Chapter 3

Unknown Regions - Near Ilum

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this." One blue eye opened from beneath the brim of his cap that was pulled low down over his face as he sat back in the pilot's seat, arms crossed, legs stretched out, trying to take a nap. "Again."

The second eye opened and Luke sat more upright, frowning in his infuriatingly earnest way. "Again?" he echoed. "You talked me into this the last time."

"And only a fool would try the exact same maneuver twice."

"Why?" Luke asked blandly. "It worked brilliantly the first time."

Mara sighed- a heavily exhalation that was more growl than breath- and threw her hands up in defeat. "You've already forgotten about the part where you, me, and Karrde had to run for our lives and barely got away?"

"Well, we aren't breaking anyone out of detention this time."

"Skywalker, breaking into the ranking officer's command suite is hardly better."

He grinned, that goofy farmboy smile that just looked so out of place on the face of one of the most powerful men in the galaxy. "It is when you have someone along who can use the command suite to cut us a departure passcode. If necessary."

"If… if necessary?" she demanded. "If necessary? Skywalker, the Imperial fleet is in disarray since Thrawn's death, they're going to be defensive and jumpy, and you want to sneak on to one of the command ships, interrogate that ship's commander, get out alive, and you wonder whether it will be necessary to cut our own departure orders? I know you're just a dumb farmboy at heart, but…" she paused at the wry smile quirking his lips. "Or just that damnable farmboy politeness of yours."

"I didn't want to sound presumptive."

The urge to roll her eyes was too strong to suppress. "Skywalker, the only reason I'm here is for my backdoor access into the Imperial network- which, by the way, depends highly on the hopes that Pellaeon won't be so foolhardy as Thrawn and completely shut down the main computer once he gets wind we're aboard- so I think I grasp my position on the ladder of the used and useful quite well."

"Hey, now. You didn't have to come along." She huffed and looked away, staring blankly at the opaque viewport of their shuttle that was still hurtling through hyperspace. "Mara, there's no reason you should feel guilty for-"

"Get out of my head, Skywalker," she snapped. "Just because I don't have voices of long-dead ghosts telling me to kill you doesn't mean I won't still get the urge once in a while."

He just couldn't take a hint though. "Han didn't mean what he said before they left, you know. He's just…"

"Upset? Yeah, Skywalker, I got that. His kriffing kids are missing."

"And that isn't your fault in any way," Luke continued smoothly, trying to sound softly reassuring but really just serving to better rile her with each passing minute. "If anyone should feel bad, it's me; I should have been there for them."

Another sigh escaped her. "Skywalker, I'm not going to start talking about my feelings- and you know that by now- so what is it that you want from me?"

"I want you to stop feeling guilty for not getting to them in time in the palace, and I want you to stop feeling guilty for killing C'baoth. It was self-defense and if you hadn't, we'd all be dead. And Han knows that, just as he knows that C'baoth didn't know where the twins are, but he needed an outlet for his anger and… well, you did once serve the Emperor."

"Easy target, huh?" she muttered.

"Yes," Luke admitted apologetically. "I'm sorry."

The merciful buzzing of the hyperspace alarm filled the silence between them, and spared her the obligation to discuss the matter any further. "C'mon," she growled, straightening her own cap on her head as Luke disengaged the hyperdrive. "Let's do this." Stars stretched into lines and then became fixed points. "Again."

"Again," Luke agreed heavily.

X-X-X-X

Chimaera – near Ilum

When the alarm started blaring, Captain Gilad Pellaeon rolled his eyes upward and glared at the ceiling above his desk, in the general direction of the bridge. Commander Vaskes was determined to keep the crew sharp and battle ready and, as evidenced by the fact that this was the third such drill this week, was unwilling to accept that the Empire was a shambles at the moment and that the Chimaera would not be seeing another battle anytime soon.

If nothing else, perhaps a bit of healthy delusion could be good for morale. The fleet was still regrouping and assessing its options in light of Thrawn's death, the subsequent defeat at Bilbringi, and dozens of planetary upheavals in the wake of everything else. And while everyone in the Empire could recognize the blow that was the death of the Grand Admiral, it was the crew of the Chimaera that most keenly felt his sudden absence.

The sound of the drill alarm, however, was not particularly good for his morale, and Pellaeon tapped the intercom switch to connect him to his aide. "Lieutenant Swalfin, can we perhaps kill the alarm on this deck?" he asked mildly, eyes still focused on his datapad. A few seconds passed without response, and he glanced at the speaker and tapped the button again. "Lieutenant, the alarm?"

