"I'd have thought Corellian Gunships would be a strain on Ellor's budget, too," Dankin commented. "You think he stole them from the New Republic?"
" 'Stole' is such a harsh word," Karrde chided mildly. "I expect he considers them merely an informal loan. New Republic ships often use the line of Duros maintenance depots scattered through the Trade Spine, and Ellor has a silent interest in several of them."
"I bet there'll be some complaints about the service this time around," Aves said dryly. "By the way, are we still planning to hit that assault shuttle?"
Karrde had almost forgotten about that. "No, actually. Corvis, Balig, Lachton—power down those turbolasers. Everyone else: stand down from alert and prepare to receive Imperial inspectors."
He got acknowledgments, and turned back to find Aves staring at him. "We're not going to run?" the other asked carefully. "Not even after that?" He nodded toward the firefight blazing off to portside.
"What's happening out there has absolutely nothing to do with us," Karrde said, giving the other his best innocent look. "We're an independent freighter with a cargo of power converters. Remember?"
"Yeah, but—"
"More to the point, it might be useful to see what happens in the aftermath of this raid," Karrde went on, gazing back at the ships. With their immediate exit vector being covered by Ellor's gunships, and with the yards' capital ships too far away to reach them in time, the raiders looked well on their way to a relatively clean escape. "Listen to their communications traffic, watch their cleanup and postraid security adjustments, get an assessment of how much damage was actually done. That sort of thing." Aves didn't look convinced, but he knew better than to argue the point. "If you think we can pull it off," he said doubtfully. "I mean, with the bounty on us and all."
"This is the last place an Imperial commander would expect us to show up," Karrde assured him. "Hence, no one here will be watching for us."
"Certainly not on a ship under the command of Captain Abel Quiller," Dankin said, unstrapping and standing up. "Impatient and bombastic, right?"
"Right," Karrde said. "But don't overdo the bombastic part. We don't want any hostility toward you, just contempt."
"Got it," Dankin nodded.
He left the bridge, and Karrde turned back to gaze at the smoldering wreckage of the now stillborn Star Destroyer. An eye-catching lesson, indeed, and one that Karrde would have argued strongly against if Mazzic and Ellor had asked his advice. But they hadn't, and they'd gone ahead and done it.
And now the lot was even more strongly cast than it had been after Trogan. Because Grand Admiral Thrawn would not let this go by without a swift and violent response. And if he could trace the attack back to Mazzic . . . and from there back to him . . .
"We're not going to be able to stop here," he murmured, half to himself. "We're going to have to organize. All of us."
"What?" Aves asked.
Karrde focused on him. On that open and puzzled face, clever in its own way but neither brilliant nor intuitive. "Never mind," he told the other, smiling to take any possible sting out of the words.
He turned back to the approaching assault shuttle. And vowed that when this was over, he would find a way to get Mara back.
The last page scrolled across the display, and Thrawn looked up at the man standing at stiff attention before him. "Have you anything to add to this report, General Drost?" he asked, his voice quiet.
Far too quiet, in Pellaeon's opinion. Certainly quieter than Pellaeon's voice would have been had he been in command here. Looking out the Chimaera's viewport at the blackened wreckage that had once been a nearly completed and highly valuable Imperial Star Destroyer, it was all he could do to stand silently beside the Grand Admiral and not take Drost's head off. It was no more than the man deserved.
And Drost knew it. "No, sir," he said, his voice sounding strained.
Thrawn held his eyes a moment longer, then turned his gaze out the viewport. "Can you offer me any reason why you should not be relieved of command?"
The faintest of sighs escaped Drost's lips. "No, sir," he said again.
For a long moment the only sound was the muted background murmur of the Chimaera's bridge. Pellaeon glowered at Drost's carved-stone face, wondering what his punishment would be. At the very least, a fiasco like this ought to earn him a summary court-martial and dismissal on charges of gross negligence. At the very most . . . well, there was always Lord Vader's traditional response to incompetence.
And Rukh was already standing close at hand behind Thrawn's command chair.
"Return to your headquarters, General," Thrawn said. "The Chimaera will be leaving here in approximately thirty hours. You have until then to design and implement a new security system for the shipyards. At that point I'll make my decision about your future."
Drost glanced at Pellaeon, looked back at Thrawn. "Understood, sir," he said. "I won't fail you again, Admiral."
"I trust not," Thrawn said, the barest hint of veiled threat in his voice. "Dismissed."
Drost nodded and turned away, a freshly awakened determination in his step.
"You disapprove, Captain."
Pellaeon forced himself to meet those glowing red eyes. "I would have thought a more punitive response would be called for," he said.
