"Your training with the ysalimir is no reason to neglect training in other areas," said Thrawn firmly, with a note of finality in his voice that signaled the argument was over. "Your mind-reading skills will be a vital weapon when the time comes. If you are incapable of reading minds, what will it matter if you are capable of using the Force?"
Scowling, Ezra declined to answer. He was already storming away, taking the baby ysalimir and its rack farther down the bank. About fifteen meters from Thrawn, he stopped and propped the rack against a tree, then took his time coming back.
"Any other requests?" he said sourly.
Thrawn looked at him, one unimpressed eyebrow raised. "No. That's all."
Ezra gestured violently toward Thrawn. "Then let's get to it."
He was already exhausted from the last five hours spent in close communion with the ysalimir, doing his best to ease into a bond naturally — and to do it as fast as he could. He'd tried floating light objects with the Force while simultaneously chatting to the ysalimir, but so far, he'd had no luck — even when he just tried to levitate leaves.
"Not here," Thrawn said just as Ezra started to collapse against the bank. He gestured northward, to the forest. "I would like your assistance today. With the wreckage."
Ezra straightened up slowly, careful not to show what he was thinking. He'd heard the hesitation in Thrawn's voice — and he shared his anxieties, tenfold. But he only nodded, quiet and subdued, and turned to follow Thrawn through the trees.
"You need my help?" he asked tentatively.
"There are sections of the Chimaera I can't access on my own," Thrawn said. He pursed his lips, then seemed to force himself to say, "We wrecked it together. It follows we can only comb through the wreckage together as well."
Ezra understood that perhaps too well. He followed Thrawn silently, gut roiling, cheeks flushed.
"You want me to practice while we walk?" he asked.
Thrawn nodded, not even glancing Ezra's way. With a sigh, Ezra reached out to the Force, letting it cool his blood and calm his mind before he connected to Thrawn's. It was always difficult to do this while walking, especially over an uneven forest floor, and it took him a long minute of struggling before he could access Thrawn's mind and simultaneously step over fallen logs and twisted roots.
He beckoned Thrawn's mind toward him; at the same time, he launched his own consciousness forward, chasing Thrawn's thoughts down. The connection was smooth, fast, natural — nothing at all like the connections he'd been trying to make with the ysalimir.
And within moments, he was back in the familiar and uncomfortable realm of Thrawn's memories.
Another Ugnaught death on the premises? Thrawn says. His tone makes it clear this is not something Governor Pryce can deny, which he knows would typically be her first strategic move. His tone combined with the hard expression on his face informs her — if she's observant enough to notice it, and he knows she is — that he does not approve, that he will not accept excuses. There is no legitimate reason another Ugnaught should have died on the premises of the TIE Defender factory in Lothal.
And yet, miraculously, Governor Pryce only gives him a superior smile, as if she hasn't noticed his tone or expression at all. Thrawn waits for her to explain; she does not.
The report states this Ugnaught was employed by the Empire to repair heating coils, he says when she remains silent. An examination of the factory's files shows that no consistent record has been kept regarding labor; employee names are on file. Hours worked are not. Is this so?
The smile remains. Governor Pryce inclines her head just slightly, angles her shoulders closer to him. It is a gesture perhaps meant to be friendly or conspiratorial, but a faint line appears at the edge of her lip, running up to the side of her nose, and this gives away the contempt she feels.
Grand Admiral, you must understand, she says smoothly. These are backwoods people; some of them can barely sign their own names, let alone fill out a timesheet. Many of them have never even bothered to learn Lothal's calendar, let alone our clock. Our supervisors do the best they can.
If that were true, then they would keep a record of hours worked by each employee, Thrawn says. Governor Pryce leans away and affects an airy laugh.
You never struck me as the bureaucratic type, she says. You'd think someone with four courts-martial under his belt—
The evidence suggests this Ugnaught fell asleep on the job, says Thrawn, voice sharp. Governor Pryce's facial heat rises; she meets his eyes and refuses to look away, trying to intimidate him or perhaps rebuke him for his tone. It does us no good to exhaust our employees; it isn't necessary, it compromises the quality of their work, and ultimately it leads to injury and death.
He can feel his mind churning, can feel unwise words coalescing on his tongue. Ar'alani's face crops up in his memory, accompanied by Thrass, both advising him sternly to keep his mouth shut. This happens in a fraction of a second; he has just enough time to note it, and then he's saying it anyway:
I understand your value for sentient life is lower than average, he says, recalling Batonn with a surge of bitterness. Yet surely you must value these workers as Imperial resources, if nothing else. You are wasting Imperial resources, Governor Pryce, and you are wasting lives.
Her eyes are cool. Her facial muscles are relaxed, as if she's perhaps hiding amusement from him.
Ugnaught lives, she says softly, dismissively. She shrugs one shoulder; her lips curl up in a slight smile. She's challenging him; her eyes shift down to the column of his throat and then to his hands.
Thrawn does not miss the pointed way she looks at her own hands afterward — her fair-skinned human hands — nor does he argue with her over the relative value of human and alien lives. He pulls up a report on his datapad instead, keeping his face blank. He keys the holodisplay and sits back as the report pops up between them. Pryce's eyes widen, then narrow, when she realizes what it is.
You're reporting the death to High Command? she asks, half-scoffing and half-laughing.
