After Chapter 37, Gilad Pellaeon meets the people who saved his ship...
As eager maintainers swarmed over the battle-scarred Chimaera at its dock, an Imperial captain came aboard, accompanied by a squad of stormtroopers—carbines thankfully holstered. Gilad Pellaeon recognized the willowy brunette immediately; her height and fine features were a delicate echo of her slight-figured father's. "Captain Asori Rogriss," she said, standing at attention and offering him a perfect salute. "Welcome to Nirauan, Admiral."
"Captain Rogriss," Pellaeon replied, his voice gravelly with use as he returned it. The events of the past days had put him on edge and as yet he had been unable to recover his equilibrium. The Empire had spun entirely out of control, and its centrifugal spin had flung Pellaeon off into the unknown regions. Seeing Asori Rogriss, prim and pristine in a perfectly tailored Imperial captain's uniform reminded him both of the Empire as it had once been—paternal order imposed upon chaos, discipline upon disorder—and that he was truly in a galaxy he no longer understood.
He glanced sideways at Nzem Dreyf, his intelligence officer. Dreyf had spent many of the last few months "searching" for Asori Rogriss, her father, and his flagship, after the Star Destroyer Agonizer had been apparently lost with all hands. But Agonizer was flanking Chimaera in the dock now—with Teren Rogriss reportedly aboard her, hale and healthy—and the younger Captain Rogriss had just rescued his command with a flotilla of her own, obliterating the Star Destroyer Judicator in the process.
"I understand this is quite a shock," she said, her expression sympathetic. "I've been ordered to tell you that Baron Fel will meet you personally to explain everything." She gestured at the Lambda-class shuttle she and her stormtroopers had landed in. "If you'll come with us, Admiral, we'll take you to him directly."
Pellaeon had no idea what the chain of command was, anymore. But if Thrawn had truly put Fel in command out here—wherever "here" was—then he at least owed it to Thrawn's shade to hear what Fel had to say.
Besides, he had nowhere else to go.
"Thank you, Captain," he said, as graciously as he could manage. "I hope you realize I have rather a lot of questions for you all to answer."
Asori's Imperial bearing was not the only comfort. For years, Pellaeon had watched the stormtooper corps lose its edge. Their training had grown slipshod and sloppy as the demands of combat pushed them into service with more and more haste, and other than Thrawn's clones they had long since lost the perfect precision that characterized the true Imperial stromtrooper of old. But the men flanking him and Captain Rogriss had that rote-drilled precision, and it provided Pellaeon with confidence that the Empire, the true Empire, preserved meticulously through the secret efforts of the greatest military mind the Empire had ever known, still lived somewhere in the galaxy.
Those stormtroopers, at least, were perfectly Imperial, as the Empire should be.
The shuttle trip down took a gentle arc around the landing zone—an Imperial garrison base built to the standard template atop a much older, perhaps even ancient, fortress structure. Four huge towers arched into the sky, and a fifth half their size—long ago broken by some orbital bombardment—filled in a semicircle, replete with modern gun batteries. As the shuttle promanaded past the towers, Pellaeon noted an enormous hangar at the center of the base. When he landed and the party made their way inside, their bootheels clicking with a precise and unified cadence, he was gratified to see that the corridors of the facility were also perfectly Imperial.
Rogriss stopped in front of a secured door, swiping her ID over its reader. The light flicked green and the lock opened. She stepped back and gestured at Pellaeon. "After you, sir."
He nodded and led the way inside, the four stormtroopers and Captain Rogriss following deferentially behind with parade-ground precision. Once inside he felt his eyes widen, the pace of his footsteps slowing almost to a stop, because he'd been in this place before.
It was an art gallery, darkly lit, each piece illuminated dimly. He recognized some of the pieces from the holos on Chimaera—the painting Peregrine, which had been Bel Iblis' favorite, was installed prominently close to the door. He still wasn't sure what to make of the hazy figure and the storm in the painting, or the painting itself.
On the far side of the room stood a stocky figure with his back to the Admiral. Tall, but not so tall that he would have trouble in a TIE cockpit, and equipped with a blocky muscularity that bespoke time training at it, the man wore an Imperial General's uniform and starfighter insignia. Pellaeon had never met Baron Soontir Fel, but he had of course heard the name before and knew the stories.
He knew all the stories—including the one where Fel had defected to the Rebellion.
How had the man come to be here?
How had the man come to be Thrawn's choice as his heir?
Why had Thrawn not picked Pellaeon?
Because that had been the constant, quiet question in the back of Pellaeon's mind. The nagging, insistent thought that would not leave him alone. Why did Thrawn not tell me? Pellaeon had been Thrawn's right hand, his trusted advisor, his confidante and executive. Pellaeon had served with Thrawn through the whole campaign against the New Republic. He had been there when Thrawn died.
So why?
The question, and the emotion wrapped up in the question, was not befitting an Imperial officer, one who followed and did not question orders, and so he tried hard to repress it and channel his anxiety into something productive—though there was nothing productive to do.
"Admiral Pellaeon," came Fel's voice, deep and sonorous. As the Baron turned, Pellaeon took in the man's features, observing a black widow's peak and decidedly non-regulation goatee sprinkled with an artful dusting of gray. He paid very close attention to the man's brown eyes. They assessed him with the flat, affectless gaze that bespoke cool confidence—something Pellaeon expected from a man whose career had largely been spent flying shieldless balls strapped to weapons and an engine. There was little welcome in that voice, and no smile. It was the voice of a superior addressing a subordinate—and a subordinate not fully trusted at that. It brought an unexpected memory. Antilles had eyes like that, as he decided what it was worth it to kill me.
