Chapter 7
The shuttle screamed toward the Planet Manajra, the pilot nursing as much thrust as he could out of the poor engines.
"Do you take me for a fool, Grant?!" Nuso Esva snarled at the miniature holo of the Imperial standing in front of him on the control display. "You knew that the Emperor had a transmission mechanism so that he could shut down his warships at a moment's notice, and you never thought to warn me?"
The image shrugged. "How was I supposed to know that Grand Admiral Thrawn knew the code to utilize the Emperor's emergency shutdown?" Grand Admiral Grant replied coyly.
"LIAR!" Esva screamed. He jabbed a finger at the holo as if Admiral Grant were standing right in front of him. "You knew that Thrawn had the code. And I'm sure you know it as well. I'm willing to bet you were planning on using it against me once I finished him off."
Grant just stood there silently. Cold seconds passed by as the two glared back at each other. Seconds that felt like an eternity.
"This alliance is terminated," Esva declared. "Once I'm finished with Thrawn, you're next."
Small holos didn't give out much detail, but Nuso Esva didn't become a notorious warlord by missing minor details. The holo of Grand Admiral Grant squinted his eyes slightly, and a small smile crept across his face.
"I'm looking forward to it, Warlord," Grant said with smug satisfaction. The holo vanished and the transmission ended.
"What a ridiculous human," Esva commented to himself. "Taking care of him will be easier than shooting darfish in a barrel."
Now it was time to get back to more important matters. Esva reached out to his panel. But a subtle shift in the air behind him made him stop.
"I was about to contact you," he said without turning around.
"I know," came the melodious and deep hollow voice. It was Sage, the Kore of Darkness. "You said you would deliver the killing blow against Grand Admiral Thrawn."
This time Esva spun around. The Kore could kill him in a second, but Nuso Esva never feared anyone nor anything. "Grant betrayed me, and Thrawn now has me pinned here with no reinforcements. We have to move now, before it's too late."
The hands of Sage cautiously moved over the hovering crystal ball in front of him. The ball lit up with an eerie dark bluish light. The red eyes peering out of the hood changed to a silver white. A long dark forefinger jabbed at the warlord. "You still haven't proved to me that you are worthy of my powers. Your enemy has bested you. And your ally has tricked you. Neither of which you could anticipate. You have lost." The eyes glowed as if they were peering into Nuso Esva's soul. "I am the ultimate. What can your pitiful existence still offer me?"
Esva knew this moment would come the instant he retreated from Thrawn. He was prepared for this very encounter. And he was prepared for this very question. Sage had all the power of the universe, it was true. But there was something he lacked. And it was a something that Nuso Esva knew that he wanted.
The bottom of his lip twitched. "It's quite simple actually. I can offer you an imagination."
The glowing white eyes seemed to squint. Esva couldn't tell exactly. The thoughts that ran through the hooded creature were equally mysterious.
After a few long and grueling seconds, the answer came. "Very well, warlord. I will succeed where you have failed."
A wide smile crawled over Esva's face. He stood up with his hands outstretched in utter joy. "See? We need each other after all."
Sage didn't seem to share his enthusiasm. As suddenly as he appeared, he vanished. Back to the planet presumably. Back to the other Kore.
And back to destroy Grand Admiral Thrawn.
The mines should be going off at any second. If the first set of mines didn't work on the cunning Admiral, Nuso Esva doubted the second set would. But it would give him just enough time to pull out the sifter card, and change the rules of the game. "You haven't beaten me yet, Thrawn," he said into the silence, grinning devilishly.
"By the time the morning sun rises over Manajra, you shall fall."
…
"Knowledge, Wisdom, report," Damien demanded, sitting in his chair inside the Throne
room of the Crystal Palace.
There was a flicker of motion and the small frail body of Wisdom appeared, dressed in his green cloak.
"Our preparations are complete, your Lordship," Wisdom replied, face looking downward in the usual gesture of respect to the Lord of the Kore. "Grand Admiral Thrawn has fallen into our trap."
"Thrawn should never have found this place," Seraph's voice called out. A moment later, Knowledge flickered into view, standing beside Wisdom.
"Your Highness, Darkness made a crucial mistake in allying himself with Nuso Esva. Now his feud with the Empire has drawn us in the middle of their affair. If Sage hadn't done this, we would've already called upon Reckoning, and the Emperor would've been history."
