by Timothy Zahn
"I wonder," Tierce said thoughtfully. "You should never underestimate what people will do out of pride."
"No," Disra said significantly. "Or out of arrogance, either." Tierce's eyes narrowed fractionally. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means you've pushed things too far," Disra said flatly. "Dangerously far. In case you've forgotten, Flim's job was to inspire the Empire's military and bring them solidly into line behind us. It was never part of the plan to openly provoke the New Republic this way."
"I've already explained Coruscant has no legal basis for action—"
"And you think that will stop them?" Disra shot back. "You really think fine points of the law will make any difference to terrified aliens who think Grand Admiral Thrawn is breathing down their necks? Bad enough that you talked me into letting Flim show himself to the Diamalan Senator. But now this?" He waved a hand in the direction of the planet.
"The Diamalan incident accomplished exactly what it was intended to," Tierce said coolly. "It created doubt and consternation, stirred up old animosities a bit more, and silenced some of the last calming voices the Rebellion still has."
"Wonderful—except that now this little trick has completely negated that one," Disra countered.
"How can anyone wonder if the Diamala are lying when a whole planet has seen Thrawn?" Tierce smiled. "Ah, but that's the point: the whole planet hasn't seen him. Only the Lord Superior's handpicked delegation will have seen him; the rest have only their word that Thrawn has returned. And since part of his message to the neighboring systems will be that Kroctar is under Thrawn's protection, his sighting will be as suspect as the Diamal's."
"You always make it sound so reasonable," Disra bit out. "But there's more here than you're letting on. I want to know what."
Tierce lifted his eyebrows. "That sounded like a threat."
"It was half a threat," Disra corrected him coldly. "Here's the other half." Reaching into his tunic, he drew the tiny blaster concealed there.
He never even got a chance to aim it. Before the weapon was even clear, Tierce had thrown himself onto the conference table, the momentum of his leap carrying him sliding headfirst on elbow and hip toward Disra across the polished laminate. Reflexively, Disra leaped to his right, trying to move out of reach of the approaching hands; but even as he lifted the blaster, Tierce rolled partway over and grabbed the center comm display, using it as a pivot point to both change direction and also roll him onto his back, swiveling his feet around in front of him, and then pushing off of it to increase his speed.
The maneuver caught Disra flat-footed. Before he could move again to correct his aim, one of Tierce's feet caught the blaster squarely across the side of the barrel, sending it spinning across the room.
Disra took a staggering step back, the bitter taste of defeat choking his throat, hands lifted in a futile gesture of defense as Tierce hopped off the table. He'd had one chance to wrest control of this grand scheme back from the Guardsman, and he'd muffed it.
And now Tierce would kill him.
But once again, Tierce surprised him. "That was extremely foolish, Your Excellency," the other said calmly, crossing the room and retrieving the blaster. "The sound of a shot would have had a squad of stormtroopers down on you in nothing flat."
Disra took a careful breath, lowering his hands. "That works both ways," he managed, knowing even as he said it that the Guardsman wouldn't need to bother with anything so crude and noisy as a blaster if he wanted to kill him.
But Tierce merely shook his head. "You insist on misunderstanding," he said.
"And you insist on working behind my back," Disra countered. "Gaining a system or two isn't worth the risk of scaring Coruscant into action. What's going on that you aren't telling me?" Tierce seemed to measure him with his eyes. "All right," he said. "Have you ever heard the phrase
'the Hand of Thrawn'?"
Disra shook his head. "No."
"You answered that rather quickly."
"I was working on this plan long before you came on the scene," Disra reminded him tartly. "I found and read everything in the Imperial records that pertained even remotely to Thrawn."
"Including everything in the Emperor's secret files?"
"Once I was able to find a way into them, yes." Disra frowned as a sudden thought struck him. "Is this what your little trip to Yaga Minor last month was really all about?" Tierce shrugged. "The primary purpose was exactly as we discussed: to alter their copy of the Caamas Document to match the changes you'd already made in the Bastion copy. But as long as I'd broken into the system anyway, I did spend some time looking for references."
