by Star Wars
“Two kilometers, yes, sir,” Agral said. “Computing now.”
“Incredible,” Ronan said, a note of surprise in his tone momentarily eclipsing his usual antagonism. “How did you know? There wasn’t any pattern to the lost ships’ vectors. I know—Director Krennic checked.”
“You are correct,” Thrawn said. “What the previous analysis failed to note was that over two-thirds of the missing ships’ vectors—specifically, twenty-eight of forty-one lost ships—pointed toward nearby systems.”
“So they jumped toward star systems,” Ronan said, still sounding puzzled. “So what? There are star systems everywhere.”
“You miss the point,” Thrawn said. “Not just star systems. Nearby star systems. The odds of such a thing happening with that many random jumps are vanishingly small. It followed that those particular vectors were not, in fact, random.”
Faro felt her breath catch in her throat. “The ships weren’t lost,” she murmured. “They were stolen.”
Ronan shot her a startled look. “What? No—impossible. The crews of these ships—” He broke off.
“The crews of the ships leaving the transfer point are carefully chosen,” Thrawn said, finishing the thought for him. “The crews bringing in the supplies are not.”
“Who?” Ronan demanded, his voice suddenly like crushed ice. “Who’s doing this?”
“As yet, that is unknown.” Thrawn nodded toward the viewport. “But I expect we shall find some clues.”
“Ready to make microjump, Admiral,” Agral called.
Thrawn nodded. “Do so.”
The starlines flared, but this time the sky had no time to change further before the lines collapsed again.
And there it was. Not the Allanar, as Faro had assumed, but a compact mobile way station, hyperdrive- and thruster-equipped. A pair of docking collars on opposite sides allowed for expedited off-loading of cargo from one ship and transfer to another, with sorting and repackaging facilities aboard the station itself. It was the sort of thing Faro had seen used by smugglers, pirates, rebels, and contraband dealers.
Only this one would never be used again. The laser gashes and torpedo pits that had all but demolished the hull made that very clear.
Faro was the first to say what they were all thinking. “It was attacked,” she said quietly.
“TIEs: Launch,” Thrawn ordered calmly. “Secure the perimeter; search outward to two thousand kilometers. Sensors and point defenses on full alert. Commodore Faro, have Major Carvia deploy a spacetrooper patrol to examine the hull for traps and residual danger, and prepare a survey team to go inside once the spacetroopers have finished their examination.”
“Acknowledged,” Faro said, pulling out her comlink and keying for the Chimaera’s stormtrooper commander.
“And bring us around to starboard,” Thrawn added. “I want a closer look at those docking collars.”
* * *
—
There were no traps on the wrecked station or inside it. What was inside was more destruction.
And bodies. Lots of bodies. Eighteen of them, torn up as badly as the station itself.
“Shredding projectile weapons,” Faro murmured as the visual feed from the survey crew paused on one of the bodies.
Ronan nodded silently from his seat at the conference room table, trying very hard not to be sick. He’d seen dead bodies before, certainly—the very size of the Stardust project inevitably meant a comparably large number of accidents. There’d also been at least three civilian or pirate vessels that had wandered into the wrong place at the wrong time, and had had to be dealt with.
But these weren’t the victims of a slipped crane or welder tank gone critical, or even the cleaner and more sanitary deaths from stormtrooper blasterfire. These bodies looked like they’d been dropped into a threshing machine, with blood and torn flesh and muscle everywhere.
He tried to remind himself that these men had been thieves who’d stolen from Stardust and the Empire, and that they deserved punishment. The rationalization didn’t help.
“Are you certain there are no more bodies?” Thrawn asked.
“Very certain, Admiral,” the survey leader assured him. “We’ve been into every compartment, and looked everywhere else that someone could have been squeezed. These eighteen are all there are.”
“Interesting,” Thrawn said thoughtfully. “At one point there were more of them aboard.”
“How do you know?” Ronan asked.
“Food and oxygen usage records,” Thrawn said, tapping a key on his console. In the corner of the survey team’s video, a set of numbers appeared. “I estimate there were twelve others.”
“The missing freighter’s crew?” Faro asked.
“Unlikely,” Thrawn said. “The degree of battle damage inside the docking collars indicates both were unoccupied at the time of the attack. At any rate, the usual complement for an Allanar N3 is between four and seven. Even if all but one stayed on the station while the remaining crew member flew it away, the numbers still come up short.”
“So where did they go?” Ronan asked.
“The twelve?” Thrawn asked, turning those unsettling glowing red eyes toward him. “The likely explanation is that they were taken by the attackers. Possibly dead, more likely alive.”
“That makes no sense,” Ronan protested. “Pirates stealing from other pirates don’t take prisoners. The last thing they want is extra mouths to feed.”
“If the attackers were, indeed, pirates,” Thrawn said. “Consider the timeline.”
He tapped another key, and another listing appeared on the display. “Twenty-eight ships disappeared, allegedly due to gralloc damage. All disappeared on unique vectors. However.”
He touched a control, and the list turned into a schematic with multiple vectors angling out from the center. “Observe the following pattern,” he continued as three of the lines brightened. “Numbers one, two, and three leave on these vectors an average of fourteen hours apart. Note that not only are the vectors grouped in the same octant, but that the systems that are the likely end points are also relatively close together.”
