The Last Command (52 page)

“So did I,” Aves told him grimly, the twisting knife back in his gut. “I guess we were wrong.”

“Or else Thrawn is.” Gillespee looked out at the armada and shook his head. “No. Probably not.”

“All right, let’s not panic,” Mazzic said. “If the New Republic comes, it just means that much more to occupy the Imperials’ attention. Let’s stay on schedule and see what happens.”

“Right,” Aves sighed. Square in the middle of an Imperial base during a New Republic attack. Terrific.

“Tell you something, Aves,” Gillespee commented. “If we get out of this, I’m going to go have some words with your boss.”

“No argument.” Aves looked out at Thrawn’s armada. “Matter of fact, I think maybe I’ll go with you.”

Carefully, Mara eased her head out of the emergency stairway and took a look into the corridor beyond. The caution was wasted; this level was as deserted as the three below it had been. “All clear,” she murmured, stepping out into the corridor.

“No guards here, either?” Skywalker asked, looking around as he joined her.

“No point to it,” she told him. “Except for the throne room and the royal chambers, there was never much of anything on these top levels.”

“I guess there still isn’t. Where’s this private turbolift?”

“To the right and around that corner,” she said, pointing with her blaster.

More from habit than any real need, she tried to keep her footsteps quiet as she led the way down the corridor. She reached the cross corridor and turned into it.

There, ten meters dead ahead, two stormtroopers stood flanking the turbolift door, their blaster rifles already lifting to track toward her.

Half a step into the corridor, all her momentum going the wrong direction, there was nowhere for Mara to go but down. She dived for the deck, firing toward them as she fell. One of the stormtroopers toppled back as a burst of flame erupted in his chest armor. The second rifle swung toward her face—

And jerked reflexively away as Skywalker’s lightsaber came spinning down the corridor toward him.

It didn’t do any real damage, of course—at that distance, and without the Force, Skywalker wasn’t that good a shot. But it did a fine job of distracting the stormtrooper, and that was all Mara needed. Even as the Imperial ducked away from the whirling blade, she caught him with two clean shots. He hit the deck and stayed there.

“I guess they don’t want anyone going in there,” Skywalker said, coming up beside her.

“I guess not,” Mara agreed, ignoring the hand he offered and getting up on her own. “Come on.”

The turbolift car had been locked at this level, but it took Mara only a minute to release it. There were only four stops listed: the one they were on, the emergency shuttle hangar, the royal chambers, and the throne room itself. She keyed for the last, and the door slid shut behind them. The trip upward was a short one, and a few seconds later the door on the opposite side of the car slid open. Bracing herself, Mara stepped out.

Into the Emperor’s throne room… and into a flood of memories.

It was all here, just as she remembered it. The muted sidelights and brooding darkness the Emperor had found so conducive to meditation and thought. The raised section of floor at the far end of the chamber, allowing him to look down from his throne as visitors climbed the staircase into his presence. Viewscreens on the walls on either side of the throne, darkened now, which had enabled him to keep track of the details of his domain.

And for an overview of that domain…

She turned to her left, gazing over the railing of the walkway into the huge open space that faced the throne. Floating there in the darkness, a blaze of light twenty meters across, was the galaxy.

Not the standard galaxy hologram any school or shipping business might own. Not even the more precise versions that could be found only in the war rooms of select sector military headquarters. This hologram was sculpted in exquisite and absolutely unique detail, with a single accurately positioned spot of light for each of the galaxy’s hundred billion stars. Political regions were delineated by subtle encirclements of color: the Core systems, the Outer Rim Territories, Wild Space, the Unknown Regions. From his throne the Emperor could manipulate the image, highlighting a chosen sector, locating a single system, or tracking a military campaign.

It was as much a work of art as it was a tool. Grand Admiral Thrawn would love it.

And with that thought, the memories of the past faded reluctantly into the realities of the present. Thrawn was in command now, a man who wanted to re-create the Empire in his own image. Wanted it badly enough to unleash a new round of Clone Wars if that would gain it for him.

She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. The words echoed around the chamber, pushing the memories still further away. “If it’s here, it’ll be built into the throne.”

With an obvious effort, Skywalker pulled his gaze away from the hologram galaxy. “Let’s take a look.”

