Chapter Six
The Empire's long and careful buildup of power in the
Unknown Regions was swiftly falling apart. Captain Parck feared
things would degenerate into an avalanche that would bury them
all if something isn't done to diffuse the situation.
Coerl's broadcasts were flooding the comm channels and
the panic was being fanned to a fever pitch as more and more
planets had to be quarenteened. So far it was only a handful of
worlds in four sectors but every other system seemed convinced
that plagues were running rampant through their own planets and
that the victims were being hidden in the 'death camps' Coerl had
displayed.
The Chiss, loyal to a fault to the Grand Admiral, were
grumbling against the Imperials that had supposedly brought the
plagues down on them, while the Imperial humans, who knew very
well the diseases hadn't come from them, blamed the races of the
barbaric Unknown Regions for infecting 'them,' and the Chiss fell
into that catagory.
Abrasiveness and outright brawling between humans and
Chiss increased on every ship and base as old prejudices that had
begun to fade now returned with a vengence. A few of these fights
had ended in the death of a human or Chiss, only a blessed few so
far and quickly hushed up, but Parck feared it was only the first
flickering flames signalling the conflagration to come.
Some of the planets Thrawn had brought into the Empire
were even attempting to withdraw back into independence. Most
were newcomers but two had been with the Empire for years now,
enjoying the order and stability it provided them. They couldn?t be
allowed to secede, of course. Thrawn did his best to diffuse each
case diplomatically but in three cases troops had to be sent in. For
a long time the Empire had kept those worlds willingly, with the
full support and cooperation of the public. Now force was used
and the thing Thrawn had feared most was coming to pass: the
Imperials were seen not as liberators, but as tyrants.
Word was leaked out, prompting riots that spread across
solar systems with five more breaking out as each one was put
down. To make matters worse, one of the outbreaks had occurred
on the Miashku homeworld, making it necessary to quarenteen the
main trade center of the Zoab sector. The High Council raged
against these new strictures and with Star Destroyers parked in
orbit around the planet with orders to open fire on any ship that
tried to take off or land it didn't take long for the entire economy
of the sector to be thrown into chaos. All possible allies in Zoab
turned hostile to the Imperial presence.
The fleet was effectively tied up with occupying and
defending the worlds to even think about a major offensive, and
Coerl or Coerl's controllers were taking full advantage of this.
Since the first broadcast the Warlord?s first broadcast Imperial
holding had been subject to constant hit and run attacks by Coerl's
fleet. The Imperials easily repelled the assaults, but the goals of
those attacks were not to achieve victory but to help tie up the
fleet. Even the strike force Thrawn had sent against Sevac III had
not returned.
Worse, as the attacks progressed and it became apparent to
all what resources Coerl was expending in his offensives against
the Empire the other Warlords in and around Zoab sector were
starting to take notice. If this wasn't some kind of ruse to divert
them, if the most powerful Warlord in Zoab sector believed the
Empire was such a great threat he was willing to strip warships
from defending his own territory and attacking theirs then perhaps
they should do something as well. The Warlords that had once
been content to pull back and defend their own borders from
Imperial encroachment now began tenative attacks of their own,
like scavenger-jackels who sensed the great predator was wounded
and bleeding.
And all the while the death tolls continued to rise on the
quarenteened worlds, not to mention those planets outside Imperial
control, which gave rise to even more panic. The diseases rejected
every treatment the medical teams came up with and continued to
spread and worsen no matter what sanitary and containment
measured used and many of the medics and groundside troops
themselves became infected.
Meanwhile every report, every last scrap of information
regarding the situation went straight to Thrawn. Despair settled
over Parck like like a durasteel-mesh blanket, weighing him down
as he entered the Admiral's private chambers. He remembered
how confident he'd been on the bridge of this marvelous flagship.
He had silently dared the Yuuzhan Vong to do their worst. He
grimaced. Sang Anor had shaken the fleet to it's foundation. All
they'd built was tottering on the brink.
The sight of the Grand Admiral made him shiver. Thrawn
paced around command chair and viewscreens. Music played
around them and selections from his holographic art gallery filled
the room, stimulations to encourage thought, but it was the
Admiral himself who drew Parck?s attention.
He looked...haggard. His hair in disarray and his skin a
paler shade of blue than usual. Parck wondered how much sleep
Thrawn had gotten since the crisis began and when he turned
toward his subordinate Parck stopped short at the brightness of that
glowing gaze, revealing the intensity of his thoughts and the
powerful spirit that was keeping him going.
"We beat back an attack on Duulo," he said at last, "base
personel report minimal casualties." Thrawn only nodded and
turned back to the viewscreens.
"They have put us on the defensive, Captain." He ran a
steady hand through his hair. Parck swallowed. The
unpreturbable Admiral never showed signs of anxiety. "We fight
smoke and wind while the true enemy stays in the shadows." He
studied the screens. "At least eight different diseases, all of which
affect a wide variety of life forms negatively." He shook his head.
"There must be an answer, Captain, a flaw in Sang Anor's plans.
He has made a mistake somewhere, I can feel it."
Parck frowned. Thrawn seemed to be reaching desperately
for a solution. He prayed the stress had not broken the Admiral.