“Clever,” Faro said, nodding. “So the first freighter arrives, transfers its cargo to the station and from there to another ship, and the freighter is sent off to vanish into deep space.”
“Possibly with its crew still aboard,” Ronan murmured.
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “That would depend on how closely the organizer of this theft wishes to keep the secret of his activities. Continue, Commodore.”
“Then the station relocates to the second system and waits until the second freighter pretends it’s been attacked by grallocs and flits off with its cargo,” Faro said. “Repeat as often as you can keep everyone thinking it’s all just random accidents.”
“And all the blame falls on the grallocs,” Thrawn said. “Your thoughts, Assistant Director?”
Ronan gazed at the schematic. What could he say? The station, the vectors, the timing—it couldn’t possibly all be just a terrible coincidence.
But if it wasn’t coincidence, why hadn’t anyone else noticed all the pieces and put them together?
Because the only one smart enough to do so was Director Krennic himself, of course, and he was far too busy with the overall project to have time for such minutiae.
Thrawn was smart, too. But he wasn’t that smart. More to the point, he’d completely skipped over one very important piece to his puzzle.
“An interesting theory, Admiral,” he said. “But you left one small fact dangling. If the Allanar isn’t here, where is it?”
“A fair question,” Thrawn said, “and one we should now address. Commodore, you brought us here on the same vector the Allanar disappeared along, did you not?”
Faro started to speak, then paused. Ronan saw a small frown crease her
forehead, and her posture stiffened a bit.
Mentally, he shook his head. He’d never cared for commanders who liked to entrap their subordinates, trying to catch them in mistakes and humiliate them front of their fellow officers and crew.
Sadly, more and more people seemed to play that game these days, from the sadistic Emperor and his cackling manipulation, through Tarkin and his cultured viciousness, all the way down to minor warship captains who would never amount to anything and knew it. Even Lord Vader pulled such stunts on occasion, generally with people like Director Krennic who’d risen to position and power solely through ability and hard work.
And from the look on Faro’s face, she was used to this kind of abuse from Thrawn. He was smart, all right, but there was a hidden gloating nastiness beneath the surface.
Thrawn, Tarkin, Vader, the Emperor—they all deserved one another. Fortunately for the Empire, there were a handful of men like Director Krennic who could stand up to them.
There was another flicker as Faro’s expression changed. “No, sir, I didn’t,” she said, a quiet confidence in her voice. “We left the transfer point on that vector; but we were farther out on the edge than the Allanar. We arrived in the same system, but didn’t travel through exactly the same space.”
Thrawn inclined his head. “Very good, Commodore,” he said.
And smiled.
Ronan frowned. He smiled? But smiling wasn’t part of the game. The object was humiliation, and Faro had escaped the trap. Thrawn should have scowled, or at the very least hidden his disappointment behind a neutral expression.
But he’d smiled.
“So let us backtrack along the vector—the precise vector this time—and see what we find.”
“Yes, sir.” Faro’s eyes lowered to her own console—
And to Ronan’s surprise, she snapped her head up again. “Admiral?” she asked, her voice studiously neutral. “Are you suggesting…?”
“The possibility exists,” Thrawn said, his voice gone a shade darker. “Compute the vector.”
“Yes, sir,” Faro repeated, and again lowered her gaze.
“And now, Commodore,” Thrawn added quietly, “you may bring the Chimaera to full combat readiness.”
Admiral Ar’alani frowned on people running on her warship, unless there was a very good reason for it.
Given the message Eli had just received, he was pretty sure this qualified.
He reached the bridge slightly out of breath. “Admiral,” he said, spotting her standing beside the comm console.
“Here, Lieutenant,” she called, her voice grim. “Now.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli said, hurrying between the consoles. The bridge was fully staffed, he noted, though most of the consoles were still shut down or on standby. “You’re sure it’s him?”
“Quite sure, Lieutenant,” Ar’alani said, motioning the officer to vacate the comm station seat. “And if we don’t hurry, he’s going to ruin everything. You need to warn him off.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eli said, keying the board. A focused comm laser had already been set up for him, he noted, pointed toward the distant mobile way station drifting along at the very edge of the Steadfast’s best passive optical sensors.
Even at this distance, the distinctive arrowhead shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer was unmistakable.
And if that was indeed the Chimaera out there…
He keyed for the Imperial encryption he’d added to the Steadfast’s comm system, a code he knew Thrawn would instantly recognize and could quickly decipher. It came up, and he started to encrypt a brief note, starting with his name, and adding a warning to desist.
And then suddenly it was too late. Even as the distance and the time lag showed the Star Destroyer still floating beside the station, there was a flicker from much closer and the Imperial ship popped back into realspace at the same spot where the Allanar N3 freighter had appeared a few hours ago. “Admiral—”
“I see it, Lieutenant,” Ar’alani said, hissing a curse between her teeth. “Of course he would blunder in.”
“What do we do?” Eli asked.
“We hold back and see what happens,” Ar’alani said. “With luck, we may still be able to salvage this operation.”
