Survivor's Quest

"Take it easy," Luke soothed, sitting down on the bed and pulling off his boots. "And don't blame Drask, at least not directly. I don't think he was the one who gave the order."

Mara frowned. "Then who did? Formbi?"

Luke nodded. "That's the feeling I was getting."

"Interesting," Mara murmured thoughtfully. "And the reason?"

"No idea," Luke said. "But don't forget how a

"Terrific," Mara muttered as she started again to get ready for bed. "It's so nice to spend time with an honorable people like the Chiss."

"It could be worse," Luke pointed out. "We could be doing this with Bothans. What did you think about his story?"

"The one about Car'das?" Mara snorted under her breath. "He's lying through his teeth on that one, too. There's no reason to let Car'das rattle off Jinzler's list of alleged credentials in an exotic trade language when he understands Basic. He could have switched languages anywhere along the way, just as soon as it was his turn to speak."

"I was thinking that, too," Luke said. "The obvious conclusion is that they didn't want Jinzler to know what they were talking about."

"Exactly," Mara said. "You'll also notice Formbi never actually answered my question as to whether he knew Car'das from somewhere else. And don't forget that they held their little rendezvous in the outer Crustai system where Drask and the rest of the Chiss couldn't eavesdrop."

She shook her head. "They're pla

"I know," Luke said, pulling her down onto the bed beside him and wrapping his arm around her. "Do you want to leave?"

"Of course not," she said. "I still want to see Outbound Flight, assuming that part of the story isn't a lie, too. Besides, if there's some trap being spun here—whether for us, Fel, or Drask—we're really the only ones available to stop it."

She shifted position to nestle herself more comfortably against his side. "Unless, of course, you want to leave that to the Geroons?" she added.

Luke smiled at the thought. "No, I think we'd better handle it," he agreed. "Pleasant dreams, Mara."

His last mental image, as he drifted off to sleep, was a darkly amusing one of Bearsh and Estosh and the other Geroons shaking in terror as they stood huddled in one of the ship's corridors, trying desperately to hold blasters steady.

Fel looked up from his desk as Grappler sat down across from him. "Yes?"

"It is in place," the other said, his large eyes reflecting the light from Fel's desk lamp. "Tapped into the navigational repeater lines."

Fel laid aside the datapad he'd been reading. "That was quick," he commented. "Any chance of the Chiss spotting it?"

The orange highlights of Grappler's green skin faded to yellow, the Eickarie equivalent of a head shake. "Not by any casual search," he said. "It is in a conduit behind a cabinet, not directly behind an access panel."

Fel nodded. "Nicely done," he said. "What about our Jedi? Do they suspect anything?"

"Of course they suspect," Grappler said, the highlights becoming orange again. "But they know nothing." His mouth opened in a sardonic grin. "Jedi Skywalker asked me to thank you for my assistance to her."

"Don't underestimate them," Fel warned. "I've heard stories about these two, both from my father and from Admiral Parck. They're sharp, they're quick, and they're very, very deadly."

"I would have it no other way," Grappler assured his commander, stiffening his shoulders proudly. "I look forward to learning their full measure in combat."

Fel took a deep breath. So the game had begun. Time to sit back and let it play. "You'll get your chance," he promised Grappler softly. "I guarantee it."

CHAPTER 10

The vermin search began early the next morning, with four pairs of Chiss armed with atmosphere sniffers starting at the bow and stern and checking every room, storage compartment, conduit, access panel, and supply package aboard the Chaf Envoy. They reached the Jade Sabre about midday, and Mara watched in polite but stolid silence as they made their methodical way through her ship.

Fortunately, Formbi's prediction proved to be correct. No line creepers were found, and within half a standard hour the search team had departed down the transfer tu

Fel's Imperial transport was searched with equal speed and efficiency. The Geroon shuttle, in contrast, took nearly three times as long to be cleared. Most of that was due to the fact that so much of the vessel had been repaired, rebuilt, or replaced that there were virtually none of the sealed equipment modules that most ships carried and that would normally not have to be checked. The search would have taken even longer if the bunkrooms and storage compartment Luke had noticed on his first visit hadn't been open to space behind their vacuum-sealed doors. The Chiss confirmed the doors' pressure readings, assured Luke that line creepers couldn't survive in vacuum, and moved on.

The whole procedure took most of the day. In the end, they found nothing.

"So we apparently have two options," Luke commented to Mara as they sat together in the forward lounge watching the hyperspace sky roll past. "Either a single group of line creepers got in and ignored everything else while they worked their way nearly to the center of the ship, or else someone brought them in and deliberately let them loose in that spot."

"Guess which option I'd pick," Mara invited.

"I know which one you'd pick," Luke said dryly. "What bothers me is that our saboteur seems to have had only that one group. What if he hadn't accomplished whatever he'd intended the first time around and had needed to create another diversion?"

"Maybe he had a few spares and spaced them before the search started," Mara suggested.

"Which means what?" Luke asked. "That he lost his nerve and dumped the evidence even though he wasn't finished with it?"

"More likely that he did accomplish what he set out to do last night," Mara said. "And that one really bothers me."

"Why?"

"Because I can't figure out what that was. Drask's been over every piece of equipment in the forward third of the ship and hasn't found anything. So what did the diversion gain anyone?"

Luke stroked thoughtfully at his cheek. "Maybe Drask is looking in the wrong place," he suggested. "Maybe we're looking at a two-stage diversion: line creepers in the control lines and doused lights in the bow, while the actual work went on somewhere else."

"Fine," Mara said. "But where? And what? Don't forget, the Chiss checked every cubic centimeter of the ship today."

"Looking for line creepers."

"Looking at everything," Mara corrected. "I watched them go through the Sabre, Luke. Even when they were sampling the air they were looking around. If there'd been any spare weapons or explosives or anything else out of place in there, they'd have spotted it. And I'll bet that goes double for the Imperials and Geroons."

"Probably triple for the Imperials," Luke conceded. Outside, the mottling vanished into starlines and collapsed into stars. Yet another navigational stop, apparently. Idly, he wondered what sort of firepoints the Chiss had waiting at this one. "So what's our next move?"

"Unfortunately, that's probably up to him," Mara said, not sounding at all happy about it. "The initiative always lies with the attacker. About all we can do is be ready—"