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Title: Memories of Empire
Author: Shezan (shezan1@yahoo.com)
Rating: NC-17
Characters: Thrawn, Vader, F, Luke, Leia, Han
Category: Drama/Romance/some BDSM

Disclaimer: Lucasfilm is Borg. I have been assimilated. Nobody's paying me, while I have bought all the books, all the comics, most of the SWAJ booklets, the videos, the Radio Dramas CDs, the soundtracks, the action figures, the mouse mat, the fridge magnets… that enough yet to keep your lawyers off my back, George?

Summary: An old friend of Grand-Admiral Thrawn's finds her way to the Chimaera, with secrets that could help the Empire -- or Darth Vader's children.

Chapter 1

Captain Pellaeon, standing next to the comm officer on the Chimaera’s bridge, kept a discreet eye on Grand Admiral Thrawn and his visitor. At the end of the long room, Niles Ferrier’s heavy bulk partly obscured one side of the right viewport. Pellaeon noted the ship thief’s slightly belligerent stance, the tension in his muscular shoulders, the nervous movements of his left arm while the right hung loosely within easy reach of the large blaster on his hip. Next to him, Thrawn’s tall figure in his impeccable white Grand Admiral uniform looked, as usual, completely at ease. Once more, Pellaeon wondered at the complex character of the brilliant, unfathomable military commander who’d taken over Imperial leadership almost a year before—and revolutionized most of the Fleet’s strategy and tactics, to superb results. He couldn’t hear the Grand Admiral’s quiet voice from where he stood, although snatches of Ferrier’s answers drifted back to the comm console. Pellaeon himself found the employ of criminals or bounty-hunters deeply distasteful. Such qualms apparently didn’t trouble Thrawn at all.

A muted scuffle was suddenly overheard on the steps leading to the bridge entrance. Pellaeon swung round to see three armed stormtroopers shepherding two men in unmarked flightsuits, and a woman wearing grubby overalls. The two men seemed unwilling to come closer and could be heard arguing; the woman, chained by a wrist to one of the stormtroopers, was edging closer to the bridge and the command post.

“What’s going on here?” Pellaeon snorted, annoyed at the disturbance.

“Incident in bay 78, sir, next to the visitors' ship,” the leader of the stormtrooper squad replied. “We thought—”

“It’s nothing at all” one of the unknown men broke in. “It’s a private disciplinary matter. We wouldn’t want to disturb you, sir.”

Near the right viewport, Grand Admiral Thrawn turned from his conversation with Niles Ferrier to glance down the room at the bridge entrance. “It seems we are already disturbed,” the Grand Admiral remarked in his calm voice, taking a few steps in their direction. “Why did you think it necessary to bring these people all the way up to the bridge, Lieutenant?”

Pellaeon stole a look at the Grand Admiral, taking in as he did so Ferrier’s scowl and arrested stance. Thrawn looked unperturbed, but the captain knew better.

“This woman says she was held prisoner in the hold of their ship... and that she knows you, Admiral...” the lieutenant answered in a tone oddly unsure for a stormtrooper. Pellaeon stared at the slight, tense figure of the girl poised on the last step. Young-ish, in her thirties, he judged. Ragged blond hair to the shoulders, none too clean. Green eyes underlined by deep shadows, fine features, jaw set, a darkening bruise on one cheek. One of the men took a step forward and tried to grab her free arm, and she jerked away, colliding with the stormtrooper who held her. Interesting—and unusual to say the least—that she seemed to fear the soldiers far less than the two crewmen from the Kessel Run.

“Does she, now?” Thrawn said almost languidly. “Then you did the right thing, of course. You may come up, lieutenant. Bring them in.” As the group moved forward, the two men shuffling their feet, the Grand Admiral turned to Niles Ferrier. “Your people, I believe, Ferrier?”

“They’re in my crew, yes,” the spacer said guardedly. “They get up to all sort of tricks. Need to keep them on a tight leash at times.”

Pellaeon noticed a fleeting glint in Thrawn’s eyes, but could not interpret it. “What exactly happened, lieutenant?” the Grand Admiral asked.

“We were patrolling near the aft docking bays, when we found them in one of the service pits, sir. The girl must have been hiding there. They were dragging her back to the ship.”

“She got out of the stockade, dunno how,” one of the men said to Ferrier. “You said two weeks, capt’n.”

Pellaeon looked at Ferrier, and was surprised to detect a worried spark in the ship thief’s glare, directed at the young woman standing silent in front of them. Silent... but Pellaeon was suddenly aware of a very different undercurrent. A minute ago, the girl radiated defiance and fear. Now she looked almost relieved.

“Ah. Two weeks,” Thrawn said, still in his deceptively quiet tone. “A tight leash, I think you said, Ferrier.”

“She’s a navigator,” Ferrier spat out. “Almost lost us in hyperspace. Always up to trouble. You have well-trained and disciplined Imperial troops and crews, Admiral. You don’t know what kind of people us independents have to hire sometimes.”

“People who obviously can convince my stormtroopers to bring them to my notice,” Thrawn replied. “An interesting skill, I would say.”

Pellaeon noted that Thrawn ignored the girl entirely, addressing only Ferrier. There was a pregnant pause, then the ship thief blustered: “She’s a shifty character. I wouldn’t trust her.”

“An opinion equally shared,” Thrawn commented dryly, finally turning to the woman standing in front of a sensor console, her wrist still tied to the stormtrooper’s. “It doesn’t seem you inspire her with much trust either.” He motioned to the stormtrooper. “Unshackle her.”

The trooper did so, and the woman rubbed her freed wrist before raising her eyes to the Grand Admiral. “Hello, Admiral,” she said quietly.

“Hello, Syrie,” Thrawn replied. “This is a surprise. It has been rather a long time.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I see Rukh is still with you. Hello, Rukh.”

Pellaeon jumped: as usual, he hadn’t heard the Noghri bodyguard moving close to them. Now, stunned, he watched the small, wiry alien bowing low to the young woman, his skinny gray arms splayed on either side of his body, in a posture of deep respect, mewing “My lady” in his gravelly voice.

“It’s good to see you, Rukh. It brings backs memories,” she said softly.

Pellaeon, speechless, looked from her to the Grand Admiral... and watched a sardonic smile widening on that hard pale blue face. Ferrier was rooted to the ground, a very scared look now in his eyes. “Yes,” Thrawn said in a steely voice. “A tight leash. I don’t doubt it for a minute. Give me one very good reason for not seizing your ship this instant, Ferrier... and holding you in that stockade for two weeks. Or much longer.”

“Wait!” Ferrier blurted out. “I don’t know what she was, but we didn’t... She’s trouble!”

“Silence,” Thrawn cut him off, turning to the stormtrooper officer. “Lieutenant—”

He broke off. Still standing at the same place in front of them, the young woman was swaying on her feet. The red eyes narrowed, glowered. “You are not well.” Two long blue fingers pressed a switch on the comm console. “Lieutenant. Sick bay.”

The same stormtrooper who had been chained to her now helped her lean on him. “No, not—too well...” she whispered, looking up into the Grand Admiral’s glowing eyes. In a few moments, a team of medics came onto the bridge. “Syrie,” Thrawn leaned toward her, as one of the medical droids started setting up an IV line. “I know there was worse. Do you want this man terminated?”

Pellaeon, fascinated, saw the woman’s pale lips stretch into the ghost of a smile. “I’m sure he’s here because you have a need for him,” she said very softly. “I don’t care enough... that kind of thing is long behind me anyway.”

The medics were helping her onto an antigrav sled, its sensor attachments already deployed and monitoring her pulse and vital functions. In a short while they were gone, and Thrawn turned back to Ferrier and Pellaeon.

“Admiral, this— this is a... a, huh, terrible mistake...”

Ferrier stopped abruptly, his throat gripped in a deadly lock, his mouth gagged by a wiry, incredibly muscular hand, the tip of something extremely sharp pricking the small of his back.

“Do you realize just how much I would like to allow Rukh to kill you now, Ferrier?” Thrawn asked in a glacial, sibilant voice that Pellaeon had never heard him use before. “And how happy Rukh would be to oblige me? Do not tempt us.” His red eyes glittered as he surveyed the immobilized, terrified spacer for a few moments. Then he raised one hand: “Rukh. Why don’t you go check on the lady Syrie in sick bay?” In an instant Ferrier was freed; the short alien vanished without a noise. The smuggler shook visibly. Thrawn took a few steps toward the viewport before turning round, once again looking perfectly calm. “So. Ferrier. I am expecting you to find Karrde and whatever smugglers are still helping him. You have three weeks. Do not fail. And remember that I can always activate the doomsday relay in your engine motivator.”

“I... no-oh,” Ferrier stammered. “I won’t. I...”

“You may go,” the Grand Admiral said coldly. Turning his back on the smuggler, he signaled to the three stormtroopers still guarding the two crewmen from the Kessel Run. “Take them all back to bay 78. I want them off the Chimaera in fifteen minutes.”

Thrawn stood staring at the bridge steps even after they were gone, his long, tapered fingers absent-mindedly fiddling with his personal comlink. Finally he turned to Pellaeon, a slight smile on his lips. “I’m sure you’re wondering what that was all about, Captain,” he said urbanely.

“No, sir,” Pellaeon replied tightly.

“Ah. You did serve on the Executor, I remember it now.”

Pellaeon looked bewildered at that, and Thrawn’s eyes glinted. The Grand Admiral seemed, unaccountably, almost amused. “Your very commendable discretion is misplaced, Captain. Perhaps you were not aware of that woman’s place near Lord Vader.”

It took a moment for Pellaeon to take in all the implications of what he’d just heard. Then his jaw dropped.

“Precisely,” the Grand Admiral said.

His glowing red eyes held Pellaeon’s mesmerized gaze for an instant, then he walked leisurely to his command chair, motioning for the captain to follow him. Sitting down in the center of the double circle of repeater displays, the Grand Admiral took the time to study the information from the ship’s main computer relays before speaking again.

“At the very least, one might wonder what became of her between the destruction of the second Death Star and today... how she happened to find herself working as a lowly navigator in a smuggler’s crew after having stood at the side of the second richest and most powerful man in the galaxy.”

“Five years is a long time, especially during a war and a revolution,” Pellaeon hazarded. “The Imperial household has been disbanded—”

“Ah, but we’re not talking about the Imperial court,” Thrawn countered. “Darth Vader’s wealth and networks were private—and spanned the galaxy. There must be holdings and property held in trust by any number of representatives and shell companies on thousands of systems, many of which are no doubt still under Imperial control. Holdings and property that could buy us ships, armaments, troops, worlds even.”

Silence fell for a moment between the seated alien admiral and his very upright human second-in-command, as if each had fallen prey, in separate and private thrall, to the tantalizing prospect of discovering and controlling Vader’s fabulous lost treasure.

Pellaeon finally spoke, twirling his clipped gray moustache between two fingers: “Do you really think this woman could help us find Darth Vader’s fortune, sir? She certainly doesn’t look as if she’d had access to it. Not that I’d have expected Lord Vader to let a——to let her... know anything important."

Thrawn cocked an intelligent blue-black eyebrow at the senior officer, a cynical glimmer in his strange eyes. “Again, you are confusing Lord Vader with our late lamented Emperor Palpatine, Captain,” he remarked mildly. “Palpatine enjoyed controlling a retinue of sycophants, hangers-on, courtiers, minor potentates, overambitious politicians, would-be advisers, and a rather dazzling variety of concubines. No matter how close to him he allowed them to appear on occasion, he despised them and would certainly never have shared any vital information with them. Vader had no entourage, and no time for the Emperor’s. I don’t know when or how this woman appeared in his life, but believe me, she was no ordinary concubine...”

He paused for a moment, and when he finally spoke, his voice was almost dreamy: “I saw her for the first time on Coruscant, at one of the abominably formal ceremonies the Emperor insisted upon. I think it was the celebration of the official extinction of the Jedi order. Everybody was watching everybody else; everybody’s place in each tedious parade and presentation had been precisely attributed by the Emperor, thereby becoming the instant object of analysis and counter-analysis, jealousy, hatred, even crime... Palpatine relished that little game with delectation—sometimes a lowly placement indicated his disfavor; sometimes it was only a test, to see how the recipient and others around him reacted... Am I boring you, Captain?”

“Not at all, sir,” Pellaeon answered truthfully. “I didn’t much serve at Court, and I can’t say I cared for the little I saw. To hear you, it seems my instincts were right.”

“Your instincts were, and remain, unerring, Captain,” the Grand Admiral commented in an amused voice. “The Emperor was a political genius, but it was all too easy to be burned at his contact. Burned... and destroyed.”

The Grand Admiral left his words trail into silence once more, and Pellaeon stood motionless at his side, patiently awaiting the rest of his narration. To the others officers on the bridge, beyond the comm console, out of earshot, the middle-aged captain must have looked transfixed. It was the first time that Thrawn had engaged him in such a drawn-out, reflective conversation—an exchange which furthermore shed a fascinating light on the secretive Grand Admiral’s past, and on the last days of Imperial glory. Thrawn could take as long and as convoluted a path as he wished to tell his story: Pellaeon was ready to wait, to listen—and to learn.

“Where was I, Captain? Ah, yes. Imperial Center on Coruscant. The ceremonies for the victory on the Jedi. Naturally Lord Vader invariably stood at the first place. There was no arguing it; he had pretty much masterminded the extinction of the Jedi single-handed. The Emperor was so pleased, I remember, that he would not allow Vader to kneel in his presence. Called him his “dear friend” and made a show of leaning on his arm... The first ceremony was essentially military, and everyone’s entourage had to stand in the public bleachers. The second was a reception in the State Apartments at the Palace, and all the Court was invited. Vader, as usual, was alone. A few steps behind him, there was a young woman dressed in a simple dark blue evening sheath, wearing no jewelry and almost no makeup—the woman we just saw here on the bridge, Captain. No jewels, no ladies-in-waiting... but with a Noghri honor guard. Nobody had a Noghri honor guard, you understand, except the Emperor, and Vader sometimes; but Vader usually didn’t bother. He didn’t need protecting, after all. Incidentally, Captain, Rukh was one of these bodyguards. Perhaps that helps you understand the little scene you just witnessed.”

Pellaeon kept staring mutely at the Grand Admiral in frank astonishment, and Thrawn purred: “Believe me, Captain, everyone at the Imperial Court reacted to Noghri the way you do to Rukh. Syrie and her guard were given as wide a berth as Vader himself. That similarity, in itself, drew attention to the relation between them. Vader left early, and she withdrew immediately after him.” His voice became pensive: “I don’t think there was a single conversation that didn’t center on her—them—afterwards. The Emperor looked entertained, but later in the evening I thought he became somewhat annoyed by it.”

“How did you know her name, sir?” Pellaeon asked quietly.

“I didn’t. I learned it later,” Thrawn said thoughtfully. “Needless to say, Captain, I was myself rather intrigued. Remember however that I wasn’t a regular visitor at Court or on Coruscant. I had spent several years in the Unknown Regions, on the march-space of the Outer Rim; it seemed this visit to the Imperial capital was to be patterned on my previous ones—a few days of debriefing; a formal interview with the Supreme Navy Warlord; a recommendation for promotion followed by an invitation at Court; and finally a few well-watched minutes with the Emperor himself, who usually complimented me on my latest actions, approved the promotion, and sent me on my way. The Emperor was capable of appreciating all the subtler points of military competence, but I was always aware that strategic excellence ultimately came second, in his interest, to the use of the Force. And as you know, Captain, I am absolutely not Force-receptive. In short, Emperor Palpatine found me useful... but not very interesting.”

Pellaeon shot a guarded but speculative glance at his superior, who was staring unseeingly at space through the center bridge viewport, his chin resting on one folded hand. Like all Fleet officers, the captain was quite aware of the Imperial bias against non-humans. Left unsaid in Thrawn’s rambling recollections was the weight of prejudice that he had finally overcome when he had become one of the twelve Grand Admirals of the Empire. Palpatine had had close military advisers; and as far as Pellaeon remembered, they were not especially strong in the Force—in fact the fashion in the Imperial Administration had increasingly become to deride it as an “outdated religion,” “superstition;” as “sorcerer’s ways...” The captain would have been ready to bet that what had kept Thrawn piling victory upon victory in the dark reaches beyond the Outer Rim worlds was that no-one on Coruscant really cared to associate with him too closely. His brilliance and unsettling poise made him a poor candidate for Court anyway; and his alien heritage did the rest, depriving him of the more immediate effects of the Emperor’s favor.

“As it happened, Captain, the pattern of my visits at Court was about to change,” Thrawn said softly, and, yet again, Pellaeon wondered if the Grand Admiral had read his mind. “Lord Vader had recommended me for promotion to Grand Admiral, and argued the case with the Emperor successfully. I know he made a strong point of my victoriously tracking down and destroying the Outbound Flight Jedi mission—something very close to the Emperor’s heart—but that, after all, had happened almost fifteen years before. It was as good a reason to give the Emperor as any; but I knew it wasn’t the true reason, and Lord Vader knew that I knew.”

Thrawn paused again, closed his eyes as in very private reminiscence. When he finally opened them, Pellaeon was fascinated to see that they had almost turned purple, their glow very dim. “But I am getting ahead of my story, Captain. I didn’t get my audience with the Emperor that night, and I recall wondering whether the Supreme Navy Warlord’s influence was on the wane. In that case, I knew the command of the 14th Fleet, which he had promised me, would escape me... Instead, the following morning, I was told to report at Lord Vader’s palace. I’m sure you remember Darth Vader’s palace on Imperial Center, my dear Captain.”

Pellaeon briefly visualized the dark, forbidding fortress that had stood less than a mile from the Imperial palace, only guarded by two stormtroopers standing at attention on either side of its high black steel gates. He repressed a shudder. “I never went inside, sir.”

“Naturally not, Captain,” Thrawn said lightly. He swiveled in his chair to face Pellaeon squarely, his eyes glinting and quite red again. “I will not insult your intelligence by pretending that I was unimpressed... apprehensive would, in this case, be a more appropriate word. I did obey Vader’s summons, of course. In fact I even arrived a little early, which enabled me to study the art collected on the walls of the reception hall. A remarkable collection, Captain. Nothing but religious art. Bpfasshi triptychs, Ridellian Nativities, Noghri genealogies...”

The Grand Admiral must have caught a flicker of expression on Pellaeon’s face, for he allowed himself a short laugh. “I know you are still unconvinced by my artistic deductions, Captain. I beg you will humor me in this respect.”

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said.

“Thank you. Lord Vader’s collection was quite extraordinary, take my word for it, Captain. A mystic’s choice, undoubtedly. In some ways, it reassured me—it wasn’t the kind of art displayed at the Imperial Palace. He came in as I was still examining a triptych. He asked me if I knew where it came from. I told him. Then he said point-blank that I was to be appointed a Grand Admiral two days hence, in a secret ceremony. I was, as you can imagine, astounded. He told me he’d personally asked the Emperor to name me, because he had a task for me. That’s when she walked in.”

Pellaeon realized he was practically leaning on the circular repeater display console, his hands resting on the plasteel outer ledge, and he instinctively righted his position. Thrawn smiled: “I am flattered by your attention, Captain. I think I was as curious as you are now. I remember he stopped in mid-sentence to greet her, which in itself astonished me. And I can still see her—in a red kyrt dress that could have bought a planetary liner, and ruby ear pendants that would have paid for the liner’s conversion to battleship. Her first words to me were ‘Congratulations, Admiral.’ Well—that supplied nearly all I needed to know.”

Pellaeon blinked in puzzlement at the Grand Admiral. Thrawn raised a mocking eyebrow at the captain, then, lounging back in the chair, leisurely started scoring off points on the long fingers of his right hand. “Think a little, Captain,” he purred. “One, she could walk in unannounced on Vader’s meeting, sure of her reception. Two, she knew of my secret appointment; which meant at the very least he had explained what it entailed; possibly even discussed it with her. Three, although there was obviously no limit to the sums Vader would spend on her, she was shrewd enough not to show off at Court. That, or he was careful that she shouldn’t; it amounted to the same thing. I knew I was faced with something unusual there.”

Thrawn let his voice trail off. Pellaeon didn’t stir, expecting more, but after a while it seemed the Grand Admiral’s inexplicable mood of reminiscence had died out. Something flickered on one of the computer display screens, and Thrawn tapped a few keys, apparently absorbed by the answers scrolling down. A few minutes passed, then the captain coughed quietly. Thrawn shot him a glance: “Still interested, captain?”

There was no mistaking the irony in his voice. “Only if you wish to tell me, sir,” Pellaeon said guardedly.

The Grand Admiral chuckled softly. “Bear with me, captain. I know I am trying you sorely.”

Pellaeon didn’t answer, and Thrawn swiveled in the chair to face him:

“Don’t worry, Captain, I am not about to decide, in two days’ or two weeks’ time, that I have been rash in telling you that much... and to make you bear the brunt of my own carelessness.” He shot a look at the officer, noting the transient glimmer of relief on Pellaeon’s lived-in face. “A remarkable institution, the Imperial Navy, but it has been allowed to function far too much on intrigue, backstabbing and politics. A shameful waste of potential... and one I intend to reform rapidly.”

He swiveled back to face the circles of displays, but only stretched his long limbs to cross his forearms behind his neck in a very human gesture. “As I was saying. The task Lord Vader had in mind for me was to take over the rule of the planet Honoghr. Once I had organized the Noghri into an efficient commando brigade for the Empire, he wanted me to use them as a kind of parallel Special Force while I concentrated on whipping various wayward provincial governors and too-independent Grand Moffs into line. I was to report to him and to the Emperor directly. The Emperor would give me further instructions.”

He hesitated, and when he spoke again, his tone was pensive. “She remained there throughout, although she largely stayed silent. But to me, it was obvious she had been consulted—perhaps had suggested me in the first place. This was, I don’t mind telling you, rather unsettling. On the other hand, I had no choice—and I was, after all, being offered a promotion beyond my highest expectations. There must have been over a thousand superior officers jockeying for the title of Grand Admiral, many of them on Coruscant, within easy lobbying reach of the Court and the Emperor. And I knew I would do the job better than any of them.”

“I don’t doubt it, sir,” Pellaeon said simply.

Thrawn lifted his gaze to take in Pellaeon’s ramrod-stiff figure: “Thank you, Captain. I am honored.”

Taken aback by the Grand Admiral’s unusually sober tone, Pellaeon was embarrassed to feel his face warming. Thrawn smiled at that, but there was no hint of sarcasm in his face, and Pellaeon caught himself thinking that he was decidedly lucky in his strange commander-in-chief. Guiltily, he recalled his own prejudices when he had first made contact with the Grand Admiral. In the midst of the Imperial debacle, any knowledgeable military leader was a godsend—but Pellaeon had not been able to repress a shudder of disgust when faced for the first time with Thrawn’s lean, pale blue features and alien red eyes. And somehow, the elegance and precision of his Basic; his unfailing, cold politeness, made him even more foreign. Pellaeon had only hazily been aware that one of the twelve Grand Admirals was a non-human. Now the detail about a “secret ceremony” clicked: the Emperor had had no intention of making any more of a statement than was strictly necessary when appointing Thrawn.

“And did you—did you see her again, sir?” he ventured.

“Syrie? A few times, yes,” Thrawn answered easily. “Twice with Lord Vader, once at Court—once at an art exhibition...”

Pellaeon reacted at that; and an inscrutable expression passed over the Grand Admiral’s face: “Yes, that was rather unexpected... Interesting taste, too. It was a gallery opening of Outer Rim art; nothing wildly fashionable. I was of course interested; I knew the region well. She was there alone, no Noghri, no expensive clothes, just a nondescript jumpsuit. Nobody noticed her. I remember that she saw me and said ‘Hello, Admiral’ exactly in the tone she said it today... and she asked me one or two questions about the pieces; obviously she knew about my hobbyhorse. A remarkable woman, Captain.”

Pellaeon found himself nodding; certainly Thrawn’s evocation intrigued him. The Grand Admiral’s glowing eyes narrowed: “As to what she could have been doing with someone like Ferrier... or what Ferrier may well have done to her...” He left the unfinished sentence hanging in the air, and Pellaeon heard a small sharp noise; looking down, the Captain saw that Thrawn had snapped in two the comlink retractable antenna with which he’d been fiddling, and was now considering the pieces: “This will have to be fixed, Captain,” he finally said in a detached voice, straightening up in the command chair. “Now, Captain. Time to check on our advance party at Sluis Van.”

