Treason - Timothy Zahn

by Star Wars

  Which meant this time it was Admiral Ar’alani’s turn to be unhappy.

  For a long minute she and Thrawn went at it in the Chiss language, Ar’alani’s voice stiff and angry and determined, Thrawn’s calm and equally determined.

  Faro stood silently by, hardly daring to breathe lest she draw unwelcome attention to herself, wishing she knew what they were saying, wondering how it was going to end. Every so often she shot a sideways glance at the girl, Vah’nya, who was also standing silent and motionless.

  Once, one of those glances happened to catch Vah’nya looking back at her, and in the girl’s face Faro could see a hint of Faro’s own concern and anxiety. They were about to enter a serious situation, the outcome of which neither Faro nor Vah’nya could entirely predict, a situation that could tax the Chimaera’s resources to the limit. Bad enough that they had to leap into the unknown without Thrawn and Ar’alani dragging out the anticipation more than necessary.

  Finally, with one last exchange, Ar’alani turned away, her eyes narrowed and clearly still unhappy. Thrawn looked at her another moment, then shifted his eyes to Faro. “Admiral Ar’alani has agreed to allow you to stay,” he said, his voice still calm. “Her one condition is that you take up position at the weapons station, where you’ll be ready to initiate combat should our arrival be less circumspect than we anticipate.”

  “Understood, sir,” Faro said, glancing again at Vah’nya. Unlike Ar’alani, the girl seemed merely relieved to be getting on with it, with happiness or unhappiness apparently nowhere in her personal equation. “Actually, that was also going to be my suggestion. Are you ready for me to clear the bridge?”

  A hint of a smile touched Thrawn’s lips. Silent approval for her anticipation of his next order? “I am,” he said.

  Faro took a deep breath. “Clear the bridge!” she called. “Rig for stealth; all consoles except Weapons locked into standby, reroute control to secondary command. Weapons, leave your consoles hot; Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi, report to secondary command as backup controller. I say again: Rig for stealth, and clear the bridge.”

  There was a scattering of acknowledgments, and the officers set about obeying her orders. Faro sent her gaze slowly around the bridge, watching for any fumbling or lingering, trying to assess the overall mood of her people as they were being ordered out and the Chiss visitors weren’t.

  Not surprisingly, Faro could sense some confusion as they finished their lockdown procedures and headed for the turbolift. But there was no real suspicion, certainly no overt resistance to the order. Most of these men and women had served under Thrawn long enough to trust him.

  Most had also served under Faro, as well, and also trusted her. Possibly not as much as they trusted Thrawn, but they certainly obeyed her orders with a similar degree of confidence.

  So why didn’t Thrawn think she was ready to command Task Force 231?

  “Your service record indicates you speak Sy Bisti,” Thrawn said.

  Faro dragged her mind away from that question. Going into a dangerous situation was no time for brooding. “Yes, sir, a little,” she said, turning back to him. Thrawn’s eyebrows rose, just fractionally— “Though I understand it better than I speak it,” she hastened to add.

  “Very good,” Thrawn said. “From now on we shall use that language whenever we are with Admiral Ar’alani and Navigator Vah’nya.”

  “Yes, sir,” Faro said. The last of the officers disappeared into the turbolift, leaving Faro alone with the three Chiss.

  “Commodore, please escort Navigator Vah’nya to the helm and instruct her in its operation,” Thrawn said, switching to the Sy Bisti trade language.

  Faro’s first impulse was to remind Thrawn that he spoke the girl’s native language and was therefore far and away the better person for such tutoring. But as she looked at Thrawn, and at Ar’alani standing stiffly beside him, she recognized what this was really all about.

  Trust.

  Ar’alani didn’t trust Faro. Not with the details of this apparently top-secret navigational technique the Chiss had worked out; certainly not with Vah’nya herself. By sending Faro and Vah’nya off together, Thrawn was stating for the other Chiss that he himself did completely trust the commander of his flagship.

