From Flames, I Soar

by Kurenaino

With the Empire at the height of its power and the shadow of a greater threat hanging above all those who would oppose Palpatine, the Specters, led by former Jedi Padawan Kanan Jarrus, are forced to contend with the Sith Lord that set the galaxy ablaze. Sequel to In Chaos, I Thrive.

73. Sedition

AN: Happy Ahsoka Finale everyone! Hopefully this chapter finds you in good spirits! I told you it wouldn't be long. But it was longer than I had thought. Typical.

I know exactly what's happening next chapter. I've been greatly looking forward to writing it. And, as I always say, I don't think it's going to be overly long, and this time I mean it!

I think.

I'm shooting for late October/November for the next one, but things never go as planned and suddenly my two scene chapter has become novel-length. But I'll do my very best to be reasonable. Promise.

I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think, I literally live for feedback.

Chapter 73: Sedition

"I will be sending my shuttle back to the Chimaera, Commodore," Thrawn's voice said from the com station, and Faro's eyes narrowed as she looked out the viewport at the research post. "Two Grysk prisoners will be aboard, and they are to be considered highly valuable and highly dangerous. We found poison capsules hidden in their teeth. They have been neutralized, but we do not know if they are hiding any other weapons, so be cautious. Make certain they are properly detained and prepared for interrogation."

"Yes sir," Faro said automatically, frowning as she looked at the com station for the third time in the past minute at the encryption code. As the flag ship of a Grand Admiral, the G77 encryption was in the ship's archives, but it was one they had never used.

Which could only mean one thing. She had long ago understood that when Thrawn did things for no reason, there was often a very good reason for it. And now, it seemed, Thrawn was baiting a trap. A smile flickered across her lips as she glanced over at Lieutenant Pyrondi at the weapons station, the frown on her face becoming increasingly deep with each passing second. She and Commander Hammerly had only ten minutes before placed bets on the presence of another Grysk ship in the area, and with Thrawn now baiting a trap, one that seemed set to go off sooner rather than later, it was becoming increasingly clear that there was indeed someone else hiding nearby.

Betting wasn't allowed on Imperial ships, of course, but getting the two incorrigible officers to stop was an exercise in futility, and since neither woman was betting actual credits, Faro considered it harmless enough.

"For security purposes, we will be sending it back without a crew," Thrawn continued. "You will have it tractored in, and I want Captain Dobbs to run a full wrap escort."

"Understood, sir," Faro said, smirking when Pyrondi groaned from her station and at the com station, Hammerly looked as smug as she'd ever seen the woman.

"Let me know when you are ready," Thrawn said. "Once the prisoners are aboard, I am certain our enemy's hidden plans will be laid out before us." A tight smile formed on Faro's lips. It was just as she had expected. For a moment, she considered responding to the Admiral's coded phrasing with one of her own, but after a moment of consideration, she decided against it. The path before her was clear enough.

"We're ready, Admiral," Faro said briskly when the tractor operators at their station gave her the signal and Dobbs checked in with the acknowledgement of his new orders, the Defender squadron that had before been on patrol changing directions on the tactical as they reported to their new positions.

"Excellent," Thrawn said almost absently. "Standby for further orders."

"Weapons are ready, Commodore," Pyrondi said when the com disconnected. "I should be able to get them even if their cloaked. So long as Hammerly can get a lock on their drive emissions…"

"I can always get a lock on the drive emissions…" Hammerly said with a roll of her eyes, peeking up from the pit and glaring at a beaming Pyrondi who had done the same to see her friend's reaction. "But that doesn't exactly make a cloaked ship easier to track, especially if the emissions aren't prolonged, or if their ships use a different energy profile we aren't used to."

"We have the energy profile of the Grysk ships we fought at Batuu!" Pyrondi protested, which earned her another scornful look from Hammerly.

"Yes, but if these aren't they Grysks," Hammerly said with strained patience. "If these are one of the Grysk slave species-"

"Tractor beam is locked, Commodore," the tractor operator said, and both Pyrondi and Hammerly abandoned the debate and turned their focus back on their stations.

"Nice and easy, Lieutenant," Faro said, her eyes fixed on the tactical. "We don't want our guests to get the impression that something's up." With a quiet acknowledgement from the tractor operator, the bridge fell into a tense silence, the open discussion over for the moment. It was a thing unique to Thrawn's style of command, a thing that never would have been allowed on any of the other ships Faro served upon, but it was a thing that allowed everyone involved in an operation to consider information they otherwise wouldn't have even thought of.

So when the cloaked ship opened fire on the Imperial shuttle, absolutely nobody was surprised when they failed to follow the ship's trail.

The enemy ship's lasers bounced harmlessly off the TIE Defender escort's shields, and the Chimaera's return fire lanced harmlessly into space, striking nothing on the vector that Hammerly had indicated. With a curse, Pyrondi opened with a wider spread along the indicated vector, but again, the fire went harmlessly into the nothingness of space. Before she had a chance to adjust her aim along the new possible vector that Hammerly indicated, the Chiss warship was on the move, the smaller vessel shooting past the Chimaera's bridge on an entirely different direction from where the Imperials had been shooting.

"I have readings of a hyperdrive spinning up!" Hammerly said only moments before the hidden ship appeared, flickered, and was gone.

"Maybe the Chiss have a way of following them through hyperspace," Faro said only moments before the Chiss ship flickered with their own jump to hyperspace, only to reappear a nearly immediately, and Faro couldn't help but wince. Apparently, the cloaked ship had left behind a parting gift before their escape. It wouldn't take them long to find the gravity well generator after all their experience with them on Batuu and the subsequent research they had done on the intact ones they captured, but it was long enough that the enemy ship was well and truly gone.

A disappointed silence fell over the bridge, which only grew worse with the chime of an incoming communication. None of them ever felt good about failing the Admiral, but this one felt worse than usual, given the circumstances. A hostile alien presence had infiltrated the Empire without anyone but them even aware of what was happening, and they had let them escape.

"Commodore," Thrawn's voice came over the com, and Faro's shoulders dropped with the pit in her stomach.

"Sir…" Faro answered morosely.

"Well done," Thrawn said evenly. "We now move on to the next phase. I will be sending-"

"Well done?" Faro interrupted, her jaw slack as she tried to understand how the Admiral could have missed their failure. "Sir, the ship escaped!"

"I did not expect you to destroy it," Thrawn said, the slightest hint of confusion in his voice, and Faro felt her face flush. Apparently she had missed part of the Admiral's plan, reasonable since they didn't actually discuss it, but she never liked being unable to follow his line of thinking. "Their escape was built into the framework of the plan. Are the prisoners secured?"

"They…yes, they are," Faro muttered as she checked her datapad, her brows drawing together as she glanced over the Stormtrooper's report. "It doesn't sound like they put up any sort of resistance at all."

"Kenobi's work," Thrawn quietly explained. "Before our arrival, the Grysks had fired upon a freighter and captured the crew. Some of the crew is still unaccounted for, but the freighter's cargo appears to be largely intact. You will tractor the freighter into the secondary hangar and begin your analysis. I will be sending Lieutenant Vanto over to assist you."

"…Lieutenant Vanto?" Faro repeated, looking down at Hammerly and Pyrondi in the crew pit and found that the other two women were grinning like idiots. They had only recently learned that Eli Vanto wasn't dead as many of them had assumed, but had been sent to serve the Chiss. Faro was still grasping with the information, trying to understand how the man could have just left the Empire to serve an alien military just because Thrawn had asked him to. Apparently, Hammerly and Pyrondi were instead more amused by the irony of meeting their former teammate out in the middle of nowhere in a vast galaxy.

"Yes…" Thrawn confirmed quietly. "The Chiss have been kind enough to loan his talents to us for this specific task. While you and Lieutenant Vanto survey the freighter, I will be joining Admiral Ar'alani aboard the Steadfast with Obi-Wan Kenobi for a brief consultation with their navigators."

"Understood, sir…" Faro said slowly. Thoughts of treason once again flitted through Faro's mind, but she swiftly suppressed the errant, unwanted impulse and the subsequent flash of anger, insult, and guilt. After all, what was she doing out here if not treason? Serving the Empire, she thought bitterly, but she wasn't naïve enough to think that it would be seen as anything other than betrayal.

But authorized or not, the Empire was at risk, and someone had to protect it.

"Eli Vanto…" Pyrondi huffed when the com deactivated, before Faro could launch into one of the many questions she had for the Admiral. "That rat bastard…"

"Is this going to be a problem, Lieutenant?" Faro asked sharply, and she got a derisive scoff in return.

"Of course it's going to be a problem!" Pyrondi shot back. "He owed me a thousand credits before he turned tail and ran!"

"You're really going to be that petty?" Hammerly asked as she peered out of the crew pit, her arms folded on the command walkway as she glanced over into the weapon pit.

"I can be a hell of a lot more petty than that," Pyrondi grumbled, her fingers tapping her display. "The freighter's been released and is ready for tractoring, Commodore."

"Bring it in," Faro said absently as her fingers tapped on the back of Thrawn's command chair.

"Do you think the Admiral believes there's something there, or do you think he's just gathering information?" Hammerly asked. "With an entire alien observation post, I'd have thought he'd be ordering survey crews over there to scour the place."

"Maybe he's already gathered the information he needs," Pyrondi said with a shrug. "He does have a squadron of Stormtroopers over there."

"There's definitely something on that freighter…" Faro said, her eyes fixed on the tactical and watching the freighter slowly drawing closer to the Chimaera in the field of the tractor beam. "It's the encryption he used," she said firmly as her thoughts feel neatly into place. "G77. It's the Grand Admirals' exclusive encryption, but Thrawn's never used it before. And he chooses to use it now while baiting a trap against an alien force?"

"A trap that worked," Pyrondi put in. "Mostly, in any case."

"Exactly," Faro said sharply, the uneasy pit sinking in her stomach in sharp contrast to the sudden excited pounding of her heart. "So, either he found the encryption in the research post's databanks, or-"

"Or the encryption came from the freighter's logs," Hammerly finished. "Which means that freighter is somehow connected to a Grand Admiral."

"Not necessarily," Faro muttered, her stomach twisting even tighter. "But it's a reasonable conclusion."

"…hey, Commodore?" Pyrondi asked as Faro began walking down the command walkway to the turbolift, and she stopped quickly and looked down at the drawn, concerned face of the Chimaera's chief weapons officer. "If that freighter is connected to a Grand Admiral, and the Gryks have all that information and the crew of that ship…"

"Don't jump to conclusions yet, Pyrondi," Faro said, giving the other woman a tight, reassuring smile before it faltered. "But yes. It's entirely possible the Grysk have already infiltrated the top levels of the Imperial navy." Her face hardened. "And it's a damn good thing we're here."

---

Eli began his investigation before the freighter had even been magnetically disengaged from the hull of the observation post. He had wanted to begin with the cargo, but the shipment hadn't been touched, all the crates still locked, secured and properly stacked in the hold. The Chimaera would have all the necessary equipment to make short work of making all the crates easily accessible, so he instead began in the cockpit. Thrawn's troops had already unlocked the entire system, so it was only a matter of pulling up the information he wanted once he sat down to work.

And there was quite a lot of work to be done.

The navigational data was clear enough. The ship originated on a planet in the Mid-Rim called Aloxor in the Esaga Sector and then traveled to a transfer depot in the Kurost Sector only a few systems over from their current location. From there, a short hyperspace jump brought them here, where they were attacked by the Grysk. But…why? There was nothing out here, no trading depot or transfer station or anything of the sort, but the logs clearly showed that this system was their destination. They may have been pulled out of hyperspace early, as the recordings the Chiss took indicate, but they were certainly headed here even before that.

Eli frowned, only vaguely aware of the ship jolting as it was locked in the Chimaera's tractor beam. The rebel leader, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had performed some magic on the two Grysk captives and supposedly discovered the Grysk observation of several ships traveling here to a mobile waystation, but Eli wasn't certain he believed it. But now, with the freighter's logs supporting the rebel's claims…

Maybe there was something to the magic this man possessed after all.

He downloaded all the navigational data and the shipping manifest onto his datapad and left the cockpit to take a brief inventory of the cargo before he arrived. At a glance, it seemed like all the cargo was accounted for, all the crates secured and labeled as they should be. Eli frowned as he took a cursory look at the manifest, a long list of items that seemed…pointless. Laser cookers and recreational devices and a notable amount of extremely specific and highly unusual foodstuff, but nothing exactly worthy of being on a ship under a Grand Admiral's encryption.

Something, Eli thought as the ship's cargo doors were opened, didn't add up.

With the bright lights of the Chimaera's hangar illuminating the cargo hold, Eli turned and found himself looking at Commodore Karyn Faro, and despite himself, he couldn't keep the smile off his face. Despite the somewhat complicated feelings he had in returning here, even though he knew many aboard would see his departure as desertion or treason, he was glad to see the woman again.

From the look on her face, it looked like she felt the same.

"You're in big trouble, Vanto," Faro said, her voice low and stiff and in sharp contrast to the wry smirk on her face. "You owe Pyrondi money, and since you skipped out on paying, she's out for blood."

"W-what?" Eli stammered, his eyebrows drawing together as he frowned, then scoffed when he understood. "The Creekpath bet? The explosion that destroyed the area sort of killed the terms of the bet with it. Nobody won that one."

"That isn't what Pyrondi thinks," Faro said with a shrug as she walked into the hold, and when she stood before Eli, she extended her hand and the man quickly clasped it. "It's good to see you again, Vanto. We thought you were dead."

"Not yet," Eli said with a wince. "So I take it the Admiral didn't tell you he sent me to serve the Chiss…"

"He certainly didn't," Faro said stiffly. "As I said, we thought you had died, from the way he resolutely refused to speak about you."

"Guess there's no real explanation for sending one of your officers to serve an alien military…" Eli grumbled.

"Of course there is," Faro scoffed, rolling her eyes as she stepped forward to survey the cargo. "Just not one that doesn't have treason written all over it."

"Y-yeah, well-"

"So what do we have here?" Faro interrupted, the shift away from such a serious and damning subject throwing Eli off balance long enough that the Commodore looked back at him to prompt an answer.

"On the surface, nothing," Eli said quickly and handed her his datapad, the shipping manifest displayed on the screen. "I traced the freighter from the Esaga sector to a transfer depot here in the Kurost sector before it wound up here."

"What kind of transfer depot?" Faro asked absently as she scrolled through the manifest.

"I'm not sure. There weren't any specifics in the navigational data."

"More and more suspicious…" Faro muttered, handing the datapad back to Eli and taking out her own, her fingers moving swiftly over the surface. "Well, let's get these crates cracked open," she said, sidestepping out of the way of a young supply officer as he gestured for the loadlifter to slowly move in. Eli scrambled out of the way, joining Faro by the wall and watching the personnel get to work on the crates for a moment before he tried to get a look at what the Commodore was doing on her datapad.

