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Battle of Bilbringi, 9 ABY.
For the treachery of the Empire against the Noghri people. We were betrayed. We have been revenged.
Pellaeon chokes against Rukh’s hand on his throat, flailing for the panic button on his control board. Sounds fade in and out; static blurs over his vision. Gathering his last coherent scraps of thought, he deliberately slumps back against the chair, playing dead and hoping Rukh will take the bait.
The pressure at his throat releases, and Pellaeon lurches forward, collapsing into the alarm trigger more than pressing the button. His head crashes down onto his console, and he sucks in huge, dizzying breaths, scraping for some kind of meaning. Treachery against the Noghri – what kind of revenge –
He spins around to look at Thrawn, but Rukh was faster: his hand slaps against the Grand Admiral’s neck, and he darts backwards into the shadows, leaving a tiny black capsule at the border where white collar meets blue skin. Belatedly, the stormtroopers surrounding the command center scramble to life, rifles swinging around to track the child-sized blur of gray skin and black clothing darting away through confused clumps of bridge crewers.
Under the strident alarms, the bridge dissolves into disorganized shouting and the clatter of stormtrooper armor. Pellaeon barely hears it. Thrawn is sitting preternaturally still, hands still on the arms of his chair, eyes fixed straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around him.
Then in one smooth motion, he reaches up and pulls the capsule away from his neck. A bead of darker-blue blood swells at the site, but Thrawn makes no move to wipe it off, looking down thoughtfully at the capsule in his hand before returning his eyes to the bridge.
“Poison,” he says, and the calm in his voice cuts through the cacophony, leaving the alarms wailing away over a tense silence as everyone from the ensigns on up turns to look at him. Distractedly, Pellaeon reaches down to shut off the alarm. “Thank you, Captain. Fortunately, it seems to have been designed for humans. I am unharmed, and I trust Major Tierce will soon be in possession of our would-be assassin. Return to your stations.”
Pellaeon feels a flush of loyalty at the way the bridge crew turn back to their stations with a respectable attempt at composure. Despite his best efforts to train at least the Chimaera’s chrew to Imperial standards, most of them are far too young for their rank, testaments to the Empire’s chronic manpower shortage. And yet they still do their best to imitate Thrawn’s unflappable calm.
Thrawn’s eyes sweep around the bridge, taking in the crew struggling to model his poise and finally landing on Pellaeon, the weight of his approval clear in his face. “Captain, are you well enough to command?”
“Yes, sir.” His voice is hoarse, but that seems to be the worst of the damage. On the battlefield map, the Rebels have surrounded one of the Golan II platforms defending the shipyard and are dealing out a worrying amount of damage. He looks back down at his board. “Captain Brandei is reporting a group of unidentified ships attacking the orbital defense platforms…”
**
Half an hour later, Pellaeon is again struggling to hide his astonishment at yet another apparently unsalvageable situation, saved. “The Rebels are in full retreat,” he reports, one eye on the messages scrolling across his screen and the other on the tactical map in front of him. “Death’s Head, Stormhawk, and Nemesis reporting minor damage only.”
“Very good. Captain Pellaeon.” Thrawn’s face is perfectly smooth, but his voice is tense, and a trickle of dark blue blood stands out against the pristine white of his uniform collar. “If you would accompany me, please.”
“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon hands off bridge control to Lieutenant Ardiff and steps around his computer to join Thrawn at the turbolift: there’s something off in the way he’s walking, but it’s impossible to pin down…
The doors of the bridge turbolift close, and Thrawn abruptly half-collapses against him, feverish heat radiating off his skin. Up close, he’s sweating; his eyes are duller than usual and his usually immaculate hair clings to the back of his neck. Pellaeon staggers back under his weight, his hand already halfway to his comm before Thrawn grabs his wrist. His fingers are trembling, and his palm is sweaty, but his grip is unbreakable.
“No, Captain.” His voice is strung tight, “I think it would be wisest to go to MedBay as quietly as possible.”
They ride in silence, except for Thrawn’s increasingly labored breathing. Pellaeon wraps one arm around Thrawn’s back to hold his chest upright: Thrawn shoots him a grateful look but wisely saves his breath. His skin is hot even through his uniform, and his heart thumps erratically against Pellaeon’s palm. Whatever Rukh gave him, it must have been more powerful than it appeared, or perhaps Thrawn simply metabolized it more slowly (Or then again, perhaps he didn’t, and he’d still wrestled a victory out of disaster in front of several hundred oblivious bridge crewers).
Pellaeon barely gets Thrawn through the door to the emergency ward before there’s a flurry of triage nurses pulling him onto a gurney – Thrawn gives the tiny capsule to one of them and he sprints off with a pair of attendants while another four or five swarm frantically around the Grand Admiral himself, brandishing scanners and needles and shouting numbers to each other.
In the middle of it all, Thrawn lies still – almost peaceful, except for the dull bloodred of his eyes and the sweat beading in distinctly non-human patterns across his cheekbones and down the sides of his neck.
“Captain.” His voice is soft, turning up into a hoarse cough at the end but Pellaeon hears it as clearly as if he’d shouted. He shoulders his way through the nurses to the gurney. Thrawn’s fingers shake when he reaches up into his pocket, drawing out a pair of data chips and pressing them into Pellaeon’s hand.
His command keys: access and override codes for everything in the Empire. Handing them over is a delegation of authority – until Thrawn recovers, Pellaeon is officially acting Supreme Commander. Pellaeon closes his fingers around the two tiny rectangles of plasteel, and forces himself to meet Thrawn’s eyes and nod before the medics wheel the gurney into an emergency life support unit.
**
The beeping of Thrawn’s brainwave monitor is just slightly out of synch with the lower-pitched whir of the life support machine. Beep. Beep. Bee-whirrrrr. Beep. Beep. Beep. Whirrrrr. The edge of his blanket is imperfectly aligned with the edge of the bed, slanting downwards towards his feet. Pellaeon stares blankly at it, his mind trying to latch on to the pattern but constantly caught off-guard by the hitch in the rhythm.
