MITTH'RAW'NURUODO
Three qualities make a man a leader:
The strength of his brother,
the love of another,
and the will of the Maker.
—Ancient Jedi proverb
attributed to Revan
Deep Space, Mid Rim, 0 ABY
In the dark void between stars, the Second Fleet of the Empire of the Hand and the Alliance Navy rendezvoused.
Admiral Thrawn stood on the starboard hangar deck of the Knight, waiting patiently for the interfleet shuttle launched from the flagship of the Second Fleet, Redeemed, an Ascendancy-class star destroyer, to arrive. Rear Admiral Gial Ackbar stood beside him, his large amphibian eyes watching the open mouth of the hangar intently.
Senator Mon Mothma and a cadre of advisers—mostly there for show, Thrawn knew, since she was anything but a fluttery woman who needed advisers to make a decision—stood waiting as well. The Opposition had been putting considerable pressure on her to keep a firm grip on Thrawn's leash, and he knew that she was here mostly to look as if she were the one in charge. The thought amused Thrawn.
Marines and spacers were standing at attention as a sleek, dark-painted shuttle slipped into the hangar. The transparisteel canopy of it was seemingly opaque, keeping Thrawn from being able to see inside, though he knew from experience that it was transparent from the inside looking out.
It landed softly, the weight of the shuttle settling on four landing struts that detached from the underside. As the hatch opened, a half-dozen bosuns brought their calls to their lips, filling the hangar with the ear-shattering sound of their whistles.
A woman in a Hand uniform stepped out. Her eyes surveyed the assembled Marines and spacers, her expression carefully neutral. Thrawn recognized her instantly, and a slight smile appeared on his lips.
The woman turned to the Knight's flag captain, Michael Baldor, and said, "Permission to come aboard, Captain?"
"Granted, Admiral," Baldor said, saluting.
The woman nodded, returning the flag captain's salute. She turned to Thrawn, saluting again.
"Admiral," Thrawn said in greeting to Admiral Sarria Thek, responding in kind to her sharp salute.
"Vun'ur-Vun'bovah," Thek responded respectfully in the Chiss fashion. "Captain Parck sends his apologies—he was not able to come in person, as he was . . . otherwise engaged."
Thrawn nodded a little. "Understandable," he said. "What is your force strength, Admiral?" he questioned a moment later. The sensor suite aboard the Knight had identified the majority of the ships of the Second Fleet, but quite a few of the emissions profiles didn't match anything in either Imperial or Alliance databases, and he wasn't quite skilled enough to take raw emissions data and match it to ship profiles from memory.
"Forty Imperial-class, eighteen Ascendancy-class, and seven Syndic-class, Vun'ur-Vun'bovah," Thek said. She had pulled out a touchpad, to give an accurate rundown of her fleet. "Standard support vessels—one-hundred and six Asdroni-class corvettes, fifty-six Kariek-class light cruisers, thirty Lancer-class frigates, ten Massias-class interdictors, and four Au'riette-class carriers. Captain Parck also detached four VELCs, sir." She seemed unsurprised that Thrawn had opted to ask about her force's disposition before she'd been more than two minutes aboard his flagship.
Thek slipped the touchpad back into a pocket, and ignored the outright shocked look on the faces of Mothma's advisers—Thek's force was three times larger than the entire Alliance Fleet. Mothma herself was doing a better job of containing her surprise at the number of vessels, but Thrawn could still see it was there. He hadn't told her just how many vessels he'd expected Parck to send him; he hadn't known for certain how many ships his second-in-command could afford to send.
"That's quite an armada, Admiral . . ." Mothma said, inviting the Hand admiral to give her name.
Thek looked at Mothma with cold eyes. "Thek," she said simply, before turning back to Thrawn. She wasn't happy about Thrawn's pact with the Alliance, that much was plain. Still, Thrawn knew that Thek would carry out his commands.
Mothma looked slightly surprised at the blunt snub, but didn't say anything, though she did shift on her feet slightly. The long dress she wore masked the uneasy movement from unobservant eyes, Thrawn noted.
Thek's eyes turned to Ackbar, who'd been watching her curiously. "Rear Admiral Ackbar, sir," he said by way of introduction. He didn't salute—he wasn't certain he should, given their differences in allegiance—but instead offered his hand.
The Hand admiral took it without hesitation, further snubbing Mothma with her easy acceptance of the Dac officer. Mothma kept her face blank, as she turned to Thrawn to say, "I have business that requires my attention, Admiral."
"Of course, Senator," Thrawn said, none of the slight amusement he felt showing. She was wise to withdraw, he thought, before Thek had another opportunity to be graceless to her, and give the Opposition further reason to put pressure on her. He would have to have a talk with Thek about respecting the Alliance's chain of command.