“And if he’s attacked?”
“Then your former shipmates may be in serious trouble,” Ar’alani said. “As will be Mitth’raw’nuruodo himself.”
* * *
—
With the transfer point eight light-years away, the Chimaera’s next trip wasn’t supposed to have been another microjump. But as the starlines flared briefly and then collapsed Faro knew that it had become exactly that.
And as the stars reappeared, she felt a horrible tingle of déjà vu.
It was the Grysks again. It had to be. This was the same compact, cloak-and-interdictor trick the Chimaera had run into near the planet Batuu as the would-be conquerors experimented with ways of isolating Imperial worlds and blocking access to the Unknown Regions.
Only that experiment had been out near the border between Wild Space and the Unknown Regions. What were they doing here, nearly the entire way across the Empire?
“Contact!” Hammerly called, her voice tight. “Ship debris bearing zero-one-eight by twelve; distance, two kilometers. Material and design consistent with an Allanar N3 light freighter.”
“Lieutenant Pyrondi: Ion cannons,” Thrawn ordered. His voice was its usual calm, but Faro could hear the edge beneath it. He recognized the implications of running into a Grysk-style interdictor cylinder this deep in the Empire as well as she did. “Saturate the area midway between us and the debris.”
“What’s going on?” Ronan demanded, a slight quaver in his voice as the Chimaera’s ion cannons began spitting out a barrage. “What happened?”
“Commodore?” Thrawn invited.
“It’s a device we tangled with out in Wild Space,” Faro told him. “It generates a gravity well like the one from an Interdictor Star Destroyer, only smaller and with a more limited range.”
“I see,” Ronan said, staring out the viewport as the Star Destroyer’s attack continued. “No, actually, I don’t see. Where is it?”
“Somewhere between us and the debris,” Faro said. “It also has a cloaking device that operates except when the gravity generator is activated.”
“A cloaking field? Just how big is this thing?”
“Not very,” Faro said. “But we should be able to find it. The Allanar hit the edge of the field coming from the transfer point; we hit it coming from the opposite direction. That gives us the approximate size of the gravity field as well as the approximate point of origin.”
“Assuming the debris has not moved significantly since the Allanar was attacked, and that the gravity field is reasonably symmetric,” Thrawn added. “We shall know soon enough. Lieutenant, widen your aim a bit. Commander Hammerly, watch for a splash pattern.”
The last time they’d done this, it had taken a considerable amount of time and effort to track down the generator. This time, knowing the field’s size and approximate center, the operation went much more quickly. Pyrondi had just opened up her targeting contour when there was a barely seen splash and a flicker of light, and the interdictor cylinder popped into sight.
And it was indeed the size and shape and design that Faro remembered.
The Grysks were here.
Ronan bit out a startled curse. “What in the name—?”
“Cease fire,” Thrawn ordered. “Sensors and weapons on full alert. There will be a hidden ship or observation post somewhere nearby.”
“No, that can’t be,” Ronan muttered, the words coming out mechanically as he stared at the cylinder. “You can’t create a gravity well and a cloaking field at the same time.”
“Like I said, except when the gravity well is running,” Faro re
minded him, her eyes flicking between the viewport and the sensor displays. With all the rocks and gravel floating out there scattering their sensor sweeps, this was going to be a challenge. “Now be quiet—we have work to do.”
“Perhaps not as much as you fear, Commodore,” Thrawn said calmly. “The debris field will impede sensors, certainly. But its very presence will also…?”
Faro smiled. Indeed. For once, maybe, the Grysks had outsmarted themselves. “The debris will also show the subtle gravitational effects caused by an invisible mass nearby,” she said. “Hammerly?”
“On it,” Hammerly said briskly. “Mapping, analyzing—Admiral! Behind us!”
Faro twisted her head around to the rear display. One of the larger asteroids had seemingly exploded, sending a cloud of rock in all directions.
Only it wasn’t an asteroid, and the debris was nothing more than the remains of a camouflage shell.
And appearing now through the dispersing rock cloud were the dual hulls and multiple-breaking-wave design of a Grysk warship.
“Admiral, we’re under attack!” Ronan yelped, jabbing a finger at the ship moving toward them.
“Not yet,” Thrawn said, his voice still calm. “We still have a few more moments before they’re in range. Commander Hammerly, continue your sweep.”
“Continue your sweep?” Ronan demanded. “What are you talking about? It’s there, Thrawn—it’s right there.”
“Calm yourself, Assistant Director,” Thrawn said. “That vessel is a warship. We seek an observation or research post. That is where we will find our answers.”
“You mean if they don’t blow us out of space before that?” Ronan snarled. “You haven’t even turned to face them.”
“There’s time for that,” Thrawn assured him. “Commander?”
“A moment, sir,” Hammerly said, peering closely at her displays. “I think we’ve almost—got it, sir. Bearing—”
“I see it,” Thrawn said. “Lieutenant Pyrondi, on my mark fire a full ion salvo at Commander Hammerly’s location. The moment the salvo is away, Lieutenant Agral, you will swing the Chimaera around toward the approaching ship, dropping the bow as we turn to present our dorsal surface to them.”