Suddenly the weight pressing down on him seemed light compared
to the burden Thrawn carried. He wished he could take some of
that burden on his own shoulders.
Thrawn gave a light chuckle. "Don't worry, Captain, I have
neither become unhinged nor am succombing to wishfull thinking,
although I have to admit that a hunch has saved my life more than
once. My conclusions are based on more concrete evidence. I
have a feeling for our enemy and how he thinks. Sang Anor has
overlooked something. We must find that mistake before the
situation becomes too extreme to diffuse."
"But the root of the situation is the plagues, and we can?t
fight a disease like we can a battle."
"They were deployed as weapons, Captain, that means they
can be countered. It-" he stopped, frowning at a report on a
viewscreen. "This is strange. Captain look at this." Parck stepped
forward and read a report on Tesen, one of the quarenteened
worlds in the Kamark sector. "Well?"
"It looks the same as the other plague worlds." Parck
ventured.
"Yes, but look at this." Thrawn pointed. "There are two
inhabited planets in that star system. Tesen and it's sister planet
Seten. There is constant trade and travel between the two worlds,
at least until Tesen's quarenteen, and while there have been a few
isolated cases of plague on Seten, but no outbreaks like on Tesen."
Thrawn stood and closed his eyes a moment. "Of course." He
whispered.
"Sir?" Parck ventured, but Thrawn was already in his chair
and calling up more reports on the screens.
"I've been a fool." His eyes burned. "The answer was right
in front of me the whole time and I didn't see it." Plague reports
and diagrams lit up in front of him. "The Jedi mentioned spores
when she told me about the Yuuzhan Vong. Biological agents
enhanced by Shapers. But they are poisons, not diseases. Neither
self-propogating nor capable of being passed from host to host."
"But these plagues are contagious and self-reproducing,
how else could the ailments continue?"
"It is not a question of contagion, but of geography. Look,
Kas, a major port-city and the site of one of the first outbreaks."
An overhead view of a computer-simulated city. Parck studied the
tops of the ling-drawn buildings. "The first cases of plague were
here." A red circle covered ten blocks of the city. "And a few
hours later." The circle expanded to cover half the city. "And by
the end of the day." The diagram shrunk as the circle expanded yet
again, to cover the city and half the countryside. "It is too precise
to be natural. And see, as the wind-patterns change, so change the
spread of the "plague.?"
He turned his face to the Captain. "We are dealing with
airborne spores, not pathogens, and here, at ground-zero..." The
diagram shrunk down to show those first few city blocks. "The
mechanism to create the spores and launch them into the air."
Thrawn smiled. "Have the Imperator set course for the nearest
quarenteened world. We may just have found the way to turn the
tide."
***************************************
From orbit around the once-popular port-world of Zdane,
now blockaded by Imperial ships and an Interdiction cruiser, the
Imperator launched it's remote-probe droids.
Six spherical pods crashed, throwing up clouds of duracrete
chips. The pods cracked open and shiny black probe droids
hovered up, unfolding long, many-jointed arms as they rose. Flat-
topped heads whirled as they turned and optical sensors irised open
and narrowed in focus. The six droids floated away from their
crater-like landing sites and took in the surrounding cityscape,
transmitting what they saw to the flagship far above.
Grand Admiral Thrawn stood over the six droid controllers
sitting at their stations in the bridge-pit. Captain Parck stood
beside him and they both watched the small viewscreen that
relayed the optical readings from the droids. The probes hovered
past corpses that had been left to rot where they lay and hovercars
that had crashed into the sides of buildings and storefronts. The
city had been abandoned and evacuated in the first day of plague
where beings had succumbed like a field of dry grass to a spark of
flame.
Graffitti had been scrawled on a few walls, curses and
pleas to various gods. There had been some looting, with many of
the perpetrators falling over dead a few meters away from the
stores with their goods scatteres around them, and a lot of simple,
mindless destruction as stress or disease had broken some beings'
minds entirely.
Mostly, though, the city was silent and undesturbed: the
plague had taken hold too quickly for any real damage to be done
and although auditory sensors were set at maximum the probes
heard nothing but the wind blowing past. The tomblike silence
affected even those aboard the Star Destroyer: the controllers and
even Captain Parck shivered reflexively.
Thrawn broke the spell. "Get a reading of the air." He said
with an air of command the others were grateful for. If what he
saw disturbed him, he didn't show it.
"Done, sir." A controller said. "Beginning analysis." He
read the results his droid signalled up, scrolling down the lower
half of his viewscreen. A body lay in the droid?s field of vision,
once it had lain full-length on it's belly, hands outstretched. Now
time had twisted it back upon itself. It was the body of a human
child. The controller pushed a toggle and the droid?s head
revolved to face an empty patch of street.
"Microscopic spores, sir, the air is thick with them."
"As I thought," Thrawn nodded sharply, "move out." He
instructed the controllers to split up into two teams. "You, take
point," he said to the first controller, "you two, flank him. The rest
of you spread out and follow them at a distance. Be ready to
reinforce the first team or warn them of ambush. I don't expect
any active Yuuzhan Vong planetside, but they are likely to have
left defenses behind."
