Treason - Timothy Zahn

by Star Wars

  Faro frowned, searching her memory. As far as she’d been able to see, the grallocs simply shoved off the hulls and fluttered away to safety. Obviously, Thrawn had seen something more. “No, sir, not really,” she admitted. “Once the attack failed, I was focused on assessing potential damage to the ships.”

  “Commander Hammerly, put the sensor recordings on the monitor,” Thrawn ordered. “Let us have another look.”

  Faro watched the repeats closely. On the third attack, she thought she saw the pattern.

  On the fourth she was sure of it.

  “The gralloc follows the ion splash pattern as it runs away,” she said.

  “Very good,” Thrawn said. “Commander: Replay the recordings. Commodore: Speculation?”

  Faro frowned at the display as Hammerly ran the recordings again. “I can’t tell, sir,” she admitted. “It could be that the burst is confusing it, like the way some insects track along a bright glow rod thinking it’s a planetary moon. Or it could be feeding on the ions themselves.”

  “Assistant Director?” Thrawn invited, turning to Ronan. “Have you any thoughts?”

  “My thought is that this is your problem, not mine,” Ronan said tartly. “My other thought is that you’re wasting time.” He stopped, and again it seemed to Faro that he was forcing a shift in mental gears. “But it’s your mission, and your time,” he continued in a calmer tone. “If you want to spend it advancing the cause of Imperial knowledge instead of flat-out killing the things, that’s your business.”

  “I appreciate your indulgence,” Thrawn said. “Lieutenant Pyrondi, have your crews prepare targeting solutions for the laser cannons. Assistant Director Ronan would like to see what it takes to kill one.”

  * * *

  —

  Hitting a freighter with an ion cannon burst would put the ship out of commission for anything from a few minutes to a couple of hours, but it rarely caused permanent damage. Not so the blast from a laser cannon. As a result, the parameters Thrawn set for the Chimaera’s firing crews severely limited where they could shoot, how rapidly they could shoot, and at what power settings they could shoot.

  The result was even less helpful than the ion tests. In two hours, the Chimaera was able to find only three grallocs sufficiently in the clear for a shot, and the creatures’ erratic flight patterns caused all three of those shots to miss.

  “Shall we switch to turbolasers now?” Ronan asked with an air of strained patience as the last targeted gralloc ducked out of sight and range behind a YT-2400 freighter. “Putting in a wider blast profile might at least enable you to singe a wing.”

  “Admiral!” Hammerly called urgently. “Allanar N3 freighter bearing two forty-seven by thirty-three—erratic maneuvering, hyperdrive spinning up. I make four to six grallocs attached to its hull.”

  “They’ve scrambled its power and control cables,” Ronan bit out. “If it jumps now—”

  “Ion cannons,” Thrawn snapped. “Target Allanar N3 and fire.”

  But it was too late. Even as the Chimaera sent a cluster of ion bursts toward the stricken ship, there was a flicker of pseudomotion and the Allanar vanished into hyperspace.

  Ronan swore under his breath. “And one more lost. Probably before it even off-loaded its cargo.”

  Faro felt her eyes narrow. “Its cargo?” she asked, turning to face Ronan. “Is that all you care about? Its cargo?”

  “And its crew, too, of course,” Ronan said stiffly, sending her glare straight back at her. “I’m not a monster.”

  “No, of course not,” Faro said, pitching her tone to be just shy of insubordination.

  “How many ships have been lost this way?” Thrawn asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ronan said, turning his glare on Thrawn. “Too many. What does it matter?”

  “And they always disappear?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Ronan demanded. “Of course they disappear. The cursed grallocs continue chewing through the power and control cables until the hyperdrive fails and they’re lost in interstellar space.”

  “That seems counterproductive for the grallocs,” Thrawn commented. “Attacking a part of the ship that will strand themselves as well as their food source.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, grallocs are not exactly an intelligent species.”

  “Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “But I believe you were suggesting a shift to turbolaser fire?”

