Force Smuggler - she's being a headstrong, stubborn Solo, taking an unconventional, instinctive route out of a trap with her back against the wall?!
Lieutenant Vane had never been in Chimaera's secondary command room before, and she wasn't sure what to expect.
She knew that the Grand Admiral used the space as a private alternative to the main bridge, and that Captain Pellaeon and General Covell sometimes consulted with him personally there, but rumours of the room's appearance ranged from a candle-strewn meditation shrine to an art gallery full of Wookiee pelts and Kaleesh war masks, or simply a sparse command office, and there was no reliable way to disentangle good reports from scramble-foil. Vane didn't have more than a saluting acquaintance with anyone who'd even met anyone who'd been inside - a subaltern with the 112th Assault had to get by on third-hand stories and idle speculation from the other officers of her company. Her job was polishing her gun, riding shuttles into flak, and getting muddy on a variety of planetary surfaces.
Just typical Valahari Vane dumb luck that her assault platoon had been on fast-reaction detail on the day they captured the Rebel freighter at Bespin. They'd been tooled up in the staging area next to the main hangar, thirty-eight Imperial Army heavy weapons troopers in khaki armor and grey jumpsuits, ready to march aboard a Zeta shuttle and go wherever the Empire needed infantry firepower, with another shuttle full of Hoverscouts if they needed to be dirt-mobile - but with the Chimaera's stormtroopers chasing Jedi infiltrators through the command tower, Vane had found herself deployed onto the hangar deck instead, surrounding the smuggler ship with her E-WHBs, and rather than stopping them from blasting out, she'd somehow allowed the Rebel captain to trick her into letting him back aboard his ship.
And that was why she was walking down the private corridor into secondary command, following the slightly scary figure of Major Tierce, straight-backed in his black uniform. Behind her was the strutting Navy deck officer who'd started an argument with her while the Rebels were escaping - if he hadn't been throwing his weight around, she might have been able to redeem herself by shooting their engines out, rather than watching the freighter loop out of the Star Destroyer's hangar bay like a ship in a Han Solo holomovie.
She didn't really understand why it had taken a week to schedule her debriefing, or why the Grand Admiral seemed to be taking charge in person, but she wasn't naive enough to think it meant she'd been excused. She'd spent the days since the incident wondering why the Grand Admiral hadn't simply had her shot by firing squad, and her nights wondering if he was going to have his Noghri bodyguard slit her throat while she lay awake in her bunk. When a Rebel-sympathising bridge tech had allowed a Jedi X-wing to land a torpedo hit a few weeks back, retribution had been instant - one version said that a single slash of the alien assassin's knife had been enough to take the offending crewman's head clean off.
The only real question was why it had taken so long for her to be called in for a debrief. She wondered if she'd get an explanation. But the corridor was just a few steps long, and Commander Tierce was leading the way through the darkened inner hatchway, bringing them face-to-face with the Grand Admiral.
To her surprise, the Chimaera's secondary command room was exactly like she had imagined.
Grand Admiral Thrawn was sitting in the central command chair, with the white surfaces of his immaculate uniform picked out by a spotlight overhead, a faint glow to those alien red eyes as he consulted a display screen in front of him. Captain Pellaeon stood at his shoulder, straight-backed and military, a slight attentive inclination to his head. An ysalamir was draped across the backrest of the chair, blinking sleepily at them - the weird alien creatures were a now-familiar sight in the Chimaera's command spaces, to the extent that everyone now knew how to pronounce their name, and had given up trying to work out why they were there.
"—this trouble at T'Mill in the Lanka sector?" Pellaeon was saying.
Thrawn glanced up at them, and might have smiled just faintly. "Ah, here are our guests."`
Vane, Tierce and the Navy man came to attention, and she felt a little awkward, staring past the ysalamir on the shoulder of Thrawn's chair.
Somewhere in the surrounding darkness was the Noghri with his knife.
All that's missing is the display of artworks on the bulkhead, she thought. Maybe that was why she was there, an Imperial Army subaltern with the commander of the ship's Stormtroopers on one side and a random idiot from the Navy on the other, one officer from each arm of the military, standing at attention in a row.
As if on cue, the Grand Admiral pressed a button on his armrest, and the composition was completed by a ring of holographic images around his chair, displaying devices that Vane vaguely recognized as Jedi lightsabers.
"I assume everyone here recognises what these are. Tell me, Lieutenant Lannier? Does anything strike you about these weapons?"
The Navy officer beside her frowned at the images. "They're remarkably high-quality holograms, sir."
"A holofaker who works out of the enclave at Antimeridias prepared them from our security footage," Thrawn murmured, as if appreciating the editing work as an artform in itself. "The delay in arranging this debriefing was largely due to the time needed to obtain images of sufficiently quality. I meant the actual design of the weapons, though. Lieutenant Vane? Perhaps you have more to offer?"
