Gingerly, Grand Admiral Thrawn, Supreme Commander of the Imperial
Galactic Navy, and the force behind the resurgence of the Empire after many
hard defeats in its ongoing war with the New Republic, reached out and
attempted to touch the face of the Noghri assassin whose knife was at that
moment buried up to the hilt within his chest.
Instead of encountering the stocky alien's sandpapery skin, his fingers passed right through, as if the space in front of him, which should have contained a short, fast, and extremely deadly killer, was instead totally empty.
Thrawn's eyes widened, the malevolent red glow within them seeming to flare up as they did so. He glanced down at his chest. Where there should have been a deadly wound, there was-nothing. The knife merely appeared to enter his chest, right at the point where his heart was supposed to be. Experimentally, he felt his chest round where the dagger was embedded. Sure enough, he found the weapon as insubstantial as its owner had been.
Cautiously, he arose, his body passing through that of the still- motionless Noghri. Like his assailant, the officers on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera were strangely unmoving, frozen in the various positions they had occupied when whatever had happened, happened. At the side of his chair, Pellaeon, his flag captain, still stood, engrossed in the tactical display. And in the chair-
Thrawn hissed and recoiled. Sitting in the chair was himself, face twisted in a rictus of agony, a bright blossom of blood starting out upon his white uniform jacket where the Noghri had stabbed him.
Once more, he looked round. Save for the strange motionlessness of the inhabitants of the bridge, everything appeared normal. Experimentally, he attempted to touch Pellaeon. Just as they had with the Noghri, his fingers passed through the other man without encountering any resistance at all.
Thrawn looked once more at the dead man in the chair. His mind was racing, as he considered in turn one explanation after another, then rejected them.
Finally, he arrived at a conclusion that, at first glance seemed so utterly improbable, that went so much against the tenets of his people and his rational training that his mind rebelled against it, even as he accepted it as the only logical explanation.
He was dead.
The Chiss were not normally a superstitious folk. Eons ago, long before their civilization had even begun to take its first faltering steps towards spaceflight, their philosophers had rejected outright the concept of any form of afterlife. In place of religion, they had proposed a code of conduct based partly on Darwinian principles and partly upon socialist philosophy. Each individual's first and foremost duty was to see to the continuance of his genes-yet, due to the long-established tradition of intermarriage between members of the great houses to which every Chiss belonged to, at least a portion of the genes of any one Chiss would also belong to a large proportion of the Chiss race as a whole. Therefore, any individual who furthered the cause of the survival of the race as a whole would also ensure that his genes would survive in some form to the next generation, even if he perished in the attempt without having reproduced first. Thus, by extension, the first duty of each and every Chiss was to aid the preservation of the Chiss race, and to that end, they were to take on whatever duties necessary to sustain their civilization.
Coming as it had on the heels of a devastating religious conflict, this new philosophy had been embraced wholeheartedly by an overwhelming majority of the Chiss race. Those who remained loyal to the old ways within the span of a few decades found themselves marginalized, utterly irrelevant to the forward-looking, vigorous new society that had sprung, phoenix-like from the ashes of the old after the war.
Perhaps, in some dim and distant past, as the Chiss race clawed its way out of the darkness of savagery and animalism and into the clear light of sentience, such traits had been crucial to the survival of the race as a whole, thus ensuring that individuals possessing such traits would pass them on to the next generation, and predisposing their distant descendants to the adoption of this new philosophy. Or perhaps the leaders of the race were more honest and more committed to the new ways than to their own enrichment than was the norm among other races throughout the galaxy, and hence less prone to finding ways of subverting the new system than others. Whatever the reason, for hundreds of years afterward, the Chiss, driven by the tenets of their new creed, became mighty among the hundreds of star nations in the region of their galaxy which they had inhabited.
Among his folk, Thrawn was a rare soul; years of travel among the races of a galaxy vast and teeming with sentient life had convinced him that the true legacy of a race was not its genes, but the ideas and ideals with which they faced a vast and uncaring world-and, to Grand Admiral Thrawn, the number of races inhabiting the vast galactic spiral whose ideals, to him, were not only worth preserving but worth propagating, was as great as that of the stars themselves. On his travels, he had admired the stern sense of honor of the Wookies of Kasshyyyk; the artistry and sheer sense of beauty with which the natives of the watery planet Calamari Prime imbued their many wondrous technological creations; the Corellians' ability to laugh in the face of overwhelming odds; and the stern warrior traditions of the Twi'leks of the desert planet Ryloth. All these and more had stirred in the admiral's heart a deep respect, and an intense desire not to allow these beings to be dragged down into the darkness.