Chapter 2

The Grand Admiral’s arrival in sick bay was at first unnoticed; droids don’t get flustered or intimidated. A TooOneBee directed him to one row of cubicles, and he palmed open the first hatchdoor. It wasn’t Syrie in the cot, but a very young man with a shell-shocked look on his face and heavy bandages around his head and arms. Thrawn hesitated only an instant, then deliberately walked in. The cubicle was tiny, cluttered by medical equipment, sensors, IV lines, screens. There were pieces of a stormtrooper’s armor in the open closet at the foot of the cot. When the injured man saw his Commander-in-chief, the drugged-out look in his blue eyes gradually changed to stupefaction, and he tried to move an arm in salute, wincing.

“Don’t move, soldier,” Thrawn said calmly. “Why are you here?”

“Radiation burns... sir. When our left sub-engine was hit, at Syydar. We were sent out in spacesuits to close the breach in the hull.”

Thrawn cast an eye on the readouts above the bed. Most indicators blinked orange or red.

“Did you succeed?”

“Partly, sir. We fixed enough relays that a sealing forcefield could be established over the openings.”

“You’re a stormtrooper. How is it that you were sent to do that kind of work, and not mechanics?”

“Mechanics don’t know how to operate combat spacesuits, sir... and they didn’t have the regular kind.”

Thrawn didn’t speak for an instant, then said in a softer voice: “How are you feeling?”

“Not—not too good, sir...”

He could see the pain and the fear in the young man’s dilated pupils. There was no chair in the cubicle. He stepped very near the head of the bed, and squatted to come at eye level. “You’ve done a good job and I’ll see that you get all the care available on this ship,” he said coolly, emphasizing each word. His eyes never leaving the wounded man’s, he picked up the dogtag from the side table and slid it into his pocket datapad, keying in a few strokes, then pulled the thin wafer out and dropped it back on the table, rising. “One thing. I was told I would find a woman in here.”

“She’s in the next row, I think, sir. I saw her being taken away for bacta treatment.”

Thrawn’s glowing eyes narrowed, but all he said was “Thank you,” and operated the hatchdoor—to walk straight into a very agitated middle-aged human in a white tunic.

“Sir... Admiral, I didn’t know you were here...”

“Doctor. This young man in here.”

The medical officer frowned. “Not good. He won’t make it—”

Thrawn’s right hand seized his arm in a vise-like grip, pulling him closer. “Try harder, doctor,” he hissed. “None of my men is expendable. I want you to do everything that is possible. If it takes marrow transplants, test every single man on this ship, for compatibility, starting now. Do you understand?”

“Yes—yes, sir... I...”

“There was a woman here. Where is she?”

The doctor stared. “The one who came in this morning? She’s out of the bacta tank now. Should be in row B, over there.”

“Bacta? Why?”

“Sir, you can’t graft synthflesh directly on the kind of scars she had. Bacta treatment made sense.”

Thrawn compressed his lips to a thin line, but didn’t speak for an instant. Still painfully held by the arm, the medical officer squirmed, and the Grand Admiral abruptly released him. “Can I see her now?”

“Why, yes, sir. The treatment went very well. Bacta always does—”

“Where is she?”

The flustered doctor led the way to another corridor of hatchdoors, palmed one open, and stood aside for Thrawn to enter. “And leave us,” the Grand Admiral told him before closing the hatchdoor from the inside.

Syrie was lying in a cot similar to the burned stormtrooper’s, her blond hair lying on the pillow in lank strands. She raised her eyes and gave Thrawn a tired smile. He stood for a moment looking at her, and she held his gaze. “You’re a mess,” he finally said crossly.

She nodded: “That must be a sad disappointment to your aesthetic sense.”

“The medic mentioned scars. How long were you on Ferrier’s ship?”

“You were always too damned acute for comfort,” she whispered. “Almost a year. Not my wisest career move.”

“You should have let me kill him.”

She closed her eyes for an instant: “I have seen far too many killings, Admiral. I vowed that in my new life I wouldn’t see another one.”

“Very likely, with the galaxy at war and the Empire struggling for its life.”

“Struggling for hegemony, you mean,” she countered in a low voice.

He walked the step that separated him from the cot, and gingerly sat on its edge, careful not to rest his weight on the shape of her body clearly delineated by the standard-issue Navy synthlin sheets. “I rule the Empire now, Syrie.”

She raised her pensive green gaze at him. “Does the Empire know?”

His own red eyes glittered dangerously: “Have a care, Syrie.”

“Oh? And if not, what happens to me?”

He gave an annoyed snort, then turned to face her. “This is a bad beginning,” he finally said quietly. “Let’s try again.”

“Ah, that’s much better!” she exclaimed. “For a moment I thought I could get you really angry. Which, as we know, is inconceivable.”

His long hands went to hers, took both in a firm but gentle clasp. She didn’t move, just looked at the pale blue fingers over her own reddened, work-roughened ones. “I have this awful taste of bacta in my mouth,” she finally said inconsequentially.

“Let me see,” he said very softly, leaning down towards her, and kissing her gently. Her lips were cool, and for a moment he just stayed motionless, drinking her in, her proximity raising the acuity of his senses. Then his tongue entered her mouth, and after an instant she reacted, kissing him back tentatively, intertwining her tongue with his, running it against his very regular teeth. His right hand slid behind her neck to support her and pull her closer to him. She gave a small sigh, and he immediately let go of her.

“Did I hurt you?”

Wordlessly, she reached up and drew him back to her. Their lips met so hard that their teeth collided, and he kissed her deeply, fully, taking his time, exploring her soft, yielding mouth with rising passion. He could feel a tightening in his belly, the excitement of the moment rising. Carefully, he eased himself a little less precariously on the narrow bed, and pulled the sheet from her. She was wearing a post-surgical nightdress, a clumsy tent-like affair that barely fastened in the back, held with loose knots. Raising her to a sitting position, so that her body pressed against his, he slid a hand delicately through the back opening, lightly caressing her shoulder blades. Her skin had the baby softness and slightly uneven texture typical of bacta regrowth, and he felt a renewed surge of anger at Niles Ferrier.

“Syrie...” he murmured, before starting to kiss her neck, tracing the spine with his tongue, dropping light kisses until he reached the first knot of fabric holding the nightdress. It gave as soon as he pulled one of the ends, and the oversized garment fell all around her shoulders, freeing one pert breast. He cupped it with his hand, and she shivered, her suddenly rasping breathing intoxicatingly close to his ear, her nipple hardening under his touch. Her hands gripped the epaulets on his uniform coat, then she started fumbling for the fasteners, her nervous fingers tugging at gold buttons and insignia. He gave a short laugh, released her and undid his jacket with fast, precise movements. He shrugged it off, cast a glance around the cubicle, and dropped it on the floor.

“We rarely had a knack for finding romantic locations, did we?” she asked with a lopsided smile.

He gazed at her. “You dreamed about this.” Not a question.

“All the time,” she whispered.

He grabbed her roughly in his arms, kissed her again hard, and her arms closed around him. He still wore a military T-shirt under which his muscles rippled; and she kneaded his shoulders while returning his kiss, her tongue now invading his mouth, their lips fiercely crushed. Reluctantly, he let go of her, and started taking off his knee-high, well-polished black boots, then the rest of his clothes, efficiently and quickly. She stared at his tall, lean frame almost hungrily. If it hadn’t been for his skin color and eyes, he would have looked completely human. He caught her expression, and asked neutrally: “Second thoughts, Syrie?”

She reached out for his hand, slowly drew it to her face, and leaned her cheek inside his pale blue palm before kissing it. The image of her with Vader flashed through his mind—how could she have, how did he... He recalled the numerous conversations and jokes he’d overheard at Palpatine’s Court, sometimes lewd, sometimes plain offensive, on occasion ribaldly funny. It was a dark area he had refused to think about. He had almost managed to block it out. Almost.

He pulled down the sheet entirely, then gently undid the last of the nightdress, and pushed it away. Their clothes littered the plasteel floor of the small cubicle. Her skin was a fair golden-pink, except for the areas where the bacta had only just reconstituted the epidermis. In wordless rage, he noted the telltale paler rings around her ankles and wrists in addition to what he had glimpsed of her back. Her thighs also bore faint stripes of newer skin... one long slash across her chest...

“I will kill Ferrier,” he hissed. “Myself.”

Suddenly self-conscious, she tried to pull the sheet to cover the marks. He knelt down on the floor next to the cot, stopping her movement with a hand that slightly shook. He ran his long fingers on her breasts, and her nipples immediately stiffened, rising to attention under his touch. He bent over her and started kissing both nipples alternatively, gently, then more possessively. She arched under his mouth with a low moan, her small hands grasping the back of his head to draw him even closer to her. His right hand traveled down, and she whimpered.

“Yes. Yes. There. There,” he encouraged her softly. He shifted his position, and his tongue replaced his hand. She contracted at his touch, and the tension of her inner muscles thrilled him, a promise of delights to come. He inhaled her private smell with relish—it tasted of musk, and the yeasty tang of bacta. His tongue became more insistent, until he felt her stiffening under him. Her fingers clutched at his hair, and she writhed convulsively, crying out hoarsely in pleasure. For a fleeting moment he wondered what the medical officer would make of that, then decided he didn’t care one bit. He half-rose and buried his face between her heaving breasts, her taste still on his mouth.

“I hope this bed can take us both,” he finally said.

He was still kneeling on the floor beside the narrow cot. She sat up, her back against the white plasteel bulkhead, and held out her hands. He sidled down cautiously next to her, and she bent to kiss his lips, before sliding down alongside his body, dropping lingering kisses down his torso, his nipples, his belly. She laughed softly then took him almost whole into her mouth. He groaned in pleasure as she found her rhythm and kept at it, one hand fondling his testicles delicately. His mind almost blanked; nothing else existed but the sensations she awoke in his groin, staggered quakes of wet ecstasy. On the edge of surrender, he raised his head to look at her, kneeling over him, her eyes closed in concentration. His vision clouded, and, with a raucous scream, he exploded in great bursts. As if in a dream, he felt her arms hugging his hips as she steadied herself against his thrusts. Enthralled, he pulled her slowly up against him, kissing her eyes, her face, her mouth as she lay resting on him, her hip against his, her breast against his muscular chest, her face snuggling against his left shoulder.

“You are beautiful,” he said.

She looked up at him, and he smiled, while his right hand traced her features, the long blue fingers following the bridge of her nose, her lips, her jaw line. His eyes glowed a soft purple. “Were you that proficient nine years ago?”

She blushed: “I was... We rarely had the time.”

He remembered their first encounter, after the art show opening in that avant-garde gallery in an unfashionable part of Imperial Center where he’d been so surprised to see her unattended. He himself wore a plain olive-green Navy uniform, with no insignia; he knew almost no-one there except the gallery owner and a couple of art dealers from whom he had bought pieces. Most of the guests, human and alien, covertly stared at him: non-human Navy officers were rare; and at any rate, Imperial officials always inspired mistrust. He was used to this state of affairs; he had carefully composed a polite, unruffled public persona for such occasions, his bearing consciously less commanding than usual. He’d recognized her at once, nearly shaken out of his usual composure. She had known him, too, and greeted him easily. He had cast a quick look across the room, and she’d understood at once. “No, no bodyguards... it would ruin the show for everyone, especially for me.”

“Are you interested in this type of art?”

“I like it. I’m learning about it. I understand you are the real expert, Admiral. Tell me about this mask, and the world it comes from.”

They had chatted for a moment, examining the works on display. She was knowledgeable and a quick study; she could pick out common influences in different works unerringly. Finally she had stopped in front of a small sculpture, entranced. “I love this one. It’s strong... and disturbing.”

“You have good taste. This is part of the gallery’s regular collection. These species have only produced art for a very short period of their history, perhaps sixty years. I would have bought it myself long ago if I could afford it.”

She’d looked at him at that: “Now you’ve made it impossible for me to buy it.”

He checked himself. Of course. Vader could buy the entire gallery for her if she wanted.

She immediately understood his expression: “I apologize. That was a stupid thing to say. Please excuse me.”

“There is nothing to excuse, Lady Syrie.”

She had reacted to his calling her by her courtesy title as if he’d flung a glass of cold water in her face, and he felt fleetingly guilty; he had intended his covert insolence. Something about her pushed him to depart from his usual prudence. “Are you on a tight schedule? May I take you to another gallery nearby that has interesting pieces?”

She had accepted. They walked down suspended avenues and over flyways bridging the deep canyons between the area’s stark ferrocrete and transparisteel towers, to the other, smaller gallery. Grav-cars and speeders passed under and above them. The walk enabled him to make sure on the way that she had indeed no “shadows”—and he was impressed by her long strides; she found it easy to keep up with him.

“Where is your home? Where do you keep your collections?” she asked as they finally prepared to leave.

“On my ship.”

There was a silence. At last she said thoughtfully: “So. We have established the two subjects not to broach. Your origins and my status.”

That made him pause. “Does this mean I can’t ask you if you had something to do with my appointment as Grand Admiral?”

“I can understand your asking,” she said.

“But will you answer me?”

Around them, the gallery droids were picking up pricelists from incidental tables and pulling down lasergrilles. Obviously, the place was about to close. Syrie looked around her in indecision, and Thrawn guessed her quandary. “I known the owner here. If we want, we can stay on for a little while.”

She nodded silently. He walked to one of the droids and spoke with it for a minute, then came back. “We’ll just need to pull the door behind us when we go. It locks.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“Do you often go out unescorted? This is somewhat out of the way, but enough people at Court know your face.”

She sat down in one of the light repulsor chairs lining the walls. “I didn’t have much to do with your appointment,” she said at last. “Lord Vader asked my advice. I knew what you’d achieved beyond the Rim—I’m originally from Ridell. I just reminded him; he knew most of it.”

Ridell. A frontier planet where the Old Republic had had staunch supporters. He had bombed and subdued it. Now it had an Imperial Governor, and paid Imperial tribute.

“I should have thought you had no great reason to admire me.”

“Perhaps I wanted to see you exercise your considerable talents away from Ridell.”

He glared at her with dangerously-glittering eyes, and she raised her hands in mock defense. “Admiral, I am playing stupid games here. I didn’t mean to antagonize you. It just came out that way. You are the most brilliant officer in the Fleet, probably in the Empire. Lord Vader knows it. That’s all.”

He studied her for a moment. There was a recklessness in her that he didn’t understand, and which had not been there either at Vader’s palace, or even just earlier, at the first gallery.

“Is Lord Vader waiting for you now?”

“No... he is away from Coruscant. On a special mission.”

Her answer hung in the air between them. He took a step toward her: “I can take you back to his palace now, if you want.”

She considered him, and he could sense her vacillation.

“Do you want to?” she finally asked.

He looked at her with narrowed eyes: “Not especially.” He extended a hand and pulled her out of the chair. “We can stay here for about an hour. There is an office in the back.”

She followed him silently. The office was small and functional, with a realwood desk, a chair, databanks and a library of art holovids. He closed the door behind her, and turned to her. She was standing in the middle if the room, her arms hanging loose. He walked to her and kissed her at length, with casual intimacy. After a moment she responded, wrapping her arms around his shoulders.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Because you are different. And you?”

He brushed the question aside; he didn’t feel like examining his own motivations too closely.

“Because you are here... and different.”

She smiled. He buried his face in her neck, inhaling her faint perfume. Then he pushed her against the desk, and pulled the front zipper of her gray jumpsuit. Under it, she only wore a black silk tank top, which he rolled above her breasts, cupping them with both hands and kissing them. She moaned, and helped him disengage her arms from the jumpsuit and pull away the tank top. His hand slid down the gaping front of the jumpsuit, and grabbed her sex roughly. She arched against him, feeling him hard and straining through the olive-green trousers.

“Wait. Let me help you,” he murmured.

She was now bare-chested, the top part of the jumpsuit trailing in her back. He helped her pull out of her left trouser leg, impatiently leaving the other to fall about her right ankle, and hoisted her onto the edge of the desk, standing between her legs. He kissed her again and pushed her legs apart. She gripped his shoulders to steady herself, then leaned back, her face rapt. Slowly, he eased himself inside her with a growl, and she moaned, her eyes closed, her head lolling, breathing shallowly. She was narrow, but slippery, and he started ramming rhythmically into her, thrusting his entire body against hers, feeling her inner muscles contracting on him and her hips grinding at his rhythm. It was the most exciting sex he’d had in years... and knowing that the woman who offered herself so completely to him was Darth Vader’s companion gave it a heightened thrill.

Her moans went up in pitch. He could feel her shudders of pleasure as his fingers stroke her. Suddenly her body contracted and arched, and he felt her vaginal muscles tightening exquisitely. She screamed out, her mouth open, her beautiful face convulsed; and overwhelmed by her passion, he exploded in her with a belly growl. Her arms flailed about, then she grasped his hands as if she were drowning. Staggering, he held onto her, then bent and kissed her. Her breathing was short and her eyes unfocused when she finally opened them.

“Oh my stars,” she whispered.

He held her against him, stroking her hair.

“Oh Gods. Oh Gods.”

He kissed her again, astonished by the intensity of their lovemaking, and by the violence of the pent-up feelings suddenly released. He knew they had both survived for most of their lives by keeping absolute control; now he found himself as close to losing it as he’d ever been in the thirty-odd years of his long exile. She cried out again when he heaved himself out of her, and he held her tight, pulling her down from the desk to stand close to him, shaking.

“My darling. How did you know?”

“I’ve been here so long, fearing everyone, watching everyone. And then I saw you, and I knew you despised these people even more than I did.”

“You organized my appointment.”

“I suggested you. My lord scorns the courtiers as much as you do.”

Her reference to Vader froze him in place. “But you are Lord Vader’s—”

“I love him,” she said in a very low voice.

He stared at her: “What happens when he comes back?”

She shivered at that: “He must not know. My duty is to him.”

He felt a tightening of his belly in foreboding , almost a blacking-out of his senses. It lasted less than a tenth of a second, but he wondered if it was premonitory. “He will know,” he said with finality.

“No... there are ways—I can blank my mind, blur out my feelings. I just need to lose myself in another sensation, a strong emotion... It can be done.”

“Have you done this before?”

She paled immediately: she knew what he meant. “No—but I have had to hide things from him in the past.”

He let go of her and took a half-step back to consider her. Suddenly self-conscious, she started to pull up the very wrinkled jumpsuit back over her nakedness. The heating had gone out automatically some time before, and she shivered, her skin rippling in gooseflesh, her nipples hardening again as she pulled the tank top over her arms and her head. The sight inflamed him, and he drew her into his arms again roughly; the tank top still binding her elbows above her head. His hands kneaded her breasts convulsively.

“This little tryst of ours is very unwise,” he said, the control in his cool voice at odd contrast with his fevered movements as he grabbed her breasts, her stomach, her sex. Her face was still half-hidden by the tank top, but he could hear her shortened breath. She froze when he started stripping down the jumpsuit all the way to her ankles again, and she tried to fight him as he turned her around; but he grasped her wrists to prevent her from untangling herself from the tank top. Swiftly, and none too gently, he bent her over the desk’s hard surface. His hands grabbed her hips, and she felt him against her exposed buttocks as he pressed himself against her. He could hear her sharp intake of breath but pushed ahead, forcing himself inside as she cried out. Her tightness sent exquisite feelings through his groin. He remained immobile for a while, holding back, letting her getting used to him; then he started thrusting slowly, entranced by the sight of her naked hips and back, sprawled over the desk, swaying with his every movement. She was whimpering softly, lying flat on her right cheek, her face emerging from the black tank top; her arms, restrained by the rolled-up silk, gracefully arching over the far edge of the desk like tulip stems. He felt her inner muscles relaxing a little, and rammed her harder, his own excitation mounting. Her cries became more raucous but they were not cries of pain, and they finally sent him over the edge in spasms of pleasure, their hips joined, beads of sweat shining on their skin. Exhausted, he fell over her spoon-like, covering her body over the desk, his nose smelling the damp little stray hairs in her neck, his labored breath in her ear. She had not said a word.

They remained motionless for a few minutes, then he pushed himself upright, and helped her to stand. She was trembling. He readjusted his clothes; then, with gentle, efficient movements, he helped her pull the jumpsuit up, the torn tank top down, did up her zipper, and ran his fingers in her hair in an effort to untangle it. She was looking gravely at him.

“I am taking my new command tomorrow,” he said calmly. “Perhaps we had better consider the situation now. Is Lord Vader telepathic?”

“No—yes, but not always. He usually senses moods. Not formed thoughts...”

“You realize that I am now reporting only to him and the Emperor.”

Her eyes widened. “Yes.”

“His sensing of moods. Is it effective through space?”

She winced. “Sometimes. I have seen it.”

“When is he due back?”

She rubbed a quick hand over her eyes: “Not immediately... I don’t know. I know he has gone to the Imperial Outland Regions. Grand Moff Tarkin’s district.”

Thrawn registered the information. There were ways of knowing of ongoing secret projects. He looked around him at the gallery’s small office, as if he was seeing it for the first time. “I should take you back there now.”

“It may not be prudent.”

“My dear, absolutely nothing that we have indulged in so far together was prudent.” He saw her stricken look and stroked her cheek with two fingers. “But it was quite unforgettable.”

“I had not considered that I was putting you in danger.”

He frowned at that. “Please allow me a will of my own, Syrie. I made this decision.”

“So did I,” she whispered.

He bent and kissed her lips lightly. “I am grateful that you did. But we now have to think ahead a little. Are you quite certain that you can—hide your moods?”

“Yes,” she said.

He waited for an explanation, but she gave none. He found himself wondering what her relationship with Vader was like. He found it impossible to picture them together... perhaps in one of the positions in which they had just made frantic love. The images simply refused to come.

Now, lying oddly peacefully next to her on the uncomfortable infirmary cot, he reflected that he had never managed to ask her directly about it, throughout the frenzied four years that had elapsed between their meeting and the destruction of the second Death Star; and she had never volunteered a word. Not that they had met that often; but they had—furtive, fiery encounters that left him hungering for more. In many ways, she remained a mystery to him—even the strength of his attraction to her unsettled him. That in turn had annoyed him; he hated losing control; and it had lent an added edge to an already dangerous relationship. It crossed his mind that they had never lain so becalmed together as they did now, in the afterglow of their tempestuous reunion.

She stirred, and he kissed the top of her head lightly: “I must go. There is a key attack planned in a few hours, and I need to be on the bridge. I would like you to move into my quarters. Even discounting the possibility that we’ll need all beds in sick bay after this action, I think we have established that you have recovered from the bacta treatment.”

He picked up his scattered clothes from the floor and dressed quickly and methodically. In full Grand Admiral uniform, he looked even taller, occupying the entire space in the cubicle. He caught the uncertain look on her face:

“My dear, you have to live somewhere on this ship. There are few possibilities.”

“It will get out at once—all these officers who saw me on the bridge this morning...”

He paused, frowning. He didn’t pretend to believe he could keep her presence secret in the tight community formed by the Imperial Star Destroyer’s crew, even if it did number over 37,000. “It can’t be helped,” he finally said. “Where else could you go?”

“I could work as a navigator on contract until you dock on some convenient world’s orbit.”

“That is nonsensical,” he snorted. “We have almost no non-enlisted personnel. And very few women. You would be even more conspicuous.”

“But it doesn’t matter if I am,” she answered reasonably. “They’ve seen me arrive. Some solution has to be found for me.”

His eyes glittered in irritation. “Nevertheless, what you suggest is out of the question.”

She looked up at him calmly: “Why?”

It was almost too easy for her to get a rise out of him. They both knew it—the simple fact riled him even more. Now he checked himself, and said coolly: “Even if you were planning to get off this ship as soon as possible, the opportunity will not arise for a while. I have at last started to mount a coherent campaign to defeat the Rebellion. Not only is it not in my objectives to detour to some suitably backwater world that would fit your new... shall I say, hermit tendencies—I doubt if there will be that many quiet worlds in the next few months. The tide is turning, Syrie. This Galaxy needs a new, stable order, and I intend to establish it at last.”

“You’ve finally come into your own,” she said slowly.

He looked at her measuredly: “You know perfectly well how time and again the Empire’s true interests were harmed by incompetence, greed, powerlust, or a combination of all three. Even Palpatine was capable of incredible short-sightenedness.”

He spoke very evenly, but her eyes narrowed. He had never allowed himself any criticism in anyone’s hearing, not even hers.

“No fewer than four times, as one of his Grand Admirals, I declined to lead offensives that in my opinion couldn’t be won,” he said pithily, his words falling like shards of ice. “He called me a traitor for refusing to waste Imperial troops and ships. His troops, his ships. As you know, he was proved wrong on the first two of these occasions. It cost the Empire two entire Fleets. Then he—he condescended to listen to me. While sidetracking me whenever he found it more... more gratifying to indulge his Force games, his political manipulations, his delusions that he was a great strategist.”