"You're naïve Seraph," Damien spoke up. Knowledge bristled at the stinging insult from the Lord of the Kore. "Drawing Admiral Thrawn here is crucial to our plan. A confrontation with him was inevitable. That much is clear. Even now, Power is hunting down the Force potentials in the Empire and eliminating them one by one. Eventually, he'll find Palpatine and kill him."
Knowledge shrugged in a helpless fit. "If that's true, then why do we need Reckoning?"
"Reckoning is to be used as a last resort," Wisdom put in. "According to my visions, if we don't activate it in the next three weeks, the Emperor will assume control of the Empire once again. However, if Power is successful, we won't need it."
"My Lord," Seraph protested again. "Is it really wise to meddle with intergalactic affairs? Such tampering undermines the sovereignty of the Force."
"Yet all has been decreed by the Force," Wisdom replied. "It speaks to us, all of us; and we've all heard its cry. The threats are real if we do nothing."
"The threats are just as real if we do everything," Knowledge retorted. "We're trying to stop the Emperor from returning to power. What if our actions cause the Emperor's return?"
For a moment Wisdom was about to argue the point. He took off his hood and revealed his face. He was a bald man, short in stature, but menacing enough to stand down the taller though younger Kore of Knowledge, Seraph.
However, Damien raised his hand to silence them. "Enough," he bellowed. "This argument is getting us nowhere. I will hear no more of this Seraph. Understand?"
His shoulders shrunk, and Knowledge sighed in defeat. "Yes, my Lord." And with a flicker of motion, he disappeared.
A few seconds later, Wisdom disappeared, and Lord Damien was left alone.
Until another figure mysteriously appeared.
"Sage," Damien said. "Are we ready to commence our attack?"
"Yes, my Lord," the dark-robed man replied. "Once Nuso Esva has detonated the last of the mines we will destroy Grand Admiral Thrawn once and for all."
Damien nodded quietly. "Proceed."
A purplish hue shot up to the ceiling from behind the throne room; its eerie light casted a dark shadow across Damien's face. The long silver locks of his hair shimmered in otherworldly darkness and flashes of haunting crossed his eyes.
He gazed over at the old wise man who had situated himself closer to the purple light behind the throne. Walking quietly over and standing beside him, Damien observed the Kore of Darkness work his powers and manifest control over the violet energy. It was an energy from the Reckoning itself.
It was the Force.
Hands swaying over his crystal ball, Sage stared into the orb as an object began to materialize inside the orb. His hands stopped moving, and arched parallel to each other over the ball. His eyes glowed white like two flood lamps peering through a mist. The object came into full view. It was a ship.
It was an Imperial Star Destroyer.
And with a clasp of his hands together, Sage crushed it.
…...
Standing in a room full of mirrors, a hooded man peered around, made sure no one was looking, and stepped inside one of them.
Coming out of the other side of the portal, the man pulled his hood off and scurried over to the array of books on the shelves. His hands grazed over each one until he found the right book.
He quickly grabbed the manuscript and hurried over to a wall. Then, arranging the book pages, he started unfolding the codex like a tapestry and draped it in a large arch across the wall. Once completed, he stood back and let the book do the rest.
A bright golden light shined out from the arch of pages, and writing began to appear underneath the top of the arch marking its way down the wall.
To the one who has wisdom, let that one understand.
I am the Force, source of all life and nourishment,
I decree this writing to be sealed as a warning to all.
Reckoning is coming. It is a day where all that is done
shall be undone. All that is old shall be made new.
Knowledge shall unbound. Wisdom shall be shaken.
Light shall cease. Prophecy shall be silenced.
Darkness shall wither. And Power shall be quenched.
All of these are the beginning of sorrows.
This is the coming Reckoning.
"I see you're reading that same passage again, Wen," said a voice.
He turned around to see a younger man walk up to him, dressed in white slacks, black shoes, and a royal blue shirt.
"Knowledge," Wen said. "How did you know about this place?"
"You're the Kore of Wisdom," Seraph retorted. "You tell me."
"I've kept this place hidden for good reason," Wen said, sighing a little. "I see nothing occurs inside this building without you knowing about it."
Knowledge put his hands in his pockets. "That's right." He nodded at the wall. "You're never going to figure out how to interpret those sayings correctly. They're too cryptic. What if our scholars misquoted the Force when the warning was given? They've been copied down for centuries. What if the message is distorted?"
