AN: A few days between chapters. This one went through a few rewrites before I got what I wanted. The next one should go smoother, but...well, it's going to be a bit longer, so it'll take a day or two to get it done. Also, I FINALLY got the inspiration I needed to start a story I had been meaning to write for a while and just couldn't think of how to start it. If things go well, I might actually have the first chapter of that one up tonight, since I know exactly how I want it to go, so the writing should be fast. Don't worry, this one isn't falling to the wayside. this is still my primary project, but when I have chapters I'm stuck on, it'll help me to divert to something else, just to get the creativity going again.
So! Expect a few more chapters of one-shots in In the Shadows, since I have two or three really good ideas planned for that one, and the first chapter of a new something within the next day. Enjoy, my lovelies! You're the best. Oh, and let me know if you want to see something, in this thing, or the one-shots or otherwise. I've got a few really good suggestions from people, and your ideas help me craft a good story.
Chapter 13: Check
Darth Sidious stood frozen to the spot, his yellow eyes glowing with untempered fury as he stared at the four crates sitting before his throne, their silver sheen dull in the darkness, the shiny surface reflecting the glow of the Sith Master's yellow eyes. It was Empire Day, and he had come to expect the day's celebrations to be punctured by gifts from his former apprentice, the lost, wayward Darth Lumis. The young Sith's actions were that of a rebellious teenager, a child cut loose from his parent and discovering for the first time that there no rules upon him. His actions were little more than irritations, sometimes immensely destructive irritations, but even at his worst, Lumis didn't leave a dent in the Empire's might. He could, but Lumis didn't.
Instead, he opted to be as frustrating as possible, a virus, a disease, but not a particularly malignant one. Lumis was less akin to a contagion than he was to a splinter dug deep within the skin, irritating, but ultimately harmless, though Sidious knew that even the smallest wound could become infected and fester were it to be ignored. Since Lumis showed no sign of dying on his own, possibly ever, he could not afford to ignore him, but validating him by lavishing attention and resources on him was only giving the rogue credence as a threat when he was, in fact, no threat at all. Not against the Empire and not against him, at least not yet, and when the Death Star was complete, there would be nothing Lumis could do to oppose the Empire. There would be nothing anyone could do.
Infiltrations, uprisings, sex scandals and coy, teasing messages had marked each Empire Day starting from year one, when Lumis had sent the Sith Master a holorecording of one of his newly appointed Moffs in the Outer Rim, naked and on her knees before twelve known Separatist agitators as they used and debased her willing body. The recording was delivered by the Moff herself, her eyes hazy and unaware and clearly under the sway of Lumis' manipulations. There was no choice but to kill her, of course, and the message was clear. Nobody was safe from Darth Lumis, and without the threat of the Jedi, with Vader crippled and soundly beaten on Mustafar, there were very little that could stand in opposition to the renegade Sith.
Sidious could, of course. Even now, he felt the touch of mastery, the grace of the Dark Side, and he knew he was stronger. Vader and Maul both thought Lumis to have achieved the same feat, bore the mark of a Master upon him, but the apprentices knew nothing of true darkness. None of them did. None of them had seen what Sidious was capable of, none of them understood the gravity of what he had accomplished, what it had meant that he had been the one to finally bring about the revenge of the Sith. And nor would they. That was part of the point. All they needed to know was that he was stronger, all they needed to feel was the depths of his power, and they did. They knew. He was the Master, and would be for a thousand years to come, and beyond even that, if he could manage to finally unlock the secrets of the Dark Side.
It was part of the reason for Vader, his powerful, wrathful, crippled apprentice, a man that existed only to feel pain and the hate that stemmed from it. One day, together, they would stand in complete dominion over the Dark Side of the Force, subjugate and master it like none had ever done. With the powerful nexus of Vader to act as a lure for the Dark Side, Sidious would harness all the power there was, all the strength there was to be had in the Force, and the galaxy would bend to his whim, remade by his design. Even Lumis would be caught in the trap, unable to escape, bound to his weakness, his pitiful connections and attachments, and he would be made to kneel once again with all the rest.
A part of the problem was he had trained Lumis too well, a mistake he did not repeat with Vader. With his power greatly diminished by the wounds inflicted upon him, Vader had become a shell of his former self, the castoff of greatness, the result of a duel he was far too unstable to win. It ultimately didn't matter. In a galaxy without Jedi, Vader stood far above the rest, far above the Inquisitors, far above Maul. Just not so far as he should have. Sidious hadn't expected that, hadn't anticipated it, had thought the raw power and fury of Vader would be enough to topple the insane, grief-stricken Lumis, but his foresight was not perfect. Far from it. In the Force, he saw the many possible outcomes of a single event, but he never saw where the Force was actually taking him. He did what he could to manipulate events in his favor, doing everything in his power to achieve his desired outcome, usually with great success. But in the Force, he never saw the outcome that had come to pass.
