by Timothy Zahn
“Certainly there is power here,” Thrawn said. “But there is only danger to your enemies.”
“You do not consider your people to be among those enemies?”
“You spoke of an interest in the Unknown Regions. How may I assist in satisfying your curiosity?”
“You seek to avoid my question,” the Emperor said. His lips compress together. “Tell me: Do your people regard the Empire as their enemy?”
“I am not accountable for the future actions or goals of my people,” Thrawn said. “I can speak only for myself. And I have said already I will serve you.”
“Until you find it convenient to escape from my reach?”
“I am a warrior, Your Majesty,” Thrawn said. “A warrior may retreat. He does not flee. He may lie in ambush. He does not hide. He may experience victory or defeat. He does not cease to serve.”
“I will hold you to that,” the Emperor said. “Why do you wish to have your translator?”
“He knows something of my people,” Thrawn said. “I wish to explore the depth of that knowledge.”
“If he has knowledge of the Unknown Regions, then perhaps I should instead keep him here with me.”
“His knowledge is little more than stories and tales,” Thrawn said. “He will not know worlds or peoples. Nor will he know hyperspace lanes and potential safe havens.”
“That knowledge lies solely with you?” the Emperor asked. His tone lowers in pitch.
“For the moment,” Thrawn said. “Later, it will lie also with you.”
“Once again, your eloquence belies your need for a translator,” the Emperor said. His lips again turn upward. “But I will give him to you. Come, let us rejoin the others.”
The group was still waiting between the lines of guards. “This is he?” the Emperor asked, pointing at Vanto.
“It is, Your Majesty,” Thrawn said. “Cadet Eli Vanto.”
“Captain Parck, how much longer does Cadet Vanto have before graduation?”
“Three standard months, Your Majesty,” Parck said. “We were scheduled to return him and his fellow cadets to Myomar when we were sidetracked by the smuggler pursuit that ultimately brought us to Thrawn’s place of exile.”
“You will return the other cadets as planned,” the Emperor said. “Cadet Vanto will remain on Coruscant and finish his training at the Royal Imperial Academy.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Parck said, looking briefly at Vanto, then at Thrawn. “I’ll inform Admiral Foss of this change.”
Vanto’s face radiates more strongly than before, and the muscles in his throat have stiffened. He begins to open his mouth, as if to speak, but closes it with no words spoken.
He does not understand. Nor will he. Not for a long while.
—
The Myomar Academy, situated in the Expansion Region, was staffed and attended mostly by residents of backwater worlds. There, Eli had been among his own kind, about as relaxed and comfortable as it was possible to be given the excruciating pressure of the Empire’s most intense training regimen.
The Royal Imperial Academy, in contrast, was staffed exclusively by the elite of the Empire, with a student body to match. From the moment Eli and Thrawn set foot off the shuttle from the Palace, he could feel everyone’s eyes fixed firmly on the newcomers.
And he had no doubt that most of those eyes were hostile.
The alien, and the backwater yokel. This, Eli thought glumly, was a classic joke in the making.
Commandant Deenlark clearly thought likewise.
“So,” he ground out, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them as they stood at attention in front of his desk. “Is this Admiral Foss’s idea of a joke?”
Thrawn didn’t answer, apparently leaving this one to Eli. Great. “The Emperor himself sent us here, sir,” Eli said, not knowing what else to say.
“That was a rhetorical question, Cadet,” Deenlark growled, glaring at him from under bushy eyebrows. “You do have complicated words like rhetorical in Wild Space, don’t you?”
Eli clenched his teeth. “Yes, sir.”
“Good,” Deenlark said. “Because we use a lot of big words here. We wouldn’t want you to get lost.” He shifted his glare to Thrawn. “What’s your excuse, alien?”
“My excuse for what, sir?” Thrawn asked calmly.
“Your excuse for living,” Deenlark bit out. “Well?”
