Survivor's Quest

"Shada was rather evasive on that point, but it seems clear that they did," Mara said. "Reading between the lines, I'd also guess Car'das had something to do with the dramatic collapse of that Return-of-Thrawn hysteria that happened while we were out on Nirauan. She also mentioned a huge data card library that she said rivaled the official New Republic archives on Coruscant."

"Karrde's former mentor," Luke murmured thoughtfully. "And Karrde with his deep and abiding interest in gathering information. It fits, I suppose."

"What fits?" Mara asked. "The bit about Car'das knowing something was in the works and pointing Jinzler to exactly the right place at the right time to intercept an incoming message?"

"Guessing the right place, at least, wouldn't have taken anything special," Luke pointed out. "Comra's the logical spot to pick up a transmission coming from Nirauan or Chiss space. If Car'das knew or guessed Formbi would be contacting us, that's where the message would come through."

"That assumes he knew the message was on its way," Mara pointed out.

"Right," Luke agreed. "And that part would have taken something special. Though even there you'll notice he seemed to be a bit off on his timing. Jinzler was at the station a good seven weeks before the message came through."

"Maybe Formbi had to argue with the Nine Families longer than he expected before he got permission to contact us," Mara suggested. "You can't dock Car'das points for someone else's bureaucracy."

"I suppose not," Luke conceded. "There's also the question of how he could have found out about Jinzler and his sister."

"Yes—Jinzler's sister," Mara growled. "I presume you've noticed that up until a couple of days ago there would have been a perfect way to check out that part of his story."

Luke nodded. "Fel's Outbound Flight operational manual and its perso

"Except that it was stolen," Mara said. "And now all of a sudden he comes up with a sister. Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?"

"I might," Luke had to admit. "But that's not proof that he took the manual."

"We're not exactly rolling in proof on any part of this," Mara pointed out. "Still, if Jinzler didn't take the cards, who did? And why?"

"I don't know," Luke said, half turning to look back toward the lounge exit. "Right now, I'm more intrigued by the question of what someone was doing lurking in the dark up here. Unless you think Jinzler made that part up to try to deflect suspicion from himself."

"Oddly enough, I don't," Mara said slowly. "He strikes me as being too smart to trot out such a lame story without dressing it up a bit."

Luke frowned. "Dressing it up how?"

"Suppose he wanted to do some mischief in the shield generator room," Mara said. "Say, someplace over at the starboard end. The first thing a real professional would do when he got inside would be to go to the portside end and open one of the storage cabinets there. Not too obviously, but enough to see if you were looking for it. Then, if he gets caught, he still spins his story about chasing down an intruder, but adds that he got a glimpse of someone over by the portside cabinets before he took off."

"The investigators go to look, and they find the open cabinet," Luke said, nodding his understanding.

"Right," Mara said. "Not only does it make his story play better, but it also automatically shirts attention away from his real target."

Luke nodded. "Simple, but effective."

"All the best tricks are," Mara agreed. "It's basically the same thing we assumed our saboteur was doing right from the start: drawing attention to the engines, then going and hitting something in the bow."

"Right," Luke said. "Assuming the engine thing was a diversion."

"Also true," Mara admitted. "It could just as well be that that was a genuine accident, and that Jinzler or someone else simply took advantage of it to do some late-night skulking."

Luke shook his head. "This is starting to make my head hurt," he said. "If Jinzler set the fire to steal Fel's Outbound Flight data, shouldn't that have been the end of it? What would he have needed to do up here?"

"Who knows?" Mara said. "He may be on some special mission, either for Car'das or someone else, and had to steal the operational manual first so that we couldn't crack his story."

"And since most of what we know comes solely from him, we wouldn't even be able to guess from that what he's really up to."

"Actually, everything we know about him comes solely from him," Mara corrected. "Karrde told us about Dean Jinzler's background, but we only have our gray-eyed friend's word for it that he really is Dean Jinzler."

Luke hissed between his teeth. That one hadn't even occurred to him. "Which means what I said about us having a few more puzzle pieces is meaningless, isn't it?"

"They could be pieces to an entirely imaginary puzzle," Mara agreed. "And it gets worse. It could even be we have two different sets of late-night skulkers, each with different agendas, working either parallel or at cross-purposes to each other. Don't forget, we had not only Jinzler up here but at least two Chiss crewers and one of Fel's stormtroopers, as well."

"And if Jinzler's telling the truth, one of the Geroons," Luke reminded her. "All we're missing is Formbi and Drask to round out the suspect list."

"Right," Mara said. "On the other hand, Jinzler's the only one who got caught where he wasn't supposed to be. How does that story about just happening to head through the Chiss quarters strike you?"

"It's actually not as far-fetched as it sounds," Luke said. "If there was a Jedi in his family, he could easily be Force-sensitive enough to be nudged to the right place at the right time without knowing how or why he'd done it. Not many people know enough about Jedi family patterns to spin that sort of subtlety into a lie, either."

"Car'das might have known," Mara said. "And whatever he senses or doesn't sense, Jinzler still needed Car'das's advice to get himself transferred to Comra in time." She waved a hand. "Yes, I know that's not the same thing."

"Still, we do keep coming back to Car'das, don't we?" Luke murmured. "I wonder what he and Formbi might have had to talk about."

"No idea," Mara said. "As far as I know, Karrde himself never did any work out in the Unknown Regions. If Car'das made it out this far, it was before he and Karrde met."

"Or after Car'das disappeared," Luke pointed out. "We don't know anything about him during that period, either."

"Maybe we should go ask Formbi," Mara suggested.

"Sure, why not?" Luke said. "We need to warn him to check the shield generators, anyway."

Mara shook her head. "I don't think the generators were the target," she said. "I think it was something else."

"Any idea what?"

"Not really," Mara conceded. "But if I had to vote, I'd vote for someone putting a tap on the sensor lines. Remember when we were called into the command center earlier this evening and Formbi was listing all the dangers we would be facing inside the cluster?"

"Yes," Luke said, wondering where she was going with this.

"Among the various natural hazards to life and happiness, he also mentioned something called firepoints," she went on. "I've been meaning to ask him what exactly those are, but I think I may have figured it out." She pointed out the viewport. "You see that asteroid over there? The one with all the dark spots?"

Luke peered out into the brilliant starscape. A spotted asteroid... "Yes," he said as he picked it out of the shadows.

"Ten to one it's either a missile cluster or a fighter nest," Mara said. "Those dark spots are almost certainly the ends of launching tubes."

"A firepoint," Luke murmured, studying the asteroid. There were a lot of dark spots on it, too. "Aptly named."