She reached out and clasped his hand in silent empathy. “Had I been consulted, there would certainly have been no second Death Star,” he finished, before squeezing back her hand. He sat down on the cot, warm memories flooding back. It had been more than just a physical attraction, a dangerous sexual game, he’d always known it. He remembered one official reception at the Imperial Palace, dragging on interminably, perhaps six years ago. She had been there, which was rare; her Noghri guards for once relegated well back in the antechambers for reasons of protocol. Standing a few paces away from her, he’d caught her eye as yet another Grand Moff made a flowery, fawning declamation to the Emperor. Her expression hadn’t changed, but for a flashing instant, there had been such humorous, understanding laughter in her eyes that it had suddenly felt as if they were completely alone in the great hall. The sensation was so powerful that he had deliberately turned away; it seemed impossible that they wouldn’t be caught out. But fortunately, no-one seemed to have noticed.

“Syrie,” he said now, looking at their entwined hands on the synthlin sheet. “I am not about to let you disappear in the far recesses of my own command ship. In which case, there is no point in dissembling. I understand that this may bring back—unwelcome memories. But I still want you to move to my chambers.”

He knew that she had spent weeks or months at a time in Vader’s apartments on the Devastator, the Avenger and the Executor. She silently nodded, a little wise smile on her lips, and he rose. “Rukh will come for you.”

Chapter 3

After Thrawn’s departure, Syrie lay back on her cot, staring at the ceiling for a long time. After five years, the past she had attempted to put behind her was rushing back, overtaking her, sweeping away the new life she had tried so hard to build for herself. She could not complain; she had called to it herself, in desperation. Had no choice. The first four years—the beginnings of that new life, she’d believed too confidently—had been a slow period of healing, cautiously adventurous, occasionally eventful. The last had been hell. She examined the now-regenerated, paler skin of her wrist, where the chafed, bleeding scars left by the stockade binders had been, and raising her arm to her lips, brushed it gingerly. It tickled: the nerve-endings responded normally. Bacta treatment was little short of miraculous for that kind of injury. Monstrously expensive, too: even if Ferrier’s home base had been equipped with a tank, she would never have had access to it.

She would not think about that last year. Not now. Not yet.

The hatchdoor slid open again, and a middle-aged human medic she hadn’t seen before entered. His face was a study in ill-concealed curiosity, mingled with apprehension. He looked at the readouts at the head of her bed, cleared his throat:

“I’ve come to discharge you... someone has come for you.”

The way he said “someone” made it abundantly clear that he referred to Rukh, and she couldn’t stop a gurgle of fast-suppressed amusement. Her Noghri had always had that effect on people. The medic pulled a datacard from his pad and handed it to her: “Your treatment results. If you could, huh, get dressed—” He motioned to the closet at the foot of her bed. It contained her old overalls, cleaned but not pressed. “I’ll wait outside.” He didn’t look especially keen to wait in Rukh’s company, but stepped out.

She got up, and, suddenly light-headed, had to steady herself against the wall for an instant. She stepped hesitantly to the closet, picked up the jumpsuit. It would have been nice to be able to clean herself up. On the other hand, Thrawn’s quarters might be outfitted with something more luxurious than a standard military ‘fresher. Running water, even... running water had a lot to be said for.

Dressed, she looked around the cubicle, saw the yellow envelope lying on the side-table, upended it onto the cot. It contained what had been in the overalls’ pockets when she’d made her escape. She stared at all she had to show for these five years—her scratched datapad, a few credit coins, a key opening her locker on Ferrier’s ship, a piece of mirror, a small comb—and a small untidily-wrapped package which she snatched eagerly, extracting from its wrinkled foil half a dried-up energy bar into which she bit. Carefully saved, that would have been all her nourishment for the next 24 standard hours if she’d been caught. It tasted musty, doughy—and wonderful. Food, too, could be expected in the Grand Admiral’s private apartments, she reflected. She tried to untangle her hair with the comb, gave up, pocketed it, picked up the objects on the cot, leaving only the key behind her, and palmed the hatchdoor open.

Rukh led her through corridors and into a turbolift of familiar design. Out of the corner of her eye, she registered inquisitive or fearful looks. She no longer felt like laughing at the reactions elicited by the Noghri bodyguard. She had seen Noghri in action, and it was obvious that most personnel on the Chimaera had too. Even the stormtrooper standing guard in front of Thrawn’s quarters maintained a telltale frozen immobility when they passed him on their way in.

“This is the Overlord’s personal command room,” Rukh mewled from the doorway. “The private quarters are behind these doors. Droids will take your orders, my lady.”

She had walked to the center of the room, examining with interest Thrawn’s double circle of holographic displays, but at that she spun round: “Rukh, don’t go. You’re the only other person I know here. And I don’t know how you have been doing these past five years.”

The gray-skinned alien came back into the room. His dark, liquid eyes were unblinking. “I have seen many star systems, my lady,” he said.

“You always wanted to do that,” she said.

He inclined his oblong head, and she remembered that the gesture indicated reticence in Noghri body language. “Azrhakhim. Your clan-brother. Is he also on this ship?”

His head bobbed up, dark eyes staring gravely at her, and she understood at once. “He is dead, my lady.”

“I am so sorry.”

Azrhakhim had been the other bodyguard who never left her. She had liked him immensely—inasmuch as a Noghri could be said to have a facetious character, it applied to Azrhakhim. How this civilization of fierce clan warriors, with their complicated honor code, rituals, blood brotherhoods, and lethal vendettas, could have produced such a light-hearted being was a complete mystery to her. She had shared jokes with Azrhakhim, which Rukh had watched in puzzlement; Rukh was the earnest, prickly one. Rukh however was ready to accept anything from his “otherself”—the best translation, they had told her, of the Noghri word for clan-brothers: Rukh and Azrhakhim were more closely-bonded than twins. Impulsively, she extended her hand to Rukh, remembering as she did that the gesture meant nothing in Noghri body-language. He surprised her by taking it and holding it gingerly. It flashed through her mind that he must have lived alone among humans for several years now.

“You were always good to him, my lady.”

“He was always good to me, Rukh. And you, too. What—how did he...”

“He died in battle, my lady. He was part of one of our elite commandos.”

They had been separated. She bit her lip. It had to be Thrawn’s doing—and a terribly cruel decision; but it would be a mistake to say so. “I am sorry,” she repeated. “I shall miss him greatly.”

Rukh made a move towards the entrance. “I have to go back to the Overlord, my lady.”

“Yes, of course. I understand.”

When he was gone, she went over to the doors at the end of the large command room. They slid open as she came near. She found herself in a small hallway-reception area in which a silver Dee-fourpee-oh protocol droid stood as if at attention, starting to talk as she appeared. “My lady, I have been instructed to show you around and help you settle in. If you will come with me—”

They all seemed to have decided she was “my lady” again. She wasn’t sure she was happy about that. She looked curiously around her. Thrawn’s quarters were comfortable, but by no means luxurious compared to what she knew existed for some Fleet commanders. There was a kind of sitting-room with an industrial-design synthwood desk placed diagonally in a small work area in a corner; the rest of the area was occupied by a low couch and two contour-memory chairs, a standard holovid deck, a library, a few unusual pieces of furniture which had to be antique, and of course several works of art. The effect was almost austere. Syrie recognized the sculpture she had admired in that gallery on Coruscant the night she and Thrawn had started their affair—the sculpture which was too expensive for him then. On one of the shelves was a Corellian flame miniature. A complicated three-dimensional piece on a small pedestal. And a large abstract painting on one of the light gray plasteel walls. But the room’s real luxury was its own viewport, opening out onto space. For the moment, it showed only a kind of milky fog—they were traveling in hyperspace.

Beyond that room was another, not very large, which very obviously was Thrawn’s own. It had no viewport and was rather bare, with a low bed, one single painting, one straight-backed chair, and more holovids and datacards. She had not expected clutter, but this looked as disciplined as Thrawn’s exterior persona, betraying nothing of the passion she had glimpsed in him. She crossed it and smiled to herself: it did open onto a real bathroom with sink, bath and shower. Another door led to a smaller room, with a narrow standard bed-banquette, closet, table and chair; and yet more holovids and datacards neatly lined up on shelves. That room looked uninhabited, and she hardly paused before deciding she would move into it. Let him say what he wanted. Her only problem was probably to leave some tangible mark of her presence: she had no personal possessions to speak of. She rummaged in her pockets, pulled out her few things, and arranged them on the small table.

“Dee-fourpee-oh, I will move in here. And I plan to take a bath. Can you arrange for a meal during this time?”

The droid had followed her, sounding somewhat puzzled. “Grand Admiral Thrawn had planned—”

“And I’d like this bed here to be made.”

She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Yes, running water. She’d almost forgotten the feel of it. She started running herself a bath and hunted for shampoo and soap. Everything Thrawn used there was tidily aligned in a small cupboard behind a mirror. She examined the products hesitantly; suddenly she realized she had never shared a bedroom with him, even for an hour; never woken up at his side; never seen him shave—if indeed he shaved. He was stranger to her than Vader had ever been.

The hot bath felt blissful. Luxuriating in the water, she almost fell asleep, shook herself awake, lathered herself up and finally washed her hair under the shower. There were Navy-issue white towels on a rack, and she wrapped herself in one, drying her hair with another, then tying it around her head like a turban. Barefooted, she walked out into the sitting-room, where she found a small food-processing unit laid out on a low table next to the couch. The Dee-fourpee-oh droid opened its lid for her, and she felt almost dizzy when the smell of appetizing, warm cooked food reached her nostrils. She sat abruptly on the couch, took her tray from the droid, and started eating, forcing herself to take civilized forkfuls. Later she would have to think about the changes in her life, and the decisions she wanted to take; but at this instant, just enjoying her most elementary needs being satisfied for the first time in months occupied her mind and body entirely.

Thrawn walked in on her at this moment, and she nearly jumped—she had not been thinking of him. She had not been thinking at all.

“I’m glad to see you settled,” he said after a pause.

“I have no idea what time it is,” she said. “But I was hungry.”

He was studying her almost like one of his works of art. She reflected that he hadn’t ever seen her in anything approaching domestic surroundings either. He sat on one of the contour-chairs and watched her eat, pausing to ask the droid for a glass of Forvish ale. “It is actually quite late,” he said. “Our attack starts tomorrow morning at 6:00 standard.”

He would want to sleep. She suddenly felt shy. “I’m almost done,” she said, swallowing her mouthful of—meat? Whatever it was, it tasted like a kind of stew, and was very good. She glanced down: there was only a little of it left. She put her fork down on the tray and lifted it to slide it back into the food-processing unit.

“Wait,” he said coolly, raising a hand at her. “You are not finished.”

“I— yes, I am.”

“Syrie,” he said, his words very deliberate. “I want you to have all of this meal, and anything else you’d like besides. And I don’t ever want to see that look in your eyes again.”

“What look?” she asked; but she knew what he meant, and somehow felt embarrassed. It was as if he had become a witness to what had happened to her—it made her odyssey suddenly more real, and shameful. She dropped the fork which she had docilely raised again. “I’m sorry. I’m really not hungry anymore.”

Thrawn said nothing, looking at her with narrowed eyes. Then he set down his half-empty glass and rose from the chair to sit next to her on the couch. His arm encircled her naked shoulders gently, his fingertips brushing against the soft skin just under her collarbone. She sat stiffly for several seconds, then relaxed against him. “My darling,” he said quietly. “It is over.” The towel which she’d wrapped around her head like a turban started sliding, and he pulled it away altogether. He kissed the top of her damp hair, her brow, her cheek. “Come to bed.” She raised her face up to him, and he kissed her lips, then rose, drawing her up with him. The other towel came undone, too, and she reflexively clutched it against her breasts. He smiled but instead of pulling it off, he gently helped her wrap herself into it again. She was absurdly touched by this, and tears suddenly pricked her eyes. She tried to brush them away angrily, but he caught her hand with his own.

“Let go,” he told her. “It’s better.”

“No,” she said in a tight voice. “I didn’t... I almost never cried.”

“It is over,” he repeated , stroking her hair soothingly. He led her to his bedroom, casting a glance around him as he sat her down on the bed. “You’ll need clothes, and, ah—things, tomorrow. I won’t be here but the droids will arrange for whatever you require.”

As he moved towards the bathroom, she made a gesture in the direction of the corridor, rushing her words. “Admiral, I thought I would take that other room there. When we’re not—”

He paused at that, throwing her a measuring look. “Certainly,” he only said, and disappeared into the bathroom. She felt, disconcertingly, that the light had been taken out of her solar sails. Then she nodded to herself and slid between the sheets.

She was already half-asleep when she felt his body next to her. The lights were dimmed, and she could see the low phosphorescence of his eyes. His arms closed around her in a comforting, warm embrace, and he kissed her lightly. “There is one thing that bothers me,” he murmured in her ear. She tensed, and whispered back: “What?”

“I wish you would stop calling me ‘Admiral’.”

She let escape a low chuckle of relief. “I don’t know what else to call you,” she answered after an instant, snuggling closer.

“My full name is Mitth’Raw’Nuruodo. You might care to call me Nuruo.”

Even on the verge of sleep, she could feel surprise. “I never knew your name until now,” she whispered.

“Our names are ours to give. Now you know mine.”

“I’m honored... Nuruo,” she said sleepily.

“So am I, Syrie,” he said softly. “Sleep now.”

Chapter 4

Thrawn got up very early, dressing quickly and silently, trying not to disturb her; but it would be a long time before her danger instincts relaxed enough to allow her to sleep in the presence of any kind of movement. After he left she remained awake, lying in bed in the dark. In the silence of the soundproofed suite, the low vibration of the Imperial Star Destroyer’s reactors brought back vivid memories of her years with Vader. Another life, that no one else could comprehend but her—and even she, sometimes, had felt the numbing unreality of it; while it was going on; in the years that followed. It had isolated her from the world, shaped and molded her—deadened some of her soul forever; sharpened and quickened other facets of herself. “I had no choice,” she said out loud in the empty room; but even as the words came out, she knew they were not entirely true. At the beginning, yes—she had been Vader’s prisoner, and toy, more than anything. But within a few months their relationship had evolved into something darker and far more complex, in which she had taken an active part.

An almost imperceptible rumble in the ship’s superstructure, and a brief queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that they had left hyperspace. Unable to go back to sleep, she fumbled for the bath towel she’d discarded at the end of the bed, and wrapped herself in it before padding barefooted into the sitting-room to look out the viewport. The sight was breathtaking—in the light of a two-planet system with at least a dozen moons, she could see two Star Destroyers close by in tight formation. A wedge of TIE fighters emerging from behind the Chimaera told her that yet another major ship was aligned on the other side of Thrawn's command vessel. The fighters swept in with impeccable precision, engaging two old Carrack-class light cruisers. The fight was uneven, and short—the TIE pilots were deadly accurate, and superbly coordinated. As the second of the cruisers took a direct hit, she experienced a dizzying flash of memory, and sank heavily into one of the contour-chairs. She had been here before... no, it was impossible. She had witnessed an eerily similar battle in the past. Yes, that must have been it. One of the many battles Vader had engaged—and won.

Vader. Again. Back on an Imperial starship, it seemed she could not shake off his memory. She put up her feet and hugged her knees, lost in thought. She remembered vividly when she had first crossed the path of the last Lord of the Sith, more than twelve years ago. She had been working as a navigator on a civilian pleasure yacht—a job she’d been happy to find, easy and decently-paid. The young owner of the yacht, a rich nobleman’s son from Alderaan, wanted to take a few friends on a fishing expedition to Ceti III and not spend too much time at the controls himself. Well, that was fine by her—without such charters she couldn’t have hoped to make an independent living after graduating from the Ridell Space Academy, which had never pretended to the prestige of better-known Core-worlds military establishments. The rest of the crew were good-humored seasoned spacers; the three guests were a bit spoiled but not unpleasant young men; and after three weeks she could honestly say she had enjoyed herself more than she expected to. Everybody had joined in the fishing trips on Ceti III’s calm oceans; no serious incident had marred the mood of the party; and when Piers Harlan, the yacht owner, had kissed her one evening on the upper deck of their boat, she had not much hesitated before sleeping with him. Nothing would come out of it; their stations in life were too dissimilar, and she didn’t much believe in prince-and-pauper stories. All the same, it had been fun, and the other guests and the crew had looked kindly upon them—the charmed golden boy with the grand name and the bright future simply had to pull the only woman on board. They were the same age—26—and it had seemed natural enough.

They had been intercepted by the Devastator on the last leg of their trip, traced almost immediately as they emerged from hyperspace in the middle of what looked like half the entire Imperial Fleet. Within moments, a clipped Imperial voice had ordered them to surrender on the emergency comm channel. In the pilot seat, Piers was still spluttering in anger and surprise as she started keying off her commands.

“What are you doing? I haven’t ordered—”

“This is an Imperial Star Destroyer out there,” she replied tautly. “No. Ten Imperial Star Destroyers... that we can see so far. They can blow us out of space at will. Better not take the risk that someone out there is trigger-happy.”

“What are they doing here? Why did you calculate our jump to here?”

She’d expected it, but it didn’t make it any more pleasant to hear. “Last time I looked, the Shi’sla system was at peace and its space open. You said you wanted to put in at a good spacedock to upgrade the twin aft engines. The Shi’sla docks are easily the best in the area, and not especially expensive.”

They’d had this discussion before, of course. The only difference was that there hadn’t been a dozen warships surrounding them at the time, and Piers had just waved an amiable hand at her in agreement. Now it seemed he chose not to remember.

“Civilian yacht, stop all your engines and prepare to be tracted. Non-compliance will be construed as active hostility.”

Wordlessly, from her navigator’s seat, she stared at Piers. Finally he turned off his commands on his side of the nav console, and within seconds, they felt the Stargazer II shake slightly as the Devastator’s tractor beam locked on it.

Awaiting them in the landing bay was a squad of white-armored stormtroopers, blaster guns at the ready—and a huge black-clad figure, face entirely hidden by a gleaming helmet-mask and breather, black cape flowing, standing still like a threatening statue in front of the Stargazer II’s ramp, radiating danger. As the stormtroopers handcuffed them, they heard the black apparition’s electronically-amplified rasping voice:

“Who is the captain of this ship?”

“My God, what is this?” Derjek, the chief mechanic, whispered. Syrie, who stood next to him, turned slightly—and was horrified to see him crumpling down to the floor, his hands at his throat. She knelt to help him in what she thought was a kind of heart seizure. The mechanical voice rasped again: “Who is the captain of this ship?”

Piers Harlan walked one step forward. “I am.”

—and Derjek started coughing, his throat suddenly freed. This—man? Droid?—is doing this, Syrie realized. Piers seemed to have understood, too—or else he knew who the giant black Imperial was, because he added “My lord” and stood at quasi-attention.

“This sector is interdicted. Your craft is part of the Rebellion.”

Rebellion? She searched her mind frantically. She hadn’t much heard of it lately. Her home planet of Ridell had tried it years ago, when she was growing up, and been beaten into submission by the Empire. Nobody at the Space Academy had dared bleat a word of it—or else she had simply not been part of the right group. That was very possible; she had always stayed aloof from cliques there.

In front of their terrified little group, Piers crumpled to the floor in his turn, and Syrie heard the merciless voice hammer: “What were your previous coordinates? Who directed you to this sector? What is your mission?”

Without thinking, she stepped forward: “I established the coordinates, sir—my lord. I am the navigator.”

Abruptly released, Piers started coughing and retching. Syrie felt the huge Imperial leader’s attention engulf her like a malevolent aura. “How did you obtain these coordinates?”

“I’ve always had them in my log, sir—my lord. From my Academy days. We wanted to upgrade our engines at the Shi’sla docks. They have a very good reputation.”

“These are now Imperial military yards. What was your mission here?”

Inwardly quaking, she motioned to the Stargazer II : “My lord, your men can check our nav computer. And here, in my flightsuit, I have my datapad—”

She moved her bound hands to her hip pocket; she couldn’t reach into it. “—there you’ll find the original coordinates I uploaded into the Stargazer II’s computer. We didn’t know this sector was forbidden, my lord. I didn’t know.”

The masked black lord gestured to one stormtrooper, who marched up to her and fumbled inside her pocket, pulling out her datapad.

“Where have you come from?”

“Ceti III, my lord—and before that, Alderaan.”

“Alderaan,” he snorted. “A hotbed of deceit and treason.”

She could feel Piers stiffening at her side; but he didn’t say a word. That in itself was unusual—and showed how frightened he was; he would normally have jumped at the throat of anyone daring to speak of his homeworld in such terms. The stormtrooper who’d been checking her datapad raised his hand. “The shipyards’ coordinates are here all right, my lord,” he said.

There was a pregnant pause, during which they could hear the Imperial lord’s labored, regular breathing behind the grille of his black mask. Then he ordered: “Take them away for further interrogation and impound the ship.”

At that, Piers did react: “My lord, I am Piers Harlan of the House of Harlan. My father is an Imperial Senator—

He could go no further, gasping for breath again and falling to his knees. Syrie stepped in to support him, horrified. He choked for several seconds, then she felt his release as he spluttered and wheezed, forcing air into his lungs. As she helped him to his feet, she heard the deep mechanical voice: “You, navigator—stay.”

She froze in place. Piers looked at her, alarm in his eyes. As two stormtroopers shepherded him towards the others, she felt overwhelmed by panic.

“We will check the ship’s computer to see if you told the truth.”

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak steadily. Two stormtroopers went up the ramp of the Stargazer II, and she stood silently in front of the squad and the tall Imperial lord, hands still bound in front of her. After a few minutes’ wait, one of the troopers came back down and stood at rigid attention to report: “My lord, the coordinates are there all right. The ship looks unarmed.”

“Very well. Take her to my chambers.”

“Yes, Lord Vader.”

Aghast, she started to protest, checked herself in fear. She’d seen his response to protestations. Four stormtroopers came to flank her and led her smartly across the bay to a wide corridor and turbolift bank. The sheer size of the Imperial Destroyer was awe-inspiring—but no more than this terrifying Lord Vader, who could strangle people at a distance, and seemed to be in charge. The turbolift took them upwards, or so it seemed. She was frogmarched through more corridors and hallways, until the small squad reached a set of double doors guarded by yet another stormtrooper.

“Lord Vader wants this woman in his quarters.”

“He’s not here,” the guard answered warily.

“We know that, you fool,” the squad leader spat. “He just sent us. Now open up.”

The doors slid apart, and the men took her into a wide, high-ceilinged chamber spread on several levels, and built on a grand scale. Black and dark-gray plasteel predominated, but she also saw two large viewports opening onto space in the far wall. She stared at a massive structure she did not recognize, set in the center of a sunken pit—it looked like a monumental command post set in a half-shell of shining dark material. The stormtroopers took her across a kind of side gangway to the other side of the room, not very far from the viewports. There was a very large contour-memory chair, and a wide comm/computer console—and, in front of that, a smooth metal post, of about the thickness of her wrist, welded into the floor and rising all the way up to the ceiling. They led her to it, and the squad leader unfastened her wrist binders briefly to pass her arm around it, before manacling her again. The position was not uncomfortable, since the post was thin enough that she could move easily, and even turn around; but being shackled like this scared her almost out of her wits. The soldiers left her. She slowly spun around the post to look at this strange place, and try to understand it; but most of it made no sense to her. What would happen to her? What had become of the others? The mysterious Lord Vader had mentioned interrogations—like anyone else in the galaxy, she’d heard of Imperial interrogations, and devoutly hoped they were not what was meant; but she had little trust of that.

After perhaps half an hour’s wait, she decided to sit on the floor, leaning on the post for support. Her stomach was tied in knots; she was thirsty and tired. She tried to find a comfortable position, and ended up with her cheek against the smooth metal of the post. She closed her eyes, and drifted into an uneasy drowsiness, until she was no longer able to figure out how long she’d waited. Her only watch was her datapad’s clock, and that had been taken from her.

The sound of heavy footfalls and labored breathing woke her. She saw Lord Vader’s tall, massive black figure stalking across the gangway, and rose quickly, steadying herself on the post. He came very near her and observed her for a moment, as much as she could tell—the black mask was completely expressionless. Unnerved, she willed herself to remain quiet.

“Navigator—are you also a member of the House of Harlan?”

His voice was so deep that she jumped. “No, my lord. I was hired for this trip.”

“As a navigator, or as the owner’s woman?”

She blushed fiercely. How could he know that, except by interrogating Piers—or the others? “As the navigator, my lord. The rest was—just offered, and I accepted.”