Wisdom nodded his head. "That's certainly the consensus from Light and Darkness. Still," he turned back to look at the writing. "What if we got the sayings right?"
"Humph," Seraph snorted. "Let the theologians and scribes figure it out. I don't care about some ancient riddle. What gets me though is that creepy Sage. He's taken it upon himself to be Damien's personal advisor, and he's dangling this Reckoning thing right in front of his very nose, like it's the answer to everything."
Wisdom saw right through the deflection. "If you're not interested in the Holy Text, why are you here?"
"Because I need your help," Seraph said earnestly. "I'm not so sure about this Reckoning thing, and you aren't either. So I think it's best that we team up. Agreed?"
"You're talking about treason," Wisdom spoke. "This is a dangerous line of thinking."
"More like sabotage," Knowledge replied easily shrugging. "Power is on Darkness's side. And Light is enticed by Sage for the moment."
"But…" Wen started.
"But if we can find the Kore of Prophecy we may stand a chance at stopping this altogether."
"I'm not buying it," Wen said, calling Seraph's bluff. "You're after Sage, aren't you?"
"You're damn right, I am," Knowledge answered gazing up at the arch. "I don't trust him. He's the one who conjured up this whole Reckoning plan. There's something he's not telling the rest of us. Something that only he knows."
"Hmm," Wisdom thought out loud. "Reckoning is supposed to be a door. A door can be used to bring something out."
"Or it can be used to lock something in," Knowledge finished.
"We both agree that there's something inside the Reckoning door," Wen chimed in.
"And regardless whether its purpose was to be unleashed or be locked inside, the Kore of Darkness knows what that something is."
Without warning, the ground quaked beneath them.
"What's going on?!" Knowledge shouted over the earth shaking.
"I think Reckoning is being used," Wisdom replied. "We better see for ourselves."
In the blink of an eye, they both disappeared—warped out of the room. A few seconds later Wisdom and Knowledge reappeared, but they were no longer in the Wen's secret chamber.
They were in the palace core.
It was a dimly lit chamber, with a slow pulsating hum, whose rhythm synchronized with the varying eminence of purple, green, and blue lights. The walls were pure crystal like the palace chamber, but they seethed with a dark energy.
"This isn't right," Knowledge put in, looking at the pulses of light on the floor that caused the chamber to glow white for mere seconds before fading to a dull black. Over and over again, the cycle repeated, each one building speed. "There's too much Force energy pouring into the Reckoning. The dichotemer readings are off the charts. Light better be careful. Sage is egging him on. Our Lord should watch out for the old fossil. He's got his own agenda."
"This is paranoia talking, Seraph," Wen admonished. "Our Lord is the most powerful of the Kore. There is nothing that Sage can do to overpower him." He gazed at the walls of green, purple, and dark blue. "However, I must admit, that the Reckoning's strength is surprising. I need to get back to my research. If I can solve the mystery of Reckoning than we'll know for certain if the wise man is scheming anything."
There was a rush of air in the atmosphere behind the two. Wisdom and Knowledge felt the power emanating from the presence and immediately turned around parading in attention.
Arms folded and cape billowing with the output of his energy, the Kore of Light, the Lord of all the Kore stood in front of them. "Wisdom," Damien called out. "What's the status of the energy absorption indicator?"
"The energy readings are well above-average, sire," Wen replied. "Knowledge was a little concerned that the Reckoning may contain too much power."
There was a moment of silence. And Damien vanished.
Knowledge turned back to the core. "I'll monitor the core. If the energy gets out of hand, I'm pulling the plug."
"Before it destroys us all."
…
"Admiral," the tactical officer called to Thrawn from the lower bridge deck, "we're getting some funny readings from the Star Destroyers. They're jettison escape pods."
"Giving up are they?" Parck murmured.
Beside him, Grand Admiral Thrawn furrowed his eyebrows in contemplation. "That doesn't sound like Nuso Esva," he said suspiciously. Thrawn looked over at the helmsman. "Disable the tractor beams and adjust our heading portside by twenty degrees. And keep our ships away from the Star Destroyers. We're not taking any chances."
Parck logged the orders into his datapad. After their near defeat at the hands of the Warlord's cloaked space mines, courtesy of Grand Admiral Grant, it was indeed a good idea not to take chances.