Nodding deferentially, he saluted the Senator, before she turned away.
"You commanded the attack on Shuldene," Thek said, eyeing Ackbar, and seemingly oblivious to Mothma's withdrawal. "That was a nice bit of action."
Ackbar nodded gruffly. "Just a small part in the war, Admiral," he said. It didn't even occur to anyone in the hangar that Ackbar was being falsely modest—he probably didn't truly think of his action as anything more than a 'small part in the war.'
"You attacked a numerically superior foe—simply as a diversion, I grant—and destroyed four battlecruisers, and the entire Shuldene fleetyard complex, while taking only light losses. I find that to be a very nice bit of action."
Ackbar—obviously somewhat embarrassed—nodded once.
Thek turned to Thrawn. Straightening herself, she looked at her commander. "Vun'ur-Vun'bovah," she said formally. "My forces await your command."
"You brought VELCs, you said?" Thrawn asked Thek, the two of them sitting in his office alone.
The Variable Emission Light Craft was one of the Empire of the Hand's many innovative solutions to their relatively low number of capital warships. One of the VELCs, roughly the size of a light cruiser, could put out enough emissions to make them look like a small battlegroup. Such a warship would likely have never been built by the orders of the Imperial Starfleet, but the doctrines of the Hand's Navy were far more sophisticated than their Imperial cousins, and had enthusiastically encouraged the development of such innovative warships.
"I did, Vun'ur-Vun'bovah," Thek responded.
Thrawn smiled a little. "No one is listening, Admiral. You don't have to be so formal."
The Hand Admiral nodded. "Aye, sir."
Thrawn just nodded, staying silent for a moment. He tapped his desk lightly as he studied the woman sitting across from him. She was in her fifties, and her graying hair had been trimmed short in accordance with regulations, even though the Hand's Navy allowed women to wear their hair longer than the Imperial Starfleet. Her face was blunt, but, had she smiled, Thrawn would have seen traces of the beautiful young commander he'd met years ago.
"Communications will be difficult," Thrawn said, jumping right into the matter. "Hypercomms are unreliable, and the HoloNet is off-limits for the time being."
"Comm silence is nothing new, Admiral."
"No," Thrawn agreed. "But it was always our choice in the past—now, it's not." He ceased his rhythmic tapping of the desk, and lit up a holo-emitter. A detailed map of the galaxy appeared between them.
Thrawn traced his finger around the Core Worlds. "The Empire is the most immediate threat to us, and we must deal with them before we can turn our attention to the Far Outsiders." His finger paused, and pointed at Imperial Center. "The Emperor is the head of the monster, but I have my doubts that simply killing him would be enough. The bureaucratic machine he created could lumber on for years without him, perhaps even decades."
"They have to surrender willingly. Simply killing the Emperor would not be enough," she agreed, though distaste was clear in her tone as she spoke of regicide. Even though Palpatine had betrayed them both—and the entire population of the galaxy, for that matter—he was still the man she'd sworn a sacred oath to.
"Agreed," Thrawn said. "If we had enough time, a well-organized, subtle propaganda campaign would go a long way in forcing them to capitulate, but that could take years." He rubbed his temple. "A more blatant propaganda push would be faster, but less likely to succeed. The Emperor could kill any blatant push in the cradle—he has a powerful cult of personality, I'm afraid."
"Then, respectfully, Admiral, taking that along with our lack of capital ships, I believe we're karked." Even as she spoke, Thrawn noted a slightly excited, almost girlish light in her eyes that gave her words more humor than he'd expected from her.
Thrawn raised an eyebrow and snorted lightly at her crude verb. "We can not defeat them in the short-term, but I believe we can at least neutralize them, for the time being."
He moved his hand toward the holographic representation of the Outer Rim. "There should be a strong Imperial force—eight-thousand vessels, or so—operating in the Rim, by now. Commanded by Grand Admiral Grant, if our sources are correct."
"What is his goal?"
"Me," Thrawn said, smiling slightly. "He has been ordered to kill or capture me. Not to destroy the Alliance, but to kill me—that tells you a bit about the Emperor's priorities. He's been ordered to succeed within six months, as well, and I would assume the Emperor will remove his head and replace him with someone else if he doesn't."
"Then that's our chance," Thek said. "If we can pin Grant down, we can destroy him." There was nothing in her expression that seemed even slightly perturbed that Grant's force was fifty times larger than hers, and Thrawn narrowed his eyes slightly, immediately tying the excitement he'd seen in her eyes with her confidence. "It'd be a drop in the ocean of the total Imperial Starfleet, but it would be a very sizable chunk of their effective force."
"We believe Grant is making a push to Dac, even as we speak," Thrawn said. "And we will meet his forces there . . . I don' believe we'll be doing very much pinning down—likely the opposite."