“Sir.” Thrawn’s personal physician is a wan-looking man named Dr. Larrk with sunken cheeks and only the slightest slouch to his Imperially-correct posture. He’s fresh from the analysis room, still in his lab coat and clutching a datpad. “We’ve just completed our initial scans and the damage appears to be reparable.”
Pellaeon shakes himself. “Have you identified the toxin?”
“Not yet.” Larrk shakes his head. “It’s a neurotoxin; it attacked his central and peripheral nervous systems. It doesn’t match anything in the database, but from what I can tell it would have been lethal to a human.” He looks over at Thrawn’s still body, and his eyes flick up to the vitals monitor. “I suppose for once we’re lucky that so few people know anything about Chiss physiology.”
Pellaeon has no reason to stay in MedBay after that – the doctors are doing their best, and there’s no possible help he can offer. He needs to contact Security about the search for the remaining Noghri aboard the Chimaera, and then get some rest himself before the inevitable crush of post-battle duties the next day.
He looks down at Thrawn’s disquietingly blank face, framed by the U-shaped brainwave scanner that wraps around the back of his head, and tries to convince himself to walk out of the room.
“We’ll notify you immediately if anything changes, sir,” Larrk assures him.
The Chimaera hums around him with the comforting stillness of the night watch as Pellaeon walks back to his quarters clutching Thrawn’s comlink, Thrawn’s datapad, and Thrawn’s command keys. Lying innocently on his desk next to his own, they make him feel like the worst kind of imposter.
Major Tierce calls him at 0230, the shadow of a beard appearing on his jaw and dark bags under his eyes.
“All Noghri aboard the Chimaera are accounted for,” he says, “all dead. Several of them killed themselves to avoid capture.”
Even with his very rudimentary knowledge of the Noghri, Pellaeon isn’t shocked to hear it, but with no prisoners to question, he’s no closer to understanding the roots of the attack, and it leaves an uneasy restlessness lingering at the back of his mind.
“Sir,” Tierce continues, “we’ve also identified one of the smuggler prisoners we captured in the battle as Talon Karrde’s lieutenant Aves. Two of the others are his allies Mazzic and Gillespee.” He pauses and scrubs his hand over his face. “I would strongly advise that they be moved as soon as possible, sir. The Bilbringi detention center simply doesn’t have the resources to keep high-profile prisoners securely contained.”
“Especially considering Karrde’s talent for improbable rescues,” Pellaeon agrees. “Instruct the detention coordinator on Bilbringi to report to me tomorrow with his suggestions for more secure facilities.”
“Yes, sir.” Tierce’s image flickers off. Pellaeon doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep, but at some point he obviously does, because at 0544, he’s woken up by a call from MedBay.
“Yes?”
Larrk looks even worse than Tierce did. “Sir, the Grand Admiral’s condition is stable,” he says, “and at this point we can declare him out of critical danger. Recovery will take weeks, but…”
“He will recover.”
“Yes, sir.”
Something relaxes in his chest, and Pellaeon can’t quite manage to hide his relief. “Very good, doctor. Thank you.”
**
The next morning, Pellaeon watches a quartet of the Chimaera’s security officers remove the ysalmiri from Thrawn’s command room while the reports trickle in. The Bilbringi shipyards are seriously damaged. Joruus C’baoth is dead, Mount Tantiss is a pile of rubble, and whatever remains of the Emperor’s storehouse there is now in Rebel hands. At least the Fleet itself was largely spared but Thrawn’s personal injury looms large in his mind: the Fleet was at least this powerful after Endor, but that didn’t stop it from fragmenting into petty feuds and political infighting…
The detention experts on Bilbringi suggest Corsin as sufficiently far away from Karrde’s typical haunts and adequately secure against any assault he could reasonably put together. Unfortunately, ion storms just rimward of Bilbringi are blocking the usual hyperspace routes, with the only remaining path taking any potential convoy through heavily guarded Rebel space – he sends the problem to Navigation hoping that there’s some alternate way to get through.
The engine noises shift slightly, and he startles up from his datapad resisting the urge to check back over his shoulder to make sure Rukh isn’t lurking somewhere in the shadows.
The last report is from Larrk. Thrawn’s vitals are normalizing and he optimistically reports that they should be able to move him from the Chimaera to the main medical facilities on Bilbringi proper in a few hours. In three to five days they’ll be able to risk bringing him out of restorative hibernation for what sounds like a brutal schedule of shifts in a neuromodulator.
“The Bilbringi neurology unit is excellent, sir, well worth the risk of moving him.”
“Very good,” says Pellaeon, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“I must warn you, Captain, the poison did extensive neurological damage, to the central and the peripheral nervous system. Even with the best therapy, he may never walk again, and – ”
“Yes?”
“We still aren’t sure to what extent his brain was affected, and whether or not the cognitive damage will be permanent. He may have memory gaps, mood swings, linguistic problems, impulsive behavior…” Larrk trails off.
He might lose everything he values in himself, Larrk doesn’t say, but Pellaeon hears it anyway. He takes a deep breath. “Dr. Larrk, I’m sure you and your team are doing the best you can. That’s all anyone can ask.”
Larrk pauses, and there’s a strangely familiar relief in his voice when he finally answers. “Thank you, Captain.”
The screen goes dark, and finally he’s left alone in the command room, staring down the holomap of the galaxy and trying to patch together some idea of what to do next.
As he sits back, he notices a small switch in the arm of the chair: when he flicks it, the top of the arm slides open to reveal a collection of datacards neatly divided into sections, and one small box carved from some kind of pale gray wood. The datacards all appear to be military-related: cultural histories of various civilizations, technical information about different classes of ships in the Fleet, records of past campaigns. Pellaeon looks hopefully for any hint of what Thrawn’s plans were for the war after Bilbringi, but if he ever recorded such a thing, it doesn’t seem to be here.