I am required to, says Thrawn mildly, by Imperial regulation.
He watches as she reads the report more thoroughly. The color drains from her face, then heightens in two bright spots of rage above her cheeks. When she finishes reading, Thrawn cancels the display, not giving her the chance to return to the more complex aspects of the report for a closer look. He can tell she wants to; it's in her nature to tear every sentence of the report apart, to reread and digest it properly so she can formulate a defense.
High Command was not pleased with the outcome at Batonn, he says. But the lives at Batonn were not considered Imperial resources. The Ugnaught workers, on the other hand—
She interrupts him with a sharp-edged laugh. Deftly, she reaches forward and grabs his wrist, switching his comlink off. Thrawn sits still, watching her as she systematically goes through his devices, powering down anything that might have a connection to the HoloNet and anything issued by the Imperial Navy or ISB.
You really think the Empire cares about a handful of Ugnaughts? she asks when she's done. You really think they care about you? If you report me for this — and I encourage you to do so — you'll only be shooting yourself in your foot. Every Imperial base has alien workers. Every Imperial base has alien deaths. You call attention to something as trivial as this and you'll only label yourself even further as an outsider.
She meets his eyes, but with a distant cast that indicates she is studying his eyes, not looking into them. It's the way some people look at an interesting specimen vs. a fellow sentient being. The back of Thrawn's neck tingles unpleasantly, but he keeps any sign of discomfort or surprise off his face.
You've heard of the Empire's biocontainment zones? Pryce asks. Or the transitory facilities, perhaps?
Reluctantly, he inclines his head.
There's not a single human prisoner there, Pryce tells him. Then, leaning forward confidentially, she smiles and says, And out of all the prisoners there, I'd wager only ten percent pose a genuine biological threat. Do you know what the rest of them have done to deserve containment?
Thrawn meets her eyes with contempt. They exist, he says, keeping his voice crisp and neutral. Perhaps they've irritated someone high-ranking enough to put them there. Then, using their word for people like him, They're aliens.
Exactly, Pryce says. Sitting back, all satisfaction and glee, she says, Take care you don't end up there yourself.
They reached the Chimaera, and that was when Ezra's connection to Thrawn snapped. He shuffled forward on numb legs; his cheeks felt heavy, incapable of forming any expression, whether good or bad. He followed Thrawn obediently to the collapsed port side of the Star Destroyer.
"Open it," Thrawn told him. Then, as an afterthought, "If you can."
Ezra could. The durasteel unbent beneath his will; what was once a rippling, melted, and impenetrable wall became a door. Thrawn didn't pause to admire it; he stepped inside as soon as the hole was big enough to allow him, leaving Ezra to follow.
He hesitated, thinking of what he might find inside.
He followed.
You smell distressed, Rukh says.
Thrawn turns to him, a faint smile playing over his lips.
When did you begin to smell emotions? he asks.
Rukh doesn't answer. Perhaps he considers it a stupid question, Thrawn notes with good-natured chagrin. Perhaps all Noghri can smell emotions, and it is not a learned skill. Rukh moves forward, and without questioning it Thrawn extends his hand, knowing what comes next. He holds still as his bodyguard — the only other non-human aboard the Chimaera — presses his nose to Thrawn's wrist.
What bothers you? Rukh asks.
His voice, gravelly and low, reminds Thrawn of the sometimes-sibilant, sometimes-reptilian tones he's heard from other Chiss. It's categorically different — not comparable at all, really — yet it reminds him of home, all the same. There are no humans who sound like Noghri, after all, and there are likewise no humans who sound entirely like Chiss.
I find it likely the Grysks have infiltrated Imperial space, he tells Rukh. I haven't told Karyn yet. I suspect she will figure it out herself long before I have the chance.
He feels the Noghri's nostrils dilating against his skin. His pulsepoint throbs beneath the warm press of Rukh's lips.
But what bothers you? Rukh asks.
Thrawn thinks of Governor Pryce, of her actions at Batonn and her thinly-veiled threat against him. Really, he cannot consider it veiled at all. He pulls his wrist away and looks at Rukh thoughtfully.
Walk with me, he says.
They leave Thrawn's aft bridge office, entering a corridor filled with officers and technicians. The occasional stormtrooper turns his helmet to glare at Rukh as he passes by. They stroll away from the bridge, deeper into the Chimaera's passageways — and Rukh never questions where they're going. Loyal, Thrawn thinks. Loyal perhaps to a fault; loyal perhaps without justification.
They round a corner. Down the hall, Thrawn's sharp ears pick out the sound of a lieutenant — Lieutenant Weylen, trained as a weapons officer, currently serving beneath Senior Lieutenant Pyrondi — saying, Well, what do you think it is?
Thrawn is silent; beside him, Rukh is listening, as well.
It's a Noghri, says Lieutenant Cedaw; his lips form the wrong shape around the 'o.' He pronounces the word wrong by mistake. Well, that's what I've heard, at least, he says.
Thrawn stops. He looks at Rukh; Rukh looks at him. His knobby forehead is drawn into a subtle frown.
Well, whatever it is, says Weylen, it creeps me out.
It's friends with the admiral, says Cedaw. He places particular emphasis on 'admiral.' The blue-skinned admiral, he seems to be saying; the Chiss admiral; the alien. What do you expect?