  “A shift to—?” Ronan’s nose twitched, and Faro felt a flicker of malicious amusement. Thrawn was better at revisiting the thread of an interrupted conversation than most people expected, often to their confusion. “Oh. No, actually, I was being facetious.”

  “Ah,” Thrawn said. “But you’re right. It’s time to switch to a new strategy.” He raised his voice. “Captain Dobbs? Have you been observing?”

  “Yes, sir.” The senior TIE Defender pilot’s voice came over the bridge speakers.

  Faro frowned. She’d completely missed the point where Thrawn had called Dobbs into the conversation.

  “Your opinion?” Thrawn asked.

  “It’ll be tricky, sir,” Dobbs said. “They’re pretty fast and way more maneuverable than any starfighter I’ve ever seen. But I think I can get one for you.”

  “Very good, Captain,” Thrawn said. “Launch when ready. We’ll find you a target.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are you doing?” Ronan asked. “Who’s Captain Dobbs?”

  “Captain Benj Dobbs is the current commander of my TIE Defender squadron,” Thrawn said.

  Faro winced to herself. The current commander, replacing Captain Vult Skerris, whose innate arrogance had gotten him killed in the recent starfighter battle over Lothal.

  Unfortunately, Skerris’s arrogance had been matched by superb combat skill. Neither Dobbs nor any of the other Defender pilots were anywhere near that level.

  And that could be a problem. Once Thrawn solved this gralloc problem and got clear of Tarkin’s and Krennic’s little spitting contest, the Chimaera would almost certainly be going back into combat.

  Faro could only hope Dobbs and his pilots would rise to whatever level was required.

  * * *

  —

  Ronan had seen demonstrations of Thrawn’s prized TIE Defenders once or twice before. He hadn’t been impressed.

  He was even less impressed now.

  The pilot—Dobbs—was competent enough, swooping around and through the mass of drifting ships, rather like an oversized gralloc himself, only with the Defenders’ trademark three wings instead of the grallocs’ two. Every time Thrawn’s sensor officer fed him coordinates, he was on it, chasing after the target with steady focus and an almost grim determination.

  But focus and determination were poor substitutes for success. After two hours of trying, Dobbs was no closer to that goal than he’d been when he launched.

  Meanwhile, the grand admiral himself had apparently lost interest in the whole thing. He’d wandered off barely ten minutes into the proceedings, conferring with Commodore Faro down in one of the crew pits, abandoning Ronan to watch the pointless exercise alone.

  Top-level naval commanders. Stuffed-uniform-useless, every single one of them.

  Ronan took a deep breath. Every instinct within him was screaming at the inefficiency of this operation, from Thrawn’s fascination with gralloc minutiae, to the wasted efforts with the ion cannons, to the failure of the Defender pilot to bring down his quarry. Efficiency was what Director Krennic demanded of his people, and Ronan had spent years honing his own abilities in that area.

  But that wasn’t his purpose aboard the Chimaera. Yes, he wanted Thrawn to solve the gralloc problem; but not in the quickest and most effective way possible. The longer the grand admiral dragged out these preliminaries, the better the chance he would run down the clock on Direc
tor Krennic’s conditions.

  At which point, those badly needed Defender funds would go safely and securely back to their proper home at Stardust.

  “Your opinion, Assistant Director?”

  Ronan jerked. With his eyes on Dobbs and his thoughts on the general incompetence that pressed in on Stardust from all sides, he hadn’t noticed Thrawn come up behind him. “As I said two hours ago, this is a waste of time,” he said. “Even your fancy Defender can’t catch them.”

  “I agree,” Thrawn said. “But that is largely because the grallocs wish to avoid him.”

  Ronan snorted. “Of course they wish to avoid him. They see him as a threat.”

  “And therein lies the key,” Thrawn said again. “Commodore?”

  “Lieutenant Fentaugh signals ready, Admiral,” Faro called from the crew pit.

  “Launch.”

