Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [139]
“I understand what you’re saying.” Mara nodded and reached up, tugging one of the monster claws from the Headhunter’s nose. “Remind me never to lend you anything else.”
“The beastie that left that in the ship was thinking of making a snack of Luke.” I scratched at my beard. “Do you think he makes too much of the dark side?”
“Having seen the Emperor work, I’m not sure one can overemphasize the dangers of the dark side.” Mara ran her thumb along the smooth top of the claw. “I think Luke may be looking for evil to be more profound than it is. You’ve seen it. Evil can be pretty plain.”
“True enough. Some may have a talent for it, but you don’t have to be talented to wallow in it.” I glanced down. “Your thinking along these lines is not that far off my own. That was just part of why I left, however. I also couldn’t stay with Kyp being heralded as a Jedi Knight while having avoided, in my mind, punishment for Carida and the other system he destroyed. I know that his going after unreconstructed Imperials is popular in some circles, but murder is murder in my memory cache.”
Mara’s face became impassive. “Is that problem going to be one you can resolve?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe Carida expatriates will set up a judgment tribunal and render a verdict. I don’t feel justice has been done here, but to tell the truth, I’m not sure what justice would be in such a case. That’s all in the future, however.”
“So the real reason you left the academy was to go after Mirax?”
I nodded. “I had things to figure out and directions to travel to get me closer to her. On the way I visited Corellia, and I’ve got some data for you on that Jorj Car’das guy you asked about during my Bacta dip. It’s all of CorSec’s old files on him, if that will help.”
“Certainly can’t hurt.” She gave me a quick nod. “I’ve heard nothing new about Mirax, and the situation on Nal Hutta has changed.”
“I know, but at least I have a place to start.” I gave her as confident a smile as I could muster. “I may still be looking for a quark in a mole of deuterium, but I’m narrowing the area I have to search in and right now that’s solid progress. I’ll get there; I’ll find her. No try, just do.”
THIRTY-THREE
The positively jubilant expression on Booster’s face reminded me of previously painful situations where he’d managed to find a way to embarrass me in front of my wife. Since there were no other witnesses in his office, however, I suspected that look of malevolent glee was reserved for someone else. He waved me in toward his desk. “Come on, I have something here.”
As I approached, he hit a button on the small datapad on which he worked, and a holoprojector popped up the image of a Corellian corvette. “This image comes from the data you pulled in when taking the Tinta Blue Seven out of the ambush. The Identify Friend/Foe transponder tagged this ship Captain’s Ladder.”
I nodded. “I’m with you so far, but I have to note, that particular IFF signal was undoubtedly used for that run alone.”
“Why don’t you just tell a Hutt how to smuggle spice?” Booster looked up at me through the hologram, his real eye rolling toward the ceiling. “Son, I was swapping out IFF transponders on ships before your father even thought about having kids. As you know, IFF isn’t the only way to identify a ship. The readings you got here were good enough that my people managed a spectral analysis of the ship’s sublight ion exhaust. If you get a good reading, and these were very good, you can get a fairly unique analysis for the ship, and that can be matched against other ships’ data to pick out a match.”
“And you found one?”
Booster nodded and hit another button on his datapad. Another image of the corvette appeared beside the first, with both of them slowly rotating to show off every detail. “It’s the Backstab.”
I closed my eyes for a second. “The name’s familiar but I can’t place it.”
“The Eyttyrmin Batiiv pirates operating out of the Khuiumin system owned her. They got busted up in an Imperial operation—fewer than three hundred out of the eight thousand pirates in