When there was still no response, Pellaeon took ten seconds to think before standing slowly, steadily, from his armchair and crossing the room to the main computer terminal. With deliberate keystrokes, he typed his identicode and glanced at the flashing corner of the screen- Bridge drill- and simultaneously slid open a small hatch on the inside of the desk as he killed the ringing alarm in the command suite.

He was withdrawing his hand slowly from under the desk when a hard, sharp voice stopped him. "Don't be a fool- put it on the desk."

The relative grace with which he accepted this order spoke volumes to how hopelessly he'd viewed his situation from the start. In fact, the only surprise he felt- and showed with a slight start- was for the familiar nature of the infiltrator. Indeed, it had not been all that long ago when she had last been aboard the Chimaera; only a matter of weeks after she had been in this very room where Pellaeon now sat, meeting with his predecessor.

"Ms. Jade," he acknowledged softly, looking her up and down a moment and taking in her clean-cut Imperial uniform, perfectly up to current specifications.

"Get up," she gestured with a small holdout blaster. "Back over there. Slow." He saw little reason to be belligerent and followed instructions; the sound of a heavy thump from the outer office paused him halfway back to the armchair, and he spared a look for the doorway behind Jade. She simply rolled her eyes. "It's just Lieutenant Swalfin being… unmanageable."

He pursed his lips as he sat. "Is he dead?" The eye-roll was more pronounced that time, but before Pellaeon could fathom why, another familiar figure entered the room. "Ah," the captain frowned lightly. "But of course. A repeat act with the same players."

"Except Thrawn," Jade cut him off harshly, "so you'll have to do."

"Mara," her companion chastised softly, "you'll hardly encourage the captain to help us if you behave like that."

She blinked and tore her eyes from Pellaeon for the first time since he'd turned to find her there in his office. "Given the unlikelihood of our success in such an attempt at encouragement-"

"Do not be harsh to judge, Ms. Jade," the captain interrupted gently, before turning his attention to the Jedi by her side. "You are, of course, seeking your niece and nephew."

Jade's brows shot to her hairline but Skywalker looked unfazed. "Yes," he acknowledged simply. "What do you know?"

"Not enough," Pellaeon conceded heavily, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands casually before him. "Certainly no more than poor Major Himron and he-"

"Poor?" Jade scoffed. "He's a kidnapping and murdering piece of-"

"And he has been summarily executed for his crimes committed at the orders of others, we can spare him the insults."

His tone and eyes were hard; the other two looked vaguely confused, and exchanged a glance. "Executed?" Jade probed cautiously.

"I am unaware how else to define a man killed while captured and bound, so yes, Ms. Jade, executed." A thin smile touched his lips. "Your Intelligence people did not share that detail with you while assisting you in tracking and locating us here?"

"Blaster?" Skywalker ignored his question and asked one of his own.

"Come again?"

"Major Himron- was he killed with a blaster or…?" he trailed off, and Pellaeon frowned.

"Ah- blaster, according to reports. Local authorities discovered his body after a neighbor's report of suspicious activity and a near run-in with your team on the ground. He was purportedly tied to a chair and shot in the back of the head." Skywalker exhaled deeply but said nothing. "Do I take from your sudden disquiet that Lieutenant Swalfin is merely stunned? Jedi Skywalker, I'd expect you to know by now- Intelligence never operates under clean rules."

"I strive to," Skywalker countered seriously. "And I suspect you do as well, Captain Pellaeon."

"A shame we will never find ourselves on the same side of a conflict to test that theory to its fullest."

The Jedi cocked his head pensively to one side, before ignoring a warning glare from Jade and coming to sit in the chair opposite the captain, eyes wide and beseeching, earnest. "Whether or not that is true, it needn't prevent you from doing what is right now, Captain. This isn't about a conflict; it is the simple difference between right and wrong, and helping remedy the egregious wrong committed by Grand Admiral Thrawn. Targeting families- children, infants- that is not the military you dedicated a lifetime of service to, is it?"

Jade huffed in exasperation. "Someone who blindly follows his leader is just as guilty for the consequences of that leader's actions." A shadow passed over her face, and she shook her head quickly, almost imperceptibly, thinking of her own sinful past, Pellaeon suspected.

Pellaeon considered both of them, as unlikely a pair today as they had been a matter of months ago when they teamed up to free Talon Karrde from the Chimaera's detention center. With a light sigh, he addressed Skywalker, who was still watching him closely, waiting. "As your own experiences may have proven… the Grand Admiral underestimated the risk in enlisting the service of Master C'baoth. For Thrawn to miscalculate anything… well, it is not a criticism I admit lightly.