  Ronan frowned. Launch? He looked back out the forward viewport.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later a second TIE Defender streaked into view from the hangar bay in the Chimaera’s belly. It shot past the Star Destroyer’s bow and headed out into the cluster of ships. “What’s this for?” he asked. “Are you trying to corral one of the grallocs? Because I can tell you right now that chasing it with two ships won’t do you any more good than chasing it with one.”

  “I agree,” Thrawn said. “But Lieutenant Fentaugh’s Defender isn’t intended for pursuit.”

  “Then what’s it for?”

  Out of the corner of Ronan’s eye he saw a small smile appear on Thrawn’s face. “Bait,” the grand admiral said. “Lieutenant Hammerly: Full sensor readout on Defender Two.”

  “Yes, sir.” On the tactical display a sensor image of a TIE Defender appeared.

  Ronan leaned a little closer to the display. Everything about the fighter looked completely normal…except that on one of the wings there was a blazing loop of high-voltage current.

  “I had a bypass installed to feed the current normally meant for the number six laser cannon into an external loop cable,” Thrawn continued. “Let us see what kind of interest it generates.”

  The blazing current generated interest, all right. Fentaugh’s Defender had barely reached the nearest freighter before three grallocs abandoned the ships they were feeding on and headed at high speed toward it.

  “Even faster than I realized,” Faro murmured.

  “Indeed,” Thrawn said. “It will be interesting to see how they achieve such speeds. Captain Dobbs, I believe your target awaits you.”

  “On it, sir,” Dobbs said briskly. “Do you want it dead or alive?”

  “We’ll begin with dead,” Thrawn said. “If necessary, we can go back and capture a live one. I suggest the third gralloc of the group now pacing Lieutenant Fentaugh—do you see it?”

  “The one lagging behind the others? Yes, sir.”

  “I presume from its relative lack of interest that it has recently fed,” Thrawn said. “Take it.”

  “Yes, sir. Fentaugh, angle up-left twenty degrees and hold vector.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  It was, Ronan had to admit, about as neat and precise a maneuver as he’d ever witnessed. As Fentaugh’s fighter held a steady course, Dobbs came up behind the group, nudging close behind the gralloc Thrawn had indicated. A quick, tight burst of laserfire, and the gralloc’s flapping became a sort of reflexive fluttering and then went completely still.

  There was, of course, still the matter of securing the carcass for transport to the Chimaera. Ronan expected Thrawn to order out a shuttle for that task, but Dobbs was already on it. Moving in close to the dead gralloc, he maneuvered the carcass between the forward points of one of his angled wings, then gave his fighter a quick spin, throwing the gralloc outward and wedging it solidly in place between the points. Then, with Fentaugh flying wingmate, he made a leisurely turn and headed home.

  “Excellent,” Thrawn said. “Commodore, go to medbay and confirm that the examination room and droids are prepared to receive the subject.”

  “Yes, sir.” Faro climbed the stairs out of the crew pit and headed toward the aft bridge and the turbolift there.

  “You have droids that can dissect a carcass?” Ronan asked.

  “After a fashion,” Thrawn said. “Imperial warships do not carry trained exobiologists unless the mission anticipates a need for them. However, the Chimaera’s library does include an exobio programming package. Two of our 2-1B medical droids have been reprogrammed, and should suffice for our purposes.”

  “I didn’t realize the navy was that thorough.”

  “In general, it is not,” Thrawn agreed. “I prefer to be prepared for as many contingencies as possible.”

  Ronan nodded to himself. In other words, Thrawn had spotted a gap in the navy’s resources and taken it upon himself to make sure that gap was filled.

  Once again, his opinion of this man reluctantly rose a notch.

  “Come,” Thrawn said, gesturing toward the aft bridge. “Let us see what we can learn about Director Krennic’s adversaries.”

  Most of the moffs and governors Grand Admiral Savit had dealt with over the years favored the use of holoprojectors for communication with other high-ranking civilian and military leaders. Part of that was probably the slightly lower resolution such images presented, which made their expressions and the thoughts behind them harder for adversaries and potential adversaries to read.