“What is your name?”

Hadn’t they told him? “Syrie, my lord.”

“No other name?”

“I never knew my father, and my mother died when I was born. I have only this name, and a registration number. From Ridell, my lord.”

And no-one had let her forget that at the Ridell Academy. The single name and number had branded her, just as they had prevented her from being fielded for Imperial exams by the planetary council. Her dreams of attending a major military space school had remained just that—dreams. She had been by far the brightest student at Ridell Space, but that hadn’t helped her make friends there; quite the reverse, in fact.

He came one step closer, and took her chin in his leather-gloved right hand, forcing her face up. She froze, her eyes widening in fear. He forced his middle finger between her lips, and she instinctively pulled back, her head banging against the post. His finger probed her mouth imperiously, and she tasted leather and metal. The domineering gesture, brutally intimate, shocked her more than it hurt her. Then he let go of her.

“My lord—” she tried to utter.

“Get undressed.”

He made a simple gesture, and her handcuffs fell open to the ground. She stared at them, then at him. Taking a step away from the post, she looked wildly around her.

“Now.”

She suddenly felt the pressure of invisible talons around her throat, and gasped for air. He stood motionless, a black statue of evil strength, towering above her, the only noise his mechanical breathing through the helmet grille. The choking feeling abruptly stopped, and she breathed again in great rending gulps, her mouth gaping.

“Do not try my patience, navigator. If I decide I find your pain more enjoyable than what I have in mind, you will regret it.”

With shaking hands, she started undoing the fasteners and the zipper of her yellow flightsuit, shrugged herself out of it, kicked off her short boots, and stood before him in a short camisole and briefs. He gave a snorting noise, and, advancing close to her in one pace, ripped them off her body. Then he lifted her seemingly effortlessly by the waist and carried her to the large contour-chair, which reclined to form a couch. He lay her flat on her back on the cold synthleather material, and she shivered.

“Spread your legs.”

She closed her eyes and obeyed. Her mind was numb. That... creature could do anything he pleased with her, and no one would ever care—or even know.

A rustle of leather made her open her eyes again. The Imperial Lord had pulled off his left glove, baring a large hand whose pale skin was mottled with angry red patches, as if it had been badly burnt; two fingernails at least were missing. He’s human, she thought, but this brought her no reassurance. He ran the scarred hand on her body slowly, squeezing her breasts, exploring her inner thighs, jabbing a finger into her sex. She gasped and clenched her fists so hard that her nails dug into the skin of her palms. His huge, black-clad figure towered over her slender nude body splayed on the contour-chair. He slid his gloved right hand under her hips, and raised her lower body as if she were a rag doll, exposing her sex entirely. His naked left hand started searching deep inside her, none too gently. She shut her eyes again in burning shame, trying to fight the tears coming to her eyes. An instant later, he let go of her, and shoved his left fingers into her mouth. She nearly choked, tasting herself.

“Suck them. Better than this.”

She closed her lips around his strong fingers and strove to apply herself. Her mouth was dry—he wouldn’t like that. She tried to work up moisture, flicking and swirling her tongue as best she could. She could feel the softer texture of the scar tissue, and wondered fleetingly what had caused it—if the suit and mask hid such hideous injuries that he preferred not to show them. What kind of pleasure could he be deriving from this, apart from her humiliation and submission?

“Good,” he rumbled.

She was dumbfounded and dismayed. An instant later, he pulled his hand out of her mouth and ordered: “Now turn around and kneel.”

She looked up fearfully at the impenetrable mask, hoisted herself clumsily on her elbows, and scrambled to her knees, balancing precariously on the contour-chair with its unstable self-adapting shape. He just stood watching her, and she suddenly sensed that he found her very awkwardness and fear arousing.

“Turn around, I said. Now. On all fours.”

Tears flooded her eyes as she obeyed him. She felt his left hand grabbing her buttocks, her sex, forcing her knees apart, penetrating her deeper than he had before. She cried out, her inner muscles tightening against the brutal invasion. Immediately, he clamped his gloved right hand over her mouth, gagging her and pulling back her head and neck painfully, until her back arched. He kept thrusting his fingers deep into her, in angry jabs, and her tears fell on the black leather of his armored right glove.

“You are too narrow. You will have to be widened for me.”

She froze in a spasm of sheer terror, contracting on his probing fingers, and he cuffed her with his right hand, sending her sprawling face down, her right cheek on fire. In shock, she felt her ankles being pulled roughly, and tethered on either side of the contour-chair. He pinioned her wrists in a vise-like grip, then fastened them, one after the other, to slim metal binders she hadn’t noticed, protruding from either side of the chair’s head. She found herself spreadeagled on the chair, which had shaped itself in a bulge to support her midriff, so that she was completely displayed and vulnerable.

She could no longer see him. She heard him walking away a few paces. An instant later, his heavy steps were retraced, and she tensed. Nothing happened for several moments—nothing but his heavy, regular breathing just behind her. Then his hand started fondling her buttocks. She would have jumped if she hadn’t been tightly restrained.

“You have an adequate body, and you are bright. I will keep you here for a while—and I will train you to service me.”

She felt an icy grip numbing her chest. His hands kept stroking her backside, the back of her thighs, the small of her back, rather more gently than he had handled her so far. His left fingers slid between her legs, running up and down her sex. Then she felt something hard insinuated at the entrance of her vagina. It couldn’t be—

She screamed as she was penetrated, slowly but relentlessly, by the largest and hardest object she’d ever experienced. When it was entirely inside her, it stopped moving, and remained there, while she sobbed in great gulps, trying to catch her breath.

It was not him—it was a monstrous sex toy, impaling her brutally. “I cannot survive outside this life-supporting suit, except in very special highly-pressurized conditions,” she heard him rasp in that deep synthesized voice. “Even then, most of my skin cannot bear strong friction. This will prepare you for me. You will wear it, and others, until you are broad enough. You are never not to wear it at least several hours a day, so that you don’t retract inside. You will walk with it, and sleep with it. When I desire your presence, you will join me in the hyperbaric tank where I meditate and sleep. Do you understand?”

Her entire body felt rent apart. The idea of experiencing this agony for several minutes, let alone hours, made her physically sick. Her brain refused to even consider the prospect of staying here and servicing his needs.

“Do you understand?” he repeated mercilessly.

“My lord...” she panted, choking on a sob, “my lord, I can’t—I—please don’t make me. Please—”

Her voice broke and she started weeping hopelessly, her shoulders heaving.

“Perhaps I can motivate you with the help of your... erstwhile employer from Alderaan. It is high time old Senator Harlan was brought to a more fitting sense of what he owes the Empire.”

She froze in nameless dread. Piers’s handsome face flashed in front of her eyes, contorted in pain, his life’s breath cut off, his lifeless body crumpled on the ground. She recalled his infectious laugh, and his soft kisses on Ceti III. The reckless way with which he left it until the very last second before switching on his repulsors when landing, and which had driven her to fury. She could not bear to be the cause of his death.

“My lord—I will—do as you say. But you must release them.”

“Do you presume to negotiate with me?” he hissed.

She took a deep breath, acutely conscious of her humiliating posture—naked, spreadeagled, her exhibited body intimately violated.

“My lord, I will—serve you as best I can. I will learn to please you. I will not attempt to escape, and—and I’ll try not to cry. I shall be willing and compliant. You will find me—enjoyable.”

“What if I should relish the notion of taming you?” he demanded slowly.

“My lord, I shall be—exactly as you want me to.”

He took a step toward her, stirred the huge toy inside her, thrusting deeper. She caught her breath but said nothing. He went to the head of the contour-chair, and shoved his left hand in her mouth. Docilely, she started sucking his scarred fingers, circling the nailless tips delicately with her tongue. She heard a strange sigh coming from his breather, and he said:

“Very well. You will tell them yourself that they are free.”

For an instant her mouth stopped all movement, then she resumed her task on his fingers, nodding wordlessly. He remained motionless, then his gloved hand came to rest surprisingly lightly on her blond hair. “You are brave, navigator,” he told her, pulling his fingers slowly from her mouth and tracing the line of her jaw to her neck. “I may indeed find you enjoyable.”

And that had been that, she reflected, still hunched on her chair, alone in Thrawn’s quarters on the Chimaera, her naked shoulders now chilled above the bath towel. Her life changed irrevocably, swept away into the dark destiny of the Lord Darth Vader. Dead now for five years... and still present in her mind, in every instant of her consciousness. She hugged herself, got up slowly, looked at the now-dull gray beyond the viewport. Hyperspace again, so soon? Earlier, it had looked as if a full-scale battle was preparing. How could she have missed it? On a small starship, she could have believed it had been nothing but a hit-and-fade operation. On an Imperial Star Destroyer, with a fleet of several more major ships, that was inconceivable.

She ambled back into the bedroom, unsure of what to do next. When she looked at the small wall clock mounted above the night table, she realized it was still early. Suddenly, the idea of going back to bed seemed very attractive. Why not? she thought. With a contented little sigh, she slid back between the sheets. Two minutes later, she was fast asleep.

Thrawn found her there as he directed several soldiers setting out ysalamiri frames around the suite. In repose, she looked absurdly young. For an instant he gazed down silently at her, at the mysterious smile playing on her lips, the beautiful fine features he had so often seen in his dreams these past five years. A soldier pushed the door, and he shook his head. “Leave a frame here and I’ll install it myself,” he instructed the man in an undertone; but she opened her eyes at that.

“Go back to sleep, Syrie. It’s nothing you need worry about.”

And that would give the rest of the squad plenty to talk about, he reflected wryly. He had better consider how best to manage the predictable reactions. He lifted the nutrient frame with its furry lizard-like creature and came back into the room, closing the door behind him. Syrie was now sitting up, clutching the sheet to her chin, and he couldn’t help smiling at her confusion. With her eyes still puffy from sleep, she was lovely.

“What in the stars is this ?” she asked, staring at the ysalamir on its frame.

“This useful little creature, my dear, is a ysalamir. For some reason, its aura repels the Force.”

Her eyes widened. “Repels the—why do we need it?”

There had been alarm, and sharpness, in her voice. He was divided between annoyance at her tone, and fond admiration for her quickness of mind. “We have a Dark Jedi on board,” he said. “He has improved our pilots’ coordination out of recognition. But he is—somewhat unstable. The ysalamiri protect us effectively.”

Her face fell in disbelief and disgust. “This can’t be,” she breathed. “No. No...”

“Calm yourself, Syrie. There is really nothing to worry about.”

“I thought there were no more Jedi except—”

“Since there are at least two that we know of, Skywalker and Organa Solo, why shouldn’t there be more? And why should they all be on the side of the Rebellion?”

“No,” she repeated. “It’s impossible.”

He set the vertical frame against a side wall, and came to sit on the side of bed. “My dear, I understand that this brings up painful associations. But Jedi do exist... and the Force is a powerful tool when you must synchronize the movements of an entire interplanetary Fleet.”

“You said we needed ‘protection.’ No interdicting... animal will protect us from the powers of a Dark Jedi.”

“Syrie, there is no comparison between this Jedi and Darth Vader. He is noxious and malevolent, but he is also teetering on the brink of insanity and incapable of long-time concentration—or of any kind of strategic thought. He is a necessary evil if I am to win the campaign I have planned. I will handle him.”

She stared at him: “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

He had a short chuckle: “You never missed much, did you? This Jedi is called Joruus C’Baoth. Note the doubled vowel.”

A clone. She hid her face in her hands: “You’ve described a ticking bomb. What makes you think you can control this monster?”

He reached out to her, pulling her to him until her head rested on his shoulder and he could stroke her back. “My darling, you are overreacting. We are perfectly safe. You are perfectly safe.”

He could feel the tenseness in her body. Yes, she still had her quick intelligence; but there was now something brittle about her that he had never seen before. What could have happened to her that even her time with Vader hadn’t triggered?

“We have just completed a successful operation in which all our forces outperformed themselves by over 40%. We are about to dislocate the Rebellion’s feeble grip on the galaxy. We are winning at last, Syrie.”

She was shivering, and he held her closer: “My darling. Look at me.”

She lifted her face, and he kissed her, gently at first, then more possessively. She finally returned his kiss, her hands clutching his shoulders. His hand slid under the sheet, found the curve of her hip. Her body relaxed against his, and he caressed the soft skin of her back, kissing her still. “Syrie. I can’t stay now. I wish I could. Tell me you’ll be all right.”

She nodded mutely. He held her tight for a full minute, then rose. “I will power up the droid. It will arrange for your things—for dresses, for anything you need. I would prefer if you stayed here today. There’s a secure comlink here on which you can call me; and also holonet access. Ask for my personal channel and scramble code. Call anyone you want. This channel is completely untraceable. I will see you tonight.” He kissed her again, longingly, hard, before drawing himself up to his full height, and striding out.

Chapter 5

Captain Pellaeon, standing near the main status console, cast a speculating glance at Grand Admiral Thrawn making his leisurely way across the bridge to the command chair. “All reports from our two other forces in, Captain?” Thrawn asked in a conversational tone as he seated himself.

“Yes, sir. Overall, 91% of our objectives were achieved. The Nemesis has already checked in from the rendezvous. We should be there in an hour. And modifications are starting on the Judicator even now.”

He saw Thrawn allow himself a wolfish smile—not a pleasant sight. “The Rebel forces in this sector should be kept busy for a while,” the Grand Admiral nodded. “Captain, a quiet word with you, if you please.”

Pellaeon looked around him, signaled for the comm officer to move to the back of the bridge, and stepped to the Grand Admiral’s command post. “I would like you to organize the discreet monitoring of all my personal comm and holo channels,” Thrawn said coolly. “Use only personnel you are personally sure of, and recently memory-wiped droids. All reports to be immediately encrypted and sealed, and delivered to me every six hours. Or sooner, if you think it necessary.”

A flummoxed look crossed Pellaeon’s face. “Come, Captain,” Thrawn rejoined. “I shall be very disappointed if you tell me that you don’t know Lady Syrie has moved into my quarters.”

Surprise was replaced by a stony expression on the captain’s deeply-etched features. Thrawn smiled: “You reassure me, Captain. It wouldn’t be like you not to know what is happening on your ship.”

“How am I to treat the information gathered, sir?” Pellaeon asked guardedly.

“Use your best judgment, Captain. Of course you will make yourself acquainted with it immediately. Time is of the essence in the case of handling financial assets—or breaches in intelligence. If you think action should be taken, and I’m for some reason not available, make your own decisions.”

Pellaeon stared at the Grand Admiral. “Sir, is this woman considered as—a prisoner?”

“Certainly not, Captain. As my guest, of course. What else? We are old friends.”

Pellaeon remained silent for a few moments, twirling his moustache. Thrawn cocked an ironic eyebrow at him, but said nothing. Finally the captain ventured: “Sir, has she given—any indication that she knows where Lord Vader’s assets are?”

“Oh, if she does know, she will,” Thrawn answered. “Have no doubt of that, Captain. But you can imagine that someone who has lived for years with Lord Vader is well able to hide whatever she doesn’t want known. I had much rather she volunteered the information.”

Pellaeon inclined his head slowly. Like any of Thrawn’s schemes, it was subtle, clever—and made him deeply uneasy. The captain made a mental resolve to shake off his misgivings. The Grand Admiral’s brilliance had been amply demonstrated to him time and again. And surely it should be nothing to him that Darth Vader’s former mistress was now sharing Thrawn’s quarters...

Still, how in the stars had that come to pass? Pellaeon wondered. Could it be that, like the late Falleen prince Xizor, Thrawn’s species emitted pheromones that made him irresistible to females... human females? Unconsciously, the captain’s nose puckered in distaste as he envisaged the contrived mating of the young woman he’d seen the day before, with this—cold-blooded, blue-skinned, preternaturally-cunning mammal. An instant later, every instinct in alert, he looked up quickly to see Thrawn studying him, his lean features entirely devoid of expression, the glowing red eyes unreadable. The captain turned crimson, then blanched.

“My mother was human, Captain,” Thrawn said very softly.

Pellaeon froze in place, his chest constricted. Whether Thrawn could read minds, as the captain felt sometimes close to believing, or had simply deduced his thoughts accurately from his ill-advised expression, the Chimaera’s commanding officer knew he had offered his chief a grave insult. Mortified, Pellaeon tried to utter a denial, an explanation, but no sound would come out of his throat. It didn’t help that he felt a rush of remorse at his own gut reaction. He owed solely to Thrawn’s brilliance and Thrawn’s victories his renewed hope to see the return to Imperial rule. And the Grand Admiral had, throughout their campaigns, treated him with a consideration that no officer could have expected, in their day, from either Grand Moff Tarkin or Darth Vader.

Inwardly cursing himself, the captain hesitated, unwilling to close the incident by walking away. Thrawn offered no help; he was examining the technical and tactical displays above his console, and tapping keys to scroll more and more information.

“—will speak to the Grand Admiral!”

Pellaeon, welcoming the distraction, turned to the commotion at the bridge entrance... and flinched. C’Baoth, his long beard flowing on his none-too-clean robes, stalked past nervous junior officers attempting to delay him.

“Captain,” Thrawn said quietly. “Ysalamir.”

Pellaeon cast a look around him, realized that the nearest frame was at least 20 meters away, near the left viewport. How could that have happened? Negligence... or had C’Baoth managed to control one of the men and have him displace it? But how could whoever had taken the frame not broken from the Jedi Master’s influence when near the ysalamir?

No matter. Pellaeon took a deep breath: “I’ll get it, sir.” He walked carefully away towards the viewport, feeling conspicuous and vulnerable. It struck him that he was leaving Thrawn to deal with C’Baoth—not that he really had a choice...

“Grand Admiral Thrawn!” C’Baoth bellowed arrogantly.

Pellaeon winced. He found the overbearing Jedi clone increasingly unmanageable—and dangerous.

“You again, C’Baoth? What is it this time?”

Thrawn sounded atypically belligerent, his voice almost petulant with unusual annoyance. Pellaeon realized his chief was deliberately provoking C’Baoth’s temper to keep his attention away from him, and give him time to get hold of the ysalamir frame.

“You are lying to me, Admiral!” C’Baoth thundered. “There is a Jedi on this ship!”

“A Jedi other than you? Don’t be ridiculous, old man.”

Two meters, one... Pellaeon grabbed the cumbersome frame and hurried back to the command chair. Thrawn’s eyes glittered a strange dark red, his hands gripping each armrest.

“Don’t think you can resist me! You are hiding a Jedi from me!”

Carrying the frame, Pellaeon stepped just behind the chair, and saw Thrawn relax noticeably. C’Baoth glared furiously at him, and the captain felt once again thankful for the little furry lizards’ strange properties.

“Now, Master C’Baoth, please explain to me exactly what it is you believe happened. I can assure you there is no Jedi on this ship.”

Once more under the protection of the ysalamir, Thrawn was his urbane self again, even if Pellaeon could sense the steel behind his politeness. C’Baoth probably did too, for he now toned down his voice.

“I distinctly felt a Force presence close by during the battle at Bpfassh. It flared during the first TIE fighters engagement, then never completely left... until a few moments ago. Less than an hour.”

Thrawn frowned. “As you know, Master C’Baoth, I have no Force sense. So little, in fact, that I am probably more resistant to Force control than anyone else on this bridge. I won’t attempt to deny that you felt something, but I ask you this: why would you not have sensed it before? Nobody has boarded our ship for two weeks, except for our TIE pilots, and they are all accounted for—no replacements for months.”

“Accounted by you, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” C’Baoth growled, leaning closer to the command chair, his unkempt beard almost brushing the admiral’s impeccable white uniform jacket.

“Master C’Baoth, what would be the point?” Thrawn asked. “We have been scouting the galaxy to find Jedi pupils for you, at great inconvenience to my plans, I might add. Believe me, if I had a Jedi readily available, I would immediately deliver him to you. Especially since he would be of no use to me hidden behind ysalamiri force-repelling bubbles.”

The Grand Admiral stretched his long legs in front of him, a picture of polite unconcern next to the rigidly-standing Pellaeon. “Besides, I don’t really believe there are any more Jedi left. You were hidden on the Emperor’s secret cache planet. That alone saved you.”

C’Baoth did retreat by an inch or two. “I—felt —something,” he insisted. Pellaeon remembered Thrawn’s earlier assessments of the Jedi clone’s stability and powers of concentration.

“It may yet return, Master C’Baoth,” Thrawn said soothingly. “I can assure you of one thing: it did not originate from this bridge. There may be... Force currents in places, or in space. I wouldn’t know, but the Emperor did believe it.”

Pointedly, the Grand Admiral turned to his readouts and tapped a key on his console. C’Baoth stood his ground irresolutely for an instant, then turned abruptly on his heels and walked away.

When he had left the bridge, Thrawn looked up at Pellaeon with a half-smile. “You can say it now, Captain,” he encouraged him.

The officer was, if anything, standing even more rigidly at attention. “Sir, we have been boarded recently,” he said tightly.

“Let me make this easier for you, Captain. Our esteemed Jedi Master lost contact with his supposed Jedi at exactly the moment when a detail was setting up ysalamiri frames in my quarters.”

Pellaeon nodded.

“She’s not a Jedi, Captain,” Thrawn said calmly. “She has no Force sense. Believe me, I know.”

The captain stared at him. “Sir, this can’t be a coincidence.”

“No,” Thrawn nodded. “I rather suspect it must have something to do with her having lived so long with Lord Vader. Some kind of... mark he left on her. Interestingly, this... phenomenon seems to have been triggered by C’Baoth’s own Force powers—remember that he said he felt something “flare” during the engagement at Bpfassh, when he was coordinating our forces. Syrie had been on the Chimaera for almost a day then.”

“Sir—” Pellaeon began, then stopped.

“Yes, Captain?”

The gaze of these glowing red eyes was hard to sustain, but Pellaeon didn’t flinch. “Sir, how would you know if she has no Force sense? You just said you have none yourself.”

“She didn’t react to the ysalamiri until I told her what they were. And besides—she never had any Force powers... before. When I met her. Vader acknowledged that himself. After all, if she had been a Jedi, he would have destroyed her—or trained her.”

“How do we know he didn’t?” Pellaeon insisted stubbornly.

“He didn’t,” Thrawn countered.

In the silence that followed, the captain slowly looked away, his lips compressed into a thin line. The bridge activity was back to normal, the young duty officers busy at their posts, all traces of C’Baoth forgotten—for the moment.

“But I will grant you that we may have a problem here, Captain. If she ever steps away from the ysalamiri and is detected again—”

Pellaeon stared at the Grand Admiral. He had known all along these complicated schemes were—

“Risk is a part of our lives, Captain,” Thrawn said evenly. “We will just have to divert Master C’Baoth’s attention. By finding Skywalker and Organa Solo for him, for instance.”

Left alone in Thrawn’s suite, Syrie dragged herself up and hunted for her old jumpsuit in the bathroom. The Dee-fourpee-oh, which had respected her privacy, hovered in when she entered the sitting-room. Tactful programming, she thought. Under standard Imperial procedure, droids had to be memory-wiped at least every six months. It made for reliable, but rather dull machines—no personality at all, she reflected with the beginning of a smile, remembering some of the more colorful droids she’d encountered in recent years. This one was definitely not in the same class, but it was competent. Having computed her measurements, it started projecting holos of dresses and outfits, with amazingly realistic macrodigitised reprosamples of material attached. She quickly picked two nondescript suits, of the kind she could wear on a hundred different worlds without attracting notice, and entered one or two special modifications. The holos continued to scroll, and she chose a smarter black trouser suit, with some blouses, shoes, underwear.

A series of elegant dresses appeared, and she looked on wistfully as the phantom fashion show unfolded. Surely these were not available on a warship. They belonged on Imperial Center, years ago... together with the occasions to wear them. But Imperial Center was now in the hands of the Rebellion. No, the New Republic; better to face facts. A New Republic conquered and led by Vader’s children. The irony of it had haunted her for five years. She had never met them; probably never would. There was no reason for them to know of her. Luke Skywalker, perhaps—Luke had been Vader’s obsession for the last four years of his life. The longing to find his son and to bring him over to his side had eaten at the Dark Lord day and night. It had been the overriding passion of this man of passions, driving him alternately to anger and to dark hope, subsuming everything else, herself included. Sometimes she felt she knew the young Skywalker, so present was he behind everything that Vader did or said. There had been months-long chases across the galaxy while she was relegated to Imperial Center; brief reunions in the course of which Vader suddenly lost all interest in her; fits of black rage when no-one, least her, escaped the Dark Lord’s sometimes lethal temper. Amend that, she thought; I knew he would never kill me. The others...

