by Star Wars
“Sure,” Eli said, looking around as if checking for listening devices or eavesdroppers. “You ever hear of a man called Nightswan?”
Sisay’s face changed, just enough. “I heard he was out of business,” Skulk said.
“He is,” Eli said. “I’m his replacement.”
“Describe him,” Sisay said, her voice stiff and wary. “Describe everything.”
“Dark hair,” Eli said. “Dark eyes. The textured skin of a man who’s spent a lot of time in the sunlight. Miners’ hands, scarred and callused. Slim body, but a full face. Never killed anyone unless he absolutely had to.”
He ran down the complete description, everything he remembered about the man who’d called himself Nightswan: how he looked, the sound of his voice, the way he did business, details about some of the man’s operations that Thrawn had thwarted over the years. The others listened in silence, their expressions not giving anything away.
Finally, he ran out. “Satisfied?” he asked.
“You met him, I’ll give you that,” Sisay said. Her lip twitched. “Probably worked with him some, too,” she conceded reluctantly. “So what’s the story?”
“The story—which I didn’t know myself until recently,” Eli said, “is that Nightswan made a deal with the Hutts.”
This time, there was a definite reaction. “What kind of deal?” Skulk asked.
“The kind you don’t want to make,” Eli said, putting some bitterness into his tone. “Or inherit. The point is that the Hutts are collecting on the debt. Part of their price is that we deal with your friend Savit.”
“Really,” Sisay said, a cynical smile touching her lips. “The Hutts aim high, I’ll give them that. And how exactly do you intend to accomplish this lofty goal?”
“Through him,” Eli said, nodding at Ronan. “There’s an assistant director on one of the Emperor’s big projects—guy by the name of Ronan. He’s a big enough wheel that if he asks Savit for an audience, Savit is likely to give it to him.”
“And he’s going to be your Director Ronan?” Skulk asked, eyeing Ronan dubiously.
“He’s not perfect,” Eli conceded. “But he looks enough like Ronan to pass anything but a full bioscan. Yeah, I know—it’s crazy. But it’s that or let the Hutts take it out of our hide some other way.”
Sisay snorted. “Hard to believe Nightswan would get himself entangled that way.”
“I didn’t believe it, either,” Eli said, watching them carefully. So far they seemed to be buying the story. “I’m guessing the details are interesting. But Nightswan’s gone, the Hutts didn’t give me the history, and I’m not stupid enough to ask.”
“So what exactly is the plan?” Skulk asked, still looking Ronan up and down.
“The Hutts say there are some ships connected to this project that load up here in Tiquwe,” Eli said. “We find one of them, get Snick here aboard—”
“Ronan,” Ronan cut in, his voice sonorous and severe and heavy with reproof. “I am Assistant Director Ronan.” He drew himself up. “There is no one here named Snick.”
“Sorry, Assistant Director,” Eli apologized, ducking his head and mentally throwing Ronan a salute. His biggest fear—aside from the probability that Sisay’s gang wouldn’t buy it—was that one of his own group would sabotage the effort before it even got started.
Instead Ronan had watched Eli’s play and joined in at exactly the right moment.
“You should be.” Ronan took a deep breath.
And to Eli’s astonishment, his face and body seemed to sag a little as the pompousness and scorn went out of him. As if he’d become an entirely different person.
It was an impressive performance. And as Eli looked back at Sisay and Skulk, he saw their lingering doubts fade away.
“Nice,” Skulk said. “You got the attitude down cold. So where is this ship, and how are you going to get aboard?”
“We start by getting to the fancy part of the spaceport, preferably without having to knife or blast anyone,” Eli said. “If you want to open a path, great—we’d appreciate the help as long as you keep a low profile. If you’d rather sit it out, that’s fine, too. Just stay out of our way.”
“I think we’ll tag along,” Sisay said. “At least for the moment. It’s a dangerous part of town, and there are a few Imperials out there who no one’s bought. Yet.”
