MARA JADE

No man can stand without another, but the strongest man stands alone.

—Ancient Sith proverb
attributed to Revan

Deep Space, Outer Rim, 0 ABY

Mara Jade, Hand of the Emperor, sat in Grand Admiral Grant's quarters, quietly reading his log. Not the official journal that would have to be turned over to Imperial Center, once the campaign was concluded. No, she was reading his personal one—the one he'd hidden inside a painting of His Grace, the Emperor.

It wasn't very encouraging.

The personal journal dated back to his early years in the Navy, but she had skipped past the first quarter, in search of his time with Thrawn.

Never have I met an alien so damnably pompous as this 'Admiral' Thrawn. The New Order was established by Humans for Humans, not for upjumped aliens!

I don't understand how the Navy could have become so infected with xeno sympathizers that this Thrawn could have been commissioned—let alone reach flag rank!

Jade skipped forward two pages, to the day after the First Battle of Tor.

I have been forced to . . . reconsider Admiral Thrawn. He is, and always will be, an alien—but I now believe he must be descended from a Human. He must!

He is pompous, true, and smug, but, unlike so many lesser species I have had the ill-fortune to encounter, he is . . . intelligent. Not as inherently intelligent as a Human, of course, but he sees things in a different way I suspect. A way that makes him seem intelligent.

But, appearances of intelligence or not, he is the most effective combat commander I have ever seen.

This battle with the Torians was beyond anything I've witnessed. It was like . . . clockwork majesty. It exceeds words what Thrawn was able to accomplish with a pair of task groups. Every move the Torians made, he was prepared for.

He seems to understand the key concepts of Humanocentristic teachings as well. At least, he certainly subscribes to the theories of certain races being more or less advantaged than others.

How he was able to realize it, I haven't a clue, but he was able to discern that the Torian race's herd mentalities extend to naval warfare. Whenever we engaged elements of the Tor Defense Fleet, Thrawn purposefully withdrew elements being assaulted by certain war captains, drawing Torian ships to the war captains that were enjoying such dramatic success.

Of course, they only appeared to be enjoying success.

Once the majority of the Defense Fleet coalesced behind a handful of war captains, Thrawn struck. Simultaneously destroying the war captains' ships, he launched a series of attacks on the rest of the Defense Fleet 'herd,' panicking the surviving members in the direction he wanted them to go. It appeared as if they were fleeing into open deep space . . . until I and my task force dropped out of hyper—practically on top of them.

I have no stomach for slaughter, not even of xenos, but that was precisely what it was.

I wonder, and fear, what a man—and he is a man, if not a Human—such as that could do against a force of Humans. . . .

The hatch clanged as it was opened, and Grand Admiral Octavian Grant stepped into his quarters. He was reaching up to undo his collar button, when he saw Mara sitting in his chair, reading his private, hidden journal.

Mara watched his expression, and quietly admired how he quickly composed any anger or fear from his features. He gestured at his journal, still in her hands. "What did you think?" he asked coolly.

"I think you are an interesting man," she answered, equally coolly.

"Oh, is that why you broke into my quarters? To see what kind of man I am?" Grant snorted. "Obviously you did," he answered for her.

She smiled. "We're four days out of Dac—"

"Three," he corrected.

"—so I thought now might be the only chance we have to coordinate our efforts."

Grant sat down on one of the other chairs in his quarters. He continued to unbutton his uniform coat. "You said you needed a Rebel ship, when you came aboard, and you'll have it." He gestured downward, through the deck plating, toward the hangar. "Take your pick."

"I have," Mara replied simply. "What I need now is to know your plans, Grand Admiral, so that I can work with you."

Grant snorted. " 'My Plans'? My plan—singular—is to knock on Dac's door, and hope I have enough ships to weather whatever trap Thrawn is doubtlessly setting for me." He slipped his jacket off, wearing only an undershirt.

"Such an elegant strategy."

"Given the far more rational strategies that I recommended have been dismissed by our Emperor as being 'too slow,' it's the only one left to me. The only one that has even the remote possibility of success."