Thrawn remained silent, and for a few seconds the two of them locked gazes. Then Deenlark’s lip twitched. “Yeah, like I thought,” the commandant said sourly. “You’re damn lucky the Emperor’s taken a fancy to you. Though why, I can’t guess.”
He paused, as if expecting Thrawn to explain it to him. Again, the Chiss didn’t respond.
“Fine,” Deenlark said at last. “Foss’s message said you were some kind of fancy-face soldier already, that all you needed was a little orientation in Imperial procedure, equipment, and terminology. That scans out to a six-month course for the typical raw recruit. Probably two years for cadets from the back end of nowhere,” he added, looking at Eli.
There were times, Eli had learned, when it didn’t pay to say anything. This was one of them. He kept his head up, his eyes focused straight ahead, and his mouth closed.
“So here’s the deal,” Deenlark said, turning back to Thrawn. “Cadet Vanto has three months left before commissioning. That’s how long you have to come up to speed. You fail, and you’re out.”
“The Emperor might disagree,” Thrawn said mildly.
Deenlark’s lip twitched. “The Emperor would understand,” he said. But some of the air had gone out of his bluster. “His own mandate to the Academies is to turn out officers worthy of Imperial service. Anything less, and the whole navy suffers, officers and enlisted alike. Of course, if the Emperor wants to put you in by fiat, he can do that.” He raised his eyebrows. “I hope you’ll prove good enough that he won’t have to do that.”
“We shall see,” Thrawn said.
“I guess we shall.” Deenlark pursed his lips. “One other thing. Foss said you were to leave here as a lieutenant instead of the standard rank of ensign. Something about getting you into command position as quickly as possible. I figure, why waste time?” Pulling open a drawer, he extracted a lieutenant’s rank insignia plaque and gave it a spinning flip that landed it on the edge of the desk in front of Thrawn. “There you go. Congratulations, Lieutenant. Cadet Vanto can show you which way is up.”
“Thank you, sir,” Thrawn said politely, picking up the plaque. “I assume the proper uniforms will be delivered to our quarters?”
“Yes,” Deenlark said, frowning. “You sure you even need a translator? Your Basic seems pretty good.”
Eli felt a flicker of hope. Deenlark had already made it clear he wasn’t happy with this arrangement. He couldn’t touch Thrawn directly, but maybe he could express some of his displeasure by refusing to accept Eli as Thrawn’s translator. If he did, maybe there was still time for Eli to get back to Myomar and finish his schooling in more comfortable surroundings.
“There are yet many idioms and technical terms I am unfamiliar with,” Thrawn said. “His service will be most valuable.”
“I’m sure it will,” Deenlark conceded reluctantly. “Fine. Now get the hell out of here. I mean, Dismissed, Cadets. You’ve been assigned a split double—the yeoman outside will have a mouse droid take you there. Schedules and directions are on your computer. Assuming you’ve figured out how to turn it on.”
“I’m familiar with your computer systems,” Thrawn said.
“I was talking to Vanto,” Deenlark said sarcastically. “Dismissed.”
The yeoman was as stiff as the commandant. But he was efficient enough. Two minutes later, Eli and Thrawn were following a mouse droid as it skittered its way along the walkway leading to Barracks Two.
And just like that, Eli’s life had been completely upended.
His career trajectory with the navy, so carefully calculated and implemented, was gone.
Worse, just because he’d been solidly on track to graduate from Myomar didn’t mean he would make it in the much tougher environment of Royal Imperial. Even with only three months to go, he could still wash out.
Especially since his time would now be split between his studies and playing word games with Thrawn. An alien who was even more of a fish ashore than Eli himself.
An alien who could not possibly succeed.
Eli knew what Imperial Academies were like. He’d heard all the running jokes about Falleen, Umbarans, Neimoidians, and other aliens. And Royal Imperial, smack at the center of the Empire, would almost certainly be the worst of the lot. Thrawn had as much chance of surviving here as a wounded bird in a nest of blood spites.
When he went down, would Eli go down with him?