"Drost is a good enough man in his way," Thrawn said evenly. "His chief weakness is a tendency to become complacent. For the immediate future, at least, he should be cured of that."
Pellaeon looked back at the wreckage outside the Chimera's viewport. "A rather expensive lesson," he said sourly.
"Yes," Thrawn agreed. "And it demonstrates precisely why I didn't want Karrde's smuggler associates stirred up."
Pellaeon frowned at him. "This was the smugglers? I assumed it was a Rebel sabotage squad."
"Drost is under that same impression," Thrawn said. "But the method and execution here were quite different from the usual Rebel pattern. Mazzic, I think, is the most likely suspect. Though there are enough Duros elements woven into the style for Ellor's group to also have been involved."
"I see," Pellaeon said slowly. This put an entirely new spin on things. "I presume that we'll be teaching them the folly of attacking the Empire."
"I would like nothing better," Thrawn agreed. "And at the height of the Empire's power I wouldn't have hesitated to do so. Unfortunately, at this point such a reaction would be counterproductive. Not only would it harden the smugglers' resolve, but would risk bringing others of the galaxy's fringe elements into open hostility against us."
"We surely don't need their assistance and services that badly," Pellaeon said. "Not now."
"Our need for such vermin has certainly been reduced," Thrawn said. "That doesn't mean we're yet in a position to abandon them entirely. But that's not really the point. The problem is the dangerous fact that those in the fringe are highly experienced at operating within official circles without any official permission to do so. Keeping them out of places like Bilbringi would require far more manpower than we have to spare at present."
Pellaeon ground his teeth. "I understand that, sir. But we can't simply ignore an attack of this magnitude."
"We won't," Thrawn promised quietly, his eyes glittering. "And when it comes, our response will be to the Empire's best advantage." He swiveled his chair to face the center of the shipyards. "In the meantime—"
"GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN!"
The shout roared through the bridge like a violent thunderclap, filling it from aft to forward and echoing back again. Pellaeon wrenched himself around, reflexively scrabbling for the blaster he wasn't wearing.
Joruus C'baoth was striding toward them across the bridge, his eyes flashing above his flowing beard. An angry radiance seemed to burn the air around him; behind him, the two stormtroopers guarding the entrance to the bridge were sprawled on the floor, unconscious or dead.
Pellaeon swallowed hard, his hand groping for and finding the reassuring presence of the ysalamir nutrient frame stretched across th
e top of the Grand Admiral's command chair. The frame rotated away from his touch as Thrawn swiveled to face the approaching Jedi Master. "You wish to speak to me, Master C'baoth?"
"They have failed, Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth snarled at him. "Do you hear me? Your commandos have failed."
"I hear you," Thrawn nodded calmly. "What have you done to my guards?"
"My men!" C'baoth snapped, his voice again reverberating around the bridge. Even without the element of surprise, the trick was an effective one. "Mine! I command the Empire, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Not you."
Thrawn turned to the side and caught the eye of the portside crew pit officer. "Call sick bay," he ordered the man. "Have them send a team."
For a few painful heartbeats Pellaeon thought C'baoth was going to object or—worse—take the crew pit officer down, too. But all of his attention seemed to be focused on Thrawn. "Your commandos have failed, Grand Admiral Thrawn," he repeated, his voice now quiet and lethal.
"I know," Thrawn said. "All of them except the major in command appear to have been killed."
C'baoth drew himself up. "Then it is time for me to take this task upon myself. You will take me to Coruscant. Now."
Thrawn nodded. "Very well, Master C'baoth. We will load my special cargo, and then we shall go."
It was clearly not the answer C'baoth was expecting. "What?" he demanded, frowning.
"I said that as soon as the special cargo has been loaded aboard the Chimaera and the other ships we'll leave here for Coruscant," Thrawn said.
C'baoth shot a look at Pellaeon, his eyes seeming to probe for the information his Jedi senses were blinded to. "What is this trick?" he growled, looking back at Thrawn.
"There is no trick," Thrawn assured him. "I've decided that a lightning thrust into the heart of the Rebellion will be the best way to shake their morale and prepare them for the next stage of the campaign. This will be that thrust."
C'baoth looked out the viewport, his eyes searching the vast reaches of the Bilbringi shipyards. His gaze swept past the blackened hulk of the Star Destroyer . . . drifted to the asteroids clustered in the central sector . . .
"Those?" he demanded, jabbing a finger toward them. "Are those your special cargo?"
"You're the Jedi Master," Thrawn said. "You tell me."
C'baoth glared at him, and Pellaeon held his breath. The Grand Admiral was baiting him, Pellaeon knew—a rather dangerous game, in his opinion. The only people who knew precisely what Thrawn had in mind for those asteroids were currently protected by ysalamiri. "Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn," C'baoth said. "I will."
