by Star Wars
All of them except one. And that one anomaly made Savit’s instincts tingle uncomfortably.
Where was Commander Eli Vanto, anyway?
* * *
—
It had all started out well enough, Lieutenant Eli Vanto thought as he paged through yet another data listing filled with delicate Chiss script. Thrawn had told him that the Chiss Ascendancy had vital need of his talents and abilities, and that he’d arranged for Eli to be quietly released from his current duty aboard the Chimaera. Eli had accepted the new assignment and left Imperial space, arriving at the rendezvous point Thrawn had sent him to full of hope and expectation, with the excitement of the unknown tingling through him.
I am Admiral Ar’alani of the Chiss Defense Fleet, the blue-skinned woman had greeted him from the bridge of her ship. Are you he?
I am he, Eli had confirmed, making sure to fill his voice with the mix of confidence and respect that had served him well during his years in the Imperial fleet. I am Eli Vanto. I bring greetings to you from Mitth’raw’nuruodo. He believes I can be of some use to the Chiss Ascendancy.
Welcome, Eli Vanto, she’d replied. Let us learn together if he was correct.
That had been over a year ago. In retrospect, Eli thought a little sourly, he should have realized from Ar’alani’s neutral words and tone that she wasn’t impressed.
His first act aboard the Steadfast was to receive demotion from Imperial commander to Chiss Defense Fleet lieutenant. No real surprise there—different militaries would hardly have equivalent rank systems. His second act was to be dropped into an intensive course in Cheunh, the main Chiss language. Again, no surprise—though many aboard spoke the Sy Bisti trade language Eli was fluent in, it was certainly unreasonable to expect everyone to bend to the needs of a single crew member. Especially a newcomer and an alien.
But in and through all of that, Eli had expected to be put onto some kind of leadership or command track. Instead, he’d been dumped down here in the analysis department, sifting data, looking for patterns, and making predictions.
It was something he was very good at. Even Thrawn, with all his tactical and strategic genius, had recognized Eli’s superiority at such things, and had utilized his skills to their fullest. In retrospect, it wasn’t all that surprising that he’d passed that information on to Ar’alani.
The problem was that as far as Eli could tell, none of the data he’d been tasked to analyze meant anything at all.
They weren’t listings of ship movements or cargo or smuggling manifests. They weren’t groups of personnel, or alien troops, or alien operations. They weren’t even anything internal to the Steadfast, patterns of power usage or data flow or something else designed to spot flaws in ship’s functions or to predict imminent system failures.
To be honest, the whole thing felt like busywork. Eli had always hated busywork.
Still, Ar’alani struck him as a subtle sort of person. Maybe this was a test of his patience, or his willingness to enthusiastically obey even orders that seemed to make no sense. He’d certainly gone through a lot of such scenarios with Thrawn.
And really, it wasn’t like the tour had been all routine. There’d been a seriously nasty skirmish with the Grysks and some of their allies near the Imperial edge of the Unknown Regions, which had made for a very interesting couple of days. After the excitement subsided, he’d hoped things might pick up a little.
To his disappointment, they hadn’t. In fact, in many ways they’d actually slowed down.
Which wasn’t to say the Steadfast wasn’t in danger. On the contrary, it was in about as much danger right now as it had ever been.
The intercom at his station gave a little three-tone warble. “Lieutenant Ivant, report to the bridge immediately,” First Officer Khresh’s voice came over the speaker.
“Acknowledged,” Eli called back, mentally rolling his eyes. The vast majority of Chiss names were composed of multiple syllables in three distinct parts, the first of which identified the person’s family, the second of which was the given name, and the third of which reflected some social factor Eli hadn’t yet figured out. Since using multisyllable titles all the time could seriously bog down conversations—and worse, timely military orders—the normal convention was to use core names for everything except in the most formal situations.
But there were a few exceptions to the norm. Admiral Ar’alani herself, for one, apparently had only a two-part name and no core name at all. The ship’s navigators, the young Chiss girls gifted with Third Sight who used their ability to guide the Steadfast through hyperspace, also followed that pattern. Eli also hadn’t figured out why they got the same naming convention as senior flag officers.
Early on, Ar’alani had explained to her officers and crew that Eli was another such exception, and that he should be addressed as Lieutenant Vanto or Lieutenant Eli’van’to. But for most of them the explanation didn’t seem to have taken. Someone had taken Ar’alani’s conversion of Eli Vanto into a standard three-part Chiss name, then created a core name out of the middle of it, and the name had stuck.
At first, Eli had wondered if it was a subtle insult, either to him or to the admiral who’d brought this alien into their midst. But Ar’alani hadn’t taken offense at the flouting of her order, at least not in public, and eventually Eli decided to treat it as their way of accepting him as one of their own.
And it could have been worse. If he’d been unwise enough to tell them his middle initial—N—the name might have become Invant, which was way too close to Infant for comfort.
He was halfway to the bridge, passing the standard green- and blue-rimmed compartment doors, when the double-red-rimmed door to the navigation ready room a dozen meters in front of him slid open. One of the navigators stepped out into the corridor and turned toward the bridge.
