Chapter 8: A Game of Chess

Not long after Nan and the scientists escaped, they were attacked by an Imperial starship. The blast disabled their hyperdrive. At first the scientists just ran around screaming, typical behavior, but Nan got them working on fixing the hyperdrive and boosting up the shields. However, they needed more time and if the enemy kept shooting at them, there soon wouldn't be a ship. Nan got the idea of firing off all the escape pods to make it look like they were abandoning ship.

"But the escape pods will just float around aimlessly without someone driving them," said Saul, "and the Empire will be able to tell they're empty."

"That's why I will go in one of the escape pods and remotely control the others," said Nan. "We will also put hot packs in the others that could pass for people's heat signatures without close examination."

"Why you, Nan? You're important to us. Send the undergrad."

There was no undergrad, however, and Nan was willing to take the risk so her friends could escape. She connected all the pods wirelessly and got in one. Saul released them, doubting he'd ever see Nan again. Her ruse worked. The TIE fighters the starship had just released went after the pods and the big ship stopped firing. The scientists fixed the hyperdrive and got the hell out of there. The TIE fighters were thorough. While they found many empty pods first, they checked each one and captured Nan. She did not want to reveal her powers so she kept her lightsaber sheathed and merely scratched a few faces. That earned her a knock on the head that put her out for a few hours.

She woke up strapped to a gurney. Count Dooku leaned against a table close by, but his outline was faint. Clearly, this ship did not have enough evil to allow him to materialize properly.

"Before you ask," he said, "I did not betray you."

"I didn't think you did," said Nan. "Who's captured me? Some lamebrain, by-the-book Imperial officer with nothing better to do?"

"Actually, you're in for a treat. You have been restrained by one of the Empire's best and brightest, Admiral Thrawn. He is known for…"

"Using his brain and not his brawn, I've heard."

"I hate rhymes."

Admiral Thrawn entered just then and looked around the room for another person, but Dooku was invisible to him.

"Who were you talking to just now?" He asked.

"Your mother," said Nan.

"Interesting. Hallucinations can be very revealing about a person. I don't suppose you'll tell me the truth, but I can determine a lot from your lies."

"You know what isn't a lie? That your mother will do anybody for ten credits."

Nan had decided that being as rude as possible was going to, somehow, help her out. If she had not been reluctant to reveal her Force powers, she would have levitated a rotting sandwich she smelled in a garbage can onto his head. Thrawn was nonplussed by the insults to his mother and picked up Nan's flashlight. He had already figured out that it was a lightsaber in disguise. He turned it on and waved it around.

"This belonged to William Dooku," he said. "His family's crest is on it. I wonder if you will be surprised to find out that I know who you are."

"Dude, you're the first person I've ever met who's used Dooku's first name. I bet even his driver's license didn't have his first name on it."

"Nancy Tam, otherwise known as Dr. Specious. Everybody assumed you were dead but when I saw you today, I recognized you."

"From where? Your mother's house?"

"Your pitiful attempts to rile me up are becoming tiresome. Why don't you tell me how you survived?"

Nan stuck out her tongue as far as it would go.

"Fine, I will tell you my theory. I suspect Count Dooku did not kill you on purpose because General Grievous was the closest thing he had to a friend. He's probably alive too. You must have spent the last ten years recuperating and searching for a doctor that could make that spine for you."

Well, it's not like he could have guessed the truth, big brain or no, eh?

Nan looked meaningfully at the Count, as if to say, "I'm not the only one who thought you shouldn't have killed us." Thrawn put Nan's lightsaber down and came closer to check her bindings. Her tail was secured in several places and she was firmly on her back, so it would not be easy to maneuver one of her little arms out.

"I've got a nickname for you," said Nan. "Admiral Blue Balls. Do you like it?"

Thrawn did not respond but Dooku snorted, though he was somewhat pleased that finally he wasn't the only one getting a stupid nickname.

"I suspected there was a spy at Meyershand," said Thrawn, "but nobody believed me. It's unfortunate when that happens. I tried to remind them how important Meyershand is and that we can't have people coming in and out of it all the time."

"You know what people are always coming in and out of?" Asked Nan with a sly smile.

"My mother? I set you up for that one, just to see if you'd take the bait."

Nan frowned. Dooku chuckled.

"I will take you to the Emperor," said Thrawn. "Your lightsaber hints at more than just scientific potential. We should arrive at Corusant in sixteen hours. I'm doing a survey of certain planets and I doubt you're important enough to rush over there immediately. Besides, I find that being strapped to a gurney with a light in your face can often be more effective than real torture."

Nan was not particularly worried because the Count was there and could free her at any time. She wanted to irk Admiral Thrawn some more, though. She saw that the room contained a board for playing electronic games and suggested chess, since Thrawn considered himself so smart and all. He agreed. He often played games with prisoners because it revealed their strategies.

