Mid-level briefing rooms aboard an Imperial Star Destroyer were apparently set up for easy-access holocomm conferencing. They didn't have the same electronic bulkheads as the uplink nodes they'd been able to access from the hangar deck, or the same sort of physical security perimeter as the command tower. Armed with Aunt Mara's override code, Fiver seemed to think he could access the HoloNet in about five minutes through one of the Chimaera's command-ship nodes, and he'd brought up a live relay from one of the command-tower turbolifts on the big projector in the centre of the table, so that Anakin and Tahiri could watch Jaina heading to the bridge, now chaperoned by a trim, black-uniformed Imperial lieutenant.
"So we just keep an eye on things from here," Tahiri asked, leaning against the bulkhead, and giving Anakin a glance.
"Mhm," Anakin nodded, as the view switched to show a different image. "Fiver, can you bring up an audio track?"
Jaina stepped out of the turbolift and onto the bridge of the Star Destroyer. She kept her back straight and her head high, moving with the military swagger of an X-wing pilot - but even on the holoscreen, Anakin could see that her eyes were dancing as she took in all the details.
Anakin knew that his sister had always had a secret admiration for the Empire. When she was younger, she had always wanted to be a TIE pilot, dogfighting against Rebels in their X-wings. She had been awed to meet Grand Admiral Pellaeon at Ithor, and she liked Jag Fel precisely because of his old-fashioned Imperial attitude, ruthless and well-trained and dangerously confident. She'd had a crush on his father for years.
They'd both been on the bridge of an Imperial-class ship before - but that had been the Errant Venture, half pirate-ship and half tourist-trap, a prize of war with ancient carbon scoring on the bulkheads, brightened by gaudy red trim, with retrofitted computer stations on the quarterdeck, and a mismatched crew of mercenaries and aftermarket droids. The command deck of the Chimaera was different. The lights were immaculately bright, every surface was polished, and the effect of order was sustained by the silent and precise behaviour of the personnel, and the clear geometry of the schematics on the display screens.
It was an imposing space enclosed by a curving sweep of viewports which looked out across the night sky of the Empire, with neatly-uniformed officers in command, and a central walkway thrust forward down the middle, above two flanking crew pits where well-trained technicians were stationed at their computer consoles. The droids and interfaces looked basic and a little old-fashioned, a reminder that the Chimaera was an older ship and that the modern Empire didn't have anything like the same industrial and economic resources for refits and upgrades as the New Republic - but everything was in good condition, gleaming and well-maintained, and all the personnel looked smart and confident.
"Wait here, please, ma'am," the Lieutenant who was escorting Jaina said, sounding politely deferential. Jaina answered with a nod and a smile, evidently enjoying being taken for a high-level Imperial agent.
Anakin watched as the Lieutenant walked forward to report, heading to the throne-like command chair which identified Chimaera as the Empire's flagship. He sensed a flicker of a frown from Jaina, something he didn't understand yet.
There was an ysalamir draped acoss the high back of the command chair - a lazy-looking alien creature that looked a little like a furry scarf, enclosing the seat in its bubble of invisibility in the Force, and shielding the man who sat there from Jedi scrutiny, a precaution that still made sense for the Empire, even after a decade of peace with the Order and the New Republic. The man was shielded from more mundane observation by the way the chair was turned away from the rest of the bridge, but Anakin could just see the elbow of a uniform sleeve on the armrest, the distinctive white uniform of an Imperial Grand Admiral - and from that hint of posture, he could tell that the man in the chair was leaning back with his hands pressed together in contemplation, looking out at space.
Even in the distant lens of the holo, even with no reading in the Force, Anakin felt like he could sense a definite aura of command around the chair - a combination of physical poise and clever spatial arrangements which created a mood of confidence and detachment, reinforced by the subtle cues of deference and respect from the other officers on the bridge.
But there was something wrong here.
Anakin watched the smart way that the officer who'd been escorting Jaina moved, and the way the Grand Admiral kept his poise as he responded - he turned his head a little to one side and listened quietly, keeping his face in shadow, then spoke a few inaudible words in response.
The young officer nodded, turned away, and came marching back across the deck. Jaina essayed another Imperial salute, and was rewarded by a smart reply.
"The Grand Admiral will see you now."
Jaina followed her forward, drawing glances from the officers down in the crew pits - to their eyes, she was probably a scruffy and ill-mannered interloper in this precise military space, even the casual rhythm of her footsteps must seem like an intrusion. Anakin reminded himself that she was a pilot with Rogue Squadron, with an ace's kill-marks beneath the canopy of her X-wing. She's a different kind of theat.
Then the chair began to turn, rotating slowly as she approached - and Jaina stopped, as if she had suddenly been caught in a tractor beam. Mentally, the shock which radiated from her in the Force was even worse - it was as if a direct hit had overriden her artificial gravity, and sent her spinning away.
And Anakin could see exactly why.
The man in the command chair was not Grand Admiral Pellaeon.
In fact, Anakin was pretty sure he wasn't even human. Physically, his facial features and his physique seemed completely humanoid, but there was an odd shade to his complexion, masked by the colour-shift of the holo - Anakin was pretty sure that seen face-to-face he would have sky-blue skin that was well beyond the range of what most people thought of as normal; and there was a glow to the eyes with which he was studying Jaina, which would be much less subtle in the flesh - no baseline human had eyes that shone bright red.
"That's—" Tahiri said.
"Emperor's Hand," Grand Admiral Thrawn said with a cool, Imperial smile. "What brings you all the way out here?"