They did their best to ignore the corpses as they made for a
piece of property in the poor section of the city. A building that
had been, according to records Thrawn had obtained, leased less
than a day before the initial outbreak by a party whose
identification proved to be cheap forgeries under inspection. A
party that had paid with ready cash: coins and gems that could
have easily been taken from ships highjacked by the Yuuzhan
Vong.
On another viewscreen the probes appeared as six blips
moving through an overhead-view diagram of the city. Moving
toward an abandoned building that stood at the center of the first
red circle of outbreaks.
When they were within a few blocks of the buildings the
leading droid passed through a pheremone barrier Nom Anor had
set just before his team had left the soon-to-be-doomed planet.
The broken chemical-trail signalled the release of tiny sentry-bugs
that flew from their hiding placed and darted down the street far
ahead of the droids. They flew through the open window of an
abandoned warehouse and down into a dank basement where two
dozen large nutrient-pods hung from the ceiling. Settled down on
the pods and secreted enzymes that began the awakening process.
Seconds later two dozen grutchin had torn their way out of
the pods and were exiting the building through broken windows,
shattered doors or any other way out they could find. The small
horde couldn?t pass the pheremone barrier, but the insectoids could
and would tear apart anything that moved. And they would relish
every moment.
"Sir, I thought I saw something move!" A flanking
controller swivelled his droid?s head.
"The quiet's just getting to you." The lead said.
"No." Thrawn spoke at last. "There it is again. Stay
sharp." Before the words were out of his mouth the first team was
under attack.
The lead barely saw the grutchin that charged him: only a
black shape that blurred towards him before rebounding on the
droid's personal shield. "Something hit me!" He put a targeting
triangle on his screen and fired at the creature. Blasters mounted
on the droid's head spat energy beams, but the grutchin was
already moving and more were appearing around corners and out
of alleyways.
Even when viewed onscreen the insectoids made Parck feel
nausious, an automatic reaction. The three droids stood back to
back as they were quickly surrounded. A wave of five grutchin
attacked, followed by five more. The droids openned fire but the
creatures were too fast, zigzagging as they moved to make more
difficult targets. Blaster bolts hit walls and street more often than
grutchin. What's more, the insects' tough, chitinous exoskeletons
allowed them to take more than a few direct hits without harm.
Thrawn watched the grutchin as they charged the probe
droids again and again, failing to penetrate the shields each time
but still attacking with single-minded fever. And according to the
reading the shields were beginning to weaken
"Stay there and make a lot of noise." He told the first team.
"Have you been spotted?" He asked the second team. Auditory
sensors picked up the sounds of the battle, from behind buildings,
but they were out of sight of the first team and each other.
"I've picked up three of the beasts." One said, his droid
being harrassed on three sides.
"I don't think-Ah!" He exclaimed in shock as a grutchin
popped into his field of vision, pincers lunging for the droid.
"Nothing." The third said. "I don't think they've seen me."
"Good. Continue. The rest of you keep them occupied."
The single blip was soon at the target building. A closed door
blocked the way and the droid lifted one limb and one of the many
tools and instruments built into the arm sprung forth. The droid
removed the hinges and claw-grips on two other arms took hold of
either side and set the door down.
It was I tight fit, but the droid got through and entered the
large lobby beyond. The structure was an abandoned hotel, there
was no power input the windows had been sealed months ago.
The controller switched the optics to night vision and proceeded,
hovering over a chipped tile floor.
"Where to now, sir?" The controller asked. Thrawn
narrowed his eyes.
"Either the top floor or the basement." He decided at last.
"Most likely the basement. The furnace room perhaps."
The stairwell was too narrow for the droid, so it pried apart
the elevator doors and decended the shaft, half by climbing with
it's multiple arms and half by using it's own repulserlifts.
The basement had a floor of plain grey duracrete, dusty
with neglect. Rusted pipes lined the ceiling. The droid hovered
down a short hallway. There were recent footprints disturbing the
dusty floor, leading to a door. Presumably the furnace room
Thrawn suspected.
Parck felt a small shudder seize him as he saw the
footprints. The beings who had wrought what he had seen in the
city had trodden these floors, had touched these walls, had planned
and executed this atrocity without hesitation.
"I'm getting an odd reading for the air down here, sir." The
controller said. "It doesn?t scan like the rest of the planet at all."
The door slid open easily, and light flooded the hall. What
Parck saw on the other side literally took his breathe away: the
Yuuzhan Vong had left a greenhouse behind!
Bright lumin bugs covered the ceiling, mimicing light from
an alien sun. The walls were lined with moss that filled the room
with alien air. The floor itself had been replaced by exotic soil
from which purple and yellow grass grew and a small pond of
opaque water filled the center of the room. The furnace itself was
gone and about a dozen tall, green stalks grew at the far end,
bristling with swollen pods. The droid could go no further: two
spikey, heart-shaped dovin basals had put up a one-way restriction
field. It allowed the air created by the moss to leave, but nothing
of the outside atmosphere could enter the furnace room.