Silently, Rukh tugs at Thrawn's sleeve. For a moment, Thrawn stands firm, unmoving, refusing to be budged. Then, matching Rukh's silence entirely, he allows himself to be led away.
The stains on the floor were unmistakable: Thrawn had been here before, had already cleared the bodies away and buried them where Ezra wouldn't see. But he hadn't cleaned up the blood; he hadn't scrubbed the evidence of human rot and decay off the floor. Ezra walked carefully, but Thrawn walked with the confidence and knowledge of someone who had tread this twisted corridor a dozen times before.
They came to another impasse; the bulkheads had bent and melted together, leaving an impenetrable mass where once there had been only an open hallway. Ezra concentrated, his hands outstretched before him, and felt the particles inside the durasteel begin to vibrate. Gradually, the walls tore themselves apart, twisting away from the center of the hallway until there was enough room for both of them to pass.
The odor of rotten flesh hit them immediately. Ezra breathed it in before he even realized what it was; his throat flexed, then constricted, and he found himself gagging into his hand violently, wretchedly. Ahead of him, Thrawn remained upright and unmoved. He scanned the bodies on the floor; what little Ezra could see of his face was unreadable.
"When you're ready," he said, his voice strange; he waited for Ezra to join him.
He returns to the camp weary but unburdened; his limbs are heavy and his thoughts are far away. Absently — automatically — he counts the seconds it takes for Ezra Bridger to notice his return. The Jedi's head snaps up a full minute after Thrawn enters the perimeter; his dark brows are pulled low over his eyes, and he scans Thrawn's face first, then moves to the empty creel on Thrawn's back.
His lips tug upward in sour amusement.
No luck? he says.
Thrawn slips the packbasket off his shoulders and sets it aside. The Jedi was asleep when he left; the back creel serves only as an excuse, disguising Thrawn's true purpose in the woods. He sits beside the fire, sweat running cold beneath his heavy winter clothes, and wraps his arms around his aching ribs.
No luck, he says neutrally. And you?
There's venom in Ezra's eyes. He doesn't like being reminded of his own uselessness. He obfuscates with a cynical sense of humor, holding his arms out to encompass the entire camp and curling his lip.
Oh, everything's going great, he says. He uses the same tone some of Thrawn's superiors have used in the past, a sarcastic tone meant to humiliate insubordinates. He suspects the Jedi has not had enough life experience to recognize how ugly his own voice can be. I'm having the time of my life here, Ezra says. What about you? I notice you didn't bring back the gourmet takeout I asked for. Couldn't find any in the woods?
Thrawn says nothing. Ezra averts his eyes, shakes his head with a click of the tongue.
I expected better from you, Grand Admiral, he says. He doesn't seem to hear how brittle his voice has become. He doesn't seem to notice how close to tears he is.
Carefully toneless, Thrawn says, I'm sorry to disappoint.
The Jedi blinks, squinching his eyelids shut as if an overabundance of pressure will erase the moisture in his eyes. Then he blinks rapidly, the way most humans do when they're distressed. In a moment, the loud emotion is almost entirely, washed away by apathy.
What's the matter? Ezra asks, his voice low again. Unnaturally so. Couldn't find anything to kill?
The fire is guttering. Thrawn says nothing; he pokes at the blackened logs until they collapse, then piles fresh, dried wood atop the embers. I found some fowl, he says. He resents the Jedi for prompting him to say as much aloud; the fowl are tethered to his belt, fully visible, and a conversation about them shouldn't be required. He finds himself reminded of his childhood, when it seemed like everyone around him — Thrass included — spoke ceaselessly, explaining concepts and motivations and interactions that never needed to be explained because they could easily be observed, saying pointless things for the sole purpose of eradicating a silence that Thrawn saw as peaceful and safe.
Awful small, aren't they? Ezra notes.
This isn't necessary, either. Thrawn knows far better than Ezra that these fowl are small for their species. In fact, they are barely out of adolescence, and not well fed. He knows because he has been hunting since the day they were stranded here; Ezra has not.
Their size indicates youth, he says patiently. Their youth indicates inexperience. They are easier to trap than older members of the same species; their wings are smaller, but their necks are long, so they walk into artificial furrows without realizing the danger.
He can see that Ezra isn't listening. He continues anyway, almost compulsively. There is a fundamental difference between his speech and Ezra's, he feels — his words are necessary because Ezra truly doesn't understand how the traps work or why Thrawn has returned to camp with small fowl. But his words are equally useless, of course, because Ezra's eyes are glazed; he's only waiting for Thrawn to be silent so he can speak again.
It is more efficient, Thrawn continues anyway, hyper-aware that every word is next to pointless, to capture several small fowl in one hour than to capture one large fowl in two.
He picks up a long, narrow twig from the ground and stands, crossing to Ezra's side of the fire. He sits beside Ezra, on the same rotten log, without asking, and pretends not to notice when the Jedi shifts uncomfortably and moves several centimeters to the side. Thrawn straddles the log rather than sit on it correctly and twists away from the fire; he uses the stick to draw a graph in the unmelted snow behind him.