Yet, as much as the many years of galactic journeying had changed the admiral, he still retained the dour and unemotional aspect of his race. And, as much as, over the years, he had had the existence of powers greater than even the advanced science of the Empire could explain demonstrated to him, like all his folk, the admiral still remained skeptical. Thus, it was with an immense misgiving that he finally reached his conclusion. Even then, a long-buried portion of his mind still howled resistance, still cried, "No! This is all wrong! This should not be happening!" Irked, he pushed it down, and tried to concentrate on his current situation.
He stomped his feet. The sound of his heavy boot soles hitting the deck reassured him. It meant that he could at least interact somewhat with his environment. Experimentally, he took hold of the chair in which his doppelganger sat and tried to turn it about. The seat turned easily in his grasp, while his double remained still in the same position he had occupied all this while. As the real admiral had, the chair passed through the fake admiral as it swiveled, as if the other man were not there. It was strange, seeing himself seated upon nothing with a knife in his chest. The almost surreal quality of the scene became even more pronounced.
Thrawn straightened. Now for the final test. He strode towards the door leading to the antechamber to the bridge. Pausing at the pad, he took out his officer's key and pointed it at a sensor. His fingers pressed a button on the silver cylinder. There was a beeping sound, and a metal plate slid aside, revealing a numeric keypad. Swiftly, Thrawn entered his personal code into the machine.
The door slid open.
Waiting behind the door was a man. Unlike the others, he did not seem to be a phantom, frozen in time and space at the moment of Thrawn's death. Indeed, as the door opened, he nodded at the admiral, as if in greeting
"Grand Admiral Thrawn. Good day."
Thrawn's right eyebrow rose. On first awakening in this afterlife, surrounded by incorporeal shadows of his crew, he had expected to be alone, possibly forever. The Chimaera was not a new ship-she was the veteran of various campaigns over the years against pirates, alien invaders, and the Rebel Alliance. On several instances, she had taken hits to the bridge, and men had died there. Thrawn had not seen these men, and thus was not expecting to meet anyone. Seeing another soul, therefore, in this most unlikely of places, came as a pleasant surprise.
He nodded at the man. "Good day," he said. Any other man, thrust unwilling and unaware into such a situation, might have panicked, bombarding the stranger with half-hysterical queries, demands and imprecations, but not Thrawn. He was of the Chiss, and his people were made of sterner stuff. Instead, he kept his voice calm, controlled, though he did shift his weight slightly, as if preparing for combat. He did not anticipate it, armed though the stranger was with a strange blade by his side, nor did he estimate his chances highly, should they be put to the test. Yet the stranger did not appear hostile, and besides, he was already dead, so what point to killing him all over again?
"I would assume that my current predicament was at least partially engineered by yourself," he continued. "Mister."
"I'm called Stalker by my associates," replied the man in answer to the implied question. "I'm impressed, Admiral. You seem to be taking this rather calmly."
"My people have a saying," replied the Admiral. "'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.'" He gestured round the bridge. "It is plainly impossible for the Rebels, no matter what scientific advances they may have made, to generate an illusion like this through technological means. There are ysalamiri mounted on most of the chairs in this room-more than enough to block the entire volume of the bridge off from the Force. In any case, the only two Jedi of requisite ability that I know of are on Wayland. Thus, what I am experiencing now is, in all likelihood, not a Force-illusion. In the command chair is a doppelganger of myself, with the knife of my Noghri bodyguard embedded in his chest. The only possible explanations for this current situation are that either I am dead, or I am experiencing a pre-fatal out-of-body experience. Both cases amount to virtually the same thing." He regarded the other man coolly, trying to gauge his response.
"Your presence here," he continued, "would indicate that you are in fact an agent of the afterlife-I did not meet any shades of former crewmen when I awoke-which I would have were they bound to this location. True," he shrugged, "there was a significant possibility that I would remain eternally bound to this location and time-however, your appearance eliminates it."
Stalker's eyebrows rose. "I am impressed," he said once more. "Your reputation as a thinker is hardly exaggerated." He stepped through the doorway. "May I sit?" he asked, gesturing to one of the chairs on the bridge. "It might take some time to explain my purposes in contacting you."
Thrawn glanced at the bridge behind him. Nearly every chair was occupied- though, in this otherland, it probably didn't matter anyway. He nodded.
The strange man strode to one of the bridge chairs, spun it around, and settled his weight into it, ignoring the incorporeal ensign occupying it. Thrawn took the one next to him.
Stalker began to speak. He told a strange and highly improbable story, of a war being fought on a higher plane of reality than any of the civilizations currently inhabiting the galaxy. He spoke of the beings who even now were fighting that war, in as many different universes as there were stars in the galaxy: men and women with godlike powers, world conquerors, scientists, explorers, and individuals who referred to themselves as "superheroes". He himself was one, or so he claimed. He told Thrawn of the nebulous "enemy" they fought, a "cancer" as he named it, a region of rogue space in which all laws of existence had gone awry, twisting the normal course of events in every universe it encountered to its own advantage, until all spiraled down into a cesspit of anarchy and entropy, and the forces of Chaos itself held sway.
