by Timothy Zahn
There was a beep from the turbolift comlink. “Moff Disra?”
“Yes?”
“There’s a transmission coming in for you, Your Excellency, under a private encryption designated Usk-51.”
Disra felt his stomach try to cramp. Of all the stupid, brainless—“Thank you,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “Have it transferred to Conference Room 68, and make sure it’s not monitored.”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
Tierce was frowning at him. “That’s not—?”
“It certainly is,” Disra bit out. The turbolift doors opened—“Come on. And stay out of sight.”
Two minutes later they were in the conference room with the door privacy-sealed behind them. Activating the comm display set into the center of the table, Disra pulled the proper encryption datacard from his collection and slid it into the slot. He keyed for reception—
“It’s about time,” Captain Zothip spat, his eyes flashing, his bushy blond beard bristling with anger. “Don’t you think I’ve got better things to do than—?”
“What!” Disra barked. Zothip’s head jerked back, his own tirade breaking off midway in sudden confusion. “Do … you … think … you’re … doing?” Disra continued into the silence, biting out each word like the crack of a rotten snapstick. “How dare you take such an insane risk?”
“Never mind your precious image,” Zothip growled, some of his insolence starting to come back. “If consorting with pirates is suddenly an embarrassment for you—”
“Embarrassment is not the issue here,” Disra said icily. “I’m thinking about our two necks, and whether we get to keep them. Or hadn’t you noticed how many relays there are in this transmission?”
“No kidding,” Zothip said with a sniff. “And here I thought it was just your wonderful Imperial comm equipment kicking ions again. So where are you, out at your vacation home counting your money?”
“Hardly,” Disra said. “I’m aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer.”
Zothip’s face seemed to darken. “If that’s supposed to impress me, you’d better try again. I’ve about had my fill of your precious Star Destroyers.”
“Really.” Disra smiled coldly. “Let me guess. You got overconfident, went in blazing, and Admiral Pellaeon clipped your tail feathers for you.”
“Don’t mock me, Disra,” Zothip warned. “Don’t ever mock me. I lost a Kaloth battlecruiser and eight hundred good men to that Vader-ripped katchni. And the payment’s going to come out of somebody’s hide. Pellaeon’s, or yours.”
“Don’t be absurd,” Disra said scornfully. “And don’t try to blame it on me. I warned you not to actually engage the Chimaera. All you were supposed to do was make him think Bel Iblis was attacking.”
“And how did you expect I was supposed to do that?” Zothip shot back. “Insult his family? Transmit lists of ancient Corellian curses?”
“You pushed an Imperial too hard and he pushed back,” Disra said. “Consider it a useful lesson painfully learned. And hope you don’t need to learn it again.”
Zothip glared. “Is that a threat?” he demanded.
“It’s a warning,” Disra snapped. “Our partnership’s been extremely profitable for both of us. I’ve had the chance to play havoc with New Republic shipping; you’ve had the chance to collect the merchandise from those ships.”
“And have taken all the risks,” Zothip put in.
Disra shrugged. “Regardless, I’d hate to see such a valuable relationship dissolve over something this trivial.”
“Trust me, Disra,” Zothip said softly. “When our relationship dissolves you’ll find a lot more than that for you to hate.”
“I’ll start making a list,” Disra said. “Now go lace your wounds; and next time you want to talk to me go through proper channels. This encrypt’s one of the best ever created, but nothing’s totally slice-proof.”
“The encrypt’s that good, huh?” Zothip said sardonically. “I’ll have to remember that. Should bring a good price on the open market if I ever need quick money. I’ll be in touch.”
He waved a hand offscreen, and the display blanked. “Idiot,” Disra snarled toward the empty display. “Moronic, brain-rotted idiot.”
Across the table, Tierce stirred. “I trust you’re planning to be a little more politic than that with the Kroctari,” he said.
Disra shifted his glare from the display to the Guardsman. “What, you think I should have let him cry on my shoulder? Or said ‘There, there,’ and promised to buy him a new battlecruiser?”
“The Cavrilhu Pirates would be a dangerous enemy,” Tierce warned. “Not militarily, of course, but because of what they know about you.”
“Zothip’s the only one who really knows anything,” Disra muttered. Tierce was right—he probably should have played it a little more calmly. But Zothip still shouldn’t have contacted him directly like that, especially not when he was away from the security of his office.
Regardless, he wasn’t going to admit an error in judgment in Tierce’s presence. “Don’t worry—he’s making too much out of this arrangement to toss it all over a single battlecruiser.”
“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 spinnin
g 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 picket 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, steppin
g 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.