"You sure seemed unconcerned with the Admiral committing treason," Eli said instead of the much more reasonable question about what she was looking up that he was going to ask. He cringed, his face burning so badly he nearly covered his eyes so he could pretend he was anywhere but there, but stopped himself when he looked down and saw the uniform of the Chiss Ascendancy that he wore.

"At this point, I better be," Faro answered so calmly that Eli didn't at first register what she had said. After that, all he could do was stare at the woman as she worked, his jaw slack and his heart beating increasingly quicker with each passing moment. Thrawn had said he wasn't returning to the Empire, a thing said so casually and moved away from so quickly that it hadn't even really registered until now. Was Thrawn really not returning to the Empire? And if that was so, how did he get the entire crew to go with him? Did they even know?

Just what had Thrawn done?

"What's the Chimaera doing out here, Faro?" Eli finally managed to ask into his own stunned silence, and Faro glanced up at him, her finger still moving over her datapad.

"We came here looking for the Chiss," Faro said slowly, her voice lowering despite the sound of the loadlifter and the moving crates more than enough to keep their conversation unheard by others. "Thrawn had been in contact with them recently and had a general idea of where to find them." She scoffed, rolled her eyes, and tucked her datapad under her arm to give Eli her full attention. "Stumbling on the Grysk out here was entirely accidental. How much has Thrawn told you?"

"Not much…" Eli muttered. "You know how he is. All his attention was on the task at hand." He shrugged. "I know you were in Wild Space before this and found the Grysk out there too."

"That was a detour, actually," Faro said, her features hardening slightly as she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "Kenobi sent us out there. He felt something out there. From halfway across the galaxy. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself."

"That's kind of a weird alliance."

"You're telling me…" Faro muttered as she leaned back against the wall. "But Thrawn struck a deal, so here we are."

"Thrawn struck a deal," Eli said quietly. "That explains why he's here. But not why the Chimaera's here. Not why you're here."

For a long moment, Faro just stared at him, her jaw tightly clenched, her brow drawn and her eyes hard and intense. Then, with a deep, heavy sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Thrawn's leaving his service to the Empire," Faro said, her voice shaking slightly like she didn't know what to think. "He told us about the Grysk, how they'll be a threat to the Empire if they're left unchecked, but they're a current threat to the Chiss, and they need his help."

"He's not wrong," Eli said quietly. "I don't really know the situation in the Ascendancy, but in my time with the Chiss, all we've done is hunt the Grysk." Faro hadn't moved, her eyes fixed on the deck, her hand clenching tightly around her datapad, the same unsettled look of concern on her face. "But…that's not all of it, is it?" Eli prompted, gave a small, tight shake of her head.

"The Grysk being here, this deep in the Empire, with warships and secret bases…" She shook her head. "Thrawn suspected they were here. Learning the Chiss were here made him think they had to be chasing the Grysk, and when he told us his reasons for leaving, an invading alien threat to the Empire was enough to get most of us on board with seeing the evidence for ourselves. He asked us for our help." Faro scoffed and gestured to the crates that the crews were now beginning to crack open. "Seeing what's happening here is enough for us to give it to him, but I didn't think we'd be getting so much more than we bargained for…"

"Imperial aid against the Grysks would be a big help," Eli said, and quickly fell silent when Faro shot him a glare that was more concerned than angry.

"It isn't Imperial aid, Vanto, it's us," Faro snapped. "The Empire didn't approve this. Thrawn isn't leaving the Empire just to fight the Grysk."

"He isn't?" Eli asked, the understanding he felt swiftly dropping away when he realized that there was still something he was missing. "Well, why is he leaving?"

"Commodore," one of the officers called, gesturing her over. "I think you ought to have a look at this."

For a moment, Faro seemed reluctant to move, but then, the concern on her face became hard resolve, and pushing herself off the wall, she motioned for Eli to follow and strode quickly toward the first of the open crates as other crew continued to work unpacking the others. Glancing into the crate, she immediately saw what it was the officer had called her over to see. So did Vanto, who hissed under his breath and pulled up the shipping manifest on his datapad, his eyes swiftly running over the screen as he looked over the information. There was the noted recreational material and foodstuff, but most definitely not noted was the pair of heavy double flared cylinders that looked decidedly military.

Worse, Faro knew exactly what they were for.

"Damn it…" Faro muttered as she reached in and withdrew one of the cylinders, her stomach tying into knots as she looked down at the heavy object in her hands. "This is a component for point defense turbolasers."

"Maybe-"

"No, it is," Faro interrupted Vanto with what would normally be perfectly reasonable speculation.

"And it's a recent model," the officer said as he handed the woman his datapad. "I looked up the serial number. This particular model is only a few months old."

"Thank you, Ensign…" Faro said absently before her attention snapped to the other crates. "I want your crew to tear through every crate in the hold," the Commodore snarled. "Log and separate everything that looks even remotely suspicious. If you aren't sure what it is, assume it's important. Let me know when you're finished, and be thorough, Ensign. Accuracy is more important than speed."

"Yes ma'am," the Ensign said, and with that, Faro turned on her heels and strode out of the ship, Eli following close behind her.

"Commodore, if every one of those crates-" Eli began, but was swiftly silenced when Faro reeled on him.

"I'll fill you in on everything we've been up to since you left on the way to my office," Faro said, an intensity in her voice that hadn't been there before. "Then, we're going to have a talk."

---

It was a lot.

By the time Faro was done recounting their battles with Kenobi's rebel forces, their subsequent alliance, and their foray into Wild Space, where they encountered a Grysk operation involving young Chiss girls, Eli's head was spinning. He was hardly surprised. Thrawn had a talent for unearthing conspiracies and generally making a mess, but hearing about the Grand Admiral being forced to take a stand against Lord Vader himself was almost more than he could handle, but it did drive home that Thrawn really was leaving the Empire. Even if his campaign against the Grysk was for the benefit of the Empire, standing against the Emperor's right hand man would certainly mark him a traitor, no matter his motivations.

Eli couldn't help the shiver than ran up his spine.

"Which brings us to this…" Faro said as she slipped the datacard from her datapad into the reader on her desk, and the holoprojector flicked on, adding a blue glow to the illuminated room which persisted when Faro dimmed the lights. A map of the galaxy projected before them, which swiftly zoomed in on a smaller section of their current location and the surrounding sectors. "We're here," Faro said, a point on the map illuminating in red. "Show me the path the freighter took to get here."

Faro slid her datapad across the table to Eli, the screen displaying a two-dimensional representation of the map projected over the table, and with a nod, Eli quickly drew the pathway, his changes appearing in the projection in green as he entered the data on Faro's device. Taking a moment to check his work, he looked up and found that Faro had paled, her jaw set tightly and her eyes fixed on the map. For a moment, Eli considered giving her his report on the information, like he would have done once when he served aboard the Chimaera. But looking at the Commodore, he knew that wasn't necessary. He had already given Faro this information earlier. Having him put in his own data wasn't for her own information. It was a confirmation of her conclusions.

"I think I know what's happened here," Faro said quietly, just barely above a whisper, and swallowing hard, she took the datapad Eli offered to her and zoomed in on the freighter's first destination, the Kurost sector transfer point, a place that was less than a ten minute jump away from their current location. "This," Faro said, her voice stronger as she pointed to the spot, "is a transfer point exclusively for shipments to the Stardust Project."

"That seems to be coming up a lot today…" Eli muttered. "Thrawn mentioned it earlier," he quickly added when Faro's eyes narrowed. "He found it? He knows what it is?"

"He knows what it is," Faro said flatly, her eye twitching slightly. "We know what it is. He told us. It's…" She paused, thoughtful for a moment before she shook her head. "I mentioned that there was more than one reason he's leaving his service to the Empire. Stardust is that other reason."

"He objects to the project?" Eli asked. "Or to the way the Empire's using its resources?"

"I'm sure he'd tell you if you asked," Faro grumbled. "But it's all of it. Everything about Stardust has crossed a line with the Admiral." Again, Faro's jaw clenched, her gaze falling to the datapad on the desk in front of her before she looked back at Eli, the hazy blue of the projection only making her gaze seem more intense. "That line," she said slowly, quietly, "was so vital that it not be crossed, that the Empire blowing right past it has mobilized Thrawn against Stardust's creation."

Eli was silent, his eyes fixed on the Commodore, and when he began breathing again, his breath came out as a hiss.

"Thrawn isn't leaving the Empire…" Eli said, a hint of wonder and disbelief leaving the man's voice sounding breathless. "He's coming back to fight against it. That's why the rebels are here. Kenobi had said they made a deal, this is the deal?!"

"Rebel assistance in the Chiss' fight against the Grysk," Faro said, a hardness in her tone that Eli thought sounded as bitter as it was mournful. Accustomed to treason, she had said earlier, and this was why. "In exchange, he returns with the rebels and aids them in their fight against the Emperor."

"The Emperor," Eli said, unable to repress the shudder that involuntarily traveled through him. "But not the Empire?"

"Kenobi's not a rebel, he's a usurper," Faro said almost dismissively. "That's what Thrawn thinks, anyway." She tapped the datapad. "But that brings us back around to this. Someone's stealing from Stardust. Someone high ranking or close to someone who is, if it isn't a Grand Admiral who's orchestrating the whole thing…"

"I think it has to be a Grand Admiral, Faro," Eli said almost cautiously, but that reserve vanished quickly when he recognized consuming interest, not anger, in the Commodore's eyes. "There's a lot of secrecy surrounding this project. So much that Thrawn didn't know about it when he was just an Admiral. He had me looking into suspicious supply discrepancies, but even then, it took a while and a lot of digging to even point in the direction of an off the books project."

"And even as a Grand Admiral, he was never given the complete picture," Faro grumbled. "A lot of his information he got from Kenobi. But, I think with the right political connections, he could have known more."

"Connections he doesn't have," Eli said pointedly, and Faro nodded ruefully.

"No, Thrawn doesn't have those connections, but the other Grand Admirals do," Faro added quickly. "And if any one of them objected to the project, for any reason, I don't think it would be very hard to set up a way to siphon off resources from the project from further down the supply chain."

"Like the transfer depot," Eli said. "That, with the G77 encryption, makes for pretty good evidence against one of the other Grand Admirals." He frowned. "I guess the next question is how they did it."

"I don't think that's important…" Faro muttered, the fire going out of her as she slumped back against her seat and looked at the holoprojection. "Not now. Not to me."

"…what is important to you?" Eli ventured cautiously, aware that the question could very well be far more loaded than he knew. From the heaviness of Faro's silence and the way her jaw clenched tightly, Eli knew that to be the case.

"Thrawn promised us evidence that the Empire was under threat by the same aliens that threatened his people," Faro said after a moment of consideration. "That's why we're here, that's how he got us to agree to an unsanctioned mission to bring Imperial assets to aid the Chiss. What we've seen here is more than enough evidence that he was right. The Grysk are here, operating in the Empire, and nobody knows but us." She snatched her datapad off the table with an irritated huff, a swift swipe of her finger across the screen shutting off the holoprojection and returning the office lights to their previous intensity. "That's enough for me to commit my forces to bringing the fight to the Grysk territory and ending their ability to threaten anyone ever again."

"What's important, Vanto," Faro continued, more intensely than before, "is when the Grysk threat is over and Thrawn returns to wage war against the Emperor over Stardust, he may have Imperial allies willing to join him."

"That's not a rebellion," Eli added carefully. "That's a civil war."

"It is…" Faro groaned, running a hand over her face and looking wearier than Eli had ever seen her. "Some of the Chimaera's crew have already said they'd stand with Thrawn against the weapon the Emperor's making." She gave Eli a pointed look. "Hammerly and Pyrondi have been the most vocal about it, but there are others."

"That's hardly surprising," Eli scoffed, and Faro gave him a tight smile for a moment before it faltered.

"All this makes me wonder where I'm going to stand, when the time comes to make my choice…" Faro said quietly, and in the silence that followed, she flashed Eli a tight, uncertain smile. "Was it easy for you?"

"It wasn't easy," Eli said. "I knew what leaving meant. But I trust Thrawn, the same as you, and I think you've already made your choice."

"Oh, you think that, do you?" Faro scoffed, but the faint smile on her lips showed that Vanto had hit the mark, even if she hadn't recognized it until that moment. "It's one thing to go serve the Chiss knowing you're fighting a threat to the galaxy. It's another thing entirely to turn around and fight the Empire I serve."

"Is it?" Eli asked, his eyebrow arching as he studied the warring emotions on the woman's face and body language. "If the Empire, if this project is a threat to everything, how is it any different?"

"…it isn't," Faro whispered, so quietly Eli could barely hear her, and shaking her head, Faro sat up straight, slid the datacard out of the reader on her desk, and stood. "It isn't," she said again, confidence and command returning to her voice, the tension gone from her as if some long-anguished thing had finally been resolved. "Come on. We need to report our findings to the Admiral."

---

Kenobi had assured them that he could share the pathway to the Grysk forward base to all five of the Chiss navigators at once. Ar'alani hadn't liked that idea at all and insisted that no amount of saved time could justify endangering all their Sky Walkers. No amount of assurance was enough to convince the woman that this was anything other than a risky, albeit necessary, procedure, and if they were to do it at all, it would be done the slower and, according to her, safer way.

Kenobi hadn't argued after that, only shrugged and decided that on her ship, they'd do things her way, and that was the end of it. They began with one of the older girls, not the oldest, a valuable anomaly that, at twenty-two years of age, had kept her Third Sight long past the time it usually faded at around fourteen, but an eleven year old who was a bit bolder than some of her younger but stronger sister navigators. When she had come out of the shared trance with the Sith Lord certain she knew the exact pathway to the Grysk base, the others were eager to follow her example, their apprehension at this experiment with the alien sorcerer vanishing with the success of the first girl.

It had gone a long way to easing Ar'alani's misgivings as well, and though she was unwilling to leave the valuable Sky Walkers unsupervised with the alien sorcerer, her attention began to wander.

Specifically in the direction of Thrawn.

They hadn't spoken since they left the observation post, partly because they both seemed uncomfortable with him coming aboard a Chiss warship, given his exile from the Ascendancy so long ago, but also because Ar'alani didn't know what to say to him. There was business, of course, and the current mission at hand, but so much of it was wrapped up in matters that were a great deal more personal, and given that they hadn't had a moment alone, there wasn't an opportunity to freely talk.

Already she had said more than she should have, allowed too many of her emotions to color the interactions between them, despite her best efforts. But now, with the Sky Walkers occupied and the sorcerer deep in Third Sight or whatever wizardry it was he employed…

Thrawn had been in the corner of the room since they arrived, silent as he worked on his datapad, and now, before she could stop herself, Ar'alani strode over, finding that he hadn't been silent at all, but had been whispering to a woman's face upon the screen, and drawing closer, she could hear the words as the woman spoke, though she didn't understand them.

