Hey Folks, Grubkiller here.

Ever since Disney took control of Star Wars, and proceeded to run the franchise into the ground, I couldn't help but return to the old comics, novels, and video games. It was then that I thought, 'why weren't the Thrawn/Dark Empire stories made into a sequel trilogy?'

So, I decided to make my most ambitious story yet: a combination of the Thrawn/Dark Empire stories, with some of the 'better/decent' (And I can't stress those two words enough) elements from the Disney trilogy, but with Legends characters that many of you know and love, and I hope that I write them properly.

Also, our old heroes aren't going to be old, pathetic losers like they were portrayed to be in the Disney Trilogy. And Female characters will not be total Mary Sues.

So, without further delay, let's begin what should have been a worthy sequel to George Lucas' 6 incredible masterpieces (And Yes, I include the Prequels, because they were great films: change my mind).

Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars, nor can I ever hope to match the talent of some of its best writers, and I do not own their superb works of Science-Fiction. I'm just writing for fun, and because I'm somewhat disgruntled.

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Devastator of Worlds-Chapter 1

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It's been five years since the Battle of Endor, where the Rebel Alliance destroyed the 2nd Death Star, and defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor. The New reformed Republic has taken the Core, and driven the fractured Imperial Starfleet into the Outer Rim.

Luke Skywalker has become the first Jedi Knight in the New Jedi Order, and seeks to rebuild the Jedi Order. Han Solo and Princess Leia have given birth to force-sensitive twins, hoping to one day let them train under Luke tutelage.

But the galaxy is still in turmoil, as the fledgling New Republic struggles to maintain order in this new galaxy. And meanwhile, deep within the Unknown regions, a new threat is brewing, and the Empire's best tactician returns to take command of the Empire's scattered Fleet.

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ISD Chimaera, in the neutral zone between New Republic and Imperial Space.

"Captain Pellaeon?" a voice called down the portside crew pit through the hum of background conversation. "Message from the sentry line: the scoutships have just come out of lightspeed."

Pellaeon, leaning over the shoulder of the man at the Chimaera's bridge engineering monitor, ignored the shout. "Trace this line for me," he ordered, tapping a light pen at the schematic on the display.

The engineer threw a questioning glance up at him. "Sir . . . ?"

"I heard him," Pellaeon said. "You have an order, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir," the engineering officer said carefully, and keyed for the trace.

"Captain Pellaeon?" the voice repeated, closer this time. Keeping his eyes on the engineering display, Pellaeon waited until he could hear the sound of the approaching footsteps. Then with all the regal weight that fifty years spent in the Galactic Republic and Imperial Fleets gave to a man, he straightened up and turned.

The young duty officer's brisk walk faltered; came to an abrupt halt. "Uh, sir-" He looked into Pellaeon's eyes and his voice faded away.

Pellaeon let the silence hang in the air for a handful of heartbeats, long enough for those nearest to notice. "This is not a cattle market in Shaum Hii, Lieutenant Tschel," he said at last, keeping his voice calm but icy cold. "This is the bridge of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Routine information is not - repeat, not - simply shouted in the general direction of its intended recipient. Is that clear?"

Tschel swallowed. "Yes, sir."

Pellaeon held his eyes a few seconds longer, then lowered his head in a slight nod. "Now. Report."

"Yes, sir." Tschel swallowed again. We've just received word from the sentry ship, sir: the scouts have returned from their scan raid on the Obroa-skai system."

"Very good," Pellaeon nodded. "Did they have any trouble?""Only a little, sir - the natives apparently took exception to them pulling a dump of their central library system. The wing commander said there was some attempt at pursuit, but that he lost them."

"I hope so," Pellaeon said grimly. Orb-skai held a strategic position in the borderland regions, and intelligence reports indicated that the New Republic was making a strong bid for its membership and support. If they'd had armed emissary ships there at the time of the raid. . . .

Well, he'd know soon enough. "Have the wing commander report to the bridge ready room with his report as soon as the ships are aboard," he told Tschel. "And have the sentry line go to yellow alert. "Dismissed."

"Yes, sir." Spinning around with a reasonably good imitation of a proper military turn, the lieutenant headed back toward the communications console.

The young lieutenant . . . which was, Pellaeon thought with a trace of old bitterness, where the problem really lay. In the old days - at the height of the Empire's power - it would have been inconceivable for a man as young as Tschel to serve as a bridge officer aboard a ship like the Chimaera.

Now -

He looked down at the equally young man at the engineering monitor. Now, in contrast, the Chimaera had virtually no one aboard except young men and women.