Unless, perhaps, it’s in the box. When he picks it up, it’s too heavy for its size, with no decoration aside from the grain of the wood still visible beneath the polished surface. He presses uselessly on the catch for a few moments before finally realizing that it’s not a button but an actual physical closure that he has to flip up. The box is full of datacards, but they don’t contain any future tactical instructions, or at least not in a form Pellaeon can understand.
Royal Wardrobe & Textiles – Naboo
Water Shaping – Ithor
Mesa Sculpture – Kuat
Rainbow Gem Jewelry – Hapes
It’s Thrawn’s art collection.
Pellaeon sighs and carefully closes the box – an antique, obviously, from the physical closure, and probably a priceless treasure in its own right. He won’t pick up Thrawn’s genius by wishing for it.
The atmosphere controls puff and he represses another startle, rubbing angrily at the back of his neck – and then stops and turns back to the sheaf of cultural histories, just to check. Yes, there it is. Noghri, Honoghr. A card, hopefully, with some explanation why the Grand Admiral’s fanatically loyal bodyguards suddenly decided to turn traitor, and whether he has the same to expect from some other quarter as well.
The report on the card is sharp and succinct, and increasingly disturbing the further along he reads. When he reaches the end, he lets his datapad fall into his lap, staring down at the display without really seeing it. Their visit to Honoghr, when Thrawn had suspected the Noghri of lying to him – they must have discovered the Empire’s deception.
It explains the betrayal, at least. But he’s still left unsettled, determined to ask Thrawn about it but not entirely sure he wants to hear the answer.
**
The medical team brings Thrawn out of hibernation for the first time three days later, and Pellaeon dodges three meetings and a holoconference to get down to the neurological ward on Bilbringi. It’s the first time he’s seen Thrawn since the nurses wheeled him away on the Chimaera (Star Destroyer captains do not sit by their commanding officers’ bedsides like worried Transhodan clutch mothers), and it’s a shock to see him looking so fragile – parenteral nutrition has not been kind to him, and his face is gaunt, skin stretched over bone.
Thrawn’s body holds perfectly still as he blinks: once, twice, and his eyes focus on Pellaeon.
“Admiral Thrawn, sir.” He pulls himself up to attention automatically.
“At ease, Captain,” Thrawn says finally – his voice comes out a scratchy whisper, and his lips barely move as he speaks. “How is the fleet?”
Reflexively, Pellaeon launches into the kind of standard report he’s given so many times he can almost see the outline typed out in his mind (heading: overall tactical situation; subheading: Battle of Bilbringi – ramifications; item: Crystal Gravfield Trap…). But a paragraph in, he can tell that Thrawn isn’t following: his eyes are glazed and his forehead creased, and he’s not nodding at important details or numbering Pellaeon’s points with little half-motions of his fingers.
Pellaeon forces the flow of words to a halt and shifts uncomfortably, suddenly aware of the way he’s looming over the bed.
Thrawn’s hand clenches and uncurls. In the silence, the machines speak for him: beep. Beep. Beep. Whirrrrrr. Beep. Beep. Beep. Bee-whirrrrrr.
“May I sit down, sir?”
“Of course.”
Pellaeon drags over the visitor’s chair, wincing at the scrape, and starts again. “The Fleet is safe, but the Bilbringi shipyards were more seriously damaged. We believe that the battle was a serious blow to the Rebels…”
By the end Thrawn is visibly exhausted, struggling to keep his eyes focused and breathing shallowly through his mouth.
Pellaeon resists the ridiculous urge to reach over and take his hand. “Sir, you should rest.” He wants to ask about the Noghri, memories of the report chafing in the back of his mind, but now is very obviously not the time.
“Yes.” But before Pellaeon can get up, he lifts his hand in the same casual command he’s given so many times before. One more thing. “You are – ” he pauses, taking a slow breath. “ – acting supreme commander?”
“Yes, sir. The Moffs accepted your decision.”
Thrawn gives the tiniest of nods, and something relaxes in his face. “Good.”
He can’t ask Thrawn to explain the Empire’s actions on Honoghr when he can barely follow a Fleet report, but on his way out of the hospital, Pellaeon stops to talk to Larrk. “I’ll only keep you for a moment, Doctor,” he says. “In your toxicology scans, did you test for Trihexalophine1138?”
“I don’t believe so.” Larrk frowns. “Is it a known weapon?”
“No,” Pellaeon says grimly, “It’s an herbicide.”
**
At least the scramble to reorganize and consolidate the Empire’s defensive lines leaves Pellaeon very little time to worry about whether or not he could possibly live up to Thrawn’s terrifying confidence in his abilities. The Rebels are still recovering from the damage to their fleet at Bilbringi, leaving him with breathing room to regroup the Fleet and consolidate their territorial gains of the past year, but first, he has to get through the Moffs.
“I am personally investigating the political circumstances that may have caused the Noghri to turn against the Empire, including the possibility of Rebel involvement,” Pellaeon explains patiently, ignoring the twist in his stomach at the thought of the datacard currently hidden back in the arm of Thrawn’s chair. “His doctors assure me that Grand Admiral Thrawn is recovering as well as can be reasonably expected.”
Fortunately, the Moffs seem less interested in the causes of the defection than in how they can turn its results to their own advantage. “A convenient story,” cuts in Moff Thurge. Thurge has thick, fleshy lips and sleepy eyes, and a sneer just subtle enough to be plausibly deniable. Did he leave any instructions?”
“Not that I’ve been able to find. I spoke to him briefly in MedBay but he was still too weak to make command decisions.” Pellaeon tries to banish the memory of the pinched confusion on Thrawn’s pale face.
“And Delta Source has been compromised.”
“Delta Source has been destroyed,” Pellaeon corrects him, setting his shoulders back. He is an officer of the Imperial Navy and legitimate acting head of the Imperial war effort; he will not be intimidated by a spineless sector governor whose only claim to power is family wealth.