Giving a quick once over on the tactical readouts, the Captain almost missed the small craft heading towards the planet. "Admiral," he warned.
"I see it," Thrawn answered. "Helmsman, pursue that craft. And get me the make on the ship."
"Yes, sir," the helmsman replied. "It's a shuttle craft. Standard Imperial issue."
"That's got to be him," Parck said. "That's Nuso Esva."
"Indeed," Thrawn confirmed. "Let him go."
Parck started logging the order in for all ships to pursue the craft, then stopped suddenly. "I'm sorry, sir," he flustered, "did you say for us to let him go?"
"That's correct Captain," the Grand Admiral replied. "Even now, the Warlord is still trying to bait us into another trap." He looked over to the operations officer. "Give me a sensor focus on the planet. Report any ground to space weaponry or shields of any kind."
It only took a moment to come up with the answer that Parck already knew. It was standard Imperial procedure to do a thorough scan of any surrounding planets nearby a fleet. The scanning came back negative when they first arrived.
"There are no weapons or shields of any kind, Admiral," the operations officer replied.
"Are there any metallic alloys or energy signatures on the planet surface?" Thrawn persisted.
Fingers flew over the keyboards as the crewers pulled up the necessary data. "Nothing, sir," the officer confirmed.
"Interesting," Thrawn contemplated thoughtfully, slowly rubbing his chin. "This is peculiar, even for Nuso Esva."
Parck said nothing and let the Grand Admiral work his genius. It was a rare moment when the Captain advised someone of Thrawn's genius, but even a highly intelligent mind like the Grand Admiral occasionally needed some grounding in basic rationale. However, the Captain was no fool. This wasn't one of those times.
Thrawn nodded his head in confidence. "Yes, we should err on the side of caution. He has nowhere to run. We'll just take our time in capturing him. And avoid his little traps along the way."
Then, as if on cue, one of Nuso Esva's traps sprung on the Imperial Fleet. The three Star Destroyers floating in space around the fleet, suddenly burst in flames as they started breaking apart from cloaked mines hidden on the hulls of the Destroyers.
The klaxons wailed over the bridge as the emergency alerts drew the crew's attention.
"Take evasive action!" Parck barked. "Veer away from the debris trajectories." He took a look back at the Grand Admiral, who remained glacially calm. Thrawn may have called Esva's trap this time, but they were still deep in the woods. The remains of the Star Destroyers were still floating in several large debris chunks, each one moving along a different vector away from the explosion.
As the Admonitor moved around the debris chunks, Parck wondered how the Executor, the Empire's largest Star Destroyer, managed to make its way out of an asteroid field relatively unscathed when Lord Vader was hell bent on capturing the Millennium Falcon just over a year ago. The Admonitor was a fraction of the size of that Super Star Destroyer, and the pilots were still having difficulty avoiding a few chunks of ship.
The field started clearing, the debris chunks getting smaller, and Captain Parck let out a breath he had no idea he was holding. Despite the ensuing chaos Warlord Esva caused earlier, Grand Admiral Thrawn had turned the tables. They were going to make it.
That's what Parck thought; until the Admonitor was struck by a piece of the floating debris. The ship lurched forward as if it jumped to lightspeed.
"Collision alert!" one of the lieutenants yelped.
"Damage report!" Parck ordered.
"Minor only, but our course trajectory has been altered!" the navigations officer reported. "Attempting to compensate."
The Admonitor spun slowly for about a minute. Then with obvious effort, the bridge team managed to regain control over the Star Destroyer and turn the ship about to its original course.
"What's our status?" Parck demanded.
"Minor damage to the engine room, only, sir," one of the crewmen responded. However, the reports were still scrolling across the bridge displays. "Correction, sir, moderate damage to the port engines, hangar bay, and minor damage to the engine room."
The Captain nodded his head silently. "The hyperdrive, is it functional?"
"Yes, sir."
Well it could have been worse. Nuso Esva was not going to escape this time. There couldn't possibly be any more surprises the cunning Warlord could bring against the Imperials.
Then it came into view.
"Admiral," one of the officers signaled, "there is an anomaly just above Manajra."
"I see it," Thrawn confirmed pulling up a display on his holo viewer.