Pellaeon tried not to bristle, and glanced to the side. The stormtroopers and Captain Rogriss were still there, standing back in the shadows, just out of sight, so he ignored them and turned his attention to Fel. "Sir. Are you to be addressed as Baron or General?"
"Baron will be fine," Fel replied. He folded his arms behind his back. "Welcome to the headquarters of the Unknown Regions Expeditionary Force."
"I've never heard of it," Pellaeon said.
"You wouldn't have," Fel replied with a small, humorless smile. "Emperor Palpatine and Grand Admiral Thrawn worked very hard to keep it off the books. If you go looking you'll find a number of references to other entities—the 'Seventh Shipbuilder Detachment', or the Second Outer Rim Reserve Squadron', or most grandiosely the 'Empire of the Hand.' All existed only on paper so that Thrawn could gradually collect ships, men, and materiel in the Unknown Regions."
Pellaeon nodded uncertainly. Judging from the shipyard he had seen, Thrawn had accumulated a great deal of resources. "Why?" he asked, that uncertainty obvious in his voice.
"We'll get to that," Fel said. "For now, what you need to know is that we had no intention of becoming involved in the politics of the Empire, but the New Order's coup disrupted our long-term plans. We decided to try to collect assets that would be lost without our intervention." He nodded at Pellaeon. "Like yourself, your ship, and your people."
"Assets?" asked Pellaon in an arch tone. "Is that all we are to you?"
Fel's expression grew hard. "The Empire is corrupt and feeble. It is the plaything of the arrogant and the idiotic, ruled by sociopaths and sadists. But for all that its leadership is irredeemable, a great many of the men and women who serve the Empire's military and political establishment are just that—men and women, seeking to live their lives as best they can. They are trapped by indoctrination and prejudice, and we would just as soon not see them killed for a crime as small as that." That stone expression slackened slightly. "We killed a great many of them when we destroyed Judicator to rescue Chimaera, and it will take quite some time to sort through Chimaera's crew to separate the people who can be recruited from those who are… liabilities."
Pellaeon felt his back stiffen, a hint of outrage curdling his gut. "Are you saying you believe my men might be liabilities?"
Fel's brown eyes were cold. "Yes, Admiral, I am. And I am saying that you might be a liability."
The hint of outrage bloomed and Pellaeon's voice grew hot. "I am a loyal officer—"
"Yes, Admiral, that is precisely the problem," Fel cut him off. "You are a loyal officer. And if the Imperial Security Bureau had not turned on you, you would still be a loyal officer. Loyal to an Empire which has long since lost any claim to your loyalty—if ever it had one." Pellaeon opened his mouth to provide a hot retort, but Fel cut him off once again. "Here, we represent an Empire. Not Palpatine's Empire, but an Empire that Grand Admiral Thrawn provided the foundations for, conceived on his idea of an ideal state." Fel's expression softened, and Pellaeon thought he saw a hint of sympathy. "And he, Admiral, wasn't sure if you would want to be a part of it."
All of Pellaeon's questions and doubts swirled together in his stomach. "He what?" His voice was harsh, and he could hear the hint of despair in it.
Fel turned and looked into the shadows. "Troopers, step forward and remove your helmets please."
Confused, Pellaeon turned towards the previously all-but-forgotten stormtroopers. Asori Rogriss stood at the end of the row, resolutely staring at the wall, but all around her the troopers marched forward, into the light from one of the illuminated displays. The first trooper reached up and removed his helmet—
Revealing an utterly inhuman face.
Pellaeon did not recognize his species, but the trooper did not belong to one that bore a close resemblance to humanity. Pellaeon could feel his guts churn with discomfort, taste the reflux of surprise and disgust—
The other three troopers removed theirs in succession. One was human. Two were not.
He felt himself crumple inside as he understood, truly understood, what Fel was trying to say. Because a part of him, a deep-seated part of him, the same part of him that had thought these stormtroopers were perfectly Imperial, now screamed that they were anything but.
Thrawn had been right not to trust him, he realized, and that realization was a pointed stab to his very heart.
"The question now," came Fel's voice, mercilessly flat, "is whether you've grown enough that you want to join us?"
Gilad Pellaeon closed his eyes, considered his long career, added it against his shaky convictions, and he made his choice.
Author's Notes
An update: we now have the first few chapters done. Maybe 10% of the third novel is now written, which is well behind last year's pace so the novel won't be released this month. I'm hoping we'll have closer to half of it done by the end of the year and will aim at releasing the first chapter then, maybe with a slightly slower chapter release pace so that I can be sure I'll keep up. On the bright side, though, many of the mental blocks which were impeding progress have been resolved, which means the pace of progress ought to increase.
This particular missing moment was a very important one. This scene, or a version of it, was originally intended for Interregnum 3, but ultimately it doesn't fit within that novel's timeline and it's better here—and it's also a transition. I actually considered going back and putting this scene into the final chapter of Interregnum 2, but I've decided that would be both bad and awkward, so it's here instead. These Missing Moments pretty often have important character beats.
In Interregnum 1, the main Imperial was Rogriss the elder; in Interregnum 2 it was Pellaeon. In Interregnum 3 we'll have two different "main" Imperials, one with the New Order and one with the just-revealed UREF, and I bet you all can guess which two...