“So we have no leader.” Thurge swallows, looking around with wide eyes. “And the New Republic could be anywhere, planning anything…”
Across the table, Moff Arren frowns at Thurge. Arren has all the rugged charm of a man sliding gracefully into middle age: blond hair flecked with gray and powerful shoulders held straight under his uniform. But behind the virility is a dangerous temper and a frequently violent xenophobia: his service record is punctuated by violence swept under the rug by money and prestige. “Control yourself, Thurge. The Empire survived without Thrawn for many years. As valuable as the Grand Admiral’s tactical skills are, the true power of the Empire cannot rest only in one…” His lip twists. “Being.”
Pellaeon’s eyes narrow.
Arren turns to address the rest of the Council. “In fact, I believe that now would be the perfect moment for an offensive. The Rebels have always been overawed by Thrawn, and the rumors of his death have made them aggressive, even overconfident. As much as we all admire the Grand Admiral, the Empire will not always be able to rest on his reputation. A victory independent of Thrawn’s genius would prove the true extent of Imperial strength.” Arren clicks his remote, and a star chart spins to life in the center of the table. “I have drawn up a plan of attack launching from my own sector…”
A proof of Imperial strength, and a convenient power base for anyone ultimately planning to supplant the alien who so inconveniently arrived to save the Empire’s human leaders from their own petty incompetence.
“I remind you, Moff Arren, that you are not in command of Imperial strategy,” Pellaeon cuts in coldly. “Until the Grand Admiral is well enough to resume command, we will focus on consolidation and defense, not personal quests for glory.”
Another man could conceivably orchestrate an Imperial military victory, but Pellaeon can’t think of one who would use that victory to create an Empire worthy of the cost – and it certainly wouldn’t be Arren.
“I also,” Arren continues as if he hadn’t spoken, “remain unconvinced that Grand Admiral Thrawn’s delegation of his command keys to you gives you any authority to override the Council of Moffs.”
Pellaeon feels his eyes tighten around the edges. “The Supreme Commander of the Imperial Fleet outranks all other military personnel – ”
“But you are not the Supreme Commander.” Arren’s face is almost blank, but there’s a challenge in his eyes. “Does his delegate inherit the same powers?”
“He does, according to Fleet regulations, section 4, paragraph 2,” Thurge cuts in. Thurge, of course, is only supporting him because Pellaeon is less likely to mount an aggressive strategy than Arren is, but for the moment, he’ll take what he can get.
Arren subsides, for the moment at least, and Pellaeon seizes his chance. “Now, gentlemen, for our short-term strategy…”
When he finally returns to his own quarters, there’s a message waiting for him from Larrk: his guess was correct.
Knowledge of the toxin’s properties should allow my team to address its effects more effectively, Larrk’s hologram reports, particularly with respect to the central nervous system. We’ve run one cycle of the targeted treatments already, and the results suggest that he may be ready for more serious discussions within the next few days…
**
When Pellaeon steps into Thrawn’s hospital room for the next time a week later, the asynchronized beeping is silenced, and the various pieces of equipment have been arranged to be, if not aesthetically pleasing, at least neatly organized. It’s not something he would ever have considered doing for himself, but the effect is surprisingly calming, not least as proof that Thrawn is recovered enough to care about the aesthetics of his environment.
Thrawn must have noticed him looking. “Hospitals are rarely pleasant, but they do not have to be actively abrasive.”
His skin is still pale, but his cheeks no longer look so sunken, and his voice sounds almost normal. Pellaeon struggles to hide his relief. “Dr. Larrk has cleared you for partial duty, sir, if you feel well enough for it.”
“Well enough, I think” he says slowly. “He told me you were the one to identify the poison.”
Pellaeon tries and fails to imagine Captain Drusan – or any of his previous commanding officers, for that matter – having everything swept out from under him like this and reacting with Thrawn’s level of self-possession. “I read the Noghri cultural history file, and it…came to mind.”
“What you read there disturbs you.”
“It does,” he admits.
“Good.” Thrawn’s exhale is barely noticeable. “The Noghri Death Commandos have always been a double-edged sword. When the Emperor started using them to carry out his secret projects, he made them as potentially dangerous to the Empire as they were to his enemies.”
He pauses and collects himself; his voice is getting noticeably hoarser. “By the time I inherited control of the Noghri from Lord Vader, Honoghr was already beyond repair. If I had revealed the truth, or even ordered our scientists to replace the poison with an effective fertilizer, the Empire’s deception would have been obvious. The Noghri would have taken their secrets to the Rebellion without any real benefit to their world.”
Pellaeon takes a breath to respond, but he can’t honestly say that he would have chosen to jeopardize Imperial stability by revealing one wrong too late to right it. The New Republic’s insistence on “justice” for every backworld wrong is the reason why even the best of intentions cannot resolve its chronic political instability. For the Empire to survive as an institution, it cannot fall into that trap.
He thinks of the slow, grinding Imperial disintegration that Thrawn had almost single-handedly reversed, the splinter groups of warlords carving off a system here and a sector there, too busy backstabbing each other to impose anything like order on the people they supposedly ruled, and too petty to stand together even in the face of an opponent as disorganized as the Rebellion.
He’s waiting – waiting for an order, he realizes, and it takes a moment to remember that the order isn’t going to come. “Yes, sir,” he says finally. “I don’t like it, but I do understand.” When he meets Thrawn’s eyes, something passes silently between them, a rapport that they’d barely built when they lost it somewhere in the endless arguments about C’baoth and the Solo children and the Rebel feint at Tangrene.
“Now,” Thrawn says, “how is the Fleet?”
**
His intensive schedule of shifts in the neuromodulator demands much of Thrawn’s still-precious energy, but Larrk is optimistic about the effects of the treatment, and his cognitive improvement is increasingly noticeable. It’s reassuring to discuss command decisions with Thrawn, even if technically outranking his commanding officer is occasionally disconcerting.
Unfortunately, Arren’s faction is insistent on talking to Thrawn in the flesh, and Larrk finally agrees that Thrawn is well enough at least for a holoconference. “His mental capacity is much improved, Captain,” he says, flicking through a series of brain scans, “but I believe you have a false impression of his recovery.” He pins Pellaeon with a stare over his desk. “He consistently performs much better on every test if we run it within half an hour of your conversations.”