"Mitth'raw'nuruodo," Ar'alani said, and Thrawn responded by holding up his hand to call for silence, his eyes remaining focused on the screen, and Ar'alani felt a flash of irritation. It was rude, of course, a thing that would never have been accepted from a junior officer, and he had always been her junior, though it had been a very long time since he had a place in the Chiss command structure. Thrawn never had any sense of social decorum, and obviously his time away hadn't improved it.

"It looks like Grand Admiral Savit has been on patrol in the area and hunting local pirates," the woman on the screen said. "That would give him the means of contacting a criminal element and overseeing their activities."

"That it would," Thrawn muttered. "Your speculation certainly fits the evidence, though we are still missing vital information. It is too early to draw conclusions."

"What information are we missing?" Faro asked, and behind her, Eli's face popped into view, his brow drawn in slight confusion and deep thought.

"Not all of the freighter's crew is accounted for," Thrawn said. "Food and oxygen consumption records indicate a crew of eight, but only five bodies were found on the observation post." Behind Faro, Eli hissed a curse and disappeared from view, and a wry smile spread across Faro's lips.

"I knew we missed something," Faro drawled. "You think they're still alive?"

"I think it likely," Thrawn said with a shrug. "If they were going to kill them, they would have done so with the others. It is more likely they were relocated for further study and interrogation."

"To their main base," Faro said with a nod. "I suppose we'll find them soon enough."

"That we shall," Thrawn agreed. "Well done, Commodore."

"Thank you, sir. I'll tell Vanto you said so," Faro said, casting a quick glance and the flash of a tight smile over her shoulder. "I'll get the Chimaera ready."

"Thank you, Commodore," Thrawn said, inclining his head. "I will be returning shortly." He shut the datapad off and returned it to his pocket, and when he looked up, he found himself looking directly into the glowing, intense eyes of Ar'alani. Thrawn couldn't help drawing back slightly.

"Are you really returning to the Ascendancy?" Ar'alani asked, her voice quiet to keep their conversation private from the chattering children, and all the more intense for it. "They'll never accept you back," she said without giving him the chance to answer. "You weren't supposed to be gone for so long, Mitth'raw'nuruodo. You were sent to gather information about the Empire, not join them!"

"I was presented an opportunity to study them closer," Thrawn said flatly, and logical as it was, Ar'alani found that it irritated her.

"We needed you," Ar'alani hissed, drawing closer to the man. "I needed you."

"I am returning now," Thrawn muttered almost apologetically, his gaze falling, and Ar'alani scoffed bitterly.

"If they even allow you to return," she said harshly and much colder than she had intended. "The Defense Council may have approved this mission, but the Syndicure believes your exile to be genuine." She grabbed hold of Thrawn's chin, forcing the man to meet her gaze and fully aware how much anger and resentment showed on her face. "Mitth'urf'ianico is still the Mitth Patriarch, and he will never allow you to back to the Ascendancy."

At that, Thrawn's face hardened into something far colder than Ar'alani had ever seen.

"I am Chiss," Thrawn said slowly, his tone glacial and sharp with defiance and pain. "Even if they do not want me to be. Everything I do, the sole reason for my existence, is to defend the Chiss Ascendancy and protect my people. I will do whatever is necessary to achieve that goal, and I will allow nothing and no one to stand in my way. Not the Empire, not the Syndicure. No one."

Thrawn gestured to the girls chatting excitedly amongst each other and the Sith Lord, silent and unmoving with a likewise still girl, her hands clasped in his own as he showed her the way to their common enemy.

"I have joined a foreign military that actively resents aliens," Thrawn continued, the cold edge gone from his voice, but Ar'alani could see the blazing intensity of the man just beneath the surface of his impassive face. "I have made deals with dissidents and sorcerers. I have abandoned my position in the Empire to bring aid to the Chiss, just as I will leave the Chiss once the Grysk are destroyed to put an end to another threat to the Ascendancy." With a slightly shaking breath, Thrawn leaned back against the wall, the fire leaving him as he returned to his usual calm, though he seemed all the more weary for it. "I do not need permission to defend my people," he muttered, and Ar'alani felt all the irritation and anger built up over the past years, both at Thrawn for abandoning the Chiss, and at the Syndicure for exiling him to begin with, fade away.

It was cruel what the Chiss had done to Thrawn, rewarding a decisive victory against a dangerous enemy poised to destroy them with exile, but it was a decision Thrawn had accepted gracefully, without bitterness or resentment, a thing he had described as a tactical decision. Allowing him to serve as the focus of the Syndicure's outrage, he had saved the rest of the forces that had accompanied him on his preemptive assault against the Grysk that had caught and destroyed the entirety of the invading fleet.

The Grysk had been meddling in Chiss society, manipulating the families into disputes and conflict that left them poised for civil war, and Thrawn, disconnected from politics, had seen right through the deception, had done…something. Exactly what, Ar'alani didn't know and hadn't been able to find out, but it had prevented the initial strike of war among the families, long enough for Thrawn to learn, adjust, and mobilize a definitive and wholly unauthorized strike against the enemy. It had worked, but it also gave members of the Syndicure ammunition to take Thrawn down, a thing that some had been trying to do for years, and Thrawn had allowed it.

He had said once that what happened to him didn't matter, and looking at him now, Ar'alani saw that, after all these years, after the betrayal of exile, after his rank, his ship, his status in his family had been stripped from him because he had been the one to spearhead the force that saved the Ascendancy, that hadn't changed.

Before she realized what she was doing, before she could stop herself, Ar'alani reached out and stroked Thrawn's cheek, and felt a stab of sympathetic pain when the man flinched at the touch, an echo of how he had been when they were both much younger. Thrawn could withstand pain, the cuts and bruising that came with rigorous combat training, but it was tenderness that made him withdraw like he had been struck. It had taken time to get him used to it, and now, after so many years away, he was unaccustomed to it again.

The last time he had been touched affectionately, Ar'alani thought, was likely the last time they had been together.

"Welcome back, Thrawn…" Ar'alani whispered, her thumb running slowly over his high cheekbone, and with a soft, shuddering sigh, Thrawn closed his eyes and tentatively placed his hand over hers.

"Well, isn't this sweet…" drawled a smooth voice in accented Cheunh, and Ar'alani swiftly drew back and spun around to find herself looking into glowing golden eyes and the smug, knowing smirk of the Sith Lord. "Oh, please," Kenobi said quickly as he raised his hands. "Don't let me interrupt you. Go on."

"Is your task complete?" Thrawn asked, as even and unaffected as ever, and Obi-Wan frowned.

"Of course it's done, I told you it wouldn't take long," the Sith Lord scoffed. "Are you done?" he asked swiftly, his tone teasing again as he looked Ar'alani over. "Because if you need an hour or two, I can always head back to Chimaera and get the Chiss girls over there up to speed before I bring them over here."

"We have a mission to complete," Thrawn said before Ar'alani had a chance to answer. "And for now, the girls on the Chimaera will remain there."

"And why is that?" Ar'alani asked sharply, her eyes narrowing as she looked away from the Sith Lord to the other Admiral. "They have been away from their people long enough. They should not remain aboard an alien ship when a Chiss ship is right here!"

"We are about to head into combat," Thrawn said calmly. "Were something to happen to the Steadfast, the Ascendancy would lose fifteen Sky Walkers instead of only five."

"And if your Empire ship is destroyed, the Ascendancy loses ten!" Ar'alani shot back.

"Yes…" was Thrawn's even reply. "But that is not all of them. Moreover, the Chimaera is considerably larger with correspondingly stronger defensive capabilities." For a moment, it looked like Ar'alani would argue, but with a huff of irritation, she crossed her arms over her chest and nodded.

"I suppose it's sensible to keep the children divided, in case of the worst…" Ar'alani grumbled. "Very well. I trust you have a plan?"

"I do," Thrawn said, his hands folding behind his back as he nodded to the curious Sky Walkers and headed toward the door. "Come. I will tell you of it on the way to my shuttle."

---

It took two hours for the Chiss analysis teams to catalogue and pack up everything in both the observation post and the mobile waystation. After that, the Steadfast and the Chimaera traveled through hyperspace together, both ships ordered to maintain full combat readiness for the duration of the trip. Kenobi had estimated the trip to take three hours, but with the route having come from the mind of a scared seven year old girl, there was a fair bit of guesswork involved in that estimate. With combat with a Grysk force a certainty at the end of their journey and no real way to be certain of when they would arrive, the crews remained on high alert, ready to take the Grysk force by surprise.

So when both ships dropped out of hyperspace only an hour into the trip and were met with nothing but the blackness of space and a small, distant sun, Faro was certain their prodigious Sith navigator had made a mistake.

"Unrecorded system," Hammerly called from her sensor station. "Eight planets, all uninhabitable. No habitable moons detected. No waystations, no fueling depots, no…wait," she stopped herself, her eyes narrowing as she squinted at her board. "Two ships detected, sir. I think one of them is the ship that got away from us."

"Message coming through from the Chiss ship, sir," the communications officer reported, and Thrawn absently gestured to him to patch them through.

"Our Sky Walker doesn't know why we've dropped out of hyperspace," Ar'alani's voice came over the bridge com in Cheunh. "She says this isn't the base and there are no obstructions that could have pulled us out."

"I pulled us out," Obi-Wan replied in Cheunh as he stood from the pilot's seat and strode down the command walkway to where Thrawn sat in his command chair. There was a sharp, angry hiss from the com.

"If you've done something to my Sky Walker, sorcerer," Ar'alani growled, "so help me, there won't be a safe place for you to hide in-"

"The ship that escaped us earlier is here," Thrawn interrupted, his finger lightly tracing the com device on the arm of his chair. "I need a moment to evaluate the situation. Standby, Admiral." Without waiting for her response, Thrawn cut the com and glanced up at the Sith Lord that now stood beside him. "You can track other Force sensitives through hyperspace?" he asked quietly, switching back to Basic.

"It's not as impressive as you're making it sound," Obi-Wan grumbled. "We're traveling together and we're walking the same path through the Force. It isn't difficult to suggest a detour." He gestured toward the viewport. "Hammerly's right, by the way. That's the ship that got away from us."

Drumming his fingers on his armrest, Thrawn looked at the tactical display, and sure enough, two ships hung in space before them, tethered together bow to stern, one of them an exact match for the ship that had escaped them before. A slight, amused smile appeared on the Admiral's face as he read the data, his gaze flicking between the viewport, the readouts, and the tactical display.

"It is a trap," Thrawn quietly declared after a minute of silent thought. "This is where they believed the interrogation of our Grysk prisoners would lead us."

"So they have a second base?" Faro asked, frowning as she came to stand beside the command chair and leaning over to look at Thrawn's personal displays.

"It is likely they have several smaller outposts," Thrawn said absently. "They are likely not prepared to move in force against the Empire. They will want to keep their footprint in the region small to avoid detection. Several smaller operations would be more difficult to detect than one larger, localized base."

"So attacking their main base would be pointless," Faro grumbled. "We can't get them all if they're spread out over several locations. Unless…" Faro said slowly, biting down on her lip as she looked out the viewport at the glint of the distant ships reflecting the light of the system's solitary sun. "This is a trap," she repeated. "The ship that escaped us must have informed the others of what happened there. They thought it possible we would find this place, so they set a trap to destroy anyone that followed."

"Very good…" Thrawn said quietly. "And?"

"And…" Faro repeated, looking back over at the tactical. "And when they don't destroy us, because they won't," she said, flashing Thrawn a tight smile, "then they will be forced to send whatever resources they have available to sterilize the area." She grinned wider when a faint, approving smile appeared on the Admiral's face. "As you said, they want to avoid detection. Destroying anyone who finds them would be a priority."

"Indeed…" Thrawn said. "So we may conclude that they are carefully monitoring this area." He glanced up at Obi-Wan. "Are they Grysk here?"

"They are," Obi-Wan said with a malicious grin and pointed out the viewport. "There. Above the ships."

"You are certain?"

"I am," Obi-Wan swiftly replied. "But the real question here is if you even want to step into this trap."

"There are few traps that cannot be turned against their creator," Thrawn said almost absently as he looked at the tactical, and his attention was swiftly drawn to the Sith Lord when the man put a hand on his shoulder.

"That isn't what I'm saying," Obi-Wan said, quiet and slow. "We have the location of their main base of operations. We can walk into the trap here, or we can head to the base and ambush them."

"Provided they're even there," Faro said grimly. "We don't know how many outposts there are, and given what we've already done, I doubt they're leaving them undefended. I think no matter what we do, we're still going to have to lure the rest of their forces to us."

"So it's a matter of taking these two ships," Obi-Wan said, "or taking the base. Given how eager these idiots have been to blow themselves up, I don't think we'll be able to take both."

"Indeed…" Thrawn said slowly, his fingers steepled together as he looked out the viewport at the glint of the system's distant sun off the hulls of the tethered ships. "The base likely has more information," Thrawn said after a moment of silence, "but this place is already set up to observe our activities. We will remain here, and turn this trap to our advantage."

"But…" Faro began, her brow furrowing in confusion. "The base probably has more information. You love information."

"I do find it useful…" Thrawn muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly and a hard edge in the lines of his face. "But I will not choose the possibility of information over the guarantee of the Grysk's destruction."

"So we walk into the trap," Kenobi grumbled, and Thrawn nodded, his fingers tapping on the com device on his chair.

"We walk into the trap," the Admiral repeated, his fingers hovering over the com for a moment before he stood, forgetting the com as he strode down the command walkway, Faro and Kenobi following close behind him. "But first…" he muttered, his eyes scanning the lines of displays down in the crew pits. "First, we identify where their communications triad is, and make certain it is transmitting before we destroy them."

"You really think they took the time to set up a communications relay?" Kenobi asked.

"I think they had to," Faro answered, and out of the corner of her eye, she could see the Admiral's lips twitch into a small smile. "What happens here will determine their next course of action. They need to be able to see what happens."

"They could have a cloaked observer like before," Obi-Wan countered, and Faro frowned, considered, and shook her head.

"They might, but I don't think so," the Commodore muttered. "It leaves too much to chance. If the cloaked ship is destroyed, they won't know what happened."

"But they would know that something happened," Kenobi said. "That would be enough to send a force here to destroy everything in the area."

"The Grysks do not leave things to chance, if it can be avoided," Thrawn said quietly, stopping beside the sensor station and peering down at Hammerly's board. "But more than that, they are astute observers, wishing to see and know all. Make no mistake, they have a triad here."

"So, what exactly are we looking for?" Hammerly asked. "Does it share the same profile as the device we took from Batuu? Because I'm not seeing anything like that."

"Maybe we're too far out," Pyrondi said from her station on the other side of the walkway. "If we're not going to move closer and have a better look, we should send the TIE's in for a closer sweep."

"We're trying to keep a low profile," Hammerly said with a roll of her eyes. "TIE squadrons aren't typically subtle."