They headed down the ten-meter walkway that led from the turbolift into the main part of the throne room, walking beneath the overhead catwalk that ran across the front edge of the hologram pit and between the raised guard platforms flanking the stairway. Mara glanced at the platforms as she and Skywalker walked up the steps to the upper level, remembering the red-cloaked Imperial guards who had once stood there in silent watchfulness. Beneath the upper-level floor, visible between the steps as they climbed, the Emperor’s monitor and control area was dark and silent. Aside from the galaxy hologram, all of the systems up here appeared to have been shut down.

They reached the top of the steps and headed across toward the throne itself, turned away from them toward the polished rock wall behind it. Mara was looking at it, wondering why the Emperor had left it facing away from his galaxy, when it began to turn around.

She grabbed Skywalker’s arm, snapping her blaster up to point at the throne. The massive chair completed its turn—

“So at last you have come to me,” Joruus C’baoth said gravely, gazing out at them from the depths of the throne. “I knew you would. Together we will teach the galaxy what it means to serve the Jedi.”

“I knew you would be coming to me tonight,” C’baoth said, rising slowly from the throne to face them. “From the moment you left Coruscant, I knew you would come. That was why I set this night for the people of my city to attack my oppressors.”

“That wasn’t necessary,” Luke told him, taking an involuntary step backward as the memories of those near-disastrous days on Jomark came rushing back to him. C’baoth had tried there to subtly corrupt him to the dark side… and when he’d failed at that, he’d tried to kill Luke and Mara both.

But he wouldn’t be trying that again. Not here. Not without the Force.

“Of course it was necessary,” C’baoth said. “You needed a distraction to gain entrance to my prison. And they, like all lesser beings, needed purpose. What better purpose could they have than the honor of dying in the service of the Jedi?”

Beside him, Mara muttered something. “I think you have that backwards,” Luke said. “The Jedi were the guardians of peace. The servants of the Old Republic, not its masters.”

“Which is why they and the Old Republic failed, Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth said, jabbing a finger toward him in emphasis. “Why they failed, and why they died.”

“The Old Republic survived a thousand generations,” Mara put in. “That doesn’t sound like failure to me.”

“Perhaps not,” C’baoth said with obvious disdain. “You are young, and do not yet see clearly.”

“And you do, of course?”

C’baoth smiled at her. “Oh, yes, my young apprentice,” he said softly. “I do indeed. As will you.”

“Don’t count on it,” Mara growled. “We aren’t here to get you out.”

“The Force does not rely on what you think are your goals,” C’baoth said. “Nor do the true masters of the Force. Whether you knew it or not, you came here at my summons.”

“You just go ahead and believe that,” Mara said, motioning to the side with her blaster. “Move over there.”

“Of course, my young apprentice.” C’baoth took three steps in the indicated direction. “She has great strength of will, Jedi Skywalker,” he added to Luke as Mara moved warily over to the throne and crouched down to examine the armrest control boards. “She will be a great power in the galaxy which we shall build.”

“No,” Luke said, shaking his head. This was, perhaps, his last chance to bring the insane Jedi back. To save him, as he had saved Vader aboard the second Death Star. “You aren’t in any shape to build anything, Master C’baoth. You’re not well. But I can help you if you’ll let me.”

C’baoth’s face darkened. “How dare you say such things?” he demanded. “How dare you even
think
such blasphemy about the great Jedi Master C’baoth?”

“But that’s just it,” Luke said gently. “You’re not the Jedi Master C’baoth. Not the original one, anyway. The proof is there in the
Katana
‘s records. Jorus C’baoth died a long time ago during the Outbound Flight Project.”

“Yet I am here.”

“Yes,” Luke nodded. “
You
are. But not Jorus C’baoth. You see, you’re his clone.”

C’baoth’s whole body went rigid. “No,” he said. “No. That can’t be.”

Luke shook his head. “There’s no other explanation. Surely that thought has occurred to you before.”

C’baoth took a long, shuddering breath… and then, abruptly, he threw his head back and laughed.

“Watch him,” Mara snapped, eyeing the old man warily over the throne’s armrest. “He pulled this same stunt on Jomark, remember?”

“It’s all right,” Luke said. “He can’t hurt us.”