The trap looks like this, he says, tracing it out. One deep furrow, three-quarters of a meter tall, dug into solid ground rather than snow. The adult fowl are experienced enough to recognize that if they walk into the furrow, they will be trapped, unable to spread their wings. But the younger fowl walk into it gladly; they're able to see above the furrow due to their long necks, so they think they can walk through unharmed and fly away whenever necessary. The furrow, however, is too narrow for them to spread their wings.
He studies Ezra's face. He sees a deliberate lack of understanding there; the Jedi hasn't listened to a single word he said — and he's done it on purpose, out of spite.
Too bad your creepy little friend isn't here, Ezra says.
Thrawn doesn't know who he means. Eli? Not creepy, even by human standards. The same goes for Karyn. Pryce? Certainly possible. Yularen? Perhaps, but he's not sure Ezra is familiar with the ISB. He twists back around on the log and throws his twig into the fire.
Or at least his invisibility device, Ezra continues. Force knows we could use that here. Maybe then you'd actually catch something worth eating.
The logs pop and creak; flames dance above them, lending a sympathetic flush to Ezra's cheeks. Thrawn sits very still. Now, of course, he knows who Ezra is talking about. Who Ezra is joking about, only three weeks after the fact.
The fire sears into his eyes, making them burn and itch from sensitivity to the light. He remembers the deck of the Chimaera beneath his feet, his thumb pressed so tightly against his comlink's call button that a callus formed hours later — when the battle was lost and his ship was stranded and he no longer cared. He remembers trying to keep his voice even and unaffected on the bridge as he asked Rukh for his status — once, twice — and the mocking voice of Garazeb Orellios telling him to call back — and the unmistakable sound of electricity sizzling through Rukh's flesh, and the agonized howl of impending death, and Orellios's voice again, gloating, his smirk audible even over the com: Yeah, never mind about calling back.
Thrawn moves away from Ezra, just slightly. He tastes bitter, stagnant saliva in his mouth and realizes he hasn't swallowed in over a minute — and then comes the subsequent realization that he hasn't breathed either, that his chest is lying perfectly still beneath his clothes. He inhales carefully, slowly, painfully, giving nothing away. It feels as though he has crushed glass in his chest, each sliver cutting deeper into his lungs every time he breathes.
When he speaks, he doesn't show his thoughts at all.
I can show you how to build the trap if you wish. Perhaps you will catch larger fowl.
The Jedi, perhaps not realizing what he's said or what he's awakened, perhaps not understanding how weak he still is and how easily Thrawn could strike, only scoffs.
Ezra stood down the corridor, his arms loaded with salvaged technology, his face turned toward the empty hall behind him. He breathed through his mouth, using the Force to numb his tongue and keep the taste of death from landing there. The air inside the Chimaera was hot, stale, tainted by what had happened here. He tried not to think about it or even sense it.
And behind him, working silently and with no expression on his face, Thrawn moved yet another body to a makeshift stretcher. The off-white canvas he'd used to carry the dead was already stained dark by wet, blackened flesh.
He carried it out by himself, guiding the stretcher while the faulty thrusters he'd attached beneath it sputtered and strained. Ezra turned away as the body went by; he aided Thrawn as much as he could without being noticed, using the Force to subtly lighten the load.
"Is that the last one?" he asked.
Thrawn didn't answer. Behind him, the stench of decay lingered in the hallway. When Ezra glanced back, he saw more corpses waiting in the distance, each of them rotting off of their bones and into the durasteel floor.
When Thrawn came back in, the stretcher empty and his hair damp with sweat, he only glanced at Ezra with haunted eyes and said, "Go on."
When the holo flickers to life — glitching slightly, like so many long-distance signals do this side of the galaxy — he notes the brief widening of Ar'alani's eyes. A line appears between her eyebrows, faint but noticeable.
Thrawn, she says.
There is something more than a simple greeting in her voice. Perhaps disbelief; perhaps concern. It sounds almost like she wants to say his name not as a greeting but as a question.
Admiral Ar'alani, says Thrawn.
Her eyes flicker first to his hair — much shorter now than the last time she saw him — and then to his uniform. Her lip curls.
That's new, she says, eyeing his Imperial rank insignia with perhaps distaste, perhaps alarm.
He wants to say 'You haven't changed.' It's a waste of words, so he doesn't, but the sentiment lodges in his throat, dominating his thoughts. She truly is no different from the last time he saw her; she has no new scars; her hair is neither longer nor shorter than before his exile; the lines on her face are no deeper than they were before.
And why should she have changed?
How long has it been? Thrawn asks. His tone is even, his voice a little scratchy. From the slight twitch of Ar'alani's eyebrow, he can tell she notices the roughness but apparently decides not to comment. I have attempted to align the Imperial calendar with the Ascendancy's, he explains. He doesn't need to tell her how poorly those attempts went; she knows him well enough that the question itself likely gives her all the information she needs to know.
Two years and sixty-seven standard days, Ar'alani says after checking her console display. How far off were you?
Roughly three months, says Thrawn, but he says it automatically, his mind already far away. Two years, she says. It's been only two years since he left. He looks at the small image of himself on his holodeck's screen, a reflection of what Ar'alani sees. He remembers the line between her eyebrows and the brief widening of her eyes when he came onscreen.
He hasn't changed much, he tells himself. Not really.