"Not typically," Thrawn said slowly. "But if we were able to use our tractor beams to fling the fighters toward the station, they-"

"They moved," Obi-Wan muttered, his eyes fixed on the forward viewport for a moment before he looked up at the Admiral. "The conjoined ships," the Sith Lord clarified. "They-"

"They moved," Thrawn repeated absently as he too stared out the viewport, his fingers drumming slowly on the hilt of the blaster strapped to his belt. "Pyrondi, launch a squadron of TIE Fighters to intercept position and order Major Carvia to prepare a boarding party," he ordered as he turned on his heel and strode back toward his command chair. "Open a hailing channel," Thrawn commanded as he sat. "No encryption."

"We aren't going to try to study them?" Faro asked as she followed, leaving the Sith alone to stare out the viewport in the middle of the command walkway. "We all know we're walking into a trap. Do you really want to walk into it without learning all we can?"

"We know everything we need," Thrawn said quietly. "All the information is here. We know they must have a triad. There must be equal distance between the poles for the triad to be functional, and the rotations of the moons and planets in the system exclude them from being the anchoring points of any of the poles." He looked up at Faro. "Which means?"

"Hailing channel is open and ready, Admiral," the com officer reported while Faro stood in silence, utterly failing to come up with the answer to Thrawn's question.

"Which means," Thrawn repeated, "that the triad poles must be here, either on the ships or tethered just outside them. Two poles," he said. "And the third?"

"The third's on the warship," Kenobi answered. "The triad is activated either by moving the warship into place, or by increasing the rotational speed of the conjoined ships to draw the poles in, if they're outside."

"That is my assessment as well," Thrawn said, leaning back in his seat and tapping the com unit on the arm of his chair. "Unidentified ships, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn of the Galactic Empire," Thrawn called sternly. "You are trespassing in Imperial space. I order you to power down all weapons and defenses and surrender for inspection."

"You aren't actually expecting an answer, are you?" Kenobi asked when Thrawn muted the com, leaned forward, and watched the TIE Fighters fly past the viewport and move into an intercept position between the Chimaera and the conjoined ships.

"Of course I am," Thrawn said calmly, a faint smile on his lips as his fingers drummed on the arm of his command chair. "Though not immediately. Not without the proper incentive. Grysk artwork shows a tendency to be especially eager to savor moments of their own triumph. A few starfighters and two warships out at this distance hardly qualify." He paused, his fingers stopping to hover over the com. "Helm, move us toward the conjoined ships,"

"Yes, sir…" the helm responded, the stars outside shifting slightly as the Star Destroyer moved slowly forward, the TIE Fighters adjusting their positions to keep their intercept vector, which moved them well within firing range of the hidden Grysk warship. With a quiet order to hold their position, Thrawn unmuted the com, once again opening the hailing channel.

"This is Grand Admiral Thrawn," the Chiss said again. "If you do not answer in the next thirty seconds, we will launch a boarding party to take your ships by force of arms." He closed the hailing channel, officially ending the conversation, and with a few taps on his armchair com, opened a new call. "Major Carvia, are your stormtroopers ready?" Thrawn asked.

"They are, Admiral," the Major's voice came over the speaker.

"Very good," Thrawn said, his gaze again returning to stare intently at the ships in the distance. "Launch shuttle." A moment later, and the troop transport shot past the Chimaera's bow, the Star Destroyer lagging slowly behind it as they again moved closer. "Watch closely," Thrawn said quietly to Faro and Kenobi. "The chance to destroy a group of Imperial Stormtroopers may be enough incentive to lure them into action."

"Why would it be?" Kenobi scoffed, and Thrawn was still for a moment before he glanced up at the Sith Lord. "They're just soldiers. With two warships just outside of range, why would they go for such a small target? It's not exactly the triumph you're talking about."

"…perhaps not…" Thrawn muttered, his eyes darting over the displays when he saw that nothing had changed. The Grysks weren't playing his game, and they certainly weren't taking the bait.

"So we give them a greater incentive," Faro said sharply, reaching down to the com on the command chair and keying it on. "Signal to the shuttle," she called over her shoulder to the com station, a tight smile on her lips as her eyes briefly met the Sith Lord's. "Encryption G77." Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Thrawn look at her, a frown on his face but he moved his hand away from his command chair's com unit, effectively giving her permission to open the channel she requested.

"G77," the com officer called. "Ready, Commodore."

"Shuttle commander, this is Commodore Faro," she called, swallowing the nervousness she felt under Thrawn's unwavering gaze and again flashing a tight smile at the Sith Lord. "Hold position off target. Lord Vader is coming to take personal command of the boarding force." There was a brief moment of silence, and Faro shut her eyes tightly, her breath held as she hoped that Carvia would pick up on what was going on. He was usually quick to follow when there was a deception at play, but if he didn't-

"Shuttle command, acknowledged," Carvia's voice came back, calm and even, and Faro breathed a sigh of relief. "What's the ETA?"

"We're prepping the shuttle now," Faro replied. "He'll be there in ten."

"You know…" Kenobi drawled as she tapped the com off. "I've got to say, if you're going to be insubordinate, it may as well be for a play like that."

"It looked like they needed some additional motivation," Faro said, trying to sound flippant but keenly aware she sounded as stiff as her posture, her eyes trained not on the Sith, but on the intense, unwavering gaze of the Grand Admiral. "You said they're observers," she said tightly. "If they've been watching the Empire for any time at all, they know who Lord Vader is."

"And he did blunder into their operation on Mokivj," Kenobi added. "I'm sure they have a way of knowing what happened there. If they didn't know who he was before, they certainly know now." He flashed Faro a sly grin. "So you offer them the Emperor's right hand as bait. I like it. It's bold, especially since he's not here."

"I don't think he needs to be," Faro shot back, flashing the Sith Lord her own tight grin. "They've cracked our upper level encryption, they've no reason to suspect we're lying. And besides, I doubt they'd be able to tell one red lightsaber wielding maniac from another."

Thrawn, his eyes fixed on Faro, now turned his gaze on Obi-Wan.

"…oh," Kenobi said flatly. "Oh, I'm the bait now?"

"We cannot send an unmanned shuttle," Thrawn said calmly. "And the conjoined ships are likely heavily trapped, in the event they are successfully boarded. Traps that you will be able to successfully detect." It was a statement, not a question, and Kenobi sighed, his fingers running through his hair as he looked out the viewport at the careful trap Thrawn was crafting.

"Don't the Grysk rig just about everything to explode?" Kenobi grumbled, his eye twitching as he looked back at the Admiral.

"Indeed, they do," Thrawn replied casually. "We will be able to disrupt their ability to activate such a device."

"I'm pretty sure jamming their signals only works if they're trying to remote detonate the damn thing," Obi-Wan countered. "If they activate it from onboard the ship-"

"They won't," Faro interrupted. "The Grysk aren't on the conjoined ships. They have a client or slave species stationed there, and they won't trust that task to slaves."

"Explain," Thrawn said, and when Faro looked at the Admiral, there was no mistaking the smile on his lips.

"They're sitting ducks out there, sir," Faro said. "Tied bow to stern like that, there's no chance for escape. Based on what we know about the Grysk, I doubt they'd put themselves in that position."

"That was my conclusion as well," Thrawn said, the satisfied smile remaining on his lips as he shifted his attention to the Sith Lord. "The remaining crew from the freighter should be aboard. You need to take them alive, if possible, and I will need to maintain an audio and visual connection with you. Are you able to do this?"

"I mean, yes," Obi-Wan said with a roll of his eyes. "But I'll need to change first."

"Excellent," Thrawn said, tapping his fingers on his datapad. "Your shuttle will be waiting for you when you are ready.

---

As it turned out, whoever was handling this operation had heard of Darth Vader.

As Kenobi flew the Lambda shuttle that had been prepared for him in toward the conjoined ships, the troop transport falling in behind him and the TIE Fighters taking up escort positions, the conjoined ships began to move. Not quickly, by any means, but their rotation had noticeably increased. The cloaked warship, it seemed, had been in position the entire time, and now that suitable bait had been laid in the careful trap Thrawn was crafting, the Grysk were finally ready to step into it, reeling in the outreaching triad poles in order to activate their communications relay.

And, with everything finally in place, with the triad transmitting everything that was about to unfold to the Grysk in charge, the Chimaera opened fire on the cloaked warship, his helmet erupting in feedback status as the Star Destroyer jammed all signals to prevent the destruction of the conjoined ships.

The assault was withering, every turbolaser cannon and weapon array on the Star Destroyer pouring fire into the enemy ship, located above the conjoined ships as Kenobi had said, and its location finetuned to perfect precision with the calculation of where the other two triad poles rested to open the relay. The TIE escort scattered and joined the assault at the same time the Chiss warship moved into position and added their fire to the Chimaera's, and coming from the low power necessary to remain successfully cloaked, the Grysk warship was too slow to power up to combat readiness to mount a successful defense.

Right before the warship violently exploded, Kenobi saw the supply ship that had escaped them before break away, and this time, with the TIE Fighters in close pursuit, it didn't escape again.

With things out here well in hand, Obi-Wan flew his shuttle in toward the conjoined ships and swiftly set about detonating the explosive charges that the docking hatches had been rigged with, the first of many traps he had expected to find aboard this alien trap. It only took a moment for him to dock the shuttle and disembark into the dimly lit halls of the ship, the troop transport following closely behind him, and within minutes, the hallway was filled with lines of disciplined Stormtroopers awaiting their orders.

It made him regret not bringing along Cody for the excursion when the Stormtrooper commander, Carvia, approached him.

"Lord Vader," the man said with a nod of his head and a particular note of amusement in his voice.

"And just when I thought things couldn't get more awkward…" Kenobi grumbled. "You better hope I'm better to my men than Vader is. Thrawn said he murdered his entire compliment on Mokivj."

"It wouldn't be the first time that's happened," Carvia said as he fell into step beside the Sith Lord as he began making his way into the ship, his Stormtroopers following close behind. "The First Legion is the most prestigious division in the Empire, but its turnover is extremely high. It's not just because they're assigned the most dangerous work."

"Man, that Empire of yours really values its soldiers, huh?" Kenobi said, stopping suddenly when he felt the warning pull of the Force, his helmet's display running a swift analysis on the surrounding area before he found the trap he had sensed. "Things will be different when I'm in charge."

"Things are different under the Admiral," Carvia said, motioning his techs forward when he saw the trap ahead, and the two troopers swiftly set to work disarming it. "For a trap, it's actually pretty obvious, isn't it? Did they actually think they'd manage to catch us with this?"

"I can't imagine they had much time to set this up," Obi-Wan said, continuing further down the hall when the troopers already called that the trap had been disabled. "It took your boys no time at all to disarm that one. Even if they're very good at what they do, that speed just screams bad construction."

"So, you thinking quantity over quality?" Carvia asked, and when the Sith nodded, he groaned. "This is going to be a pain in the ass, isn't it?"

"It's certainly looking that way," Kenobi grumbled and again stopped, pointing to another trap that was even more obvious than the last.

That trap disabled, they continued on deeper into the ship, a slow, painstaking process as they stopped ever minute or so to clear trap after trap, most of the easy to disable and obvious to detect, some meant to deal with a single intruder, while others appeared rigged to clear entire hallways. Nearly forty minutes later, they neared the center of the ship when Kenobi stopped suddenly, the Force running cold and churning with a distinct pull that made him uneasy. There were lifeforms ahead, yes, injured and afraid and desperate, but there was something more, something moving the Force in a way that was both foreign and extremely familiar.

"Kenobi," Thrawn said in Cheunh, his voice came through the Sith's helmet speaker. "I have you patched into the conversation with Admiral Ar'alani. Report."

"We've got the traps cleared…" Obi-Wan said slowly, the Stormtroopers at his back waiting restlessly to continue. "I sense living beings ahead."

"You have found the prisoners?" Thrawn asked.

"Yeah, but that's not what's important here," Kenobi snarled, inching forward and peering down another long dark hallway and motioning for the Stormtroopers to follow. "There's something else."

"The Grysk client species?" Ar'alani asked.

"Maybe?" Kenobi said with a shrug, moving slowly down the hallway toward a large open hatch at the far end, the cold stir in the Force growing sharper with each step. "I don't know who or what they are, but I do know that they're mind readers."

"Are you certain?" Thrawn asked quietly, and the Sith hissed under his breath and rolled his eyes.

"I'm sort of the preeminent authority on mind reading, Thrawn, yes, I know what it feels like."

"Then we must take additional precautions," Thrawn said quickly. "When you-"

"Just a moment, sweetheart," Kenobi interrupted. "You didn't just send me here as bait, you sent me to handle this situation, yes? Yes," he answered before Thrawn had the chance to. "So we're handling it my way." There was a pause, long enough that he thought Thrawn had cut the com or muted him out of the conversation.

"…I need the prisoners alive," Thrawn finally said.

"I'll do you one better than that," Kenobi drawled, pointing to order the Stormtroopers to take up position along the last stretch of hallway, and drawing up tall, he strode toward the open hatch. "You wanted access to my visual feed, you have it, now sit back and watch daddy work."

He saw them before he even entered the room, six aliens he had never seen before, their skin a wrinkled mess of dark red and dirty white, with black eyes and a lipless slit of a mouth, and over the com, he heard Ar'alani hiss a curse. Two of the aliens faced away from him, blasters in hand and pointing them at presumably the missing freighter's remaining crew, eight humans and one Dashade, all of them looking like they were in bad shape. The other four aliens faced him, one of them holding a blaster in his hand, the muzzle pointed at the ground and decidedly non-threatening.

But it didn't matter.

With an upward sweep of his hand, all six aliens were torn from the ground and slammed hard into the ceiling before they hung suspended in midair, their blasters clattering harmlessly to the ground. The one closest to him twitched, his hand tightening around something, and Obi-Wan reached out with his other hand, the Force swiftly heeding his command, and the alien's eyes widened, his entire body beginning to shake as his fingers were pried open.

"Now, now, none of that…" Kenobi chided, the small cylindrical device gently plucked from the alien's hand and floated into the Sith Lord's waiting grasp just as the Stormtroopers rushed into the room, blasters raised, and froze near the doorway when they spotted the aliens struggling and thrashing futilely in midair. Cautiously, Major Carvia crept up to stand beside the Sith Lord, his blaster raised and pointed at the nearest alien.

"We heard a lot of noise coming from in here…" Carvia said quietly. "We thought you might have needed assistance, but…well, I honestly don't know why I expected anything else." Cautiously, he looked the Sith Lord over. "You alright?"

"Never better," Obi-Wan said, holding up the small device he had taken from the alien. "Looks like our friends here were planning on throwing a party."

"Is that a detonator?" Carvia asked, gesturing for his men to secure the area, and the rest of the Stormtroopers cautiously filed into the room, detaining the missing freighter's crew and very deliberately avoiding the center of the room where the suspended aliens continued to struggle.

"That's certainly what it looks like," Kenobi muttered. "It would track with their behavior up to this point, anyway."

"Want us to take them into custody?"