Pellaeon doesn’t know what to say to that. “I see.”
Larrk sighs. “I will clear him, if you consider it necessary,” he says, “but only on the condition that you stay with him the entire time.
He’s taken aback for a moment, because he’d never considered doing anything else. “Of course.”
**
“…Admiral, Captain Pellaeon continues to insist on a strategy of caution, but I still maintain that an aggressive expedition to Farrfin or Pantolomin would – ”Arren’s tone is aggressively patronizing: a muscle twitches in Thrawn’s jaw.
“An expedition to Farfinn or Pantolomin would accomplish nothing.” That’s Moff Hnega, one of Thurge’s allies.
“Your fears are groundless,” Arren snarls directly at Thurge, ignoring the attempt to direct his anger onto a middleman.
Thrawn is staring at the monitor, the corners of his eyes tight, and his hand clenched in the blankets, struggling to follow the rapid-fire power politics. Pellaeon keeps his breathing deliberately even, refusing to let the cold twist of fear show in his face.
“Admiral?” Hnega again.
“I am not familiar with the current military situation on Farrfin or Pantolomin.” If Pellaeon hadn’t just seen him struggling to follow the conversation, he never would have guessed. “However, I have every confidence in Captain Pellaeon’s decisions. He is acting Supreme Commander until further notice and has full authority to order whatever he considers to be best for the Empire.”
Deliberately or not, Arren fails to hide his scowl at that, and he opens his mouth to speak again, but Pellaeon has had enough. “Gentlemen,” he cuts in, “if you are all quite satisfied, the Grand Admiral needs to rest.”
“Of course.” Arren looks as if he wants to object, but even he won’t risk appearing deliberately unconcerned for Thrawn’s welfare.
Slowly, the holograms of the Moffs blink off, and finally the screen is empty. For a long moment, Thrawn simply gazes into the darkened space. Pellaeon is familiar enough with his expressions to know when he needs time to think, and so he waits, silently, until Thrawn turns to look at him, mouth drawn tight with fatigue and worry. Lying open against the white sheet, his hand is trembling. “You were right, Captain. That was necessary.”
“Sir, I know you need to rest.” Pellaeon reaches down for his document case. “But when I was looking at your data files, I found this as well.” He holds up the wooden box and a small stack of holo projection discs, placing them carefully on the side table. “I thought perhaps you might like to have it.”
Thrawn is silent for so long that Pellaeon is almost afraid he’s angry at the intrusion into his private affairs, but finally he reaches up for the box. “Thank you.”
**
Three days after that, Pellaeon receives a set of particularly troubling Intelligence reports from the Schwuy sector: Moff Arren, apparently, has extensive financial connections with Mazzic’s group. There’s no evidence yet that those connections extend beyond the usual under-the-table deals, but considering Mazzic’s presence at the battle, the timing is suspicious, to say the least.
It’s a group without a leader, with most of their militarily significant ships captured and their focus presumably on remaining viable as a commercial organization, not waging private wars for Imperial malcontents. But still…
“I’m worried about the implications, sir. If Arren has worked his way into one group, what about the rest of the Smugglers’ Alliance?” As paranoid as it makes him feel to admit it, this kind of web-weaving is familiar from the years of disintegration after Endor.
Thrawn looks as though he’s about to object when Pellaeon’s comlink buzzes: it’s Security. “Sir, we’ve identified an intruder in MedBay. Her name is Shada D’ukal; she’s a bodyguard to the smuggler Mazzic.”
“Have you confronted her?”
“No, sir.”
Thrawn shakes his head minutely, and Pellaeon nods. Mazzic is in a secure holding facility on the other side of the shipyard, so she’s not here for him. Thrawn is the most interesting being around: if he’s not her target, he will be as soon as she realizes he’s here. And once she starts smashing things up in here, she’ll cause an unacceptable amount of damage whether she actually hits the Grand Admiral or not.
Pellaeon’s eyes dart around the room and land on the sensory input hood hanging from the far wall. It’s a crude device, used for patients who react badly to emerging straight from a neuromodulator into the chaos of the real world. The hood provides total audio, olfactory, and visual isolation, allowing the doctor to slowly increase the amount of stimulus to match what the patient can take.
As a medical device, Thrawn hasn’t needed it since the first few neuromodulator treatments, but as a way to hide his skin…Thrawn follows his gaze and nods slightly.
He mutes the comlink. “Can you walk that far?”
A pause. “If you help me.”
The rest of his conversation with Security is peppered with override codes: yes, the Grand Admiral is going to be leaving his room – yes, walking – nobody is to pretend anything unusual is happening. You’ll know when you need to know, Lieutenant. Dismissed.
The hood is reinforced, steel-threaded canvas, awkwardly bulky and disgorging a tangle of stiff, snarled wires. Pellaeon carefully lifts the back of Thrawn’s head, trying to be gentle as he slides it on, wincing as it scrapes over skin. Thrawn lies perfectly still, hair soft between Pellaeon’s fingers and his head feels heavier than it looks. There’s nothing remotely inappropriate about it, but it unsettlingly intimate to be trusted with this kind of physical care. Or perhaps the only unsettling part is how reluctant he is to eventually pull his hand away and close the catch on the hood.
Thrawn’s fingers tighten on the blankets, and Pellaeon resists the impulse to ask if he’s really all right: Thrawn can’t hear him anyway. His fingers – with their telltale blue skin. Pellaeon yanks off his own gloves and slides them over Thrawn’s hands. Once no hint of skin remains visible, he helps Thrawn sit up and shakily swing his legs over the side of the bed.
Four or five unwieldy kilos of medical equipment does nothing for Thrawn’s still-recovering sense of balance – he staggers when he walks and sways in place when he stands still. Slowly, they shuffle towards the door, where, to his intense relief, the pair of stormtrooper guards salute as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
Across the open area, D’ukal on a stretcher, twitching: she’s either having a seizure, or more likely faking one. Now that he’s looking for it, he sees her eyes flicker over them, but there’s no double-take, no recognition, at least not obviously. For a well-trained operative, though, there wouldn’t be....
