When Rory and Thrawn ran up to the command level, they found Commander Piett seated in the captain's chair, and everyone at battle stations. Unlike the relaxed atmosphere they'd left moments before, the mood of taut expectation on the bridge could be cut with a vibroblade. Wonder what happened while we were away. Seeing them arrive together, Piett raised an eyebrow. "Becoming the Singing Hutts Duo, are you?" He waved Mikam to the weapons relay comm station, and motioned for Thrawn to report. "Well?"
"The leader of the pirate fleet is a Duros who's been hijacking ships on the Chandrilan Trade Spine for over a year, sir, so that would fit the description you had. Name of Kal'tuar. What we saw was more or less all their available warships, although they have a couple more currently being refurbished at the Shi'sla dockyards. The prisoners I interrogated mentioned a base in the Taanab asteroid belt, but I don't believe that's their only one, or even the largest."
Glib, Mikam thought in admiration. There was no other way to describe the ease with which Thrawn was delivering his report, as if he'd really arrived straight from the brig's interrogation rooms, instead of Wynssa Starflare's luxurious VIP suite, presumably snogging with the holostar who'd got the entire officer corps slavering for the past week. Clever sonovanek. It struck him that he'd easily trust his friend to lead them into battle. Wouldn't lose his cool, and there isn't much that'd get past him. Piett was listening to him, too—Rory had always respected Piett's good sense.
"Overall," Thrawn went on, "I'd say they have an unusually disciplined organization for pirates. Their boarding groups have been drilled by a group of Twi'lek mercenaries who used to work for the Trade Federation, and got laid off after His Majesty sent a Moff and an Imperial garrison to the Nemoidia system; as you know, sir, Nemoidia was settled by Duros millennia ago; they originate from the same species even though they're easy to tell apart now. Anyway, it doesn't look as if the Twi'leks have much to do with fleet tactics; that's largely a Duros affair, which should make them fairly predictable."
"It should?" Piett said mildly.
"I believe so, yes, sir. Duros society puts a high premium on hierarchy. They're inventive enough, and reactive, but they don't improvise."
"Spent some time on a Duros orbital station in your life, lieutenant?"
"No, sir."
"So how come you know the species so well?"
"I've—studied them, sir."
Piett's eyes narrowed. "How exactly? I'm pretty familiar with what little's left of exosociology in the Academy cursus, lieutenant, and it usually isn't enough to help you order a beer in a Rim cantina."
"I've studied Duros art, sir."
"Duros art?" Head cocked to the right, a sardonic expression on his face, the "Empire's Revenge"'s first officer considered the alien lieutenant. Mikam, listening in from the weapons comm station, wondered if he'd heard aright. Art?
"Art provides the best insight you can have of a people, sir. Duros art puts a high emphasis on symmetry and perspective, but it's never invented much in terms of color, and their abstractions are mostly decorative. They construct things, but they're not mold-breakers."
Piett's face reflected polite doubt. Rory was glad nobody asked his advice—his new pal, he felt, had gone way off the deep end on that one.
"I have to assume you believe what you're saying, since you must be aware how it sounds to me," Piett said with more than a hint of sarcasm. "So tell me, lieutenant, how Duros art can help us one hour before our space battle?"
Thrawn paused for an instant as if marshalling his thoughts, and took a measured breath. "Sir, over the centuries, Duros artists have invented new techniques to fit more subject-matter on planic pictures or in sculpted subjects. They invented, then tweaked, perspective; they refined triptych delineation; they also devised narrative conventions that every Duros understands in order to cram intelligible storylines carved onto fairly small chunks of semi-precious stones. All this is very ingenious, just as they've been ingenious in designing the orbital stations they now live in after industrial pollution made their world largely uninhabitable. But it implies an almost complete subjection to order, because without order, their world can't exist—it would explode." He stepped to the tactical console and picked up the pointer. "So what you must use against them is asymmetry—non-logical narrative. Hit the articulation of a flank, not the center. To attack the lead ship, send out a squadron of TIEs against one structural weakness, and recall them immediately, whether they've succeeded or failed. Use overwhelming fire for fast attrition of their first line of defense, then vanish—microjump to leave them faced with empty space, and microjump back on a different vector. It will gain you the advantage faster than classic Imperial tactics, because they expect those. In fact, I believe it may end in their surrender."
Piett had been staring at the young officer with something approaching fascination, but the last word broke the apparent spell. "Surrender? Pirates? Knowing what they do of Imperial policy to their kind? Not to mention that I'll be hanged if any of them has ever set foot in a museum other than to burgle it. Aren't you being a tad fanciful, lieutenant?"
"Sir, I believe I'm right, but I realize this is an unconventional view."
"I'll say it is. At any rate, you can see why I don't plan on presenting it to the "Judicator" 's commanding officer."
The blue-black hair shimmered under the bridge's harsh artificial lighting when Thrawn nodded. "I do, sir, but does that prevent you entirely from using some asymmetrical tactics?"
"You mean, without explaining why?"
Thrawn nodded again.
"More of your sneaky tricks, lieutenant Thrawn?"
"Sir," the alien lieutenant said, "I said I would not go behind your back, and I don't plan to do so. It all comes down to whether you believe my ideas have any merit, and my tactics will work."
Piett rose from the command chair, and headed to the forward viewport, motioning to Thrawn to follow him. "Do I believe your art theories, lieutenant? No. Do I believe that you're an unusually good tactician, and that you might succeed in throwing the Duros out there for a loop? Yes. So go and devise me a plausible course of action with enough conventional-sounding explanations backing it up that I don't look as if I'd gone off my rocker if I'm asked why I'm suggesting it. Got me?"
Thrawn very nearly smiled. "Aye, aye, sir."
"You've just succeeded in making me behave as sneakily as you, haven't you?"
"Sir—"
"Haven't you?"
"Sir—it doesn't matter if none of those pirates have ever been in a museum or an art gallery. Their mental structures are the same as those of the artists who've produced centuries of Duros art. The art is just a deciphering device, a code-breaker—it's reliable because it's consistent, and it's neutral."
The first officer turned from the starry space view to look straight into the strange glowing eyes. "You take this pretty seriously, don't you, lieutenant?"
"I take seriously any means which permits me to win, sir."
Piett paused infinitesimally. "Yes, I can see that you do. Very well, lieutenant, I'll trust you not to botch this up. Because while you were chatting with the sorry bunch in the brig, we had a subspace communication from Admiral Mordon on the "Judicator." They've got Lord Vader on board, and he'll take a very dim view of any officer screwing up this operation."