"Of course," Disra said. Nothing so crude as a direct lie, simply a conveniently neglected bit of the truth. "And?"
Tierce shook his head. "Nothing. As far as any existing Imperial record is concerned, the term might not even exist."
"What makes you think it ever did?"
Tierce looked him straight in the eye. "Because I heard Thrawn mention it once aboard the Chimaera. In the context of the Empire's ultimate and total victory." Suddenly the room felt very cold. "You mean like a superweapon?" Disra asked carefully.
"Another Death Star or Sun Crusher?"
"I don't know," Tierce said. "I don't think so. Superweapons were more the Emperor's or Admiral Daala's style, not Thrawn's."
"And he did just fine without them," Disra conceded. "Come to think of it, he did always seem more interested in conquest than wholesale slaughter. Besides, if there were another superweapon lying around, the Rebels would almost certainly have found it by now."
"Most likely," Tierce said. "Unfortunately, we can't make it quite that final. Did your extensive research into Thrawn's history happen to turn up the names Parck and Niriz?"
"Parck was the Imperial captain who found Thrawn on a deserted planet at the edge of Unknown Space and brought him back to the Emperor," Disra said. "Niriz was the captain of the Imperial Star Destroyer Admonitor, which Thrawn took back into the Unknown Regions on his supposed mapping expedition a few years later."
" 'Supposed'?"
Disra sniffed. "It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Thrawn tried his hand at Imperial Court politics and got his fingers burned. No matter what they called it, his assignment to the Unknown Regions was a form of exile. Pure and simple."
"Yes, that was the general consensus among the Royal Guard at the time, too," Tierce said thoughtfully. "I wonder now if there could have been more to it than that. Regardless, the point is that neither Parck nor Niriz—nor the Admonitor, for that matter—ever returned to official duty with the Empire. Not even when Thrawn himself came back."
Disra shrugged. "Killed in action?"
"Or else they did come back, but are in hiding somewhere," Tierce said. "Perhaps standing guard over this Hand of Thrawn."
"Which is what?" Disra demanded. "You say it's not a superweapon. So what is it?"
"I didn't say it wasn't a superweapon," Tierce countered. "I just said superweapons weren't Thrawn's style. Personally, I see only two likely possibilities. Did you ever hear of a woman named Mara Jade?"
Disra searched his memory. "I don't think so."
"She currently works with the smuggling chief Talon Karrde," Tierce said. "But at the height of the Empire, she was one of Palpatine's best undercover agents, with a title of Emperor's Hand." Emperor's Hand. The Hand of Thrawn. "Interesting possibility," Disra said thoughtfully. "But if the Hand is a person, where has he or she been all these years?"
"Gone to ground, too, perhaps," Tierce said. "The second possibility's even more intriguing. Remember that above all else Thrawn was a master strategist. What could be more his style than to leave behind a master plan for victory?"
Disra snorted. "Which after ten years of Imperial reverses would be totally useless."
"I wouldn't dismiss it quite so quickly," Tierce warned. "A strategist like Thrawn didn't see battle plans solely in terms of numbers of warships and locations of pi
cket lines. He also considered geopolitical balances, cultural and psychological blind spots, historical animosities and rivalries—any number of factors. Factors which could very likely still be exploited." Absently, Disra rubbed his hand where Tierce's kick had jammed the blaster painfully against the skin. On the face of it, it was absurd.
And yet, he'd read the history of Thrawn's accomplishments. Had seen the record of the man's genius. Could he really have created a battle plan that could still be used ten years and a thousand defeats later? "What about that five-year campaign I found in his files?" he asked. "Was there something in there I missed?"
"No." Tierce shook his head. "I've already been through it. All that is is a rough outline of what he was planning to do after the Bilbringi confrontation. If the Hand of Thrawn is a master strategy, he hid it away somewhere else."
"With Captain Niriz and the Admonitor, you think?" Disra suggested.
"Perhaps," Tierce said. "Or else the ultimate victory lies with a person called the Hand. Either way, there's someone out there who has something we want."
Disra smiled tightly. Suddenly, it was clear as polished transparisteel. "And so in order to lure that someone into the open, you've decided to parade our decoy around a little." Tierce inclined his head slightly. "Under the circumstances, I think the risks are worth taking."