"I can beat you in fifteen minutes," boasted Nan.

Actually, it took her twenty minutes, mostly because Thrawn considered his moves carefully. He had tilted Nan's gurney so she could see the board and she spoke commands to the pieces. Thrawn was not upset about losing.

"Every loss is a victory," he said, "because it reveals more and more about the opponent until you know everything you need to beat him. I've practiced chess many years and with a few more games, I would know your strategy and could beat you."

Nan yawned and said, "Waste of your life, that. I learned chess in a day and if you think you can beat one of my strategies, good for you. I'll wait until that happens before trying the other fifty I know."

Finally, the Admiral was a tad peeved. He seated himself suddenly on a stool Count Dooku was also sitting on. He sat inside the Count, who looked irate though he could do nothing about it except get up with a disgusted look. Nan laughed at the spectacle.

"He just penetrated you," she said to the Count, who called her crass.

Thrawn didn't know what she was talking about and thought she was laughing over his chess failure. He decided that he could not hand her over to the Emperor without wiping the grin off her face. Before he could start, Nan asked a question.

"I've been wanting to ask this since I first saw you. It's a question of dire importance that will bother me for the rest of my life if I don't find out the answer. Have you been…"

But Nan cracked up before she could continue. She tried again, getting no farther than, "Have you…," until finally she spat out the entire thing: "Have you been jacking off so long that your dick has turned blue?"

Her joke was wasted on the Admiral, though Count Dooku cracked what may have been a smile, in a certain light.

"You are either insane or you think your idiot rebel friends will come to save you," said Thrawn. "I suspect you are just mad. When I studied your case and the General's, I found it remarkable that people seemed to think he was the worst offender. I understand that your current involvement with the rebels and your past betrayal of the Separatists are acts of redemption. I find it funny that the Jedi, whose records of your capture by them survived, considered General Grievous a much more despicable criminal than you. They kept rambling on about his murder of the Jedi, when the Jedi were soldiers like the clones. Really, Grievous never went out of his way to kill and torture innocent people, he only killed soldiers on the battlefield. You, on the other hand, called some scientists and their families to an unfamiliar planet, promising them money and scientific renown, only to capture and murder them because of some personal vendetta. Who's the bigger criminal?"

Nan kept quiet. She never liked to be reminded of her past misdeeds. She tried to say something about Thrawn's blue balls or his mother, but it felt wrong. The joke had turned sour. Count Dooku looked from her to Thrawn and cursed himself.

"Guilt!" He said. "I should have used guilt to rattle you when we battled, not jealousy. Perhaps I could have won then."

Thrawn smiled, pleased with another victory, however small. He looked at the lightsaber again and delivered the final blow, not realizing that he was insulting two people.

"I'll stick to my original theory that Count Dooku saved you at the end. He was a blind old fool who overestimated his own importance. He shouldn't have bothered to let you live. How can you hope to help the rebels, when all you're fighting for is your own guilty conscience?"

Thrawn started to leave in no hurry. Nan called up the foulest things she knew and opened her mouth to say them, but she just sputtered. Thrawn heard and couldn't resist a chuckle. He left. Nan did not speak for a long time after the sound of his footsteps faded.

"There is a rotting sandwich in the garbage can," she finally said.

"And you want me to put it under his pillow?" Said Dooku. "Done. I can't touch him or I would have given him a kick already, but I can manipulate inanimate objects."

After that errand was done, he released Nan. She quickly penned a note to Admiral Thrawn that contained only three expletives and one obscene image, but mostly focused on explaining what she had discovered about the Hollow Code. If Thrawn believed any of it, he would probably understand how the destruction of the universe was troubling. Dooku helped Nan navigate through the ship until she got to the hangar. Although he could not knock the Stormtroopers out like he had before, Dooku distracted them with falling objects while Nan got into a TIE and flew off. Thrawn sighed when he learned that the prisoner had escaped. He sighed again when he found an unwelcome surprise under his pillow. Luckily, he hadn't made any mention of Nan's capture in an official report. What the Emperor didn't know couldn't piss him off.

The rebels successfully released the prisoners and saved Andrea. Greg kept pointing out that some of the prisoners had been serious criminals and not rebels at all but Ahsoka figured they were the Empire's problem. At least, until one of them tried to steal their supplies. Then she had the actual criminals dumped on some abandoned space station. Greg decided they could all use a drink to celebrate and organized a party. Commander Ackbar protested that they'd just had a party, but nobody listened.

The party really got started when Nan arrived, closely followed by the scientists from Meyershand. It took them so long because the ship ran out of fuel and it turned out that none of them had brought money. They considered selling their bodies for money until they found some other crap to sell.

Nan and Greg's joyous reunion was overshadowed by Saul's reunion with Andrea, who turned out to be his sister.

"What? You're here?" She said. "I thought you were glued to some spectrophotometer."