It was...a mistake. An error. A grievous oversight. Lumis was a manipulator, a man skilled at hiding his intentions, his thoughts, his desires, his very presence, just as Sidious was. In this, he had trained Lumis far too well, for the ambitious young Sith had eventually come to learn to hide himself from his Master, all without Sidious' knowledge. And now, this monster of his own creation roamed the galaxy, undermining the Empire at every turn simply to spite him. It mattered not. In the end, Lumis was necessary. He had somehow discovered immortality, and his visions, his foresight was a gift, a powerful one that still had use to Sidious. Lumis had a part to play still. His death wasn't the goal. Lumis needed to be captured, subjugated, enslaved, as he had enslaved so many others with his tremendous talent for domination of the mind.
The threat Lumis posed meant that Sidious would have to do this himself, but in this, the task was far more difficult. Sidious ruled the galaxy, was the Master of everything, and yet, in his role, he was trapped, constrained, constricted, his position as Emperor keeping the watchful eye of the galaxy upon him, which meant keeping up the guise of Palpatine. Who he actually was remained a secret, one of the best, a thing meant only for only a select few. Keeping the nature of the Force a secret kept any potential threat away from true power. But in time, he would have to deal with Lumis himself, just as he had once left Coruscant to deal with Maul on Mandalore.
He could see it in the Force, the many outcomes of Darth Lumis, all of them vague, clouded, changing and shifting with the constant flow of the Force. His victory after defeating Vader, Maul, Tarkin, Thrawn, anyone that Sidious came to throw at him, only to fall to the Master himself, his confidence bolstered by the victories he had achieved. He saw an inferno, blazing and raging across every planet, every system as everything burned to ash, and in the middle of it, he saw Lumis, gold eyes given way to blood red and glowing with the Dark Side and the depths of unending insanity, broken, bloody bodies scattered around him as he destroyed everything. He saw him kneeling, defeated and lost upon the realization that fighting against the Empire only saw those he cared about brought to a grisly end, and head bowed in submission, the eternally youthful Sith Lord didn't move as Vader's red blade cut through his neck.
But above all else, the outcome he saw, the one he focused on was Lumis hanging suspended on the wall behind the throne, his gold eyes vacant, his consciousness lost forever within the pull of the Dark Side. His body remained, a living nexus for the Force to rage through, pouring the future into his head as it so often did, visions that were bright, vivid, accurate, provided they could be properly interpreted. Sidious saw many outcomes, all vague, all ever changing, much to his irritation. But Lumis saw one, a clear, perfect picture of the future that the young Lord misinterpreted often, but the Master could easily decipher. Together, he and Vader ruled the galaxy uncontested, perfect foresight brought to them through Darth Lumis, forever contained in a slavery he could never escape, lost forever within the grief and darkness of his own mind. This was the vision Sidious sought to create. Lumis would serve, as he was meant to, when he was meant to, and the day was coming when he would meet his wayward apprentice again face to face. He could feel it, and then it would be over.
Lumis deserved no less. For years, he had been an irritating thorn in his side, a persistent buzzing in the back of his mind that occasionally erupted with noise and spectacle, only to fall back into obscurity again, and Empire Day was always the worst, a day that Lumis seemed to hold for celebration by sending his former Master gifts, a thoughtful gesture made both gruesome and humiliating by sending the Emperor heads in boxes, entire crates of dismembered bounty hunters, recordings of public orgies starring Imperial Officers, both male and female, as the starring, wanton centerpieces of lust, made mere vessels for the genetic material of a dozen different species. There were explosions, riots, anti-Imperial graffiti, legions of stormtroopers controlled into doing ridiculous things like preforming opera, discharging their weapons to leave obscene gestures burned into the walls of government buildings, or walking entire platoons into walls or lakes. Officers had been found staggeringly drunk in the streets, leaving Imperial installations without any leadership while the local populace did as they wished.
All of this was mere irritation, Lumis playing with the powers he had been gifted with, demonstrating how difficult it was to fight against the mental control and domination he so skillfully commanded. But then there was the more damaging things, the more personal ones, precision strikes against the Emperor that were made not to slight, but to hurt the Master he once so loyally served, punishment he saw fit to dole out for being abandoned and cast aside for Anakin Skywalker by yet another Master.
The theft of his holocrons, a move that trapped Sidious on Coruscant. The corruption of the Dark Side acolytes on Dromund Kaas, forcing the Sith Lords to execute the entire population of the Temple, destroying the trained adults from which the Inquisitors were drawn from and thereby destroying their ability to replace Inquisitors were they to die, making them a rare and valuable resource instead of the disposable tools they had been intended as. The takeover of the holonet, announcing the rise of the Shadow King, casting immediate suspicion on the Mandalorians that served the Empire, and ligitimate or not, it served only to push fickle Mandalore away from the Empire.
The theft of the Carrion Spike and the subsequent destruction of Desolation Station, killing dozens of scientists and pushing progress on the Death Star back years. The rain of Genonsians upon Coruscant five years ago, not only triggering a rapid descent into absolute anarchy that lasted across the planet for nearly two weeks, but brought galactic attention to Geonosis and the genocide of the entire populace, a move that would have exposed the plans of the Death Star, were it not for some quick thinking by Tarkin and Vader.