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, and the lines in his face sharpened with a depth of mental strain Pellaeon hadn't seen in the Jedi Master for a long time. He watched the other, wondering what he was up to . . . and suddenly, he understood. Out there, around the asteroids, were hundreds of officers and techs who had worked on the project, each of them with his own private speculations as to what the whole thing was about. C'baoth was reaching out to all those minds, trying to draw out those speculations and compile them into a complete picture—
"No!" he snapped suddenly, turning his flashing eyes on Thrawn again. "You can't destroy Coruscant. Not until I have my Jedi."
Thrawn shook his head. "I have no intention of destroying Coruscant—"
"You lie!" C'baoth cut him off, jabbing an accusing finger at him. "You always lie to me. But no more. No more. I command the Empire, and all its forces."
He raised his hands above his head, an eerie blue-white coronal sheen playing about them. Pellaeon cringed despite himself, remembering the lightning bolts C'baoth had thrown at them in the crypt on Wayland. But no lightning came. C'baoth simply stood there, his hands clutching at empty air, his eyes gazing toward infinity. Pellaeon frowned at him . . . and he was just considering asking C'baoth what he was talking about when he happened to glance down into the portside crew pit.
The crewers were sitting stiffly in their chairs, their backs parade-ground straight, their hands folded in their laps, their eyes staring blankly through their consoles. Behind them, the officers were equally stiff, equally motionless, equally oblivious. The starboard crew pit was the same as was the aft bridge. And on the consoles Pellaeon could see, which should have been active with incoming reports from other sectors of the ship, the displays had all gone static.
It was a moment Pellaeon had expected and dreaded since that first visit to Wayland. C'baoth had taken command of the Chimaera.
"Impressive," Thrawn said into the brittle silence. "Very impressive indeed. And what do you propose to do now?"
"Need I repeat myself?" C'baoth said, his voice trembling slightly with obvious strain. "I will take this ship to Coruscant. To take my Jedi, not to destroy them."
"It's a minimum of five days to Coruscant from here," Thrawn said coldly. "Five days during which you'll have to maintain your control of the Chimaera's thirty-seven thousand crewers. Longer, of course, if you intend for them to actually fight at the end of that voyage. And if you intend for us to arrive with any support craft, that figure of thirty-seven thousand will increase rather steeply."
C'baoth snorted contemptuously. "You doubt the power of the Force, Grand Admiral Thrawn?"
"Not at all," Thrawn said. "I merely present the problems you and the Force will have to solve if you continue with this course of action. For instance, do you know where the Coruscant sector fleet is based, or the number and types of ships making it up? Have you thought about how you will neutralize Coruscant's orbital battle stations and ground-based systems? Do you know who is in command of the planet's defenses at present, and how he or she is likely to deploy the available forces? Have you considered Coruscant's energy field? Do you know how best to use the strategic and tactical capabilities of an Imperial Star Destroyer?"
"You seek to confuse me," C'baoth accused. "Your men—my men—know the answers to all those questions."
"To some of them, yes," Thrawn said. "But you cannot learn the answers. Not all of them. Certainly not quickly enough."
"I control the Force," C'baoth repeated angrily. But to Pellaeon's ear there was a hint of pleading in the tone. Like a child throwing a tantrum that he didn't really expect to get him anywhere . . .
"No," Thrawn said, his voice abruptly soothing. Perhaps he, too, had picked up on C'baoth's tone. "The galaxy is not yet ready for you to lead, Master C'baoth. Later, when order has been restored, I will present it to you to govern as you please. But that time is not yet."
For a long moment C'baoth remained motionless, his mouth working half invisibly behind his flowing beard. Then, almost reluctantly, he lowered his arms; and as he did so, the bridge was filled with muffled gasps and groans and the scraping of boots on steel decking as the crewers were released from the Jedi Master's control. "You will never present the Empire to me," C'baoth told Thrawn. "Not of your own will."
"That may depend on your ability to maintain that which I am in the process of re-creating," Thrawn said.
"And which will not come to be at all without you?"
Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. "You're the Jedi Master. As you gaze into the future, can you see a future Empire arising without me?"
"I see many possible futures," C'baoth said. "In not all of them do you survive."
"An uncertainty faced by all warriors," Thrawn nodded. "But that was not what I asked."
C'baoth smiled thinly. "Never assume you are indispensable to my Empire, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Only I am that."
He sent his gaze leisurely around the bridge, then drew himself to his full height. "For now, however, I am pleased that you should lead my forces into battle." He looked back sharply at Thrawn. "You may lead; but you will not destroy Coruscant. Not until I have my Jedi."