A simple dark-blue long sheath of shimmery organic faille flickered to life in the space between the Dee-fourpee-oh and the low table. I had one almost like that, she remembered, and raised her hand. “This dress, Dee-fourpee-oh. Is it available?”

“Yes, my lady. It will need to be made for you. This will take one hour and twenty-five minutes.”

The Maker only knows what Thrawn wants with organic faille on his command flagship. And me. I know I want this dress.

“Have it made,” she ordered, and relaxed into the sofa, fighting a tension of which she hadn’t even been aware. What in stars do I need this dress for? Who for? Yes, for him, perhaps. Thrawn... Nuruo. I know so little of him; I didn’t even know I did not know his name. And I didn’t imagine he could be kind. If he is sincere.

She remained motionless a long while, then got up and walked to the holovid deck. She’d had very little chance of watching the news on Ferrier’s ship. She flicked on one of the commercial grids, made a choice of news summaries and waited for the hourly-updated holoreels to load. Soon images of dozens of worlds fought for ephemeral control of the viewspace above the deck console. Thrawn also received Alliance holovid grids, she noted. Sensible of him, although she doubted they were available to the crew. She had a glimpse of Princess Organa Solo receiving some dignitaries on Imperial Center—no, Coruscant. The familiar spires and towers triggered a sharp nostalgic ache in her breast. She had known real happiness there—at times, at least. At a price. I knew all along it was indefensible, but I thought the private price I paid was enough. Darth knew, and reveled in the evil of it. The Emperor didn’t care, of course. I always wondered if he could truly be of the Dark Side and not really believe in evil, just in his absolute right to do as he pleased.

News items briefly flickered into the viewspace, to be replaced by yet more news. Battle scenes, sometimes shown twice, once by a New Republic grid, once by Imperial News. The information conflicted, and she knew enough to tell that the Alliance grids were more truthful.

Another official opening with Princess Organa Solo, this time wearing a Senator’s simple all-white robes. Her hair tied around her head in tight braids, the small, dark-haired woman looked very young, and suddenly, Syrie experienced a tug of recognition. But—I do know her! I saw her at Court... It was so long ago, I simply had no idea—

Strange that Vader hadn’t felt anything either, she mused. His daughter... but then he’d never known he had twins. She hadn’t known, for that matter; she had pieced the story together after the destruction of the Second Death Star. Rumor and panic reigned in Imperial Center; she had remained barricaded inside Vader’s fortress for days, until she was absolutely certain of Vader’s death. By the time she could bring herself to believe it, more disturbing reports were being whispered—that Vader himself had killed the Emperor. That she could more easily believe. If Palpatine had in any way harmed Luke Skywalker, she found it easy to imagine his right-hand Dark Jedi turning against him. Ruled by passion and anger... and impatient of Palpatine’s tortuous, treacherous schemes. There was an absolute purity in Darth’s dedication to the Dark Side. It is perfectly possible that he could have turned at the last minute. But I’ll never know. I wasn’t there with him. For him. I failed him.

The Dee-fourpee-oh came into the room, carrying an armful of clothes. Shaken out of her reverie, she jumped up to look at the suits—and the dark blue dress. The sheer sensual splendor of the shimmering fabric with its nightly reflections took her breath away. This is a work of art, she thought, and smiled—Thrawn might well agree. Suddenly she felt the urge to wear it at once. She drew it against her, looked around in vain for a mirror. There was one in the bathroom. “Fourpee, I’ll need—”

What would she need? Getting outfitted for a normal life was one thing; replicating the array of cosmetics and accessories she had in her Imperial Center life was another, definitely out of the question here. All the same, there were a few women officers on the Chimaera...

She rattled off a list for the droid, then slipped into the bathroom with the dress, yanked off her overalls, and slid into the cool folds of the luxurious faille as she would into a pool of still water. The very texture of the fabric made her dizzy. All her senses, her nerve-endings jerked her into sharp reminiscences of other times, other places, other feelings. She drew up the invisible fasteners at the side, adjusted her breasts inside the asymmetric bodice from which her pale shoulders emerged. In the mirror above the washbasin she stared at a woman she had not met for five years. She pulled up her hair above her head with a hand that shook a little, wondering if she could achieve alone the look that three droids and several hours of expensive grooming had once unfailingly produced. I can fly a spaceship and a TIE fighter, I can calculate a hyperspace jump and fight my way in a brawl, but I still panic at the idea of dressing my hair, she thought, and almost laughed. Letting her ragged blond mane fall, she tripped back into the sitting-room. A few moments later, the Dee-fourpee-oh returned.

“My lady, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to get much of what you wanted—”

She chortled at the droid’s lugubrious tone. Get any droid into a no-win situation, and it’ll acquire personality fast. “That’s all right, Fourpee. Just tell me what you found.”

Apart from one lipstick, of a rather sickly pink, some cheap mascara and eyeliner, there was very little indeed. No feminine shoes, for instance, that would fit with the dress. No hair accessories except a few U-shaped metal pins and rubber bands. No makeup remover of any kind—presumably female Imperial troops were expected to make do with soap or ‘fresher fluid. Well, she herself had considered soap an unattainable luxury for close on a year. This would do.

About half an hour later, Thrawn entered the suite and was surprised not to find her in either the sitting-room or the bedroom. As he crossed the corridor leading to the smaller room she had asked to occupy, he heard a movement in the bathroom.

“Syrie?”

“Yes—Nuruo?”

Hearing her say his private name created a new, uncharted intimacy between them; no one had uttered it in years. It felt—strange, but good. He smiled to himself.

“Have you been using the holonet channel? It's no longer secure. There is something I had better tell you—”

He pushed the door to the bathroom and stopped dead.

“I hadn’t hoped to see you so soon...” she started.

He said nothing, staring at her for so long that she faltered; then he took her hand, drawing her to the sitting-room. She had tied her hair tightly at the back of her head, and drawn a thin dark line at the base of her eyelashes, extending outwards. Her neck and shoulders rose gracefully from the dark-blue faille. Her lips weren’t made up, but she had dabbed a little pink on her pale cheeks. She looked dazzling and unattainable. Then he noticed her bare feet padding on the floor, and this triggered a stab of possessiveness—a desire not to let her out of his reach ever again.

“You are very beautiful,” he finally told her

“I couldn’t resist having it made. But I have more practical—”

“This is magnificent.”

He saw her blush under the light makeup. He knew they both remembered the occasions in which he had seen her in similar dresses. He drew her close, and kissed her. “What happened to all your things—to your dresses, your jewels, your artworks?”

He felt her stiffening. “I left everything behind. There was no point.”

He led her to the couch and sat next to her: “You could have used them to protect yourself. So that you didn’t have to cross the path of a Niles Ferrier.”

She shivered involuntarily, and he wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders, drawing her to him: “How could you be so destitute?” he insisted. “Vader gave you everything you wanted. You could easily have kept enough to live in comfort.”

She looked up at him: “But I did take some money with me. It was—enough for almost four years. After my lord’s death... I didn’t have the energy to plan very far ahead. I remembered what I needed to live on—before. Of course I hadn’t realized that everything, starting with bare necessities, sees its price multiplied during a war.”

“But surely you could have accessed one of Lord Vader’s accounts. They must have remained untouched on hundreds of systems.”

She stared at him, and he could see the old hurt in her eyes. “Perhaps... I never even thought of it. I would imagine many of these accounts still exist...”

“Do you know how to find them? And are you authorized to draw on them?”

“I... suppose I am,” she replied slowly. “Why do you ask?”

“Syrie, do you have any idea at all of how much Darth Vader controlled?”

She pulled away from his embrace, looking him straight in the face. “Certainly a lot,” she finally said.

He took her hands in his. “That is one way of putting it. >From what I could ascertain, there were major holdings on at least a thousand systems. Now do you understand why I’m asking?”

She gazed down at their intertwined hands. “Not for me,” she whispered. “For you.”

“For the Empire,” he corrected her coolly. “At this moment, we are desperate for ships, for troops, for bases. Yes, I have managed to assemble a respectable Fleet. But we barely control one fourth of the worlds we ruled—many of which were ruined by the civil war. Our troops are young and inexperienced. Training takes time and costs credits. Practice ships cost credits. Supply lines cost credits. Police operations cost credits. In any case, police operations would not be half as necessary if our systems were more prosperous! Rich worlds do not rebel.”

“Rich worlds rebel when they have no freedom,” she murmured.

His eyes narrowed: “Are you trying to tell me you are on the Rebellion’s side?”

“I am on no one’s side... Admiral. I don’t ever want to be again.”

He’d stiffened at her use of his title. “What makes you think you have a choice in the matter?” he asked, his voice cutting and icy as she’d never heard it before. She raised her eyes at him in surprise. His lean face was set, a hard glitter in his eyes. “I don’t—know—what can have made me think such a thing,” she replied slowly, holding his wrathful glare. For a long moment they faced each other, very still, eyes locked angrily. As if wholly separate from their exchange, their hands had remained entwined on his lap. He felt hers slipping away, and held onto them reflexively, looking down at her small, work-coarsened fingers. He saw that she had filed as best she could her short, broken nails; but there was nothing she could do to hide the calluses and the scars which blemished her extremities. He exhaled slowly, willing his anger away; raised both her hands to his lips and kissed them.

“Syrie, do not resist me all the time. It is pointless.”

She didn’t answer. He looked up into her face. Her eyes shone with unshed tears. He drew her to him, hugging her tightly. “My darling—surely we could do better than this.”

“But you’ll always want it to be on your terms,” she said in a small voice.

He stroked her upswept hair, the nape of her neck: “You know I’m not unreasonable, Syrie. You have been here for barely a day. You need more time to—to heal. You don’t have to fight anymore.”

“Yet you want to drag me into your war.”

His hand froze on her hair. “Damn it, Syrie, you are part of it, whether you want it or not! Do you realize that C’Baoth sensed your presence here today? It came to him as he was guiding our starfighters during this morning’s engagement, and lasted until I had ysalamiri installed in these quarters. Do you now have Force abilities? Was this the reason why you were so overwrought about his presence? What else is there about you that I don’t know?”

He had let go of her, lashing out with his questions, and she recoiled: “I—I did feel something this morning. When the TIE fighters took on these Carrack-class cruisers. I—remember thinking they flew superbly—and at their first hit I had this—flash. At first it felt as if I’d been there before, but that was—impossible. I thought then I was reminded of other—space battles—with my lord.”

The raw hurt in her voice was unmistakable, and it made him suddenly jealous, in a way that he hadn’t been when they were conducting their clandestine affair. To find her, after all these years, still faithful to the memory of the most hated man in the galaxy, galled him and goaded him to provoke her. “Space battles? What had you to do with battles?” he snorted.

Her hands flew to her face, as if to protect herself. “I witnessed many—and I fought in some. My lord trained me on his own TIE fighter. He thought—that I was good—and it pleased him.”

Thrawn stared at her. Even knowing what he did, he was thunderstruck that Darth Vader could have let Syrie fly his TIE fighter—a special prototype, outfitted to his specifications, with shields and a hyperdrive.

“You could have flown away anywhere in that starfighter,” he said slowly.

She nodded wordlessly. But she hadn’t.

“Did he Force-guide you?”

“Perhaps—at the beginning... I don’t really know. Once—in a dogfight—I felt him near, directing my fire. But mostly—he just enjoyed seeing me perform well.”

“Perhaps you were more attuned to him than you think.”

“Perhaps...” she whispered.

Could there be such a thing as an aura Vader had left permanently on her? Without her knowledge?

“But you still believe you have no Force-sense?”

“I’m... sure, or as sure as I can be. We talked about it—don’t you remember?”

He remembered, of course. They had arranged to meet outside Imperial City, at a place she had given him coordinates for. He had landed his personal speeder on an empty beach beyond the Manarai Mountains, near a forbidding cliff; and it had taken him some time to see that part of the cliff was man-made, the wall of a stone fortress rising above the ocean in this, one of the very few places on Coruscant that was not overbuilt with hundreds of levels of city-structure. She had met him at the foot of the cliff, and guided him into a hidden hangar for space- and aircraft. “What is this place?” he’d asked in astonishment, as she led him through stone corridors to an eyrie high above, with a spectacular view of the ocean and the mountains.

“My lord’s beach retreat.”

“Syrie, are you mad?”

“He is in the far reaches of the Rim—near a planet called Dantooine, I think. We are quite safe here—there are no holorecorders like at the palace, his or others’... no servants, no droids.”

“What if he could... sense our presence here, next time he comes?”

She’d shaken her head: “He told me many times that this is only possible with Force-sensitive people... he feels their aura, or whatever disturbance they leave in the Force. Because he knows me, he can find me in a crowd, or even in space, but he can’t tell whether I’ve been somewhere.”

He remembered their lovemaking of that day, his perceptions heightened by their surroundings, his nervousness at having intruded into Vader’s most private sanctum, the sheer beauty of the sea and the sky. They had lain on a thick fur blanket directly on the eyrie’s terraced balcony, only separated from the cliff’s precipitous drop by a stone parapet, the salty winds ruffling their hair. The weather was uncertain, with the sun intermittently hidden by fast-moving, fleecy clouds, so that they alternately basked in the balmy light, and hugged fiercely, clinging to each other, seeking warmth. He had found her tender and dedicated, her hands and mouth seemingly bent on extracting the last morsel of pleasure from his body, until he abandoned himself to exquisitely new sensations washing over him like the ocean on the beach below. Then he had methodically kissed her all over, inch by inch, starting at her small cold feet, refusing to yield to her entreaties or to his own mounting arousal until he had reached the top of her head.

Thinking now about their subsequent embrace brought a warm constriction in his chest and groin, a tug of memory sharp and tangy. He looked at her with hungry eyes, and saw that she had been remembering the same thing. He opened his arms, and she came to him wordlessly, resting her head on his shoulder. He held her quietly, his mouth pressed against her hair, the little tendrils that escaped from her makeshift chignon tickling his nostrils. He inhaled deeply her smell, clean and soapy and distinctive. She was still an enigma, but she was his enigma—the only woman who had ever come close to him in almost thirty years. Now that he had found her again, he wanted her at his side when victory came.

“Syrie...”

“Nuruo.”

His embrace tightened. “Thank you,” he murmured, and she knew it was because she had used his private name. He kissed her and she kissed him back fiercely, her tongue pushing back his and exploring his mouth. His hands ran over her naked shoulders and back, stopped by the dress’s tight bodice.

“How do you take this off?” he asked in a thick voice.

“But I’d hoped you’d like it,” she said with a small gurgle of laughter.

“I like it. Now how do we get rid of it?”

She laughed again, an entrancing sound he had all too rarely heard. Her smiling face danced in front of his eyes: “You undo this... here... and this...” She guided his fingers to the small concealed fasteners at the side of the night blue faille bodice, then, raising her bare arms, assumed a waiting position, letting him grapple alone with the tiny hooks and lateral zip. He let out a frustrated growl, fighting unsuccessfully with the delicate clasps.

“I could almost believe you have little experience of this,” she teased.

“I have very little experience of this,” he retorted.

“Oh? I would not have guessed.”

The first hook came off its eyelet, and he pulled impatiently at the revealed zipper. “You will ruin this work of art,” she warned him playfully, relenting and helping him undo the rest of the fasteners. His sigh of relief was audible; as the décolletage of the dress finally gaped to reveal the swelling of her breasts, he buried his face in them, kissing their soft skin then trailing his tongue along her neck, her jaw line, back to her mouth for a long passionate kiss.

“It is a work of art,” he said at last, holding her face between his two hands, and looking smilingly into her eyes. “Where in stars did you find it?”

Her breathing was still short: “Your droid had a complete holo fashion show in its memory cores. I can understand someone wanting to watch the model show, but what you do with organic faille of this quality on your ship is beyond me.”

“Is that what it is called?” he asked as he pulled down the material to reveal her nude body. She stepped nimbly out of the billowing folds and picked up the night-blue dress to lay it neatly on one arm of the couch. He watched her careful gestures with amusement. “I inherited this protocol droid from my predecessor. From the way these quarters used to be decorated, I imagine he might have had more demand for fashion shows and expensive dresses than I.”

She cocked her head on one side, considering him with frank curiosity, reminding him sharply of one of Carida’s brown Viikii-sparrows, the ones that used to perch on the window-ledges of the Military Academy’s tactics classroom—oh, a century or two ago. Now why would such long-forgotten memories suddenly come back to him? He drew her to him: “This entire area, secondary bridge included, was an ‘entertainment suite’ done in the most extraordinary taste. Round repulsor bed, holo cameras in the ceiling, mirrored glass everywhere... Obviously you have come across other traces of the former Commander in the Chimaera’s supplies.”

He led her by the hand to his Spartan bedroom, with its solitary painting on the wall. The bed in which they’d slept had been made, and she turned down the sheets, sliding between them while he undressed. When he joined her, their warm bodies reunited under the cool synthlin, her long purr of contentment enchanted him—lying there close to her felt like coming home, whatever “home” meant. He tightened his embrace and kissed her face and her neck gently, the usual sense of urgency replaced by a new-found tenderness. His hands rejoiced in their growing familiarity with her body, the curve of the hips, the small of her back, the slightly too-angular bones of her shoulders. Part of his mind started thinking of the delicacies he would get the officers’ mess droid cook to prepare for her. He had been enraged, the previous evening, when he had realized that she had gone hungry on Ferrier’s ship.

“I could get used to this,” she whispered.

“My darling, I hope you will.”

Limbs entwined, mouths joined in a languorous kiss, they drifted into lovemaking without haste. She gave a long contented moan when he penetrated her, arching her back to meet him, wrapping her legs around his hips. His lips never leaving hers, he thrust rhythmically into her, deep and slow, attentive to her movements and her reactions. He wanted to bring her higher than they had ever reached—and was willing to give it all the time in the stars. He could feel her small hands on his shoulder blades, and the little tremors of pleasure which made her contract exquisitely around him. She threw her head back against the pillows to take a great gulp of air, her breathing quickened, and he kissed her throat and her ear: “Not yet... not yet, my sweet...”

He felt more than heard her little answering gasp, then her body compliantly slowed its motions to match his achingly unhurried strokes. His lips found hers again and he kissed her deeply, enthralled by her responsiveness. Yes, they truly were well-matched... In a few days she will have relaxed enough to forget her fears. After C’Baoth leaves for Jomark, I will have her fly out with one of our TIE squadrons—that and the Vader fortune will ensure she is accepted. His pace had intensified in spite of himself, and he now forced himself to hold entirely still. She whimpered against his mouth, writhing with desire under him, and he smiled. “When I say so, my darling, and not an instant sooner,” he murmured. Raising himself on his elbows, he half-withdrew from her slowly, halting at the last second, watching her all the while. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on her skin, and her nipples were hard. Her hips rose to keep him inside her, her legs tightening their grip convulsively around his waist. Her passion delighted him. His lips brushed against her erect nipples, sending a shiver through her body; then, deliberately, he rammed himself into her in one forceful thrust until he hit her inner wall. She cried out, her face convulsed, and clutched him to her, her nails digging into his back. He welcomed the sharp pain, which helped him hold back his mounting climax. No, not yet. I want to bring you much farther... to possess you and own you and take you again and again, until we are both exhausted and sated... He started moving deeply and powerfully inside her, enjoying her wet snugness and her soft whinnying as she arched against him, matching his rhythm. He nibbled at her ear, then traced his way back to her mouth, crushing her lips under his—

—and became aware of an insistent vibration in the room. Syrie had heard it, too, suddenly still under his weight. He raised his head, looked quickly around at the door, the gray walls, the ysalamir frame, the chair—

His personal comlink in his uniform jacket. The sound was muffled but not to be mistaken. What in stars—

“I have to take it. They never disturb me here.” Unless in a real emergency, or Pellaeon’s idea of an emergency.

He heaved out of her in a frustration compounded by her little moan when they came separated. Naked and still erect, he walked to the chair, thrust a hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out the still-ringing comlink.

“Thrawn here. What is it?”

“Admiral, I regret to disturb you, but we have a crisis on the bridge.”

Pellaeon’s voice, tense. “Master C’Baoth has returned and heard the report of our Noghri team’s failure to capture Organa Solo on Bimmisaari. He has—harmed some of the pit officers, I think.”

“But you are still protected, Captain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. What is he threatening?”

“He seems to want—to commandeer the Chimaera to go after Skywalker himself, sir.”

“Don’t antagonize him needlessly, Captain. I’ll be right up.”

And I shall put a stop to that nonsense. “But before that—what happened to the Noghri mission?”

“Sir, from what we gathered through ELINT, Organa Solo was with her husband, the Wookiee, and the CO of Rogue Squadron. The fake Millennium Falcon doesn’t seem to have fooled them.”

“Noghri are better assassins than kidnappers, obviously,” Thrawn spat. “I may have to motivate them better. Hold the bridge, Captain, I’m on my way to relieve you.”

Snapping the comlink shut, he picked up his clothes and started dressing. Bare-chested but in his trousers, he walked back to the bed and sat down to pull on his knee-high black leather boots. Only then did he notice Syrie’s tense stare. Uncovered by the sheet, her half-reclining body was rigid.

“My dear, I have to go. I wish it were not so.”

He took her hand in his and kissed it at length, his tongue drawing wet circles on her palm. “I am sorry—and as frustrated as you...” The smell of their lovemaking lingered on her skin, on the sheets, in her hair. A thought crossed his mind, and he smiled: “My darling, don’t dress, just stay in bed exactly as you are. I will come back as soon as I can. Knowing that you are here waiting for me will give me every inducement to expedite my crisis and return to you.”

“Why are you trying to kidnap Organa Solo and Skywalker?”

He pulled up his other boot. “I have a use for them. And it will weaken the Rebellion. Why do you want to know?”

“It’s because they are Jedi, isn’t it?”

He turned to her at that, eyes narrowed: “Possibly. What concern is it of yours?”

“I know it is—linked—with your dark Jedi. The one who threatens you.”

“Syrie, there is no need for you to worry. I will handle this.”

“But you are doing his bidding, aren’t you?”

He stood up, walked to the chair, picked up his undershirt and pulled it over his muscular torso: “He is welcome to believe it—as long as it serves my purposes,” he said dryly. “Do not infer from this that I do not control him.”

She was frowning, her green eyes worried. “But you have a plan that involves Organa Solo and Skywalker. And this—clone.”

Buttoning his Grand Admiral’s jacket, he stepped back to the bed, considering her with an appraising eye. She was sitting up straight, the synthlin sheet drawn to her waist, her breasts half hidden by her crossed arms. He leant over to pinch her chin, and his left hand cupped the underside of one breast, his fingers finding the nipple. She stiffened but when he tried to kiss her, he found her lips dry and unresponsive. He drew himself up, staring at her: “Syrie, I am working at rebuilding the Empire. I will use any tool that will help me achieve it. C’Baoth wants Organa Solo and Skywalker, and I will give them to him—to secure his services until I no longer need them. Then I shall dispose of him, and not one moment too soon.”

He knew she feared Dark Jedi, for reasons he found hard to understand—after all, Vader had been one—and was ready to make allowances for that; but her haunted expression surprised him: “Why give him Organa Solo and Skywalker?” she whispered.

“He has this delusion that he will train them—bend them to his Jedi ascendancy. I have my doubts about Skywalker, but Organa Solo is expecting twins. Jedi twins. That tempts him very much.”

He hadn’t expected that her face could grow paler, but it did. “That is—the most—revolting thing I’ve ever heard,” she stammered.

“Syrie, don’t be naive,” he snapped. “They are rebels and traitors. My inclination would be to get rid of them outright. I would already have sent Noghri teams if I had believed that their elimination could strike a significant blow to the Rebellion. As it is, their government has grown to a complexity that makes political assassination a waste of time and effort. And neither Skywalker nor his sister are good targets for a discreditation campaign. Eventually, ion cannons and proton torpedoes over Coruscant will make a better job when the time comes.”

He finished buckling up his standard-issue blaster holster over his belt, and started for the door: “We are in the midst of a civil war, Syrie, and I intend to win it. Then we will work at setting up an orderly government that will be more efficient, and more just, than Palpatine’s. But the Empire will certainly not be rebuilt with weak scruples and self-commiserating bellyaching. In my years in the Unknown regions I have learned that the foundation of right is might. Show, inspire, and lead.”

She was still sitting straight in his devastated bed, her face grave, her eyes on him. He glowered back at her for an instant, then spun around and stalked out.

Chapter 6

The worst part, perhaps, had been telling Piers that she was not leaving with the Stargazer II.