Sidious had come to expect things on Empire Day, an irritating, frustrating end to usually very good days that resulted in the Sith Master taking out all his frustrations on his hapless apprentices. Every single time, Lumis would somehow overcome the ever-increasing security, would change his tactic and the nature of his slights so drastically that it became impossible to detect and predict. After the Geonosian incident, the increased security expanded not just to cover Empire Day, but the days before, then the weeks before, and it seemed to work. The past few years, Lumis' attacks had been mild, almost friendly in comparison, though they were still insulting and rage-inducing, the irritation of having a single man at large for fifteen years building until Maul and Vader began fighting to be the one not present on Coruscant during the festivities.
Executing Obi-Wan Kenobi publically was a move that seemed to defang the young Sith, at least for the time being, and since then, Lumis' actions had greatly diminished. Robbing the man of his influence, of his name seemed to work, the double-edged sword to the eternally young Sith in a world where immortals simply did not walk. He was young. He couldn't be the Separatist leader, the original Shadow King, the man that burned Ord Mantell. He could establish a new identity, yes, but it would not be easy.
But now, things had suddenly changed. Now, fifteen years after the end of the Republic, Darth Sidious stood staring at four crates sitting before his throne, the room dark, the sky outside the windows only just beginning to pale with the rising sun. This was new. Different. This time, the wayward apprentice had the indecency to deliver the gift before the sun had even come up. Sidious could feel a foul temper rise within him. Not even dawn, and the day was already ruined.
He was beginning to wish he had stayed in bed. Like he wanted to do.
Sidious stood there staring at the crates for a long while, his rage slowly building, the room beginning to lighten with the first rays of light. Even when he heard heavy, metallic footsteps on the cold, hard ground, he didn't move, only listening as the steps grew louder as they drew near. By the time he felt the presence of the man walking into the long hall of the throne room, his breath had quickened in anger and his shoulders were tight with rage. If it was going to be a bad day for the Emperor, it was going to be a bad day for everyone.
The footsteps shuffled, stopped, stood still for a moment, then began again, quicker and lighter than before. "Master!" Maul chirped lightly, striding toward the hooded Emperor, his chest bare and covered in a sheen of sweat, returning form his early morning training. "I didn't think you'd be up," he continued, completely oblivious to his surroundings until he saw the Sith Master's cowled head turn, and from the darkness of his hood, he could see those pale, yellow eyes glowing with fury. He stopped, suddenly cautious, uncertain what he had done wrong until he looked behind the Emperor and saw crates, four of them, brilliant in their sheen, except for one, which had been painted with a large, smiling, decapitated head, and a severed hand giving a thumb's up.
Empire Day.
"Oh, shit!" Before he could move, bolts of lightening so dark blue they appeared purple hit the Zabrak in the chest, lifted him in the air, and slammed him against the wall, the man's mechanical legs striking the ground with a loud clang. Maul quickly scrambled to his feet and began to run from the room, only to find his legs suddenly pulled out from underneath him, his face slamming against the ground and sliding along the floor as he was pulled back to Sidious, his fingers desperately clawing at the ground in a futile attempt to get out of the Sith Master's grasp.
"Maul," Sidious rasped, his eyes narrowed in anger as he rose the Zabrak into the air with the Force, the squirming man gasping for breath and clutching at his throat as his air flow was deprived. "What. Is. That." Sidious snarled, pointing toward the crates by the throne, the Zabrak's chin forced in the direction of the Master's finger. Despite the crushing grip on his throat, Maul swallowed hard.
"...boxes, Master?" he cautiously squeaked, and he was rewarded with a tired sigh from his Master, followed by searing agony from deep within his brain. Maul gasped, his eyes rolling in the back of his head as his entire body went limp with submission, a reflexive, instinctive action that he had learned from Kenobi.
"Boxes, yes..." Sidious hissed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I don't suppose you'd want to open them, Maul." He released his hold, and Zabrak fell crumpled to the floor, and for a moment, he didn't move, simply laid there and looked at the crates in resignation. He knew there was something awful in there. Something that was going to make his day even worse, as it always happened on Empire Day, but in the past, it had been the evenings that had been reserved for torture. Why was Lumis doing this so early?!
"I really don't want to..." Maul muttered against the floor.
"Open it." Sidious demanded, and with a sigh, Maul rose to his cybernetic feet and slowly dragged them to one of the crates, his hand resting on the cold, shining surface.
"...or," the Zabrak said slowly. "How about we don't open them." A furious, angry glare was his only response, and before he had a chance to continue pleading his case, deep, assisted breathing could be heard coming down the hall, and Maul watched as Sidious' jaw clenched in rage. A moment later, and Darth Vader entered the room, his breathing deep, even, pendulous, his cape billowing out behind him his focus absolute as he came before the Emperor and dropped to one knee.