"Not yet…" Obi-Wan said absently as he slowly approached the lead alien, the creature lowering slightly so the tips of his boots just barely scraped against the ground. "These aliens are telepathic. Before you go about handling them, I want to find out how." He handed the detonator to Carvia and gestured absently toward the weary, beaten humans and the singular Dashade. "Might as well start dragging these guys back to the Chimaera so Thrawn can get a crack at them. I'll be alright here."

"Can't imagine the Admiral would like it if I left you alone on a ship that's trapped to hell," Carvia said as he holstered his blaster. "My men can handle the prisoner transport. I'm going to stick around here with you. Just in case."

"Do what you want," Kenobi said with a shrug as he turned away from the man and stepped up closer to the now frantically struggling alien, his black eyes wide with fear. "Just keep it down while I'm working…"

Carvia didn't need to be told twice, and a minute later, the sounds of the Stormtroopers handling their captives grew instantly quieter, the only sound a muffled shuffling as they silently escorted the group out of the room, leaving Kenobi alone with the Stormtrooper commander and the aliens, silent save for the scratching rasp of an alien language as they continued to struggle against invisible bonds.

"Sorcerer," Ar'alani's voice came through Kenobi's helmet speaker. "We know these aliens."

"You do?"

"We do," Thrawn replied, his voice grim. "They are called the Agbui. Once, many years ago, they attempted to orchestrate a civil war among the Chiss. We later learned that they did this at the behest of the Grysk, not just to us, but to other civilizations where they managed to successfully incite war that destroyed them."

"So not slaves of the Grysk, but allies?" Kenobi asked.

"It's difficult to say," Ar'alani said. "We know very little about them. All our information comes from first hand accounts of the Chiss who had direct dealings with them, politicians and mid-level family officials, for the most part, a farming family and an exceptionally foolish mid-ager. And since the Agbui were actively manipulating them, most of that information isn't exactly reliable."

"One Agbui body was recovered for dissection and study," Thrawn added. "Beyond that, we have had no contact with them."

"Well, let's add a bit to that limited knowledge…" Obi-Wan drawled, the alien's arm shaking as it rose against his will, and Obi-Wan pressed his hand against the Agbui's, the black eyes growing wider and more fearful as the Force rushed around them. This alien was telepathic, though it seemed as if the ability relied entirely on touch. Beyond that, there was nothing remarkable about this creature's connection to the Force. The only thing he could feel the alien gleaning from him were emotions and basic desires, a thing that made the creature renew its struggle, twisting and flailing in a futile attempt to get away from the Sith Lord.

Which was reasonable, he supposed. Obi-Wan knew very well that a baseline reading like this alien was capable of would show only darkness; hatred and pain so overwhelming it flooded the senses.

And that led to the imbalance that made it so very easy for him to effortlessly slip into a being's mind.

What was most satisfying about this one was that this alien was telepathic, familiar with the push and pull of thoughts and feelings, knew very well the feel of entering a mind and claiming another's emotions and desires. So when the Agbui felt the same happening to him, the fear and hopelessness and despair that streaked through the Force was the most intoxicating the Sith Lord had felt in a long while.

However, when he peeled back the layers of the alien's mind and looked within, there was a disappointing lack of things to see. Unlike the Grysk he had ripped through earlier, the Agbui had little to offer in terms of new information, but what he did have to offer was perspective. Things he had seen through Grysk eyes took on a new color through the lens of the more emotional Agbui. The Grysk manipulated, threatened and coerced in order to maintain dominion and gather information, but the Agbui provided the method through which that became possible. Not new information. They had already known the Grysk employed client species to do their bidding. But that information could be useful to Thrawn, who found use in the smallest things.

"Admiral," Eli's voice came over Kenobi's helmet com, pulling him out of his plunge into the alien's mind. "I was going over the list of the freighter's inventory again, and something stood out."

"Something other than stolen turbolaser components?" Thrawn asked, and Eli chuckled softly in response.

"Something other than that, yes," Eli said. "The manifest includes shipments of blosfly extract, which is used in the creation of low-cost rations for a number of species, but a small number of species considers it a delicacy." He paused, and even from this distance, Kenobi could feel the tremor of satisfaction pierce the cold fear in the Force. "Dashades are on that list."

"I see…" Thrawn said quietly. "So the freighter's crew are complicit in the theft."

"That tells you nothing you didn't know before," Ar'alani scoffed. "And that information is entirely irrelevant to the task at hand."

"Perhaps…" Thrawn muttered. "Perhaps not. Either way, the information will prove useful in my future interrogation of the prisoners."

"Sorcerer," Ar'alani said sternly. "Have you discovered anything?"

"The Agbui are sent by the Grysk as the vanguards in their conquests," Kenobi said flatly, his focus sliding between the conversation in his ear and the now pliant, dazed mind of the alien as he continued to rift through it. "They use telepathic abilities to learn how a people works, and through that knowledge, the Grysk are able to manipulate entire governments, either into their service, or into their own destruction."

"As they are attempting with us…" Ar'alani said, a hard, vicious growl in her voice.

"Just how bad are things in the Ascendancy?" Thrawn asked quietly, and Ar'alani gave a short, dismissive hiss.

"Bad enough…" she grumbled. "Things were fine for a time after you left, but we have since begun to fracture again."

"Civil war?" Thrawn asked, and there was a brief, tense silence from the Chiss Admiral.

"It is certainly heading in that direction," Ar'alani finally said. "But it's worse than before. Before, they only turned the families against each other. Now, I suspect that some of the families have been manipulated into serving the Grysk directly."

"Is that so…" Thrawn muttered coldly, more a statement than a question, and one that needed no reply. "Then we will deal with them when we arrive in the Ascendancy," Thrawn said, a sharpness in his tone that broke through his usual calm. "But for now, Obi-Wan, you must return to the Chimaera. Do you need assistance to bring the Agbui prisoners with you?"

"I will take custody of the Agbui," Ar'alani said sharply. "I can send a team immediately to-"

"We do not have the time," Thrawn interrupted. "The Grysk will attempt to destroy this station, and us along with it. We must begin the preparations to defeat the trap that is incoming. When the current mission concludes, I will be more than happy to transfer the Agbui to the Steadfast."

For a long moment, there was silence, long enough that Kenobi once again turned his attention back to the captive, though no longer struggling Agbui and once again began raking through his mind, the creature moaning pitifully and black eyes rolling back as the sharpness of the Dark Side effortlessly sliced through emotions and memory.

"You believe they will launch a trap?" Ar'alani finally asked, any insult she might have felt carefully put away. "You don't believe they will come themselves?"

"They will indeed bring the remainder of their force here, yes," Thrawn said. "But not yet. First, they will attempt to purge the area. They will arrive here afterwards to confirm the destruction."

"You're certain?" Ar'alani asked, and Kenobi chuckled when he felt the slight, knowing smirk on the Grand Admiral's lips in the brief silence that followed.

"I am," Thrawn replied. "As are you. Such a tactic has been used extensively by the Grysk in our last conflict with them, as you know."

"That I do…" Ar'alani muttered. "Alright, Thrawn. What's the plan?"

"We will go over it once Obi-Wan returns to the Chimaera," Thrawn said. "Obi-Wan, do you need assistance to transport the prisoners?"

"Nah…" Obi-Wan said flippantly, a swift gesture of his hand dropping the Agbui to the ground and they slowly rose to shaking legs and swayed where they stood. "I do believe they're willing to walk themselves into their cells."

"Very good," Thrawn said quietly. "I expect you on the bridge within an hour so we may begin preparations for the next phase of battle."

"I'll be there sooner than that," Kenobi said, and with a casual gesture, the Agbui began shuffling toward the door, Carvia falling in behind them, his weapon pointed at the oblivious aliens as they made their way through the ship to the waiting transport.

---

Having grown restless aboard her ship sitting flightless in the belly of another ship, a sensation she didn't at all appreciate, Hera Syndulla left the Ghost to go exploring while Kanan, Ezra and Sabine trained to keep their mind off things. After their rendezvous with the Chiss, they were projected to be in hyperspace for a full ten days at the very least as they journeyed through the Unknown Regions to the Chiss Ascendancy, and even when she was at the helm of her own ship, Hera never liked long periods of hyperspace travel.

There was nothing like flying, nothing she loved better in the entire galaxy, but being in hyperspace was much like being on the ground. And when she wasn't the one flying, it was even worse. There was a feel to the Ghost. There was a feel to every ship, really, but her ship had a pulse, a lifeblood and breath that she could feel with its every move, even in those long hours of tedious hyperspace travel. But Chimaera, massive beyond measure, felt robotic, almost hollow despite the enormous drives and systems powering it. She couldn't get a feel for it, couldn't feel the rhythm and flow of it that she knew existed, and that bothered her more than she cared to admit in her first few days sealed inside the massive hangar bay.

She finally couldn't take it any longer, and so, she wandered off to get a feel for the capital ship that nearly spelled doom for the entire rebellion.

She had armed herself before she left, of course, though several offers made by Kanan, Ezra, and Sabine to accompany her were all rejected. It wasn't that she didn't want their company, but ships and flying was a thing she understood in a way they didn't, and this was something she was going to have to do alone if she wanted to really get the understanding she wanted.

She didn't trust the Imperials, not the officers or the Stormtroopers that patrolled the halls, though the Seventh Fleet insignia they all wore on their left shoulder remained a reminder that they – all of them – were loyal to Thrawn. She had expected more than once to be turned away from any number of places that she wished to go for any number of reasons, be they restricted, high clearance areas or the locations of the vital inner workings of the ship, or simply a common area for the officers or soldiers that they were uncomfortable with her entering. But she encountered no resistance at all, every Stormtrooper guard or officer checkpoint standing aside and allowing her access wherever she wished to go.

Thrawn had said they would have full access to the ship, a thing she had tested with Kanan before when they had wandered up to the bridge, but Hera felt that the seat of the ship's commander was far less vulnerable and much more intimate than the inner workings of the Star Destroyer. And yet, every guard, every sentry let her pass by. Even when she wandered into the operation and maintenance compartments of the engines and the walkways high above the hyperdrive, she was only given a cursory, polite reminder to be careful.

Which was where she noticed the problem.

Hera had been around ships her whole life, began flying far younger than most, the need to be in flight such a strong, innate compulsion that it flowed through her with her blood, as much a part of her as her heart and lungs. And in all that time, she knew that even in a ship this big – especially in a ship this big – that a hyperdrive that emitted so little heat as the Chimaera's did had been inactive for hours. Which made no sense. They were supposed to be on the way to the Unknown Regions. After they rendezvoused with the Chiss ship running a mission in the Empire, they were supposed to head directly toward the Ascendancy, stopping only to reorient their navigation as Thrawn had said in the debriefing. They certainly wouldn't be stopping long enough for the hyperdrive to go cold.

Unless the rendezvous had taken longer than expected. Or more likely, Hera thought with a grimace, something had gone wrong. She had the distinctive impression that Thrawn, like Kenobi, was the sort to find trouble no matter where he went.

With a sinking feeling in her stomach, Hera strode out of the hyperdrive compartment and toward the bridge, cursing herself for not spending her first few days aboard really getting a feel for the Star Destroyer. She had tried to stay inside the Ghost as much as possible, the discomfort of their surroundings and the distinct unease she found with their current situation keeping her from properly exploring before now, and she felt it now. By remaining on her ship, that space between Chimaera and herself prevented her from feeling the rhythm and flow of the ship through the deck, the thrum of the engines and the low frequency hum of the hyperdrive, which would have been so very different, so very unfamiliar in such a massive vessel.

She felt blind.

She didn't know what she was expecting to see when she stepped out of the turbolift and on to the bridge, but it wasn't at all what she was actually faced with. As soon as the doors had slid open, Hera was greeted by a raucous, distinctly non-regulation cheer as the viewport filled with the brilliant flash and flames of a violent explosion. She watched in stunned silence as the bridge crew calmed down, though an excited buzz persisted as they returned to their status boards and reported to the Admiral standing calm, silent watch on the command deck beside the Sith Lord and Commodore Faro.

Military action, and she hadn't even been informed about it…

"What exactly is going on here?" Hera asked as she strode purposefully down the command walkway toward the trio, and Faro seemed to flinch as she turned to face her, a hard, displeased look on her face as Obi-Wan tossed Hera a smug, triumphant smile over his shoulder. Thrawn didn't so much as move.

"Imperial matters," Faro said stiffly. "Nothing that concerns you."

"Really," Hera said flatly, her arms crossed over her chest and returning the Commodore's cold expression. "Last I checked, we're your temporary allies. We didn't agree to help with Imperial activities."

"Which is why you weren't informed!" Faro shot back.

"Ladies, please…" Kenobi drawled, a slight gesture of his hand making the two women slide away from each other, the scraping of Faro's boots against the deck making the startled woman stumble as if the ground beneath her had disappeared.

"The Grysk are here, Captain Syndulla," Thrawn said calmly without turning to face her. "The Chiss have been tracking them, and together, we have discovered their efforts to infiltrate the Empire's power structure." He gestured to the viewport. "What you see here is their attempt to destroy their research post, and our success in preventing it."

"That's what you call a success?" Hera asked, squinting as she looked out the viewport at the blackness of space that only a few minutes ago had seemed to catch fire. "It looked like a pretty big explosion to me."

"The result of the explosives they had sent detonating against themselves," Thrawn muttered as he looked down at his datapad. "The research post they had attempted to destroy was removed from the detonation site."

"Convenient…" Hera said.

"The result of careful planning and good timing," Thrawn corrected, and Faro, having recovered from being moved with the Force, seemed to draw up taller.

"And how many operations like this have you done without telling us?" Hera asked, her tone becoming substantially colder, though the Admiral didn't seem to notice.

"Like this?" Thrawn asked. "None. Though prior to this, we engaged in two separate battles with Grysk warships."

"Two battles?!" Hera sputtered, at a loss for words for a moment before disbelief gave way to anger. "So two operations like this, is what you meant!"

"No," Thrawn said calmly. "This operation is the product of physics and expert timing to diffuse a trap." He gestured dismissively, not once looking up from his datapad. "The incidents before were only battles."

"Alright…" Hera muttered, taking a deep breath to soothe her reflexive anger. "Alright, so what now?"

"As I said," Faro said stiffly. "This is an Imperial matter that doesn't concern you!"

"Now," Thrawn said quietly as he gestured for the Commodore to stand down, "we wait for the Grysk forces to arrive to sterilize the area of their presence." Finally, he looked up from his work and handed the datapad to Hera. "We engaged them once before when the Chimaera had been pulled out of hyperspace by a planted gravity well generator. That was their interception point to capture Imperial ships for study and, incidentally, where the Chiss had followed them to. It was there that we discovered the locations of their regional bases, and when we arrived here, we engaged them again."

"And you think they'll be back?" Hera asked, her eyes quickly scanning the information on the datapad Thrawn had given her. "They've lost two battles now and been outplayed here by…whatever it was you did. You really think they won't cut and run?"