Slowly, Pellaeon let his eyes sweep across the bridge, feeling the echoes of old anger and hatred twist through his stomach. There had been many commanders in the Fleet, he knew, who had seen the Emperor's original Death Star as a blatant attempt to bring the Empire's vast military power more tightly under his direct control, just as he'd already done with the Empire's political power. The fact that he'd ignored the battle station's proven vulnerability and gone ahead with a second Death Star had merely reinforced that suspicion. There would have been few in the Fleet's upper echelons who would have genuinely mourned its loss . . . if it hadn't, in its death throes, taken the Super Star Destroyer Executor with it.

Even after five years Pellaeon couldn't help but wince at the memory of that image: the Executor, out of control, colliding with the unfinished Death Star and then disintegrating completely in the battle station's massive explosions. The loss of the ship itself had been bad enough; but the fact that it was the Executor had made it far worse, because it was Darth Vader's personal ship, and despite the Dark Lord's legendary - and often lethal - administration, serving aboard it had long been perceived as the quick lone to promotion.

Which meant that when the SSD went down, so also did a disproportionate fraction of the best young and midlevel officers and crewmen.

The Fleet had never recovered from that fiasco. With the Executor's leadership gone, the battle had quickly turned into a confused rout, with several other Star Destroyers being lost before the order to withdraw had finally been given, with Pellaeon himself taking command when everyone above him was killed, including the Chimaera's original CO. And despite his best efforts to hold the fleet together, they had never regained the initiative against the Rebels.

Instead, the Empire fell apart into a state of warlordism and civil war. Trade collapsed, the economy tanked, and the Starfleet was always low on supplies as a result, and they had been steadily pushed back as a result. The Core systems were abandoned, including Imperial Center, and now they were here, in what had always been considered the backwater of the Empire, with barely a quarter of its former systems still under nominal Imperial control, having signed a humiliating peace treaty with the "New Republic." Here, aboard a Star Destroyer manned almost entirely by painstakingly trained but badly inexperienced young people, many of them conscripted from their home worlds, by threat of force in many cases.

Here, under the command of possibly the greatest military mind the Empire had ever seen.

Pellaeon smiled - a tight, wolfish smile - as he again looked around his bridge. No, the end of the Empire was not yet. As the arrogantly self-proclaimed New Republic would soon discover.

He glanced at his watch. Grand Admiral Thrawn would be meditation in his command room now . . . and if the Imperial procedure frowned on shouting cross the bridge, it frowned even harder on interrupting a Grand Admiral's meditation by intercom. One spoke to him in person, or one did not speak to him at all. "Continue tracing those lines," Pellaeon ordered the engineering lieutenant as he headed for the door. "I'll be back shortly."

The Grand Admiral's new command room was two levels below the bridge, in a space that had once housed the former commander's luxury entertainment suite. When Thrawn took command, one of his first acts had been to take over the suite and convert it into what was essentially a secondary bridge.

A secondary bridge, meditation room . . . and perhaps more. It was no secret aboard the Chimaera that since the recent refitting had been completed the Grand Admiral had been spending a great deal of is time here. What was secret was what exactly he did during those long hours.

Stepping to the door, Pellaeon straightened his tunic and braced himself. Perhaps he was about to find out. "Captain Pellaeon to see Grand Admiral Thrawn," he announced. "I have informa-"

The door slid open before he finished speaking. Mentally preparing himself, Pellaeon stepped into the dimly lit entry room. He glanced around, saw nothing of interest, and started for the door to the main chamber. He saw several pieces of art, and relics from ancient history.

Paintings, wall carvings, ancient relics and trinkets, including a modest-looking, worn, and very battered clay chalice.

He continued down the dark corridor, and a touch of air on the back of his neck was his only warning. "Captain Pellaeon," a deep, gravelly, catlike voice mewed into his ear.

Pellaeon jumped and spun around, cursing both himself and the short, wiry creature standing less than half a meter away. "Blast it, Rukh," he snarled. "What do you think you're doing?"

For a long moment Rukh just looked up at him, and Pellaeon felt a drop of sweat trickle down his back. With his large dark eyes, protruding jaw, and glistening needle teeth, Rukh was even more of a nightmare in the dimness than he was in normal lighting.

Especially to someone like Pellaeon, who knew what Thrawn used Rukh and his fellow Noghri for.

"I'm doing my job," Rukh said at last. He stretched his thin arm almost casually out toward the inner door, and Pellaeon caught just a glimpse of the slender assassin's knife before it vanished somehow into the Noghri's sleeve. His hand closed, then opened again, steel-wire muscles moving visibly beneath his dark gray skin. "You may enter."