"Master," he said in his deep, modulated voice. "The Grand Inquisitor has arrived on Lothal to root out the persistent rebel insurgency there. A surviving Jedi is said to lead them." Sidious said nothing, and cautiously, Vader looked up at his Master, the mask hiding his expression, but Maul could feel his confusion turn to swift anger and irritation as he looked upon the crates. Empire Day. And it had come early this year. He managed a long-suffering groan before he was slammed to the ground with the weight of the force, and a moment later, the Zabrak hit the floor next to him. Maul looked into the black, expressionless mask with a deadpan look on his face.
"You know..." he whispered to Vader, the breathing from his mask still even, though Maul could hear small vocalizations of pain from the man. "Lumis was a much kinder Master."
"Lumis," Vader snarled, "sapped you of your will and left you an empty, mindless slave."
"Yeah..." Maul sighed. "I miss that..."
"You are an idiot," Vader growled, scoffing as Maul's face contorted with pain as the Sith Master grabbed him through the Force and bent to punishing the man for his insolence, for his stupidity, because it was Empire Day, because crates blocked the Emperor's path to his throne. Or all the aforementioned. He didn't need a reason to torture them. He just did. But mostly Maul.
"If only you hadn't so stupidly killed sweet Satine..." Sidious mournfully bemoaned, his hand gently raising and falling in the air, sending Maul into the air, only to be slammed back down over and over again. "I would have had a leash on Lumis. An unbreakable chain. He would have done anything I asked of him to defend his beautiful lover and powerful son from me. I would have had a new apprentice in the boy, a tool to use against his father, and he would live in fear of what would happen were he to disobey..."
"Would he not have tried to kill you, Master?" Vader asked, groaning as he attempted to stand, only to have Sidious casually wave his hand and send him crashing back down to the ground.
"Of course he would have tried to kill me. He was planning on doing so anyway, do you think I could not see through his emotional motivations?" He glared at Vader, his mouth curling up into a vicious sneer, and his yellow eyes drifted back to Maul, the man still on the floor as he gasped and sputtered, blood running out of his mouth from a bit tongue and splits in his lips. "I allowed him to keep Satine as a means to control him, just as I would have allowed you to keep Padmé Amidala." Vader's regulated breathing never faltered, but his mechanical hands clenched tightly, his shoulders shaking.
"That was a long time ago, Master," he managed to say without emotion, though they all could feel the cold, the dark, the hate swirl around Vader like a vortex.
"A long time ago, yes..." Sidious snarled, flicking his wrist and sending both apprentices skidding across the ground to slam against the four crates. "Open them."
Maul swiftly leapt to his feet and immediately began pacing before them, almost as if trying to choose which one to begin with while Vader slowly rose, grunting in effort. With a vicious growl and a gesture of his gloved, prosthetic hand, the lids of all four crates flew off, hitting the far wall with a clattering bang. Maul glared at him.
"Showoff."
"Coward."
"Enough!" Sidious hissed, striding quickly forward and peering into one of the crates. For a moment, the Sith Master drew back in disgust and disdain, his eyes narrowing as he peered within at the empty, open cavity of a blue skinned alien. A Chiss. His eyes quickly darted over to look inside another box to find another of the same species. Not Thrawn, then, but one of his race, one that looked a great deal like the Imperial Admiral, so far as Sidious could tell. Maul leaned in to one of the crates and came up with a datapad, stood beside his Master and powered it on, and they were immediately greeted by a recording of Lumis' smiling face.
"K'ates Ect'asei Csihn, ch'eo Crahsystor!" the young Sith said brightly, and Sidious' eyes narrowed, and quickly summoned his droid, the modified medical droid wheeling its way toward its Master from beside the throne, and it stopped, it's circuits churning as it listened to the datapad. "Bav vim vzah sevti carcir csot ch'at csitan'ci. Veah vah tucan'si veb, ch'ah csah g'evot'o veah na. Tascarah ch'ah ch'at tisci bah vah vei ch'ah csah k'un'bah bohn ch'eo tiscah tur vah hsisah." Sidious paused the recording.
"Droid, translate that," Sidious quietly commanded, and after a moment of silence, one of the droids many arms seemed to rotate in irritation.
"Sir, this language is not stored in my databanks." Sidious hissed in irritation, his fingers steepled together as he returned to the recording, Vader and Maul peering over his shoulder as they watched Darth Lumis preform a dissection on two Chiss, cut open and study one as he lived, and slew another with the Force, all the while his amused clip narrating over the footage.
"Lord Vader," Sidious said softly after the recording had concluded. "Contact Admiral Thrawn and tell him to report to me immediately. You are to take up his position until he returns." With a deep bow to Sidious and a swift look at the groaning Maul, Vader swept from the room. The Master slowly moved his hand from the air, clearing the crates away from the throne as he sat upon it, his hand on his sallow cheek, the other raised and crackling with Force lightning. Maul looked at the Master and swallowed hard as the Sith began to watch the recording once again, and there was no escape for the Zabrak when Sidious forced him to his knees and sent lightning through him.