Normally, seeing the back of a navigator’s head wouldn’t have given Eli a clue as to who she was. All of the Steadfast’s navigators were girls, nearly all of them between the ages of seven and fourteen, when Third Sight was at its strongest. On top of that, they tended to keep to themselves, and in all his time aboard he’d only met three of the five.
Vah’nya was the exception to all the rules. She was twenty-two years old, and unlike the children who shared her job she felt perfectly comfortable mixing with the rest of the adults aboard. Eli had seen and talked with her on a number of occasions, and had found her congenial company.
“Navigator Vah’nya,” he called.
She turned to face him, a small smile touching her lips as she saw who it was. “Hello, Lieutenant Eli,” she said. “What brings you to this part of the ship?”
“I’ve been ordered to the bridge,” he said, eyeing her closely. Not just good company, but also highly intriguing. Though her Third Sight was slowly fading, as it did with all navigators, even at twenty-two she still had greater skill than all but one or two of the younger girls.
He’d looked into it a bit, and as far as he could tell no one knew why her ability had lasted this long. But then, with the whole Chiss navigation system a deep, black secret, it wasn’t surprising that it hadn’t been very well studied.
On top of all of Vah’nya’s other interesting qualities, she was the only person aboard he’d been able to persuade to call him by his real name. That alone would have earned her high marks in his book.
“Ah,” she said. “So you were not merely coming to see me?”
“No, not at all,” Eli said, feeling his face warming. He wasn’t entirely sure of the protocol regarding fraternization among the officers and crew, and he had no intention of learning about it the hard way.
“Too sad,” Vah’nya said, in a tone that could have been mild sarcasm or complete sincerity. “Did Junior Commander Velbb say what it was about?” she added as the two of them continued forward.
“Actually, it wasn’t Commander Velbb,” Eli
told her. “The order came from Senior Captain Khresh.”
“Really?” she said, frowning. “That is unusual.”
“I know.” Eli gestured to her. “What about you? Are you coming on watch?”
“Yes,” she said. “Though I feel I’m unlikely to be needed.”
Eli wrinkled his nose. She had that right. Barely three hours after the Steadfast arrived in this system, Ar’alani had ordered a hard shutdown of the entire ship, a stage below even dark stealth mode, cutting unnecessary power use and all emissions, including active sensors. She’d given the ship one final burst from the drive, and from that moment on they’d been drifting, dark and silent, through the loose asteroid belt three hundred million kilometers from the system’s sun.
That had been nearly a week ago. Eli had checked the ship’s position, and studied the passive sensor reports, and he still had no idea what they were doing here. His best guess was that they were still following the ship they’d been tracking ever since leaving the Unknown Regions and that Ar’alani was afraid of spooking it.
As well she might. They were a long way from Chiss space and the various vague threats arrayed against them. This was a system deep within the Galactic Empire.
And the threats here were anything but vague.
“Still, if the unusual has happened to you, it could also happen to me,” Vah’nya continued. “By the way, I understand you’ve become something of a disappointment to Senior Commander Cinsar.”
“How so?” Eli asked, bracing himself. Cinsar had been assigned to guide the newcomer through the process of orienting to the Steadfast, its procedures, and its crew. It had been clear from the start that he didn’t exactly relish the job, but he’d always treated Eli with at least an arm’s-length respect.
“I’m told your Cheunh grammar and pronunciation are no longer amusing enough for him to share with his fellow officers,” Vah’nya said, gazing down the corridor with a perfectly straight face. “Your procedural knowledge is likewise useless as a source of entertainment.”
“I’m sorry for his loss,” Eli said, giving her a hard look. “And how exactly would you, a simple navigator, be privy to the inner workings of Officer Country?”
“Please,” she protested, a mischievous smile finally breaking through the carefully engineered calm. “I may be a simple navigator, but I do know my way around the ship. After all, I’ve been aboard for a long time. I should also say that Commander Cinsar also believes the speed of your progress is largely due to the competence of his teaching.”
“And I wouldn’t argue that point in the slightest,” Eli said. “He’s been an excellent and amazingly patient teacher. I owe him a lot.” He pursed his lips. “I owe all of you a lot.”
“I’m sure that in the future you’ll repay the Ascendancy multifold,” Vah’nya assured him. “In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see why you’ve been summoned.”
“Yes,” Eli said, gazing at the single red rim of the bridge door looming ahead of them. “It will indeed.”
The Steadfast’s bridge was smaller than the Chimaera’s, with only a single deck instead of the walkway-and-crew-pit arrangement common in Imperial capital ships. Admiral Ar’alani’s command chair was in the center of the double ring of consoles, but at the moment she was across the room by the sensor monitor station, her pure-white uniform standing out against the black garb of the rest of the officers and crew. She looked over her shoulder as the door slid open, caught Eli’s eye, and beckoned him over.
“Good luck,” Vah’nya said softly, her fingertips brushing across his shoulder as she headed toward the combined helm and navigation stations.
Eli worked his way through the close-packed consoles and reached Ar’alani. “Lieutenant Eli’van’to,” she greeted him, gesturing him to the chair Sensor Officer Tanik had just vacated and was now standing beside. “Sit down. Tell me what you see.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Eli said as he lowered himself into the chair. Tanik touched a switch, and the monitor lit up with a view of a cluster of asteroids a few degrees off the Steadfast’s starboard bow.