"I thought so." Thrawn said. ?They would want to
simulate the spore-bearer's native environment. It would be too
suspicious if spore-plants began sprouting throughout
quarenteened planets. I would guess the spores released die out
soon unless absorbed by living beings. Focus on those stalks."
Four of the other screens had cut off as the droids had been
destroyed, the fifth was still active, but the diagnostic report said it
was badly damaged. "I-wait! Something is happenning!"
Before their eyes, the stalks did as they had done every day
when the pods swelled: they released their spores.
The pods squirted the spores out of tiny orifices at their
tips, and as the pods began to deflate a bright red mist filled the
room, as though the air itself was bloodied. The spores were
microscopic, so billions upon billions must have been released to
be visible to the naked eye.
It only lasted for an instant, though, as a third dovin basal
caught the spores in a gravitational anomoly and directed the mist
up the pipe where the stove had once connected. From there they
would exit through the narrow chimney and spread on the wind.
"I have seen enough." Thrawn stepped back and turned.
"Gunner, are the main turboblaster batteries locked on target?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then fire at will."
Bright beams of energy lanced from the warship and
vaporized the building and everything beneath, completely
overwhelming the dovin basals and incinerating them and all they
protected.
"Nicely done." He turned to Parck. "I surmise there are at
least five spore-producers on the planet, considering the overall
spread of the plague. Move the Imperator over the next target."
He glanced at the controllers? screens. "After the spores die out
we'll send in a cleanup crew to deal with the surprises the Vong
left us."
******************************************
"Peoples of the Unknown Regions, for more than a week
plague had ravaged our home, spreading with a fervor never before
experienced. The Warlord Coerl would have us believe the
Empire has carried these ailments among you, but he is decieving
you. These plagues are a weapon deliberately deployed by Coerl
himself against those worlds which have chosen to embrace the
stability of the Empire, and against world he feared might follow
their lead, in an effort to preserve and further his own power at the
expense of all our lives."
"I am not speaking simply to trade recriminations," Thrawn
raised his hand, "but to offer a solution to the plagues, which are
not true plagues at all but airbore spores released by exotic
plantlife transplanted onto select worlds by Coerl's agents.
Already the spore plants that have infected worlds under the
Empire's control have been destroyed. Included in this transmition
are the methods by which infected planets outside our control can
locate these spore plants."
"I advise the governments controlling those infected worlds
to destroy the spore-sites from orbit, as they are very well
defended. The spores themselves cannot reproduce, nor can they
be passed from one host to another. Also, they are unable to take
root and thrive in any environment but that of their own native
planets and quickly die out upon being released unless ingested by
a living being. Without the spore-producers to create and release
them the plagues will quickly fade. As yet we can do little for
those already infected but at least the ailments will not spread
further."
"As of now the quarenteens on Imperial worlds are lifted
and the occupying ships are withdrawing. I apologize for the
inconvienence the blockades have caused, but it was done to
protect Imperial citizens, which is my highest priority." Thrawn
closed his eyes and lowered his head, his expression becoming all
the more solemn.
"Finally, I cannot begin to express my sorrow at the deaths
these spores have inflicted on all the beings of the of Unknown
Regions, Imperial and otherwise. But most of all I feel for my
fellow Chiss who trusted and followed me, and hopefully still do
so. The spores were not an enemy you could fight with blasters or
ships, they were a weapon used by a coward who refused to fight
his enemies openly. I give you my word that medical teams will
do all that is possible to find a treatment for the ailments, and that
every death, every moment of suffering, will be avenged."
******************************************
Thrawn switched off the recording and ejected the
datacard. "It will do." He said as he handed it to Parck. "Transmit
it to every infected world outside our influence, and over all the
comm channels."
"Yes, sir. But if I may ask, why didn't you mention the
Yuuzhan Vong instead of simply blaming Coerl?"
"The infected and panic-stricken planets are worrying about
the diseases now, Captain, it will appear to be nothing but an
obvious distraction to describe a nebulous and outlandish new
enemy at this point. At the very best I could come off looking
deranged, at worst it would appear I have some sort of scheme or
ulterior motive in mind. No, best to pin this on the obvious source:
Coerl. After the immediate crisis has passed I will make the
public aware of the Yuuzhan Vong and all they have done." He
narrowed his eyes as he walked among his holograms.
"I am reluctant to do even that. True, Sang Anor will find
it next to impossible to plant agents in ooglith masquers with
literally everyone on the alert for Yuuzhan Vong, but at the same
time many innocent humans and Chiss will be subjected to
persecution on suspicion of being Yuuzhan Vong themselves." He
stopped before the hologram image of Hren Silra, the Yuuzhan
Vong who had made an attempt on Thrawn's life.
"At any rate the most immediate issue, the plagues, have
been curtailed. There is still much to do and not everyone will be
satisfied, but at least the pressure has been taken off our fleet.
Now we can take a more proactive role against the Yuuzhan
Vong."
"You have a plan, sir?"
"Of course." A slow smile played across Thrawn?s features.
"One that we will put in motion immediatly after this transmition
goes out, before Sang Anor hears of it and has time to put another
plan into effect." He turned his unbearable gaze on the Captain.
"The Executor has surprised us more than once, I think it's time we
repaid him in kind."