"I have to ask myself, what makes a Thrawn?" Obi-Wan Kenobi asked in Cheunh, not perfectly, of course. His grammar was faulty in places, and his manner of speaking was accented, though pleasantly so, almost aristocratic, his chosen words descriptive, as the language required, but the word choice was basic and simplistic, as opposed to the ornate complications inherent in the Chiss' native tongue. Though, for an outsider, he spoke it quite well. Thrawn watched impassively as the rebel preformed two autopsies on a male and a female Chiss, a process he found both scientific and thorough as he listened to the man's post-recorded findings on each subject he examined. His research was completed when he had taken a living Chiss male and cut him open, observing and prodding the man's innards as they worked and pumped with life. His findings were extremely accurate, something of a marvel for one who would have had little to no contact with the Chiss before that moment, which meant that Kenobi had not just done this before, but the way he made his cuts, the swift, brutal precision with which he took the bodies apart suggested that he had done this many times, indicated that the man was something of a researcher, a mad scientist in a lab making large strides without the constraints of morality.
It was as horrific as it was...admirable.
Kenobi finished the display off by killing yet another male in a way that Thrawn didn't understand, through the Force, no doubt, but the Chiss became pale, his skin dry and leathery as if he had been dead for ages, and the body of the man in the crate confirmed that it wasn't simply a trick of some clever editing. The body was dry, the organs shriveled and blackened, the bones brittle, as if something had sucked the marrow from them, the very essence of life from each and every cell. The recording concluded with the final captive, a female, screaming as Kenobi thrust within her, first with cries of pleasure, then with grunts and shouts for him to stop his relentless assault, and finally, with soft, tired moans of submission. That was difficult to watch, and not just for Thrawn, but for the Emperor's associate, red-skinned Maul, who looked away and bit his lip, shivering the entire time the woman was broken.
"My conclusions, my friend," Obi-Wan gleefully chirped at the end of the recording, a final edition that had been added after his experiments, "are fairly complete, as you can see. Even the Chiss will submit, will accept and embrace their domination if it is done right. Now, I have learned Thrawn's language. Let's see if he will learn mine. I know that you have been working very hard to expunge all records of the Jedi and the Sith, but perhaps you will allow him to learn our language. If not, I will send the necessary tools he will need to teach himself to his ship."
The yellow eyes narrowed, and the Sith Lord leaned in closer to the holocam he had been recording on, his eyes darting back and forth as if he were searching for something, feeling for something with his attuned senses. "Or, have you been teaching him? Has your Admiral been allowed to study the Sith? Has he been studying like I have? Have you given him one of your own to dissect, as I have to his people?" He scoffed. "Don't think I haven't noticed that Vader has been conspicuously absent from the scene. Did that heap of scraps and wasted potential end up on a dissection table so that Thrawn may learn the secrets of what makes a Sith Lord?" Kenobi grinned. "I do so look forward to the day I finally get to meet Thrawn. I have such plans for him, and after the tragic deaths of four of my Chiss slaves, well...the female is lonely for a companion. I think Thrawn will make a fine addition." He smiled quickly and waved. "Happy Empire Day, Palpatine. Perhaps I'll still celebrate this momentous day when my Empire controls the galaxy."
The recording stopped, and the room was silent, save for Maul's soft, nearly insane whimpers, and Thrawn moved from crate to crate, observing the bodies once again and the organs that hand been neatly, methodically packed away into transparent containers. He already knew Kenobi to be meticulous based on his behavior, but now he had morbid physical proof of it. What's more, he was adept at language, learning the complex Cheunk to study his opponent, much in the way Thrawn had done to him. Thrawn had a lead of several years on the renegade Obi-Wan, but he was quickly closing the gap, insinuating now that he even knew the ship on which he was stationed. The situation was becoming...dangerous. The Chiss Admiral felt his heart begin beating faster, his face flushing, the feeling of adrenaline coursing through his veins.
Thrawn loved this.
The most interesting thing about this, however, was the nature of the message. Despite being delivered in Cheunk, this message was not intended for Thrawn. The point had been to draw the Admiral into this matter, but the message was not for him. This message was for Palpatine, delivered in a way that forced the Emperor to use a medium to understand, and because of the highly reclusive nature of the Chiss and their relegation to the Unknown Regions, it was unlikely that a droid would be equipt with the ability to translate the language. Having Thrawn present was a calculation, and one that had paid off. Kenobi wanted Thrawn there.
The Admiral's mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile, and he quietly added a point to Kenobi's score in the game they played. This was an exceedingly clever move. But more than that...
The assumption was that Obi-Wan was a rebel, a faction leader that pressed for the liberation of worlds from Imperial rule, but that wasn't what he wanted. Obi-Wan was an Imperial. One that fashioned himself a greater Emperor than Palpatine. To be sure, if there was a greater rebellion, then Obi-Wan Kenobi would be at the head of it, but what he had intended for after, were he to be successful...it seemed less of a rebellion and more of a coup, at least from Kenobi's perspective. It changed a vital part of Thrawn's analysis of the man. He had been intent on capturing him alive to make his death an example to anyone else who wished to rebel, but now, Thrawn wanted to talk to him, to find out exactly the man's intentions.
