Thrawn

by Timothy Zahn

  Eli frowned. Here, on Cyphar’s open areas, it didn’t exactly take an ace to handle a high-cover mission. Was Thrawn expecting resistance in the form of enemy airspeeders?

  He considered asking, decided it would be just as easy to wait and see, and turned his electrobinoculars back on the diggers.

  They were making good progress. Already the long bags they were dragging behind them were starting to fill up. By the time the stormtroopers arrived, they might well be ready to scurry back across the border.

  “What’s that?” A distant voice whipped faintly across the empty field.

  Eli winced. Unless, of course, they spooked and took off sooner.

  He focused on Tanoo. The man was staring up into the night sky, fumbling a civilian set of electrobinoculars from a pouch at his waist. He lifted them up to his eyes…

  “Set on stun,” Thrawn said quietly as he drew his blaster. “I will move a hundred meters to the right and take up position beside that border-mark stone.”

  “Understood,” Eli said. Peering across the ground, he located the rough obelisk at the edge of the field.

  “You’ll stay here,” Thrawn continued. “I’ll deal with the landspeeders, while you target the raiders. Make certain none of them gets past us.”

  “Understood,” Eli said again. Twelve against two…and all twelve of the raiders had holstered blasters. Briefly, he hoped Thrawn had taken those odds into account. “Do we attack together, or does one of us start?”

  “I’ll start,” Thrawn said. “You’ll know when to open fire.”

  Eli frowned. “I’ll know? How will I—?”

  But Thrawn had already slipped out into the darkness.

  Eli mouthed a silent curse. Great. He braced the side of his blaster against the edge of the meetinghouse doorway, hoping those long-ago Academy weapons classes would come back to him.

  “It’s Lambda shuttles!” Tanoo said anxiously, his voice rising almost to a squeak. “Two of them. Everyone—back in the speeders. Come on, come on, come on.”

  “Oh, bark it down,” someone growled contemptuously. “It’s probably just that idiot Imp bringing in a late buffet dinner or something.”

  The words were barely out of his mouth when Thrawn opened fire.

  His first shot burned through the rusty plating of the rearmost of the three landspeeders, blasting the starboard-aft repulsorlift. With a metallic screech the front of the vehicle pitched up as that corner slammed onto the ground.

  The nearest raiders jerked as if they’d stepped on a static plate. Eli clenched his teeth, wondering if this was when he was supposed to make his appearance. Before he could decide Thrawn fired again, taking out the same repulsorlift on the vehicle in front of it.

  That was enough for Tanoo. Shrieking something incomprehensible he dived into the third landspeeder, the one closest to him, and tried to spin it around back toward the border.

  But with the disabled vehicles blocking the path behind him, and with the taller and stiffer stalks on either side resisting his attempts to get through them, he was having trouble breaking free. He kept trying anyway, battering at the stalks over and over, gaining a few centimeters with each lunge.

  The rest of the raiders weren’t so easily rattled. They sprinted instead toward the disabled vehicles, their long bags dragging and bouncing behind them, yanking out their blasters and firing in the general vicinity of Thrawn’s concealment as they ran. Eli tensed, but they were in motion and none of them seemed to be particularly good with their weapons, and all the bolts went wild. The raiders tumbled into cover behind the landspeeders and dropped to their knees, ducking lower as Thrawn shifted to a standard rapid-fire pattern designed to keep an enemy pinned down. The raiders responded by popping their heads up at random and squeezing off return fire.

  And as both sides settled down for battle, Eli realized that the raiders were now lined up neatly within his field of fire. Even better, pressed against the landspeeders and on their knees, they were not only stationary but also had limited capacity to move or dodge.

  Eli smiled tightly. Thrawn had been right: He did know when to fire.

  Lining up his blaster on the first pair, he squeezed the trigger.