"Thank you," Pellaeon growled. Straightening his tunic again, he urned back to the door. It opened at his approach, and he stepped through . . . into a softly lit art museum.

He stopped short, just inside the room, and looked around in astonishment. The walls and domed ceiling were covered with flat paintings and planics, a few of them vaguely human-looking but most of distinctly alien origin. Various sculptures were scattered around, some freestanding, others on pedestals. In the center of the room was a double circle of repeater displays, the outer ring slightly higher than the inner ring. Both sets of displays, at least from what little Pellaeon could see, also seemed to be devoted to pictures of artwork.

And in the center of the double circle, seated in a duplicate of the Admiral's Chair on the bridge, was Grand Admiral Thrawn.

He sat motionlessly, his shimmery blue-black hair glinting in the dim light, his pale blue skin looking cool and subdued and very alien on his otherwise human frame. His eyes were nearly closed as he leaned back against the headrest, only a glint of red showing between the lids. he wore the all-white officer's uniform worn by Grand Admirals.

But what was unique about Thrawn, other than being the last one, was the insignia on his shoulder. Instead of the Imperial insignia, was a sixteen-rayed symbol inscribed within a hexagon. The insignia of the First Order - a mysterious Imperial faction that operated out in the unknown regions, where Thrawn came from before taking command here.

Pellaeon licked his lips, suddenly unsure of the wisdom of having invaded Thrawn's sanctum like this. If the Grand Admiral decided to be annoyed. . . .

"Come in, Captain," Thrawn said, his quietly modulated voice cutting through Pellaeon's thoughts. Eyes still closed through slits, he waved a hand in a small and precisely measured motion. "What do you think?"

"It's . . . very interesting, sir," was all Pellaeon could come up with as he walked over to the outer display circle.

"All holographic, or course," Thrawn said, and Pellaeon thought he could hear a note of regret in his voice. "The sculptures and flats both. Some of them are lost; many of the others are on planets now occupied by the Rebellion."

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon nodded. "I thought you'd want to know, Admiral, that the scouts have returned from the Obroa-skai system. The wing commander will be ready for debriefing in a few minutes."

Thrawn nodded. "were they able to tap into the central library system?"

"They got at least a partial dump," Pellaeon told him. "I don't know yet if they were able to complete it - apparently, there was some attempt at pursuit. The wing commander thinks he lost them, though."

For a moment Thrawn was silent. "No," he said. "No, I don't believe he has. Particularly not if the pursuers were from the Rebellion." Taking a deep breath, he straightened in his chair and, for the first time since Pellaeon had entered, opened his glowing red eyes.

Pellaeon met his gaze without flinching, feeling a small flicker of pride at the achievement. Many of the Emperor's top commanders and courtiers had never learned to feel comfortable with those eyes. Or with Thrawn himself, for that matter. Which was probably why the Grand Admiral had spent so much of his career out in the Unknown regions, working to map out those uncharted sectors and helping the First Order to bring those still-barbaric sections of the galaxy under heel. His brilliant successes had won him the right to wear the white uniform of Grand Admiral - the only non-human ever granted that honor by the Emperor.

Ironically, it had also made him all the more indispensable to the frontier campaigns. Pellaeon had often wondered how the Battle of Endor would have ended if Thrawn, instead of Vader and Piett. "Yes, sir," he said. "I've ordered the sentry line onto yellow alert. Shall we go to red?"

"Not yet," Thrawn said. "We should still have a few minutes. Tell me, Captain, do you know anything about art?"

"Ah . . . not very much," Pellaeon managed, thrown a little by the sudden change of subject. "I've never really had much time to devote to it."

"You should make the time." Thrawn gestured to a part of the inner display circle to his right. "Saffa paintings," he identified them. "Circa 1550 to 2200, Pre-Empire Date. Note how the style changes - right here - at the first contact with the Thennqora. Over there-" he pointed to the left-hand wall, "-are examples of Paonidd extras art. Note the similarities with the early Saffa work, and also the mid-eighteenth century Pre-Em Vaathkree flatscuplt."

"Yes, I see," Pellaeon said, not entirely truthfully. "Admiral, shouldn't we be-?"

He broke off as a shrill whistle split the air.

"Bridge to Grand Admiral Thawn," Lieutenant Tschel's taut voice called over the intercom. "Sir, we're under attack!"

