From a distance the planet had looked dark and grim and desolate. Up close, Mara decided, it didn't look a whole lot better.

There was vegetation, certainly, everything from squat trees with wide, fan-shaped leaves to ground-hugging plants impossible to see clearly at the speed she was making. But the usual variety of color that was the norm on most of the worlds she'd visited seemed to have skipped Nirauan somehow. Everything here seemed to be done in shades of brown or gray, with only occasional splashes of dark red or deep violet to break up the monotony.

Possibly it was a natural adaptation to the dim red light of the planet's sun; perhaps in the infrared part of the spectrum the plants were actually quite colorful. Somehow, she doubted it.

"Starting to get into some hills now," she said to the recorder fastened to one end of the Defender's control panel. "They look pretty craggy, actually-whatever dirt was on them seems to have eroded away." She glanced down at her displays. "Still no indication of sensor probes."

She looked back up from her board, frowning at the landscape ahead. Up there, between two of the craggier hills . . . ? "Looks like a sort of gully up ahead," she said. "No-make that a full-fledged ravine. In fact . . ."

She brushed the Defender's control stick gently, risking a little more alt.i.tude to get a better look. Her first impression had indeed been correct: the deep canyon ahead was pointing right toward the target zone.

And in fact, unless the terrain was somehow deceiving her, it looked like it would take her all the way in.

"I think I've found my route," she said, tapping a key to download the navigational information onto the recorder's data track. "Looks like a straight run right to their door."

Unless the unknown aliens had the ravine sensor-rigged, of course, in which case it would be a straight run into an ambush. She would just have to trust her danger sense to give her enough warning.

The ravine was indeed just as it had looked from a distance: fairly straight, its width varying from fifty to a hundred meters, its depth averaging around a hundred meters but dipping as deep as three hundred in places. Most similar ravines Mara had seen had been cut by rapid rivers, but the bottom of this one was dry. The walls were composed of craggy gray rock, with small bushes and tenacious vines clinging to the sides. "Still no sign of sensor activity," she told the recorder as she settled into the task of flying down the narrow pa.s.sage. Standard military logic, she knew, would be for her opponents to launch their attack somewhere along these first few kilometers, while her maneuverability was limited but before she got unnecessarily close to their base. Stretching out to the Force, keeping a wary eye on the pale blue-green sky above her, she kept going.

But no attack came. The ravine widened, narrowed, then widened again, at one point changing from a canyon into the open side of a cliff where the left wall had crumbled down into a wide, forested valley beyond. The breath of open air was only a brief one; a moment later the wall rose again on her left and she was again flying through a ravine. As if inspired by its view of the forest, the vegetation was now becoming thicker and more varied, with the bushes and vines often completely covering the rocky walls.

And there was something else new, as well. "I'm seeing holes in the sides of the ravine now," she reported, trying to look into some of them as she pa.s.sed. But she was going too fast to see more than that they were too deep for the sunlight to penetrate all the way to their backs. "Offhand, I'd say they don't look particularly natural," she continued. "It could be a colony of avians or vine-crawlers, or it could be part of a sensor array.

Suggest the next person in bring a better sensor package to-wait a second."

She eased off on the throttle, frowning ahead. The ravine was widening again; and up there to her right&mdash "I think I may have found the front door," she told the recorder tightly. "Looks like a cave entrance up ahead on the right, just this side of a slight right-handed angling.

Good-sized opening-a little maneuvering and the ships we saw could make it inside." She pursed her lips. "And I've now got a decision to make: take the Defender, or head in on foot."

The Defender was slowing to a halt now, and she shifted to full repulsorlifts as she tried to think. The obvious decision, of course, would be to take the Defender in. But in this case, obvious didn't necessarily mean smart. So far there'd been no response from their quarry, which meant they either hadn't noticed her yet or else didn't consider her a threat.

And either way, a lone person on foot would probably get farther before sparking a reaction than a New Republic starfighter roaring in with laser cannons charged and ready.

"I'm going in on foot," she told the recorder, easing the Defender down to the ground beside a clump of bushes and keying for a bioscan of the air outside. "There've been no hostile acts toward me yet, and it would be nice if I could keep it that way."

Reaching down to the small weapons locker beside her right knee, she opened the panel.