  Or at least he trusted her enough not to mess this up.

  Not that Ar’alani seemed to have gotten the message. Faro could feel the Chiss admiral’s eyes on her the whole way down into the crew pit.

  Faro had worried that her only marginal expertise with Sy Bisti would make it difficult to give Vah’nya the instruction she needed. But the young woman was smart, and the helm controls were relatively intuitive, and after a couple of minutes Vah’nya pronounced herself ready to go.

  Midway through the procedure, Ar’alani joined them, standing close enough behind Faro that she could feel the Chiss’s breath on the back of her neck. It didn’t make the procedure any easier.

  Thrawn was waiting at the starboard alcove weapons station when Faro emerged from the crew pit. “Is she ready?” the admiral asked.

  “She says she is, sir,” Faro answered.

  “You have doubts?”

  Faro hesitated. “She seems…troubled, sir. Not just nervous or even frightened, but…I’m not sure. Like there’s a struggle going on inside her.”

  “Indeed there is,” Thrawn said quietly. “But the battle isn’t with herself. Rather, it’s with the memories of the place we’re about to travel to. Memories that are not hers, but have been filtered through the mind and emotions of a seven-year-old girl.”

  “I see,” Faro said, wishing she did. This was the first she’d heard of a seven-year-old girl being involved in any of this. Had she been aboard the observation post and been sent back to the Chiss ship?

  But then, it was also the first she’d heard about shared memories. Were the Chiss able to actually transfer thoughts from one to another? Or did Thrawn simply mean that the seven-year-old had given a verbal or written report that had been exceptionally detailed?

  “I shall be at the defense station,” Thrawn continued. “I am hoping to catch them unawares, so do not attack unless I give that order.”

  “Even if we’re attacked first?”

  “Even then,” Thrawn confirmed. “There are certain goals we must achieve before we destroy our enemies.”

  He turned and crossed the bridge toward the defense console in the portside alcove. As he passed the crew pit, he looked down at Ar’alani and nodded. “She may proceed,” he said.

  Ar’alani nodded acknowledgment and turned to Vah’nya. A moment later the stars blazing through the viewports stretched into starlines, and the Chimaera was once again in hyperspace.

  The last time, with Vader at the helm, the Chimaera’s passage had seemed a bit jerky. Now, with Vah’nya navigating, there was no doubt about it. Faro had been on a watercraft once, and the ship’s movement reminded her of how every small wavelet the boat had encountered had translated into a small bounce or skid or hesitation. It was a far cry from the precise, mathematically determined jumps driven by nav-computer calculations, and it struck her as both discomfiting and unstable.

  Still, Thrawn seemed unworried as he stood at the defense console. Faro could only see the top of Ar’alani’s head, but there was no indication that she was concerned, either. Perhaps the difference was due to Vah’nya’s relative youth, or perhaps the information from the younger girl hadn’t been completely clear.

  And speaking of information…

  Surreptitiously, Faro looked across at Thrawn, studying the admiral’s profile. The fleet rules were quite clear: Contact with an enemy force needed to be reported at once to the High Command. That went double for unknown enemies, and triple if the contact involved combat.

  Yet to the best of Faro’s knowledge, Thrawn hadn’t filed any reports. Not with Coruscant or anyone else.

&nbs
p; Which could pose a serious problem down the line. Especially since Ronan was sending his own undoubtedly slanted messages back to Director Krennic.

  Faro probably should have found a way to cut off Ronan’s access to the HoloNet after the Chimaera’s first run-in with the Grysks. Now, with Ronan and Eli apparently off on some mission of their own, it was too late.

  “TIE Squadrons Two and Three: Report to your fighters,” Thrawn called into the intercom. “TIE Defenders: Report to your fighters in fifteen minutes.”

  Faro frowned. So Thrawn wasn’t going to lead off with the Defenders? Not his usual strategy.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him coming toward her. She gave her instruments and displays a quick look, confirmed everything was ready. “Weapons systems prepped and ready, Admiral,” she said briskly as he reached her side. “Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi confirms all systems and crews standing by.”