The Empire's long and careful buildup of power in the
Unknown Regions was swiftly falling apart. Captain Parck feared
things would degenerate into an avalanche that would bury them
all if something isn't done to diffuse the situation.
Coerl's broadcasts were flooding the comm channels and
the panic was being fanned to a fever pitch as more and more
planets had to be quarenteened. So far it was only a handful of
worlds in four sectors but every other system seemed convinced
that plagues were running rampant through their own planets and
that the victims were being hidden in the 'death camps' Coerl had
displayed.
The Chiss, loyal to a fault to the Grand Admiral, were
grumbling against the Imperials that had supposedly brought the
plagues down on them, while the Imperial humans, who knew very
well the diseases hadn't come from them, blamed the races of the
barbaric Unknown Regions for infecting 'them,' and the Chiss fell
into that catagory.
Abrasiveness and outright brawling between humans and
Chiss increased on every ship and base as old prejudices that had
begun to fade now returned with a vengence. A few of these fights
had ended in the death of a human or Chiss, only a blessed few so
far and quickly hushed up, but Parck feared it was only the first
flickering flames signalling the conflagration to come.
Some of the planets Thrawn had brought into the Empire
were even attempting to withdraw back into independence. Most
were newcomers but two had been with the Empire for years now,
enjoying the order and stability it provided them. They couldn?t be
allowed to secede, of course. Thrawn did his best to diffuse each
case diplomatically but in three cases troops had to be sent in. For
a long time the Empire had kept those worlds willingly, with the
full support and cooperation of the public. Now force was used
and the thing Thrawn had feared most was coming to pass: the
Imperials were seen not as liberators, but as tyrants.
Word was leaked out, prompting riots that spread across
solar systems with five more breaking out as each one was put
down. To make matters worse, one of the outbreaks had occurred
on the Miashku homeworld, making it necessary to quarenteen the
main trade center of the Zoab sector. The High Council raged
against these new strictures and with Star Destroyers parked in
orbit around the planet with orders to open fire on any ship that
tried to take off or land it didn't take long for the entire economy
of the sector to be thrown into chaos. All possible allies in Zoab
turned hostile to the Imperial presence.
The fleet was effectively tied up with occupying and
defending the worlds to even think about a major offensive, and
Coerl or Coerl's controllers were taking full advantage of this.
Since the first broadcast the Warlord?s first broadcast Imperial
holding had been subject to constant hit and run attacks by Coerl's
fleet. The Imperials easily repelled the assaults, but the goals of
those attacks were not to achieve victory but to help tie up the
fleet. Even the strike force Thrawn had sent against Sevac III had
not returned.
Worse, as the attacks progressed and it became apparent to
all what resources Coerl was expending in his offensives against
the Empire the other Warlords in and around Zoab sector were
starting to take notice. If this wasn't some kind of ruse to divert
them, if the most powerful Warlord in Zoab sector believed the
Empire was such a great threat he was willing to strip warships
from defending his own territory and attacking theirs then perhaps
they should do something as well. The Warlords that had once
been content to pull back and defend their own borders from
Imperial encroachment now began tenative attacks of their own,
like scavenger-jackels who sensed the great predator was wounded
and bleeding.
And all the while the death tolls continued to rise on the
quarenteened worlds, not to mention those planets outside Imperial
control, which gave rise to even more panic. The diseases rejected
every treatment the medical teams came up with and continued to
spread and worsen no matter what sanitary and containment
measured used and many of the medics and groundside troops
themselves became infected.
Meanwhile every report, every last scrap of information
regarding the situation went straight to Thrawn. Despair settled
over Parck like like a durasteel-mesh blanket, weighing him down
as he entered the Admiral's private chambers. He remembered
how confident he'd been on the bridge of this marvelous flagship.
He had silently dared the Yuuzhan Vong to do their worst. He
grimaced. Sang Anor had shaken the fleet to it's foundation. All
they'd built was tottering on the brink.
The sight of the Grand Admiral made him shiver. Thrawn
paced around command chair and viewscreens. Music played
around them and selections from his holographic art gallery filled
the room, stimulations to encourage thought, but it was the
Admiral himself who drew Parck?s attention.
He looked...haggard. His hair in disarray and his skin a
paler shade of blue than usual. Parck wondered how much sleep
Thrawn had gotten since the crisis began and when he turned
toward his subordinate Parck stopped short at the brightness of that
glowing gaze, revealing the intensity of his thoughts and the
powerful spirit that was keeping him going.
"We beat back an attack on Duulo," he said at last, "base
personel report minimal casualties." Thrawn only nodded and
turned back to the viewscreens.
"They have put us on the defensive, Captain." He ran a
steady hand through his hair. Parck swallowed. The
unpreturbable Admiral never showed signs of anxiety. "We fight
smoke and wind while the true enemy stays in the shadows." He
studied the screens. "At least eight different diseases, all of which
affect a wide variety of life forms negatively." He shook his head.
"There must be an answer, Captain, a flaw in Sang Anor's plans.
He has made a mistake somewhere, I can feel it."
Parck frowned. Thrawn seemed to be reaching desperately
for a solution. He prayed the stress had not broken the Admiral.