"Every man has a weakness to be exploited."

Grant laughed bitterly. "Thrawn has two weaknesses." He held up one finger. "The first is the most obvious; his people. He'd die a thousand deaths before he'd stand back and let his people be destroyed. Unfortunately, he's in between us and his homeworld. Equally unfortunately, we aren't quite sure where the hell his homeworld is in the Unknown Regions."

He held up a second finger. "The only other weakness, that I know of, is a puzzle. He's a calculating, rational man, and if he finds something that doesn't make sense, he'll upend the galaxy trying to figure it out and extract some military usefulness from it."

Mara shrugged. "But you aren't giving him a puzzle," she said.

Grant shook his head. "Oh, but I am, actually," he corrected her. "How to destroy a force the outnumbers him by seventy-to-one is a damn good puzzle."

Mara shrugged again, thinking about her own mission. "Will he be on Dac?" she asked.

Grant said, "No. He doesn't like tying himself down to one position. He'll be in space, where he can maneuver."

"He was on the surface of Hoth," Mara said.

"Special circumstances," Grant said dismissively.

"But someone has to be on Dac. If he's setting a trap, someone has to be there to spring it."

"Sheplin, probably."

"Who?"

"Commander William J. Sheplin," Grant said, enunciating every word precisely. "Thrawn's aide and confidant for fifteen years. He was reported KIA—he was on the Death Star, after all—but an ISB operative spotted him on Hoth with Thrawn."

Mara's eyes widened ever so slightly. "On the Death Star? Did he—"

"Most likely." He snorted. "Certainly more believable than that farmboy one-shotting the most expensive weapons platform ever built in a strike-fighter." Even as he spoke, Mara could almost hear him pausing to censor any less than complimentary comments about the ill-fated Death Star. The survival instincts of an officer who spent any amount of time in the Imperial Court were very well-adjusted.

Mara blinked. The beginnings of an idea entered her mind, as pieces began sliding into place. "An aide for fifteen years?" she asked, ignoring his comment about the Skywalker boy and the Death Star.

"Yes."

"They must be very close," Mara said, more pieces sliding into place, slowly forming a picture of the two men.

Grant looked at her, slightly surprised that she had figured that out from so few clues. "Sheplin is . . ." he shrugged, searching for the right word, "like Thrawn's surrogate son, from what I could gather. Just like any protégé of Thrawn's, he's a very, very capable man."

Mara was smiling openly, the words he said registering for later reflection, but without really hearing them. "You're wrong about Thrawn, Grand Admiral," she said. "He might have those two weaknesses, but there's one that every man shares: Family."

Mara jumped into hyperspace, sitting in the cockpit of the Arcadia, a little, dingy YT-1000 series freighter. The entire Fourth Oversector Group had made the stop, allowing her to slip out of the hangar of the Sword of Anaxes in realspace, instead of hyperspace.

Her dark cloak—one of the signature possessions of a Hand of the Emperor—had been left aboard the Imperial dreadnought. Instead, she now wore a baggy flight suit in the pattern that the Alliance seemed to favor. A name had been sewn onto her breast pocket, beside a sewn-on emblem of an Alliance phoenix; 'L. Taggert.'

Everything that could potentially give her away during this mission had been painstakingly removed from her person. Leaving her precious lightsaber behind had been hard, and she felt almost naked without the cold, deadly weight of it on her belt.

But it wasn't a lightsaber that made her lethal to the Emperor's enemies, nor even the Force, it was him. Even half a galaxy away from him, she could feel the weight of his spirit pushing her on. It was inconceivable to deny that will, and, for a moment, she wondered how some—like Thrawn—could even think to do so.

Dac Orbit, Outer Rim, 0 ABY

"Unidentified contact, make your heading zero-eight-one, mark three-one-nine. Do not deviate course. State your business in the system."

Mara smiled thinly at the businesslike voice. She keyed her headset's mic, deliberately pitching her voice so that is was high and panicky. "This is the light freighter Arcadia, Lieutenant Taggert commanding. I have been attacked by Imperial forces in deep space. Requesting immediate landing authorization."