Parck strode over to the side of the command chair. The anomaly looked eerily like a black hole. But the Captain never saw one this small before. And there weren't any gravitational distortions affecting any of the ships, planets, and moons in the system.
"The hell is that?" he murmured in the Grand Admiral's ear.
"I have no idea," Thrawn said, worry filling his voice.
"But it's no coincidence that Nuso Esva is heading for the planet."
…...
Junior Lieutenant Mileesha Yensen sat in the front of the enormous stellar cartographical display in the Admonitor's astrometrics lab. Wrinkling her nose at the smell of artificial air, she still hadn't adjusted to space duty from planet duty. And she still wondered why the Empire had "requested" her talents on board the flagship of an Imperial Fleet stuck in the backwater regions of the galaxy on a shady mission under the command of an alien "Grand Admiral" that she had never even heard of.
When she first came on board the Admonitor one of her first acts was to hack into the main Imperial data archives on Coruscant and find out more about the ships, operatives, and mission she was assigned under. Mileesha didn't care about the potential ramifications that would befall on her if she were caught in her illegal activities. She was a computer nerd like no other. And it was unlikely that anyone would uncover the trail she masked so carefully in her hacking adventures.
Mileesha was a conscript from Coruscant. As the Rebellion began to grow in strength, Emperor Palpatine decided that it was necessary to draft members of the core worlds into the Imperial military. Mileesha was one of the draftees.
She often employed her techniques in computer modelling, in the Empire's case, modelling the astrophysics of the star systems in the Imperial Domain. Her work was largely tailored to scientific research and data analysis.
So it was a strange wonder when Admiral Thrawn handpicked her out of thousands of potential recruits for the stellar cartography station that he had formed on the Admonitor. She had never met him and had no clue about their mission. Frankly she didn't care. She pulled all the information she could find on him. She even made sure to study up on the Grand Admiral military rank.
She poured through everything.
And found nothing. There was nothing about the Grand Admiral rank, the ships, personnel, resources, no official records of their mission at all. She still received goose bumps recalling the moment it dawned on her that no one else was supposed to know what they were doing in the Unknown Regions, not even the Empire proper. It wasn't simply classified information that any slicer could hack and access. The information didn't exist, or it was "off the books" as the colloquial phrase put it. For Yensen, she was in the dark completely.
This was not something she was particularly used to.
The door to the lab slid open. Yensen wasn't used to the person who walked in either. She stood up in a rigid military attention stance. "Admiral on deck!" she shouted. Which was pretty stupid to state such a thing, when Yensen was the only one in the room other than Grand Admiral Thrawn. But that was military procedure for you.
"At ease Lieutenant," he said in a cool, modulated voice. The tone wasn't cold or calculating like Yensen imagined. Instead, it was smooth and flowing, almost poetic save for the monotone.
The Grand Admiral walked up to her and handed her a data card. "Upload this into the display," he ordered.
Flinching just a second before taking the card, Yensen quickly gathered herself together, turned around, sat down, and started getting to work. The voice may have been settling, but those eyes of his were certainly not.
It took about thirty seconds for the data to finish uploading into the model display. Thirty long, uneasy seconds, with the commander of the entire Imperial military forces in this region silently standing behind her computer desk console waiting expectantly. She breathed a sigh of relief when the model updated.
And nearly dropped her mouth when she saw the picture on the display over the planet Manajra.
It was a black hole.
At least that's what it looked like. But there were no gravitational anomalies, no distortions in the space-time continuum around the singularity, and it wasn't even the size of a planet. This was the smallest "black hole" Yensen had ever seen if it was one.
"Can you tell me what this is?" Thrawn asked. It was strange how some people were able to ask questions that would sound like an order. Grand Admiral Thrawn was one of those people.
"I can tell you what it's not, sir," Yensen replied, fingers flying over the console at light speed. She was nervous, but she still had her wits.
"It's a start," Thrawn said.
"It's definitely not a wormhole, or any other type of singularity—at least, none that I've ever studied," she amended. "It doesn't seem to have an effect on any of the physics of the surrounding area." She looked up at the Admiral who was gazing at the object on the screen. "By all accounts, Admiral, it's nothing more than a projection."
"A projection?" Thrawn enquired, cocking one-blue black eyebrow. "Elaborate."
"It's simply a focus of energy emitted as light swirling around a density that doesn't exist."
"Energy," he said, more to himself than to Yensen. "Can you tell me the source of the energy?"