“Well, maybe today we’ll find a bargain,” Eli said. “Let’s get moving before we attract any more attention we don’t want.”
“Sure,” Sisay said. “We’ll just take those bags…?”
Eli hesitated. But there was nothing for it. Silently, he slipped his carrybag off his shoulder and handed it to one of the men as Ronan did the same.
“Great,” Sisay said, her tone almost cheerful. “Okay. Follow me.”
Traveling by normal hyperdrive, with coordinates established via a normal nav computer, a ship’s captain always knew where and when the ship would arrive.
With a Chiss navigator at the helm, all of that went straight out the viewport. Faro had no idea where they were going or what the target system would be like, and had only the vaguest idea of when they would arrive.
But she’d always been good at playing things off the sleeve, and during her time aboard the Chimaera she’d had the opportunity to hone that innate skill to a fine art.
And so when the starlines collapsed, an hour into the trip and barely ten seconds after Ar’alani’s abrupt warning, she was ready.
“All bridge personnel, return to stations,” she called, running her eyes over the status boards and tactical displays. A movement caught the edge of her eye, and she looked over to see Ar’alani help an unsteady Vah’nya out of the crew pit and lead her toward the temporary quarters Thrawn had had set up for them in his aft bridge office suite. Briefly, Faro wondered if she should offer assistance, decided that Ar’alani would almost certainly refuse, and returned her attention to the tacticals.
The data was starting to flow in now, and she took a moment to note the overall geography: single sun, eight uninhabitable planets and an assortment of equally barren moons, no fueling depots or orbiting habitats or way stations of any sort. Other ships…
She felt her lips compress into a thin line. There it was, two hundred kilometers almost directly ahead, floating dark and quiet with just the smallest glint of reflected light from the distant sun marking its place. The Grysk ship that Thrawn had hoped to find.
Vah’nya had come through.
There was a brush of air as Thrawn appeared at her side. “Report, Commodore?”
“We have it, sir,” Faro said, tapping the spot on the tactical and peering at the fine-tune data beginning to scroll across the sensor display. “Or them, rather—it looks to be a pair of ships conjoined by short pylons or umbilical tubes.”
“What do you make of the configuration?”
Faro keyed for the highest magnification, wishing she could use the active sensors. But Thrawn had ordered the Chimaera rigged for stealth, and for the moment the passives were all she had. “Looks like…they’re tied up alongside each other, lying bow-to-stern?”
“That was my conclusion, as well,” Thrawn said. “A highly vulnerable position, is it not?”
“It is indeed, sir,” Faro agreed. Two ships tied together bow-to-bow had their thrusters pointed in the same direction, and in an emergency could charge off together while they closed off their umbilicals and disengaged their connection in a safe and orderly fashion. Tied bow-to-stern, on the other hand, meant lighting up their engines would do nothing but spin them in tail-chasing circles until the umbilicals were ripped apart.
“Your conclusion?”
Faro smiled grimly. “It’s bait,” she said. “The Grysks want us to think that they’re helpless and we can just move in.”
“And who is aboard?”
Faro’s first impulse was to give the obvious answer: the Grysks and the client species the Chimaera had run into at the observation post. But even as she opened her mouth she realized that it wasn’t quite that simple. “Just the clients,” she said. “The Grysks had time to pull out, and they did.”
“Where have they gone?”
“Back to their base, I assume—no,” she interrupted herself. Once again, it wasn’t that easy. “They’re still here,” she said slowly, looking at the tactical display with new eyes. Still nothing showing but the conjoined ships. “As you said earlier, uncertainty is their biggest dread. They want to watch what happens. But at the same time, they don’t want to be in the center of our targeting ring if we do show up.”
So: a stealthed ship. She looked again at the tactical.
And made a face. No. Damn. Not stealthed.
Cloaked.
“So they will be watching from a cloaked ship,” Thrawn repeated her unspoken conclusion back at her. “How would you set about deducing their location?”