"They cannot," Thrawn said grimly. "The information they left behind here is vital to their operations and catastrophic were it to fall into enemy hands. They cannot afford for that to happen."

"But it already has," Obi-Wan said with an indifferent shrug, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "We've already spent a good amount of time over there, and I've already had a crack at the Grysk client species manning the station." The Sith Lord's smirk twisted into a sharkish, predatory smile. "Their minds have been…interesting, to say the least."

"This is why they must return, Captain Syndulla," Thrawn said quietly. "They will wish to discover what has happened here, and then must destroy all who have discovered their presence."

"So we can be sure they won't send just one ship," Hera said, looking up from the datapad and handing it back to Thrawn. "How many warships are you expecting to face? Five? Ten? Twenty? Because I don't think even you can handle odds like that. Not with just one ship."

"Two ships," Faro corrected with a defeated sigh, her previous indignation gone now that the rebel leader had been effectively brought into her Admiral's confidence. "We rendezvoused with the Chiss when we were first pulled from hyperspace, and they came with us here."

"Two ships aren't much different from one if the Grysk bring a war fleet," Hera said flatly. "Unless this Chiss ship happens to be a dreadnaught."

"The Vigilant is a heavy cruiser," Thrawn said. "But I will not need more than two ships to defeat the Grysk. They wish to avoid detection, so their presence here cannot be overly large, and given the circumstances, they must act quickly in order to contain their discovery. They are not at liberty to wait for reinforcements."

"Alright, so what do you think we're looking at?" Hera asked.

"The warships we have already destroyed were Battle Chiefs, the equivalent of light cruisers," Thrawn said as he frowned, his eyes fixed on his datapad as he swiped his fingers across it. "The largest ships in the Grysk armada are Shatter-class War Masters, which are large enough to discount from a clandestine operation like this one. Most likely, we will be dealing with Stone Crusher-class War Masters, perhaps a pair, certainly no more than three."

"You sure do know a lot about the Grysk fleet array…" Hera muttered, taking Thrawn's datapad when the Admiral again offered it, and her brow furrowed as she looked at the screen of indecipherable alien script and images of unknown warships she assumed were the Grysk armada in question.

"I engaged the Grysk directly only once in my time in the Ascendancy," Thrawn said quietly. "The leader of the war fleet that had been brought against me was kind enough to give me an overview of the ships he had brought to destroy me." A faint smile twitched at the corner of the Chiss' thin lips. "Before I destroyed him."

"Generous of him," Hera said with a wry smile and looked up from the datapad when she had made sense of the alien ships. "Those Stone Crushers are big ships. Bigger than the Chiss ship tagging along with us?"

"Fifty percent bigger," Thrawn said. "Approximately."

"But not nearly as big as a Star Destroyer," Hera said, handing back the datapad. "If you're right about what they're bringing with them, that's pretty manageable. Even for a mediocre commander."

"The Grysk make up for small numbers with clever tactics," Thrawn said absently, once again swiping his fingers over his datapad and tapping on his commlink. "Fortunately, we have an understanding of their tactics." His commlink beeped, and a moment later, a terse, female voice answered in a language Hera didn't understand. "Vah'vacosetahn tur'ch'a vun'retehe'ch'ah?" Thrawn asked, and there was a short pause before the woman answered, just as short and perfunctory as before.

"That's Admiral Ar'alani," Kenobi said as he leaned over to Hera. "She's coming over for a consultation."

"Actually, she will be attending the conference remotely," Thrawn said as he turned and strode purposefully down the command walkway toward his bridge office, Faro, Hera and the Sith Lord falling in behind him. "There is a distinction between vun'retehe'ch'ah and vun'retehe'chah."

"Sometimes I think you Chiss created your language the way you did specifically to be difficult…" Obi-Wan grumbled. "How much time do we have?"

"Not much," Thrawn said quickly as he inserted his code cylinder in the reader by the office, and a moment later, the door slid open. "No less than an hour, though not much longer than that."

"Not long to prepare…" Faro grumbled as she took up her place beside the Admiral around his conference table.

"It is not, but we will not need much time to prepare," Thrawn said as he tapped the table's com device and the holoprojector in the center lit up, the image of a blue skinned, red eyed woman in a white military uniform appearing in the holofield. A wry smile touched Hera's lips as she looked between the Imperial and Chiss Admirals. A matched set, she thought, even if the thought was a superficial one, but she somehow had the feeling that it was true.

Without a word to the others, Thrawn began speaking quickly to Ar'alani, the tone between the two both urgent and intense, and drumming his fingers on the desk, the Sith Lord leaned in toward the two women.

"He wants to use the Vigilant as bait," Kenobi said slowly, his eyes fixed on Thrawn as he continued to discuss the plan with the other Chiss. "He thinks a smaller, more known ship will lull the Grysk into overconfidence and prevent them from doing anything too clever."

"Surely the Chiss won't allow themselves to be bait in an Imperial operation," Faro said stiffly, and the Sith Lord chuckled.

"On the contrary…" Kenobi said, slight amusement in his voice as he looked knowingly between the two Chiss. "Ar'alani's fully on board." He paused, listening as the woman spoke, those red eyes sharp even over the hologram as her gaze settled on the Sith Lord. Bowing his head, Obi-Wan responded to Ar'alani with a few words in Cheunh, and she turned her attention back to the Grand Admiral. "And suggests that the Chimaera jump out of the system and not join the battle until the Grysk have committed their forces."

"That sounds unnecessarily dangerous," Hera said. "It sounds like this situation could turn real bad very quickly. How are we going to even know when to jump in to help?"

"I'll know," Obi-Wan said confidently, laying a hand on his chest. "I'll be able to feel the right moment in the Force."

"We are not leaving the matter up to sorcery, of course," Thrawn calmly cut in, the hologram flickering off as he turned from the holotable. "The Chiss have a captured Grysk gravity well generator that they will launch toward the warships that arrive to engage them. We shall be traveling between two nearby coordinates that crosses the engagement area, and will be pulled out by the generator when Admiral Ar'alani is ready for us to join the battle."

"You just take the fun out of everything, don't you?" Obi-Wan grumbled as Thrawn handed his datapad to Faro.

"The coordinates, Commodore," Thrawn said quietly. "Get the helm to begin the jump to the first point and forward the marked data to Captain Dobbs. I will join you on the bridge shortly." With a nod and a swift salute, Faro strode out of the office and on to the bridge, her stern, strong voice heard as she began issuing orders until the office door slid closed.

"I don't understand," Hera said stiffly, anger straining her voice and her eyes narrowing as she looked at the Admiral. "We fought the Grysk at Batuu. We know what we're dealing with. Why wouldn't you tell us the minute you decided to embark on another military campaign?"

"You are unneeded," Thrawn said flatly, and the Chiss took a deep, almost shaking breath when the Sith Lord winced and offense flashed plain on Hera's face. "I am confident in my ability to win these battles without your assistance," Thrawn corrected. "I have very limited resources, and larger, more vital battles are yet to come."

"None of which will mean anything if you overplay your hand and lose the Chimaera!" Hera shot back. "You lose your ship, you lose us all. If you brought us into the conversation, we could provide assistance to make sure that doesn't happen."

"And in doing so, risk losing fighters and pilots which cannot be replaced," Thrawn calmly responded. "If the Chimaera were in danger, I would of course deploy the necessary force to ensure its survival. But doing so now, before such actions are required, every casualty would only diminish the strength of the overall armada I will bring to the Grysk homeworld."

"I thought you were supposed to plan for everything," Hera shot back, more irritated than angry now. "Waiting to deploy ships until you're in trouble doesn't exactly sound like good advanced planning."

"Indeed, it is not," Thrawn said, inclining his head to the woman. "That is why I have a squadron of TIE Defenders standing by a fifteen second jump from the combat zone." Hera's defiant expression didn't change, but the slight flush that appeared on her face didn't go unnoticed by the Admiral. "Your team is not expendable," Thrawn said gravely. "If it was, there would have been no survivors on Atollon."

Again, the offense returned to Hera's face, but this time, it was marred with grief and frustration with the bitter reminder that she and the remaining Spectres only survived by Thrawn's mercy, which wasn't so much mercy as it was cold, calculated pragmatism, a thing that only stung more because a third of them had already been killed. Despite her best efforts, nothing she did had been successful in bringing Chopper back, and no amount of wishing could resurrect poor Zeb.

"I think this is something Faro has to do on her own," Kenobi said quietly into the silence, a faint smile on his face as he slowly stroked at his beard. "If you don't want a tactical reason, Hera, maybe you'll accept a political one."

"She's committing treason by defecting with Thrawn, isn't she?" Hera scoffed, but the Admiral's sharp red eyes snapped to the Sith Lord. "What politics could she possibly be playing?"

"Fleet politics, I suspect," Obi-Wan said with a shrug. "Out on assignment, an Imperial Star Destroyer stumbles across hostile aliens encroaching deep into Imperial space with conquest in mind. Teaming up with known rebels to defeat them is treason no matter how you slice it, but if the Empire repels them on their own?" The slight smirk on the edge of his lips grew wider as he met Thrawn's unmoving gaze. "That sounds like the start of a war party."

"I fought against Darth Vader," Thrawn said flatly. "Certainly the Emperor will know of this soon, if he does not know already."

"You fought and won," Obi-Wan said with a roll of his eyes. "I sincerely doubt word of that is going to reach the fleet. But word of an alien threat, engaged by an Imperial Grand Admiral's flagship?"

"She could bring in other Imperial warships to fight against the Grysk," Hera finished, a smile on her face that mirrored the Sith Lord's infectious one, but it quickly morphed into a concerned frown. "Not exactly good for us rebels, now is it?"

"It is if they defect," Kenobi said, rolling his eyes when the Chiss' brow drew together. "Oh, stop that, Thrawn…"

"The captains of my fleet will not abandon the Empire," Thrawn said stiffly.

"The Death Star threatens everyone," Obi-Wan shot back. "We saw that on this mission, didn't we? Someone high up the chain of command is stealing from Stardust."

"We cannot-"

"We can," Obi-Wan interrupted. "And you do."

"I think we should trust your Commodore," Hera said into the tense silence that followed, calming meeting the Admiral's gaze. "I think she's seeing something here you aren't."

"…perhaps," Thrawn muttered, tapping a control panel on the wall and gesturing toward the doors as they slid open. "The battle awaits. After you."

---

The anticipation was the worst part of the operation, Obi-Wan thought as he restlessly paced before the Chimaera's massive viewport and the blaze of hyperspace beyond it. The jumps between the two points that Thrawn had plotted through the combat zone were very close, each jump only taking just over a minute to arrive, and just under a minute to reorient the Chimaera, plot the jump, and return to hyperspace. So far, they had made this trip thirty times, and still, they had not been brought to the battle as Thrawn had predicted.

Which only made the worst possible scenarios run furious through the Sith Lord's mind.

The Grysk had arrived in force and destroyed the Chiss ship before they had a chance to launch the gravity well generator that would bring Thrawn to their aid, a thing that Thrawn had been adamant wouldn't happen because of the Grysk need to understand what had happened to this operation. Or the gravity well generator simply hadn't worked, that the captured device malfunctioned or had been damaged. Another thing that Thrawn had been certain was not the case.

Thrawn's calm was so frustrating that Kenobi stopped asking questions only five minutes into the operation, but now, silence and repetition with no sign of the return to action had him restless. Even worse, if that was even possible, was how calm everyone else was. The crew, the Commodore, even Hera, standing beside Thrawn's command chair and quietly speaking to the Admiral. Kenobi had never known anyone so good as Hera at trusting in her allies' abilities, content to allow those closest to her to rush off into danger because she trusted them so wholly, so completely. And now it seemed that faith extended to the Grand Admiral that had so recently been her enemy and had delt her so much personal damage.

Obi-Wan had never been like that, not even when he had been a Jedi. He had always clutched those he cared about to him tightly, afraid to lose them like he had lost everything else. But it seemed the tighter he held, the easier it was for them to slip through his fingers. The line of his losses was long and deep, and even now, powerful as he had become, that line grew longer and sunk deeper like razor wire that sliced effortlessly through him. There weren't just losses from long ago that even still bled him dry, the deaths of Satine, his child and Quinlan still ripping jagged holes through him every time he closed his eyes.

Only recently, Thrawn had captured his entire family, Luke, Leia and Bo-Katan only living now because the Chiss hadn't chosen to close his fist and snuff out their lives. And despite his best efforts, no amount of power, no effort of his to protect those around him could have saved Zeb, Kallus, and the thousands of lives that had been given to secure an alliance with the cunning Grand Admiral. And yet, despite the brutal, bloody lessons that each loss taught him, Obi-Wan Kenobi couldn't bring himself to let go, only drew those he cared for closer into himself in the hopes that - this time – it would be enough, that his ever-tightening grasp wouldn't squeeze those he clung to between his fingers and into the void where they could be stolen from him.

Of course, nothing had gone wrong with the mission, despite his fretting. He knew it hadn't. So close as they were, should something go terribly wrong, he'd feel it in the ripples in the Force, and he hadn't felt anything. Not the fear of inevitable death that came from a ship wounded beyond saving, not the panic of a carefully lain plan slowly unraveling. Not even the arrival of the Grysk could be felt in the even tide of the Force, which was even more irritating. That the aliens weren't behaving the way Thrawn had anticipated was-

And there it was. Just as the Chimaera had again lurched into hyperspace, he felt the sharp stab of anger and sour bitterness and his restless pacing faltered. The Sith Lord looked toward the command chair to find the cunning Admiral staring at him, those glowing red eyes boring into him, and Obi-Wan couldn't help but roll his eyes. How very like Thrawn to have a failsafe in place. Should something go wrong on Ar'alani's end of the conflict, he had an advanced warning system in place in the form of a Lord of the Sith. Intangible and unknowable as the Force was, Thrawn had spent the past weeks directly testing Kenobi's abilities, and had spent years before observing him from a distance. He knew exactly what the Sith Lord was capable of and trusted it explicitly.

Like Hera did.

Like Obi-Wan struggled so hard to do.

"Battle stations," Thrawn said calmly, and the entire bridge crew set to work, the quiet hum of conversation rising to a persistent buzz as they readied their stations and reported their status to the commanding officers, and they in turn reported to the Commodore. "The Grysk have arrived?" Thrawn asked as Kenobi strode down the command walkway, allowing Faro to have the deck by the viewport as she prepared the ship for battle. He nodded in response, but said nothing. "The battle has begun?"

"I don't think so," Obi-Wan said, closing his eyes and dipping into the Force, feeling that bitterness quickly turn to disgust and resentment, the Force thick with tension. "It's too quiet. Too tense."

"They seek information…" Thrawn muttered, his fingers drawing small paths across the arms of his command chair. "So far as they know, the Steadfast is the only one that knows what happened there. They wish for understanding before they destroy their enemy."