“Ah, Skywalker, Skywalker,” C’baoth said, shaking his head. “You, too? Grand Admiral Thrawn, the New Republic, and now you. What is this sudden fascination with clones and cloning?”

He barked another laugh; and then, without warning, turned deadly serious. “He does not understand, Jedi Skywalker,” he said earnestly. “Not Grand Admiral Thrawn—not any of them. The true power of the Jedi is not in these simple tricks of matter and energy. The true might of the Jedi is that we alone of all those in the galaxy have the power to grow beyond ourselves. To extend ourselves into all the reaches of the universe.”

Luke glanced at Mara, got a shrug and puzzled look in return. “We don’t understand, either,” he told C’baoth. “What do you mean?”

C’baoth took a step toward him. “I have done it, Jedi Skywalker,” he whispered, his eyes glittering in the dim light. “With General Covell. What even the Emperor never did. I took his mind in my hands and altered it. Re-formed it and rebuilt it into my own image.”

Luke felt a cold shiver run through him. “What do you mean, rebuilt it?”

C’baoth nodded, a secret sort of smile playing around his lips. “Yes—rebuilt it. And that was only the start. Beneath us, down in the depths of the mountain, the future army of the Jedi even now stands in readiness to serve us. What I did with General Covell I will do again, and again, and again. Because what Grand Admiral Thrawn has never realized is that the army he thinks he is creating for himself he is instead creating for me.”

And suddenly Luke understood. The clones growing down in that cavern weren’t just physically identical to their original templet. Their minds were identical, too, or close enough to be only minor variations of the same pattern. If C’baoth could learn how to break the mind of any one of them, he could do the same to all the clones in that group.

Luke looked at Mara again. She understood, too. “You still think he can be saved?” she demanded grimly.

“I need no one to save me, Mara Jade,” C’baoth told her. “Tell me, do you really believe I would simply stand by and allow Grand Admiral Thrawn to imprison me this way?”

“I didn’t think he’d asked your permission,” Mara bit out, stepping away from the throne. “There’s nothing here for us, Skywalker. Let’s get out of here.”

“I did not grant you permission to leave,” C’baoth said, his voice suddenly loud and regal. He raised his hand, and Luke saw that he was holding a small cylinder. “And you shall not.”

Mara gestured with her blaster. “You’re not going to stop us with
that
,” she said with thinly veiled contempt. “A remote activator has to have something to activate.”

“And so it does,” C’baoth said, smiling thinly. “I had my soldiers prepare it for me. Before I sent them outside the mountain with the weapons and orders for my people.”

“Sure.” Mara took a step back toward the stairs, throwing a wary glance at the ceiling above her as her left hand found the guardrail that separated the raised section of the throne room from the lower level. “We’ll take your word for it.”

C’baoth shook his head. “You won’t have to,” he said softly, pressing the switch. In the back of Luke’s mind, something distant and very alien seemed to shriek in agony—

And suddenly, impossibly, he felt a surge of awareness and strength fill him. As if he were waking up from a deep sleep, or stepping from a dark room into the light.

The Force was again with him.

“Mara!” he snapped. But it was too late. Mara’s blaster had already wrenched itself from her grip and been flung back across the room; and even as Luke leaped toward her C’baoth’s outstretched hand erupted into a brilliant blaze of blue-white lightning.

The blast caught Mara square in the chest, throwing her backward to slam into the guardrail behind her. “Stop it!” Luke shouted, getting in front of her and igniting his lightsaber. C’baoth ignored him, firing a second burst. Luke caught most of it on his lightsaber blade, grimacing as the part he missed jolted through his muscles. C’baoth fired a third burst, and a fourth, and a fifth—

And then, abruptly, he lowered his hands. “You will not presume to give me commands, Jedi Skywalker,” he said, his voice strangely petulant. “I am the master. You are the servant.”

“I’m not your servant,” Luke told him, stepping back and throwing a quick look at Mara. She was still pretty much on her feet, clutching the guardrail for support. Her eyes were open but not fully aware, her breath making little moaning sounds as she exhaled between clenched teeth. Laying his free hand on her shoulder, wincing at the stink of ozone, Luke began a quick probe of her injuries.