The first group of bridge crew had arrived and was crossing the aft bridge toward their stations. Ar’alani and Vah’nya, Faro noted, had already disappeared. “If the ship out there is the bait, there’s presumably also a trap,” she said. “It’s possible that they’ve brought in a major warship, but I’m guessing not. They haven’t had much time, and as you also said they don’t want to open themselves too much to observation and possible capture.”
“So if not a warship…?”
“A booby trap,” Faro said, wrinkling her nose. “Probably packed the conjoined ships with all the explosives they could find, waiting for us to stroll confidently into range.”
“It would no doubt be a satisfying sight,” Thrawn said, a bit drily. “Assuming, of course, that they could see it.”
Faro frowned. Why wouldn’t they be able to see it? Blocked by the debris? There certainly weren’t any meteor clumps that might get in the way.
Nothing except their own cloaking field.
“They’re within a spherical shell centered on the conjoined ships,” she said. “Bounded on the inner edge by the safe distance from the booby trap they’ve set up, and on the outer edge by the limit their cloaking field puts on their sensor range.”
“Excellent,” Thrawn said. He raised his datapad and tapped a key. “Here is my estimate and interpretation of those boundary conditions, using likely explosive availability figures for the first and Admiral Ar’alani’s knowledge of Grysk cloaking fields for the second.”
The double sphere appeared on Faro’s tactical display, centered on the distant conjoined ships, with Thrawn’s search zone shaded in red. Faro studied it, noting the relative closeness of the two spheres and the odd fact that the sections currently in front of the Chimaera and at the far side of the zone had been eliminated from consideration. “May I ask why these two sections have been blanked?” she asked.
“If we arrive, we will most likely arrive from this direction,” Thrawn said. “They would hardly wish to be in our line of fire if we choose to simply destroy the conjoined ships without investigation.”
“Or on the far side where they might catch any misfires,” Faro said, nodding. “Not nearly as much territory in there to search as I was afraid we’d have to deal with.”
“Agreed,” Thrawn said. “Still, there is more than can be resolved with a few ion bursts. So we begin by gathering more information.”
Faro looked at the status boards. “TIE Squadrons Two and Three indicate ready.”
“Excellent.” Thrawn looked back over his shoulder at the next group of officers streaming from the turbolift. “I believe Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi has arrived.”
A moment later the other woman joined them. “Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi reporting for duty, ma’am,” she said formally. “Admiral,” she added, stiffening briefly to attention.
“Lieutenant, how many of your Class A–rated tractor beam operators are currently on duty?” Thrawn asked.
Pyrondi keyed her datapad. “Three of the five, sir.”
“Excellent,” Thrawn said. “Loop those three and two others of your choice into the following conversation. I wish to instruct them in a new maneuver called a slingshot.”
* * *
—
Ar’alani had rejoined Thrawn and Faro on the bridge by the time the tractor operators were ready. The Chiss started to say something—“Sy Bisti, Admiral, if you please,” Thrawn said in that trade language.
Ar’alani sent an annoyed look at Faro—“We have found them?”
“We’re about to tighten the search,” Thrawn said. He switched back to Basic. “Lieutenant Pyrondi?”
“Ready, Admiral.”
“Launch Squadron Two, and engage tractor beams.”
“Acknowledged. Squadron Two: Launch.”
Faro looked at the displays, watching with fascination. As far as she knew, this maneuver had never been tried before.
Of course, in all fairness to the tactical planners on Coruscant, it was only this very specific combination of circumstances that made the maneuver useful in the first place.
The TIE fighters appeared, twelve marks on the tactical. Unlike the usual launch pattern, though, they didn’t come screaming out of their drop racks at full power, roaring around the rim of the hangar bay and charging to the kill. Instead they simply drifted lazily into view, their engines cold, their sensors and targeting computers on low power. The initial momentum given them by the racks sent them drifting clear of the bay’s edge and out beneath the ship.