For a moment the scene remained unchanged, with only the flowing time stamp showing that the recording hadn’t been paused. Eli leaned a little closer in anticipation…
And then a speck of something flickered into view. Two seconds later there was a muted double flash from a nearby point, the flashes briefly lighting up the speck. The speck seemed to move, possibly to rotate, and a second double flash lit up the scene. The flash faded, the speck seemed to go a little darker, and the image returned to its original state.
“That event was observed approximately thirty minutes ago,” Ar’alani said from beside him as the recording went into repeat mode. “There’s been no further activity.”
Eli nodded. No further activity that they’d been able to see, anyway. With the active sensors shut down, the Steadfast was flying half blind. “The incoming object was probably a ship,” he said. “Most likely civilian, possibly a private yacht, more probably a freighter.”
“Your reasoning?” Ar’alani asked.
“There was no indication of deflectors,” Eli said. “The first shot might have caught them by surprise, but there was enough time between that salvo and the second one for the ship to have raised them. Those were shots, I assume?”
“Commander Tanik?” Ar’alani invited.
“Here’s the initial analysis,” Tanik said, touching a key and bringing up a data list on a second display. “The energy profile is definitely consistent with that of an energy weapon.”
“My question for you, Lieutenant,” Ar’alani said, “is whether it fits the profile of an Imperial weapon.”
Eli peered at the display, running the numbers and mentally fitting them into known patterns, remembering that Ar’alani preferred accuracy over speed. He took his time studying the numbers, waited until he was sure, and then shook his head. “I don’t believe it’s something used by the Empire,” he said. “However, it does share certain characteristics with Grysk weapons.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ar’alani and Tanik exchange glances. Apparently, that was something they’d already guessed. “Was it a Grysk weapon?” Ar’alani asked.
“I don’t think so,” Eli said. “At least, not like the ones they’ve already used against us. But I could see this weapon as something, oh, a generation or two behind those. This armor-piercing spectrum isn’t quite as focused or refined as the ones we’ve seen, which makes it less efficient.”
“You said that the target might be a civilian craft or a freighter,” Ar’alani said. “You didn’t suggest the far more obvious possibility: an asteroid miner.”
Eli frowned. Now that she’d mentioned it, why hadn’t he suggested that? He focused again on the recording, watched the ship arrive and be attacked.
“It’s not a miner,” he said. “For one thing, it tried to get away. A normal mining ship would probably have lost its entire drive and maneuvering system with that first double shot.”
“Unless the attacker was incompetent,” Tanik said.
“I don’t think so,” Eli said. “The speed of his attack shows he was waiting for the ship and ready to fire. And that’s the other thing. A miner wouldn’t have come out of hyperspace into the middle of an asteroid cluster. Too much risk of running into something. Normal procedure is to come in above or below the ecliptic.”
“Only this one came directly into the cluster,” Ar’alani said. “And landed solidly in the attacker’s primary targeting zone.”
Eli nodded. “All of which strongly suggests that the ship didn’t come out of hyperspace at that point on purpose. At least, not on its own captain’s purpose.”
“A mass shadow,” Tanik murmured.
“Yes,” Eli said, wincing. The Empire had such technology, built into massive Interdictor-class Star Destroyers, projecto
rs that permitted an Imperial commander to either prevent an enemy ship from escaping or pluck a passing craft out of hyperspace and back into realspace.
But there was nothing the size of an Interdictor lurking nearby. Even at this distance, the Steadfast would have no trouble seeing it. If the attacker had used mass-shadow technology, it was far more compact than anything the Empire possessed.
Or else it was designed to cover only a small area. As if the attacker had known the precise vector his victim would be arriving along.
Something was happening out there. Something bad…and the Steadfast was still too far away to do anything about it.
Unless Ar’alani decided to break cover and move in. But it would take more than a wounded freighter to make her do that.
“Thank you, Lieutenant Eli’van’to,” the admiral said, her voice quiet and thoughtful. “Return to your station. Mid Commander Tanik will send you everything we have on this incident, both the raw data and the tactical department’s initial analysis. I expect that you’ll see things others have missed—”
Eli felt a small swelling of pride. Maybe he was more useful to Ar’alani and the Chiss than he’d thought.
“—if only because of your greater familiarity with the Empire and its technology,” Ar’alani finished.
The pride evaporated. “Yes, Admiral,” Eli said.
He’d hoped Vah’nya might be looking in his direction as he left the bridge—she was too far away for him to say goodbye, but they might at least be able to exchange nods. But she was embroiled in conversation with the pilot and the navigator about to go off duty, her back to him.
He eyed the three of them. A full-grown Chiss man, a Chiss girl who came to about his elbow, and Vah’nya. Once again, Eli was struck by the oddness of it all.
But there was no time to think about any of that now. Ar’alani was right. Something was happening out there, and the knot in his gut told him that it was something nasty.
Ar’alani preferred accuracy to speed. In this case, Eli knew, he’d damn well better deliver both.