"But just in case I can't, I'm taking my BlasTech, sleeve gun, and lightsaber," she added.

"That should give me a head start on whatever happens."

She slid the BlasTech blaster into the holster on her hip and secured the smaller weapon in the forearm holster hidden beneath her left sleeve. She picked up the lightsaber . And paused, gazing at the weapon, feeling the cool metal against her skin. It had been Luke Skywalker's lightsaber once, made by his father and pa.s.sed down to him on Tatooine by Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. Luke had given it in turn to her after the Empire's ma.s.sive counteroffensive under Grand Admiral Thrawn had finally been stopped.

Then, she and Luke had been allies. Now . . .

With a grimace, she hooked the lightsaber onto her belt. Now, she wasn't sure what they were.

Or rather, she wasn't sure what he was.

The bioscan beeped: the air was breathable, with no toxins or dangerous microorganisms that should be able to get through her broad-scale immunization. "Looks okay out there,"

she said, dragging her thoughts away from Skywalker and back to the immediate business at hand. Shutting down the repulsorlifts, she shifted the Defender's systems to standby and double-checked that the recorder was set to pulse-transmit back to the Starry Ice. "I'll take my comlink, keyed to the recorder."

She clipped her comlink to a hands-free position on her collar, then popped the canopy.

Nirauan's air rushed in, cool and crisp, with the subtle yet exotic odors of a new world.

Unstrapping, she stood up, pulling the Defender's survival pack from its storage locker and hooking its straps over one shoulder as she climbed down the side to the ground.

Settling the pack securely onto her shoulders, taking one last look around, she closed and locked the canopy and set off toward the cave.

The gra.s.slike vegetation underfoot was short and broadbladed, with a tendency to cling to her boots, but otherwise it didn't impede her movements. She listened as she walked, but there was only the rustling of the vegetation and the quiet whisper of the breezes through the ravine. No animal or avian sounds at all.

But they were there, she knew, glancing up at the small holes that dotted the ravine's sides. The animals were there. In the holes, or nesting in the bushes, or lurking under the rock-climbing vines. She could feel their presence.

And at least some of them were watching her. . . "I could have been wrong about this," she said into the comlink, drawing her blaster. "That could just be a cave up there. I guess I'll find out soon enough."

Cautiously, she worked her way to the cave. Just as cautiously, she eased an eye around the edge.

It was a cave, all right. A dirty, musty, rough-walled cave, stretching back blackly into the distance, with a thick matting of dead leaves on the ground at the entrance, cobwebs of some sort wafting randomly in the breeze, and a lingering hint of dankness from distant standing water.

She lowered her blaster, feeling both anticlimactic and a little bit foolish. "I'm here,"

she said to her comlink. "And if this is a disguised landing bay, they've done a terrific job of it."

She stepped back from the cave's mouth, shading her eyes as she peered up the side of the cliff. Nothing but cliff that she could see. Just beyond the cave, as she'd already noted, the ravine veered slightly to the right. More from curiosity than any expectation of seeing anything interesting, she walked to the far side of the cave and looked around the bend.

And caught her breath. Straight ahead, perhaps ten kilometers farther along, the ravine came to an abrupt end at the base of a ma.s.sive bluff. And sitting atop the bluff, black against the pale sky, was a building.

No, not just a building. A fortress.

Mara took a deep breath. "I've found them," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady as she pulled a set of macrobinoculars from their pouch in the side of her survival pack.

There was something about the sight of that structure that was sending an unpleasant tingle through her. "There's some kind of fortress sitting on a bluff at the far end of the ravine."

She activated the macrobinoculars and focused on the fortress. "Seems to be built of black stone," she reported, zooming in the view. "Reminds me of that old abandoned fortress on Hijarna we sometimes used as a rendezvous point. I can see-looks like two, maybe three towers from this angle, plus something that might have been one more broken off near the base. In fact . . .

She lowered her view down the bluff to where the ravine began, the tingling sensation growing even more unpleasant. "In fact, if you set up the angles right," she said slowly, "you could make a case that whatever the shot was that took out that tower was the same blast that gouged out this ravine."

And if so, that would have been one impressive blast. The Death Star could have done it, but not much else in either the Imperial or New Republic a.r.s.enals. "Regardless, I guess that's my next stop," she decided, sliding the macrobinoculars back into their pouch.

