"I just — literally, dude, I can't even call on the Force to calm myself down," said Ezra, his shoulders slumped and his voice flat as he stared at the transmitter. He could see Thrawn watching him, a speculative look pinned to his face as he waited for Ezra to either blow up or let the whole thing slide.

With a deep sigh, Ezra shook his head. "How long have you had this thing?" he asked wearily.

"Twenty-seven days," Thrawn said. He threw another brief, wary glance Ezra's way before shifting his attention to the transmitter, carefully adjusting the long line of its antenna.

"Stop looking at me like I'm gonna explode," Ezra said patiently, still not sure whether he was going to explode or not.

"My apologies," said Thrawn.

Ezra's temper spiked irrationally at that, but he forced it back down. "Just walk me through your reasoning here," he said. "I mean, you've had this thing pretty much half the time we've been here. Why not use it? Have you been using it? Did you get a response?"

"I have not used it," Thrawn said. He took his hands away from the transmitter and clasped them in his lap instead. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're not angry?"

"I'm fine, dude," said Ezra, not sure he was. "Move past it. You said you haven't used it?"

"Perhaps you should take a moment," Thrawn advised him. "Let the hate flow through you, like last night."

"Oh, the hate has flowed through me," Ezra said. "Some would say the hate is flowing through me literally as we speak. But trust me. We're good."

Thrawn looked at him doubtfully, but eventually acquiesced. "I have not been entirely honest with you, Commander Bridger," he said.

"No shit," Ezra said, kicking up a broken shard of stone from the ground.

Thrawn accepted this with another amicable nod, turning his eyes to the array of electronics on the altar next to him. He picked up a blaster and turned it over in his hands, deftly hitting the release. With a mechanical click, he slid a charge pack into place and turned the blaster to the side so Ezra could see.

The lights on the side display were lit up, the blaster set to stun.

"It's live?" Ezra breathed. Thrawn leaned forward a little with his arm outstretched, silently inviting Ezra to take the blaster. Ezra weighed it in his hand, turning to face the trees around him. For a moment, he considered pulling the trigger, just to be sure — but the moment passed, and he handed the blaster back to Thrawn.

"The barrel was dented when I recovered it," Thrawn said, setting it aside. "I disassembled it, then melted and reformed the durasteel. It fires true."

Ezra said nothing, his eyes scanning the rest of the items. When his gaze rested on a vibroblade, Thrawn picked it up and handed it to him without being asked; Ezra ran his thumb over the flat button on the grip and went still as the knife blade shimmered with faintly-visible vibrations.

"All of this stuff works?" he asked, scanning the rest of it, the vibroblade warm in his hand.

"Yes," said Thrawn. "Simple repairs, of course. Nothing requiring a workshop or tools beyond what you see here. I am not a magician; I am, however…" He seemed to hesitate. "...a bit more competent than you seem to expect."

Oh, so that wasn't hesitation at all. That was a pause for dramatic effect. Ezra resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "You can't pretend to be offended when you're the one who said you couldn't salvage anything from the wreck," he said. He threw his free hand out in a sweeping gesture, encompassing everything on the altar. "Literally all of this is salvaged from the wreck! You lied to me."

"You couldn't be trusted," said Thrawn, with no remorse evident in his face.

"You couldn't trust," Ezra snapped, irritation wrinkling his brow again. "There's a difference."

Surprisingly, Thrawn didn't argue that point. What he did was, in Ezra's estimation, ten times worse than arguing. He slipped off the altar, drawing himself up to full height and looking down at Ezra. There was a grave set to his face that Ezra didn't like at all; even worse, Ezra knew instinctively that Thrawn's sudden mood change wasn't in response to anything Ezra had said. It was like Thrawn had merely played along with Ezra's moods until now, patiently tolerating Ezra's reactions to the lie until he could reasonably brush them aside and turn Ezra's attention to something more serious.

"For at least three years," Thrawn said, "the Grysks have tracked my movements within the Imperial Navy. They kept tabs on my fleet for at least one year. What do you remember about my brother, Mitth'ras'safis?"

Ezra's eyes flickered down to the pendant around Thrawn's neck. He was thrown by the unexpected change of subject.

"Your brother … who? I remember the one called Vuras, but..."

"Vuras," said Thrawn patiently. "Kivu'ras'sa. Mitth'ras'safis. Thrass. What do you remember about him?"

Ezra digested the different names — which called up all sorts of other questions he'd been meaning to ask for a while, but he pushed them down. Instead, he concentrated on the question at hand, at what he'd been able to glean about Vuras — Thrass — whatever — from Thrawn's memories.

"He's Force-sensitive," he said. "He's older than you. Uh, he was in the military, like you, only he joined when he was a little kid, as a cadet or something. And he made that necklace for you, with some of his life energy inside."

It looked like there was something more Thrawn expected from him, or perhaps something Thrawn wanted to add. But after a moment, he only nodded and moved on.

"Thrass was a navigator," Thrawn explained. "Chiss Force-sensitives — we call the gift Third Sight — are rare, and mostly female. Their sensitivity manifests primarily in the form of precognitive abilities; they are capable of navigating through the Unknown Regions, where most Imperial nav systems fail. But the Sight fades in time, leaving most adults with little to no ability."