Thek looked at the star cluster around the Dac system, the hidden excitement dimming slightly. "The Dac are going to get hurt then. Badly," she said. "Nothing's going to stop Grant from just glassing the planet, once they're in orbit."
"I believe you'll find Octavian Grant doesn't enjoy genocide," Thrawn responded. "And I doubt he'll have been directed to exterminate the Dac people—that would pose problems to pacifying the Rim; many of the major star systems follow the lead of Dac, and would likely declare open rebellion if the jewel of the Rim was slagged."
"I see you don't agree with Tarkin's policy of blowing up a planet to cow their neighbors," Thek said dryly—Tarkin's 'New Navy' policies had never been favored by career officers.
"As the late Grand Moff discovered, a second before a farmboy sent him to Hell: It doesn't work." Thrawn refocused the holo-emitter on the Mid Rim. "Once Grant is out of the equation, my force will be free to enter the Mid Rim and play hell with the Imperial defenders, while yours begins establishing a proper presence throughout the Outer Rim," Thrawn added, moving his hand toward the holographic representation of the Mid Rim.
Thek made a sour face. "I don't believe I'll enjoy conquering planets in the name of the Alliance."
"Then don't," Thrawn said simply. " 'Liberate' them in the Hand's name—we can always decide who gets what, after the war."
Thek looked surprised. "The Alliance will never accept that. Let alone that ciken Mothma."
"Whatever she is, she's not a ciken," Thrawn said. He paused, before deciding that his . . . advice to be more friendly to the Alliance's leadership could wait until later. "And they will accept it, Admiral; they will have no choice. Not while you have sixty-five star destroyers, and they have . . . slightly less."
"True," Thek granted. "It'll be another war in the making though." She laughed without humor. "Providing we win this one and the next, of course."
"War has been part of the universe since Creation; I don't think it will ever go away." Thrawn moved his hand to the Core Worlds, passing through the Expansion Region, the Inner Rim, and the Colonies on his way. "If we avoid the hyperlanes, we should be able to cut a straight line to Imperial Center. Taking the planet won't win the war, but it will shock their civilians, and put the Empire on the defensive. Hopefully, that will give us the time to deal with the Far Outsiders. Hopefully."
Thek stared at him. " 'Avoid the hyperlanes'?" she repeated. "That'll take you years, Admiral." Memories from her two-week journey from Nirauan to Namadii were still fresh in her mind. In two weeks she'd traveled a hundred lightyears. What Thrawn was planning would require him to go thousands of lightyears through a far, far more dangerous—as far as uncharted celestial objects were concerned—portion of the galaxy.
"You would have to scout every jump," she went on, "and there's so much debris in the Core. . . ."
Thrawn smiled thinly. "I have my ways," he said simply.
Thek just rocked her head to the side, before saying, "Aye, sir."
The comlink built into Thrawn's desk chimed, and he depressed a stud to answer it. "Go ahead," he said.
"My apologies for the interruption, Admiral," a mechanical voice said. It belonged to TC-32, one of the protocol droids that had been assigned to help him with an ever-increasing pile of flimsi-work. "There has been a priority hypercomm from Dac, sir, and I believe you have instructed me to put any such calls through, regardless of circumstance."
"Put it through."
The holographic representation of the galaxy was replaced by a familiar figure. "Admiral," the holographic rendition of William Sheplin said in greeting. "Just so you know, this is prerecorded; so don't go and answer me." The tall man smiled humorously, his scars flattening out slightly from the action. "My end is coming along nicely, sir. I don't know what kind of strings you pulled, but Colonel Sanderson has been decidedly helpful.
"We've got fourteen mobile ion batteries deployed around Imprimis Base, along with three-dozen MACs—though if Grant gets close enough that we have to use them, we will be really karked.
"I'm organizing the Base's strike-craft compliment into two strike groups, and we should give Grant a very, very bloody nose with the strike groups and the orbital defenses. Still, I wouldn't stop for caf if I were you—the faster you get here, the better." Sheplin's scarred face lost its smile.
"It's going to be some ugly skrag, sir. I don't think we'll hold for more than a day, if it comes to it . . . and that's assuming that Grant doesn't decide to just glass us from the edge of the system . . ." he trailed off. "On that cheerful note; good luck with your end, sir."
"I see your aide is as optimistic as ever," Thek said dryly.
"Always," Thrawn answered. He glanced shrewdly at the Hand Admiral. "Speaking of optimism, I believe you have something important to show me, judging from the way you've been hiding your smiles."
Thek had served with Thrawn long enough to know that he could practically read the minds of his subordinates, and she grinned slightly. She slipped her hand into her uniform coat, finding her touchpad. "Well, Admiral, I do have something to show you." She activated the screen. "We call it a 'Hudson Box.' "