  Mostly, though—he privately suspected—it was because the Emperor nearly always used holoprojectors, and for moffs like Haveland imitation was the most cynical form of flattery.

  Still, today at least, the first part of that logic had failed. The expression on Haveland’s flickering holoprojection was quite clear, and about as angry and frustrated as Savit had ever seen it.

  “I’ve just received word,” the moff bit out, “that yet another of my freighters has been taken and destroyed by these thrice-damned grallocs.”

  “So I’ve also heard,” Savit confirmed. “The Chimaera reports that freighter AL6-KM44 was prematurely driven into hyperspace by a gralloc attack and presumably lost. It was an Allanar N3 light fr—”

  “I know what kind of ship it was,” Haveland cut in harshly. “I thought you said this blue-skinned Thrawn person was going to fix this problem.”

  “Grand Admiral Thrawn has barely begun his work,” Savit said, putting the full weight of his rank and experience into his voice. Whatever he might think of Thrawn personally, the man was a fellow grand admiral and was not to be so casually insulted by a civilian, no matter how important Haveland thought she was. “I understand he’s killed one of the grallocs and is doing some studies on it.”

  “One gralloc? What does he think he’s going to do, deal with them one at a time?”

  “I don’t know what his plan is,” Savit said. “Let me just remind you that you’ve had this thorn in your side for years without making any headway against it. Thrawn’s supposed to be good at this sort of thing. I suggest you sit back and give him a chance.”

  “You suggest that, do you?” Haveland growled. “Well, let me tell you something about your precious hero. From what I’ve heard, much of his so-called success was due to a single man, someone he kept hidden in his shadow: unnoticed, uncredited, and unpromoted.”

  “Really,” Savit said. “You’ve heard that, have you?”

  “I have,” Haveland said darkly. “Furthermore, once this secret adviser became so well known to the High Command that the scam was about to collapse, he conveniently and permanently disappeared. To this day, Thrawn refuses to tell anyone what happened to him.”

  “Intriguing,” Savit said. “I don’t suppose you have an actual name for this unsung genius.”

  A hint of uncertainty touched the edge of Haveland’s indignation. “There are several possibles,” she said. “Commander Alfren Cheno, Commander Eli V
anto, Admiral Plor Wiskovis—”

  “And therein lies the unraveling,” Savit said. “Multiple names and widely variant details are the hallmarks of unfounded rumors.”

  “An unfounded rumor is merely a fact that hasn’t yet been confirmed.”

  “Or a soap bubble that continues to float until it bursts,” Savit said. “I suggest you spend less time listening to idle gossip and more time focusing on ways to protect your ships from grallocs and other dangers.”

  “I suggest that you spend less time lecturing your betters and more time finding a way to get rid of these vermin,” Haveland shot back.

  “It’s out of my hands,” Savit said. “We’ll both just have to hope that Tarkin and Krennic made the right decision in sending in Thrawn. Good day, Governor Haveland.”

  Haveland might have had a final word or two or twenty to deliver. Savit keyed off the holoprojector before she had the chance.

  For a long moment, he gazed through the space where Haveland’s image had been floating. Theoretically, of course, he could still go to the transfer point and either offer the Chimaera his help or at least see what kind of progress Thrawn was making. It was quite possible that that kind of teamwork was what Tarkin had been hinting at with his suggestion that Savit weigh in on Thrawn’s side.

  But politics was driving all of this, and both sides would be watching it unfold with the unblinking attention of hungry predators. Savit needed to choose the right moment to make his move, and even then it needed to be as invisible as possible. Until then, Thrawn was welcome to take all the heat his opponents could generate.

  And yet…

  Savit frowned. He’d heard the rumors Haveland had brought up. Unlike her, though, he’d taken the time to track down all the names the various stories listed as Thrawn’s supposed captive genius. All the likely subjects were present and accounted for, either still in military service or else retired under perfectly reasonable circumstances.