Chapter 10

"Come," the commander called as Thrawn keyed the door chime. He pushed back from the charts that were spread across his desk as Thrawn entered. "Captain Mitth'raw'nuruodo, I hear that two of your crew members were brawling in my corridors, this morning. Have you learned nothing of command authority that you allow your warriors to behave in such a disrespectful and unbecoming fashion?"

"My apologies, Commander Ina'tin'scalin. They have both been dealt with appropriate. It will not happen again," he assured him.

"See to it that it does not," he said sternly. "Now, what did you want?"

Thrawn continued to stand respectfully at attention. "I have a matter which I believe requires your judgment."

"Go on," Ina'tin'scalin prodded as Thrawn paused to gather his thoughts.

"It is about the alien, Jedi Master Chiara Matao," he started.

Ina'tin'scalin hissed in annoyance. "I told you, Mitth'raw'nuruodo, you should have left her to die. You can learn nothing of value from a primitive alien. If you insist on keeping her as your pet, you and you alone are responsible for her."

Thrawn carefully kept his expression neutral. "Commander, I wish for your advice on-"

"My advice is that you execute her and be done with it. Do not waste my time on such trivial matters. She is a distraction to you, nothing more. Either put her back in that junk heap and drop her back into space to die as she should have in the first place or deal with her yourself. If you ask me about her again, I will execute her myself." The commander glared at him across the desk. "Dismissed."

Thrawn turned and left, feeling a bit surprised by the commander's outburst. The commander had a chance at High Command, once, Thrawn knew. He'd sabotaged his own career through his temper and his inability to play at the political games of the Ruling Families. After a particularly spectacular blow up with an Aristocra of the Second Family, he'd been shunted aside to this quiet planet where nothing ever happened. Still, he was an excellent commander and promising young officers were often sent to serve under his command for a time. Thrawn had always suspected this was partly so that they could learn from his methods and partly so that they could learn from his mistakes. For the hundredth time since he had been promoted to captain and given command of the Springhawk, he promised himself that he would not make the same mistakes He would do whatever it took and play whatever games the Ruling Families asked him to, He would reach High Command, no matter what the cost.

He turned his attention back to the matter at hand as he threaded his way through the corridors and made his way back to his small office. As far as he could tell, he had three options: he could execute Chiara, as the commander had suggested, he could hold her prisoner for the rest of her life, or he could trust her. He sighed wearily as his office door slid shut behind him and he sat down behind his desk. I doubt we could hold her long term, even if we wanted to, Thrawn thought. She undoubtedly has other skills which haven't come up, yet. Yet he didn't get the sense that she was deliberately hiding anything from him. It was as if it didn't occur to her that her abilities were anything unusual or noteworthy.

He opened his desk drawer and took out her lightsaber, turning it over in his hands. She had been wearing it openly on her belt when they pulled her from her wrecked fighter. Perhaps she was accustomed to being recognized as a Jedi and for the abilities which that title entailed, simply from people seeing her weapon. He traced a finger over the intricate runes that had been painstaking carved into the handle. They were arranged in a ring around the top of the hilt, then ran artistically down around the handgrip in a spiral pattern.

Thrawn held the weapon at arm's length and pressed the activation button. A blue blade appeared with a distinctive snap-hiss. Experimentally, he spun the blade in a small circle. This wasn't a weapon of death or destruction, he decided, it was an elegant tool for protection. When Chiara had first shown him the blade, he had doubted her assertion that it could be used for deflecting energy fire because he hadn't believed that anyone could have fast enough reactions. After their sparring match, he was no longer certain of that.

As he closed down the blade, he noticed that the activation stud was the only part of the weapon to be completely devoid of decoration. Upon closer study, he found that the stud itself was meticulously shaped, indicating that the lack of embellishment was deliberate. The deliberation of the act seemed to indicate that the maker had considered the use of the activation stud to be an undesirable event, almost as if they believed that situations should be resolved without resorting to force.

The more Thrawn studied the unusual weapon, the more it seemed to him that it was an artistic statement, rather than a militaristic one. Everything about the design and use of the weapon spoke of the utmost respect for and desire to preserve life. It was a tool with which a Jedi could create peace. Turning the hilt over in his hands, he considered. If what she had told him of their extensive training practices and indoctrination from an early age, were these Jedi truly a threat? Yes, their powers were dangerous and could be turned to great wrong, but if their actions were dictated by their Code, was there really any danger?

Thrawn set the lightsaber on his desk and steepled his fingers under his ching, closing his eyes. Did he really need to judge the entire Jedi Order, or was it just this one Jedi? If he asked for her word that she would not give up the coordinates of Chiss space to the Jedi Council, could he trust her to keep that word? He thought back over the time they had spent together since she was brought aboard the Springhawk. She had been honest with him from the beginning: in fact, he could remember her offering to give him a list of her Jedi skills on their first meeting. And there was something open and artless about her manner that invited trust. He glanced back down at the lightsaber, suddenly feeling certain that he knew who had spent so much time in crafting such an exquisite weapon. With that knowledge, he reached his decision.