When Vader was finished with her that first day—after a strange hour-long session in which he had left her spreadeagled on the contour chair, his ungloved left hand fastidiously tracing every curve and crease of her body, caressing and exploring her, until she felt troubled and disoriented—she had been frogmarched by stormtroopers to a common detention cell dozens of level down, in which the rest of the crew had been confined. They were sitting on the floor or on narrow plasteel bunk beds, talking in hushed voices, their faces creased with worry. When the troopers brutally propelled her inside, Piers sprang to his feet to help her keep her balance.

“Syrie! Are you all right?”

She nearly burst into tears on his chest, but something stopped her—she hardly knew what. Instead, she just nodded, searching his face for traces of an Imperial interrogation. He was somewhat dirty and disheveled, but obviously not hurt.

“What did they do to you?”

“Nothing—much,” she stammered. “They wanted to check—that I had really uploaded the Shi’sla docks coordinates to the Stargazer’s nav computer.”

“Syrie, you were away six hours! And they kept asking questions about you. The Intelligence officers—and Lord Vader.”

She stared up at him. “Piers, who is he? You know, don’t you?”

“Of course I know. Everyone knows of Darth Vader, the last Lord of the Sith—the Emperor’s own Jedi.”

“I don’t,” she said in a small voice, looking around at the others. She saw that even in captivity, the fishing party’s social differences had been respected—Piers’s Alderaanian friends, Sertis Celchu, Zander Rodes and Vimer Breira, all sat on cots while Derjek, the chief mechanic, huddled in a corner with Petah Roven, the Thyferran systems expert who doubled as a copilot, and Adil Sonb, the Sullustan guide. Piers led her to the last empty cot and helped her as she sat down gingerly.

Holding a mug of tepid water between his hands, Derjek stood up and came to her with careful steps. “We’ve had no food, but I’ve kept this for you to drink. The climate control on this ship is very dry.”

She gulped down the water gratefully. Piers shot a dark look at the older man, and Syrie realized he hadn’t thought of saving some of his water ration for her. Partly to divert his attention, she repeated: “Piers, who is this Lord Vader?”

“The Emperor’s right hand man—the last of the Jedi Knights. He hunted them down and destroyed the Jedi Order for Palpatine. He is his Majesty’s adviser—aide—Fleet Commander—executioner if need be. The whole Empire fears him.”

“You have met him before.”

“I’ve seen him at Court, Syrie. One doesn’t meet Lord Vader—save in circumstances few have lived to retell.”

She hung her head in silence, remembering the invisible talons constricting her throat—and Vader’s strong fingers invading her mouth. Piers was looking at her out of narrowed eyes. “What exactly happened to you there, Syrie?”

She shook her head wordlessly, very aware of the huge instrument still secretly embedded in her, stretching her inside; and felt herself blushing.

“Answer me, Syrie!”

The others were watching them now. “I was—asked—about you,” she whispered.

“What were you asked?”

She raised her eyes to his stern face. “He wanted to know if I was a member of—your family. I said no, I had been hired by you.”

She saw Piers exchanging quick looks with his Alderaanian friends; and because it reminded her all of a sudden of the little cliques at the Ridell Academy that had excluded her, she asked: “Piers, why did you tell him—about—us?”

“About us?” Piers Harlan repeated. “Who is ‘him’? Lord Vader?”

She nodded.

“Look, Syrie, there’s not much point in evading questions when an interrogation droid is hovering near your face,” he said; and she heard the petulance in his voice. He heard it himself, it seemed; and added “What does it matter? We don’t know what they want from us. These are Imperials, not some pirates who would hold us for ransom.”

In the silence that followed, Syrie shifted her sitting position on the narrow bunk bed, and winced as Vader’s contraption moved painfully inside her—a reminder of his mastery over her. From the corner of the room, Derjek was still looking at her. “Syrie, are you hurt?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. The chief mechanic once more rose to come and sit next to her on the cot, holding her hand. Piers glowered as he saw his territory invaded and took half a step closer, chin high as if about to speak—then retreated. Of course it’s not really his bed by right; we’d have to take turns to sleep if we were held too long here, she thought. But we’re not. They will be freed, and I am staying.

Vader had said she should tell the others, but she didn’t know how.

“Whatever you do, save yourself,” Derjek was saying in a very low voice, holding her hand in his cool, callused ones. “Don’t be heroic, and don’t feel shame. Just stay alive.”

Her eyes flew to his kind, weatherbeaten face. Her lips moved in a silent “How?” How does he know? Does something about me show?

“I’ve worked on Imperial ships in my time... and you’re a very pretty girl.”

She shuddered. Piers was watching them intently. “What is it you’re hiding from me?” he finally asked, in a calmer voice than before. She looked up into his handsome face, and thought, there’s no point in delaying.

“You are all going to be released. I—I am staying.”

“You are what?”

“I—Lord Vader—said—he doesn’t need you. He knows the Stargazer II came here by mistake. My mistake.”

The others had heard, and stared at her in a mixture of relief and horror. “Syrie, that’s ridiculous,” Sertis Celchu said. “Anybody would have made that mistake. The Shi’sla dockyards were still a civilian operation last year. My brother used them, he always said their mechanics were superbly trained.”

His brother was a star pilot in the Alderaanian Navy, she remembered now. Very young, the reputation of an unrivalled ace. She had a half-smile. “Thank you for saying so. I’ve been berating myself since this morning.”

“You should not be punished for this, or we should all be,” the slight, brown-haired Celchu insisted.

Why did I not see what a nice man he is? Because Piers swept me off my feet. Because Piers is a Senator’s son, the heir of the noble family of Harlan. Because I was stupid.

“I don’t think she’s being punished for that,” Piers voice was saying slowly. “I don’t think she’s being punished at all. I think our Syrie prefers to stay—as an Imperial Navy whore.”

The contempt in his voice cut like a whiplash. Syrie turned as white as the bunk beds’ rough synthlin sheets. She felt Derjek’s hand squeezing hers, in an attempt at reassurance. Their eyes were all on her, now—Zander Rodes and Vimer Breira with a kind of leer; Petah Roven with a disgusted expression; Adil Sonb and Sertis Celchu watchful but not unkindly.

“We are all tired and tense,” Celchu said quietly. “Piers didn’t mean this, Syrie.”

“Shut up, Sertis!” Piers spat. “I meant every word—and I don’t want any of your blasted interference.”

Syrie’s hands had flown to her ashen face in dismay. “Look at her, you’ll know I’m right,” Piers taunted.

“You’re way out of line, Harlan,” Derjek snapped. They all stared at him: they were used to his soft-spoken manner; but now his voice had been curt, almost harsh, not unlike the Imperial officers who’d questioned them. Now what kind of work did you do on Imperial ships in your time, Derjek? she wondered. Strange how people reveal themselves under pressure. I thought Piers was a sweet boy. But still, he doesn’t deserve to die.

“Please don’t fight,” she said softly. “We have no choice here.”

“Don’t flatter yourself that I intended to fight over you,” Piers shot back. “I’m not interested in some soldier’s leavings.”

She closed her eyes as if he’d hit her. In some way, perhaps this makes things easier. She opened them again and saw Sonb and Celchu had come close to the bunk where she sat, her hand still in Derjek’s. Sonb’s large jowls quavered and his large ruby eyes blinked, a rare occurrence for a Sullustan; and evidence of great emotion. The small guide wheezed in a low tone: “This is true, isn’t it? You are staying so that we can go.”

She tried to smile. “Adil, truly this is not the case. I would not have been allowed to leave in any event.”

“But there is some sort of a deal,” Sertis Celchu said in a low voice.

She assented, touched by his unexpected perceptiveness: “I promised I would—cooperate. It could be—for the best,” she murmured. “I’ll get... less hurt this way.”

“This is revolting,” Celchu said.

A better man, but a child of privilege all the same. She had a small smile, but it was Derjek who spoke: “She’s right, Sertis, even if I don’t like it any more than you do.”

“We are greatly in your debt, Syrie,” Celchu said after a moment’s pause. She shook her head, unable to speak—she could withstand insults, but kindness brought her to the brink of tears. The young Alderaanian took her hand and kissed it simply, without flourish. “Please stay out of harm’s way—when they release you, I wish you will come to our house on Alderaan, and make your home with us as long as you want.”

She nodded with a tremulous smile. She could see Piers glaring at their little group from another cot, but it didn’t really matter any more. And then there was no more time; stormtroopers came to take them away, and eventually led her back to Vader’s chambers, after the Stargazer II had left the docking bay.

And I will never see Sertis Celchu’s house on Alderaan, she thought, lying alone in Thrawn’s bed in the Grand Admiral’s private quarters on the Chimaera. Tarkin ordered the destruction of Alderaan, but Darth didn’t object, didn’t mind; and I am tainted by this great sin too, since I would not leave him. Sertis is dead, his parents dead; and Piers and Senator Harlan; Zander Rodes and Vimer Breira too... Sertis Celchu’s young brother had survived and flew for the New Republic, she’d heard. She imagined the bleak devastation in the unknown Tycho Celchu’s heart, and shuddered. What am I doing here? I could love Thrawn; perhaps I already do; but I cannot live with his war, his hegemonic dreams—and his cloned dark Jedi. She could smell him on her skin and on the sheets, a dry, clean, faintly musky scent. It brought back sharp memories of the very first day of their affair, nine years before, at the art gallery.

I went there hoping to meet him, and my hopes were fulfilled. All my hopes. Sitting back that day on the cushions of the grav-cab Thrawn had finally hailed to take her back across the ferrocrete and transparisteel canyons of Imperial Center to Vader’s dark palace, reliving their frantic lovemaking in her mind, she had found herself crooking her neck, bending her head to her shoulder to catch his elusive smell on her, and being nearly overcome by it. Some residual sense of danger had made her shower immediately, throw away her jumpsuit and her ruined tank top, erase all trace of her bout of madness—except in her mind, in the memories of her skin, in the sweet soreness of her flesh. Vader had not touched her for almost three months, entirely consumed by his war against the Rebellion in the Outland Regions—always driven at the service of the Emperor, he had of late become obsessed. Something pulls him there, and he won’t tell me what it is, and perhaps he doesn’t even know. I am of no use to him now, and there is no-one I can trust—except someone as brilliant and as lonely as Thrawn, who has no friends or allegiance here.

Of course, later on, she had understood. First Vader’s old Jedi Master; then his own son. Vader had not told her much, but enough that she could understand how Luke had become more important to him than the Emperor. Even the scant knowledge she possessed terrified her; she was afraid of betraying him, and afraid that he would destroy himself. For the months that Vader was away—and didn’t take her with him—she hid in his Imperial Center palace or his beach fortress rather than risk crossing paths with the courtiers, with a Xizor, with Palpatine himself. The only one who had no interest in it was Thrawn. She found safety in the very different danger of their affair.

Again and again, vivid snatches of her past danced in her mind, competing reminiscences of the last twelve years, until she felt physically overwhelmed by it all. She rose from the bed, shivering, grabbed one of Thrawn’s shirts and wrapped herself in it, pacing the small bedroom like a caged vornskr. I have to end this, to put this life behind me, no matter what...Nuruo...wants of me. Then I shall see if there can still be anything between us. But first I have to lay a ghost to rest.

She walked into the sitting room and went to the datapad linked to the holovid deck. It was more recent than the models she’d last used, on Ferrier’s ship, but not so much that she didn’t know how to enter a data query. She tapped a few keys, and pages started to scroll in the space above the deck. She stared at the reams of material available, then narrowed her search, and sat down to study the results.

Forty-seven levels below the Grand Admiral’s private quarters level, a viewscreen lit up in the small ops room hastily created by Captain Pellaeon and manned by five computers, two droids and a young, thin lieutenant with a rumpled look about him. His olive-green jacket was gaping at the neck; the regulation crease in his uniform trousers was a distant memory; his left black boot bore distinct marks of brown polish; and his straggly blond hair, thinning at the temples despite his youthful countenance, frizzed in an unkempt halo about his pale face. He had been reading a datacard, but the low buzz of the screen brought his pale blue eyes up, and his entire body seemed to straighten up. At last, something to do. He checked needlessly that the material scrolling down the awakened viewscreen was being recorded and encrypted, with automatic compilation of keyword summaries. It was: he had gone over his setup several times since he’d been installed in the airless, dark-gray plasteel-walled cubicle just off the galleys of the techs’ mess room. A strange place to set up a monitoring center—the smells from the kitchens wafted through the reinforced door to his nostrils, sometimes pleasing; occasionally offensive— but Captain Pellaeon had impressed on him the need for discretion. Not that this was very necessary: Lieutenant Vikram Nyerere had few human friends on the Chimaera.

“Sir, this search is being narrowed by sources,” one of the droids, a customized T3, said. “The searchcode is first-level Imperial, but outdated.”

“Yeah, I can see that, Terry,” Nyerere said, tapping the droid’s oblong metal head affectionately. “Find out who it was issued to in the first place.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nyerere smiled. He was looking forward to the ideal assignment: alone with his droids and his keypads, and a puzzle shaping up in front of his eyes. He leaned back in his straight chair and watched.

The mass of information available when one punched the name “Darth Vader” was disheartening. A great deal of it was also completely useless—propaganda, hearsay, fantastic stories spun by the hologrids, military reports that were little more than sentences piled one upon the other in an attempt to disguise fear and ignorance. Even the Alliance-sourced documents—and there were quite a few; obviously Thrawn managed to have his databanks updated with New Republic material fairly regularly—were hazy when it came to the Battle of Endor. The Rebel forces had annihilated the second Death Star and the Executor. Much was made of Lando Calrissian and Wedge Antilles’s run on the half-completed space station. Of Vader—who in Imperial documents was on occasion presented as a martyr like Palpatine—there was little. Even Luke Skywalker’s presence was simply acknowledged. That, in itself, was strange. Syrie found it difficult to believe Luke would only have been a spectator in the battle that saw, in effect, the end of the Empire. No matter what Thrawn calls it today, can there be an Empire without the Emperor?

The listing for several classified documents appeared in the viewspace, asking for an authorization code. She closed her eyes and typed from memory. In a moment, the pages scrolled down at her command. “The Rt. Hon. Lord Darth Vader of the Sith, reg. nob. ImpCal. 23.XXXII.12... She scrolled further, and found a long list of demesnes: whole systems listed and detailed under “fiefdoms” and “protectorates.” Well, Nuruo was right—just these, with the landrights and mineral rights and trading rights, represent a huge fortune, even if half these worlds have claimed complete independence since. And I know there was much more.

She tapped the keyboard again. A new code was requested. I am running out of Imperial codes. She closed her eyes again, tried a first password, was thrown out; tried a second password, and was in. They say bacta therapy plays havoc with your memory, well I am proof it’s not true. She opened her eyes.

Darth Vader, regicide. The assassination of our Emperor by Darth Vader and the Jedi Skywalker must be avenged. All Hands are IFwqIFUiBTS09 CUIuQS4sIENvbaaaGHaaH9yI...

The text was corrupting itself in front of her eyes. Frantically she started hitting combinations of keys as she’d been taught, to no effect. She tried going back in her search, then to escape. Back to the previous list, she called up the document again. No response. It was as if the document had never existed. She tried her codes again, and was rejected by the system.

Luke and Darth, together against the Emperor? Could it be true?

I must know.

She remained sitting at the desk for a long time, then stood up and turned to the holovid deck itself. The holonet channel, as Thrawn had told her, was open. She took a deep breath, and typed in a number and a code.

When Lieutenant Vikram Nyerere presented his first findings to Captain Pellaeon, looking even more rumpled than usual among the crisply-attired officers on duty on the Chimaera’s bridge, the older officer twirled his moustache for a minute, then decided to go in search of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Once again, his enigmatic chief had been proved right—but Pellaeon knew better than to follow all the orders he’d been given, and take action himself.

Furthermore, he knew exactly where he could find the Grand Admiral. He made his way through corridors and in turbolifts to the upper aft gymnasium. Passing the lap-pool where he had twice watched with a tinge of admiration Thrawn’s powerful underwater breast-stroke, Pellaeon saw across the half-deserted facility the Grand Admiral lifting weights from a cross-bar at shoulder level, and paused to observe him for an instant. Whatever species Thrawn belonged to—and the captain hadn’t forgotten his admission to a half-human heritage—he was a splendid specimen, with elongated muscles and broad shoulders. What could be seen of his body under his khaki singlet and shorts was practically hairless, the pale-blue skin smooth as a marble statue. Pellaeon thought of the woman who had arrived 36 hours sooner, and reflected that she could after all have been genuinely attracted...

Except that she had just proven she was playing a double game.

“Admiral,” he began.

Thrawn turned his head, nodded to Pellaeon, and slowly set the weights back into the notches of the cross-bar. “Trouble, Captain?”

“Sir, we’ve had a first report from the monitoring of your holo and comm channels.”

The Grand Admiral looked at him with narrowed eyes, drying his face and shoulders with a towel; then held out a hand for Pellaeon’s proffered datapad. “I gather I had better look at this.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thrawn punched a key, and stared at the signs on the small screen, his face unreadable. He lifted his glowing eyes after a few minutes. “Come with me, Captain.” Walking to a small office in a corner of the large room, he motioned to the gym administrator to move away from his comm and holopad desk. The man hurried away, surprise and awe blended on his face.

“This is Thrawn. Patch me to Lieutenant... Nyerere.”

The young lieutenant’s thin, pale face appeared in the viewspace above the pad. Seeing his Commander-in-chief didn’t seem to faze him. “Lieutenant, can you run the holo transmission you say you intercepted through this station? But keep it protected?”

“Yes, sir. We got a long data search as well.”

“I have that, lieutenant, thank you. Good work. Now send this transmission, please.”

The young man’s pleasant face faded away—to be replaced within moments by Syrie’s, biting her lower lip. Pellaeon understood they were seeing the entire transmission from the moment she activated the holonet channel, not just the actual conversation. As contact was made, a second face appeared in a halo to the right of the main picture. A human, middle-aged, non-descript, on a background of sculptured stone that looked familiar.

“New Republic Government House, good day, what can I do for you?”

“I need to get in touch with Luke Skywalker.”

“Many people would like to do just that, Miss. Perhaps you’d like to record a capsule.”

Pellaeon saw the indecision in the young woman’s face. “This is rather... confidential.”

“You can mark the capsule ‘confidential’, Miss. The thing is, it may be some time before Luke Skywalker gets round to open it. He receives quite a lot.”

“This is rather urgent. Perhaps you could let me know at least if he’s on Coruscant.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that myself, Miss. I don’t get told of every ship’s arrival or departure, nor of officials’ movements.”

On the main hologram, Syrie’s hands fluttered up to her mouth. “Operator, if I give you a code, can you patch me on to someone who will know?”

“Depends what code, Miss” the man said in a slightly doubtful voice.

“Sapphire-Riezalt-Devaron-Elom.”

Pellaeon heard a hiss issuing from Thrawn’s lips. He himself wasn’t familiar with the code; but the Grand Admiral obviously was.

“Don’t know that code, Miss,” the operator said, his voice now distinctly peevish. “You can record a capsule, if you like.”

“No, wait. Input that code into your switchboard. You’ll see it opens up restricted-access extensions. Just connect me with someone who will help me get in touch with Luke Skywalker. He will be thankful that you did so.”

“That’s assuming the Rebels haven’t deprogrammed the Palace switchboard,” Pellaeon heard Thrawn mutter under his breath. He cast a sidelong glance to the Grand Admiral. His face was calm, as always, but his eyes were riveted to the hologram.

Meanwhile, the operator had reluctantly keyed in the code—with visible results. “This is getting to an extension all right. Connecting you now, Miss.”

His face faded away, and Pellaeon saw Syrie close her eyes as if a great weight had been lifted from her chest. An instant later, a woman in a military uniform appeared. “Palace security here,” she said in a clipped voice.

“Hello Lieutenant,” Syrie said. “I have information for Luke Skywalker. I need to contact him personally.”

“Does he know what this is about?”

“No, but he will want to.”

“Who is this information from?”

Syrie seemed to hesitate. “This is a personal—a family matter. I need to speak to him.”

“He is away at the moment. I can pass on a message and ask that he call you back.”

On the main holo, Syrie was obviously nonplussed. “I can’t be contacted. But I can call him back if you’ll give me a time.”

“Can you give me at least a message—an indication?”

She hesitated. “Yes. Please tell him it’s about his father.”

Skywalker’s father? Again, Pellaeon glanced at the Grand Admiral. Thrawn was staring at the rest of the hologram in complete silence, his lean profile unreadable.

“It could be a code, of course” Thrawn finally said as the hologram faded out after Syrie logged off. “We’ll find out more tomorrow, when she said she would call back. Meanwhile, Captain, we’ll get your lieutenant Nyerere working on the Vader fiefdoms and protectorates. That should start yielding results soon enough.”

“And it was in our memory banks all along,” Pellaeon muttered.

“Ah, but she knew where to look,” Thrawn said, striding out of the small office. “Now your slicer has her passwords.”

They had reached the pool, and the Grand Admiral stripped off his singlet. “I will join you on the bridge in forty-five minutes, Captain. No, make that an hour. I think I may pay another visit to my private quarters.” He stepped to the edge of the lap-pool and dove head first, the water closing silently over him, leaving the Captain to watch him in uneasy fascination.

Chapter 7

Somehow being taken back to Vader’s chambers did not terrify her quite as much as the first time.

She wondered why she had been made to witness the departure of the Stargazer II. Standing to the side of the docking bay between two stormtroopers, she had not been allowed to speak to the crew and passengers. Piers had affected not to see her at all; but Derjek and Sertis Celchu had signaled to her—a defiant pilot’s circled thumb and index from Celchu, which he must have learned from his brother; a surreptitious wave from Derjek. As the yacht rose on its repulsorlifts, she had experienced a desolate feeling—even if she had only met all of them three weeks before, an easy familiarity had grown between them which even Piers’s affront could not sever. They were her last link to the world she knew.

And then they were gone.

The stormtroopers has manacled her again to the metal post in front of Vader’s large comm/computer console, and she sat gingerly on the floor, very conscious of the instrument inside her. It was less painful than uncomfortable now. He said I had to be—prepared— for him. How long will this take? How—wide—does he want me? Will I be able to stand it?

There had been one girl from her high school who had become the mistress of a well-known politician on Ridell. Syrie remembered being surprised, because she hadn’t expected it would be that particular classmate whose name got whispered in conversations by the time she was finishing the Academy. Saina was a quiet type, not especially bold or flamboyant—and the Maker knew there were defiant or brazen types in her class. Ridell’s school system was public and unified, with students on the entire planet reading the same basic curriculum, and teachers appointed centrally from the Ministry of Education to ensure equal chances for all. All the same, over half the pupils in Syrie’s school were more difficult “single-names.” The others’ parents—they had parents, after all—somehow knew how to get their children enlisted somewhere else, even if it meant requesting tuition in arcane subjects like Falleen, or Thennqoran art history, that weren’t available at her school.

Everybody knew about Saina even though the holonets never mentioned her. Her lover was much older and very self-important and, naturally, married. Syrie recalled meeting Saina by chance in the street, and chatting for a couple of minutes with her, of course never mentioning the rumors, until a uniformed driver had come for her in a gravcar. The driver wasn’t especially polite to her, and she did not look very happy. How did she fall into that relationship? Nobody bothered to ask.

She heard Vader’s well-remembered footsteps and mechanical respiration, and rose.

“Come here, navigator.”

Her handcuffs clattered down on the floor. I don’t know how he does this. She walked hesitantly to the wide area in front of the viewports where he stood, staring out at the stars—or so she imagined: his black mask was unreadable.

“Don’t you regret sacrificing yourself to save a coward like young Harlan? His ship still hasn’t jumped into hyperspace. I can have it blasted with one single proton torpedo.”

She froze. We were monitored. It did not matter. “My lord, please—no...”

“ ‘No’ comes easily to your lips, navigator.”

She took a deep breath. “No, my lord, I will not regret staying, if you let them go as you said you will.”

“So you believe in keeping one’s word, navigator?”

She nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

“Good.”

In the silence that followed, she took one more step toward the massive black figure. “My lord, I promised that I would learn—to please you. Tell me—what I should do.”

A low rumble came from the gleaming mask. “>From now on I want you nude when you are with me. Undress.”

She hesitated for an instant, then undid the fastenings of her yellow flightsuit. She was naked underneath—Vader had torn her underwear beyond repair earlier. She shrugged out of the suit, and looked around for a place to leave it.

“Throw it away. I will provide more becoming clothes for you when and if I decide you should be dressed.”

She obeyed and stood in front of him, fighting the urge to cross her arms over her breasts.

“What exactly did young Harlan require of you?”

“My lord, I—I computed the ship’s course—and—slept with him.”