"Yes, I can," she responded, pulling up the necessary data.
"Let me guess," Thrawn said coolly. "The source is located on the planet surface."
"That's correct, Admiral," Yensen confirmed.
Thrawn immediately touched a display on the desk console. "Bridge, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn."
There was a brief pause. "Go ahead, Admiral," came the reply.
"Captain, I want you to set orbit around the planet Manajra, and follow Nuso Esva's trajectory. And prepare a landing party."
"Yes, sir," Captain Parck answered.
Thrawn proceeded to leave the Astrophysics Lab. He didn't even reach the door. The jolt was unexpected. Yensen grabbed her desk to brace herself. Thrawn managed to keep himself standing upright with obvious effort. The entire ship shuttered constantly.
"I suppose I don't need to ask what's causing the Admonitor to shake like this," Thrawn said, raising his voice over the jarring sound the quaking made.
He headed for the door—
And never made it. But Yensen wasn't concerned with the Grand Admiral. She had adjusted the viewer to a real life screen using the Admonitor's external sensors as a relay to see what was going on outside the ship. And the results didn't look good. Checking the displays again, just to make sure the image was correct, her mouth dropped open in astonishment.
They were heading straight for the planet.
"Holy shit," she rasped.
...
It was 2200 hours, and Captain Delson had just laid in his bunk. Closing his eyes after a hard day's work he started to drift off to sleep.
Then he was thrown violently out of his bed and onto the floor of his quarters. A violent ringing sound could be heard in the background. As it faded, klaxons started blaring and red lights filled the room.
They were under attack.
He hopped to his feet. Another violent lurch threw Delson into one of the bulkheads. But something didn't see quite right.
Staggering to the control panel in his quarters, Delson quickly tapped for the bridge comm.
"This is Captain Delson," he announced. "What the hell's going on?"
"I'm not sure, sir," came one of the staff officers from the bridge. "We seem to be under attack, but we can't detect any enemy ships!"
"Are there any traces of debris colliding with the ship?" Delson demanded.
"No, sir. The scans are showing nothing," the officer replied.
"Then it's got to be coming from inside the ship," Delson said, more to himself than anyone else. "Go to Yellow Alert. And notify me if anything changes."
"Yes, sir,"
Delson clicked out as another lurch threw him away from the panel.
"Gods, what in worlds is going on?"
With sheer concentration and force of will, Rhapsody, still dressed in Imperial garb strolled down a hallway, explosions rupturing behind him with each step he took. Sooner or later, the mayhem and destruction he caused would draw his target.
And right on schedule, there she was. There was someone else with her, some sort of military man. But it didn't matter. Rhapsody had finally found her.
The Kore of Prophecy.
"Welcome," he said with outstretched hands. The gesture caught the pair off guard.
"Come, we have much to discuss."
They had finally caught up with him.
"Careful," Ellysia warned. "He's definitely a member of the Kore."
The words went through one ear and out the other. Doran had drawn his blaster. "I don't care who you are or why you're here. In the name of the Galactic Empire, you're under arrest."
With a flick of his hand the blaster flew out of Doran's hand and landed comfortably in the Kore's. "What a crude weapon," he commented, examining it like a child.
"Why are you here?" Ellysia said.
"There is no time," the Kore replied, red hair flowing behind him as if there was some sort of breeze. "It's easier if I show you."
Before Ellysia could say anything, the whole environment around her changed. She was standing, no longer on an Imperial cruiser, but on a rugged cliff overlooking a sea. The smell, sounds, and roaring waves all sounded familiar. Somehow she was on her homeworld.
Manajra.
Then the dream turned into a nightmare. She saw a huge object gliding across the sky with an all too familiar shape. It was an Imperial Star Destroyer. And somehow, Ellysia knew that it was the Admonitor.
She reached out her hand in reflexive horror. Hoping to wipe away the nightmare like it was but a mere painting. But it was too late, and all too real. The Admonitor crashed with huge ferocity into the sea far off. The waves it generated slammed into the shoreline and crashed against the rocks with such force they almost threw Ellysia off the cliff.
But her concern wasn't about her life. On board that ship thousands of lives were in peril. They were doomed. Particularly one, whom Ellysia still owed a debt.
She screamed out loud his name over and over again in agony.
"GRAND ADMIRAL THRAWN!"