They ease across the floor out to the nurses’ station – Thrawn’s hand around his waist tenses, but under the hood, he’s essentially blind and dumb.
“Excuse me, sir.” The man isn’t even in Security uniform – he’s dressed as a navigator, and desperately needs a jacket he didn’t grow out of two growth spurts ago. “Can you identify your patient, please?”
“Stand aside, Officer. Authorization code – ” but that’s as far as he gets, as Pellaeon realizes belatedly that the man was stalling for his friend, emerging from another door with a gun trained directly on Thrawn. And Shada meanwhile has miraculously recovered from her seizure and is heading across the floor, pulling something out of her hair as she comes.
The ward explodes into screams and streaks of laser fire as Shada’s companions start shooting – before he even realizes what he’s doing, something in his lizard brain understands danger and Pellaeon throws himself on top of Thrawn, crash-landing on the floor with a thump and a flare of pain along his hip. Crushed against his chest, Thrawn’s back is hard and tense, his shoulderblades moving under the thin hospital gown.
Fortunately, a trio of Imperial security officers are also converging on the drama – Pellaeon sees one of them grab for Shada as he digs for his tiny holdout blaster, crawling bodily over Thrawn as a kind of human shield and trying not to flinch as a monitor shatters into sparking wires and shards of glass above them. Fingers close around his leg – he kicks reflexively before realizing that it’s Thrawn’s, a sliver of blue wrist showing between glove and sleeve.
He manages one shot into someone’s leg, but the firefight was over almost before it started, security staff rounding up the two shooters who survived the first whirlwind of fighting and wrestling them into handcuffs.
By Pellaeon’s count, four doctors, a nurse, and at least one patient are lying dead on the floor, with a couple more already being hurried off to the trauma intake. Two feet away, a stormtrooper commander is heading their way.
“Sir, is that Grand Admiral Thrawn?”
“Yes.” Pellaeon crawls off him and helps him sit up – he’s visibly shaking, one arm pinned to his body by the tangle of wires attached to the input hood, and the other held at an awkward angle – the wrist sprained, probably, from falling on it. “Call a medic, and help me get this hood off.”
When the commander touches Thrawn, he jerks away violently, and Pellaeon sucks in a breath. “Call the medic,” he says to the man, and slowly reaches out to take Thrawn’s uninjured hand in both of his, easing off the glove and trying to remember what he’d learned decades ago in combat training about trauma and panic and skin contact. Hopefully it works the same way for Chiss.
Apparently it does. Thrawn’s fingers close around his, and he eases one hand up to disentangle the wires and free the arm, slowly working his way up to the ridiculous system of catches and latches that secure the actual hood. It’s awkward to undo them with one hand, and once it’s done, Pellaeon quickly realizes that, there’s no way to take the thing off with Thrawn still clinging to his fingers.
Very carefully, he draws Thrawn’s hand up to his shoulder, curling it around the exposed skin just under the collar of his uniform and working his fingers free. Thrawn’s grip on his neck is painfully tight; he pushes down the memory of Vader and his Force-choking, and slowly slides the hood off.
Thrawn’s face is pale and drawn with pain, his breathing harsh and shallow. He’s looking in Pellaeon’s direction but doesn’t seem to be seeing him, his eyes unfocused and distant.
“Sir? Sir?” Doctors are converging on them, but Pellaeon holds up a hand. “We were in a firefight, but it’s over.” There’s no sign that Thrawn even understands what he’s saying. Pellaeon eases Thrawn’s hand off his neck and back into his own, giving the emergency medics room to work. “Do you understand?”
No response, but the fingers laced together with his tighten briefly.
“Sir, he seems to be having a panic attack.” The medic is young, with sharp cheekbones and her hair scraped back into a severe bun. “Dr. Larrk’s instructions call for one dose of Trixylapam, which I’m administering now.” While she talks, her hands fly over Thrawn’s shoulder, gently pushing a hypo into his skin. Thrawn barely seems to notice her. “We’re going to transfer him to Emergency Neuro. I think it would be best if you came along.” She glances down at their hands.
“Of course.” Awkwardly, he stands up when two nurses slide a cotton stretcher under Thrawn’s body, and grabs for his comlink with his free hand.
**
The trixylapam works slowly, but they can’t risk anything harsher, given Thrawn’s already fragile neurological health. Dr. Larrk rushes in, freshly woken up from his sleep cycle, and takes ten minutes of readings, finally pronouncing Thrawn to be substantially unharmed: his wrist should heal normally, and aside from a few bruises, he took no physical damage in the fight. The nurses take longer, but eventually they’ve done everything they can, and Pellaeon is sitting beside the bed holding hands with his commanding officer: every time he tries to ease his fingers away, Thrawn’s grip tightens around them.
Twenty minutes after the last nurse leaves, Security calls: they’ve apprehended all the rest of the suspected intruders, and identified the shuttle they came in on, but Shada D’ukal is still at large.
Fortunately, Thrawn’s room was far enough from the firefight that the medics move him back after the initial scans reveal no serious damage: Pellaeon hadn’t realized how much more tolerable Thrawn had made his own room until he had to spend an hour with very little to do amid the antiseptic clutter of boxy plastic monitors and off-level monitor screens. Thrawn’s own room is almost soothing, especially with the lights dimmed to display his latest holos – some kind of pale-blue tapestries with red and gold calligraphy, twisting gently in an imaginary wind.
The adrenaline of the fight has long since worn off, leaving a dull fatigue in its wake; he’s almost nodding off when he feels pressure on his hand and looks up to see Thrawn blinking in confusion at the ceiling. “Captain?”
“Sir.” Pellaeon is inordinately relieved to see his eyes moving normally again.
“What happened?”
He has to go over everything starting from the moment he first put the hood over Thrawn’s head, and he doesn’t miss the tiny shiver and the slight tensing of fingers against the back of his hand when he mentions it.