He took a step toward her, and she quailed. “I am not interested in astronavigation here. If words fail you, I suggest you show me precisely what you did,” the electronically-amplified voice wheezed.

“We—I was—we made...” she started, blushing fiercely.

“Come,” he interrupted her.

He led her across the room to the massive half-shell structure, set in the center of a sunken pit, which had puzzled her before. A command chair stood in the middle, surrounded by computers, holodisplays, and equipment she had never seen before. He seized her by the waist as if she were weightless and sat her on one of the consoles; then seated himself on the chair.

“Lie down over the instruments.”

Hesitantly, she stretched out and positioned herself as best she could between the switches and the viewscreens, her pale body displayed in front of him on the dark plasteel of the complex machinery. Immobile, he surveyed her; then took off his left glove and ran his naked hand over her skin, surprisingly gently. She shivered.

“Are you cold, navigator?”

“No-o, my lord.”

She heard the rumble she was learning to associate with his laughter.

“Spread your legs wider. There.”

He raised her foot and rested it on the casing of a holo display; then grazed the baby-soft skin inside her thighs with his nailless fingertips until he reached her sex and the large prosthesis embedded in her.

“Ah, good,” she heard him exhale, twisting it inside her. She moaned and his gloved right hand came to pat her hair, curiously reassuring. She felt the hard toy being wiggled inside, then yanked out, and she cried out in surprise. His bare fingers replaced it, probing imperiously, exploring her stretched passage, awakening strange sensations of mixed pleasure and pain in her.

“Yes... this is much better.”

She heard the snap of his leather-gloved fingers; then he helped her raise herself enough that she could see a hovering droid emerging from behind the chair with a tray of shiny black implements shaped like male members in various sizes.

“I want you to chose the one closest to young Harlan’s.”

Her eyes widened in stupefaction. She found it almost impossible to connect these surgical-like devices and the feel of Piers’s warm skin at night, their happy fumblings in the Stargazer II’s bunk. The Dark Lord seemed to understand her hesitation, because he took her hand and brought it to rest on the tray.

“Feel them and pick the right one, navigator,” he rumbled.

Very conscious of his scrutiny , she wrapped a small hand around several cold, black toys, until her thumb and fingers barely met in a circle when she held one. “This,” she whispered.

“You will measure the length as well. With your mouth.”

She brought the toy to her lips with a hand that slightly shook . It felt cool and dry. She brushed her mouth across its tip gingerly, then took it in and closed her tongue and cheeks around it.

“Deeper.”

His hand pushed it until it filled her mouth, stretching her lips tautly around the base. She gagged and Vader released his pressure on the knobby handle.

“Well, navigator? Is this the right size, or do you want to try another one?”

She could only nod, and he pulled the toy from her mouth.

“This—is—right...” she said.

“Good.” He motioned for the droid to come closer, and selected two more prostheses from the tray, one very thick and long, the other appreciably smaller; then he sent the droid away. His gloved fingers stroked her cheek.

“Tell me what you will do with these. Precisely. Imagine what can please me most.”

The three toys lay on the dark deskspace near her hip. She twisted a little to her side, facing him. Her face was suffused with blushes. He pinched her chin, while his naked fingers cupped one breast, stroking her nipple. It hardened, and she felt her sex moistening. Vader chuckled behind the mask.

“Your arousal pleases me too, navigator. Now speak.”

She took a deep breath. “My lord... I think you will want me to take all three inside me.”

His fingers squeezed her nipple harder and harder, until she gave a little whimper. “Tell me how. Now.”

She pointed tentatively to the largest toy. “This—goes into my—me—to widen me—for you. She touched the one she had picked herself. “This is—for my mouth. This—”

“Did young Harlan use you in all three?”

She shook her head.

“Did you want to be?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Do you want to be?”

“If it—pleases you, my lord.”

He growled. “It does please me. Turn around. On your hands and knees.”

She half-rose on the console, straddling the controls to the left of the main display, and turned her back to him.

“Lean on the holo projector box, there. Spread your knees.”

Her elbow hit a switch, and suddenly a holo materialized over her body, a dark-hooded figure breaking over the curve of her hips and buttocks in a halo of blue-white light. She heard a mesmerizing, strangely echoing voice that started “I have a task for you...” before Vader switched it off. “Wider, girl. Spread yourself for me. Now!” The electronically-modulated voice was harsh. Syrie stumbled on her knees, trying to balance herself on the hard plasteel without leaning on any more commands. She felt his hand on her buttocks, then the cold toy probed her. She contracted in fear: “My lord...”

“Is this the docility you promised?”

She hung her head. An instant later she felt torn apart by the hard tool he drove inside her in one push. She screamed and almost lost her balance. He seized her waist to support her with his right hand; it could easily encircle half her middle. “Is this the first time you are opened up this way?”

“No-o, my lord,” she sobbed.

“Who did it to you last?”

“It was—on Ridell—at the Academy.”

In her last year, she had had an affair with the astrophysics professor. He was over twice her age, an abrupt, sardonic man who found her talented and coached her after classes for the interplanetary exams she was ultimately never fielded for. He had had jaded sexual tastes and introduced her to some decidedly exotic practices. But he was fond of her, and she was so grateful for his tutoring and his dry affection that she had acquiesced to all his demands, even taking part in a threesome, which she had hated.

“And did you like it?”

“I—grew to like it, my lord.”

“And now?”

“This—hurts, my lord.”

“But you will wear it to please me.”

She nodded.

“Good. Turn back to me.”

Her knees on the hard plasteel ledge, she found purchase for her hands and carefully lay down again in front of him, spread over the consoles in front of his command chair. She gasped several times as she tried a semi-reclining position, stabbed by the foreign toy in her rear. She could hear his breathing through the mask’s respirator.

“Tell me about young Harlan. Did he force you to become his lover?”

“No, my lord.”

“Ah? You were willing?”

“We were—on a fishing trip—to Ceti III, my lord. It was a holiday. One evening—he kissed me—and it started from there.”

“Was he a good lover?”

Was he? Yes, probably. “Yes, my lord.”

“Did he share you with the others?”

“Oh—no, my lord.”

“Would you not have liked it? With this—Celchu boy?”

She shook her head fiercely.

“He seemed to care for you more than Harlan.”

“You were—monitoring our cell?” she whispered.

“There is a young Celchu who has just been admitted into the Imperial Navy. A remarkable pilot.”

“That’s—his brother Tycho, my lord.”

“Tycho Celchu, yes. He is exceptional. I am a pilot myself.”

She stared at the mysterious mask. A pilot. It was the first thing she could comprehend of him.

“You find this interesting?”

“I—can pilot myself, my lord. I wanted to apply for the Imperial Academy but—I was not pre-selected.”

“There are almost no women in the military. Perhaps I will have you fly an Interceptor to see what you can do.”

Her eyes lit up. “Thank you, my lord.”

The low rumble came from the mask again.

“Ah, so you care for this. Tell me, is young Harlan a good pilot?”

She wrinkled her nose. “He is—not bad. Reckless.”

“But not good enough.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He has—no instinct for space. He doesn’t feel where the other starships are coming from. He doesn’t—anticipate.”

“But you do.”

“Sometimes... my lord.”

A distinct chortle. “Would you rather be piloting a ship than where you are right now?”

She glanced up into the disconcerting mask. “It’s not—the same thing, my lord.”

“Unarguable.”

His gloved right hand pinched her chin. “Now, girl, show me how you pleasured Harlan.”

Syrie looked down at the toys, and took the one she had herself picked.

“My lord, he liked—me to suck him.”

“Good. Show me.”

Her back half-supported by the holo casing, so that her head and throat were almost upright while the rest of her body was still splayed on the console, she brought the black member to her mouth and started carefully licking the length of its underside. The prosthesis was very realistic. She ran the tip of her tongue delicately up to the rim, then swirled it around the head. When it glistened with her saliva, she took the top into her mouth, closing it over the rim, then slowly working with her cheeks and lips to take progressively more in. Her blonde hair bobbed a little as she sucked, eyes downcast, concentrating on her task. It felt strangely exciting to be watched like this. Vader must have sensed her confusion, because he moved closer and ran his left hand over her belly. She shivered, and her hips arched. His naked fingers entered her sex, and she knew he would find it wet and throbbing.

“You are enjoying this.”

She blushed, her mouth still full of the hard black plasteel cock. His hand probed her, alternately gentle and brutal. She moaned when he stroked her most sensitive spot, bewildered by both his expert touch and her own fiery reaction to it. I never felt like this with Piers. I can’t remember ever feeling like this. I like being completely powerless for him. At least there is no pretending.

Vader’s gloved right hand squeezed her breasts as the bare left one worked her gaping sex. She moaned louder and threw back her head, the toy still in her mouth. Her hips rose rhythmically to meet his hand, legs spread wide. She heard his low rumble.

“You are very passionate, navigator.”

Eyes closed, she abandoned herself to the sensations washing over her. Just as she felt herself submerging, his hand left her, and she cried out softly.

“You know what I want of you now.”

She stared at the gleaming black mask, then nodded, and looked around her almost eagerly. The largest prosthesis lay on the console next to her hip. She picked it up, a small shiver running through her body at its size and width. The circle of her fingers didn’t close over it by a good inch. She stroked its cool surface with her fingertips and looked at Vader mutely—she was still gagged by the other one.

“Insert it yourself.”

Holding the black plasteel toy to her engorged sex, she started rubbing it up and down along her slippery inner lips, and sighed.

“Don’t make yourself come,” he snapped. “You have to take it entirely in first.”

Her hand stopped. She took a long breath, then applied the huge tip to her vulva, and pushed slowly. The toy felt cold and hard, and at first she thought she could never penetrate herself with it. Then, trembling, she pressed on the handle and forced the instrument inside her. She gave a series of little half-muzzled cries as she felt stretched wider than she imagined possible. It displaced Vader’s other contraption, excruciatingly spearing her rear. She stopped, the huge toy sticking out of her vagina like a monstrous appendage.

“Deeper, girl.”

She pressed a little more, and cried out in pain. With no warmth or elasticity, the prosthesis suddenly felt just that again: a foreign, surgical implement.

“Well?”

She raised anguished eyes at him, trying to convey a wordless plea; but he only moved to the console and with his gloved hand pushed the tool all the way inside her. She screamed in agony behind the gagging toy, her eyes blurred with tears, feeling ripped apart. The pain was worse than anything she’d experienced before, increased by the soreness left by the previous session. Would she have to wear this for hours too? She tried to repress the great sobs racking her, feeling his invisible gaze upon her. It flashed through her mind that he enjoyed the spectacle of her distress as he had enjoyed watching her earlier arousal.

“The first thing I require of you is your absolute obedience, do you understand? You may cry if you can’t help yourself, but you will do everything I tell you to.”

She closed her eyes in helplessness, acutely aware of the three foreign objects penetrating all her openings.

“Do you hear me, girl?” said the deep mechanical voice.

She felt the huge prosthesis inside her sex being twisted, and cried out. Vader jerked the black plasteel member from her mouth.

“Yes—my—l-lord.”

“Good,” he growled, thrusting the toy between her lips again. She whimpered and caught herself. He did take in her efforts to control herself, for she heard his low rumble again. His left hand came to rest on the side of her taut cheek and neck, stroking them almost tenderly, soothing the tension from holding in the artificial cock for so long.

“I knew you were brave from the start, when you said you had plotted the coordinates to Shi’sla. You will be brave for me now.”

She nodded mutely, fresh tears coming to her eyes. His bare hand ran down her neck to her breasts, caressing her nipples, one after the other, till they stood erect; then stroked her belly, her hips, her long thighs at length, until she started relaxing.

“You think your body is invaded and violated because I have entered its natural ways with these... things; because I am training it to be more responsive and more pliable. You have no idea of how invaded and violated a human body can be.”

She tensed in renewed terror, but his hand pressed her waist in—reassurance? “Not yours, navigator, not yours. Yours will never be charred and mangled and rebuilt from plasteel and silicon and synthflesh. Yours is for my enjoyment and pleasure, and to remember the feel of bare skin.”

If it hadn’t been for the rhythmical breathing and the deep electronic tones, she would not have believed it was his voice. It was musing, almost dreamy. It trailed off and Vader continued tracing the curves of her body in silence, until she began arching under his fingers, her nipples hard, her skin tingly.

“Ah, you please me very much, navigator.”

His hand entered her soft blonde fur, caressing her mound, grazing her clitoris, and she jerked under his touch. She heard his rumble behind the mask.

“You have been so very good, my child. Now, before I let you climax, I will allow you to be freed from one of these. Choose which.”

He pulled out the toy from her lips. Her mouth ungagged, she took great uneven gulps of air, looking up at him. “My—lord?”

“Which shall it be? Your mouth? Your bottom? Your sex?”

She closed her eyes, biting her lips, anxious for the feel of his hand on her skin again.

“My lord, did you—enjoy—that I wore these for you?”

“Yes, navigator, I did enjoy it,” he said, stroking her cheek.

“Then—my lord—I would rather—wear all three—when you give me pleasure.”

She heard a low growl behind the helmet grille. He stroked her cheek again; then his naked fingers traced her lips before penetrating her mouth. She kissed and licked them, sucking on them as she would on his sex. He made a noise like a sigh, then finally pulled them out and replaced them with the black toy around which her lips immediately closed. He patted her hair, then laid his left hand over her palpitating sex. Her hips arched to meet his fingers, and she trembled violently when he started stroking her inner lips around the big implement, then inched up to her engorged button. She moaned and shuddered when he touched her, her body taut and glistening with sweat. Relentlessly, his fingers circled her most sensitive spot, and she finally screamed out, overwhelmed by a riot of sensations so strong she felt she had never experienced anything like them before. Contracting on the toys she wore, her inner muscles brought her to a second orgasm, then a third, almost continuously, the rush of intense pleasure mingled with the soreness of her invaded flesh. Eyes closed, face convulsed, splayed on the console boards, she rode the wave interminably, or so it seemed. When she opened her eyes, her breathing short, she saw Vader, watching her.

I was his from that moment, of course. As a pet; as a lover; as—something more, I think. I believe.

He did trust me, and—love—me, in his way, during those years. Even if his quest ultimately turned him away from me.

And now I need to know how he died, from his son’s mouth. And do what’s right, if truly he renounced his hatred.

Her shoulders were tense from sitting at the holopad; she had been staring at the empty viewspace for a long time; she didn’t know how long. A noise in the antechamber brought her to a sudden awareness of where she was. Thrawn. He wanted me to wait for him. She fled into the bedroom, shrugged off the shirt, and slid into the bed, drawing the crumpled sheets over her and closing her eyes. Moments later she heard his footsteps entering the room. She didn’t dare open her eyes, for fear that he would ask what she had just been doing. Better to wait for him to undress and join her; it would be more natural that way. His tenderness made her forget the past; his strength pushed the disturbing memory of the Vader years safely back. She craved his lovemaking, which had something vital to it—a closeness that swept away the need for games and pretence.

She heard him stop in the middle of the small room. She lay very still, expecting to hear the rustle of his uniform on the carpet, and to feel his smooth skin against hers. But there was no noise at all for a long while, until her spine literally tingled while she forced herself to breathe evenly. He seemed to remain there, immobile, for ages. Then she heard his steps again, walking out of the room before she could think of a way to pretend that she’d woken up. An instant later, she heard the door to the antechamber slide shut. He was gone. She pushed back the covers and sat up, a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach.

He had recognized the shirt at once.

Crumpled on the floor near the bed, as if thrown away in haste; the shirt she had been wearing in the holo; one of his regulation white shirts worn under the immaculate high-collared Grand Admiral jacket. He did not think Pellaeon had noticed it; or the duty security officer at the Imperial Palace... New Republic Government House, as the Rebels seemed to want to call it now. And they call us pompous.

But whereas his personally-redesigned quarters were perfectly anonymous, with no Navy-issued furniture or equipment in sight, any analysis of the holo could yield an identification for the shirt. He didn’t know what made him more coldly angry, her carelessness or her dissimulation.

Despite pushing himself to his limits in his taxing forty-minute swim, Thrawn had not quite been able to banish from his mind the image of Syrie materializing over the desk of the small gym office. Riding down the turbolifts from the upper aft gymnasium, he had briefly indulged in the hope that he would find her waiting to explain herself, even though cold logic told him this would not happen. Logic equally destroyed a dagger-like intuition, which had almost stopped him in the water, that it had all been a Rebel plant from the start—her escape from Ferrier’s ship; even her scars. Ferrier would never have had the nerve.

Her breathing is much too quiet. She isn’t asleep, only pretending. Surely this was better: he didn’t entirely trust himself to maintain an unconcerned charade in bed. He allowed himself a pang of regret that after the second altercation with C’Baoth, he had decided to go work off his tension at the gym before returning directly to his quarters, as he had promised Syrie. Pellaeon sought me out me at the gym; he wouldn’t have disturbed me a second time in my private apartments. Not with this kind of news. Had he returned immediately to her, they could have resumed their interrupted lovemaking. It would have been as perfect as we ever knew. It’s all over now.

When Thrawn stepped onto the bridge, he saw Pellaeon glancing in his direction, then immediately turning his eyes back to his status readouts. Sauntering to his command chair, he motioned to the captain.

“Sir?”

“Didn’t we have a disinformation agent working undercover on Coruscant?”

Pellaeon looked bewildered. “Yes, sir.”

“What has this agent been up to?”

“Planting a money trail between us and Admiral Ackbar’s bank accounts, sir, as you ordered.”

“Good. Is this achieved?”

“I think so, sir. I’ll check immediately, of course.”

“Let’s assume it is. I want your agent to start assessing the possibilities of recruiting a network as close as possible to the Rebel Assembly and the... Government House cadres. We need personalities susceptible to blackmail—or, better, people who are beginning to regret the orderliness of the Empire, and dislike the endless bickering and the bureaucracy of the new government. Not a large network. Four or five people should suffice, as long as they occupy strategic positions.”

Pellaeon started twirling his moustache. “But, sir, don’t we already have Delta Source?”

The Grand Admiral smiled faintly. “That is for straight intel only. I want to plant dissent and disinformation from the inside of their administration. Rumors. In the next few weeks. For the moment, let your agent concentrate on hooking the proper people. I want them unable to refuse when we need them to work for us. Of course, they need not know who is ultimately employing them, if it can be avoided.”

“I’ll—let our agent know at once, sir...”

“Keep me informed of who is recruited.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.”

Pellaeon was turning on his heels when Thrawn’s coolly-modulated voice stopped him.

“She will lead us to Skywalker long before Master C’Baoth succeeds to lure him, captain,” the Grand Admiral said softly. “And then, if your agent is worth his pay, it will be up to the so-called New Republic’s last Jedi to explain his contacts with that jewel of our late Emperor’s Court, my friend, the lady Syrie.”

Pellaeon stared, and Thrawn’s smile widened.

“Either way, we’ll have him.”

Chapter 8

Two TIE Interceptors shot out of the reddish, blinding sun, blasting fire.

Luke’s X-wing navcomp blared in warning as both TIEs’ quad lasers acquired a hard lock on his slower fighter. Just as his hand hit the commands in reflex, the X-wing shook from the impacts, its shields absorbing only part of the energy shock before going down, most of the systems jolted offline. In the silence that followed, Artoo's frantic bleeping filled the cockpit as Luke yanked on the etheric rudder.

“Artoo! I can’t—it’s not responding!”

More bleeps.

“I’m trying! The thrusters aren’t functional either!”

The TIEs whizzed back in a narrow arc, like oversized, lethal flies, intent on finishing their job, the multifaceted black eyes of their twin wing reflector panels glittering. Luke hit the override switch on his ejector seat, to more electronic squeals from his astromech companion.

“It’s the only energy source left! Now if only—”

Fed a short spurt of energy diverted from the seat’s emergency power pack, the starboard rudder pedal awoke in a sluggish response, and Luke jammed his foot down on it, crushing it to the floor, throwing the X-wing into a desperate portward spin. As the stars gyrated wildly outside the transparisteel cockpit the TIEs overflew him, banking out too widely for a new approach vector. A few seconds won.

“Artoo! Bring the systems back online! Quick or we’re fried!”

A desolate whistle. Luke could already glimpse the bolder of the two TIEs diving after the X-wing, tracking his spin in a graceful, deadly trajectory. This one is a precision artist. If I don’t think up something quick, I’m dead.

Gritting his teeth, he slammed his fist on the seat’s override switch again, leaving it there, willing the last dregs of power out, rerouted to the X-wing’s failing systems—enough, just enough to accelerate the craft’s mad whirl. It’s only because I’m spinning out of control that he can’t get a target lock on me. If I—

“Luke? Luke?”

The stars faded to white and the hatch of the simulator lifted to reveal his sister perched on the access ladder, concern on her face blending with a tinge of irritation.

“Everyone in the delegation is already boarded but you. We’ll be late for our takeoff slot. What happened in here? I sensed you going scared.”

His hair still sticky with sweat, Luke smiled ruefully: “I was. Someone has reprogrammed these sims, someone good. Two squints were having me for breakfast.”

Princess Leia Organa, vice-president of the New Republic, frowned, took a deep breath—

“TIE interceptors,” Luke offered.

“I have been listening to Wedge on occasion,” Leia corrected. “Luke—I know you don’t like these diplomatic missions. Perhaps you shouldn’t come.”

Luke recognized what she was doing at the very moment she was doing it, but this didn’t prevent him from experiencing a twinge of guilt. His sister worked harder than anyone at strengthening the fledgling New Republic’s influence across the Galaxy. It was only fair that he should contribute his support when she needed him. Especially now, with her twins on the way. “I’m sorry I forgot the time. I’ll shower on the double and meet you at the docking bay. Let’s go.”

His sheepish grin disarmed her, as usual. He saw the tension in her arms relax, her face light up in an answering smile as she sprang lightly from the ladder. “Don’t bother. They want a hero of the Rebellion, they’ll get one complete with sweat and grime. Hop down.”

And now, strapped in one of the diplomatic transport’s passenger seats—how he hated not being at the controls—Luke fidgeted. Almost an hour, and they still weren’t off. His sister had vanished again into the pilot’s cabin. He could have traded his lightsaber for a hot shower. I wonder if the ‘freshers on this lumbering beast have water. Possibly. The recently-renamed Republic’s Pride had seen service as one of Palpatine’s own cruisers. Did the old ghoul like his creature comforts? Yes, probably. They had largely scattered by the time the Rebel Alliance had taken Coruscant; but there had been a Court, a Household, a harem of concubines...

“Damn, damn, damn, damn!”

He stared up at Leia erupting from the command room, eyes flashing, white robes flaring. He could sense the dismayed surprise of the four older career diplomats in the cabin. “What is it? Technical trouble?”

“We’re not going. Those mynocks of the Lyran system have made a deal with the Empire behind our backs. They’ve arrested our ambassador and broken off all diplomatic relations. Seems this mysterious new Imp leader persuaded them he has the winning hand—that they were better off siding with him immediately. I’d spent months trying to convince them. All down the drain.”

Luke snapped off his seat restraints and stepped up to his sister, laying his arm about her small, heaving shoulders.

“Leia, you can’t always win. You’ve brought so many systems into the New Republic already. This could have been much worse.”

“Stop patronizing me, blast it! How could I fail worse than this?”

Behind his back, Luke felt the shock of the senior diplomats. I wonder how my sister can be at the same time such a dedicated politician and such a termagant. Han certainly seems to have added to her vocabulary

“Look at it like this,” he said with a half-smile. “They could have made this deal after we got there.”

He felt her body tense as she took in the implications. “Oh my stars, you’re right.”

“So your Lyrans may be mynocks, but you can’t accuse them of duplicity. In fact, if this self-styled Imperial Warlord-something only knew how close it was...”

“But they— No, they knew I was coming. And they let our ambassador’s holo through, together with the terms of his ransom.”

“Hedging their bets, don’t you think?”

Nodding, Leia took a few steps between the rows of seats, her eyes flitting from one diplomat to another.

“Your brother is right, Princess. The Lyrans are traders and merchants. They would hate to commit the irreparable,” the highest-ranking one, a silver-furred Bothan, said. “Was the Ambassador’s holotransmission marked ‘highest priority’?”

“Had to be, if it got us on the Republic’s Pride,” Luke said.

Leia nodded, her eyes no longer glaring. A rueful smile finally lit up her face as she looked at her brother, half-perched on a seatback, still clad in his rumpled flightsuit. “I don’t take your counsel often enough—and I don’t mean just learning Jedi meditating techniques.”

Luke tipped a half-salute at her: “It’s all part of it.” He nodded politely at the diplomats and picked up his brown cloak. “You know, I think I’m going to have that shower after all.”