Lastly, he spoke of his own part in the fight, and, more importantly, the band of allies he was gathering whose skills and abilities, in addition to his own, might stem the tide which even now was threatening to inundate the multiverse entire with blood, death and destruction.
"Extraordinary men and women, Admiral," he said. "People who are the best there are at what they do: fighter pilots, snipers and soldiers. Even a telepath and a magician, strange though that may seem to you.
"And you as well," he continued. "The greatest tactical mind in a thousand universes. There are more than just us, the extraordinary ones, caught up in this. Recently, an inhabited planet in an out of the way universe was destroyed. Me and my associates were able to evacuate the planet-at least, what was left of the population after they had gotten through with it." His voice caught, during that last sentence, barely perceptible except perhaps to the alert ears of Thrawn. Did he detect a trace of grief, well hidden? Some one he'd cared about, perhaps? Thrawn filed the information away for further use, just in case.
"They are a people adrift, Admiral. Before the disaster, they had barely entered the Industrial Age-and now they are caught up in this war between forces and beings they can barely comprehend. Can you imagine what it must be like for them?" He gestured toward the unmoving figure of Thrawn's former bodyguard, standing over the corpse of his doppelganger. "Just like the Noghri, uplifted from primitive tribalism directly into the space age. Like it or not, they are irrevocably affected by this."
His eyes bored into Thrawn's. "I know, Admiral. I know what you used those little bastards for-and I know how you got them in the first place." His voice was cold. Thrawn could feel the disapproval radiating from the other man almost like a physical force, pushing him back into his chair. He squared his shoulders, meeting the other man's gaze and sitting up a little straighter in his chair.
"My purposes required that they be used in such fashion, Mr.Stalker," he replied, the chill in his voice matching that used by the self-proclaimed "superhero". "The unification of the galaxy is essential for its long term survival-"
Stalker raised a hand to forestall him. "I know about your purposes. If it's any comfort, the information you've gathered, and that little band you've gathered in that out of the way fortress, will prove essential in defeating the Yuuzhan Vong. I may not agree with your methods, but I do know what your original intent in joining the Empire was, as evil as Palpatine and Vader may have been. Trust me, the Vong will be defeated. I know this."
Thrawn did not relax. If this stranger was going to invade his bridge and lecture him on the moral propriety of the actions he'd taken-well, he would have none of it.
"My point is," the other continued, speaking quickly as if he feared interruption, "that these people find themselves forced to fight. But they have no training, no experience of war in the spheres in which we move. That's why I called upon you. They need a leader and a teacher, someone who can show them how to handle themselves. You're known to be both. Would you rather they be thrown on the largesse of beings so much higher than them that they are effectively gods? That scenario has not produced the best of outcomes, where it has come to pass."
"Thus you wish me to train these people in the arts of war," replied Thrawn, coolly "Strange that you would ask me, whose methods you so disapprove of."
The Stalker shook his head, wearily. "Your methods I may not agree with-at least concerning the matter of the Noghri. The important thing is that you stepped up to the challenge of protecting this galaxy. You elected to stand against the Vong, when the task could easily have been left to another. You forsook your home, your family, in order to safeguard the lives of hundreds of billions of sentient beings, many of whom you've never met.
"You could have died, alone on your quest, surrounded not by friends but by humans hostile to you and all not their kind. You have died. Yet still you found it all worthwhile, to go out there into the dark and cast your defiance into the teeth of those who would deprive uncounted billions of their lives, of their very right to live. For those lives, you found it worthwhile to sully yourself, doing the work of scum like the Emperor and Darth Vader-no, Admiral," he continued, as Thrawn made as if to rise from his seat and walk away, "do not regard me so angrily-"
Thrawn cut him off in mid-sentence. "I gave my oath as an officer," he said, allowing a hint of anger to creep into his voice. "Do not expect me, sir, to sit idly and listen to you slander the one to whom I gave it."
Stalker regarded him in silence awhile with surprised eyes. After a few, awkward moments, he spoke.
"I humbly apologize, Admiral. I did not mean to impugn your oath. I know very well that such as you would never foreswear yourself in the slightest detail, even to begrudge in the slightest those to whom you swore-though you did, on such occasions where the opportunity arose, use it to further your own ends. But never foresworn, Admiral, and never would I name you as such."
To this, Thrawn did not reply. Instead, he nodded, stiffly. He would accept the apology-for now. Let the other offer but the slightest further insult however.
