Chapter Text
The jump to hyperspace, when initiated from atmosphere, did not resemble the familiar elongation of pinpricks of light into starlines. Instead, the hazy, diffuse light that filtered through the smoky sky brightened into a blinding glare that engulfed the bridge of the Chimaera. It was as though Lothal’s sun had gone nova and expanded to consume the entire planet.
As the ship around him faded from view, Ezra struggled to keep the boundaries of the bridge fixed in his mind. It was critical that he keep the atmosphere from rushing out of the shattered transparisteel viewports until he was able to activate the emergency magnetic shield. He focused on the throbbing pain in his shoulder, relying on the sensation to keep him grounded in physical reality.
Slowly, the blinding white resolved itself into the angular gray lines of the interior of an Imperial Star Destroyer. Ezra blinked, attempting to speed up the process. Shards of transparisteel glinted in the ghostly blue light of hyperspace, suspended in midair, their motion arrested alongside the oxygen molecules that Ezra held stationary with the Force. Thrawn was still staring out the shattered viewport, body gone limp in the grasp of the purrgil, seemingly hypnotized by the undulating view before him.
Ezra weighed his options. The pressure differential was becoming increasingly difficult to overcome—he needed to activate the shield now. The blaster that Thrawn had shot out of his hand was lying on the floor near his foot. If he could reach it, he could shoot the door controls and free up his good hand. Careful not to let his concentration slip, Ezra edged closer to the blaster.
The movement seemed to have awoken Thrawn from his stupor. The man slowly turned his head to gaze at Ezra. The pale fluorescence of hyperspace reflected eerily off of Thrawn’s blue skin, causing it to appear to glow almost as brightly as his creepy red eyes.
Ezra froze. Although intellectually he knew that Thrawn was fully restrained by the purrgil’s tentacles, he couldn’t prevent the creeping dread that suffused him at the thought that the alien might have some hidden trick up his sleeve.
But his fear was unwarranted.
“The magnetic shield can be activated from the terminal two stations to my right,” Thrawn drawled, his voice not betraying any hint that he was currently at his enemy’s mercy with the vacuum of hyperspace mere centimeters away.
Ezra’s mind raced, searching Thrawn’s face for an ulterior motive. Thrawn merely stared back at him stolidly, one eyebrow slightly raised.
“As I said....whatever happens, happens to both of us.”
Keeping his gaze fixed on Thrawn, Ezra crouched down, right hand reaching blindly for the blaster. For a second, his concentration wavered, and the hiss of pneumatics cut through the blanketing hum of hyperspace as the door to the bridge began to slide open. Ezra startled, and his hold on the atmosphere slipped as well. The hiss of the doors was quickly engulfed in the deafening roar of their precious oxygen outgassing into the vacuum. Thrawn’s calm expression faltered as he was buffeted by the rush of air. Panicked, Ezra snatched up the gun and fired a shot in the direction of the control panel, trusting in the Force to guide his aim. The doors slammed shut again with a resounding bang that was echoed by the clatter of the blaster as Ezra cast it aside. He extended both his arms, struggling to regain his control over the quickly escaping gas.
It felt as though years had elapsed in the few seconds that it took for Ezra to return the wildly swirling shards of transparisteel to their stationary suspension. He took a few deep, steadying breaths, reassuring himself that he had successfully averted suffocation—at least for now.
“Two terminals to the right?” he said, chest heaving slightly, trying to evince a calm he didn't feel.
Thrawn nodded his assent, looking uncharacteristically pale.
Ezra walked slowly forward, arms outstretched, hands trembling. His limbs felt heavy, muscles straining from the psychic exertion. The pain in his shoulder had dulled, almost indistinguishable from the deep ache that permeated his entire body. He hoped the shield was easy to activate; he knew now that he wouldn’t be able to navigate a computer terminal while simultaneously maintaining his control over the Force.
“Tell me what exactly I’ll need to do to activate the magnetic shield,” he commanded Thrawn.
“On the underside of the terminal, there is a transparisteel box. Remove the cover and press the button within. The shields should activate immediately.”
