SW0415 Hand of Thrawn 02 Vision of the Future (v5) by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

27

Mara took in the room in a glance as she stepped through the doorway. It was long and narrow, stretching perhaps fifty meters back from the door but no more than five meters wide. Near the far wall was a solid-looking chair, facing away from her. Five meters beyond that, right at the room’s back wall, were six more of the blue-skinned aliens, all wearing the same tight-fitting burgundy patchwork-design outfits as the ones who had escorted her here from the slideway. And like her escort, each of the aliens was wearing Imperial ranking bars on their chests beneath the high-topped black collars.

But even as her glance took in those details, her main attention was caught by the man in the center of the group, seated in a duplicate of the empty chair facing him a few meters away. His hair was gray, his skin lined with age; but his eyes were alert and shrewd, and his back was straight and proud.

And he was wearing the uniform and insignia of an Imperial admiral.

“So here you are at last, Mara Jade,” he said, waving her forward with a gnarled hand. “I must say, you took your time.”

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Mara countered with an edge of sarcasm as she walked toward them. She could feel Luke’s concern and nervousness at the back of her mind, and tried to send him a reassurance she didn’t entirely feel. These people knew who she was and presumably what she was; and yet here they were, letting her move freely toward them. It all looked far too casual, and she didn’t like it one bit. “If your people hadn’t been so trigger-poppy, I’d have been here a lot sooner.”

The admiral bowed his head briefly. “My apologies. For whatever it’s worth, it was an accident. Please, come sit down.”

Mara continued forward, trying to watch all of them at once, her senses alert for trouble. If they had a trap set, it would be sprung somewhere before she got too close to them …

And without warning, right in the middle of a step, Luke’s presence suddenly vanished from her mind.

Her brain froze in shock, sheer momentum keeping her feet moving. Luke? Luke! Come on, where are you?

But there was no response. No emotion, no sense of mind or thought, no sense of presence at all. Incredibly, impossibly, he was gone.

Gone.

“Come sit down,” the admiral said again. “I imagine you must be quite worn out after all you’ve been through.”

“You’re too kind,” Mara said, the words sounding distant and mechanical through the pounding of blood in her ears as she forced her feet to keep moving her forward. What in the worlds could possibly have happened to him?

There could only be one answer. Somehow, they’d gotten past his Jedi senses, had penetrated his Jedi powers, and had launched a sudden, undetected, and unblocked attack.

And Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, was unconscious.

Or dead.

The thought slashed into her mind, cutting through her heart like a jagged blade. No—it couldn’t be.

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