"What spectrophotometer?" He said. "I'm a crystallographer! You never bothered to understand anything about what I do."

"And you never cared about anybody except yourself!"

Whatever happened to apologizing…but never mind. The siblings seemed to make up after a while. Greg introduced Nan to Saati and Beck. Everybody drank and had a good time. At one point, Greg mixed up some jingy tanguses,[1] drinks so vile they're the closest thing to poison that isn't labeled with a skull and crossbones. Beck wanted to try one.

"It's too strong for you," said Greg.

Beck downed the concoction in one gulp and said it really hit the spot.

"He's a chip off the old block," said Ahsoka.

Later Greg played an electronic piano he called up on a screen. He played fantastically and laughed the whole time. Sure, he was kind of drunk, but that was not it. Ahsoka asked where he learned to play so well.

"I didn't!" He said. "It's all Kate's doing. She devised a serum that can make you learn something under mild sedation, and learn it so well that you don't even know you know it. Heck, if I hadn't asked, I would never have known I can play the piano until I came across one. I don't know how I'm doing it right now!"

"That's terrible," said Ahsoka. "Making your brain learn something like that cannot be good for it. Why would you have agreed to that?"

"Agreement is usually not the way Kate works. She just stabbed me in the ass with the serum one day and tied me up in a room with a program that teaches one to play the piano. It's actually quite dangerous."

"Playing the piano?"

"No, the serum. You could teach somebody to assemble a bomb and they wouldn't know or remember it until they found the parts in front of them. They wouldn't be able to stop…like I can't stop playing this piano right now. Help me!"

They dragged him away from the piano and turned it off and he forgot about it. Nan wanted to tell Greg about Count Dooku but he was awfully drunk (Greg, not Count Dooku). Nan decided to call a meeting the next morning and explain about the end of the world. Ahsoka wandered around, uneasy for some reason. She glared at the scientists. What was she supposed to do with them? They could barely pilot a shuttlecraft or speak a reasonable sentence without lapsing into science gibberish. But that was not the problem. Something else bothered Ahsoka. She sat down between Nan and Greg even though they spilled beer on her (half the time on purpose) and thought about it seriously.

Suddenly she jumped up and ran up to the bridge. Commander Ackbar was there, morosely sipping coffee and making sure everything was all right on the scanners. Ahsoka asked him to come help her find several people. She felt urgency and did not explain what it was all about. Some of the people she needed were stationed elsewhere and Ahsoka got in a plane to find them. She did not rest until they were assembled in front her, except for one that Ackbar was fetching.

It was the pilots Hartwald had called down to Corusant a while ago. They were uncomfortable, feeling that Ahsoka was picking on them again for something they didn't even remember. But that was precisely it. Ahsoka thought of Greg playing the piano. He didn't know how he did it and he didn't know how to stop. What if Imperial scientists had developed a similar drug to Kate's and Hartwald had used it on the pilots? Ahsoka grabbed some of the scientists, including Nan and Greg, and told them her idea. One of the scientists had heard about such a drug.

"Still, you couldn't tell if it was used on them now," she said. "It will be gone from their system."

"There's no cure aside from creating permanent brain lesions," said Greg.

"What am I supposed to do?" Asked Ahsoka.

The pilots decided for her. They were tired of people looking at them with suspicion.

"If you can't trust us not to blow you up someday," one said, "then we can't work here. We'll go battle the Empire some other way. Maybe we'll go work in a bomb factory, since it looks as though we know that trade already."

Ahsoka could see no other way out, but she was still upset at losing some great pilots. Commander Ackbar returned without the last pilot. She had been working at a ground station and the wreckage of her plane was found not far from it. The debris revealed that her plane had exploded. Ahsoka's suspicions were proven correct. The pilot had made her plane a bomb and tried to ram it into the station to kill everybody, but something went wrong and it exploded too early.

Nan suggested various conditioning techniques so the rest of the pilots would not be compelled to make bombs, but they just wanted to get away. They ended up forming a back-to-nature community on some forest planet. Ahsoka felt tired and got a drink.

"I hope this isn't the beginning of something terrible," she said.

Nan whined, considering the bad news she carried. Greg said things had turned out as well as they could and Ahsoka had been clever to recognize the danger before they all got blown up. Nevertheless, the party halted and everybody went to bed. The next morning was rough and nobody had any idea of what was coming when Nan called them into a conference room. She explained about Meyershand and the Old Ones, leaving out the parts about Count Dooku. When it finally got through to people that this was the big one, the end of life as we know it, they forgot their hangovers. Only Beck continued to lean his head on his mother's shoulder.

"If the end of the world means I'll never drink again, perhaps it's a good thing," he said.

Footnote

[1] In The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams, he mentions that every civilization in the world has a drink called something like "gin and tonic," though the drinks are not the same. I don't see why the Star Wars universe should be an exception.