"Oh, that's comforting," Calrissian growled. "And all the more reason to get the Caamas issue resolved as quickly as possible. if there's even half a chance Car'das can help, someone has to go see him."

"And you're suggesting I should be that someone?"

"You're the one who knew him," Calrissian pointed out.

"That may not be an a.s.set," Karrde said. "In fact, it could be quite the opposite."

There was the soft sound of a slightly exasperated sigh. "Look, Karrde, I don't know what went on between you and Car'das. What I do know is that we're facing Grand Admiral Thrawn here. And not just us-you're facing him, too. Don't forget be specifically said he'd be coming after you."

"Scare words," Karrde murmured.

"I don't remember Thrawn ever relying on scare words the last time," Calrissian said.

"Everything he said was backed up with action. But since you've brought up the subject of scare words, what are you so afraid of, anyway?"

There was the sound of footsteps moving toward the window. "You never met Car'das, Lando,"

Karrde said quietly. "If you had, you'd understand. In his own way he was more ruthless even than Jabba the Hutt."

"Yet you asked Mara and me to go hunt him down."

"I didn't ask you to do anything at all," Karrde said. "If you'll recall, I tried to get you to sell me that beckon call outright."

"You also tried to tell me it was just some useless curiosity from pre-Clone Wars days,"

Calrissian reminded him dryly. "You knew perfectly well I wouldn't fall for a story like that. Anyway, that's beside the point. We tracked him down, and made it back just fine."

"You only tracked him as far as a likely system," Karrde said. "You're asking me to walk into whatever fortress he's set up there and go face-to-face with him."

"If Thrawn isn't stopped, he'll be the one who eventually comes knocking at Car'das's retirement home," Calrissian said. "If Car'das has any brains, he'll thank you for the warning."

"Car'das never thanked anyone for anything in his life," Karrde said bluntly. "And he most certainly hasn't retired, either. He'll be scheming or plotting something-that's the nature of the man. And he will not want to be found. Particularly not by me."

Calrissian hissed between his teeth. "Fine," he bit out. "You want to go bury yourself in a hole and wait for Thrawn to come dig you out, you go right ahead. Give me a copy of Mara's route to the Exocron system and I'll go find him myself."

"Don't be absurd," Karrde said. "You and the Lady Luck wouldn't last two days alone in the Kathol Outback."

"Who says I'll be going alone?" Calrissian countered. "I thought I'd ask General Bel Iblis and the Peregrine along."

"That would be the absolute worst thing you could do," Karrde said, an edge of exasperation starting to color his tone. "You bring a capital warship into the Exocron system and Car'das will either go completely underground or blow it out of the sky. You don't know him the way I do."

"No," Calrissian agreed quietly. "I don't."

There was a long silence. A long, waiting silence. "You should never have given up on your con man origins, Calrissian," Karrde said at last. "You're far too good at it. All right.

I'll go."

"Thanks," Calrissian said. "You won't regret this."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Karrde warned, his usual easy humor back in his voice. "I suppose we should go break the news to the others."

The door whispered open and the glow panels shut off; and as the room went dark again, Shada heaved herself up out of her hiding place. Rolling back across the bed and onto her feet, she crossed the room and slipped out just before the door closed again.

The two men, Calrissian in the lead, were heading down the hallway toward the edge of what looked like an Alderaanian-style conversation circle, both of them completely oblivious to her presence behind them. Moving up, she fell into silent step behind Karrde.

"Okay, I give up," Han said, a puzzled look on his face. "What was that all about?"

Leia shook her head. "I don't know," she admitted, replaying the last exchange between Lando and Karrde in her mind as she gazed at the hallway where the two of them had disappeared toward the boys' bedroom. "Some kind of secret they don't want us to know about."

"Yeah, I figured that much," Han said. "What I meant was what's the secret?"

Leia threw him one of her vast repertoire of patient looks, an inventory created by a lifetime of diplomatic service and honed to a fine art by ten years of dealing with three boisterous children. "You know I can't just go in and dig things out of their minds," she reminded him. "It's not even ethical with enemies, let alone friends."