He had no idea. But he guessed he probably would.
“You seem thoughtful,” Thrawn said.
Eli made a face. The Chiss had no idea what he’d let himself in for. “Just wondering how we’re going to do here.”
“Yes.” Thrawn was silent a moment “You spoke once of a planetary and social hierarchy. Tell me how that hierarchy…” He paused. “Binesu.”
Eli sighed. “Manifests.”
“Thank you. How that hierarchy manifests here.”
“Probably the same as in any military academy,” Eli said. “The commandant is on top, the instructors are below him, and the cadets are below them. Pretty simple, really.”
“Are there good relations between each level of authority?”
“I don’t know,” Eli said. “They all have to work together, so I suppose they all get along.”
“But there is rivalry between cadets?”
“Of course.”
“And the cadets have no official military rank or hierarchy until graduation?”
“There’s an unspoken social order,” Eli said, frowning. “Nothing official. Why all the questions?”
“This.” Thrawn opened his hand and gazed down at the lieutenant’s rank plaque lying across his palm. “I wish to understand why he gave it to me.”
“Well, it wasn’t from the goodness of his heart,” Eli growled. “It wasn’t to save time, either.”
“Explain.”
Eli huffed out a breath. “Look. There are three reactions you’re going to get as soon as you start flashing that plaque around. One: Some students and instructors will see you as Deenlark’s pet and resent you for it.”
“What is a pet?”
“In this case, slang for a favored student,” Eli told him. “That group will resent you for all the privileges you’re supposedly getting.”
“I do not expect to get privileges.”
“Doesn’t matter—they’ll still figure you’re getting some. Reaction number two: Some will see you as a failed officer who’s been sent back for a refresher. That group will treat you with complete contempt.”
“So this is not so much a gift as a weapon?”
“A weapon against you, yeah,” Eli said. “And then there’s group three. They’ll think you’re a joke. No, on second thought, they’ll probably think you’re a test.”
“What sort of test?”
“The really hard kind,” Eli said. Yes, this had to be what Deenlark was going for. “Okay. Here you’re not supposed to show disrespect to superior officers. I assume it’s also like that in the Chiss military, right?”
“Normally,” Thrawn said, his voice going a little dry.
Eli winced. For a moment he’d forgotten how Thrawn had arrived in the Empire in the first place. “Well, officially we’re not allowed to disrespect aliens, either,” he went on hurriedly. “I say officially, because that’s what the General Orders say we’re supposed to do. But that’s not always what we really do.”
“You dislike nonhumans?”
Eli hesitated. How was he supposed to answer that? “There were a lot of different nonhuman groups in the Separatist movement,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “The Clone Wars killed a lot of people and devastated whole worlds. There’s still a lot of resentment about that, especially among humans.”
“But were not other nonhuman groups allied with the Republic?”
“Sure,” Eli said. “And most of them did all right. But humans still carried most of the weight.” He considered. “Well, that’s the perception, anyway. I don’t know if it’s actually true.”
Thrawn nodded, either agreement or simple acknowledgment. “Either way, would it not be more reasonable to resent only those nonhuman groups that opposed you?”
“Probably,” Eli said. “Well, okay—definitely. And it probably started that way. But sometimes that sort of thing seeps down to other groups.” He hesitated. “On top of that, there’s a lot of contempt in the Core Worlds toward the people anywhere past the Mid Rim, humans and nonhumans alike. And with me from Wild Space and you from the Unknown Regions, we’re about as far into the Sneer Zone as you can get.”
“I see,” Thrawn said. “If I understand, I am untouchable for three reasons: I am an officer, I am not human, and I am from the disrespected edge of the Empire. So the test for the cadets would be to see how creative they can be in their disrespect toward me?”
“Basically,” Eli said. “And how close to the line they can get without stepping over it.”
“Which line?”