"Yet consider, Admiral Thrawn," the strange man continued, "by any moral standard, can the actions of the Emperor, and of Darth Vader, in any way be called 'good'? Did either of them, at any time, intentionally and altruistically act for the benefit of any other being? I ask this of you, Admiral, as a hypothetical disinterested observer, not as an officer of the Imperial Navy."
Thrawn stared at him a few moments. At length, he spoke.
"No," he replied, shortly. It was all he could say. By any objective standard, both men had been evil-they had lied, burned and slaughtered their way to power in a galaxy desperate for order in the aftermath of the Clone Wars. It was the truth, pure and simple. Not even his oath of loyalty to the Emperor could make him deny it.
"Yet you found it all worthwhile." Stalker's voice was soft, low, wheedling.
"I do not regret it, no," replied Thrawn, returning the other man's gaze. He had done what was necessary, and did it well; that was all any Chiss needed to do.
"And now, you are being called to even greater responsibility." Stalker sighed. "More lives are at risk here than just one galaxy-or even one universe. Are you, Admiral, willing to stand by and see billions of souls dragged screaming into the abyss? Or will you cast your defiance into the teeth of this threat, just as you have cast it into the teeth of the Vong?"
Thrawn looked around the bridge, taking in the still figures, the battle frozen in an instant within the holotank outside the ship, the two figures that still stood, unmoving, over his command chair.
"I hardly suppose you could send me back," he said.
The other man smiled, a trifle sourly. "Hardly. I found it necessary to petition the Presence Himself for permission just to do this-and my powers certainly do not extend to bringing the dead back to life."
"The Presence?"
"The One Above All.the Almighty.God. All names with which we refer to the Creator of the multiverse."
"So such a being exists? You have met him?"
Stalker shook his head. "I have met several who were His agents, and yet more who claimed to have seen Him, but never have I had the opportunity to gaze upon Him myself."
Thrawn rubbed his chin. "So you say." He turned to look out the window. Outside, the contending fleets had vanished. The black of space had been replaced by a brilliantly coruscating sea of crimson energy, suffusing the now darkened bridge with its blood-red light. Around them, the motionless figures of the Star Destroyer's crew seemed to Thrawn to have become yet more immaterial. They were barely visible now. He turned to the other man.
"Is this your doing?" he asked.
Stalker's face was grim. "We are moving into the Bleed," he said. "It is the void between worlds, the gateway to higher realms. Choose quickly, Admiral. Soon, the gatherer of souls will arrive to take you to your fate. You have but a little time left to avoid it, and perhaps by your actions win yourself a better one than what you must go to today."
Thrawn stood. He felt the loss of all he had worked for: the fleets waiting in the Unknown regions; the millions of warriors he had trained, all of them willing to spill their life's blood in the defense of their home galaxy. What would become of them after he was gone, he wondered. There was always the clone, but even one's clone, imprinted with the very essence of one's psyche, could prove radically different from the original. He could not rest easy not knowing if the work he'd started here would go on.
"Stalker," he said. "The Vong. Tell me this, Stalker: will they be defeated? Will the races of the galaxy realize in time what they face?"
The other man nodded. "They will-though it will be the Republic that claims the victory and not the Empire. Be at ease, Thrawn; your work has not been in vain."
The admiral turned. The relief was almost too great to bear. For well over twenty years, he had fought this war, preparing the galaxy for a threat it had not known was there. To know now for certain that that fight was over, that he could now turn his burden over to someone else.
And yet.Thrawn looked at Stalker. If the stranger was to be believed, there was yet another war imminent-one in which the battleground was infinitely larger and the stakes, infinitely larger. And this man, who wore a strange costume and told an even stranger tale-this man believed in him, believed that he, whose only weapon was his mind, had a part to play among this pantheon of gods which he spoke of-believed that his mind would be able to win through where strange powers and telepathy and magic, though he could scarce credit it, had failed. And it seemed to Thrawn that the burden was even heavier and the responsibility even more crushing-and he knew that he had no choice.
"I will go," he said, and the future stretched out before him like a road never ending. Perhaps when this was over, he would be able to rest. Till then, he would fight the good fight, and never look back.
Stalker stood, and clasped him on the shoulder. The bridge shimmered away, and it seemed as if they stood unprotected amidst the crimson energies of the Bleed.
"I understand, Admiral. Look, there is my fortress," and he pointed to a great globe of steel, fifteen miles across, it surface unnaturally smooth. Beside it, a great starship of unusual design floated. "And there is the SDF-3 beside it. It belongs to allies of mine," he said, in response to Thrawn's quizzical expression, "the Robotech Expeditionary Force, lately discovered wandering the Bleed. We have agreed to work together awhile, and when this conflict is over, I have committed myself to finding them a way back to their home plane." He laughed. "You find yourself in strange company, Admiral. Come, we go to meet your new comrades!"
