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The black droid finally succeeded in rotating its head, bending its laser cannons toward the sub.

Ackbar fired the lateral jets, wrenching them and the probe droid sideways as a volley of vicious laser blasts screamed past them, plowing a tunnel of sudden steam through the water. He tugged at the waldos and brought another of his equipment arms to bear, a small cutting laser.

Its tip heated to incandescent red-white as he slashed through the probe droid’s gripping metal claw, severing the plasteel and breaking them free. Ackbar pulled the sub away and brought the cutting laser to bear again just as the probe droid turned to fire a second time.

Leia knew it was hopeless. They couldn’t get away, and the cutting laser would do nothing against the far-superior weapons of the probot. And unlike Luke, she had not mastered Jedi skills enough to mount even a feeble defense. But Ackbar, still looking cool and in control, fired two blasts from the cutting laser at the head of the probe droid, attempting to blind its optical sensors. The feeble beams struck—

The probot detonated in an unexpected explosion. Bright concentric waves of light hurled the sub back, tumbling it end over end. They were thrown backward; Leia felt the chair’s restraints automatically tighten around her. The shock wave rang against the hull, sending a sound like a gong through the enclosed sub. A fury of bubbles and drifting debris surged around them. Large splintered seatree trunks sank to the ocean bottom.

“The probe self-destructed!” Cilghal said. “But we didn’t stand a chance against it.”

Leia remembered Han’s conjecture on Hoth. “The probe droids have programming to destroy themselves rather than risk letting their data fall into enemy hands.”

Ackbar finally managed to stabilize the spinning submersible. Four of the mechanical arms extending from the front of the sub had been snapped off, leaving only frayed edges of broken metal and dead circuitry.

Ackbar blew one of the ballast tanks, and the sub rose toward the surface. Leia noticed three hairline cracks in the transparisteel windowport and realized how close they had come to being crushed by the shock wave.

“But the probot already sent its signal,” Cilghal said. “We heard it before the self-destruct.”

Leia felt a cold fist of fear close around her stomach, but Ackbar tried to dismiss the peril.

“This probe droid has been here for ten years or more, and that would have been a very old code, almost certainly obsolete,” he said. “Even if the Imperials could still understand its message, who would be out there listening?”

17

With her three Imperial Star Destroyers safely hidden among the ionized islands of the Cauldron Nebula, Admiral Daala retired to her private quarters to review tactics.

She sat stiffly in a slick lounge chair, refusing to relax into the warm contours. Too much comfort made Daala distinctly uncomfortable.

The holographic image of Grand Moff Tarkin stood with her in the dim room, unchanged after all these years. The gaunt, hard man presented his recorded lectures, his communiqués. Daala had watched them dozens of times before.

In the privacy of her chambers, she allowed herself to miss the one person in the Imperial Military Academy who had seen her talent. Tarkin had raised her rank to admiral—as far as she knew, the highest rank held by any female in the Imperial armed forces.

During her years of exile in Maw Installation, Daala had often replayed Tarkin’s messages, but now she studied them intently. Her eyebrows knitted together, and her bright green eyes narrowed as she concentrated on every word he spoke, searching for some indispensable advice for her private war against the Rebellion.

“Liquidating a dozen small threats is easier than rooting out one well-established center of defiance,” his image said, in a speech given on Carida explaining the “Tarkin Doctrine.” “Rule through the fear of force rather than through force itself. If we use our strength wisely,