"Well?" the Emperor asked after the Chiss had been silent for a long while. "What is the point of this?" he growled, gesturing to the crates with the bodies.
"In part, a show of dominance," Thrawn quietly mused. "My people are a proud one. One that does not submit to domination." He pointed into one of the crates where a neatly folded black jacket lay on top of a container that held a heart. "That is the jacket of an officer in our defense force, so he went a great deal out of his way to find them. This is a targeted strike."
"A warning to you," Palpatine stated, and Thrawn slowly shook his head.
"No, not this one. This is...curiosity. He is studying me as I have been studying him. More brutal, perhaps, but the methodology is the same."
"And the message?"
"A dissection report, for the most part," Thrawn quietly said. "A rather complete one at that. He does, however, wish you a happy Empire Day." Maul winced, a mad, nervous laugh torn from his throat swiftly silenced by a glare from the Emperor, and Thrawn watched him very closely.
"Tell me," the Emperor said, and with a slight nod of his head, Thrawn began translating the extensive transmission word for word. It was clear there was more to Palpatine than the mild tempered Senator made Emperor that he portrayed himself as, mostly because he commanded Darth Vader, the galaxy's most fearsome Imperial agent, a man that lay outside the chain of command and yet, exerted his command over everyone except the Emperor he swore allegiance to. He was an almost mystical presence, one that wielded the Force like a weapon, one of the few left in the galaxy that could do so.
Thrawn's studies of Kenobi led him to learn about the Sith, the ancient, extinct order of Force sensitives that stood in opposition to the Jedi since a philosophical difference divided the Jedi thousands upon thousands of years ago, and it seemed like a statistical improbability that Vader wasn't Sith, which could only mean one thing. According to their doctrine, Emperor Palpatine was more than the Emperor that Vader served, but his Dark Side Master, the Lord of the Sith himself, or else Vader simply would never follow him with the fanatic loyalty he demonstrated.
What was more, Thrawn knew exactly who Darth Vader truly was beneath that mask of his, a fact that he had shared with the Emperor long ago in their first meeting. Palpatine had neither confirmed nor denied it, though Thrawn always suspected that his correct assumption of the Dark Lord's true identity had been part of the reason that Palpatine had been so ready and willing to accept his service, despite his status as a near-human. A pledge of loyalty and an endorsement by an Imperial officer went a long way, but the knowledge of the Empire's greatest secret bespoke of genius and cunning that the Emperor simply couldn't pass up.
Early in his time within charted galactic space during the Clone Wars, Thrawn had the privilege of witnessing the Jedi first hand, a thing that was difficult to forget. The force was a mysterious, unknown, random variable, one that turned certain defeat into victory, one that could crush armies at a whim in what appeared to be something akin to dumb luck, and it had no place in a galaxy built on logic and reason. He had seen such a thing in his own people, on very rare occasion. People that could move objects without touching them, that possessed speed and reflexes that existed on the very edge of the body's limitations, that seemed, by all accounts, to be supernaturally lucky.
And yet, Thrawn found that a tactical mind was a much better, far more reliable asset. After all, the Jedi Knights were all dead now, and the Force had been powerless to save them. Had they not relied so heavily on an ultimately unpredictable variable for their success, perhaps the Jedi would have concentrated on a careful examination of their surroundings, an analysis of the things in their environment that simply didn't make sense. Instead, they had grown accustomed to the nonsensical, brushing it off as simply the Force working in mysterious ways, and so hadn't seen the storm approaching.
Their attention diverted toward dealing instead with the Sith threat in the form of Obi-Wan Kenobi and, most likely, in Count Dooku as well, they had failed to notice things, small things, that foreshadowed their inevitable fate. An Empire was at hand, and the Jedi would never stand for such. The solution was a simple one. The Jedi needed to be destroyed to bring about unification under one, single voice. Thrawn would have done the same.
Of course, all the Jedi hadn't been killed, though the one Thrawn focused on was Darth Vader himself. Because of his close relationship with Governor Tarkin and his high opinion of Palpatine, it seemed very likely that Vader was none other than Jedi Knight and hero of the Clone Wars, Anakin Skywalker. Having had the opportunity to have seen the prodigious Skywalker in action during the war, Thrawn was able to confirm the Dark Lord's identity through an analysis of the fighting styles of both Vader and Skywalker. Vader's movements were slower, heavier, more brutish and severe, almost as if he were in constant conflict with the cybernetics that Thrawn knew made up his arms and legs. But the blade work was nearly identical, a thing far too coincidental to be a matter of chance, especially with all the different forms of lightsaber combat and in light of his other information. There could be no doubt that Vader was Anakin Skywalker.
Thrawn knew when it was best to hold his tongue, and since their first meeting, he had not brought up Vader's identity to the Emperor again, nor did he express his suspicions about Palpatine's own adherence to Sith doctrine as its Master. If Palpatine was what he believed, then he already knew anyway. That was the trouble with the Lords of the Sith. They were everything the Jedi were, but untethered by moral constraints, focused on power and domination over all else, and they had been gifted with sensitivity to the Force that allowed them to reach those ends with ease. It made them ideal rulers and leaders, beings that commanded fear and obedience, but in a galaxy where the Force was largely dead, it left the entirety of its power the express domain of beings like Palpatine and Vader.