And he floated off towards the immense, gray sphere, and bemused, Thrawn followed. And in his heart, the Admiral wondered if this time, the burden would not prove to be so hard after all.
Instead of encountering the stocky alien's sandpapery skin, his fingers passed right through, as if the space in front of him, which should have contained a short, fast, and extremely deadly killer, was instead totally empty.
Thrawn's eyes widened, the malevolent red glow within them seeming to flare up as they did so. He glanced down at his chest. Where there should have been a deadly wound, there was-nothing. The knife merely appeared to enter his chest, right at the point where his heart was supposed to be. Experimentally, he felt his chest round where the dagger was embedded. Sure enough, he found the weapon as insubstantial as its owner had been.
Cautiously, he arose, his body passing through that of the still- motionless Noghri. Like his assailant, the officers on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera were strangely unmoving, frozen in the various positions they had occupied when whatever had happened, happened. At the side of his chair, Pellaeon, his flag captain, still stood, engrossed in the tactical display. And in the chair-
Thrawn hissed and recoiled. Sitting in the chair was himself, face twisted in a rictus of agony, a bright blossom of blood starting out upon his white uniform jacket where the Noghri had stabbed him.
Once more, he looked round. Save for the strange motionlessness of the inhabitants of the bridge, everything appeared normal. Experimentally, he attempted to touch Pellaeon. Just as they had with the Noghri, his fingers passed through the other man without encountering any resistance at all.
Thrawn looked once more at the dead man in the chair. His mind was racing, as he considered in turn one explanation after another, then rejected them.
Finally, he arrived at a conclusion that, at first glance seemed so utterly improbable, that went so much against the tenets of his people and his rational training that his mind rebelled against it, even as he accepted it as the only logical explanation.
He was dead.
The Chiss were not normally a superstitious folk. Eons ago, long before their civilization had even begun to take its first faltering steps towards spaceflight, their philosophers had rejected outright the concept of any form of afterlife. In place of religion, they had proposed a code of conduct based partly on Darwinian principles and partly upon socialist philosophy. Each individual's first and foremost duty was to see to the continuance of his genes-yet, due to the long-established tradition of intermarriage between members of the great houses to which every Chiss belonged to, at least a portion of the genes of any one Chiss would also belong to a large proportion of the Chiss race as a whole. Therefore, any individual who furthered the cause of the survival of the race as a whole would also ensure that his genes would survive in some form to the next generation, even if he perished in the attempt without having reproduced first. Thus, by extension, the first duty of each and every Chiss was to aid the preservation of the Chiss race, and to that end, they were to take on whatever duties necessary to sustain their civilization.
Coming as it had on the heels of a devastating religious conflict, this new philosophy had been embraced wholeheartedly by an overwhelming majority of the Chiss race. Those who remained loyal to the old ways within the span of a few decades found themselves marginalized, utterly irrelevant to the forward-looking, vigorous new society that had sprung, phoenix-like from the ashes of the old after the war.
Perhaps, in some dim and distant past, as the Chiss race clawed its way out of the darkness of savagery and animalism and into the clear light of sentience, such traits had been crucial to the survival of the race as a whole, thus ensuring that individuals possessing such traits would pass them on to the next generation, and predisposing their distant descendants to the adoption of this new philosophy. Or perhaps the leaders of the race were more honest and more committed to the new ways than to their own enrichment than was the norm among other races throughout the galaxy, and hence less prone to finding ways of subverting the new system than others. Whatever the reason, for hundreds of years afterward, the Chiss, driven by the tenets of their new creed, became mighty among the hundreds of star nations in the region of their galaxy which they had inhabited.
Among his folk, Thrawn was a rare soul; years of travel among the races of a galaxy vast and teeming with sentient life had convinced him that the true legacy of a race was not its genes, but the ideas and ideals with which they faced a vast and uncaring world-and, to Grand Admiral Thrawn, the number of races inhabiting the vast galactic spiral whose ideals, to him, were not only worth preserving but worth propagating, was as great as that of the stars themselves. On his travels, he had admired the stern sense of honor of the Wookies of Kasshyyyk; the artistry and sheer sense of beauty with which the natives of the watery planet Calamari Prime imbued their many wondrous technological creations; the Corellians' ability to laugh in the face of overwhelming odds; and the stern warrior traditions of the Twi'leks of the desert planet Ryloth. All these and more had stirred in the admiral's heart a deep respect, and an intense desire not to allow these beings to be dragged down into the darkness.
Yet, as much as the many years of galactic journeying had changed the admiral, he still retained the dour and unemotional aspect of his race. And, as much as, over the years, he had had the existence of powers greater than even the advanced science of the Empire could explain demonstrated to him, like all his folk, the admiral still remained skeptical. Thus, it was with an immense misgiving that he finally reached his conclusion. Even then, a long-buried portion of his mind still howled resistance, still cried, "No! This is all wrong! This should not be happening!" Irked, he pushed it down, and tried to concentrate on his current situation.