  The stun setting had a wider effective range than standard blasterfire, permitting each shot to take down two of the raiders. With their attention on Thrawn and his louder, more dangerous fire, the conspirators lost six of their number to Eli’s attack before the rest suddenly woke up to the new threat. Instantly they shifted their fire toward the meetinghouse, forcing Eli to throw himself sideways to avoid getting hit. He slammed onto the ground on his left shoulder, jarring his whole body and momentarily throwing off his aim.

  It was, in retrospect, the wrong move. Up to that point his position had been somewhat obscured; now he was out in the open. Shots hammered the meetinghouse and the ground around him as he scuttled as quickly as he could on elbows and knees toward another border stone to the meetinghouse’s left.

  Five meters into his mad scramble, he belatedly realized he probably should have gone the other way, past the raiders’ defense line, and tried instead to reach Thrawn. There, the two of them could have worked in unison to hold off their opponents until the reinforcements arrived from the Thunder Wasp.

  Too late for that now. Swearing under his breath, Eli kept going, wincing with each shot that burned through the air or sizzled into the ground nearby—

  And then, suddenly, all was silence.

  Cautiously, Eli wobbled to a halt. Still silence. Even more cautiously, he lifted his head.

  The men and women who’d been shooting at him were sprawled on the ground beside the landspeeders. Standing over them, his blaster trained on the still-trapped Tanoo, was Thrawn.

  Feeling like a fool, Eli stood up, brushed himself off as best he could, and walked over to his commander.

  “Well done, Ensign,” Thrawn said, his eyes and blaster still pointed at Tanoo. Tanoo, for his part, had abandoned his attempts to escape and was leaning resignedly over his landspeeder’s steering wheel. “Are you injured?”

  “No, sir,” Eli said, feeling his face warming. Well done? Not even close. “Sorry, sir.”

  Thrawn spared him a quick look. “Why are you sorry? You executed your part perfectly.”

  “But I didn’t get them all,” Eli pointed out. “And when they fired at me I went the wrong direction.”

  “I did not expect you to defeat them all,” Thrawn assured him. “And your decision to draw their fire away from me was what enabled me to move unnoticed to a position where I could bring a final end to their resistance.”

  “Oh,” Eli said lamely, torn between the reflexive desire to tell Thrawn that it hadn’t been a decision at all and the equally reflexive reluctance not to argue with his commanding officer when he was being complimented.

  Thrawn didn’t give him time to resolve either part of the quandary. “Come,” he said. “I expect Mr. Tanoo is ready to talk.”

  Mr. Tanoo was.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” he groaned, still draped across the steering wheel. “It was Polcery—she’s the one who came up with it.”

  “Yet you were the one who refined the pre-spice for smuggling,” Thrawn said. “Having learned the technique from your brother.”

  “They forced me,” he moaned. “I didn’t want to. But they forced me.”

  “The technique is quite interesting,” Thrawn went on, as if Tanoo hadn’t spoken. “A small change in the formulation results in a product that appears to be scarn but with the effects drastically diminished. A man who is being forced to work against his will could easily sabotage their efforts and desires. Yet you did not.”

  Tanoo raised himself from the steering wheel, and even in the darkness Eli could see the disgust in his face. He didn’t like being caught, and he especially didn’t like being caught by an alien. “You’re a clever little Imp, aren’t you? Fine; you caught us. Now what?”

  “You will be turned over to a court for
trial.”

  “And what are you going to charge us all with?”

  “Possession of an illegal substance,” Thrawn said. “Assault on Afe villages and their inhabitants.”

  “I don’t think so,” Tanoo said. “See, there aren’t any raids going tonight—Polcery didn’t trust you not to put some stormtroopers on guard. So that’s off the list. And possession of pre-spice isn’t illegal.”

  “Really,” Thrawn said. “Ensign?”

  Eli already had his datapad out. A quick search…

  Damn it. “He’s right, sir,” he said. “Pre-spice isn’t an illegal substance. There are too many other products it can be turned into that are perfectly safe and legal.”

  “But the product you have created is illegal,” Thrawn pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Tanoo said. “But you’ll never prove it. See, that’s what the others are doing tonight instead of poking at the Cyphari. They’re hiding all our product where no one will ever find it.”