"Which sounds exactly like the overconfidence you were hoping for," Hera said as she looked over Thrawn's shoulder at the status reports flashing on his monitor. "They must be pretty sure of themselves if they're taking the time to stop and chat."

"Indeed…" Thrawn said quietly, his eyes fixed ahead as they once again dropped out of hyperspace and began the now familiar sequence to return to their route. "Can you determine the number of ships that have arrived?"

"Wouldn't that be a neat trick," Kenobi drawled, a lazy smirk on his lips as he shook his head. "Sorry, babe. It doesn't work like that."

"Can you determine, then, how many Force sensitive beings are on board?" Thrawn asked, and a wolfish grin slowly slid across the Sith Lord's face.

"Now that is a much more interesting question…" Kenobi drawled. "It won't tell us how many ships they have, not unless we know how many they keep on a ship at any one time."

"A question for Un'hee, at another time," Thrawn said. "Can you sense them?"

"I can," Obi-Wan said as he shut his eyes and dipped into the Force, the current swift and wild as they traveled through hyperspace, but dipping deeper, beneath the surface current, everything stilled and slowed, and through the haze, he could see them clearly. "There are-"

The sudden jolt interrupted him as he stumbled, nearly thrown to the deck as the Chimaera suddenly and rapidly slowed, the blaze of hyperspace outside the viewport twisting and warping as they were dragged back into space normal, ships materializing before them as the stars faded into distant pinpricks. Two warships, large and imposing and of Grysk design hung in space before them, the sensor proximity alarms blaring as the tactical display became quickly speckled with starfighters, perhaps thirty of them on the other side of the warships. And further past that, the Chiss warship, its weapons blazing as they combatted the Grysk threat.

A slight, undeniably smug smile spread across the Grand Admiral's face. Just as he had hoped, as he had predicted, his pathway across the field of battle has brought them into perfect flanking position behind the warships.

"Full battery," Thrawn said calmly. "Open fire."

Green bolts of turbolaser fire pounded into the closest Grysk ship, their sudden appearance leaving the hapless commander reeling, and the Grysk ship jerked, attempting to reposition to better deal with the newly arrived threat. Beyond the closest warship, they could see the other warship repositioning as well, turning away from the Steadfast to better deal with the newly arrived threat, the small dots on the tactical representing the starfighters swooping around and shooting toward the Chimaera.

"Increase energy output by fifty percent, Lieutenant Pyrondi, if possible," Thrawn ordered. "Draw power from the shields, if you must."

"I can double the energy output if I draw from the shields, sir," Pyrondi said, and after a brief silence, Thrawn shook his head.

"Fifty percent will be more than sufficient," Thrawn said, and with a nod, the woman went to work, the brilliant green of the turbolasers becoming even brighter as they drew additional power from the ship's other systems.

"They're just abandoning their fight with the Chiss?" Faro asked with a frown. "I'd have thought animosity toward your people would have kept at least some attention on them."

"The Grysk show a strong preference for dealing with the closest threat first, before diverting attention to a more distant target," Thrawn said quietly. "A thing we shall use to our advantage in the battles to come."

"A thing we'll use to our advantage in this battle, sir?" Faro asked, and a tight smile turned the Chiss' lips upwards as the nearest warship finally began returning fire, the other warship jerking as the Chiss beyond them moved in to the attack.

"Exactly so, Commodore," Thrawn said coldly, and a second later, the Chimaera rocked, a blinding flash filling the viewport as the Grysk warship exploded, the tactical showing not just the warship blink out of existence, but all thirty fighter craft as well, all caught up in the blast on their way to engage the Star Destroyer. "Pyrondi, adjust your aim to the second target," Thrawn commanded calmly, and with a response that was, perhaps, a bit too exuberant, the officer bent to her task, the turbolaser fire casting the cloud of dust and smoke and debris that was previously the warship in an eerie green light.

Under the withering assault of both the Imperial and Chiss ships, the second warship exploded ten seconds later.

"You know, sir…" Pyrondi drawled from her station after she had secured her console from combat readiness pending Hammerly's sensor sweep. "If the Grysk keep blowing themselves up the moment someone looks at them funny, this is going to be the shortest war in galactic history."

"I believe you will find a clandestine operation to be tactically quite different from a war fleet invading their system," Thrawn said flatly, but there was no mistaking the wry smirk on his lips. "When I last fought a Grysk war fleet, they fought to their last ship. It was only when the battle was lost did they destroy themselves, to keep us from acquiring prisoners or technology to study."

"It won't just be the Grysk either," Hammerly said, her arms draped on the command walkway from where she stood in the crew pit, her station secured with the all clear that had returned from her scan. "It'll be all their subjected species as well."

"Well, yeah, but how hard do you think they're really going to fight?" Pyrondi said with a roll of her eyes, standing up from her own station, her head peaking up from over the command walkway to meet Hammerly's level gaze.

"Pretty hard, I think," Hammerly scoffed. "You saw the analysis from the research post. Those aliens died without a fight because their masters demanded it of them."

"They also defied those masters by saving the one girl that could be their undoing!" Pyrondi shot back. "When we show up with a war fleet of our own to destroy them, how hard do you think they'll be fighting knowing they're about to be freed?"

"What war fleet?" Hammerly asked, her chin resting on her folded arms, and she shrugged when Pyrondi's face reddened with frustration. "We're one ship, the ships the Chiss can spare, and whatever ships the rebels bring with them to the fight, and the rebels fight with salvage." She glanced up at Hera and flashed the woman a tight, apologetic smile. "No offense…"

"None taken…" Hera grumbled. She turned to Thrawn, her mind racing with questions, and whatever she was about to ask was interrupted by a chime from Thrawn's com, the holoprojector on his command chair blinking to life to display the small image of the other Chiss Admiral. The conversation the two Chiss had in their native language was short and perfunctory, though all of the strain and sharpness that Hera had seen in the woman before was gone. The conversation was over in under a minute, and switching off the holoprojector, Thrawn stood, Obi-Wan falling into step beside him as he slowly made his way to the turbolift at the back of the bridge.

"Obi-Wan and I will be traveling to the Steadfast to deliver the Chiss children to Admiral Ar'alani," Thrawn said quietly. "Commodore, you have the bridge. Recall Captain Dobbs and his Defender squadron and prepare the ship for travel. The rebels will be providing us with a rendezvous point before our departure."

"Yes sir," Faro said almost absently, and without another word, Thrawn and the Sith Lord were gone, leaving the Commodore with the rebel leader and a bridge filled with uneasy officers. She felt the same disquiet, of course. Pyrondi and Hammerly were constantly needling and debating each other, but this current spat drew the current situation into sharp focus.

They were all about to leave the Empire to fight a threat only they knew existed, one that could very well see them all killed so very far from home.

Because they had both been right. There was an unknown variable here, one that could mean the difference between fifty ships, or a thousand.

"Open a channel to Captain Dobbs," Faro said absently as she took her place on the Admiral's command chair, her eyes fixed on the viewport and the dust that was once the Grysk warships, the only evidence that there had even been a battle here.

"Having second thoughts?" a voice beside her asked, and Faro frowned as she was pulled out of her thoughts and cast a weary glare up at the rebel leader that still stood beside the command chair.

"Don't be ridiculous…" Faro muttered, but the Twi'lek's gaze only became sharper.

"Is it ridiculous?" Hera countered. "The Grysk have been rooted from the Empire. Their threat to you is over."

"Is it…" Faro sneered, her chest tightening with anger, and grinding her teeth together, she gripped the arms of the command chair tight, wondering what was taking Dobbs so long to respond. "We don't know if this is their only incursion into Imperial space, and if they're this deep in, they could be anywhere! We were lucky we stumbled on this one, we were lucky we had seen their methods before, or we may never have known!" Finger tapping impatiently on the arm rest, she bit at her lower lip for a moment before she looked back to the rebel, uncertain why she felt it so easy to speak with the other woman. "How many other Imperial patrols have stumbled across Grysk incursions, only to leave because they were ignorant of the threat?"

"I don't know," Hera said quietly, and Faro felt the concern in the woman's voice was genuine. "But you're right to be worried."

"I think Thrawn was right about the threat they pose," Faro snapped, hissing in irritation when she looked down and answered the blinking com. "Captain Dobbs," she said stiffly. "The battle is over. Report back to the Chimaera."

"Ma'am," Dobbs said, not an acknowledgement, but the start of a question, and Faro couldn't help but wince. When Thrawn had asked them to join him in this act of treason, they had done so under the condition that he provide evidence that the Grysk were a threat to the Empire. While what they had seen today alone was enough to convince her and the rest of the bridge crew, she didn't know if it was enough for the commanders of their soldiers.

That conversation, it seemed, was being revisited right now.

"I'm patching Major Carvia into the conversation, Captain," Faro said, her fingers moving quickly over the com device and shooting Hera a quick look that said in no uncertain terms that she was free to leave. Frustratingly, the rebel didn't move. "Go ahead, Dobbs," Faro said when Carvia joined the conversation, and for a moment, the Defender pilot was silent, the officers on the bridge all paying close attention. "You want to discuss the evidence Thrawn said he'd show us, I take it."

"No, ma'am," Dobbs said, the hint of confusion in his voice heard even through the speaker of his flight helmet. "I thought what we found out at Batuu was more than enough to send us hunting."

"Agreed," Carvia said stiffly. "These aliens are dangerous and hostile, and if they're this deep in the Empire, I think their intentions are clear."

"I've been wondering about how many more bases they have, just like this one," Dobbs snarled, and Faro felt her chest tighten.

"I was just wondering that exact thing," Faro muttered, and the com picked up Carvia's whispered curses.

"So Thrawn was right from the start," Dobbs said. "If they have one base here in the Empire, they may as well have a hundred. We're going to be dealing with them forever unless we root them out at the source."

"So we do what the Admiral wanted," Carvia said, his voice hard with resolve. "We go out to the Unknown Regions and we destroy them."

"I wasn't asking if we were going, ma'am," Dobbs said calmly. "I was going to ask how much of the Seventh Fleet is going with us."

"I don't think the Admiral has any plans to bring the fleet," Faro said through the tightening in her chest. "We'll be picking up the rebel ships, like they promised, but that's it. He's already sent the fleet out on assignment." For a moment, Carvia and Dobbs were silent, the following silence on the bridge almost deafening as the officers waited, and from the crew pit, Faro could see several heads poking up over the command walkway to look at her.

"With all due respect, Commodore," Dobbs finally said, "I think you should do something about that."

"The Admiral-"

"This is a real threat to the Empire, Commodore," Carvia cut in.

"A real threat that we have no authorization to act against!" Faro shot back. "This is treason, Major."

"So what?" Dobbs said casually, and though she tried to muster up outrage, Faro found she couldn't. "Thrawn's always walked that edge, and his fleet has gladly followed him. I don't think it's asking too much for them to follow us to destroy a real threat to the Empire."

"And if the Emperor thinks that's treason," Carvia added darkly, "maybe the Grand Admiral isn't asking too much for us to follow him in his campaign against Palpatine either."

"You know what, Faro?" Hera whispered to the tense woman in the command chair. "I think your people are starting to sound like rebels."

"Don't remind me…" Faro muttered back, her fingers drumming on the armrest before she gave a resolute nod. "Report back to the Chimaera, Captain. I don't think Thrawn wants to linger longer than we have to."

"Copy that, Commodore," Dobbs said, and with a sift tap, the com was shut off, the conversation brought to an end, and Faro ran her hand over her face, the bridge crew seeming to heave a collective sigh.

"Lieutenant Lomar…" Faro said after a moment of silence, her fingers swiftly moving over her datapad. "I'm sending you a data package I want you to send to Captain Ferno on the Dark Omen for distribution amongst the ships of the Seventh Fleet. Inform him that I'd like to have a meeting with him as soon as he reviews the material."

"Yes ma'am," came the man's terse reply, and dropping her datapad on her lap when the data was sent, Faro slumped in the command chair, suddenly feeling far too small for it.

"You'd better make sure your people know exactly who they're working with," Faro grumbled as she glared up at Hera. "The last thing I need is the Chimaera being fired on because you rebels think you're being ambushed."

"Ahsoka's already filled them in," Hera said calmly, a knowing smirk on her lips. "But it would be helpful if they knew how many Imperial ships to expect."

"I'd like to know that too…" Faro muttered, her shoulders tensing for a moment before she stood from the command chair and straightened out her uniform. "Send me the coordinates for the rendezvous as soon as you can. I want to leave this cursed system as quickly as possible."

With a nod, Hera turned and walked to the turbolift, looking back at the bridge just in time to see Faro step down into the crew pit to consult with her officers.

---

They arrived at the outer edge of the system, approximately thirty minutes sublight from the rendezvous point so the Ghost could be dispatched to warn the gathered rebel forces of their arrival. The last thing anyone wanted was to spook the rebels into fleeing or fighting, especially since there were no good ways of identifying in the Imperial force was hostile or not. The system was remote, the chances of an Imperial patrol stumbling upon it vanishingly small, but the chance was still there, and Admiral Thrawn didn't particularly like leaving anything to chance.

Left to await the word from Captain Syndulla, Thrawn had left the bridge in the hands of his Commodore without a word as to what he was up to, though she suspected he had gone to consult with the Chiss Admiral that had followed them. Which left Commodore Faro with her officers, and…

And the Lord of the Sith draped casually on the command chair he had taken permanent residence on.

"You could have gone with your crew, you know," Faro said stiffly, glaring at the man from halfway down the command walkway, and she felt her face flush when the man flashed her a grin that would have been charming if he wasn't so positively insufferable.

"You are my crew, sweet thing…" the Sith drawled, and from the crew pit, Faro could hear Pyrondi snort a laugh she didn't try hard enough to repress.

"Phoenix Squadron is your crew!" Faro snapped. "All the Spectres went, why couldn't you!"

"Why would I do that?" Kenobi scoffed, swinging his legs off the armrest and sitting up in the command chair. "They're more than capable of distributing my Force sensitives to the ships of the fleet on their own."

"You might have had last minute instructions, or-"

"It took us four hours to get here," Obi-Wan said with a roll of his eyes. "I spent all that time teaching them how the navigation is to be done. It isn't very difficult. They either got it, or…" He shrugged, a casual thing that made Faro grind her teeth together. "Or they'll collide with a rogue star out in the Unknown Regions."

"Oh, is that all?"

"Such concern for rebel lives, Commodore…" Kenobi said in a tone that sounded chiding. "What ever shall the Admiralty Board have to say…"

"Is that before or after I'm court marshalled and charged for treason?" Faro grumbled, and the Sith Lord answered with a wry grin.

"When next you return to Coruscant, Commodore," Obi-Wan said, "you'll have a new Emperor that might find it within himself to forgive that particular transgression." There was a low, seductive trill in his voice that made the entire bridge crew lean in closer to hear, a thing Faro found she was doing as well, and despite the flush she felt heating her face, she felt her entire being had been seized, and for the life of her, she couldn't turn away. Screams of witchcraft rushed through her mind, reminders of the Separatist's fearsome Negotiator and his poisonous words flooding her thoughts.