"You Jedi are no fun sometimes," Han said. His tone was bantering, but she could tell from his eyes and mood that he was still uneasy about the situation.

"We're not in the business to have fun," she pointed out.

"You couldn't just sort of, oh, stretch out and get a feel for what they're talking about in there?"

Leia smiled wryly. "I wish you wouldn't do that," she admonished him.

He pulled out one of his own repertoire of innocent looks. "Do what?"

"Suggest that I do something unethical right when I'm trying to persuade myself that it wouldn't hurt anyone," she told him. "That's very disconcerting."

"Specially coming from a guy who isn't supposed to have near as good a conscience as you do?" he suggested blandly.

Leia rolled her eyes. "I swear, Han, I think you can read my mind better without Jedi senses than I can read yours with them."

He waved a hand. "Professional secret. One of the things you learn as a scoundrel."

"Of course," Leia said, looking in the direction of the hallway again. "I wonder how unethical it would be to send Threepio in to take notes for them-"

"Lady Vader," a gravelly voice cut in.

Leia jumped; as usual, she hadn't beard or sensed the Noghri's approach. What is it, Gharakh?"

"Perhaps trouble," Gharakh growled. "The sentry on the rooftop is not responding to his comlink."

Out of the corner of her eye, Leia saw Han roll slightly in his chair to loosen his blaster in its bolster. "You've sent a team to check on him?"

"They are on the way," the Noghri said. "But until we know otherwise, we must a.s.sume an intruder is attempting to break in. Where are the others?"

"Down the ball," Leia said. Even as she pointed, she felt the subtle change in air pressure as the distant bedroom door slid open. "That should be them now," she added as the sound of approaching footsteps confirmed it.

"I would ask that you stay in this room for the present," Gharakh said. As he spoke, Lando appeared around the corner, followed by Karrde&mdash "If there is an intruder, we will need to seek him out."

-followed by a tall, slender woman dressed in a dark gray combat jumpsuit.

"Don't bother," the woman said quietly. "I'm here."

CHAPTER 22.

Their reactions, as reactions went, were quick and efficient. At the same time, Shada had to admit, they were oddly comic to watch.

The shock of the unexpected voice behind him sent Calrissian jumping half a meter into the air, his gunhand getting momentarily tangled in his cloak before he could haul his blaster free. The Noghri's blaster, unsurprisingly, was already out and trained on her, with Solo's not very far behind. Karrde didn't jump nearly as far as Calrissian bad; but instead of going for a weapon himself, he merely took a long step to the side to give Solo and the Noghri a clear field of fire. A smart move, but no more th an Shada would have expected from someone of his reputation.

Councilor Organa Solo, in contrast to the others, didn't move at all.

Shada didn't move, either, She stood where she was, hands hanging empty at her sides, wondering distantly if the vaunted and probably overrated Noghri combat reflexes would make it more or less likely the guard would overreact to her unexpected appearance by gunning her down.

She almost hoped he would. In many ways, it would be the simplest way to end things.

But the Noghri didn't fire. Neither did Solo nor Calrissian; and with a vague sort of half regret Shada knew she wasn't going to get to go out the easy way.

It was Organa Solo who broke the brittle silence. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice as serene as her face.

"My name is Shada D'ukal," Shada said. "I'm not here to hurt any of you."

Organa Solo nodded. "I know."

Solo threw her a quick sideways glance. "You do?"

"My danger sense would have reacted otherwise," Organa Solo told him. "Long before she arrived in this room."

"What did you do to the guard on the roof?" the Noghri snarled.

"I taught him not to be carelessly compa.s.sionate," Shada said. "He's not hurt, except possibly his pride."

There was a quiet mewing of alien language from a comlink attached to the Noghri's collar.

"Gharakh?" Organa Solo murmured.

"He is unhurt," the Noghri said. His blaster was still aimed at Shada, but his eyes seemed fractionally less baleful. "They are freeing him from his restraints."