Pyrondi was gazing at the display, watching the fighters drift away. Faro looked sideways at Thrawn, wondering if he would intervene, knowing he wouldn’t. He’d explained all the nuances of the maneuver to Pyrondi and had handed over control of the operation to her. Now he would stand back and quietly assess how his senior weapons officer handled the task. Faro counted out five more seconds…
“Forward tractors: Engage,” Pyrondi ordered.
Abruptly, six of the TIEs jerked forward as the ventral tractor beams caught them, showing up as milky white lines on the tactical connecting the fighters to the very tip of the Chimaera’s bow. The TIEs picked up speed as they were reeled in toward the bow…
“Disengage,” Pyrondi called. “Helm, pitch five degrees positive.”
The white lines vanished, leaving the TIEs with the speed and direction the tractor beams had given them. They were nearly to an impact with the Chimaera’s bow when the ship pitched upward the five degrees Pyrondi had ordered, clearing the path for the TIEs to sweep safely past.
Faro shifted her attention to the forward viewport, watching as the darkened fighters swept past and outward, heading toward the conjoined Grysk ships.
Thrawn remained silent as Pyrondi repeated the process with the remaining TIEs. “Excellent work, Lieutenant,” he said as the fighters faded into the starscape ahead. “Tell me, who were the operators on Tractors Three and Five?”
Pyrondi consulted her datapad. “Matavuli on Three, Nasmyth on Five.”
“Make a note of those names, Commodore,” Thrawn instructed. “Matavuli’s aim is tentative and his overall procedure weak. He requires additional training.”
“Yes, sir,” Faro said, making a note on her datapad. “And Nasmyth?”
“He should be considered for Class A status,” Thrawn said. “Find a convenient opportunity to administer the test.”
He turned to Ar’alani and switched back to Sy Bisti. “The fighters are on their way to a closer inspection of the conjoined ships,” he said. “With only low power usage and no sensor emanations, they should remain invisible to the cloaked Grysk ship.”
“I see little importance in the joined ships,” Ar’alani said dismissively. “The Grysk will surely have already destroyed any useful data aboard.”
“They certainly w
ill have tried,” Thrawn said. “Yet the most dangerous data remains: members of their client species who might be persuaded to give up their secrets.”
“If there are any still aboard.”
“There are.” Thrawn gestured to Faro. “The evidence, Commodore?”
“Infrared analysis suggests that there are ten to twenty life-forms aboard,” Faro said, fighting through the awkward Sy Bisti words. At least the language’s grammar was relatively easy.
“Grysk clients?” Ar’alani asked.
“Or Grysk clients and all or some of the twelve missing members of the pirates’ mobile way station,” Faro said.
“Whom we hope to rescue if such is possible,” Thrawn added.
For a moment Ar’alani gazed out the forward viewport. “The joined ships are the bait of a trap,” she said. “The cloaked ship is the true enemy and therefore our primary target.”
“One of our primary targets,” Thrawn corrected. “There is a second equally valuable target. Possibly of even higher priority than the ship itself.”
“You speak of the triad?” Ar’alani asked.
“Yes.”
Faro nodded to herself. The Grysks could hardly use the HoloNet for long-range contact with their main base, not with the Empire routinely monitoring all transmissions that went through that system. The solution was a communications triad, a technique used in the Unknown Regions, Wild Space, and at the Empire’s own fringes.
The problem was that a triad needed space—a lot of space—to set up the three poles of the transceiver.
She looked back at the system’s geographic plot. Eight planets, five of them gas giants, the other three a minimum of eight light-minutes away. The former didn’t have any solid ground in which to plant the triad, while the latter would require communications lasers to punch signals that far, in both directions, not counting the awkward and potentially dangerous built-in time lag. Four of the gas giants’ moons were within a light-minute of the conjoined ships, but that would still require either a laser or a finely columnated maser transmitter at both ends to exchange messages. Unless the triad was cold or on standby, such massive power emissions should be clearly visible to the Chimaera’s sensors.