“The line where they’ve done something that can’t be ignored,” Eli said, trying to think. “Okay, try this. Someone could shove you off a walkway and claim you were the one who bumped into him. But he couldn’t break into your quarters and wreck your computer. See the difference? In the second case, there’s no way he could claim you were the one at fault.”
“Unless he claimed I had stored stolen data on the computer and he was attempting to retrieve it.”
Eli winced. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “But yeah, that’s exactly how it would work. Though in that case he’d have to prove you had stolen data in order to get away with it.”
“It could be planted after my quarters were entered.”
“I suppose,” Eli said. This just got better and better. “Looks like we’re going to be walking on eggshells for the next three months.”
Thrawn was silent another few steps. “I assume that is another idiom,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better if you did not walk on these eggshells alongside me.”
“Yeah, well, you should have thought about that before you asked the Emperor to stick me as your translator,” Eli said sourly. “You want to call the Palace and tell them you’ve changed your mind?”
“I still require your services,” Thrawn said. “But you could join the others in expressing your contempt for me.”
Eli frowned. “Come again?”
“Excuse me?”
Eli rolled his eyes. Sometimes Thrawn caught these idioms right away. Other times, he didn’t have a clue. “That means I want you to repeat that, or otherwise explain what you mean.”
“Were the words not clear? Very well. You may make it clear to the others that I am no more than an assignment. One, moreover, that you resisted and thoroughly dislike.”
“I don’t dislike my assignment,” Eli protested, the polite lie automatically coming to his lips. “And I don’t dislike you.”
“Do you not?” Thrawn countered. “Because of me you were taken from your ship and brought to this Academy, which you fear.”
Eli felt something stir inside him. “Who said I was afraid?” he demanded. “I’m not afraid. I’m just not looking forward to spending my last term with a bunch of Core World snobs, that’s all.”
“I am glad to hear that,” Thrawn said gravely. “We shall endure it together.”
“Yeah,” Eli said, frowning hard at him. Had he just been maneuvered into supporting the Chiss against whatever the Royal Imperial could throw at them? Apparently, he had.
Which didn’t mean he couldn’t backpedal on that anytime he wanted to. And that time might very well come. “I can hardly wait,” he said.
“Change of subject. Did you really meet General Skywalker?”
“I did,” Thrawn said, his voice going distant. “It was an interesting time.”
“That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me? That it was interesting?”
“For now,” Thrawn said. “Perhaps we will speak more of it later.” He opened his hand and looked at his new rank plaque. “I cannot help being nonhuman or coming from a region of low respect,” he said. “But perhaps it would be best if we kept this a secret between us.” He slipped the plaque out of sight into his tunic.
Eli nodded. “Works for me.”
Ahead, the mouse droid rolled to the front of a three-story building and stopped, waiting for someone to open the door for it. “I guess we’re here,” Eli added. “Let’s see what the Admiralty has sent ahead for us.”
“And then we will learn our schedule and duties,” Thrawn said. “And prepare as best we can for the onslaught.”
Eli sighed. “Yeah. And that.”
To some extent, the direction of one’s chosen path automatically selects for the paths that may cross it. A warrior’s path will intersect the paths of other warriors, allies and enemies alike. A worker’s path will intersect the paths of other workers.
But as with games of cards or dice, sometimes unexpected crossings occur. Some are driven by chance, others by design, others by a change in one’s goals.
Some are driven by malice.
Such manipulations can prove effective in the short term. But the longer-term consequences can be perilously difficult to predict.
The path of Arihnda Pryce is one such example. A deep and perceptive study of it can serve as a valuable lesson.
And as an even more valuable warning.
—
“Ms. Pryce?”
Arihnda Pryce paused and turned around. Hurrying toward her down the long corridor was Arik Uvis, a datapad in his hand, an intense expression on his face.
Arihnda glowered to herself. Uvis with one of his rock-brained questions or comments wasn’t something she really wanted to deal with right now.
But he wasn’t going away, and the Pryce Mining’s corporate building was far too small for her to successfully avoid him all day. Might as well get it over with.