Ezra resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief. All capital ships were required to have magnetic shield backups for their transparisteel viewports, but their heavy power draw meant that they were rarely wired to activate automatically. If a faulty circuit caused them to turn on in the middle of a firefight, it could spell doom when power was suddenly diverted from essential functions such as weapons or shields. According to Kallus, some Imperial vessels even required clearance codes to bring them online out of fear of potential sabotage.
Fortunately, it seemed Thrawn recognized the wisdom of having an emergency safety feature actually be accessible in the event of a real emergency. Ezra forced his weary legs to carry him to the terminal Thrawn had indicated. As he felt under the terminal for the box, he caught the glimmer of the transparisteel from the corner of his eye as the fragments began to wobble under his control. He couldn’t maintain his hold over them much longer. Fortunately, the button was exactly where Thrawn had said it would be. Ezra slammed his palm down on it, and the force field flared into existence with an electric hum.
Exhausted, Ezra released his hold on the atmosphere. The shards of transparisteel dropped to the ground in a glittering rain of sharp edges. One sliced across Ezra’s cheek as it fell, but he barely noticed as he slid down the console, utterly spent. He slumped against the bulkhead and rested his forehead against his knees. He closed his eyes, blocking out the glare of hyperspace and the dead, red glow of the emergency lights, and let some of the tension drain from his body. His shoulder was starting to throb again, and now that the initial adrenaline that had carried him through was fading, he had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to lift it.
The immediate danger past, Ezra let himself sink into the comforting embrace of the Force. His awareness of his physical body shrank as his consciousness expanded outward. Beyond the duristeel walls of the Chimaera and the transparent blue glow of the magnetic shield whorled the hypnotic vortex of hyperspace. Ezra had never quite been able to articulate what hyperspace felt like in the Force. He had expected hyperspace to be an isolating void, a separate dimension populated only by the small crew of the Ghost. He hadn’t been prepared for how alive the pulsating blue tunnel had seemed. It felt like a low-grade electrical current running through his mind, activating thought muscles he hadn’t been aware existed. Ezra had mentioned this sensation to Kanan, once, shortly after they had begun their training together. His master had explained that hyperspace was part of the Cosmic Force that permeated all dimensions—not just those of realspace. Ezra hadn’t fully understood it at the time, but now, having followed the loth-wolves through the mysterious portal on Lothal, he thought he might comprehend it a bit better.
Around him, Ezra could sense the massive, alien presence of the purrgil. Their minds felt utterly unlike those of any sentient or creature he had ever encountered, boundlessly complex and yet opaque in such a way that he knew that attempting to decipher their thoughts would be futile unless they took the initiative to impress their desires onto him.
By contrast, the hulking carcass of the Chimaera was an aberration. It sat dead in the Force, its sharp lines slicing a wound through space. The hyperdrive was irreparably offline, the reactor core good for little else but maintaining artificial gravity and life support. Within its metal shell, Ezra could feel pale glimmers of life scattered throughout the decks—far, far fewer than the ship’s complement of forty thousand crewmembers. He tried not to dwell on the implications of that. If he hadn’t acted, it would have cost the lives of over a million residents of Capital City—all civilians, unlike the crew of the Chimaera, who had willingly enlisted their lives in service of the Empire.
It was, Ezra tried to convince himself, a necessary sacrifice. But the echoes of the dead and the dying within the Force rendered the thought hollow.
“Do you have a plan, Bridger?”
Thrawn’s voice cut through the white noise. Ezra felt a headache building in the base of his skull. His hands tightened into fists. How could someone so obviously defeated still sound so smug and collected?
“Just... shut up,” Ezra ground out through gritted teeth.
Thrawn ignored him.
“Since you were so quick to activate the magnetic shield, I can only assume that you intend to survive this experience. However, you must be aware that with the damage undoubtedly sustained by the power generator, the Chimaera will be unable to support the additional power drain for very long. Before that happens, you will need to dock or abandon the ship.”