He stomped his feet. The sound of his heavy boot soles hitting the deck reassured him. It meant that he could at least interact somewhat with his environment. Experimentally, he took hold of the chair in which his doppelganger sat and tried to turn it about. The seat turned easily in his grasp, while his double remained still in the same position he had occupied all this while. As the real admiral had, the chair passed through the fake admiral as it swiveled, as if the other man were not there. It was strange, seeing himself seated upon nothing with a knife in his chest. The almost surreal quality of the scene became even more pronounced.
Thrawn straightened. Now for the final test. He strode towards the door leading to the antechamber to the bridge. Pausing at the pad, he took out his officer's key and pointed it at a sensor. His fingers pressed a button on the silver cylinder. There was a beeping sound, and a metal plate slid aside, revealing a numeric keypad. Swiftly, Thrawn entered his personal code into the machine.
The door slid open.
Waiting behind the door was a man. Unlike the others, he did not seem to be a phantom, frozen in time and space at the moment of Thrawn's death. Indeed, as the door opened, he nodded at the admiral, as if in greeting
"Grand Admiral Thrawn. Good day."
Thrawn's right eyebrow rose. On first awakening in this afterlife, surrounded by incorporeal shadows of his crew, he had expected to be alone, possibly forever. The Chimaera was not a new ship-she was the veteran of various campaigns over the years against pirates, alien invaders, and the Rebel Alliance. On several instances, she had taken hits to the bridge, and men had died there. Thrawn had not seen these men, and thus was not expecting to meet anyone. Seeing another soul, therefore, in this most unlikely of places, came as a pleasant surprise.
He nodded at the man. "Good day," he said. Any other man, thrust unwilling and unaware into such a situation, might have panicked, bombarding the stranger with half-hysterical queries, demands and imprecations, but not Thrawn. He was of the Chiss, and his people were made of sterner stuff. Instead, he kept his voice calm, controlled, though he did shift his weight slightly, as if preparing for combat. He did not anticipate it, armed though the stranger was with a strange blade by his side, nor did he estimate his chances highly, should they be put to the test. Yet the stranger did not appear hostile, and besides, he was already dead, so what point to killing him all over again?
"I would assume that my current predicament was at least partially engineered by yourself," he continued. "Mister."
"I'm called Stalker by my associates," replied the man in answer to the implied question. "I'm impressed, Admiral. You seem to be taking this rather calmly."
"My people have a saying," replied the Admiral. "'Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.'" He gestured round the bridge. "It is plainly impossible for the Rebels, no matter what scientific advances they may have made, to generate an illusion like this through technological means. There are ysalamiri mounted on most of the chairs in this room-more than enough to block the entire volume of the bridge off from the Force. In any case, the only two Jedi of requisite ability that I know of are on Wayland. Thus, what I am experiencing now is, in all likelihood, not a Force-illusion. In the command chair is a doppelganger of myself, with the knife of my Noghri bodyguard embedded in his chest. The only possible explanations for this current situation are that either I am dead, or I am experiencing a pre-fatal out-of-body experience. Both cases amount to virtually the same thing." He regarded the other man coolly, trying to gauge his response.
"Your presence here," he continued, "would indicate that you are in fact an agent of the afterlife-I did not meet any shades of former crewmen when I awoke-which I would have were they bound to this location. True," he shrugged, "there was a significant possibility that I would remain eternally bound to this location and time-however, your appearance eliminates it."
Stalker's eyebrows rose. "I am impressed," he said once more. "Your reputation as a thinker is hardly exaggerated." He stepped through the doorway. "May I sit?" he asked, gesturing to one of the chairs on the bridge. "It might take some time to explain my purposes in contacting you."
Thrawn glanced at the bridge behind him. Nearly every chair was occupied- though, in this otherland, it probably didn't matter anyway. He nodded.
The strange man strode to one of the bridge chairs, spun it around, and settled his weight into it, ignoring the incorporeal ensign occupying it. Thrawn took the one next to him.
Stalker began to speak. He told a strange and highly improbable story, of a war being fought on a higher plane of reality than any of the civilizations currently inhabiting the galaxy. He spoke of the beings who even now were fighting that war, in as many different universes as there were stars in the galaxy: men and women with godlike powers, world conquerors, scientists, explorers, and individuals who referred to themselves as "superheroes". He himself was one, or so he claimed. He told Thrawn of the nebulous "enemy" they fought, a "cancer" as he named it, a region of rogue space in which all laws of existence had gone awry, twisting the normal course of events in every universe it encountered to its own advantage, until all spiraled down into a cesspit of anarchy and entropy, and the forces of Chaos itself held sway.