Taking one last look at the fortress, she turned and headed back toward the Defender. She glanced inside the cave, crossed to the other side&mdash And froze, pressing her shoulder against the cool rock beside the cave opening. Something had suddenly set off her danger sense . . . and as she waited, she heard it again.

The soft, distant whine of an air vehicle.

"I think I'm about to have some company," she muttered into her comlink, giving the sky a quick scan. Nothing was visible yet, but the sound was definitely coming closer.

Carefully, still watching the sky, she took a few steps back into the shadows of the cave.

Abruptly her danger sense flared; but even as she spun around she knew it was too late; From deep in the cave to her right something dark shot past, flapping a puff of dank air into her face as it swooped past her head and darted back into the darkness. She dropped into a crouch, blaster tracking toward the flying shadow, but it was already out of sight.

She fired once into the ceiling, the blast of light giving her a brief glimpse of rough walls and hanging spikes of rock. She spotted the flying shado w, shifted her aim warningly toward it&mdash She had only a glimpse of the second shadow as it dropped from somewhere above her and deftly s.n.a.t.c.hed the blaster from her hand. Stifling a curse, she yanked her lightsaber off her belt with her left hand, igniting it and in the same motion tossing it to her right hand.

And suddenly the whole cave seemed to come to a screeching halt.

It was, Mara realized, a bizarre characterization of what had just happened. But the impression nevertheless remained. Whatever the flapping creatures were, they were suddenly watching with new eyes.

And speaking with a new voice.

A new voice? Mara frowned, listening hard. No mistake: there were indeed new sounds murmuring through the cave.

Through the cave . . . or through her mind.

Backing into a slight depression in the wall, she stretched out as hard as she could with the Force. The almost-voices seemed to sharpen, but they remained right on the tantalizing edge of comprehension. "Terrific," she muttered to herself. An alien and possibly hostile aircraft on its way, and here she was, pinned down by equally alien creatures who were smart enough to grab her blaster away. Creatures she could almost, but not quite, communicate with. "Where are Skywalker and his bag of tricks when you need them?"

It was as if an emotional seismic shock had rippled through the cave. Suddenly the almost-voices were clamoring even louder at the edge of her mind. "Skywalker?" Mara demanded. "You know him?"

Again the almost-voices clamored, this time with a coloring of frustration in their tone.

"Yeah, I'm frustrated, too," Mara snapped back. "Come on, speak up. Or whatever it is you're doing. What does Skywalker have to do with you ?"

If they gave an answer, she never heard it. From the mouth of the cave to her left came a whisper of movement. She spun around, swinging her lightsaber to defense position&mdash And felt her mouth drop open in astonishment. Moving awkwardly into the mouth of the cave was a huge cloud of dark, vaguely mynock-like creatures, their wings flapping madly.

And in the center of that cloud, supported on the backs of those beneath it as it was hauled by the half-hidden claws of the ones above, was her ship.

"What in blazes?" she snapped, jumping forward. Too quickly. Her foot caught on a pile of dead leaves, throwing her off balance. She twisted around, trying to recover, and instead swerved the opposite direction. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a sharp-edged stone jutting out from the cave wall rushing at her&mdash She woke gradually, painfully, with a matting of what felt like dried blood on the side of her head and eyes that didn't seem to want to open.

It was perhaps half a groggy minute more before she was conscious enough to realize that her eyes were in fact open. It was simply a matter of its being too dark to see anything.

"Uh-oh," she muttered, her voice echoing oddly. Had she been unconscious long enough for it to become night? Or had she been dragged or carried farther back into the cave?

The survival pack was still strapped to her back. Pulling the glow rod from its pocket, she flicked it on.

She had indeed been moved deeper into the cave. And, for good measure, it had also become night outside.

"Nice to know I can still call em," she muttered in disgust, glaring at her chrono. She'd been unconscious for nearly three hours, far longer than she would have expected. Either she'd hit the wall harder than she realized, or else her kidnappers had dropped her a few times on the way here.

Wherever "here" was.

For a moment she played the beam from the glow rod around the walls and high ceiling of the cavern around her, comparing it with her memory of the brief glimpse the illumination from her earlier blaster shot had given her. But nothing matched. That put her at least thirty meters inside, she estimated, probably more. Not an unreasonable hike, a.s.suming she didn't get lost in a maze of side pa.s.sages. And a.s.suming her Defender was waiting somewhere along the way for her to find.