Suddenly the weight pressing down on him seemed light compared
to the burden Thrawn carried. He wished he could take some of
that burden on his own shoulders.
Thrawn gave a light chuckle. "Don't worry, Captain, I have
neither become unhinged nor am succombing to wishfull thinking,
although I have to admit that a hunch has saved my life more than
once. My conclusions are based on more concrete evidence. I
have a feeling for our enemy and how he thinks. Sang Anor has
overlooked something. We must find that mistake before the
situation becomes too extreme to diffuse."
"But the root of the situation is the plagues, and we can?t
fight a disease like we can a battle."
"They were deployed as weapons, Captain, that means they
can be countered. It-" he stopped, frowning at a report on a
viewscreen. "This is strange. Captain look at this." Parck stepped
forward and read a report on Tesen, one of the quarenteened
worlds in the Kamark sector. "Well?"
"It looks the same as the other plague worlds." Parck
ventured.
"Yes, but look at this." Thrawn pointed. "There are two
inhabited planets in that star system. Tesen and it's sister planet
Seten. There is constant trade and travel between the two worlds,
at least until Tesen's quarenteen, and while there have been a few
isolated cases of plague on Seten, but no outbreaks like on Tesen."
Thrawn stood and closed his eyes a moment. "Of course." He
whispered.
"Sir?" Parck ventured, but Thrawn was already in his chair
and calling up more reports on the screens.
"I've been a fool." His eyes burned. "The answer was right
in front of me the whole time and I didn't see it." Plague reports
and diagrams lit up in front of him. "The Jedi mentioned spores
when she told me about the Yuuzhan Vong. Biological agents
enhanced by Shapers. But they are poisons, not diseases. Neither
self-propogating nor capable of being passed from host to host."
"But these plagues are contagious and self-reproducing,
how else could the ailments continue?"
"It is not a question of contagion, but of geography. Look,
Kas, a major port-city and the site of one of the first outbreaks."
An overhead view of a computer-simulated city. Parck studied the
tops of the ling-drawn buildings. "The first cases of plague were
here." A red circle covered ten blocks of the city. "And a few
hours later." The circle expanded to cover half the city. "And by
the end of the day." The diagram shrunk as the circle expanded yet
again, to cover the city and half the countryside. "It is too precise
to be natural. And see, as the wind-patterns change, so change the
spread of the "plague.?"
He turned his face to the Captain. "We are dealing with
airborne spores, not pathogens, and here, at ground-zero..." The
diagram shrunk down to show those first few city blocks. "The
mechanism to create the spores and launch them into the air."
Thrawn smiled. "Have the Imperator set course for the nearest
quarenteened world. We may just have found the way to turn the
tide."
***************************************
From orbit around the once-popular port-world of Zdane,
now blockaded by Imperial ships and an Interdiction cruiser, the
Imperator launched it's remote-probe droids.
Six spherical pods crashed, throwing up clouds of duracrete
chips. The pods cracked open and shiny black probe droids
hovered up, unfolding long, many-jointed arms as they rose. Flat-
topped heads whirled as they turned and optical sensors irised open
and narrowed in focus. The six droids floated away from their
crater-like landing sites and took in the surrounding cityscape,
transmitting what they saw to the flagship far above.
Grand Admiral Thrawn stood over the six droid controllers
sitting at their stations in the bridge-pit. Captain Parck stood
beside him and they both watched the small viewscreen that
relayed the optical readings from the droids. The probes hovered
past corpses that had been left to rot where they lay and hovercars
that had crashed into the sides of buildings and storefronts. The
city had been abandoned and evacuated in the first day of plague
where beings had succumbed like a field of dry grass to a spark of
flame.
Graffitti had been scrawled on a few walls, curses and
pleas to various gods. There had been some looting, with many of
the perpetrators falling over dead a few meters away from the
stores with their goods scatteres around them, and a lot of simple,
mindless destruction as stress or disease had broken some beings'
minds entirely.
Mostly, though, the city was silent and undesturbed: the
plague had taken hold too quickly for any real damage to be done
and although auditory sensors were set at maximum the probes
heard nothing but the wind blowing past. The tomblike silence
affected even those aboard the Star Destroyer: the controllers and
even Captain Parck shivered reflexively.
Thrawn broke the spell. "Get a reading of the air." He said
with an air of command the others were grateful for. If what he
saw disturbed him, he didn't show it.
"Done, sir." A controller said. "Beginning analysis." He
read the results his droid signalled up, scrolling down the lower
half of his viewscreen. A body lay in the droid?s field of vision,
once it had lain full-length on it's belly, hands outstretched. Now
time had twisted it back upon itself. It was the body of a human
child. The controller pushed a toggle and the droid?s head
revolved to face an empty patch of street.
"Microscopic spores, sir, the air is thick with them."
"As I thought," Thrawn nodded sharply, "move out." He
instructed the controllers to split up into two teams. "You, take
point," he said to the first controller, "you two, flank him. The rest
of you spread out and follow them at a distance. Be ready to
reinforce the first team or warn them of ambush. I don't expect
any active Yuuzhan Vong planetside, but they are likely to have
left defenses behind."