There was a whisper of movement from the corridor behind Shada. She started to turn her head&mdash "Stand where you are," a Noghri voice ordered from behind her. "Lift your arms."

Shada did as instructed, holding her arms out to the sides as alien hands flitted across her body, wondering where this other group had been hiding. To have sneaked up behind her in what bad seemed to be a dead-end corridor&mdash She smiled to herself. Of course: they'd come from the roof, following her route down the safety line and in through the bedroom window.

And they'd done so with a speed and efficiency that rivaled the best the Mistryl could have offered. Perhaps the Noghri weren't as overrated as she'd thought.

A minute later the probing hands were gone, taking her hip pack and climbing harness with them. "Sit down," the Noghri standing next to Organa Solo ordered, gesturing toward one of the chairs in the conversation circle. "Keep your hands where they can be seen."

"Don't you trust your searchers?" Shada asked, sitting down in the indicated chair. "Or your mistress, for that matter? Councilor Organa Solo already told you I wasn't here to hurt anyone."

The Noghri's eyes seemed to blaze. "Why are you here?" Organa Solo asked calmly before the alien could speak.

"I wanted to talk to you," Shada told her, settling her forearms along the chair's armrests. "This was the only way I could do it."

She'd expected an outraged denial, or at the very least a snort of derision. But the other woman merely lifted her eyebrows slightly.

Solo was less of a disappointment. "What's that supposed to mean?" he demanded. His blaster, Shada noted, was in his lap, no longer pointed directly at her. But he still had a grip on it.

"It means that unless you're someone with power or money, the corridors of the high and mighty are closed to you," Shada told him, not particularly caring whether she sounded bitter or not. "I've been trying to call for the past three days, and no one would put me through. So much for the great and wonderful New Republic, friend of all the common people."

"So what, you never heard of leaving a message?" Solo growled.

"A message that said what?" Shada countered. "That a n.o.body with no credentials or status wanted to talk to a great and glorious High Councilor? It would have been tossed out with the next clearing wipe."

"You're talking with me now," Organa Solo said mildly. "What is it you want to say?"

Shada focused on her, the carefully rehea.r.s.ed words seeming to stick in her throat Words that would slice through her last ties to the Mistryl, and her people, and her life. "I want to join you," she said, her voice sounding hollow and distant in her ears. "I want to join the New Republic."

For a painfully long moment the only sound in the room was the thudding of her own heart in her throat. It was, predictably, Solo who broke the silence. "You what?" he asked.

"I want to join the New Republic," Shada repeated. The second time wasn't any easier than the first. "I have a number of abilities you'll find useful: combat and surveillance, escort and security-"

"Why are you asking us about this?" Solo interrupted, sounding bewildered. "The New Republic has recruitment centers all over Coruscant."

"I don't think you fully appreciate the situation here, Solo," Karrde spoke up before Shada could reply. "Shada hasn't just walked in off the street-or rather, dangled in off the roof. She's chief bodyguard for our smuggler friend Mazzic."

A ripple of surprise ran across the others' faces. "Former bodyguard," Shada corrected. "I resigned three weeks ago."

Karrde c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "Your idea?"

Shada felt her throat tighten. "Not entirely."

"I don't see what difference it makes where she came from," Solo persisted. We're still none of us in the business of hiring."

"Han's right, Shada," Organa Solo said, her eyes studying Shada's face with an uncomfortable intensity. Had those Jedi techniques pulled the secret Mistryl connection from her mind? "There's really nothing we can do for you."

"I'm not asking for charity," Shada bit out. "Frankly, you need me more than I need you.

Especially with Thrawn on the loose again-"

"What do you know about Thrawn?" Solo asked sharply.

"I was in the back room just now," Shada said. She glanced over at Karrde, caught the sudden tightening of his expression. "Calrissian implied be was back."

She looked back at Organa Solo. "I also know about the Caamas Doc.u.ment," she told the other woman. "And I know that the only way you're going to get out of the mess you're in is to get hold of an intact copy of it."