Ezra kept his eyes closed and attempted to block out Thrawn’s voice. The pressure in his head continued to grow.
“Surely you know that destroying the controls will not prevent my troopers from accessing the bridge forever. I have no doubt that they are regrouping as we speak. Eventually, they will be able to force open the blast door. What then? Although many of my crew have perished, do you truly believe that, injured as you are, you will be able to fight your way past even a diminished crew of a Star Destroyer to reach the hangar? I notice that you do not have your saber.”
Ezra couldn’t resist taking the bait. “I made it onto the bridge, didn’t I?”
There was a pause as Thrawn contemplated this.
“True,” he said consideringly. “Clearly I underestimated you, Bridger.”
Ezra fought back a tired, disbelieving snort. If it had taken this long for Thrawn to come to that realization, he was clearly a lot less clever than people thought.
"Clearly."
Ezra opened his eyes a sliver and turned his head slightly to sneak a glance at Thrawn. He couldn’t see much of the man. The staticky barrier of the shield was no deterrent to the sinuous arms of the purrgil. They twined around the man's body in a luminal embrace, blocking most of it from view. From his position on the floor, Ezra could really only see Thrawn's silhouette, backlit by the steady glow of hyperspace. That, and his creepy glowing eyes, which contrasted sharply with the dim blue light that suffused the rest of the room. And that eerie red gaze was unerringly fixed on Ezra.
It was a sharply calculating look that would have made Ezra distinctly uncomfortable in any other circumstance. As it was, however, he couldn't bring himself to care.
Perhaps realizing that Ezra had exhausted his supply of energy for sharp retorts, Thrawn fell blessedly silent. Ezra let his eyes slip shut again, pretending that he couldn't still feel Thrawn craning his neck over the restraining arm of the purrgil to continue to stare down at him.
Ezra was on the verge of slipping into unconsciousness, the pain and exhaustion finally overtaking him, when the blast doors began to open with a loud, rending screech.
Ezra was too slow, too tired, too far away to react, and the door opened wide enough for the muzzle of a gun to peek through before he had time to move. Gloved hands followed, widening the gap, and a line of stormtroopers forced their way onto the command deck, blasters raised.
Ezra panicked, one hand—the uninjured one— instinctively reaching out to land on one of the massive tentacles wrapped around the neighboring station. In response, the purrgil limbs came to life. It was as though the Chimaera itself had been transformed into its namesake. It was the chaotic violence of the initial assault all over again. The stormtroopers barely had a chance to get off any shots before tentacles burst through the shields and swept them off their feet and lifted them, struggling, off the ground. They wildly fired their blasters into the air, shots going wide and narrowly missing Thrawn in the confusion.
Ezra had never had cause to wonder what would happen if a human was violently cast into hyperspace. The stormtroopers’ screams were abruptly cut off as the purrgil yanked them effortlessly through the thin barrier into the abyss of vacuum. Before their limbs had even had time to slow, the purrgil released their hold, and, with a flash of light, the troopers vanished from view as they were torn out of hyperspace.
The remaining troopers hurriedly bunched back against the doors, letting loose as broad a spray of blasterfire as they could manage without risking hitting their commander. But the moving limbs were no easy target, and the few shots that did manage to land seemed to have no effect.
Bursts of energy peppered the air over Ezra’s head, one striking the panel above him, causing it to spark and smoke. His brain fought through the fog of fatigue to realize that the troopers risked disabling the magnetic shield with an errant shot. If the shield went down, they would all be doomed.
Perhaps Thrawn had come to a similar conclusion, because his voice cut sharply through the noise.
"Hold your fire!"
To Ezra’s mild surprise, the stormtroopers obeyed immediately, although they kept their blasters raised and pointed warily in the direction of the still-moving tentacles.
“Bridger, call off your beasts,” Thrawn commanded.
Ezra pushed out a wave of calming intention toward the purrgil. They retracted their twisting limbs to within a few feet of the viewport frames, but didn’t still their arms entirely, the sinuous movement evidence of the threat they still had the potential to pose.