"Perhaps," Disra murmured. "It assumes, of course, that it wasn't all just a load of tall talk." The corner of Tierce's lip twitched. "I was aboard the Chimaera with the Grand Admiral for several months, Disra. Before that, I watched him from the Emperor's side for nearly two years. Never in all that time did I hear him make a promise he wasn't able to carry out. If he said the Hand of Thrawn was the key to ultimate victory, then it was. You can count on it."
"Let's just hope whoever's holding the key comes out of hiding before Coruscant gets nervous enough to take action," Disra said. "What do we do first?"
"What you do first is get ready to welcome the Kroctari back into the Empire," Tierce said. Placing Disra's blaster on the table, he pulled a datacard from his tunic and set it down beside the weapon. "Here's a brief rundown on the species in general and Lord Superior Bosmihi in particular," he continued, starting toward the door. "It's all the data we had on board, I'm afraid."
"It'll do," Disra said, stepping to the table and picking up the card. "Where are you going?"
"I thought I'd join Captain Dorja in escorting the delegation from the hangar bay," Tierce said.
"I'm rather looking forward to seeing your negotiation skills in action." Without waiting for a reply, he stepped through the door and was gone. "And to seeing whether or not the Royal Guardsman and con man still need the Moff?" Disra muttered aloud after him. Probably. But that was all right. Let him watch—let Flim watch, too, if he liked. He'd show them. By the time the Kroctarian delegation went home, both of them would be absolutely convinced that Disra wasn't just some tired old politician whose brilliant scheme had somehow gotten away from him. He was a vital part of this triumvirate, a part that was not going to simply fade into the background. Especially not with a guarantee of ultimate victory almost within their grasp. He had started this; and by the Emperor's blood, he would be with it to the very end. Sliding the datacard into his datapad, he tucked his blaster away into its hidden holster and began to read.
* * *
There were no planets visible from the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Tyrannic. No planets, no asteroids, no ships, no stars. Nothing but complete, uniform blackness. Except for one spot. Off to starboard, barely visible within Captain Nalgol's view, was a small disk of dirty white. A tiny sliver of the comet head the Tyrannic was riding beside, peeking through the ship's cloaking shield.
They'd been flying like this for a month now, completely blind and deaf to the rest of the universe outside their insular existence.
For Nalgol, it wasn't really a problem. He'd pulled duty on one of the Empire's most distant listening posts when he was a cadet, and the mere fact that there was nothing outside to look at didn't bother him. But not all of the crew were as tough as he was. The vids and combat practice rooms were getting triple duty these days, and he'd heard rumors that some of the probe ship pilots were being offered huge bribes to take a passenger or two on their trips outside the darkness. At the height of the Empire's power, Star Destroyer crews had been the elite of the galaxy. But that glory was far behind them; and if something didn't break soon, Nalgol was going to have a serious personnel problem on his hands.
Outside, there was a brilliant flash from the upper portside quadrant. Relatively brilliant, at least: the glowing drive from one of their probe ships, carefully made up to look like a battered old mining tug. Nalgol watched as it circled around to vanish beneath the arrowhead-shaped hull toward the hangar bay.
No, the unremitting blackness didn't bother him. Still, he had to admit it had felt good to stretch his eyes there for a moment.
There was a step on the command walkway beside him. "Preliminary report from Probe Two, sir," Intelligence Chief Oissan said in that tone of voice that always sounded to Nalgol like someone smacking his lips. "The warship count around Bothawui has gone up to fifty-six."
"Fifty-six?" Nalgol echoed, taking the other's datapad and skimming the numbers. If he remembered the list from yesterday's probe run— "Four new Diamalan ships?"
"Three Diamalan, one Mon Calamari," Oissan said. "Probably there to counter the six Opquis ships that arrived two days ago."
Nalgol shook his head in wordless amazement. From the beginning he'd had quiet but serious doubts about this mission—the idea that the Bothan homeworld would become a focal point for any military activity, let alone a confrontation of this magnitude, had been ludicrous on the face of it. But Grand Admiral Thrawn himself had apparently come up with this scheme; and plagued if old red-eyes hadn't been right.