They did their best to ignore the corpses as they made for a
piece of property in the poor section of the city. A building that
had been, according to records Thrawn had obtained, leased less
than a day before the initial outbreak by a party whose
identification proved to be cheap forgeries under inspection. A
party that had paid with ready cash: coins and gems that could
have easily been taken from ships highjacked by the Yuuzhan
Vong.
On another viewscreen the probes appeared as six blips
moving through an overhead-view diagram of the city. Moving
toward an abandoned building that stood at the center of the first
red circle of outbreaks.
When they were within a few blocks of the buildings the
leading droid passed through a pheremone barrier Nom Anor had
set just before his team had left the soon-to-be-doomed planet.
The broken chemical-trail signalled the release of tiny sentry-bugs
that flew from their hiding placed and darted down the street far
ahead of the droids. They flew through the open window of an
abandoned warehouse and down into a dank basement where two
dozen large nutrient-pods hung from the ceiling. Settled down on
the pods and secreted enzymes that began the awakening process.
Seconds later two dozen grutchin had torn their way out of
the pods and were exiting the building through broken windows,
shattered doors or any other way out they could find. The small
horde couldn?t pass the pheremone barrier, but the insectoids could
and would tear apart anything that moved. And they would relish
every moment.
"Sir, I thought I saw something move!" A flanking
controller swivelled his droid?s head.
"The quiet's just getting to you." The lead said.
"No." Thrawn spoke at last. "There it is again. Stay
sharp." Before the words were out of his mouth the first team was
under attack.
The lead barely saw the grutchin that charged him: only a
black shape that blurred towards him before rebounding on the
droid's personal shield. "Something hit me!" He put a targeting
triangle on his screen and fired at the creature. Blasters mounted
on the droid's head spat energy beams, but the grutchin was
already moving and more were appearing around corners and out
of alleyways.
Even when viewed onscreen the insectoids made Parck feel
nausious, an automatic reaction. The three droids stood back to
back as they were quickly surrounded. A wave of five grutchin
attacked, followed by five more. The droids openned fire but the
creatures were too fast, zigzagging as they moved to make more
difficult targets. Blaster bolts hit walls and street more often than
grutchin. What's more, the insects' tough, chitinous exoskeletons
allowed them to take more than a few direct hits without harm.
Thrawn watched the grutchin as they charged the probe
droids again and again, failing to penetrate the shields each time
but still attacking with single-minded fever. And according to the
reading the shields were beginning to weaken
"Stay there and make a lot of noise." He told the first team.
"Have you been spotted?" He asked the second team. Auditory
sensors picked up the sounds of the battle, from behind buildings,
but they were out of sight of the first team and each other.
"I've picked up three of the beasts." One said, his droid
being harrassed on three sides.
"I don't think-Ah!" He exclaimed in shock as a grutchin
popped into his field of vision, pincers lunging for the droid.
"Nothing." The third said. "I don't think they've seen me."
"Good. Continue. The rest of you keep them occupied."
The single blip was soon at the target building. A closed door
blocked the way and the droid lifted one limb and one of the many
tools and instruments built into the arm sprung forth. The droid
removed the hinges and claw-grips on two other arms took hold of
either side and set the door down.
It was I tight fit, but the droid got through and entered the
large lobby beyond. The structure was an abandoned hotel, there
was no power input the windows had been sealed months ago.
The controller switched the optics to night vision and proceeded,
hovering over a chipped tile floor.
"Where to now, sir?" The controller asked. Thrawn
narrowed his eyes.
"Either the top floor or the basement." He decided at last.
"Most likely the basement. The furnace room perhaps."
The stairwell was too narrow for the droid, so it pried apart
the elevator doors and decended the shaft, half by climbing with
it's multiple arms and half by using it's own repulserlifts.
The basement had a floor of plain grey duracrete, dusty
with neglect. Rusted pipes lined the ceiling. The droid hovered
down a short hallway. There were recent footprints disturbing the
dusty floor, leading to a door. Presumably the furnace room
Thrawn suspected.
Parck felt a small shudder seize him as he saw the
footprints. The beings who had wrought what he had seen in the
city had trodden these floors, had touched these walls, had planned
and executed this atrocity without hesitation.
"I'm getting an odd reading for the air down here, sir." The
controller said. "It doesn?t scan like the rest of the planet at all."
The door slid open easily, and light flooded the hall. What
Parck saw on the other side literally took his breathe away: the
Yuuzhan Vong had left a greenhouse behind!
Bright lumin bugs covered the ceiling, mimicing light from
an alien sun. The walls were lined with moss that filled the room
with alien air. The floor itself had been replaced by exotic soil
from which purple and yellow grass grew and a small pond of
opaque water filled the center of the room. The furnace itself was
gone and about a dozen tall, green stalks grew at the far end,
bristling with swollen pods. The droid could go no further: two
spikey, heart-shaped dovin basals had put up a one-way restriction
field. It allowed the air created by the moss to leave, but nothing
of the outside atmosphere could enter the furnace room.