  “Perhaps.” Thrawn reached into the landspeeder and plucked the sensor from Tanoo’s belt. “Perhaps not.”

  Tanoo barked a laugh. “If you think you’re going to search the enclave looking for our supply, you can forget it. That thing’s range is only twenty meters, and it only registers pre-spice, anyway. Face it: You’ve got nothing.”

  “On the contrary, I have all I need,” Thrawn said calmly. “Twenty meters will be quite sufficient. One final question: Which of your group brought in Nightswan to advise you?”

  Tanoo’s eyes narrowed. “How did you know about him?”

  “Answer my question.”

  Tanoo pursed his lips. “It was Scath,” he said. “She knew someone who knew him and thought he could help.”

  “And so he did,” Thrawn said. “But not enough. His end will come. Yours has now arrived.”

  And with perfect timing, the two shuttles and their three accompanying TIEs swooped past overhead. The shuttles curved around and angled toward the ground near Thrawn, the starfighters rising again into low-cover and high-cover formations.

  Ten minutes later, the unconscious conspirators were aboard the first shuttle, binders firmly locked around their wrists and ankles. Eli used that time to check the landspeeders, hoping for contraband or something else that could be used against them in court.

  But aside from the material in the collection bags, there was nothing. Unless there was some tweak in local law that made possession of pre-spice illegal, and if the others really had stayed home instead of raiding across the border, then Thrawn might very well have nothing.

  “All secured, sir,” the stormtrooper commander reported as Tanoo trudged up the shuttle ramp under the blasters of a pair of watchful guards and disappeared inside. “Orders?”

  “Take the prisoners back to the enclave by way of the Afe villages I have marked,” Thrawn said, handing him a data card. “If you see any fighting there you are to intervene on the side of the Afes. Do your best to take the human attackers alive, but you are free to use deadly force if you deem it necessary.”

  “Yes, sir,” the commander said. “Do you want the other shuttle left here?”

  “It will accompany you,” Thrawn said. “There will be more prisoners before the night is over, either in the villages or in the enclave. I will keep Lieutenant Gimm; you will take the other two TIEs as escort.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stiffening briefly to attention, he strode toward the shuttles, giving orders as he went.

  A few minutes later, the shuttles were back in the sky, the TIEs flying in flanking formation. “And now, we end this,” Thrawn said, fingering the sensor he’d taken from Tanoo. “Come.”

  Lieutenant Gimm was waiting by his TIE, coming to attention as Thrawn and Eli neared him. “I’m told you need some fancy flying, Commander,” he said.

  “Indeed,” Thrawn confirmed. “Running through the ground below our feet is a vein of material that is a precursor to a spice variety called scarn.”

  The pilot stiffened a little further. “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice darkening. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “This sensor will show its presence,” Thrawn continued. “It does, however, have only a minimal range, twenty meters or less, which will require ground-level flight. The vein itself almost certainly does not run straight, but twists and turns along its length. Do you think you can follow it?”

  “May I see the sensor?”

  Thrawn handed it over. The pilot peered at it, waved it back and forth around him, then nodded. “Yes, sir, I can,” he said. “May I suggest I also take a little gunnery practice as I fly over it?”

  “Your enthusiasm is noted and appreciated, Lieutenant,” Thrawn said. “But I am told that the pre-spice runs deep in places, and I understand that a certain degree of heat is part of the refining process. We do not wish to accidentally turn it into the final, deadly product.”

  “No, sir,” the pilot said. “If you just want it mapped, I can do that.”

  “We will hardly be simply mapping, Lieutenant,” Thrawn assured him, pulling out his comlink. “As you said: gunnery practice. Lieutenant Commander Osgoode, this is Commander Thrawn. I have an interesting challenge for you.”

  —

  It was, Eli would afterward decide, the most insane military operation he’d ever seen or even heard of.

  But it worked.