And Obi-Wan.
Thrawn always found tactics and a superior intellect a greater asset than the power of the Force, a thing that allowed him time and time again to triumph over his foes, but when a being had both a genius mind and the Force...it was something to be feared. Palpatine was one such being, he was sure, but so was Kenobi, as the current display before him showed. Thrawn believed he could still triumph over the renegade Separatist leader. Kenobi was holding back, guarding something, something that Thrawn had yet to discover, and so their game continued, moving pieces, setting up traps and feints, attempting to bait the other into action, but both were too cautious to fall into the other's traps, now that they knew a game was being played.
Though today, it seemed as if Obi-Wan had moved into check. He was playing a piece that he had been holding close, a key player that should have been in Thrawn's assets, but the Admiral now found that this may not be the case. A powerful wildcard that played by no rules but his own, one that the other players were forced to maneuver around, and now, Kenobi may have found a way to place that piece directly between himself and Thrawn.
The Emperor.
But in the end, it wouldn't matter. Thrawn held the winning card. He just was not willing to play it until he knew the game would be decisively over the moment he laid it down, and a great deal needed to be in place first before that could happen. But that day was getting closer.
"He knows your ship, Admiral," Palpatine said in a low, menacing whisper.
"He knows a great many things. He is...a formidable adversary."
"One beyond even you, it seems." Thrawn's eyes narrowed as he watched the Emperor look within the crates, the hood of his robes keeping the Admiral from seeing the expression on his face, though he doubted old, wizened Palpatine was bothered, or he wouldn't have been looking. Thrawn was...insulted. Obi-Wan was one man. A powerful man, yes, but he had taken many strides against him, and even now, even as the rogue drew closer, the noose was tightening. Kenobi would get the meeting he desired, but it would be on Thrawn's terms. It was time to take a defensive position, one that would draw the Negotiator out into the open, one that would throw him off the Admiral's trail, and already, the Chiss' quick and clever mind was churning with a plan. He just needed the Emperor on board, just needed to get the wildcard back in his hands, lest the game be prematurely ended with Thrawn's removal.
"My Emperor," Thrawn began slowly, "Obi-Wan Kenobi is one man, and since my involvement, his attacks against the Empire have greatly diminished, even with his adoption of the mantle of Shadow King."
"He knows your ship," Palpatine said, more forceful this time. "A man that has been known to steal ships knows your vessel."
"I disagree," Thrawn said swiftly. "I believe he knows the name of my ship. That is quite a different thing from knowing my ship. And even if he does happen to be familiar with my ship in particular, which I sincerely doubt, he has yet to do anything with the information. Instead, he goes out of his way to find my people so that he may capture, torture and study them." He stroked his chin in thought. "No...this is not a man on the offensive. Your Obi-Wan is...cautious. Careful. He is protecting something, or someone, and I mean to find out what that is."
"And how do you intend to do such a thing?" Palpatine asked, indicating to the crates behind him. "Five years, you have hunted him and yielded no results."
"Five years, and I know everything about him," Thrawn said defensively. "I know how he works, how he acts, how he moves. I do knot know where he disappears to, but I know how to draw him out, but his connection to the Force is not one to be underestimated. I will not strike until I am certain I can trap him."
"All the while, he can strike you at any time," Palpatine said in a voice that left no room for argument. "Nobody is irreplaceable, Admiral Thrawn, but I see little point in wasting an asset such as you. You will no longer be hunting the Shadow King." Thrawn frowned deeply. This was the point of Kenobi's message, this was the move that he had played, though it was not in the game between Sith and Chiss. This move was in the extended contest between the Negotiator and Palpatine, two men with a history that were competing for rule of the galaxy, with Palpatine as Emperor and Kenobi as the pretender, the small, sharp threat what would bring death not in a bold spectacle, but with a thousand tiny cuts.
Haatyc or'arue jate'shya ori'sol aru'ike nuhaatyc. Better one big enemy that you can see than many small ones you can't. It was very Mandalorian. But...what of one big enemy that you couldn't see? What was to be thought of something like that? He needed every asset. He needed the weight of the Empire behind him to close his trap. He had a plan, a way to force cautious, powerful Obi-Wan into a corner, and done correctly, he could deprive the Sith of his powers, could overwhelm him, could take him alive. With enough patience and planning, even the unpredictable factor of the Force could be relegated to a negligible variable. This was, at the end of the day, a battle of wits, and Thrawn would not lose.
"My Emperor," Thrawn said in his flat monotone, "this is a calculated move by our enemy specifically done to remove me from the picture. If not, why not just send you the message in a language you understand?" Palpatine said nothing, only stared at the Chiss, and eventually, he gestured for the man to continue. "All of this was done in an effort to bypass me by addressing you directly, and he made certain I was the focus of this message, the subject, not the recipient, by making my people his victims." He looked pointedly at the Emperor. "Removing me from my fight against him is playing right into his hands."