And a.s.suming that if a.s.sumptions one and two worked out there would be some place for her to go.

She looked at her chrono again. Three hours. The recorder had been set up to dump a pulse-transmission back to the Starry Ice if she either shut off the comlink or else stopped talking for fifteen minutes. Which meant Faughn bad had the record of her trip for over two and a half hours now, including that last startled yelp before she'd knocked herself out The question was, what had she decided to do with it?

Unfortunately, there was only one likely answer. Faughn had no other fighters aboard; had no way to come to Mara's aid except to bring the Starry Ice itself in. She knew better than to risk her ship that way, particularly when she was the only one who had the information Mara had sent.

Which meant the Starry Ice was long gone. And with no hyperdrive on the Defender, that meant Mara was stuck here.

"I suppose I could walk to the fortress and see if they've got a room to rent," she muttered. But that really didn't sound like a smart idea; and even as she said it, she could hear a strong note of disapproval enter the almost-voices tickling at the edge of her mind. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere," she growled. It was their fault she was marooned here, after all.

On the other hand, depending on who or what had been in the aircraft she'd heard, it was possible they'd also saved her life. Under the circ.u.mstances, she supposed, it was a fair trade-off.

And it wasn't like this was permanent exile, either. A few days-two weeks at the most-and Karrde would have a force here to get her out.

In the meantime, she bad survival to worry about. Balancing the glow rod on an outcropping where it could give her some working light, she unstrapped her pack and began setting up camp.

CHAPTER 15.

Lando looked up from his datapad at the grizzled man sitting across the tapcafe table from him, face half hidden behind his mug. "You must be joking," he said, waving at the datapad. "Fifty thousand? A month?"

The other shrugged. "Take it or not, Calrissian-makes no difference to me. But if you want to hire the best, you gotta expect it to cost you."

"Oh, come on," Lando growled. "This is me you're talking to, Reggi. We both know the Soskin Guard is hardly the best."

"Maybe not," Reggi allowed, taking another swig from his mug. "But they're the best you're gonna have any shot at hiring."

"Look, I'm talking about running ore freighter security here," Lando said, fighting against the sinking feeling he'd had so many times in the past ten days. "Not invading Alion or boarding a Star Destroyer or something."

"Too bad," Reggi said, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. "Those sound like more fun-the Soskins might give you a discount on one of them."

"My point is that we're not talking the kind of job that's worth fifty thousand," Lando pushed ahead doggedly. "We're talking one shipment of ore per month out of Varn, plus a few shiploads of casino customers coming in and out. That can't be worth more than, say, five thousand a month."

Reggi sighed. "Look, Calrissian-" He paused, glanced around the tapcafe. "Look over there," he continued, pointing across at a group of aliens bunched together around a table, their h.o.r.n.y heads almost touching. "See those Clatear? They've got a six-hundred-year-old feud going with the Nhoras that five separate generations of Jedi tried to stop and couldn't Ever heard of it?"

Lando nodded. "Yes."

"Good," Reggi said. "Well, with this new bands-off policy that's come out of Coruscant, they figure no one outside their sector is going to care anymore what they do to each other. Ergo, it's time to start fighting again.

"Now, the Clatear, they've got a pretty good military-they were under Imperial guns a lot for a while-so they're in pretty good shape. The Nhoras were luckier-or maybe not, depending how you look at it. They got ignored by the Empire, so they've got nothing much to fight with."

Lando sighed. He could see where this was going. "So they're hiring mercenaries."

"You got it, old friend," Reggi said approvingly. "They've got the Dhashaan Shield in to guard their systems-even talked old Dharus himself out of retirement to handle logistics and strategy for them. And they're ladling out thirty thousand for them. That's per day."

He shook his bead in disbelief. "It's definitely a seller's market out there for anyone with soldiers and ships, Calrissian. Everyone's figuring on settling old grudges. And who out there't hasn't got a grudge or two against someone?"

"But the Nhoras are hiring for a full-scale war," Lando said, trying one last time. "All I want is someone to help keep pirates off my shipments."

Reggi shrugged. "Some of those pirate gangs are worse than taking on a whole system defense force. Course, that depends on the system."