PROLOGUE
Sheev Palpatine. We watched his ascent to the pinnacle of power with a mixture of horror and awe. Horror at his commands, and awe at his limitless ambition.
—From The Journal of the Whills
Imperial Center, Core Worlds, 0 BBY
The Imperial Palace was a tall building, towering over the surrounding cityscape just as the Jedi Temple—the ruins of which the Palace was built on top of—had two and a half decades prior.
A transport airspeeder cut through the orderly traffic patterns of airspeeder traffic, escorted by four Coruscant Security Force speeders. The pilots of the commercial speeders, stuck in their traffic patterns, glared at the CSF speeders that were ignoring the patterns, but the sight of a grand admiral's insignia painted on the escorted airspeeder gave them pause.
The transport speeder was occupied by a single passenger, who studied the flow of traffic to and from the Palace with neutral eyes. The pilot was incapable of understanding more than flight commands, and its photoreceptors remained fixed on the instrument panel. The machine could not have comprehended his passenger's ability to pick apart even the most minute details, even if he had noticed.
The single passenger's gaze turned from the traffic, and to a balcony appearing from the upper levels of the Palace, where a barely-visible figure was watching the police cadre with dark eyes. The passenger's eyes turned cold, and his lips pursed momentarily before he recomposed his expression.
The Imperial Guardsmen stood at rigid attention, their force pikes held perfectly vertical, while the lone passenger climbed out of the airspeeder.
The passenger straightened his meticulously pressed uniform, taking the moment to study the Guardsmen. Under their expressionless helmets—inspired by the helmets of the Mandalorian Death Watch—and ceremonial robes, they were perfectly identical to any observer.
Any observer, except for Grand Admiral Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
He let his fiery eyes sweep the Guardsmen, and a slight smile appeared on his lips. "I see His Grace sent the same Guardsmen to greet me as before," he said, a slight smile appearing on his lips.
The Guardsmen didn't stir, and after a moment the Guard on Thrawn's right took one step forward. "Your sidearm," he demanded, his voice coming through the facemask distorted.
Thrawn moved his hand down to the regulation sidearm and removed it from the holster. The Guardsmen didn't react, but Thrawn could almost see them calculating how to kill him should he make a wrong move with the pistol.
He extended his hand, and the Guardsmen collected the weapon without a word.
"Take me to our emperor."
"Your Grace," Thrawn said, bowing deeply.
The Emperor of the Galactic Empire, Sheev Palpatine, remained seated on his throne. "Grand Moff Tarkin requested this time, but you requested it first, Grand Admiral," he said thinly.
"I see, Your Grace."
Palpatine leaned back. "Rise, and begin," he commanded
Thrawn straightened. "The Enemy has arrived, Your Grace," he said simply.
For a moment, silence reigned in the audience chamber, before Palpatine broke it: "Where?"
"The Crispin system, in Wild Space, Your Grace. They have been halted by my people, for the time being, but they grow stronger by the day."
Palpatine seemed to sag momentarily, before renewed energy brought anger to his eyes. "You informed me that your people did not expect them to arrive for another thirty years."
Thrawn nodded in admission. "I did," he said simply. "It would appear my people were wrong."
Palpatine stood, and walked toward a window, leaving Thrawn still standing before the throne. Palpatine contemplated the ornate glasswork, before turning to speak again to Thrawn. The action made him seem like a living shadow. "You are here only to tell me this?"
For a moment, Thrawn's eyes narrowed. It had been fifteen years since the promise had been made, but Thrawn knew that Palpatine remembered it still. "I am here to resign my commission, Your Grace, and assume command of the fleet—as we agreed."
Palpatine stared at Thrawn menacingly, but the Chiss grand admiral refused to let his gaze waver. "The fleet is not ready," Palpatine said finally.
Thrawn's eyes narrowed again, "That is for me to decide, Your Grace."
Palpatine clasped his hands together in front of his body, his loose robes falling from his thin limbs. "You seem to forget who I am," he said vilely.
"I forget nothing, but you seem to have forgotten who has kept you in power." For the first time, Thrawn refused to refer to the Emperor as 'Your Grace.'
The Imperial Guardsmen activated their force pikes at an unheard comand, and leveled them at the Chiss grand admiral, though he was several meters from the tips of their weapons.
Palpatine began walking nearer to Thrawn, stopping ten meters from the Chiss. "You, more than any—even Vader—are responsible for maintaining the New Order." His tone was sickening, and every part of Thrawn wanted to recoil from the raw sense of danger that Palpatine was exuding. "But you are only a liability now," the Emperor continued. "So run back to your people." He smiled, no warmth expressed in the action. "Perhaps you will hinder the Far Outsiders, perhaps not. Either way, the Unexplored Regions will welcome Imperial rule."