It was almost dark when they left the Chimaera at last — and on a planet like this, with days thirty-three hours long, that said a lot. For an hour, Ezra watched, drifting in and out of Thrawn's consciousness while the other man buried the bodies alone. He retreated to the ruins for thirty minutes of blissful, ysalimiri-driven ignorance, depositing their salvaged technology with the rest of it. Aimlessly, he organized the scraps, the canisters, the chips and wires and motherboards.
When he couldn't delay it any further, he went back. The Force came back to him gradually, stroking his senses back to life as he walked away from the ruins and closer to Thrawn. His shoulders hunched and his head was bowed by the time he reached the Chimaera's wreck, but he was walking with a spring in his step as well, unable to fight the lightening effect of the Force on him.
He found Thrawn waiting for him. He sat on the ground, his back against a tree, the shovel still clasped loosely in his hands. His eyes were set on the treeline; he didn't turn his head until Ezra was standing directly over him.
In the darkness several meters away, Ezra could sense several dead bodies lined up neatly in a row. Unburied.
"You're not done," said Ezra uncertainly.
Thrawn shook his head.
A few meters away, there was a series of shallow graves, each of them no more than a third of a meter deep. The corpses were farther away, nothing more than silhouettes in the dark, but Ezra could tell how diminished they were. For most of them, one-third of a meter would be sufficient. He glanced at Thrawn again, but Thrawn didn't meet his eyes. He bowed his head, rested his forehead against his dirt-stained knuckles.
"I could help," Ezra offered, voice low.
He watched Thrawn's fingers tighten on the shovel. His nod was so minute that Ezra nearly missed it. He turned, keeping his eyes on the graves and not on the bodies, and with one hand raised, he used the Force to scoop the dirt out of each one, digging them deeper and deeper. With that first step done, he took the spade from Thrawn and wandered out among the graves, ready to finish the work.
He felt Thrawn's eyes on his back the whole time.
It's his first major kill here on this deserted planet — a large creature weighing at least as much as he does, roughly the size of the dugar-dugars he noted on the distant plains of Batuu when Lord Vader was busy landing their shuttle. Thinking about that — about how recently he's been on a real mission and how far away it now seems — makes his throat tighten, but it isn't something he can afford to reflect on right now.
He hauls the dugar-type creature up over his shoulder, its hooves falling heavily against his back, and sets off for the makeshift winter shelter near the Chimaera's wreck. Walking back through the snow is more difficult with the creature on his back — especially so with bruises and cuts still lining his body from the crash — but it is not unmanageable.
And besides, it's necessary.
Near the Chimaera — where the ground is already contaminated by the rotting purrgil, not to mention the bodies he's extracted from the wreck — he hefts the creature off his shoulder and lays it on the ground. Over the next two days, he tends to it when he has time, between finishing their shelter, tending to the unconscious Jedi, searching the debris. The hours blend together through lack of sleep and the pounding white noise that never seems to leave his ears.
Through it all, unceasing, he hears the hull breach alarms.
Night falls on the second day before he finishes the hide, with temperatures dropping quickly. He can hear a freshly-hardened scrim of ice cracking over the Chimaera's durasteel plates as he holds the hide material to his nose, testing how badly it reeks of gore. It's passable, he decides. More than anything, it smells like leather and smoke. Everything near the Chimaera smells like smoke.
He folds the hide over his arms, trudging back to the low shelter he built deeper in the trees. With snow packed against each wall, it provides some measure of warmth throughout the night, but cannot truly be called comfortable. Inside, he lays the hide over the dirt floor and lights the wick of a small disc made of tightly-packed tree sap and microcrystalline wax.
It illuminates the shelter to a small degree, throwing shadows over the face of Ezra Bridger, who lies asleep nearby, atop a loose pile of needle-type foliage Thrawn was able to pull together from nearby trees after the wreck. Moving silently, Thrawn approaches the Jedi; there are traces of unusually high temperature visible across his cheeks, indicative of a continued fever. But when he rests his palm against Bridger's forehead, he finds the boy's skin dry and cool.
And then, abruptly, Bridger's eyes snap open and he flinches away. Thrawn removes his hand, doing it slowly to avoid causing any alarm, and in response Bridger looks at him with a curled lip and wide eyes, indicating perhaps contempt and perhaps trepidation.
What are you doing? Bridger says.
For a moment, Thrawn contemplates not answering. The Jedi knows what he's doing, or at least could figure it out if he paused to think. But he also hears the hoarseness of Bridger's voice and understands he hasn't been out of his fever-induced coma for very long; perhaps there is some lingering confusion at hand.
And in any case, he can practically hear Vanto's voice inside his head telling him for the hundredth time, It's not polite to ignore people just because you think their question was stupid. When Vanto said this, it was in reference primarily to senators and high-ranking military officers, but perhaps it applies to Jedi as well.
I was checking your temperature, Thrawn says. You have been unconscious and feverish for three days.
Weakly, Bridger shifts away from Thrawn. The needles beneath him stick to his hands, and he pauses with his back against the wall, staring down at his palms in confusion.
The temperature of your skin indicates a reduced fever, Thrawn notes. Yet your internal body temperature appears elevated.
Bridger only stares at him, not comprehending. Perhaps these statements are too subtle for someone recovering from a concussion to understand; having suffered from concussions himself before, Thrawn attempts to clarify the issue.