  “Excellent.” Thrawn paused. “You seem disturbed, Commodore.”

  “Sir?” Faro asked, suppressing a sigh. Of course he’d seen her looking sideways at him earlier, and of course he’d sensed the concern in her face and body language.

  Hopefully, he’d interpreted it as stress related purely to the upcoming action.

  “An exercise, Commodore,” he said. “I will tell you the past of our current operation, much of which you do not yet know. You will then tell me the present.” He smiled faintly. “After that, we shall endeavor together to tell the future.”

  Another of the admiral’s famous brain-twister tests. Wonderful. “Yes, sir.”

  Thrawn paused a moment as if gathering or organizing his thoughts. “Director Krennic arranged with Moff Haveland to bring a number of his Fifth Priority shipments through Esaga sector,” he said. “At that time, or perhaps somewhat later, someone else decided to steal some of those cargoes.”

  “I see,” Faro said. No, she hadn’t known any of that. “I wouldn’t have thought Fifth Priority cargoes were worth that much effort.”

  “Normally, they’re not,” Thrawn said. “But our thief was somewhat more ambitious. He found a way to shuffle some of the cargoes around at an intermediary point in such a way that more valuable components were swapped out for some of the lower-level ones. Specifically, he obtained components for point-defense turbolaser batteries.”

  Faro felt her eyes widen. “How many?”

  “We believe eight full sets have been stolen. If the thief is also working other supply lines, he may have obtained more.”

  Faro nodded. Point-defense turbolasers weren’t as powerful as the Chimaera’s main weaponry, but they were a vital component of a ship’s or battle platform’s defense against missiles, enemy starfighters, or even just wayward meteors.

  That also explained the high-level encryption they’d used earlier when baiting their trap, as well as why the Grysks had fallen for the ruse. Apparently, the thief had contacts in the Empire’s highest echelons, and the Grysks had obtained both those contacts and the encryption.

  “The thief of course needed an excuse for the ships to vanish without tipping his hand,” Thrawn continued. “His chosen method was to create a way to draw grallocs to the transfer point and the ships gathered there. Once the chaos created by the creatures was established, the chosen ships and crews could pretend they’d been damaged, make the jump to hyperspace, and reemerge at another point to transfer their cargoes to the thief’s ships.”

  “The mobile way station.”

  “Correct,” Thrawn said. “At some point, however, an unexpected complication disrupted the thieves’ calculations. The Grysks and one of their client species moved into the area and discovered their plan.”

  “That’s the part that most worries me,” Faro said. “We left the Grysks in the Unknown Regions, out past Mokivj and Batuu. What in space are they doing this deep in the Empire?”

  “On that point I can only speculate,” Thrawn said. “But the established Grysk strategy seems to be to learn what is most precious to a species and then use that weakness to subvert either key leaders or possibly the entire populace to the Grysk will and purpose. I assume they made their start on Batuu, learning only then that the humans of that world were far below the level of Imperial personnel. For whatever reason they chose this region, and set about basing the next stage of their conquest here.”

  A shiver ran up Faro’s back. Their conquest. Not a single shot fired, at least not by anyone besides Thrawn and the Chimaera, and not a single admiral or moff even aware that the Empire was under attack.

  Yet the Grysk conquest had already begun.

  Or maybe it was farther along than even Thrawn realized. There was a growing unrest in the fringes of the Empire, an increasing number of systems and peoples hostile to Imperial rule. How many of those systems and species were quiet or unwitting allies of the Grysks?

  For that matter, how much of the growing Rebellion was being driven by that same unseen enemy?

  “The thieves had set up a system whereby the stolen ships would enter hyperspace on different vectors, with the way station moving in advance to the new rendezvous point. The Grysks were able to decipher the instructions and encryptions and attack the way station, killing or capturing its occupants.”