Ezra shifted from foot to foot, growing uncomfortable under Thrawn's gaze. He stopped moving entirely when he saw Thrawn's eyes harden.

"The Grysks have acquired some Chiss navigators of their own," he said. "Children, likely sold into slavery — either by their own parents, which is unlikely due to the class structure of the Ascendancy, or by a middleman taking advantage of political dissent to make a profit. The reasons are not important for our purposes; what is important is that the Grysks are watching this sector, Ezra. They know we are here somewhere, though they don't know exactly where. And at least one of their ships — the flagship, without a doubt, and possibly more — has a Chiss Force-sensitive onboard."

Ezra looked again at the high-power transmitter; he could feel understanding start to coalesce in his brain. "You want to lure them here," he said incredulously. "Like I lured the purrgils."

A faint smile touched Thrawn's lips. He stepped back, leaning against the altar. "Precisely," he said.

"But why?" Ezra said. "I thought the Grysks were some big, awful threat — worse than the Empire. Why would you invite them to come kill us?"

The smile on Thrawn's face got disarmingly wide. "Because we can take them," he said. "Not only that, but we can take their ships."

For a long moment, they stared at each other. Thrawn's smile did not fade.

"You're crazy," Ezra said.

"Not at all," said Thrawn. "I have all the resources I need right here. Why shouldn't we?"

"Because it's you versus probably a thousand Grysks," Ezra snapped.

"It's us against a thousand Grysks," Thrawn corrected him. "And why shouldn't we at least try?" He reached out, touching the transmitter gently. "I could signal the Empire or your friends for the rest of our lives and never make contact. How many friends do you have looking for you? How do you know they aren't already dead in their war against the Empire?"

Before Ezra could get out an answer, Thrawn said.

"I have one, perhaps two, who would be willing to mount a search for me. And I am not confident either of them will survive their petty war. In my own part of the galaxy, I have more who would be willing, but perhaps not permitted, to mount a rescue operation — and in any case, I have no way of knowing whether they've even been informed that I am missing." He spread his palms out wide. "Our options, Ezra, are to lure the Grysks or to die here. Trust me when I say we are both too valuable to die on a deserted planet while our people wage war."

Ezra chewed the inside of his cheek; adrenaline beat its way through his veins and he couldn't help but stare at the transmitter, thinking of Sabine, of Hera. Neither of them would abandon their war against the Empire just to find him, he knew. Thrawn was right about that much. And so long as they were active participants in the war, they were risking their lives every day.

He pictured himself growing to be an old man here, his days filled with fishing and mind-numbing chores. He pictured himself someday laying Thrawn to rest with the other members of the Chimaera. Would he join them someday? Would he feel himself fading and lay down in the graveyard to die?

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and said, "Okay. So. We use the Force to lure the Grysks here. Then what?"

Thrawn's smile returned with a vengeance. "It will be similar to when you summoned the purrgils, yes," he said. "But not the same. In this case, it will not be you sending out a signal through the Force. The signal will come from someone else; you will only be amplifying it."

Ezra's brow furrowed. "What, then you want to transmit a message in Cheunh?" He could tell by the blank look on Thrawn's face that this wasn't right. "I'm kind of, you know … the only Force-sensitive here," said Ezra awkwardly. "I can amplify a regular signal, but I can't amplify a Force signal if there's … no one…"

Thrawn's left hand was clasped around his oth'ola endzali. Ezra's mouth kept moving, but for a moment, no sound came out.

"No way," Ezra said.

Thrawn nodded.

"You really think that'll work?" Ezra held out his hand, silently asking for the pendant, and to his faint surprise, Thrawn untied the leather cord without hesitation and dropped the oth'ola endzali into Ezra's palm. He examined it carefully, feeling nothing — not with the ysalimiri so close. He glanced up at the transmitter, looking at it with new eyes.

"You are, as you say, our only Force-sensitive," Thrawn acknowledged. "Which is why we must keep you a secret as long as we can. When you hold Thrass's wayfinder, can you tell he was Force-sensitive?"

Ezra frowned down at it, thinking back to the few times he'd held it before. "No," he said. "It's not like that, really. I can tell there's some sort of Force presence there, but at the same time, I can tell it's — I mean —" He glanced up at Thrawn, an apologetic look crossing his face. "—I can tell it's not alive," he finished. "It just kind of … feels like a pendant, but with the Force presence of a dead sentient attached to it. Almost like a ghost."

He expected this news to disappoint Thrawn; instead, he looked like a particularly satisfied Loth-cat.

"As I expected," he said. "In that case, by broadcasting the signal from that wayfinder, you will tell whichever Chiss navigator is in this system exactly what she hopes to find: the precise location of a lone Chiss in possession of an oth'ola endzali. There may well be other Chiss in this sector, but there should only be one fitting those criteria."

"You," said Ezra, staring down at the oth'ola endzali with a smile. "So you bait the trap. You let them know you're shipwrecked here; you make them think you're alone. And then when they arrive here—"

Thrawn met Ezra's eyes, sharing his smile.

"We strike," he said.