Ar’alani looked at Thrawn, then at the incoming Fifth Family ships, then finally back at Car’das. “Permission granted,”
she said. She started toward the blast doors.
“I’ll also stay,” Thrass said.
Ar’alani stopped in midstep. “What?”
“I’m also not under Chiss military command,” Thrass said. “And Aristocra Charorm’bintrano didn’t mention me, either.”
Ar’alani sent a hard look at Thrawn. “We’ll both be destroyed by this,” she warned.
“The role of a warrior is to protect the Chiss people,”
Thrawn reminded her. “The warrior’s own survival is of only secondary importance.”
For half a dozen heartbeats the two of them locked gazes. Then, with a hissing sigh, Ar’alani turned to Thrass.
“Pesfavri is the nearest Defense Fleet base,” she said. “You know the coordinates?”
Thrass nodded. “Yes.”
“Then we leave you,” she said, nodding to him. “May warriors’ fortune smile on your efforts.”
She continued toward the blast doors. Thrawn lingered for a last, long look at his brother, then followed.
And a minute later, Car’das and Thrass were alone.
“You really think we can get this thing all the way to a military base?” Car’das asked.
“You miss the point, friend Car’das,” Thrass saidgrimly. “Weren’t you listening to my brother? It would be better for Outbound Flight to be destroyed than to let any single family claim it.”
Car’das felt a sudden tightening in his throat. “Wait a second,” he protested. “I was just going to try to lock Outbound Flight down so that the Aristocra’s people couldn’t get aboard without blasting their way in. I didn’t sign up for a suicide mission.”
“Courage, Car’das,” Thrass assured him. “Neither did I. I assume we can set this vessel’s course to intersect the local sun, then escape in the shuttle we arrived in?”
Car’das thought it over. It should be possible, he decided, provided at least one of the Dreadnaughts’ drives was still operable and the control cables to it were intact. “I think so.”
“Then let us do it,” Thrass said. “Your people built this vessel. Tell me what to do.”
The turbolift shaft was reasonably clear, and the car reached D-4 with only a few bumps and scrapes. The Dreadnaught itself didn’t seem too badly damaged, either.
Except, of course, for all the bodies.
The medical droids had already started clearing them away, probably taking them all to one of the medical labs where, according to the droids’ now outdated programming, living beings would be waiting to give orders on how to proceed.
But there was no one to receive the corpses. Lorana stretched out with the Force and worked with the ship’s comm system, hoping against all her fears that someone might have miraculously survived the cataclysm that had overtaken Outbound Flight.
But no one answered either call. D-4, it seemed, was dead. Of defenders and attackers alike; and that Lorana found both curious and ominous. Surely the Chiss hadn’t gone to all the effort to destroy Outbound Flight simply to abandon it. But thenwhere were they?
She spent only a little time on D-4 before continuing on.
The turbolift to D-3 was inoperable, implying damage to the cars or the pylon or both, so she headed instead to D-5.
There she picked her way through the same debris and bodies and received the same negative results to her efforts at communication. D-6, the next ship on her grisly tour, was much the same.
Still, all three ships seemed to be mostly airtight again, with adequate light and heat and gravitation. The service droids had used the past few hours well. If the Chiss truly had abandoned Outbound Flight, she and the others might be able to make it at least partially operational again.
She was in the turbolift heading for D-1 when her senses caught the faint whisper of nearby life.
She pressed her head against the wall of the car, stretching out with the Force as best her own injuries and lingering horror would allow. There were definitely living beings out there. Alien beings, and not very many of them. But at least there was someone.
And she and her turbolift car were headed straight toward them.
Stepping away from the wall, she got a grip on her lightsaber. Whether by design or simple blind luck, Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo had made good on his threat to destroy Outbound Flight. And he had, moreover, destroyed it out from under Jorus C’baoth and the rest of the Jedi.
It was time to see how well the Chiss would do in a face-to-face confrontation.
The turbolift car came up short at the D-1 end of the pylon, blocked by a maze of support girders that had broken loose during the battle. Using the Force to augment her efforts,she pried open the car door and climbed through the twisted metal to the entrance door.
The turbolift pylons connected at the base of each of the Dreadnaughts, serving only Decks 1 and 2. The bridge was another four decks up, and under the circumstances it didn’t seem like a good idea to trust the Dreadnaught’s own internal turbolift system. Making her way to the nearest stairway, she headed up.
The door opened in front of him, and with a not-very-gentle nudge at the small of his back the pair of yellow-clad Chiss gestured Doriana forward.
He found himself on a command bridge similar to the one aboard the Springhawk, only bigger and crewed exclusively by Chiss in the same yellow uniforms as his escort. It made Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s black uniform stand out that much more in contrast as he stood in the center of the room before a Chiss in a gray-and-yellow robe. Behind Mitth’raw’nuruodo, a female Chiss dressed all in white stood at stiff attention.
The robed Chiss eyed Doriana as his escort again nudged him forward. He spat something in the Chiss language—
“ ‘So this is your collaborator,’ ” Mitth’raw’nuruodo translated.
“Hardly,” Doriana said, loading his voice with as much dignity and disdain as he could, just in case the robed Chiss was able to pick up on verbal cues. He had no idea of the details, but it was obvious that there was some kind of power struggle going on here.
And Kinman Doriana, assistant to Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, was quite familiar with power struggles. “I’m an ambassador of a vast assembly of star systems called the Galactic Republic,” he intoned. “I came here on a mission of goodwill and exploration.”
He studied the robed Chiss carefully as Mitth’raw’nuruodo translated. But the other merely smiled cynically and spoke again. “ ‘You came to bring chaos and war to this region of space,’ ” Mitth’raw’nuruodo translated. “ ‘You havebrought alien weapons that you intended to use against the Chiss Ascendancy.’ ”
The robed Chiss straightened slightly as Mitth’raw’nuruodo finished and spoke again. “ ‘But you have failed. Those weapons are now the property of the Fifth Ruling Family. I, Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano, hereby take possession.’ ”
Doriana nodded to himself. So it was Outbound Flight and its technology that was at issue here. And he knew enough about internecine conflict to know that letting one Chiss group have sole possession of it would probably create terrible conflict with the other groups, up to and possibly including civil war.
Which would, of course, be precisely the situation Darth Sidious would want to see here. A Chiss Ascendancy entangled with its own internal problems couldn’t pose a threat to the Sith Lord’s plans for the Republic and the New Order he planned to create. Standing here in the middle of Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano’s people, all Doriana had to do was confirm the Fifth Family’s claim and he would help put the Chiss on that long and bitter road.
But as he opened his mouth to speak, he looked at Mitth’raw’nuruodo.
The commander was looking back at him, his face expressionless, his glowing eyes focused unblinkingly on him.
Doriana had already reluctantly concluded that Mitth’raw’nuruodo would have to be killed. But if that death came at the height of a controversy over the disposition of Outbound Flight… “I’m sorry, Aristocra Chaf’orm’bintrano, but Outbound Flight is not yours to take possession of,” he said instead. “As a duly appointed representative of the Republic that sent the project on its journey, I claim full salvage rights.”