“How do I know your men won’t just shoot me the second I do?” Ezra demanded warily.
“You have my word,” Thrawn said, inclining his head as much as he could within the tight grasp of the purrgil.
Ezra snorted.
“Like I would trust you.”
“I am Chiss. Our word is our guarantee.” He paused. “However, I will also have my men put down their weapons as a show of good faith.”
Chiss. So Thrawn wasn’t just some mutated Pantoran. Not that that told him much. He probed Thrawn’s mind in the Force. It was cold and slippery, the current of thoughts concealed beneath a meter of frozen ice. However, Ezra could sense no deceit, and the Force offered no warnings. It appeared that Thrawn truly intended him no immediate harm.
Ezra jerked his head towards the crew pit. “Toss the cartridges down there.”
Thrawn nodded his assent. To their credit, his troopers obeyed, albeit reluctantly.
When the final power pack had disappeared over the edge, Ezra shut his eyes and extended his consciousness out to the purrgil. The alien mind reached back with a detached sense of curiosity, mildly concerned by Ezra’s brief moment of panicked distress. He attempted to project a message of reassurance, of danger-passed.
The movement of the tentacles calmed as they retreated back out of the ship, resuming their hold on the hull.
An officer pushed through the door past the cluster of stormtroopers. She was a tall woman, with a sturdy build and hard jaw.
"Grand Admiral—!"” she said, lurching towards Thrawn. Ezra lifted his head to observe where his enemy still hung suspended a few inches above the ground, back mere inches from hyperspace. It appeared that the purrgil had not released Thrawn during their retreat from the ship. The position could not possibly have been comfortable, but Thrawn’s face betrayed no hint of discomfort.
Thrawn shook his head minutely, stopping the woman a few paces onto the command bridge.
Ezra reluctantly pushed himself off the floor. His shoulder screamed with pain as he used both arms to climb the terminal to leverage himself to his feet. The body of a stormtrooper lay unmoving a few feet away, blaster discarded by his side. Ezra could feel the Imperials’ tense stares upon him as he slowly moved to pick it up.
He walked deliberately towards Thrawn, blaster braced in his good hand, until he could look the man in the eye. He had to crane his neck up to meet Thrawn’s red gaze.
“If you try anything,” Ezra warned, brandishing the blaster in Thrawn’s face, “I’ll have them toss you into hyperspace.”
“Understood.”
Unwilling to lower the blaster, Ezra angled his body so that he could press a palm to one of the purrgil’s tentacles without lifting his injured arm. Let go, he willed.
Like a blossom unfurling from a bud, the tentacles loosened their grip, unwinding and slithering away to wrap around the durasteel struts that framed the shattered viewports.
Thrawn, for all his previous composure, was unable to maintain control over his legs. He slumped inelegantly to the ground. The officer rushed towards him, concern evident on her face, several troopers close behind her. Ezra stepped back and let her proceed. She helped the grand admiral to his feet. He swayed a bit gingerly, as though still regaining the feeling in his legs.
“Gravesend, Wytt, search the crew pit for survivors,” Thrawn said. He looked over towards Ezra and raised a brow. “With your permission, of course, Bridger.” How Thrawn could tell the troopers apart under their identical white helmets, Ezra had no idea.
Ezra nodded his assent curtly. He desperately wanted to respond to the subtle sarcasm, but preventing the Imperials from providing aid to the wounded would, well... make him as bad as an Imperial.
Two stormtroopers immediately broke off from the pack and made their way down the metal stairs into the crew pit.
“Commander Hammerly,” Thrawn continued, “Please retrieve the bridge’s emergency medical kit. Captain Jima, do you have a casualty report?”
"What you see here are all that's left of the bridge crew, sir. The tower sustained heavy damage and has currently cut us off from the rest of the ship. We weren't able to raise them on comms, either."
Thrawn frowned. “Cut off?”
“Half the tower is gone,” Jima clarified grimly. “What remains is structurally unsound. Turbolifts are offline, and the access shafts are blocked by debris. We’re fortunate that the jump to hyperspace suffocated the fires, otherwise we’d be a lot worse off.”