“I have rarely wanted to destroy a perfectly serviceable medical device more than that hood,” Thrawn says darkly.
“We do still need some atypical targets for Intelligence operative training,” Pellaeon says automatically, and then stops himself, belatedly realizing that it wasn’t an order. Thrawn’s mouth twitches, and then they’re both laughing, the kind of quietly exhausted laughter that’s more tension release than humor, half a smile and half a breath.
For a moment, he’s caught watching Thrawn’s face, his eyes crinkled at the corner like a man, not a Grand Admiral, reflections from the holos shimmering off his skin in the low light.
Pellaeon takes a deep breath. “Sorry, sir. Habit.” He realizes belatedly that they’re still touching, and gently tugs his hand away; Thrawn looks down and raises one eyebrow.
“You – ” he searches for a way to phrase it diplomatically. “The doctor said you had a panic attack, sir. It may have been a lingering effect of the toxin, but anxiety can also be a side effect of the neuromodulators. You seemed to be in less distress with the skin contact.”
“I remember,” Thrawn murmurs. “Your touch is…calming.” He frowns, as if he’s trying to remember something, but it evidently eludes him. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Of course.” He seizes the excuse of fatigue and circumstance to push the nagging questions of rank protocol to the back of his mind.
Thrawn shakes himself a little, pulling back from wherever he’d been. “How did D’ukal get in?”
“According to Security, she and three of her associates disguised themselves as crew members of a supply shuttle to the Bilbringi shipyards.” A task that should have been more difficult than it apparently was: if nothing else, this has underscored the need to get these prisoners off Bilbringi as soon as possible. He pauses to make sure Thrawn is following before he continues. “They originally intended to rescue the smugglers, but a guard at one of the Detention Center checkpoints seemed suspicious of one of the men’s identification. D’ukal faked a seizure as a distraction, which allowed the man to escape unnoticed while the security officers escorted her and the other two to MedBay.”
“And the man who escaped?”
“Security caught him attempting to infiltrate the detention block roughly 10 minutes after the firefight in MedBay. He’s in custody, sir.”
“I see.” Thrawn takes a deep breath. “How many died in the firefight?”
Pellaeon doesn’t wince, but only because he’s been trained not to. “Six confirmed, with one more still in critical condition.” Their plan for avoiding violence, in other words, had failed completely, and six (possibly seven) Imperial citizens had to pay for it with their lives. And all in response to a threat that had never existed in the first place.
Thrawn must see the guilt on his face. “Nobody is responsible for their deaths except the men who shot at them, Captain,” he says, sounding for a moment like the Thrawn who could give a string of orders without missing a beat. “It was the only reasonable action to take, given the circumstances.”
“Yes, sir.” He hopes there’s more surety in his voice than he actually feels.
On the way back to his quarters, he can still feel the warmth of Thrawn’s hand around his own.
**
After the attack, Pellaeon docks the Chimaera at Bilbringi, partly to give his own crew the chance for some long-deserved shore leave, and partly to rotate crew units from Bilbringi in to work with the Chimaera’s training staff. And partly, he has to admit, to make his increasingly frequent conferences with Thrawn more convenient. His cognitive ability is almost back to normal now: most of the remaining damage is to his balance and coordination.
When he knocks on the door with the final Security report, fully half the floor space in the room is taken up with a holo of Mon Calamari star cruisers, moving around in a formation vaguely familiar, but not enough for him to name.
“The Mon Calamari consider their star cruisers to be works of art in their own right,” Thrawn explains. “Their tactical holos are fascinating.” He turns away from the display, his eyes skipping down to the datapad in Pellaeon’s hands. “You have the Security report?”
“Yes, sir. No missing shuttles or supply craft have been located, so it’s likely she stowed aboard a larger ship. Intelligence has instructed all captains to double their security sweeps, but Major Tierce considers it very unlikely that she’s still anywhere near Bilbringi.” He keeps his face carefully neutral. “No evidence yet confirming or denying whether Arren was involved. Intelligence is still working on it.”
“But you think he was.”
“I don’t think he meant it to succeed; he might have told Mazzic that to get his cooperation, but he’s not stupid enough to think that he can benefit from killing you at this point.”
“But it is in his interest to keep me here,” Thrawn finishes for him. “And in any case, our need to move those prisoners is now urgent.” He looks back at the cruisers.
They can’t possibly be attacking Mon Calamari, at least not immediately; it’s much too far away and too well-defended. Pellaeon wracks his mind for a Mon Cal general anywhere within a reasonable attack range. “Yellan Tim,” he says cautiously, “in the Schwuy sector.”
“Indeed.” Thrawn calls up the star map, showing an alternate route to Corsin. “Keep the prisoners here, but have Captain Unlisst put together a mock convoy and ask Intelligence to leak the information that the prisoners will be leaving in two days. The convoy will jump to Palanhi and then along the Shwuy Exchange to Uviuy Exen. Then they’ll follow the Hydian Way to Corsin.”
Pellaeon frowns. They’re bait, obviously, but for whom?
“Commander Tim’s forces are stretched thin as it is; he’s defending against an assault from Carida and Moff Arren has been snarling at the gates from Mrisst, so most of his strength is concentrated towards Coruscant. He won’t take the risk of moving it, certainly not for a smuggler. But if he doesn’t…”
“…then the Rebels lose their chance to prove good faith to the smugglers,” Pellaeon finishes. Talon Karrde might be steering perilously close to Han Solo’s footprints, but the rest of his little band certainly aren’t. Faced with their allies’ refusal to help, they’ll break up and go back to what’s left of their individual affairs, and the so-called Smugglers’ Alliance will disappear as any kind of militarily significant force.
“And if Arren has made allies of them, he’ll have to let them break up or risk showing his hand too early.”
**
The convoy jumps to hyperspace 15 minutes before the report comes in: Pellaeon is in the command room, double-checking the latest Intelligence reports from Coruscant and trying to decide which ones Thrawn needs to see once he gets out of the neuromodulator: this should be one of his final treatments.