"I thought so." Thrawn said. ?They would want to
simulate the spore-bearer's native environment. It would be too
suspicious if spore-plants began sprouting throughout
quarenteened planets. I would guess the spores released die out
soon unless absorbed by living beings. Focus on those stalks."
Four of the other screens had cut off as the droids had been
destroyed, the fifth was still active, but the diagnostic report said it
was badly damaged. "I-wait! Something is happenning!"
Before their eyes, the stalks did as they had done every day
when the pods swelled: they released their spores.
The pods squirted the spores out of tiny orifices at their
tips, and as the pods began to deflate a bright red mist filled the
room, as though the air itself was bloodied. The spores were
microscopic, so billions upon billions must have been released to
be visible to the naked eye.
It only lasted for an instant, though, as a third dovin basal
caught the spores in a gravitational anomoly and directed the mist
up the pipe where the stove had once connected. From there they
would exit through the narrow chimney and spread on the wind.
"I have seen enough." Thrawn stepped back and turned.
"Gunner, are the main turboblaster batteries locked on target?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then fire at will."
Bright beams of energy lanced from the warship and
vaporized the building and everything beneath, completely
overwhelming the dovin basals and incinerating them and all they
protected.
"Nicely done." He turned to Parck. "I surmise there are at
least five spore-producers on the planet, considering the overall
spread of the plague. Move the Imperator over the next target."
He glanced at the controllers? screens. "After the spores die out
we'll send in a cleanup crew to deal with the surprises the Vong
left us."
******************************************
"Peoples of the Unknown Regions, for more than a week
plague had ravaged our home, spreading with a fervor never before
experienced. The Warlord Coerl would have us believe the
Empire has carried these ailments among you, but he is decieving
you. These plagues are a weapon deliberately deployed by Coerl
himself against those worlds which have chosen to embrace the
stability of the Empire, and against world he feared might follow
their lead, in an effort to preserve and further his own power at the
expense of all our lives."
"I am not speaking simply to trade recriminations," Thrawn
raised his hand, "but to offer a solution to the plagues, which are
not true plagues at all but airbore spores released by exotic
plantlife transplanted onto select worlds by Coerl's agents.
Already the spore plants that have infected worlds under the
Empire's control have been destroyed. Included in this transmition
are the methods by which infected planets outside our control can
locate these spore plants."
"I advise the governments controlling those infected worlds
to destroy the spore-sites from orbit, as they are very well
defended. The spores themselves cannot reproduce, nor can they
be passed from one host to another. Also, they are unable to take
root and thrive in any environment but that of their own native
planets and quickly die out upon being released unless ingested by
a living being. Without the spore-producers to create and release
them the plagues will quickly fade. As yet we can do little for
those already infected but at least the ailments will not spread
further."
"As of now the quarenteens on Imperial worlds are lifted
and the occupying ships are withdrawing. I apologize for the
inconvienence the blockades have caused, but it was done to
protect Imperial citizens, which is my highest priority." Thrawn
closed his eyes and lowered his head, his expression becoming all
the more solemn.
"Finally, I cannot begin to express my sorrow at the deaths
these spores have inflicted on all the beings of the of Unknown
Regions, Imperial and otherwise. But most of all I feel for my
fellow Chiss who trusted and followed me, and hopefully still do
so. The spores were not an enemy you could fight with blasters or
ships, they were a weapon used by a coward who refused to fight
his enemies openly. I give you my word that medical teams will
do all that is possible to find a treatment for the ailments, and that
every death, every moment of suffering, will be avenged."
******************************************
Thrawn switched off the recording and ejected the
datacard. "It will do." He said as he handed it to Parck. "Transmit
it to every infected world outside our influence, and over all the
comm channels."
"Yes, sir. But if I may ask, why didn't you mention the
Yuuzhan Vong instead of simply blaming Coerl?"
"The infected and panic-stricken planets are worrying about
the diseases now, Captain, it will appear to be nothing but an
obvious distraction to describe a nebulous and outlandish new
enemy at this point. At the very best I could come off looking
deranged, at worst it would appear I have some sort of scheme or
ulterior motive in mind. No, best to pin this on the obvious source:
Coerl. After the immediate crisis has passed I will make the
public aware of the Yuuzhan Vong and all they have done." He
narrowed his eyes as he walked among his holograms.
"I am reluctant to do even that. True, Sang Anor will find
it next to impossible to plant agents in ooglith masquers with
literally everyone on the alert for Yuuzhan Vong, but at the same
time many innocent humans and Chiss will be subjected to
persecution on suspicion of being Yuuzhan Vong themselves." He
stopped before the hologram image of Hren Silra, the Yuuzhan
Vong who had made an attempt on Thrawn's life.
"At any rate the most immediate issue, the plagues, have
been curtailed. There is still much to do and not everyone will be
satisfied, but at least the pressure has been taken off our fleet.
Now we can take a more proactive role against the Yuuzhan
Vong."
"You have a plan, sir?"
"Of course." A slow smile played across Thrawn?s features.
"One that we will put in motion immediatly after this transmition
goes out, before Sang Anor hears of it and has time to put another
plan into effect." He turned his unbearable gaze on the Captain.
"The Executor has surprised us more than once, I think it's time we
repaid him in kind."