“So it would appear that we are currently confined to the bridge,” Thrawn mused. He turned to address Ezra. "You seemingly are able to exert some level of control over these creatures."
"I just put out a call. The rest was the purrgil. They really don't like Imperials," Ezra said, attempting to disguise his discomfort at becoming the sudden focus of the Imps’ attention. He didn't like how quickly Thrawn had stepped up to reassume command over the situation. It implied a shift in the balance of power aboard the ship in a direction that was less than favorable for Ezra. He wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting when he had released Thrawn; perhaps that the Imperials would just retreat to a corner to lick their wounds? It seemed a little naive in retrospect. And yet...he had felt no glaring warnings in the Force. Ezra had hoped to have the opportunity to regather his strength and assess the damage to his shoulder, but it seemed that he would have to wait.
“Is our destination not one of your choosing, then?” Thrawn asked.
Ezra shrugged with his good shoulder. “We’re going wherever they want us to go. It’s up to the will of the Force.” That, at least, he was confident of. When he had chosen to take this path, there had been a sense of rightness in the Force, even if he didn’t yet know where it would lead him.
Thrawn turned to gaze out into the blue tunnel of hyperspace, face inscrutable. “Ah, yes. The—” He paused. “—will…of the Force.” His lip curled slightly as he said it.
“Admiral!” A shout came from one of the troopers who had descended into the crew pit. “We’ve found Lieutenant Pyrondi, sir. She’s injured, but alive!”
Thrawn abruptly turned his back to the viewport. “Assemble the wounded in the communications annex. As we currently have no need for our controls, we should endeavor to be on the other side of the blast doors in the event that the magnetic shield fails. Commander Hammerly, I see that you have located the medical supplies. Have anyone with training in field medicine assist you in setting up a triage site.” Hammerly nodded, jerked her head in the direction of two of the troopers, and made her way back through the blast doors, the men close behind her. “Captain Jima,” Thrawn continued,” please accompany me to assess the extent of the damage to the bridge tower.” He strode towards the exit, making as though to leave the bridge.
Ezra let out an aborted sound of protest.
Thrawn paused to glance back at him. “If we are, as you suggest, truly at the mercy of these creatures’ whims, Bridger,” Thrawn said, speaking slowly as though he were talking to a particularly unintelligent child, “we may be travelling through hyperspace for days, if not weeks. While we likely still have access to potable water, the commissary and our supply of rations are all located in the main body of the ship, as is the medbay and all of our advanced medical equipment. While it would not surprise me to learn that you Jedi can slow your metabolisms at will, the rest of us are not so fortunate.”
Ezra felt a little foolish for not having considered that, but there was no way he was admitting that to Thrawn.
“May we?”
Ezra jerked a nod reluctantly. At least he would be spared Thrawn’s insufferable smugness for a time.
Thrawn paused briefly in the communications annex to issue a quiet command to Hammerly before disappearing down the darkened hallway to its left. Ezra was too exhausted to be too concerned about the content of the exchange, although a small corner of his mind whispered that nothing Thrawn was up to could be good. The remaining Imperials all seemed too busy following Thrawn’s orders to pay much attention to him. The two troopers who had accompanied Hammerly had removed their helmets in a flagrant disregard for Imperial regulation and were in the process of spreading out the contents of what must have been the emergency med kit on the holotable.
The other trooper left on the bridge had rushed over to help Gravesend and Wytt carry an unconscious woman up the stairs. She had brown skin, black hair, and no obvious injuries that Ezra could see, but the fluttering rise and fall of her chest was barely perceptible. Ezra forced himself to look away.
As much as he hated to admit it, Thrawn was right about the blast doors. With no set destination, the magnetic shield was a dangerous drain on the ship’s power reserves. But Ezra wasn’t sure he would be welcome in the makeshift infirmary, and he felt more secure knowing that there was no durasteel barrier separating him from the insurance of the purrgil.