A light was flashing on the comm board at his Imperial Palace apartments. He ignored it, stripped off his flightsuit, and, stepping into the ‘fresher, turned on the shower. The Tatooine moisture farmer in him still marveled at running water. He stayed long after he’d washed all the grime of the day, and finally emerged, dripping all over the rooms as he picked up the things he’d flung off at random—drying himself always seemed a waste of the wonderful droplets on his body. Even Han takes this water for granted. Ackbar told me I love the water as much as he does. He’s right, even though I still can’t swim. His single expedition to Coruscant’s only ocean had almost created a panic, as, unable to swim, he had relied on Jedi pre-hibernation breathing techniques to walk at the bottom of the sea for ten minutes in awe. A different world, so close to us.

The flashing red light caught his eye. Messages. With a sigh, he reached over and flicked the comm switch.

“Skywalker here.”

“You have sixteen simple messages and one note from Security,” a polite mechanical voice said.

“Give me Security.”

A hum; another voice, human, female. Tactful enough not to transmit visuals. Still, it reminded him of his nakedness. He grabbed a corner of his cloak, pulled it across his lap as he sat on the couch.

“Commander Skywalker? A woman has been trying to get in touch with you, using old Palace clearance codes. Doesn’t give her name, untraceable holotransmission. She says she calls about your father.”

“She—what?”

He hit the screen video switch, recognized the lieutenant in charge of all Executive Floor security. Toryn Farr’s eyes narrowed as she caught the shock in his voice.

“Do you want to see her call?”

“Yes-yes, of course. Thanks, Toryn.”

“All in a day’s work. Here goes.”

He liked Toryn, who’d been an Alliance member since the early days. On Hoth, she’d stayed almost until the end, leaving on the very last transport after manning the ion cannon controls. He wondered whether she knew who his father was, and how she would react if she knew.

But naturally she doesn’t know, or she wouldn’t announce this so calmly.

He stared at the face of the young woman in the holo viewspace. “...Yes. Please tell him it’s about his father.”

She looks sincere. She sounds—distraught. But of course, I can’t sense much in a holo.

“Toryn?”

“Still here.”

“How do you mean, untraceable?”

“Just that. The beam seemed relayed from one of this system’s farther planets. When we checked, there was no transmitter. When we started analyzing the transmission, we discovered the closest relay point appeared to change every five seconds.”

“Not relay points at all.”

“No. A phantom trace, masking whatever real transmitters were used after the beam came out of hyperspace. It takes a very sophisticated operation to do that.”

He could hear it in Toryn Farr’s voice. A trap.

“What was that code she used? Sapphire-Riezalt... Devaron-Elom?”

“That’s another puzzle. It works, but we don’t know of such a code. It’s not an ISB code; and we don’t have it in the Imperial logs. It’s as if it were hardwired into the Palace systems. And that has to have taken place before our first sweeps here, almost three years ago.”

Luke looked into Toryn Farr’s scowling eyes, and she uttered a short laugh. “And no, before you ask, we have no idea where she might have been calling from. The furniture we saw behind her could exist in billions of living units across the Galaxy.”

“And did she call back? How long ago was this?”

“Nine hours... and no, she hasn’t called back.”

“Yet.”

“Yet,” the lieutenant repeated, and there was no mistaking the grim determination in her voice.

Why do I believe this woman is sincere? What could I possibly learn about Darth Vader—Anakin Skywalker, my father, after five years? Who is she?

“So we wait, Toryn.”

“So we wait.”

The second call came in the early hours of the morning.

“Sorry to wake you,” Toryn’s clipped voice said from the comm board. “It’s the mysterious caller at last.”

Luke was instantly awake, completely aware of his surroundings in the darkened room.

“Don’t you ever sleep, Toryn?”

“Here goes.”

A kind of click, another voice, hesitating. “Luke Skywalker?”

“Yes.”

He touched the switch and her image appeared in the viewspace. She was wearing a kind of jumpsuit, not unlike his own yesterday, he noted. She seemed to take in the darkened apartment at the same time that her green eyes looked almost—hungrily at him.

“Is it night? I am sorry...”

“Early morning. Where are you?”

The woman in the holo shook her head slightly. “I needed to speak to you. You see, I was a—friend—of your father’s.”

Luke stared at the unknown caller. Beautiful, certainly; unusual, with these cat’s eyes, the high cheekbones and her honey-colored hair. Perhaps she’s older than she looks. Still—

“I find this hard to believe,” he said carefully.

“I understand. But it is true nonetheless.”

Check.

“I did not think my father had—any friends.”

“He didn’t.”

Check.

Time to try something. But first—

“Wait,” Luke said, half-raising a hand. “You don’t have to tell me where you’re calling from. But is this expensive connection secure?”

He saw her start to nod, then pause as she took in the implications of his question. “I have—been told—it is. But you are right, one should always be responsible for one’s own security.”

Why do I suddenly feel this is something Vader—my father—told her?

His hand went for the comm panel, but she shook her head in warning:

“Don’t. Most of Imperial Palace communications eavesdropping is triggered by encryption attempts.”

But of course. He stopped his movement.

“It alerted Palpatine to who needed to be watched?

For the first time, he saw her smile. “Yes. And the closer to the Emperor, the more suspect.”

“What a charming world you lived in.”

No protestations. She is telling the truth. “So we just have to hope all the listeners have been flushed out by the New Republic?”

“No-o—no. Let me try something from here.”

He saw her reach outside the limits of the holo, and key in instructions. The image suddenly shimmered, distorting itself as he saw her lips move in the trembling holo. He raised a hand.

“I can’t hear you.”

More tap-tapping; and suddenly he heard her voice again, with a slight metallic echo. The picture rippled with light variations, but he could still see her expressions very clearly. “And now, can you hear?’

“Yes. What did you do?”

Another careful shake of her head. “Just a few old tricks. They don’t matter much.”

“Somehow I suspect my sister might not agree with you.”

A cloud passed over her face. “Perhaps not. But it is too late.”

What a strange thing to say. And like an echo of—

Let’s test something.

“My father never mentioned—sorry, I don’t know your name—”

The results exceeded any of his expectations. At the other end of the encrypted transmission, the woman’s composure seemed to come apart. One hand flew to her mouth; she closed her eyes briefly. When she reopened them, they were full of tears.

“Then he did find you! You spoke to him? I must see you, I must!”

“Why must you see me?” Luke probed gently.

“I—never said—goodbye—properly to him.”

Raw hurt in her voice. This is unbelievable, but I believe it. I believe her.

“Yes. I would like to meet you, too.”

He could feel the relief in her, literally washing over them both. How extraordinary. Unless she is—

But no, that’s impossible.

“I knew I was right. To try—“

“Can you come here? To Coruscant?”

A shadow passed across her mobile face.

“That—will be difficult.”

“Why?”

In the viewspace, the woman frowned irresolutely.

“Can you think of a quiet place? Some neutral world, perhaps, off the main Core traffic ways? I would like to keep this—personal.”

“But surely—”

And then of course he knew the perfect solution. Doubly perfect. To find out about my father; to find out about her. “Can you make your way to the moon of the third planet in the Comendor system?...”

“You are completely mad. Toryn is a thousand times right, this is a trap!”

Leia paced her study like a caged Wookiee, so energetically that the imposing-sized room looked too small for her slight frame. Seated in one of the visitors’ chairs, Luke shook his head.

“It could be, but I don’t think so. I sense she’s sincere.”

“Across space, stars know how many light-years away, in a mysteriously-encrypted communication? She could be manipulated. She could have had a personality wash. Perhaps you’re not just able to tell the difference at this distance.”

“Which is precisely why I need to meet her.”

“Nonsense. She’s an Imp. She knows things about this palace that even our security was unable to dig out. She said nothing of where she was, how she had access to encrypted holotransmissions. And you want to jump out and meet her unprotected.”

“She asked me,” Luke said calmly.

“Stars give me patience!”

Han Solo detached himself from the back wall against which he’d been leaning, surveying his wife’s fury with a sardonic expression, and came to perch himself on a corner of the New Republic’s Secretary of State’s massive Xylanese wood desk, across from Luke’s chair. “You know, kid, I’m tempted to agree with your sister this time—”

“Well, thank you!” Leia interrupted.

“—Especially with the kind of recommendation this woman gives. A friend of Darth Vader’s?”

“A friend of our father’s.”

“No! No! No! I will never accept it. Never!”

Leia’s voice grew shriller with each “no”, scaling up toward hysteria. She suffered much more at the hands of Vader than I did. Luke half-rose, reaching out to press his sister’s tense shoulder; but she almost drew back. “Leia, you have to think of him as Anakin Skywalker.”

“Why? Obi-Wan was right, Vader killed our father. He destroyed everything that he stood for. And he killed the only father I ever knew as well. Anyway, you can’t tell me it’s Anakin this woman knew. She can’t be older than Han.”

“And she lived here, from what she said,” Han added. “At Palpatine’s court. Not the best of references, kid.”

“Leia spent some time at court too. She simply didn’t have a choice.”

“I was in the Resistance! I—”

The two men stared at the diminutive Secretary of State. Leia’s brow had furrowed in thought as she leaned back on the desk, closer to Han. “But—I do remember a woman with Vader here once— Whether it was this one, I can’t tell. Of course I never spoke to her. Vader did take her to a couple of functions—people talked about it for weeks afterwards. It was the first year I was in the Senate.”

Luke exchanged a wry look with Han. Neither of us had any inkling at the time that we would ever enter this palace, let alone participate in government. “Could it be her?” Han probed. “And what do you think she was to Vader?”

“I told you, I have no idea—I certainly didn’t speak to such women. As to what she was, I would have thought it obvious.”

“When you take that cut-glass voice, you remind me of when we first met,” her husband said with a lopsided grin.

“When we first met, I threw you into a garbage chute,” Leia instantly retorted with an answering smile. “Something I often think I should do more often.”

“Threw me? I jumped! And just you try that trick on me—”

Sitting back in his chair, Luke watched for a moment his sister and his best friend mock-quarrelling with growing amusement, trading spirited insults that told of their affection better than any endearments.

“So you’re really verifying her story,” he stated.

That stopped the Solos, as he knew it would. “You know what they say about lies,” Leia finally said. “The best ones skirt the truth as close as possible.”

“Does it matter? You’ve just confirmed that this woman knew our father well. That’s reason enough for me to meet her.”

“Then don’t go alone,” Leia said decisively. “We’ve no idea what kind of traps Vader might have sprung for you—before he finally decided to save you from the Emperor at the last minute. If this woman is what she says she is, she may have spent the last five years perfecting one of Vader’s nasty little surprises. The security of the New Republic is at stake here, Luke. This is my call, and I’m taking responsibility for it. We need you too much.”

Luke half rose from the chair. “Leia!”

Luke caught Han Solo’s sharp glance and the former smuggler’s narrowed eyes. “Come, out with it, kid. You have a reason to want to meet her so badly.”

“Of course I do. She has clues to our father’s life that no-one else will tell us. That no-one else knows.”

Chapter 9

Standing ramrod-straight in the TIE squadrons hangar bay, Captain Pellaeon trained an expressionless stare at the group of pilots being given their last instructions by Commander Niriz—and especially at the slight figure in the black standard-issue flightsuit at the right of Lieutenant Orin Darja, the Chimaera’s best TIE squadron leader.  What in the Galaxy could have possessed the Grand Admiral to entrust a TIE—worse, a shielded TIE Interceptor with a hyperdrive—to a woman who had rushed to contact the Rebellion the minute she had the opportunity?  No sooner had Master C’Baoth left for Jomark, supposedly to wait there for Luke Skywalker, that Thrawn had called for these TIE exercises, brushing away Pellaeon’s representations, and merely answering that he wasn’t concerned Syrie might escape.  The Grand-Admiral was here too, standing at ease a few paces behind Niriz with Pellaeon, his hands clasped behind his back, observing the pilots with those strange red eyes of his.

     “Lieutenant Darja.  Recap.”

     Darja stepped smartly forward to answer Niriz’s command, the very image of the Imperial pilot in a recruitment holo—square-jawed, blue-eyed, his flightsuit crisply-pressed, his voice clear, with the precision of an upper-class Core-worlds clip.  “We fly out in double-helix formation, sir, to run a protect-and-interference wing for the Peremptory until she clears the planetary gravity well and jumps into hyperspace.  We are to engage all attackers—because the Peremptory shields are disabled, she is too vulnerable to take even one hit.”

     “Excellent, Lieutenant,” Pellaeon heard Thrawn say at his right.  “Lady Syrie will fly as your wing instead of flight-officer Nemrod. The exercise starts in three minutes.”

     Darja was far too-well trained to gasp, but Pellaeon could see him pause for a brief second.  Thrawn’s coolly-modulated voice rose again:

     “Lady Syrie flew missions for Lord Vader, Lieutenant.  I’m sure you’ll find her piloting abilities adequate. Dismissed.”

     Darja saluted crisply and ran to his fighter with the other pilots, but Pellaeon had caught the quick glance he’d shot at Syrie.  He shared the young man’s surprise.  Flown missions for Vader?

     The TIEs scrambled out of the hangar bay in perfect formation, pair after pair crossing the magcon field to soar into black space.  Pellaeon turned to see Thrawn speaking a few words into his comlink.

     “Ready, Captain?  Let’s go watch them from the bridge, shall we?”

     Pellaeon followed Thrawn into the express turbolift the Grand Admiral had had installed between the bridge and the ship’s main battle stations by a special crew of Verpine technicians.  It whizzed through the bowels of the Imperial Star Destroyer at such speed that Pellaeon found himself swallowing again and again as  his ears popped under the altered pressurization.  But he had to admit that such discomfort was a small price to pay for being able to reach the bridge, nearly three klicks away, in less than twenty seconds.  When the Chimaera’s commanding officers stepped on the bridge gangway, the wing of TIEs was clearly visible through the large viewports, a symmetrical flurry of receding bright dots closing the distance between the Chimaera and the Peremptory.  Turning away from the viewport, Thrawn flicked a switch on his command console, and a tactical holo materialized, replicating the outside scene, the twelve TIEs blinking blue against the Peremptory’s yellow.

     No, eleven blue dots and one green.  Pellaeon shot a quick glance at the Grand Admiral.

     “Of course I’ve had a homing beacon installed in her TIE, Captain,” Thrawn chided in a conversational tone, even though his eyes never left the holo.  Maintaining a wooden silence, Pellaeon followed his gaze and gave all his attention to the TIE wing in the viewspace.

     “Nice flying,” he eventually grunted.  She’s had no time to practice solo, let alone formation flying.  Yet she is in perfect position.

     Thrawn switched to the TIEs’ tactical comm channel, and Darja’s crisp voice rang out:  “—twenty degrees.  Good turn, Twelve.  Peremptory at five klicks, people.  On past form, I’d say whatever surprise the Admiral has in store for us will hit in less than a minute, so stay sharp.”

     “Any rule to know about those surprises, One?”

     Syrie’s voice, startlingly enthusiastic and youthful.

     “Haven’t known him long, have you, Twelve?  Whatever it is, it will be unpredictable, and nasty.  Stay on my wing at 5:30.  Approach maneuvers, Five and Six.  Seven and Nine, stay ready to engage.”

     Pellaeon stole another look at Thrawn.  A cold smile was playing on his lips.  At this very moment, a cluster of red dots appeared from under the plane of the ecliptic, in arrowhead formation, aiming at the center of the Peremptory’s hull, and seemingly disregarding the TIE wing.  Pellaeon glanced at the side display readouts.  There was no technical identification for the newcomers.

     “Uglies out of lightspeed at seventy degrees!  Watch—“

     Over the comm channel, the voice was cut dead by the noise of an explosion.  On the tactical holo, one of the blue dots winked out.

     “Nine’s gone, One!  They’re firing real ammo!”

     “Get out of the way, Five!  Regroup at 11:00 between them and Peremptory!  Twelve, on my wing—“

     “I’ve got one targeted!”  Syrie’s voice.

     Reflexively, Pellaeon glanced at the side display, at the very moment that one of the red dots at the edge of the arrowhead vanished.  But—she hadn’t acquired a target lock yet…  He concentrated on the main holo.  At the same instant, the green dot peeled off from the TIE squadron and dove straight out to meet the red cluster.

     “Twelve!  What are you—“

     On his right, Pellaeon noticed Thrawn’s hand suddenly clenched on the edge of the console, but the Grand-Admiral said nothing.  Syrie’s TIE flew at top speed toward the Uglies, registering one, then two hits on her shields that didn’t even seem to slow her down.  Jabbing a finger on his own console panel, Pellaeon quickly called up the stray TIE’s tactical readings. She’s switched all her weapons’ power to the forward shields. And then she was among the enemy wing, power swiftly reversed, shooting green laser beams at one, then two doomed targets before escaping toward the Peremptory in a fast upward loop.

     “Nice job!  Uglies after you, Twelve!  We’re on them!”

     Darja’s voice, matching his TIE’s arc.

     “Interesting trick, but she’s bringing the fight too close to the Peremptory,” Pellaeon heard Thrawn say quietly.  On the holo, the blue dots were engaging in dogfights with the suddenly stretched-out enemy line, the neat arrowhead formation all but a memory.

     Pellaeon turned from the holo to the viewport.  Even from a distance, he preferred watching the actual encounter.  Darja’s lasers vaped Syrie’s closest pursuer, but the second let loose a blue ion-cannon salvo which engulfed the squadron leader’s TIE ominously.  On the side-display readouts, Darja’s TIE specs flickered and died.

     “One!  One?”

     “He’s fried, Twelve. Look out!  At 110 degrees!”

     Two attackers rushing at her from spaceside.  Syrie dove in a tight spiral, followed closely by one of the Uglies, a strange composite of E-wing and Headhunter with one single TIE-defender’s solar panel stuck above the cockpit.  Pellaeon saw her TIE turn impossibly tight, shaking off her pursuer by a few seconds—enough to enable her to shoot the Ugly down with her left laser quad. Her targeting comp hadn’t locked yet.  Again.  How does she do it?

     The skirmish was all but over, the other TIEs efficiently cutting a swathe among the scattered and visibly demoralized Uglies.  The last two turned about and fled to lightspeed, while the squadron regrouped a few klicks from the unscathed Peremptory.  Pellaeon stole a look at Thrawn, now completely relaxed again in his command chair.  Turning slightly, the Grand Admiral was about to speak, when a movement on the holo attracted his eye.  Alone in the blackness of space, the green dot looked as if it was hanging back from the rest.  Is this when she escapes and jumps to lightspeed?

     “Twelve, you’re breaking formation.”

     Squadron XO Lieutenant Rory Vals’s no-nonsense voice rang clearly on the comm channel.

     “Four, we can’t leave One here!”

     Of course.  Darja’s dead TIE’s signal no longer showed on the tactical holo.

     Vals’s voice, suddenly weary:

     “It wasn’t your fault, Twelve.  Close ranks, there’s nothing we can do.”

     “No, you don’t understand, Four.  He’s not dead—we must get him out...”

     “No-one can withstand this kind of ion strike, Twelve.”

     “No hardware, you mean.  And our TIEs are shielded.  The shields always fall last—everything shorts before them.”

     “How do you know?  We’ve only been refitted with them last month.”

     “ I—I have more experience with shields.  You must trust me on this. I know he’s alive.”

     A pause.  Pellaeon observed Thrawn, aware that the bridge duty and comm officers, frozen at their posts in holobook images of Imperial rectitude, could hear the entire exchange.

     “We could ask the Peremptory to tract his TIE,” Syrie’s voice insisted.  “It’s within reach.”

     “You don’t think a Navy captain will even listen to a pilot’s request, Twelve?” Four retorted, his voice bitter.  “We’re the help here.  Anyway, we’re the Chimaera’s squadrons, not the Peremptory.  And that old martinet Pellaeon would ground us for even asking.”

     “For asking the Peremptory?  Or for asking him?”

     “Probably both.”

     “But we can’t leave him here!”

     There was a pregnant silence, then Vals’s weary voice came over the tactical comm channel, ringing out in Syrie’s spherical cockpit.

     “Okay, let’s go get One.  Anyone flying with his spacesuit, people?”

     A voice—Three’s, it seemed, the pilot who’d warned her of the two Uglies on her back:  “Nine always wears his. He says he’s so used to it, he feels naked without it.”

     A muffled oath.  “He said, Three.  Nine was vaped early in the mission.”

     Syrie wondered inconsequentially where in the Rim Four came from—the twang in his voice was unlike any she’d heard, but distinctly Frontier-like.  She caught herself, surprised that she could let her attention wander, and suddenly became aware of an insistent twinge on her mind.  “Four!  Four!  Nine isn’t vaped!   His TIE was!  He’s E.V.! If we get him, he can help us rescue One!”

     “Did you see him?”

     “Yes,” she lied.  How could she explain her hunches?

     “Blast, he’s only been EV for ten minutes, then.  Let’s go for him.”

     Four and Three’s TIEs veered back toward the Chimaera, and Syrie banked steeply to follow them.  There was plenty of black space in which to search fruitlessly for Nine, even with the help of the cloud of debris still hovering at three klicks from them;  and the fast diminishing heat from Nine’s spacesuit would be insignificant for their trackers.  But her hunch was still directing her, further in the direction of the Chimaera.  A speck of light caught her eye, and she zeroed on it.  Sure enough, it was the pilot in his white spacesuit, the black reflecting helmet showing nothing of his face.

     “Nine!  Nine!  Can you hear me?”

     No answer.  Was he dead?  But…

     Radio.  The radio transmitter might just work—the primitive communications standard still used on some far worlds, and which had been built into the TIEs’ comm system by Sienar at Vader’s request.  She flipped the switch.

     “Nine?  Can you hear me?”

     Nothing.  Still…

     “Nine?  It’s radio I’m using.  If you can hear me, move your arms!”

     She could have cried when she saw the small figure’s arms waving wildly.  “Yes, I see you!  Nine, we need your help, but we’re going to get everyone back to the Chimaera!  How much time have you got left on your suit?”

     The pilot showed both his hands splayed out.

     “Ten minutes?  Yes?  Yes?  We can do it!”  She moved back to the comm channel. “Four?  Three?  I’m at 73 degrees and three clicks, with Nine!  Come over, quick!”

     “Ryloth’s stars, she’s done it,” Thrawn whispered distinctly enough for Pellaeon to overhear.  The captain pivoted fractionally to observe the impassible figure of his chief, still staring at the tactical holo from which all red dots had vanished.  The TIE pilots’ voices could still be overheard on the tactical comm channel, as Four threw a line to the marooned Nine, pulling him back carefully across three klicks of empty space to Darja’s dead TIE, to which Nine hooked his line before joining Four inside the Interceptor’ small cockpit.

     “They’re coming back,” Pellaeon said in a carefully inexpressive voice.

     “Yes.  A very interesting exercise, wouldn’t you say, Captain?”

     Thrawn rose unhurriedly from his command chair, shooting a glance at the Chimaera’s commanding officer.  “What would you say we’ve learned from it?” he inquired, walking to the turbolift doors at the end of the bridge and signaling to Pellaeon to follow him.

     “That she— that Lady Syrie certainly can fly.”

     The lift doors opened, and Thrawn led the way, tapping directions to the TIE squadrons hangar bay on the inside console.  “Yes, she’s a very good pilot.  I had little doubt of that.”  As the cabin whizzed off, the Grand-Admiral leaned against the far wall, seemingly unaffected by the depressurization, a tight smile playing on his lips.  “She also did not try to jump into hyperspace, demonstrated an imaginative way of using the TIEs’ new shields—and I’d be surprised if she hasn’t become something of a heroine to the Chimaera’s best TIE squadron.”

     Pellaeon offered no reply, and as the doors opened into the hangar bay, Thrawn said lightly:  “Surely your opinion could not be influenced by this pilot calling you an old martinet?”

     At that Pellaeon stared at his chief.  He had never before encountered levity in Thrawn, and was astonished by it.  The Grand-Admiral seemed, in point of fact, remarkably pleased with himself.  The need to react to this new facet of his chief’s personality was obviated by the scene at the other end of the hangar bay.  Lieutenant Orin Darja’s TIE had been physically tracted by a line to the Chimaera, then carried through the magcon field by repulsor platforms manned by two techs.  Their fighters already down at their assigned spaces, the pilots gathered to cheer Darja as he stumbled out of his cockpit, obviously weakened but alive.  Another cheer greeted the last TIE in, Four’s, from which two pilots emerged.  The group’s obvious enthusiasm prevented them for a few instants to see Thrawn and Pellaeon approaching.  Darja saw them first, and drew himself to rigid attention, the other pilots immediately following suit.

     “At ease.”

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