Thrawn tapped the intercom switch. This is Thrawn," he said evenly. "Go to red alert, and tell me what we've got. Calmly, if possible."

"Yes, sir." The muted alert lights began flashing, and Pellaeon could hear the sound of the klaxons baying faintly outside the room. "Sensors are picking up four New Republic Assault Frigates," Tschel continued, his voice tense but under noticeably better control. "Plus at least three wings of X-wing fighters. Symmetric cloud-eve formation, coming in on our scoutships' vector."

Pellaeon swore under his breath. A single Star Destroyer, with a largely inexperienced crew, against four Assault Frigates and their accompanying fighters . . . "Run engines to full power," he called toward the intercom. "Prepare to make the jump to light speed." He took a step toward the door-

"Belay that jump order, Lieutenant," Thrawn said, still glacially calm. "TIE fighter crews to their stations; activate deflector shields."

Pellaeon spun back to him. "Admiral-"

Thrawn cut him off with an upraised hand. "come here, Captain," the Grand Admiral ordered. "Let's take a look, shall we?"

He touched a switch; and abruptly, the art show was gone. Instead, the room had become a miniature bridge monitor, with helm, engine, and weapons readouts on the walls and double display circle. The open space had become a holographic tactical display; in one corner a flashing red sphere with four rectangles and a couple dozen tiny dots indicated the invaders, while the blue triangle and small dots indicated the location of the Chimaera, and its sentries. The wall display nearest to it gave an ETA estimate of twelve minutes.

"Fortunately, the scoutships have enough of a lead not to be in danger themselves," Thrawn commented. "So. Let's see what exactly we're dealing with. Bridge: order the three nearest sentry ships to attack."

"Yes, sir."

Across the room, three blue dots shifted out of the sentry line into intercept vectors. From the corner of his eye Pellaeon saw Thrawn lean forward in his seat as the Assault Frigates and accompanying X-wings shifted in response. One of the blue dots winked out-

"Excellent," Thrawn said, leaning back in his seat. "That will do, Lieutenant. Pull the other two sentry ships back, and order the Sector Four line to scramble out of the invader' vector."

"Yes, sir," Tschel said, sounding more than a little confused.

A confusion Pallaeon could well understand. "Shouldn't we at least signal the rest of the Fleet?" He suggested, hearing the tightness in his voice. "The Death's Head could be here in twenty minutes, most of the others in less than an hour."

"The last thing we want to do right now is bring in more of our ships, Captain," Thrawn said. He looked up at Pellaeon, and a faint smile touched his lips. "After all, there may be survivors, and we wouldn't want the Rebellion learning about us. Would we."

He turned back to his displays. "Bridge: I want a twenty-degree port yaw rotation - bring us flat to the invaders' vector, superstructure pointing at them. As soon as they're within the outer perimeter, the Sector Four sentry line is to re-form behind them and jam all transmission."

"Y-yes, sir. Sir-?"

"You don't have to understand, Lieutenant," Thrawn said, his voice abruptly cold. "Just obey."

"Yes, sir."

Pellaeon took a careful breath as the displays showed the Chimaera rotating as per orders. I'm afraid I don't understand either, Admiral," he said. "Turning our superstructure toward them-"

Again, Thrawn stopped him with an upraised hand. "Watch and learn, Captain. That's fine, bridge: stop rotation and hold position here. Drop docking bay deflector shields, boost power to all others. TIE fighter squadrons: launch when ready. Head directly away from the Chimaera for two kilometers, then sweep around in open cluster formation. Backfire speed, zonal attack pattern."

He got an acknowledgment, then looked up at Pellaeon. "Do you understand now, Captain?"

Pellaeon pursed his lips. "I'm afraid not," he admitted. "I see now that the reason you turned the ship was to give the fighters some exit cover, but the rest is nothing more but a classic Marg Sabl closure maneuver. There's no way they'd fall for that."

The Marg Sabl maneuver was a tactic first used in the Clone Wars, in the Battle of Ryloth. It was developed by Jedi Padawaw Ahsoka Tano. According to Tano's master, Anakin Skywalker and Senator Amidala, both of whom Thrawn met when he was just an undercover Lieutenant, the Marg Sabl was named for a Togrutan flower that grew on Shili.

"On the contrary," Thrawn corrected coolly. "Not only will they fall for it, they'll be utterly destroyed by it. Watch, Captain. And learn."

The TIE fighters launched, accelerating away from the Chimaera and then leaning hard into etheric rudders to sweep back around it like the spray of some exotic fountain. The invading ships spotted the attackers and shifted vectors. They all split apart in a very disorganized manner and tried to retreat and reform into a defensive column.

