Chapter Text
Everything is unfamiliar, here, in this untold compass of space: the stars, and the planets, and the grey-green curve of the tiny moon below them. Even the bridge of the cruiser he’s captaining still looks strange beneath his feet, — not the gleaming brightness of the Steadfast, which had almost begun to feel like home, but the dim confines of a decrepit old vessel that’s decades past retirement.
It’s the only ship Ar’alani had been allowed to assign him and his crew of volunteers.
It’s the only one the Ascendancy would spare, Eli corrects with no small amount of bitterness, and then tries to shrug it away for the moment because right now, it doesn’t matter.
Right now, none of it matters. In this moment, right now, he really only needs to see one familiar thing, and it’s not stars, or planets, or moons, or the shining lights of the Steadfast.
With his hands resting stiffly on the arms of the captain’s chair, he waits.
“The scans are complete,” Dalvu finally says, turning to face him from the sensor display. Her voice cuts through the tense silence as the bridge crew waits for confirmation, waits to know whether this will merely be one more stop in an endless search. There’s a faint smile on her face, and Eli isn’t quite prepared to let himself hope, but then she’s magnifying the display so he can see it himself, and —
Yes. There. He can feel his heart pounding in his ears, can hear it beating in a rush all around him as his eyes fix on a shape he remembers like the back of his hand.
Like the first formula he’d memorized as a child.
“Any life signs detected?” he asks, his eyes glued to the display.
“A great many,” Dalvu replies with deep satisfaction, and Eli gives in and lets his eyes close just for a moment, just for the expanse of a single slow breath, before he opens them again to the unmistakable, tapered body of a Star Destroyer near the moon’s equator line.
“Captain?” the pilot asks, looking to him for instructions, and Eli gives him a nod, swift and sure.
You better be there, Thrawn, is what he thinks, air tight in his lungs, or I’m never speaking to you again. You damn well better be there.
“Take us down, Azmordi,” is what he says. “Let’s go find him.”