"Yes, Grand Admiral." She frowned, and looked at the images of the Jedi weapons. "The one at the extreme left seems out-of-place, but I'm not sure if I'm right about that…. The two on the right don't belong at all, though. The others form a group."
"Very good, Lieutenant." Thrawn actually seemed quietly impressed, which made Vane hope he wasn't going to have the Noghri disembowl her, though she didn't have bragging rights just yet. The Grand Admiral inclined his head, and glanced at the Stormtrooper officer. "Major, would you perhaps care to elaborate?"
"Yes, Admiral." The stormtrooper officer wasn't the most obvious person to ask about the psychology of art, but Vane supposed he had skills in weapons analysis and tactical reading. "Note the proportions, the functionality of the design, the use of plain chrome and ribbed black patterns, raised box sections. Those traits, functional as they are, bind them together as a group. The two on the right are easy to set aside, but the one at the far end of the display is a little more puzzling - the overall shape and feel is similar, but the lack of dark contrast areas and the regular metal ribbing represent a different pattern, especially the way the geometry shifts from vertical to horizontal between the grip and pommel, suggestive of a disciplined, highly-ordered context. There's no cross-reference for that unless it's picked up by the leather grip on that black hilt in the centre."
"Just so." Thrawn seemed contemplative. "The lightsaber is the essential Jedi artform, both in use and in design, and while essentially simplistic in aesthetic terms, and often idiosyncratic or improvised in design technique, there are certain patterns which can be recognised by even the unpracticed eye." A gesture indicated the two images on the right. "Different traditions create different results. Note the clear differentiation between plain slender haft and wider emitter section on the weapon of Captain Katarn, suggestive of a preference for high-impact ranged fighting that is equally appropriate for a Caridia-trained officer or his Ibhaan'I nomad Jedi mentor, and the compactness and predominantly dark finish of the weapon used by the Corellian Security agent attached to Rogue Squadron." Another gesture took in the rest of the weapons. "But here, there is no clear resemblance to the weapons of other Force-users known to be in New Republic service, and only the weapon of the would-be Emperor's Hand embodies significant influence from the genuine Imperial agent who, as she said, trained her. In contrast, the lightsabers of our infiltrators all suggest a pronounced Skywalker lineage. Wouldn't you say, Lieutenant Vane?"
Skywalker? "Yes, sir?" She wasn't sure where Thrawn was going with this, but she knew that Commander Skywalker was the Rebels' most high-profile Jedi - their only real Jedi, some people said. She didn't believe the stories that made out he'd defeated the entire Empire single-handed, but he'd somehow escaped from Chimaera twice in the past few weeks, and single-handedly massacred an entire platoon of stormtroopers under Tierce's direct command on Myrkr. If there were more Jedi like him, that was something that might be a problem for the Empire. "That's an alarming thought, Grand Admiral."
Was that the right thing to say? Still, she felt slightly less stupid than she had when she walked into the room. Slightly less likely to be disembowelled.
A light on the armrest of Thrawn's command chair blinked, a subtle alert that indicated someone outside the room wanted his attention. "A moment." Thrawn's body-language shifted from passive to alert as he leaned over the speaker. "Yes, Lieutenant?"
"Ah, bridge to secondary command. A courier shuttle with a code ident stating it's on diplomatic business from the Grand Moff of Sector Five has just arrived in the main hangar. The, uhh, passengers have come aboard Chimaera."
"Thank you, Lieutenant Tschel. I'd imagine that they are already on their way up here?"
"Yes, sir." The young officer sounded a little chagrined. "I've alerted Commander Lang, but he says Commander Tierce is in a conference with you and Captain Pellaeon. Should we try to stop them?"
"No, not at all," Thrawn smiled. "Gentlemen, Lieutenant Vane, I'm afraid our discussion is about to be intruded on by some rather impatient visitors, but I think you can all wait here while this interruption is resolved."
An imperceptible nod from Tierce made Vane realise that there was some unspoken understanding between the Grand Admiral and the Stormtrooper commander. The delay to her debriefing suddenly seemed a lot less of a coincidence - perhaps the whole thing had been held back just so Thrawn could move his pieces into play on the dejarik table?
She looked around the darkness, and wondered where the Noghri was. Thrawn and Pellaeon seemed imperturbable. Tierce had the clear-eyed look of an infantryman who'd been in combat for a bit too long, and he'd adjusted the big DH-17 pistol sitting at his hip, checking it was ready for a quick draw.
She quietly opened the flap of her belt holster, and laid her fingers on the handgrip of her own sidearm, a non-regulation DDC Aggressor sporting weapon - she'd have preferred her helmet and breastplate, her own DH-17 at the other hip, and a repeating blaster strapped across her back, but an Imperial Army officer was trained to fight in whatever awkward corners the Navy landed them in.
Just another day on the job, she thought.