  It was spectacular enough from the ground. It was probably even more so from low orbit. Gimm flew his TIE fighter low over the cropland, nearly brushing the tops of the stalks at times, then continued on over grazing lands, marshes, and more cropland. He flew in gentle curves or dizzying zigzags, wherever the trail led him, always following the line of pre-spice lurking beneath the soil.

  And following along fifty meters behind him was a blazing wave of ground-shattering flame as the cleansing fire from the Thunder Wasp’s turbolasers carved out the same path, their focal point precisely matching the TIE’s maneuvers and burning the pre-spice into oblivion.

  By morning, as Thrawn had predicted, it was over.

  —

  “What do you do?” Joko demanded. His voice shakes. “Do you attack our sovereign land at will?”

  “I have destroyed the source of the conspirators’ profits,” Thrawn said. Did the chief truly not see the pattern nor understand the result? “With the pre-spice gone, they have no further incentive to seek control over Afe land.”

  “You attacked us,” Joko repeated. “You destroyed farmland and damaged homes and water springs.”

  “If I had not destroyed all the pre-spice, the attacks would have continued.”

  “The Empire would have given us justice without destruction.”

  “Without the destruction the justice would have been temporary,” Thrawn said. “The value was too great to be ignored. The thieves would have come back. When they did, you would have lost more than just farmland.”

  “What more?” Joko demanded. “Orchards? Bridges?”

  “Lives.”

  For a few seconds Joko gazed at him in silence. But the silence was stiff, and there was bitterness beneath it. “I see your concern for my people,” he said at last. “But their lives and lands could have been protected in a different way. A better way.”

  “You may appeal my actions to Coruscant,” Thrawn said. “They may repudiate them.”

  “Yet the damage will remain,” Joko said. “I will appeal your actions. And I will pray we never meet again.”

  Vanto was waiting when Thrawn emerged from the shuttle. “Ensign Vanto,” Thrawn said. “Has Coruscant responded to my report?”

  “Yes, sir,” Vanto said, his voice dark with contempt. “I’m afraid they’re not happy with you.”

  “No doubt their unhappiness will expand when Chief Joko delivers his own reaction.”

  “Fine,” Vanto said with a resigned sigh. “They’re not just not happy. They’re furious.”

  “As expected.”

  “Which is insane,” Vanto said, his anger appearing through h
is decorum. “You ended the conflict, you exposed a criminal conspiracy, and you kept a deep vein’s worth of spice off the market. What more do they want?”

  “They want a commander who follows procedures,” Thrawn said. “They want a commander who will ask their advice.”

  “And their permission?”

  “Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “I have found that many admirals aspire to that rank because of a wish to exercise control and authority. Such leaders are threatened if officers of lower rank solve difficult problems without them.”

  “And of course, there’s always politics lurking around the corner.” Vanto eyed him thoughtfully. “What about you, Commander? Why do you seek high rank?”

  It was a question many had asked over the years. Thrawn had asked it of himself. The answer never seemed to satisfy the questioner. “Because there are problems that must be solved. Some cannot be solved by anyone except me.”

  “I see.” Vanto was silent a moment. “Senior Lieutenant Hammerly was able to stall them for a bit by telling them you were consulting with the local chief. But they expect you to call back.”

  “Of course,” Thrawn said. “I will do so immediately.”

  “What will you tell them?”

  “The truth.”

  Vanto had now asked the question. He was no more satisfied than anyone who had come before him.

  Thrawn wondered if anyone would ever be satisfied. Or would ever truly understand.

  —

  The truth.

  Eli scowled the words to himself as he strode down the Thunder Wasp’s central corridor toward his quarters. The truth. When did that ever gain anyone anything?

  Thrawn had been telling the truth pretty much since he’d arrived in Imperial space. Yet he was continually getting hauled back to Coruscant to explain himself before increasingly hostile officers’ boards. It was only through the intervention and good graces of people like Colonel Yularen that he was still even in the navy, let alone commanding his own ship.

  The truth. No, truth never gained anyone anything. All it did was anger those who preferred lies and confusion and backspinning in the hope of making themselves look better.

  As far as Eli had been able to tell, that was pretty much everyone.