Thrawn closed his eyes against the vision of Csilla burning, as the Far Outsider tortured all that lived to death. "You are insane," he said softly.
"To a man of your vision, perhaps." Palpatine said, sneering the word 'man,' for Thrawn's features made him look like anything but a man. "But men of your vision will never stop the Far Outsiders. Men like Tarkin, who can think beyond the confines of this universe, will," he said
Thrawn could feel the danger still pulsating through the air, but anger began to take hold of his mind. He managed to keep his voice quiet. "Tarkin will never stop them," he said icily. "Stardust will not stop them."
Palpatine's face became a mask of shock.
Thrawn felt himself losing command of his own anger, but he continued to speak: "Oh yes, I know about your pet project. Half of the Navy knows about it." He shook his head. "A battlestation the size of a moon will not slow the Far Outsiders down—the defensive armament is insufficient."
"The offensive armament, my dear Grand Admiral, can destroy a planet, and that is all that is required."
Thrawn stared, at a loss for words. Finally, he said, "I will take my leave." He held his gloved hands before his face, studying them with blank eyes. "I will leave your service at the conclusion of my campaigns."
"Be sure that you do, Grand Admiral."
The Chiss grand admiral did not bow to the emperor who had just betrayed him. He only turned, and walked away.
Nez Peron, Outer Rim, 0 BBY
Grand Admiral Thrawn rode in the back of the groundcar, as the 1098th Stormtrooper Legion paraded through the streets of Yuun around him. His campaign was at an end.
The ruins of buildings were everywhere, and where plasma bolts had slagged entire districts of the rebellious city, only a meters-thick plate of glass could be found.
The citizens of the city stared at the parading soldiers with a mixture of fear and hope. Fear from the Empire's reputation for punishing defiant systems, and hope that they might be able to eat more than rats again.
"Little people," the other occupant of the back of the groundcar, Moff Neros, said.
For a moment Thrawn thought that the Imperial Moff was referring to the higher than average gravity of Nez Peron, but quickly realized that he was referring to the mental capacities of the people on this world.
"But they are my little people, at least," Neros said, looking out the blast-proof canopy. "Thank you for delivering them to me mostly unharmed, Grand Admiral, so that I may teach them what comes of traitors."
Thrawn simply nodded. His thoughts were elsewhere.
Even through the transparasteel canopy, the din from the marching bands was deafening. Spaced evenly between each platoon of Stormtroopers, a unit of Navy spacers in dress uniforms pounded out the excruciatingly loud strains of the Imperial March.
It was a sight Thrawn had seen before, and the faces of the 'little people' as they watched their conquerors continue to smear their faces in their defeat made him want to close his eyes. But he couldn't. This was the price he paid for having pledging his sword to the Empire, and he could never afford to forget it.
Soon it will be over. But that thought did not do much to reassure his conscience.
"What the he—" Neros began to swear as a man ran through the crowd. The man's face was pale, and his eyes wide. Then the world seemed to blow up.
Neros was thrown bodily across the back of the groundcar, as a series of improvised explosive devices ripped the 1098th Stormtrooper Legion apart. Thrawn had known what was coming, and had grabbed one of the handholds right before the explosives went off.
The crowds screamed in shock and fled in a panic. Partly from seeing three thousand men be literally torn apart, and partly because they knew that the act of a few fanatics had just condemned them all to death.
The surviving Stormtroopers shakily formed defensive perimeters, but didn't give the burning groundcar that had been carrying their grand admiral and the foppish moff a second glance. Flames were licking around the outsides of it, and any minute now they expected to see the fuel reservoirs touch off.
The driver of the groundcar was trying to blink blood out of his eyes, when a combat vibroblade snaked around the headrest and was plunged into his neck.
Neros stared at the Chiss, with his eyes wide in horror, as Thrawn pulled the vibroblade free from the dying man—as if he were a monster from a fairy tale.
"Why?" he asked, choking in terror as Thrawn pulled his sidearm out with his free hand.
"Honor," Thrawn answered simply, before squeezing the trigger.
Even as Neros' dead body slumped to the plush seating, Thrawn plunged the vibroblade into the flooring, and pulled the vibrating blade through the tough durasteel frame, cutting a man-size circle in seconds.
The flames were sizzling now, and he realized, as he struggled to move the cut-away section, that he might have timed this a bit too closely.
The cut-away section finally moved, and through the new hole in the flooring, he could see the top of a manhole.
General Leats swore at his men who hadn't even made a move toward the burning groundcar. Thrawn could still be alive in there! He—
The explosion from the groundcar echoed throughout the ravaged streets, and he stared at the car again. Pieces of it were streaking through the sky, vapor trailing behind.
No man could survive that. Not even Thrawn.
"You." Leats singled out an aide. "Get a message off to Imperial Center." He turned away from the burning husk of the vehicle. "Let them know Grand Admiral Thrawn is dead."