But they were her thoughts, despite the sudden fear of the alternative. It was the confidence, then, the absolute certainty of his path that had captured her and her officers.

Much like Thrawn had done, an unwanted alien with no business in the Empire's command structure making his way to the very top of the navy on the back of conviction and the results that his unshakable confidence had produced.

"Suppose your rebels are successful in defeating the Empire," Faro sneered, making no attempt to hide the contempt on her face, the sheer vitriol enough to knock the smug smirk off the Sith Lord's face. "Do you really believe they'll allow the Empire to continue to exist?"

Obi-Wan said nothing, those golden eyes breaking his locked gaze with her and dropping to stare at the deck. It was the look of a child that had been caught in a lie, a thing Faro would have found funny had she not staked her career on an agreement that the mighty Negotiator had arranged with her Admiral. Rage twisted her gut, a hot flash that vanished as soon as she felt it when she realized that her entire bridge crew were standing in the crew pit and looking expectantly up at them and awaiting an answer.

The Sith Lord wasn't sullen, she realized. He was pensive. A thing they had all grown accustomed to in their time under Thrawn's command.

"I don't think," Obi-Wan began slowly, "that the rebels have really thought through what it is they want."

"I think they've been more than clear on that," Faro said stiffly.

"They certainly have a goal," Kenobi said with a nod. "Albeit a nebulous one. End the tyranny of the Empire, restore the Republic to what it once was. But," he said, raising a finger when it looked like Faro would speak, "what they haven't realized is that the Republic they long for is lost and gone. The galaxy can't go backwards. Only forwards."

"The Empire does have a Senate," Hammerly chimed in from her place in the crew pit, her arms resting on the command walkway as she looked up at the Sith and the Commodore. "If they're committed, I don't think it would be very hard for the rebels to transition over to a Republic, once the Emperor's out of the picture."

"You don't think so?" Obi-Wan asked, smirking when his eyes met the woman's and she shrank away from the command walkway, her face flushing as if she had only just realized who she had been speaking to. "The Imperials are the only ones working with a military that isn't cobbled together from scrap., and you think the transition will be seamless?"

"…maybe not seamless…" Hammerly squeaked, and beside him, Obi-Wan could feel the sudden shift in Faro, from combative to interested.

"The rebels can't return to the time before the Clone Wars and the machinations of the Sith like they want," Kenobi continued, leaning back in the command chair, his shoulders relaxing as he basked in the caught interest of the crew. "Nearly twenty years of Imperial rule can't be erased. There are billions loyal to the Empire. Founding a Republic on the backs of those loyal to the Empire is asking for trouble."

"So what are you going to do?" Pyrondi asked as she hoisted herself up from the crew pit to sit on the command walkway.

"We split the difference," Obi-Wan said firmly. "The galaxy is big. I don't see why a Republic and an Empire can't both exist."

"And a correspondingly smaller Empire will allow for a more effective usage of our resources," the cold, flat voice of their Admiral said from the back of the bridge, and Faro instinctively snapped to attention, the rest of the bridge crew swiftly sliding from their decidedly non-regulation positions and back to their stations. Despite Thrawn's return to the bridge, the eyes of the crew followed him as he made his way to his command chair, Admiral Ar'alani walking in lockstep beside him.

The presence of a foreign military leader on the bridge of a Star Destroyer didn't even register as an act of treason anymore, though only weeks ago, it would have. Now, Faro only smirked. She had been right about her Admiral's whereabouts when he left the bridge earlier.

"Well…" Kenobi drawled, lounging in the command chair and winking at the two Chiss. "Hello there, beautiful…"

"Have we received word from Captain Syndulla?" Thrawn asked, hooking his fingers into Kenobi's collar and pulling the man out of the command chair, and the Sith tumbled to the ground with a hiss of irritation and a spat curse in a language that was decidedly not Basic.

"Not yet, sir," Faro said, her eyes fixed on the foreign Admiral so she could get a sense of her from her expression or body language, but like her own Admiral, Ar'alani gave very little away, those glowing eyes not even so much as looking around the bridge. It was almost as though she had been on the bridge of a Star Destroyer before, though Faro was certain that wasn't the case.

"Maybe the rebels are having second thoughts," Pyrondi said with a shrug. "Maybe they think that whatever fleet they have down there can stand against us."

"I find that unlikely," Faro said before Thrawn had a chance to respond. "Syndulla knows what's at stake."

"Or maybe…" Kenobi said as he picked himself off the floor, a smirk on his lips that Faro knew could only mean trouble. "Maybe Hera's just taking her time so you can have more time with your girlfriend."

Ar'alani hadn't reacted, unsurprisingly, as the woman didn't understand Basic, but the rest of the bridge seemed to hold their collective breath, Faro included. And that should have been the end of it, just more of the Sith's unremittent teasing and nothing more. But Thrawn had shifted, nearly imperceptive, away from Ar'alani, a slight gesture that held all the more weight for it having been done by careful, controlled Thrawn.

It was…unthinkable. The Grand Admiral was singularly focused, never showing interest in anything that couldn't be used to systematically destroy those that opposed him. For Kenobi not to simply be teasing the man, but to have grasped hold of the truth and run with it…

It was something almost human, something that almost seemed to pull their lofty war god down into the dirt with the rest of them.

Blinking hard, Faro again looked at the Chiss, and decided she must have been mistaken.

"The transfer of the navigators will take time," Thrawn said as he sat in his command chair. "We will give her another hour before we contact the Ghost for a timeframe."

"As always, Thrawn, you are never any fun…" Obi-Wan grumbled. "Does Ar'alani know you aren't any fun?"

"I have known Ar'alani most of my life," Thrawn said calmly. "Of course she-"

"K'ir'vah rsah'ch'at cahitehah carcir'nah eo'lassibi?" the Sith Lord said, the Cheuhn words effortless and natural, and finally, the foreign Admiral reacted, her head tilting slightly, her glowing gaze shifting to look at the Sith Lord, a faint smile on her lips as she scoffed.

"Vah k'ir'nah rsah'ch'at bavrcso bocun ch'at'tol."

Faro didn't understand what had been said, but she had worked with Thrawn long enough to know his body language, his expressions, and his idiosyncrasies, but the way he seemed to slightly sink into the command chair, the tightening of his jaw, and the flash of pure relief on his face when the com officer reported an incoming transmission was new to him. Faro couldn't help the wry smirk that came to her face when she saw the slight, teasing smile on Ar'alani's face, a thing that was almost playful and bespoke of deep familiarity.

Perhaps Kenobi had been right about something existing between the Chiss.

"Chimaera, this is Massassi Station," Leia's voice came over the com, and Obi-Wan's back straightened with pride. "The navigators have been transferred and we are ready for departure. Fulcrum thinks you should arrive at the rendezvous first. We'll join you after you arrive."

"Acknowledged," Thrawn said almost absently, gesturing to the helm to input the rendezvous coordinates, and beside him, Ar'alani sent her own message to her ship. A moment later, the deck shuddering beneath them as the Chimaera made the jump, the points of stars out the viewport elongating slightly before snapping back into view in different positions. Two seconds later, the Steadfast appeared beside them, having completed their own in-system jump.

In the few seconds it took to complete the jump, Commodore Faro had grown considerably more anxious, enough to catch the attention of both Chiss, enough that the Force grew tight and strained, drawing the Sith's eye as well. The weight of the glowing eyes upon her. Faro swallowed hard, tried to get her nerves in check to answer the inevitable question from her Admiral, but never got the chance. Only moments after they arrived, the cause of her distress became clear.

Ten Imperial ships blinked into space before them, six Star Destroyers and four light cruisers, and Thrawn's shoulders tenses, a hard edge in his eyes as he glanced at the tactical.

"Com," Thrawn said evenly, "tight beam transmission to the Ghost." There was a swift, terse acknowledgement, and the indicator light on the command chair's com unit lit up, the entire bridge crew swiftly returned to their stations and preparing their stations for whatever the Admiral may order. "Captain Syndulla," Thrawn said as he touched the com, ignoring the new incoming message that lit his display. "We have arrived at the rendezvous, but hold off on joining us. We have unexpected company."

"I see them," Hera responded in a whisper, as if quiet would allow her to avoid detection. "Bad odds, if they aren't friendly."

"Indeed…" Thrawn muttered, frowning as he looked at the tactical readouts and saw that not only were the ships not locking on with weapons despite being combat ready, but they all also belonged to the Seventh Fleet. "Standby, Ghost," he said, switching off the com and taking a deep breath before he glanced at Faro, the woman's anxiety and tension all he needed to know that these ships were here because of her. For a long moment, he stared at her, the woman's jaw tight and her eyes averted to deliberately avoid his.

Possibly guilt, Thrawn considered, but he knew Faro. She was straightforward and direct, occasionally to the point of insubordination. She was capable of betrayal, as all beings were, but if her objections to their course were that strong, she would have brought her concerns to him, loudly and frequently, if necessary. Not guilt, then, he decided, not entirely, but apprehension. She had gambled, as he had long ago when he joined the Empire, and now she stood here waiting to see if the dice she cast had rolled in her favor.

With a slight nod, his attention going back to the viewport, he switched on the com and answered the incoming transmission.

"This is Grand Admiral Thrawn," the Chiss said evenly. "You are far off your scheduled patrol route, Dark Omen."

"Not much going on out on our patrols," the stern voice of Captain Ferno came over the bridge speaker. "We heard there's more action out here."

"You were mistaken," Thrawn answered coldly.

"We read the after-action reports, sir."

"Then you know our battles took place far from here," Thrawn responded, his eyes fixed forward, but his fingers swiftly tapping his datapad and sending tactical orders to the combat stations.

"As I said, we read the report, we know," Ferno said. "You're here to pick up assets." He paused, long enough that Faro became keenly aware of Ar'alani shifting, her hand resting on the empty holster at her hip. "Rebel assets."

"Assets that were acquired as part of the terms of Phoenix Squadron's surrender," Thrawn said, his tone never wavering, but the bridge tactical lit up with the diagram of his orders, should it come to combat.

"I think," Ferno said, "that it's terribly rude of you to plan a major military campaign without informing your fleet." He paused, the silence on Chimaera's bridge heavy and tense as they waited for Thrawn's response, but he gave none, only sat still in his command chair, his unwavering gaze fixed on the tactical. "We've come," Ferno continued, "to join the hunting party."

"The location of our enemy is deep in the Unknown Regions," Thrawn said, his shoulders relaxing slightly as he glanced up and saw the relief on his Commodore's face and heard the Sith Lord whisper in Cheunh, providing a translation to Ar'alani. "Furthermore, we are acting without the Emperor's authorization. Despite the threat to the Empire, our actions will likely be seen as treason and desertion."

"Yes, Commodore Faro said as much," Ferno said, a new graveness in his tone that had been absent until then. "We've walked this line with you before, sir. We think the results will speak for themselves, when it comes down to it."

"I think it likely we will not be so fortunate this time," Thrawn said, his finger swiping across his datapad and the tactical display clearing. "We will be working with an alien government in order to achieve victory against a common enemy. This will likely be seen as collusion."

"But these aliens are a threat, sir," Ferno growled. "As I said, I read the report. We all did. Alien warships deep in the Empire? Abducting ships and stealing cargo containing naval weapon components?" He scoffed. "The rest of the Seventh Fleet has been given the data so they know what to look out for, but this cannot be ignored."

"Indeed…" Thrawn muttered, sitting up taller in his seat. "Then I welcome you, Captain. You honor me with your presence."

"Send us the coordinates, Grand Admiral, and we will be ready to jump when you are," Ferno said, and Thrawn reached over and swiftly tapped Kenobi's arm.

"Travel through the Unknown Regions is quite dangerous and uncharted, Captain," Thrawn said. "We have an alternative method of travel to our destination. I will be sending Obi-Wan Kenobi to the Dark Omen with the navigators the method requires. He will explain when he arrives."

"I…y-yes, sir," Ferno stammered. "These navigators are…people, sir?"

"Mandalorians, in fact," Thrawn said, glancing up at Kenobi as the man nodded, flashed him a smile, and turned to leave the bridge. "You will have your explanation, Captain. Obi-Wan is more qualified to give it."

"We'll be awaiting his shuttle, then," Ferno said, the hesitation gone from his voice. "Dark Omen out." The com disconnected, and just as Thrawn began to order the com officer to contact the Ghost, they received an incoming transmission that was immediately patched through.

"All is well, Captain Syndulla," Thrawn said before Hera had the chance to speak.

"Yeah, I see that," Hera said smugly. "Looks like your Commodore came through."

"Indeed she did," Thrawn said as he glanced up at Faro, an unmistakable smile on his lips. "It will take time to transfer the navigators to the additional ships and integrate them into the bridge crew. You may join us at your convenience."

"We're on the way now. See you in a few." The com cut, and there was silence for a moment before Thrawn stood, took a deep breath, and looked down at Commodore Faro.

"It was terribly insubordinate to contact the Seventh Fleet," Thrawn said quietly, and Faro held her breath as she held his gaze, which was, to her surprise, considerably warmer than she'd ever seen in those glowing red eyes. "Thank you…"

"It wasn't just my idea, sir," Faro said, a faint smile on her own lips as she felt the weight of the past few days lift off her shoulders. "Carvia and Dobbs were in on it too." She gestured to the officers down in the crew pits, casually working at their stations as they quietly spoke to each other, their relief palpable. "And the bridge crew."

"Then I shall take the time to thank them as well," Thrawn said, inclining his head to Faro before he gestured for Ar'alani to follow him as he strode down the command walkway, the foreign Admiral following close behind him.

"You promised me a war fleet, Mitth'raw'nuruodo," Ar'alani said as she stopped beside the other Chiss at the viewport, the space beyond them filled with stars and the imposing wedges of the six Star Destroyers just off their port side. "Eleven ships is hardly a war fleet."

"There are thirty more ships on the way to join us now," Thrawn said calmly.

"Thirty more of these angular monstrosities?"

"Corvettes, light cruisers, and modified freighters, I have been given to understand," Thrawn said, and Ar'alani scoffed.

"Half a war fleet," Ar'alani said with a roll of her eyes. "At best."

"It represents a larger fleet than what we faced together the first time we engaged the Grysk," Thrawn said, his lips pressing together as his gaze swept across the viewport as small groups of ships slowly began to fill the space between them and the Imperial ships. "Larger by half, in fact."

"The Grysk will have a much larger fleet defending the worlds of the Hegemony," Ar'alani said flatly. "In addition to the assets provided to them by their slaves."

Thrawn simply shrugged.

"I suppose we will just have to be clever, then," Thrawn said, and unable to keep a smile from creeping across her face, Ar'alani shifted closer to Thrawn and allowed her fingertips to brush against his as they silently watched the Imperial and rebel fleets come together.