The Last Command Read Online Free PDF Page A

C’baoth had returned and been seen on Jomark,” Thrawn cut him off coldly. “It was Imperial Transport who brought you there, Imperial Supply who arranged and provisioned that house for you, and Imperial Engineering who built the camouflaged island landing site for your use. The Empire did its part to get Skywalker into your hands. It was you who failed to keep him there.”
    “No!” C’baoth snapped. “Skywalker left Jomark because Mara Jade escaped from you and twisted his mind against me. And she will pay for that. You hear me? She shall pay.”
    For a long moment Thrawn was silent. “You threw the entire Filve task force against the
Millennium Falcon
,” he said at last, his voice under control again. “Did you succeed in capturing Leia Organa Solo?”
    “No,” C’baoth growled. “But not because she didn’t want to come to me. She does. Just as Skywalker does.”
    Thrawn threw a glance at Pellaeon. “She wants to come to you?” he asked.
    C’baoth smiled. “Very much,” he said, his voice unexpectedly losing all its anger. Becoming almost dreamy… “She wants me to teach her children,” he continued, his eyes drifting around the command room. “To instruct them in the ways of the Jedi. To create them in my own image. Because I am the master. The only one there is.”
    He looked back at Thrawn. “You must bring her to me, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he said, his manner somewhere halfway between solemn and pleading. “We must free her from her entrapment among those who fear her powers. They’ll destroy her if we don’t.”
    “Of course we must,” Thrawn said soothingly. “But you must leave that task to me. All I need is a little more time.”
    C’baoth frowned with thought, his hand slipping up beneath his beard to finger the medallion hanging on its neck chain, and Pellaeon felt a shiver run up his back. No matter how many times he saw it happen, he would never get used to these sudden dips into the slippery twilight of clone madness. It had, he knew, been a universal problem with the early cloning experiments: a permanent mental and emotional instability, inversely scaled to the length of the duplicate’s growth cycle. Few of the scientific papers on the subject had survived the Clone Wars era, but Pellaeon had come across one that had suggested that no clone grown to maturity in less than a year would be stable enough to survive outside of a totally controlled environment.
    Given the destruction they’d unleashed on the galaxy, Pellaeon had always assumed that the clonemasters had eventually found at least a partial solution to the problem. Whether they had recognized the underlying cause of the madness was another question entirely.
    It could very well be that Thrawn was the first to truly understand it.
    “Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” C’baoth said abruptly. “You may have one final chance. But I warn you: it will be your last. After that, I will take the matter into my own hands.” Beneath the bushy eyebrows his eyes flashed. “And I warn you further: if you cannot accomplish even so small a task, perhaps I will deem you unworthy to lead the military forces of my Empire.”
    Thrawn’s eyes glittered, but he merely inclined his head slightly. “I accept your challenge, Master C’baoth.”
    “Good.” Deliberately, C’baoth resettled himself into his seat and closed his eyes. “You may leave me now, Grand Admiral Thrawn. I wish to meditate, and to plan for the future of my Jedi.”
    For a moment Thrawn stood silently, his glowing red eyes gazing unblinkingly at C’baoth. Then he shifted his gaze to Pellaeon. “You’ll accompany me to the bridge, Captain,” he said. “I want you to oversee the defense arrangements for the Ukio system.”
    “Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said, glad of any excuse to get away from C’baoth.
    For a moment he paused, feeling a frown cross his face as he looked down at C’baoth. Had there been something he had wanted to bring to Thrawn’s