Wynssa Starflare was turning out to be a regular guy, Rory Mikam reflected. Thrawn had told him to get her as inconspicuous a job as possible until the danger was past, and the two of them found themselves drafted into an emergency detail containing a fire started by a direct sublight torpedo hit into one of the "Revenge" 's fuel reserves, rerouting the intact fuel cells. Rory had considered for half a minute leaving Wynssa at it, but he wasn't sure Thrawn would have wanted her alone in a potentially explosive area. And when did I start taking orders from my pal Red-Eyes? he asked himself wryly. Anyway, the civilian engineer in charge of the detail had bawled him out for slowing down the movement; and there he was now, ordering especially clumsy, not to mention reluctant, kitchen droids to stock energy packs among the durasene tanks, in the middle of an indescribable mob scene.
"You want to keep the tritium bars well away from the durasene!" Wynssa shouted. "One teeny-weensy shock and you'll get a really nice bonfire!"
Kreth. That means I've got half my work again cut out for me. He looked up at the holostar operating a forklift hovercar with considerable expertise. One strand of blonde hair was now stuck to her sweaty brow, and she sported a soot stain on her left cheek. She still looked like a gazillion credits. "How come you know this? Come to think of it, where did you learn to work a forklift car?"
The fork zoomed down next to him, deposited a pile of fuel cells within easy reach of the closest kitchen droid, hiked back up with a clang.
"Long story short, my parents have a refueling station at Gus Treta, that's in the Corellian sector. I can't say I liked the work, but I could do it half-way decently when they nagged me enough to make myself useful."
"And now you're a major holostar, Navy captains fall about to give you the run of their Star Destroyers, and zingo, you're back at fuel detail again. Ain't life a bitch."
She burst out laughing. "Tell you what, Lieutenant Mikam—"
"Rory."
"Tell you what, Rory, I'm sorry if I shouldn't be saying this, but this is a lot more fun than dinner with Captain Corlag. What happened to him?"
Mikam packed off the indignant chief kitchen droid with a consignment of tritium bars, turned back. "I biffed him one."
"You what?"
Zoom, plop, clang. Another half-tonne dispatched. They were getting pretty good at this, he reflected.
"You've seen a bit of what Corlag is like. That's when he's sober. When we got the red alert, he showed up on the bridge an hour late, drunk as a Drall, and started to frell up, pardon my Hutt, all of Commander Piett's battle plans. Your boyfriend's too. When he—"
The lift stopped abruptly, the fuel cells balancing awkwardly in mid-air. "My what?" Wynssa asked awfully.
"Thrawn. When he—"
"Lieutenant Thrawn is not my boyfriend," she enunciated carefully, depositing the fuel cells with extra caution.
"Oh come on, you like him and he sure likes you. In the past day or so, he's been behaving a lot more normally than I've ever seen him, and I bet you're the reason why."
Clang. "I don't suppose I can make you change your mind, lieutenant."
Zoom. "Nope."
He sent off another droid, looked up in case she really was mad, but she was grinning again. "Well, we'll see about that. Have you known him long?"
"Thrawn? We've been bunking for nine months now, but truth is, I don't think I ever knew him until yesterday. Which ain't telling much. Don't tell me this is the last load!"
"Sure is." She wiped her face with the cap, smearing more soot, pulled it back on. "What do we do now?"
Mikam looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Look, I've got to get back to the bridge, but now I've seen you operating this, I wonder if you couldn't come help one of the gunnery teams. We were short to begin with, and what with the hit that got Captain Corlag—"
"I thought you did?"
"Kreth! Sorry, Wynssa, but you're not really supposed to know that, okay?"
She nodded and climbed down from the forklift hovercar. "Not a word, but you will tell me that story, won't you?"
She really had the most brilliant eyes he'd ever seen. He grinned. "It's a deal. This way."
***
Commander Piett eyed the non-human lieutenant standing at attention next to the relay weapons status station with a mixture of fascination and irritation. Thrawn was proving to be by far the best tactician he'd ever met in any staff. He was also demonstrating a sneakiness that had just crossed the line from brilliant to duplicitous. This, Piett told himself, definitely had to be nipped in the bud. He cast a quick glance around to check that there was no danger he'd be overheard, unless he raised his voice, something he was not in the habit of doing. He didn't want any more hostile reactions to Thrawn among the rest of the officers than absolutely unavoidable. But that didn't mean he was going to give the lieutenant an easy go of it.
"Let me get this straight. You organized this broadcast by Wynssa Starflare behind my back and had one of your fellow-officers send it out before I'd approved the notion of getting those pirates to board us?"
The other nodded. "Yes, sir."
"Tell me, lieutenant, what part exactly of the chain of command is not entirely clear to you? Why did you do this?"
"I felt we had very little time before we were completely destroyed, sir."
"All of us here felt there was very little time before we were completely destroyed." Except possibly that ass Corlag, and I've just all but sanctioned young Mikam's outrageous initiative, which would have gotten him shot for mutiny by most of the COs I've served with. But Mikam never premeditated this coldly. "Let me make something crystal-clear, lieutenant. I value about everything you've contributed to this battle. I don't know how you got Starflare to send out her message, but it was absolutely brilliant, and the fact that nothing has hit us in the past five minutes may mean it did get us where we wanted. All the same, if you ever pull another of your little tricks without clearing it with me first, I'll have you demoted to private faster than you can switch this console on. I don't give a frell how irregular your thinking is. You can walk all over the manual for all I care, but you're not going to walk all over me, is that perfectly understood?"
The glowing red eyes held Piett's gaze for an instant, then Thrawn nodded.
"I understand, sir."
"Good. You may not have had enough experience of being—trusted—by your superiors here; but I assure you this does not apply in my case. As long as you give me no reason not to trust you. Got me?"
Another bob of the blue-black hair. "Aye, sir."
"Now let's see how this boarding party is moving, and I want the sublight engines prepped. Trooper report?"
"Colonel Tyfas's men are deployed in Hangar Bay 2, and ready, sir," Thrawn's cool voice said.
"Excellent. Let's spring that trap."