Are you regulating your internal body temperature? Thrawn asks.
Regulating … what? says Bridger.
For a long moment, Thrawn says nothing, chewing the inside of his cheek. He gestures to his eyes. I can see somewhat into the infrared, he explains. Your internal body temperature is high, indicating a fever, but your skin is cool. This implies to me that you are somehow regulating your temperature so as to provide warmth, without tipping the scales, so to speak, into uncomfortable levels of heat. What is your method for temperature regulation? Is this a deliberate action on your part, or an automatic response to fever?
Bridger only blinks at him.
Is it a commonplace evolutionary trait for humans? Thrawn asks. Or is it specific to Force-sensitives, such as yourself?
He pauses again, but again Bridger does not answer.
Do you consciously manipulate your body temperature? Thrawn tries once more; he doesn't allow his impatience to show. In response to the cold, perhaps? I have read of midi-chlorians, an agent of the Force supposedly present in the blood of Force-sensitives. Perhaps you are capable of inducing kinetic energy through these molecules to produce heat? In any case, it seems your fever is now artificial, warming you internally but not externally, as if to protect you from the cold.
Silently, Bridger scoots away from Thrawn, pulling his knees up to his chest. He moves gingerly, as if his body aches; it likely does.
You talk too much, Bridger says.
Thrawn stares at him a moment longer, waiting to respond just in case Bridger is assembling his thoughts for a proper answer. Past experience tells him these specific words may be the precursor to an attack. But no answer comes — and no attack, either — and eventually Thrawn stands and moves away. He collects the hide from the floor and holds it out to Bridger without a word.
Bridger raises his head slightly, squinting at the hide. Gradually, his eyes shift to look directly at Thrawn instead.
Neither of them speaks. When Bridger refuses to take his blanket, Thrawn drops it on the bed of needles in carefully-concealed disgust. He's glad now that Bridger isn't speaking; if he required any sort of response, Thrawn isn't sure he could disguise his emotions properly. Not vocally. It is difficult enough to keep them from showing on his face.
He crosses to the other side of the cramped shelter and sits there with his back against the wall. He pulls a holoprojector from his tunic, running his thumb over a dent in the shell, and busies himself for the next several minutes trying to repair it. He deliberately refuses to look at Bridger, but he notices it in his peripheral vision when Bridger eventually shifts position, moving back to the bed of needles — and the animal hide — and lying down.
Exhaustion takes the young Jedi a moment later. He lies with the hide pulled up to his chin, already asleep again despite doing nothing but sleep for the past three days. Thrawn's hands go still on the holoprojector, dark lines converging on his face. He feels an ugly, unacceptable expression tugging at his lips and tries to conceal it.
He feels for the projector's power button, his eyes on Bridger, and thumbs it on. The display sizzles and flickers, the first datafile too corrupted to view. Thrawn switches it off again and sets it aside. Distantly, he hears the Chimaera's hull breach klaxons screaming through the night.
He could kill the Jedi so easily.
He takes a slow breath, inhaling through his nose, letting the oxygen rest in his lungs for a full minute before exhaling again. Bridger is injured; he can barely maintain consciousness for more than five minutes; he's confused, concussed. Useless. Incompetent. The forest to the north of them is filled with ysalimiri; even if the Jedi were fully functional, Thrawn could dispatch him easily with those weapons on his side.
And he wouldn't even have to do it with his hands, though to do so might bring him more satisfaction than he cares to address. He's found three vibroblades in the Chimaera's wreckage — one functional, two easily repaired. He's found blasters, as well, some in a state of disassembly — power cells missing or destroyed, casing damaged, barrels warped — but most still salvageable. These weapons, every single one of them, now sit in the ruins to the north, waiting to be used.
He could use them now, if he wanted to.
He does want to.
He can't.
Lowering his head against his knees, Thrawn sets the holoprojector down and covers his ears, then presses his palms against them the same way he would to get rid of water after a cold swim. He can still hear the Chimaera's hull breach alarms in the distance, the sound distorted and warbling, like the wail of a wounded beast. Like the noise that creature made before he killed and skinned it to give the Jedi a warm hide.
He rests a hand over his eyes, blocking the rest of the shelter from sight, and exhales a long, slow sigh.
Forty-six thousand, six hundred fifty-three humans died aboard the Chimaera — enlisted men and officers, stormtroopers and technicians, civilian contractors and medical techs — all of them his responsibility. His crew. Dead on impact, Bridger says — and for the first two days here, Thrawn has chosen to believe him. Forced himself to believe him.
That was before he discovered the ysalimiri. Before he realized the Jedi couldn't have sensed living crewmembers trapped inside the Chimaera even if he tried. How many people out of 46,653 died from exposure or succumbed to potentially nonfatal wounds in those two days, waiting to be rescued while Thrawn wasted time and effort to bury the disparate body parts of pilots and technicians killed in the hangar bay?
The total number of casualties is only slightly less than the people who died aboard Outbound Flight . In that case, it was an invisible hand around his throat, crushing his windpipe, that incapacitated him; in this case, it was an invisible hand pushing him back into the grasp of a massive, deadly creature, crushing his ribs. In that case, it was Thrass — no longer endowed with the Sight, not to any significant degree — who attempted to land the ship, to save lives when Thrawn could not. But in both cases it was Thrawn's failure to predict an unknown element and prepare — his failure to adapt — that sealed those fates. The same was true at Batonn; the same is true everywhere he goes.