Lastly, he spoke of his own part in the fight, and, more importantly, the band of allies he was gathering whose skills and abilities, in addition to his own, might stem the tide which even now was threatening to inundate the multiverse entire with blood, death and destruction.
"Extraordinary men and women, Admiral," he said. "People who are the best there are at what they do: fighter pilots, snipers and soldiers. Even a telepath and a magician, strange though that may seem to you.
"And you as well," he continued. "The greatest tactical mind in a thousand universes. There are more than just us, the extraordinary ones, caught up in this. Recently, an inhabited planet in an out of the way universe was destroyed. Me and my associates were able to evacuate the planet-at least, what was left of the population after they had gotten through with it." His voice caught, during that last sentence, barely perceptible except perhaps to the alert ears of Thrawn. Did he detect a trace of grief, well hidden? Some one he'd cared about, perhaps? Thrawn filed the information away for further use, just in case.
"They are a people adrift, Admiral. Before the disaster, they had barely entered the Industrial Age-and now they are caught up in this war between forces and beings they can barely comprehend. Can you imagine what it must be like for them?" He gestured toward the unmoving figure of Thrawn's former bodyguard, standing over the corpse of his doppelganger. "Just like the Noghri, uplifted from primitive tribalism directly into the space age. Like it or not, they are irrevocably affected by this."
His eyes bored into Thrawn's. "I know, Admiral. I know what you used those little bastards for-and I know how you got them in the first place." His voice was cold. Thrawn could feel the disapproval radiating from the other man almost like a physical force, pushing him back into his chair. He squared his shoulders, meeting the other man's gaze and sitting up a little straighter in his chair.
"My purposes required that they be used in such fashion, Mr.Stalker," he replied, the chill in his voice matching that used by the self-proclaimed "superhero". "The unification of the galaxy is essential for its long term survival-"
Stalker raised a hand to forestall him. "I know about your purposes. If it's any comfort, the information you've gathered, and that little band you've gathered in that out of the way fortress, will prove essential in defeating the Yuuzhan Vong. I may not agree with your methods, but I do know what your original intent in joining the Empire was, as evil as Palpatine and Vader may have been. Trust me, the Vong will be defeated. I know this."
Thrawn did not relax. If this stranger was going to invade his bridge and lecture him on the moral propriety of the actions he'd taken-well, he would have none of it.
"My point is," the other continued, speaking quickly as if he feared interruption, "that these people find themselves forced to fight. But they have no training, no experience of war in the spheres in which we move. That's why I called upon you. They need a leader and a teacher, someone who can show them how to handle themselves. You're known to be both. Would you rather they be thrown on the largesse of beings so much higher than them that they are effectively gods? That scenario has not produced the best of outcomes, where it has come to pass."
"Thus you wish me to train these people in the arts of war," replied Thrawn, coolly "Strange that you would ask me, whose methods you so disapprove of."
The Stalker shook his head, wearily. "Your methods I may not agree with-at least concerning the matter of the Noghri. The important thing is that you stepped up to the challenge of protecting this galaxy. You elected to stand against the Vong, when the task could easily have been left to another. You forsook your home, your family, in order to safeguard the lives of hundreds of billions of sentient beings, many of whom you've never met.
"You could have died, alone on your quest, surrounded not by friends but by humans hostile to you and all not their kind. You have died. Yet still you found it all worthwhile, to go out there into the dark and cast your defiance into the teeth of those who would deprive uncounted billions of their lives, of their very right to live. For those lives, you found it worthwhile to sully yourself, doing the work of scum like the Emperor and Darth Vader-no, Admiral," he continued, as Thrawn made as if to rise from his seat and walk away, "do not regard me so angrily-"
Thrawn cut him off in mid-sentence. "I gave my oath as an officer," he said, allowing a hint of anger to creep into his voice. "Do not expect me, sir, to sit idly and listen to you slander the one to whom I gave it."
Stalker regarded him in silence awhile with surprised eyes. After a few, awkward moments, he spoke.
"I humbly apologize, Admiral. I did not mean to impugn your oath. I know very well that such as you would never foreswear yourself in the slightest detail, even to begrudge in the slightest those to whom you swore-though you did, on such occasions where the opportunity arose, use it to further your own ends. But never foresworn, Admiral, and never would I name you as such."
To this, Thrawn did not reply. Instead, he nodded, stiffly. He would accept the apology-for now. Let the other offer but the slightest further insult however.
"Yet consider, Admiral Thrawn," the strange man continued, "by any moral standard, can the actions of the Emperor, and of Darth Vader, in any way be called 'good'? Did either of them, at any time, intentionally and altruistically act for the benefit of any other being? I ask this of you, Admiral, as a hypothetical disinterested observer, not as an officer of the Imperial Navy."