Pellaeon blinked. "What in the Nine Corellian hells are they doing?"

"They're trying the only defense they know of against this maneuver," Thrawn said, and there was no mistaking the satisfaction in his voice. "Or, to be more precise, the only defense they are psychologically capable of attempting." He nodded toward the flashing sphere. "You see, Captain, there's an Elomin commanding that force . . . and Elomin simply cannot handle the unstructured attack profile of a properly executed Marg Sabl."

Pellaeon stared at the invaders, still shifting into their utterly useless defense stance . . . and slowly it dawned on him what Thrawn had just done. "That sentry ship attack a few minutes ago," he said. "You were able to tell from that that those were Elomin ships?"

"Learn about art, Captain," Thrawn said, his voice almost dreamy. "When you understand a species' art, you understand that species."

He straightened in his chair. "Bridge: bring us to flank speed. Prepare to join the attack."

The Chimaera came about and headed straight for the damaged, and disorganized Rebel frigates, and cut loose with a barrage of green turbo laser fire. Their shots ran straight and true, spearing through the rebel ships.

A few minutes later, the rebel ships were burning from stem to stern, and began to spin out of control. One frigate crashed into another, creating a fireball that erupted more brightly than the stars, if only for the briefest of moments.

In just under an hour, the Empire won against an enemy that had it outnumbered and outgunned.

The ready room door slid shut behind the ing commander, and Pellaeon gazed back at the map still on the display. "Sounds like Obroa-skai is a dead end," he said regretfully. "There's no way we'll be able to spare the manpower that much pacification would cost."

"For now, perhaps," Thrawn agreed. "But only for now."

Pellaeon frowned across the table at him. Thrawn was fiddling with a data card, rubbing it absently between his finger and thumb, as he stared out the viewport at the stars, and possibly the debris field from the destroyed rebel ships. A strange smile played about his lips.

"Admiral?" He asked carefully.

Thrawn turned his head, those glowing eyes coming to rest on Pellaeon. "It's the second piece of the puzzle, Captain," he said softly, holding up the data card. "The piece I've been searching for now for over a year."

Abruptly, he turned to the intercom, jabbed it on. "Bridge, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn. Signal the Death's Head; tell Captain Harbid to head for the planet Mrykr, and begin collecting the specimens I asked for, and that he is to continue making tactical surveys of the local systems and pulling data dumps wherever possible. And then inform him that we'll be temporarily leaving the fleet, and then set course for a planet called Wayland - the nav computer has its location."

"Yes, sir." The lieutenant said.

"And one more, very important thing: Send an encrypted massage to all Imperial forces, and tell them that it is time to make use of the World Devastators. The next phase of Operation Cinder is to begin at once."

The bridge acknowledged, and Thrawn turned back to Pellaeon. "You seem lost, Captain," he suggested. "I take it you've never been to Wayland?"

Pellaeon shook his head, trying without success to rad the Grand Admiral's expression. "Should I have?"

"Probably not. The planet's location is classified, even before the Rebels took Coruscant."

He paused, taking a measured sip from the mug at his elbow - a strong Forvish ale, from the semll of it - and Pellaeon forced himself to remain silent. Whatever the Grand Admiral was going to tell him, he was obviously going to tell it in his own way and time. "Just before I came here from the unknown regions, I was introduced to one of our late Emperor's messenger sentinels, telling me to go to Wayland, and giving me access to this data card that I'm holding." Thrawn said, holding up the card that he was fiddling with earlier. "Apparently, it's home to one of the Emperor's observatories, and another secret facility beneath the mountains. But I don't know what it could be."

Pellaeon looked at the card his superior was holding. "And that explanation will become the first piece of this puzzle of yours?"

Thrawn smiled. "Not mine, Captain, but that of our late Emperor."

"I congratulate you on this high honor from the Emperor," Pellaeon said, suddenly tired of this game. "May I ask just what exactly this great puzzle is, and what it has to do with Operation Cinder?

Thrawn smiled - a smile that sent a shiver up Pellaeon's back.

"Why, the only puzzle worth solving, of course," the Grand Admiral said softly. "The retaking of this galaxy, and the total, and utter destruction of the Rebellion."

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Well folks, that was chapter 1, inspired from the Heir to the Empire novel by Timothy Zahn, and with some of Disney's canon details thrown in, because I'm a fair guy.

I hope that you all enjoyed.

I'll be working on chapter 2, and have it published as soon as possible.

Until next time, as always, this is Grubkiller, over and out.