"I was not engaged in the planning of the attack on the Imperial Palace," he confessed, "but I can tell you this- it was a distraction, an appeasement to keep C'baoth on our side until he could be contained at the storehouse. Thrawn did not have high expectations for the success of the mission."

"Why should we believe that?" Jade scowled. "Thrawn's most defining characteristic was his utter arrogance in his own capabilities."

He smiled tightly. "You should believe it, Ms. Jade, because the most desirable outcome of the mission was the one that would have come to pass should Major Himron's team have failed- and that was removing you from the equation."

Jade hesitated. "Me?"

"Unless I am much mistaken, only your wealth of knowledge acquired at the Emperor's service enabled you to locate the storehouse and destroy the cloning facilities. No," he shook his head and grimaced, "while the acquisition of the children may have been a success, the greater strategic victory would have been in implicating you as our source on the inside; and that would only have happened with the capture of the major."

Skywalker shook his head sadly. "So it truly was a hopeless mission for Major Himron? Success meant either spending the rest of his life in hiding, or being captured."

"It doesn't matter," Jade snapped, though Pellaeon could read the disquiet behind her emerald eyes. "What's important is whether that's all you know, in which case we've completely wasted our time here."

"I know what you've surely already deduced: that the children were never to go to C'baoth."

"Then you don't know where they did go?" Skywalker asked quietly.

He smiled sadly. "I can only speculate; but my guess is that they are beyond even the furthest reach the New Republic will ever attain."

"The Empire is not so dauntingly large for that to be possible even now," Jade scoffed.

Pellaeon raised a brow. "You believe Thrawn would trust such a prize in the hands of some squabbling warlord? You know better than I that his past, his origins, are steeped in myth and legend; his race entirely unknown to either side. Where are his people, Ms. Jade, Jedi Skywalker? Where does he come from? The galaxy is yet filled with vast, unexplored territories, and Thrawn spent years exploring them with no known records to show for it. Many secrets died with the Grand Admiral- I can only fear that this is one of them."

The pale, blue eyes of the Jedi were fixated on him, and the captain felt for a moment as though his very soul were being examined. "You do strive to do what is right," Skywalker finally declared decisively. "You've already been looking for them, too."

"Perhaps I merely sought to use them to barter."

"I don't believe that."

"In the end, my intentions matter little I daresay, in the absence of success."

"Your candor matters to me," Skywalker argued. "And your help will as well."

His brow rose again. "Help with…?"

"Run an identification code for us," Jade cut in, tone terse and irritated.

"Surely someone with your access…?"

"Thrawn spent the last few months of his life trying to override the back channels the Emperor had built into the system," she bit. "I could do it but the time I would spend circumnavigating the new blocks…"

"But of course. May I…?" he gestured towards the computer console. Jade strode to it and plucked the holdout blaster off the desk, the one he had acquired from the hidden compartment below, and then jerked her head to summon him over. She was right of course- new layers of data security had been woven in to the existing system, a feature the captain had never really noticed considering he had access to all but the highest levels. "The code?"

Skywalker recited it from a datapad and they waited close to two minutes while the computer searched thousands of files, delving back through decades of practically antiquated data. When the program finally finished running, his brow furrowed as he stared at the screen, as sure that the information was wrong as he was positive that it must be right. But it was impossible, surely…

"What's wrong?" Skywalker asked from across the room, and Pellaeon cursed his Jedi insight.

He turned in the chair and met their eyes in turn. "Certain parts of any alphanumeric identity code used in Imperial service have particular indicators- an individual, a specific location- information which, if known how to pull and read it properly, can provide far more than a simple verification of identity."

"So what does this one say?"

"The algorithm is not completely certain… but fragments within the code point towards an association with a known Imperial officer by the name of Admiral Voss Parck."

He saw Jade blink once, twice in confusion. Skywalker registered no obvious emotion, and Pellaeon suspected he'd never heard the name. "Parck?" Jade was nonplussed. "He was no admiral."

"Who is he?" Skywalker interrupted politely.

"Was," Jade corrected harshly. "He disappeared years ago. And he was a screw up… the human officer so inept he was busted to work beneath Thrawn, which was a huge insult in the earliest days Thrawn was on the scene. And he hasn't been seen since…" she trailed off and then looked suddenly at Pellaeon again, eyes widening slightly.

He nodded somberly. "Since Thrawn disappeared into the depths of unknown space."

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