Thrawn stared at him a few moments. At length, he spoke.
"No," he replied, shortly. It was all he could say. By any objective standard, both men had been evil-they had lied, burned and slaughtered their way to power in a galaxy desperate for order in the aftermath of the Clone Wars. It was the truth, pure and simple. Not even his oath of loyalty to the Emperor could make him deny it.
"Yet you found it all worthwhile." Stalker's voice was soft, low, wheedling.
"I do not regret it, no," replied Thrawn, returning the other man's gaze. He had done what was necessary, and did it well; that was all any Chiss needed to do.
"And now, you are being called to even greater responsibility." Stalker sighed. "More lives are at risk here than just one galaxy-or even one universe. Are you, Admiral, willing to stand by and see billions of souls dragged screaming into the abyss? Or will you cast your defiance into the teeth of this threat, just as you have cast it into the teeth of the Vong?"
Thrawn looked around the bridge, taking in the still figures, the battle frozen in an instant within the holotank outside the ship, the two figures that still stood, unmoving, over his command chair.
"I hardly suppose you could send me back," he said.
The other man smiled, a trifle sourly. "Hardly. I found it necessary to petition the Presence Himself for permission just to do this-and my powers certainly do not extend to bringing the dead back to life."
"The Presence?"
"The One Above All.the Almighty.God. All names with which we refer to the Creator of the multiverse."
"So such a being exists? You have met him?"
Stalker shook his head. "I have met several who were His agents, and yet more who claimed to have seen Him, but never have I had the opportunity to gaze upon Him myself."
Thrawn rubbed his chin. "So you say." He turned to look out the window. Outside, the contending fleets had vanished. The black of space had been replaced by a brilliantly coruscating sea of crimson energy, suffusing the now darkened bridge with its blood-red light. Around them, the motionless figures of the Star Destroyer's crew seemed to Thrawn to have become yet more immaterial. They were barely visible now. He turned to the other man.
"Is this your doing?" he asked.
Stalker's face was grim. "We are moving into the Bleed," he said. "It is the void between worlds, the gateway to higher realms. Choose quickly, Admiral. Soon, the gatherer of souls will arrive to take you to your fate. You have but a little time left to avoid it, and perhaps by your actions win yourself a better one than what you must go to today."
Thrawn stood. He felt the loss of all he had worked for: the fleets waiting in the Unknown regions; the millions of warriors he had trained, all of them willing to spill their life's blood in the defense of their home galaxy. What would become of them after he was gone, he wondered. There was always the clone, but even one's clone, imprinted with the very essence of one's psyche, could prove radically different from the original. He could not rest easy not knowing if the work he'd started here would go on.
"Stalker," he said. "The Vong. Tell me this, Stalker: will they be defeated? Will the races of the galaxy realize in time what they face?"
The other man nodded. "They will-though it will be the Republic that claims the victory and not the Empire. Be at ease, Thrawn; your work has not been in vain."
The admiral turned. The relief was almost too great to bear. For well over twenty years, he had fought this war, preparing the galaxy for a threat it had not known was there. To know now for certain that that fight was over, that he could now turn his burden over to someone else.
And yet.Thrawn looked at Stalker. If the stranger was to be believed, there was yet another war imminent-one in which the battleground was infinitely larger and the stakes, infinitely larger. And this man, who wore a strange costume and told an even stranger tale-this man believed in him, believed that he, whose only weapon was his mind, had a part to play among this pantheon of gods which he spoke of-believed that his mind would be able to win through where strange powers and telepathy and magic, though he could scarce credit it, had failed. And it seemed to Thrawn that the burden was even heavier and the responsibility even more crushing-and he knew that he had no choice.
"I will go," he said, and the future stretched out before him like a road never ending. Perhaps when this was over, he would be able to rest. Till then, he would fight the good fight, and never look back.
Stalker stood, and clasped him on the shoulder. The bridge shimmered away, and it seemed as if they stood unprotected amidst the crimson energies of the Bleed.
"I understand, Admiral. Look, there is my fortress," and he pointed to a great globe of steel, fifteen miles across, it surface unnaturally smooth. Beside it, a great starship of unusual design floated. "And there is the SDF-3 beside it. It belongs to allies of mine," he said, in response to Thrawn's quizzical expression, "the Robotech Expeditionary Force, lately discovered wandering the Bleed. We have agreed to work together awhile, and when this conflict is over, I have committed myself to finding them a way back to their home plane." He laughed. "You find yourself in strange company, Admiral. Come, we go to meet your new comrades!"
And he floated off towards the immense, gray sphere, and bemused, Thrawn followed. And in his heart, the Admiral wondered if this time, the burden would not prove to be so hard after all.