  “And knowing that another freighter was on its way,” Faro said, “they moved an observation post and one of their gravity-well generators along that vector, but out in the asteroid cluster where they assumed they wouldn’t be disturbed. The Allanar N3 we chased showed up, got caught, and its crew taken and murdered.”

  “Very good,” Thrawn said. “That is indeed what happened.”

  “And then we crashed the party,” Faro said, looking over at Ar’alani. “I gather the Chiss were already on the case and were tracking the Grysks from the other direction?”

  “They were actually tracking the supply ship.”

  “The supply ship that we allowed to escape?”

  “Correct,” Thrawn said. “I don’t believe that at the time Admiral Ar’alani knew the full depth of the Grysk involvement.” He raised his eyebrows. “We arrive now at the present. Your analysis of the situation?”

  Faro pursed her lips. Thrawn always provided the clues and the logical path in these mental challenge games. The trick was to find that path and follow it. “There were only two Grysks on the observation post, overseeing several of their clients,” she said slowly. “That suggests the clients were the ones with the necessary expertise for this job, and the Grysks were just making sure they kept working. You said there were several people missing from the way station, which suggests the Grysks took them elsewhere for interrogation or testing.”

  “Who is likely doing the testing?”

  “Again, probably the clients,” Faro said. “So…you let the supply ship go—”

  “A supply ship crewed by whom?”

  “Also probably the clients,” Faro said. “I’m guessing the Grysks are trying to keep their footprint here as small as possible, in case something like this happens.”

  “That is also my assumption,” Thrawn said. “We also know that the two Grysks on the observation post had orders to die rather than be captured.”

  Faro grimaced. Which they had, unfortunately, right after their shuttle reached the Chimaera. The medical droids were still trying to identify the poison they’d used on themselves, but at this point the question was mostly academic.

  Only…

  “Only they didn’t die before the supply ship jumped to lightspeed,” she said. “That means…”

  “Yes?” Thrawn said, an encouraging note to his voice.

  “The girl,” Faro said. The pieces were starting to fall together now. “The seven-year-old. I assume she was a kidnapped navigator like Vah’nya?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did the Grysks know she’s alive?”

  Another smile, slightly bi
gger this time. “No.”

  “So we’re heading for a Grysk forward base consisting of another ship or group of ships,” Faro said. “As far as they know, the only way we could have found them is by interrogating the two Grysks we took from the observation post.” She raised her eyebrows. “And if the prisoners lasted long enough for us to get the base’s location, their friends will have to assume they’re still alive.”

  “Exactly,” Thrawn said. “And that, I believe, is what they fear most. The Grysks running this project are not merely soldiers, following orders with no useful knowledge of their own. They are high-ranking personnel with important information about their operations against the Empire. The Grysks cannot afford for that data to fall into our hands.”

  “So you let the supply ship go to give them warning,” Faro said. “A warning that’s vague enough that they presumably won’t run.”

  “Vague or otherwise, they dare not run,” Thrawn said. “Leaving with nothing but uncertainties is the worst outcome of all for them. So they will wait for us, hoping we will not appear, fearing that we will. And then?”

  Faro looked at Ar’alani again. “We let them send one more message before we destroy them,” she said. “A message that will bring the rest of the Grysks in this area down on us to sterilize the area.” She looked back at Thrawn. “By destroying us.”

  “Very good, Commodore,” Thrawn said, inclining his head. “Very good indeed. But don’t look so concerned. They will bring as powerful a force as they can, certainly, but that force will not be overly large. As you said, they wish to minimize their presence here.”

  “Understood,” Faro said. It sounded easy enough.

  But it wasn’t.

  Because by failing to call in the earlier battles to the High Command, Thrawn had effectively cut the Chimaera off from other Imperial assistance. It was up to him, along with maybe the Steadfast, to deal with this.

  Unfortunately, the fleeing supply ship had seen the Chiss before it jumped to lightspeed. Thrawn knew how to use surprises like that with great effectiveness against an enemy, even one holding overwhelming odds. Too late to think about that now.