And this Jedi is nothing like Thrass.
Thrawn leaves the warmth of the shelter voluntarily, stepping out into the frozen night and leaving Bridger behind. Several kilometers to the north lie the ruins — and the weapons Thrawn has repaired and secreted away inside. Less than half a kilometer to the east lies the Chimaera . He hesitates just outside the shelter door, arms crossed tightly in front of his chest. Above him, a thin wash of snowflakes scatter on the wind, visible only when their paths cross with light from the distant, yellow-tinted moon.
He feels Pyrondi's holoprojector weighing heavily in his pocket and sets off for the Chimaera's wreck, the alarms beckoning him closer with every step. A weight seems to lift from his chest as he makes this decision, leaving him feeling lighter but strangely cold. He cannot kill the Jedi; he knows this, yet every day — multiple times a day — he must convince himself all over again, reciting the strategic reasons to keep the Jedi alive by rote.
As the hull of the ship comes into sight, he removes strips of grease-stained cloth from his pockets and wraps them around his hands. They protect the skin of his palms and fingers from the cold metal plates as he climbs, scaling the Chimaera's hull until he reaches an entrance painstakingly carved out with a vibroblade.
From there, Thrawn drops down into the crew quarters, careful to land at the right angle on the tilted deck. He skids downward on the incline, hitting his shoulder against the bulkhead to come to a stop. This portion of the Chimaera is almost untouched by fire damage; he has yet to find a single living crewmember, nonetheless. For now, he walks past the closed quarters with his hand on the bulkhead for support, ignoring the stench of decay as much as he can — telling himself the bodies will keep, knowing they will not.
In any case, he can handle them later. For now he must deal with the almost deafening noise of the hull breach alarms, and to do that he needs to go deeper aft into the ship, away from the main passageways and into the engineering section of the Chimaera.
He makes it no more than three steps before the body of a trooper blocks his path. Sprawled across the deck from one end of the passageway to the next, the trooper lies with his neck twisted, a pool of blood congealed beneath his skull. The black helmet is shattered, shards of it sticking from the trooper's skull. Past this body, Thrawn's night vision only goes so far, but he can make out the dark forms of other corpses in the hall.
He should ignore them. He has been scouting the Chimaera's wreckage for days now; he is certain — or as certain as he'll ever be — that everyone aboard is dead, and the bodies can wait. The bodies will keep. They do not need to be removed right now, today; he's already started digging graves, he's already removed as many corpses as he could find in the hangar bay.
He has been awake for three days on this planet, resting only when his consciousness left him against his will — sleeping sometimes for an hour or two amongst the dead bodies of his crew. Sleeping other times in the cramped shelter, too close to Ezra Bridger for comfort, a fact that finds him waking sometimes with the taste of bile in his mouth. None of it can truly be called rest, and he won't be functional for much longer if he continues searching for the bodies of his crew.
He considers all of this, and then he lifts the technician's body and slides it gently to the port bulkhead, supporting the broken skull with his hand. The corpse is limp in his hands, no longer rigid like the first few bodies Thrawn found. He takes a few more steps, careful not to lift his feet too far off the slanted ground, and stops centimeters away from another corpse.
He moves this one, too. Once he has the body lined up with the bulkhead, he folds the crewman's arms over his chest and pulls the feet together so that the heels touch. Pain stabs through his ribs as he straightens up, but he keeps moving regardless, taking his crewmembers from where they lay sprawled and undignified, and arranging them peacefully against the wall.
He will have to move them again, later; in time, this planet will attract more sentients, and the wreck of the Chimaera in particular will attract scavengers; he cannot allow them to disturb the bodies of his crew. The only thing he can do to prevent it — or the only thing his sleep-deprived mind can think of — is to lay them to rest elsewhere. To bury them outside.
And he can't do that now, but he can at least do this.
He hauls another crewmember to the bulkhead. He recognizes her silhouette, though her face is unrecognizable now. This is Ensign Eully, a supply officer from the Mid Rim. She was assigned to the Chimaera after the Battle of Atollon; as a supply officer — more importantly, as a trainee — she has not yet participated in battle. Not against the Rebels; not against anybody.
He tilts her head to the north and moves on. The names of the other dead crewmembers play on a loop in his head as he tends to their bodies, each name beating to the pulse of the hull breach alarm. The engineering section is farther aft, several levels beneath the crushed bridge — a bridge no longer accessible to Thrawn, or at least not yet. Perhaps that will change when the Jedi wakes for good; perhaps not.
It should only take him fifteen minutes to reach engineering from the crew's living quarters.
There are so many bodies that it takes him more than an hour.
The durasteel doors to the engineering section are wedged open by debris and the bisected body of a technician. Thrawn stoops, his limbs aching with fatigue as he moves the corpse aside. Congealed blood glues the technician's uniform to the floor, and the material only separates with significant effort and a loud ripping sound. The technician's intestines trail heavily over the floor as Thrawn moves the torso and steps inside.
