In the privacy of his command room, Grand Admiral Thrawn removed his chest plate armor, removed his helmet, took off his black gloves, and allowed himself a deep contemplative sigh. He sagged deep into the chair, leaning back against the padding, crossing his arms.
The Empire scored a major victory against the Rebels today. He managed to destroy their base on Atollon and succeeded in tearing apart the nascent Rebellion in this sector, teaching them their lesson. It was Thrawn who brought them to their knees with minimum losses, and he knew it was only the combination of Konstantine's incompetence that allowed a few Rebel ships to break the blocade, Tarkin's obsession with making an example of Rebel leaders, and Pryce's need to prove herself to him, seeking her own advancement, that resulted in unnecessary waste of Imperial resources and the loss of lives of the men under his command.
Thrawn had spent months planning his move, studying his opponents carefully, preparing for all kinds of possible or impossible scenarios, fully aware of his own limitation; he was not omniscient. No battle plan had ever survived the contact with the enemy. But even in his wildest dreams, he would not have imagined that it would take a supernatural entity to rob him of his personal victory.
He had been this close to capturing the Ghost's crew. Or killing them, the choice was theirs. In either event, he won.
The Rebels made their decision, and Thrawn was so convinced of his own ingeniousness that he had allowed to lose his carefully controlled facade in front of them, absolutely certain that his smirk would be the last thing they would ever see.
Only to be struck down by a creature beyond his power to destroy.
He did not doubt the existence of the Force once he had experienced its effects firsthand; an energy field created by all living things, surrounding them, penetrating them, a power that could only be used by those few rare individuals whose midi-chlorian count had been high enough to manifest their skills.
In physics, energy was the property that had to be transferred to an object in order to perform work on the object, it could be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. There were many forms of energy: the kinetic energy of a moving object, the potential energy stored by an object's position in a force field, the elastic energy stored by stretching solid objects, the chemical energy released when a fuel burned, the radiant energy carried by light, and the thermal energy due to an object's temperature.
The Force was simply an another form of energy, one for which science had no explanation as of yet, but he had no doubt that in the due time someone would be able to come up with a reasonable, scientific explanation. The midi-chlorians were a proof.
Thrawn had seen both Jedi and Sith in action, he was fully aware of their superior strength, enhanced reflexes, and mental capabilities. All living things consisted of midi-chlorians, therefore all living things could be bent to their will. It made perfect sense.
But immortal creatures? Supernatural entities? Visions of the future?
That did not make any sense. Nevertheless, he has just seen such a creature with his very own Chiss eyes. At first he thought that the Jedi had been simply using his mind tricks on him, making him see things that did not exist, or using the Force to manipulate the weather, unleashing a powerful electromagnetic storm upon him.
And then the Rebels fled and the creature revealed itself to them. He tried to prove its mortality by shooting it right in the face… Not only it did not die, it evaporated into the thin air, laughing at him.
Once you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable had to be the truth. Therefore, there had to be an another aspect to the Force, a spiritual aspect, one that he had always dismissed as mere superstition.
Witchcraft. Wizardry. Devilry.
There was no better word to describe what he had seen that day.
You cannot see... But I can... I see your defeat, like many arms surrounding you in a cold embrace.
Even if it lasted only for an instant, his heart had been gripped by fear.
All beings were capable of feeling fear; it served as a self-preservation instinct that insured the survival of an organism. A safety brake. Thrawn was a soldier, a warrior, a one who had escaped death countless times, he knew what fear felt like. He would have never survived as long as he did if he had not been capable of feeling fear. But this time, it was not the fear of his own death that would be acceptable to a Chiss. It was an irrational fear of the supernatural.
A fear so very typical of humans.
Humans and Chiss shared a common ancestry; it was humans who had colonized the cold, inhospitable planet that would have been later named Csilla, that eventually would give birth to the Chiss. And today Thrawn had been painfully reminded of just how human he was.
He has always known that he would cease to exist, one day. All beings died, sooner or later. Either of an old age, of a disease, or of a mortal wound. He was prepared for that eventuality, the death was an inescapable part of the warfare. Sometimes, when he allowed himself to think about such things, he hoped that he could die on the battlefield, taking the enemy down with him. He could accept such an ending; it was certainly preferable to dying of an old age or a disease.
But never in his life he had considered the possibility that his fate could have been already carved into a stone. That he could have been a mere pawn in the dejarik game played between omnipotent entities. That no matter what he had done, the result would have been the same. Such thing was absolutely unacceptable. Human.
I see your defeat, like many arms surrounding you in a cold embrace.
Damn that supernatural creature for being so cryptic. Had it really spoken of his future? Or had it simply spoken of his past?
The moment he had been almost killed by Jedi Master Jorus C'Baoth aboard the Outbound Flight certainly felt like many arms surrounding him in a cold embrace; Thrawn's throat had been gripped by invisible hands, his consciousness slipping away, with one of his human captives trying to break the spell by pressing the switch that would launch the radiation bombs Thrawn had prepared, causing the death of his would-be murderer and deaths of 50,000 non-combatants in the process.
That was the first time Thrawn's plans had sent innocent beings to their deaths, and he even had lost his own brother in the process, the only person in the universe who had never allowed him to stray from his path, the only person in the universe who had the power to make him stop.
He could not stop; not now, not ever, not even because of the Death Star. Especially because of the Death Star.
Thrawn had sacrificed his entire life and career at the Chiss Defense Fleet because he believed only he could protect his people from their own short-sightedness. It resulted in his exile to the Galactic Empire, and he would have done it again. He made a deal with the Emperor, and he would have done it again if it gave him the power he wanted. The power he needed to protect those who depended on him from the enemies that froze the blood in his veins, the things far more evil than the Galactic Empire.
Damn that supernatural creature for being right... He could not see.
But one day, he would.
The Force.
It all came back to the Force.
Thrawn pressed a switch on his command chair and turned on the holographic gallery, calling up the ancient art of people of Atollon. There were many records of this supernatural creature, the Bendu, they had called it. That would be his first clue.
Later he could ask Darth Vader about the Dark Side of the Force. He would have to thread carefully around him for the Dark Lord was known for his temper but Thrawn was certain that they would be able to find a common ground.
However, there was no way Darth Vader would be willing to talk to him about the Light Side of the Force. He needed an alternate source, a Jedi Master. Kanan Jarrus could not have been more than a mere Padawan by the time the Jedi Purges ended, but at this time he was the only surviving Jedi Master known to him. He would have to capture him and make him talk. Threats and violence would not have worked on him, the Grand Inquisitor tried in the past and failed. He would have to offer him something in return. But what?
And he would have to try to capture and have a word with Agent Kallus, too. A pathetic little traitor he might have been but he was correct in one thing. Even against all odds, the Rebels had found a way to beat him.
Kallus... What an ally he could have been. If there was anything in the universe Thrawn loathed, hated, it would be traitors, saboteurs, and fools who had the audacity to lie right to his face. They deserved death. And Kallus had been all three. Nothing would have brought Thrawn a bigger satisfaction than having Kallus on the bridge watching all of his traitorous friends die before his summarily execution.
And yet Thrawn had always believed that all thoughts were worth listening to, whether later judged to be of value or not. To defeat his enemies he had to understand them, to study their history, their philosophy, their art. Obviously he had not studied his Rebel opponents enough. No. Not only them. He had not studied the Force enough. His information was bad, incomplete.
Bad information lead to bad tactics. Incomplete information lead to flawed strategy. Both lead to defeat. And though the Empire scored a major victory today, Thrawn himself suffered a major defeat.
THE END