"Very good," he told Oissan. "I want Probe Two's complete report filled within the next two hours."
"Understood, Captain." Oissan seemed to hesitate. "I don't mean to pry into top-level affairs, sir, but at some point I'm going to need to know what's going on out there if I'm to do my job properly."
"I wish I could help you, Colonel," Nalgol said candidly. "But I really don't know a lot myself."
"But you did receive a special briefing from Grand Admiral Thrawn at Moff Disra's palace, didn't you?" the other persisted.
"It hardly qualified as a briefing," Nalgol said. "He basically just gave us our assignments and told us to trust him." He nodded in the direction of the comet and the other two Star Destroyers riding cloaked alongside it. "Our part is simple: we wait until all those ships out there have battered themselves and the planet into as much rubble as they're going to, then we come out of cloak and finish them off."
"Finishing off Bothawui will be a good trick," Oissan commented dryly. "I doubt the Bothans have scrimped on their planetary shield system. Thrawn give any idea how he's going to handle that?"
"Not to me," Nalgol said. "Under the circumstances, though, I'm inclined to assume he knows what he's doing."
"I suppose," Oissan muttered. "I wonder how he got all those ships to face off like that?"
"Best guess is that rumor you picked up from your fringe contacts just before we cloaked," Nalgol said. "That thing about a group of Bothans having been involved in the destruction of Caamas."
"Hardly seems something worth getting worked up over," Oissan sniffed. "Especially not after all this time."
"Aliens get worked up over the strangest things," Nalgol reminded him, feeling his lip twist with contempt. "And from the evidence out there, I'd say Thrawn found exactly the right hot spot to hit them with."
"So it would seem," Oissan conceded. "How are we supposed to know when to come out of cloak and attack?"
"I think a full-scale battle out there will be fairly obvious," Nalgol said dryly. "Anyway, Thrawn's last message before we went under the cloak said there would be an Imperial strike team on Bothawui soon, and that they
'd be feeding us periodic data via spark transmission."
"That'll be useful," Oissan said thoughtfully. "Of course, knowing Thrawn, he'll probably have the battle timed for the comet's closest approach to Bothawui, to give us the maximum benefit of surprise. That's about a month away."
"That makes sense," Nalgol agreed. "Though how he's going to get them to follow that tight a timetable I haven't a clue."
"Neither do I." Oissan smiled tightly. "That's probably why he's a Grand Admiral and we're not." Nalgol smiled back. "Indeed," he said; and with that admission, one more layer of his private doubts seemed to melt away. Yes, Thrawn had proved himself in the past. Many, many times. However this magic of his worked, it was apparently still working.
And under the spell of Thrawn's genius, the Empire was about to get some of its own back. And that was really all Nalgol cared about.
"Thank you, Colonel," he said, handing back the other's datapad. "You may return to your duties. Before you do, though, I want you to check with Probe Control about whether we can increase our probe flights to twice a day without drawing unwanted attention."
"Yes, sir," Oissan said with another tight smile. "After all, we wouldn't want to miss out on our grand entrance."
Nalgol turned to gaze out at the blackness again. "We won't miss it," he promised softly. "Not a chance."
CHAPTER
2
From somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind came an insistent warbling; and with a jolt, Luke Skywalker snapped out of his Jedi hibernation trance. "Okay, Artoo," he told the droid as he rolled out of his bunk, and took a moment to reorient himself. Right; he was aboard Mara Jade's ship, the Jade's Fire, heading toward the Nirauan system. The system where Mara herself had disappeared nearly two weeks ago. "Okay, I'm awake," he added, flexing his fingers and toes and working moisture back into his mouth. "We almost there?"
The droid twittered an affirmative as Luke snagged his boots, a twitter that was echoed from the direction of the cockpit. The echo was Mara's Veeone pilot droid, who had been flying the Fire ever since Luke and Artoo had come aboard at the Duroon rendezvous point, and who up till now had refused to let either of them anywhere near the ship's controls.