The walkways here were entirely empty; anyone standing on the retractable catwalks would have been thrown off when the Chimaera tilted toward the ground. Thrawn skirts the edge of the power core, unable to reach the maintenance ledge with the Chimaera still partially on its side. He slams his fist against a dented control panel in the bulkhead nearby, catching a microfilament rope as it spools out.
He knots it around his waist and under his arms, forming a harness in case he slips as he makes his way across the tilted bulkheads to the open maintenance chute nearby. Despite the heaviness of his limbs — and exhaustion tugging at his vision — he remains surefooted as he climbs inside.
A broken compscreen is still lit up inside the control station. Thrawn runs his hand over it, but it doesn't respond to his touch; instead, it flickers and opens applications at will, attempting to run a software program that will likely never see the light of day again. He bypasses it, prying a power panel off the wall before him.
The switches are dead. He touches the first label — the system failure alarm — and runs his fingers down the line until he finds the hull breach.
All the lights are off. The power has been cut. The hull breach alarm, according to this display, isn't ringing.
Thrawn stares at the labels a moment longer, not blinking, scarcely breathing. He toggles the switch; nothing changes. He checks the power source; over his shoulder, he can see the dead lights of the power column, and farther down — almost out of sight — the break in the column itself, where it shattered when the Chimaera hit the ground. The central power cell is still running — not reliably, and not for long — but the alarms are sourced from the forward power cell, which he already knows is dead. He can see that it's dead with his own eyes.
He pulls away from the display, letting his hand drop to his side. The hull breach alarms aren't ringing; worse, they can't possibly be ringing. What he hears is likely a hallucination; now that he's seen the damaged power core, he knows it's been a hallucination ever since he first heard it, when the Chimaera struck the ground.
Numbly, he turns back to the passageway and climbs across.
He can still hear the alarm blaring in his head.
He trudged back to Thrawn when the bodies were buried, dropping the spade as he went. He could feel the constriction in his chest again, the tightness squeezing Thrawn's lungs together. Carefully, projecting every move as he went, Ezra put his hand on Thrawn's shoulder.
"You're not breathing again," he said.
Thrawn kept his eyes closed. His arms were crossed, his knees bent up to his chest. For someone who didn't have a connection to his mind, he'd look restful, like someone taking a break after a long day of work. Ezra wondered how many times he'd missed something like this entirely — and not just him, but Thrawn's human friends and subordinates in the Imperial Navy. How many times had they looked right at Thrawn in a moment like this and thought he looked fine?
He sat next to Thrawn with a sigh, feeling the other man's quiet struggle to breathe, remembering how wrong it went the last time he tried to help. Ezra looked out at the gravesite, his shoulder touching Thrawn's.
"You're gonna have to trust me for this to work," he said.
He felt, rather than heard, the wheeze of breath through Thrawn's throat. When he glanced sideways, Thrawn's eyes were still closed, the planes of his face hard.
"It doesn't matter if I trust you," Thrawn said. "Your abilities work whether the subject trusts you or not. What matters…"
He paused, sucking in a shallow breath. Through their connection, Ezra felt Thrawn's lungs hitch and close up, refusing to let the air through.
"...is that I can't succeed against the Grysks without help," Thrawn continued, his voice tight. "And you are the only help I have."
Ezra said nothing. He rolled to his knees and stretched his arm out to grab the spade he'd dropped on his way over. When he sat back down, he handed the spade back to Thrawn without a word.
Thrawn's hand opened, but his fingers didn't close around the spade's wooden handle. His breath hitched again; his chest expanded in a cut-off gasp and then froze there, unable to let anything else in or out. Through the Force, Ezra could feel him struggling, fighting against his own body for a single breath of air.
He reached out and closed Thrawn's fingers gently over the handle. Without moving his hand away, he said,
"Will you just let me help?" And then, when Thrawn didn't answer, he said, "Open your eyes."
Thrawn did, his face a wooden mask. He stared out at the gravesite Ezra had helped dig — at the neat, orderly rows of fresh graves — at the wildflowers growing from each one, even the newest ones. For a moment, his thoughts seemed to freeze. His hand was cold beneath Ezra's, cold and motionless, but after a long silence, a flicker of confusion broke through his unreadable expression, and his fingers twitched against the spade.
"You planted…" he said.
"It's the living Force," Ezra said. "It's in everything, even flowers. All I had to do was convince them to grow."
Thrawn didn't respond. His eyes tracked over each new grave, then back to the Chimaera. His chest shuddered; he squeezed his eyes closed again.
"Yes," he said suddenly.
Ezra stared at him, mouth half-open as he stumbled over a response, uncomprehending. "Yes…?"
"Yes," said Thrawn, one hand pressed to his ribs. "Help me. I can't breathe."
Ezra didn't need to be told twice. He let the Force trickle through Thrawn's body like a cold, soothing stream; he felt the oth'ola endzali glow brighter against Thrawn's skin, joining his efforts as if it had been waiting years for him to help. He felt the tension of adrenaline fade from Thrawn's muscles, leaving him shivering — loosening his chest again — letting him breathe.
When he pulled away, Thrawn was staring at the Chimaera again, his posture that of a man who had been through battle and wanted nothing more than to sleep.
"You okay?" Ezra asked, studying Thrawn's face.
"Yes," Thrawn said, his voice subdued. He stood carefully, using the spade to prop himself up, and offered his hand to Ezra. "Let's go home."