“Captain Pellaeon, sir? Active priority message from Intelligence.”
“Patch it through to my datapad.”
Commander Tim withdrawn from Schwuy Sector to Coruscant; replaced by Wedge Antilles.
Pellaeon feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. Wedge Antilles is reckless enough – and friendly enough with Talon Karrde – to withdraw ships from the forces facing Mrisst and Carida and attack the convoy in force. He’s daredevil enough to try it and good enough to make it work.
The convoy is still in hyperspace, cut off from communications until it emerges, at which point it will in all likelihood be attacked and probably be destroyed by the entire Schwuy Sector fleet. Pellaeon takes a deep breath and keys for the bridge. “Lieutenant, I want immediate contact with Captain Unlisst the moment he drops out of hyperspace.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pellaeon takes a deep breath, reminding himself that the most brilliant strategist in the Empire chose him as deputy commander for a reason, and it wasn’t so that he could sit by helplessly and watch the galaxy go to hell.
“And get me Moff Arren on the comm.”
Arren, of course, waits just long enough to snub him without crossing the line into officially notable delays. Pellaeon chooses to ignore it: as satisfying as it would be to take the man down a peg or three, he doesn’t have time to get caught up in an ego contest right now.
“Moff Arren,” he says without preamble as soon as the quarter-size holo appears on his chair.
“Captain Pellaeon.”
Pellaeon allows a hint of a smile to play around his mouth, wondering how long it’ll take before Arren cottons on. “I regret having to hide this from you for so long, but of course you understand that strategy occasionally demands secrecy.”
Arren leans forward in his chair: he’s hooked.
“I trust that your forces are still concentrated at Mrisst?"
“Yes, sir.”
“A sizeable Imperial force is currently on the way to Uviuy Exen. Gather your four Interdictor cruisers and whatever support craft can be assigned to them without adding any delay. I’m currently transferring the coordinates of your hyperspace jump to your datapad. In approximately two hours, Rebel reinforcements will be passing through that lane bringing reinforcements to the Schwuy Sector. Intercept and destroy them.”
Arren’s eyes glitter. “This is the Grand Admiral’s plan, sir?”
“No,” Pellaeon says tightly, “It’s mine.”
The blatant triumph on Arren’s face would be grating even if Pellaeon were sincerely attempting the coup Arren thinks he is. He vanishes, and Pellaeon sets his datapad to automatically pick up the status reports from Mrisst as they start coming in.
**
By the time Thrawn is out of the neuromodulator, all the possible pieces have been picked up. The battle, such as it is, was over quickly. Arren’s four Interdictor cruisers make short work of the disorganized Rebels facing them, and without their expected reinforcements, the forces at Uviuy Exen itself are lost, barely able to take a few wild potshots at Unlisst’s convoy before it reorients and disappears along the Hydian Way.
It’s surprisingly gratifying to see the tension in Thrawn’s face progressively ease as he recounts the whole story.
“Well done, Captain,” he says finally, and Pellaeon hadn’t realized how tight the tension in his shoulders was until it loosens.
“I learned from the best, sir.”
Thrawn’s head inclines ever so slightly at the compliment. “And Moff Arren’s forces?”
“Minor damage, sir. He lost – ” Pellaeon checks his datapad “21 TIE fighters, two assault gunboats, and one assault shuttle. Three more gunboats were damaged but repairable.” He hesitates. “He was also…vocally disappointed that I didn’t use the victory to undermine your position, sir.”
Thrawn’s eyes turn hard. “Was he.”
“He called me privately after the engagement, under the impression that we were now co-conspirators.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“The truth, sir. The Empire I serve is more than a gang of backstabbing xenophobic warlords playing power games. It has honor and dignity. And it already has a leader.”
Thrawn’s eyes bore into his, and then abruptly there’s a hand at the back of his head, pulling him forward with irresistible force, and a mouth hot and insistent over his own, teeth sharp against his lips. His body reacts before his brain can catch up, pressing forward into the heady rush of yes, this – but then one or both of them comes to his senses and they jerk apart.
“Sir – what – ” he stutters, and Thrawn yanks his hand back.
“Captain.” Thrawn’s breathing is uneven – for once in his life, he actually looks rumpled.
Thrawn already knows that Pellaeon would never judge a man for anything he said or did three hours out of a neuromodulation unit. They’ve both read the Imperial Code of Conduct multiple times: any such relationship would be against every fraternization regulation, and for good reason. There’s nothing to discuss.
Pellaeon reaches down to squeeze Thrawn’s shoulder – Thrawn startles at his touch but then relaxes into it, and the ghost of a smile passes between them.
Thrawn takes a deep breath. “The convoy reached Corsin safely?”
“Yes, sir.”
EPILOGUE
The Rebels’ withdrawal of troops from the Inner Rim to bolster their defensive line around Coruscant gives Thrawn the opening he needs to attack Obroa-skai – this time, not just as an information raid, but to actually take the planet. And this time, he’s out of the hospital to do it.
A pair of stormtroopers beckons Pellaeon into Thrawn’s command room, and he steps inside to see the Grand Admiral surrounded by a familiar constellation of glowing lights that cast a purple glow over his uniform.
“Corellian flame miniatures,” he says, reaching up as if he could cup the hologram in his hand.
Thrawn’s eyes follow Pellaeon’s hand, but his expression is distant, as though his mind is somewhere else. “Indeed. Adventure seekers, but loyal to their own.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Captain.” Whatever Thrawn was thinking about, he pulls himself back to the present, fixing Pellaeon with a steady gaze. “After we take Obroa-Skai, I plan to put together a special task force to be where the flag armada cannot. Would you prefer me to reassign the Chimaera to that group?”
Pellaeon’s hand falls back to his side, and he pauses to force his response into some semblance of propriety before he opens his mouth. “I will serve the Empire wherever you think is best, sir.”
“I know you will,” Thrawn says. “I asked what you prefer.”
There's nothing to say but the truth. “I would prefer to stay with you, sir.”
Something relaxes around Thrawn’s eyes. "Very good."