He had just sunk back down to the floor and begun to close his eyes when the sound of boots determinedly hitting the catwalk forced them back open. Hammerly was striding towards him. She stopped directly in front of him, forcing him to crane his neck back at an angle that tugged uncomfortably on his wounded shoulder to see her face. Her dark eyes were narrowed in suspicion.
“The admiral requested that I treat your blaster wound,” she said, her displeasure written all over her face. “I can’t imagine why, but he usually has a good reason. Can you walk?” She didn’t offer a hand to help him up.
“I can walk,” Ezra said. Whether he could stand was another question entirely, but he forced his tired legs to obey. He followed her cautiously down the walkway, the knowledge that he definitely needed medical attention warring with his certainty that Thrawn must have an ulterior motive.
The communications annex was less than ideal as a makeshift infirmary. Hammerly and the two stormtroopers had stripped the jackets off of fallen officers in an attempt to cushion the durasteel floor. Two officers were laid out alongside one trooper, their faces deathly pale in the dim emergency lighting. The two troopers who had removed their helmets were tending to their wounds. To the other side of the room, the still-helmeted troopers were arranging bodies in neat rows. Ezra stared as one of the troopers carried in a corpse from the bridge and added it to the stack.
Hammerly caught him looking. “If they’re still out there when the shield goes down, they’ll be sucked out into hyperspace during the depressurization. They deserve better than that.”
Ezra had no response. He had never thought about what happened to the bodies of the Imperials who died in space.
“Sit here and remove your shirt,” Hammerly said, gesturing to a section of the room opposite the blast doors. It was spaced equidistant between the living and the dead. Ezra obeyed, forcibly keeping his gaze from straying to the pile of bodies on his left. It turned out that a combination of heat from the blaster bolt and dried blood had fused the fabric of his jacket to the wound. Hammerly had to cut his shirt open. Ezra flinched when she withdrew the knife from a pocket of her uniform; she politely pretended she hadn’t noticed.
“I’m not going to waste bacta on you,” Hammerly informed him, “but I can disinfect and bandage it.”
Ezra drew on the Force to center himself as she worked. This is nothing compared to what Kanan experienced, he reminded himself. Nothing at all.
“I’m no medic,” Hammerly said at last, jostling Ezra, blinking, out of his meditative state, “but I don’t think you’ll lose the arm.” There was a not-so-subtle “unfortunately ” hidden beneath her words. “You probably should keep it immobilized if you don’t want permanent damage, though.”
She seemed a little unnerved by his continued silence. The hard edge her voice had maintained throughout the process softened a little. “You okay, kid?”
Ezra nodded.
Seemingly satisfied, Hammerly rose to supervise the other Imperials.
Ezra was unsure how much time had passed since their departure, but Thrawn and Jima had yet to return from their survey of the tower. Ezra decided there was not much else to do but wait. He let his eyes drift shut, only intending to rest them for a moment, but within seconds, he drifted off to sleep.
The Farseer was a small recon craft posted deep within Imperial space. It was a stealth ship, as it was imperative that the Empire not discover that the Ascendancy had eyes this deep into its territory. Its official mission was to observe and collect information about the movement of people, ships, and military assets within the Empire. More recently, that mandate had expanded to include a survey for any further Grysk incursions into this part of the galaxy. But its un official mission was to keep the Aristocra informed of the actions of one Mitth’raw’nuruodo.
Khoric was the communications officer on duty monitoring Imperial transmissions when the report came through. His blue face faded to the color of ice as his brain finally managed to parse the message. He had to replay the recording twice, not entirely that he had correctly interpreted the Basic words. But there was no mistaking it: twelve hours ago, Grand Admiral Thrawn had disappeared into hyperspace from the nearby system of Lothal. The Imperial Navy was currently listing his status as “Missing, Presumed Dead.”
Khoric almost yanked his headset out of the console in his rush to get to the bridge. It was critical that the Farseer depart for the Unknown Regions immediately.
Admiral Ar’alani needed to be informed of Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s disappearance as soon as possible.