"Do you seek revenge for your people?" Palpatine asked, his eyes narrowed. "Is this why you argue with my will? You told me once that loyalty to the Empire will supercede your loyalty to your people."
"And it does," Thrawn reassured. "If Kenobi's intent was to get an irrational, emotional reaction out of me, or draw my ire by torturing, murdering and raping my people, he has failed. This is simply an attempt to draw me out, and I will not take his bait. I do not need to. He will come to me. He has to if he wants to keep his possessions safe, and he knows this. This is the tactic he used to draw the Jedi out during the Clone Wars, and it will not work on me."
Palpatine was silent for a long while, simply looking the Chiss over, his hand on his pale chin, and Thrawn evenly met his gaze. He did not fear the Emperor, no matter the nature of the beast he may be. After a long while of deafening silence, punctuated only by short, soft occasional whimpers from the forgotten Maul, Sidious nodded his head.
"Do you have a plan?" He quietly asked, and Thrawn clasped his hands behind his back and stood up tall.
"I do. We name fifty Star Destroyers in the fleet Chimera and equip them all with ISB surveillance nodes in the event that Kenobi attempts to attack one. In doing such, we can find a pattern in his behavior, see if he is taking chances or carefully planning. That will address the current threat he has issued, at least for a time." Sidious nodded his approval.
"And in doing so, it increases your presence and serves to hide your true location. I'll have it done." He pointed a long, gnarled finger at Thrawn. "But do you have a plan to capture him?"
"...I do." Red eyes drifted over to the cowering Maul. "When I once again have him on the defensive, I will force him back into a corner, and he will willingly go where ever I point."
"An animal fights hardest when its cornered," Palpatine said, and a small smile crossed the Admiral's lips.
"That is so, but a beast will find it difficult to fight back when it has been declawed and defanged, and for one as dependent on the Force as Obi-Wan Kenobi, depriving him of it will leave him at a serious disadvantage."
"And you believe you can simply take it away from him?" Palpatine asked softly.
"I know I can. When his friends are concerned, Kenobi has time and time again walked into traps, and in the case of Luminara Unduli, he stepped right into a containment field without hesitation."
"He escaped."
"Yes, but I have learned from that," Thrawn said, his voice affecting a smooth, pleased tone. "Anger makes him dangerous, and baiting him with one that can no longer be helped is a good way to turn his wrath on his captors. But provide him with living bait, a friend that can yet be saved, and his attention is divided. He is rendered careful. Cautious. And in such, he may be captured. I believe Mand'alor Bo-Katan Kryze will prove to be more then sufficient for this purpose." The Emperor was silent for a moment as he observed the Admiral.
"You believe her to be a traitor?"
"It is very likely, but I think she will be more useful to us were we to keep her close." His red eyes turned back on the shaking Maul. "To put my plans into action, my Emperor, I will need him." He pointed a long, blue finger at the Zabrak, and slowly, Maul looked up and met the intense stare, and pointed at his own chest.
"M-me?" He looked to his Master. "Why me?" A clever smile passed over the Chiss' features as he slowly approached the Zabrak.
"Stories fly in Mandalore about the Lord of the Shadow Collective, a foolish Zabrak that rose to topple an empire, only to be made a slave to the Shadow King." His eyes drifted down Maul's suddenly shaking arm. "Given your...physical state, it is a fair assumption that you are the one that made Kenobi famous among his Jedi brothers. The Sith Lord that was bisected by a student." Maul snarled viciously, crouched down to lunge at the Chiss, but the firm hand of Sidious stopped him, forced him to drop supplicant to his knees before the intimidating Admiral.
"That," Thrawn continued, "gives you motivation for your attack against him, and the scar on your hand you seem so fond of..." he said, pointing with his chin to the Zabrak's hand which he was, in fact, rubbing. "Dentition indicating..." The Chiss took Maul by the wrist, the Zabrak whimpering as he pried the fingers off the base of his thumb, and the Admiral closely observed the deep, prominent scar. "Yes, an adult human, almost certainly, and female, based on the size, shape and depth of the indentations. Were I to guess, based on how fixated you are on it, it was left there by Mand'alor Satine Kryze before you killed her..."
Maul looked away and whimpered loudly, his hand beginning to shake in Thrawn's grasp, and a pleased smile spread across his face. He had the right of it. "Emperor Palpatine," the Chiss said firmly. "I should like to borrow Maul. I believe what he knows can help me optimize my trap for Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Maul's wide, frantic eyes shot to the Emperor, but he was unmoved. With a flick of his hand, he quietly commanded, "Go. Maul will see to it that your questions are answered. See to it that my work is done." With a deep, respectful bow, Thrawn softly demanded the Zebrak follow him, and when Maul had risen to his feet, the Admiral strode from the room with the Force sensitive silently on his heels. The chains were tightening. He would have Kenobi soon enough.