What in the Great Presence’s Name did Thrawn want with Rapacc?
“Pathfinder?” Thrawn prompted.
Abruptly, Qilori remembered he’d been asked a question. “Yes, I know the system,” he said, again trying to keep his winglets steady. “Difficult to get into. Nothing very interesting once you do.”
“You might be surprised,” Thrawn said. “At any rate, that’s our destination.” He gestured to the navigator’s station. “At your convenience.”
There was nothing for it. Guild rules apart, Qilori could hardly tell Thrawn that the Nikardun would be as happy to cut a Chiss warship to ribbons as they would any other unwelcome intruder. Apart from all the other considerations, a warning like that might prompt Thrawn to wonder how Qilori knew so much about Yiv and the Nikardun, and where he’d learned it.
So Qilori would take the Chiss to Rapacc as ordered. And he would hope to the Great Presence that the system’s Nikardun overseer would take the time to pull the valuable and totally innocent Pathfinder out of the wreckage before ordering the ship’s final destruction.
He would hope it very, very much.
The bridge was quiet as Samakro came in, with only the command, helm, primary weapons, and primary defense stations occupied. Plus, of course, the alien Pathfinder sitting at the navigation station, and the two charric-armed guards standing on either side of the hatch keeping a watchful eye on him.
Mid Commander Elod’al’vumic was seated in the command chair, her fingers tapping noiselessly and restlessly on the armrest as she gazed through the viewport at the undulating hyperspace sky. She looked up as Samakro came alongside her. “Mid Captain,” she greeted him.
“Mid Commander,” Samakro greeted her in turn. “Anything to report?”
“The Pathfinder came out of his trance again an hour ago, took a ten-minute break, then went back under his headset,” Dalvu said. “He said another three-hour shift should bring us to Rapacc. We took a location reading while we were in space-normal, and it looked like we were in the right position.”
“I presume you reported all this to the captain?”
Dalvu’s shoulders gave a small twitch. “I sent him the message. Whether or not he noticed is something you’d have to ask him.”
Samakro felt his eyes narrow. A disrespectful comment that managed to be not quite over the line into something actionable.
Dalvu wasn’t the type to come up with such opinions on her own, let alone have the audacity to speak them. Apparently Kharill had been sharing his displeasure regarding the new command structure with his fellow officers. “I believe you’ll find Captain Thrawn on top of the situation,” he told her. “Hold things as is for another hour, then start bringing the Springhawk to combat status. I’ll want us at full battle—”
“Combat status?” Dalvu cut him off, her eyes going wide. “We’re going into combat?”
“I’ll want us at full battle stations thirty minutes before we reach Rapacc,” Samakro finished.
“But combat?”
“Probably,” Samakro said. “Why, did you think we had some other reason for going back to Rapacc?”
Dalvu’s lips curved in an almost-scowl. “I assumed Captain Thrawn forgot something and we were going back to get it.”
Samakro gazed down at her, counting down five seconds of silence. Dalvu’s scowl was gone after the first two seconds, and by the fifth she was starting to look distinctly uncomfortable. “I suggest you keep any derogatory thoughts about the captain to yourself,” Samakro said quietly. “His mental state is not your concern, nor is his fitness to command, nor is his authority to issue orders aboard this vessel. Is that clear, Mid Commander?”
“Yes, sir,” Dalvu said in a more subdued tone. “But…are we even authorized to fight these people?”
“We’re always authorized to defend ourselves,” Samakro reminded her. “And given the blockade ships’ reaction on our last incursion, I suspect we won’t have to wait very long on that count.”
“Yes, sir,” Dalvu muttered, lowering her gaze.
Samakro pressed his lips together, his annoyance at her reluctantly fading away. Unfortunately, she had a point. They’d been fine on their last run into the system; but that time they’d had a Nightdragon running backup. Now it was just them. “You weren’t aboard the Springhawk back when Thrawn was first in command, were you?”
“No, sir,” Dalvu said. “But I’ve heard stories of his…recklessness.”
“Best to take those with a sideways look,” Samakro advised. “Just because Thrawn doesn’t lay out his tactics in advance for everyone to see doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them. Whatever he’s got planned for today, he’ll get us through it.”
He took a deep breath and looked again out the viewport. “Trust me.”
It was time.
The shimmering disk of the Great Presence loomed large in Qilori’s unseeing eyes. The undulating rumble echoed in his unhearing ears. Reaching blindly to the hyperdrive lever at his right, he squeezed off the locking bar and wrapped his fingers around the lever. He waited until the disk filled his vision, then delicately pushed the lever forward. He waited another moment, savoring the experience one final time, then shut down the sound-blocking part of his headset.
The Great Presence vanished as a quiet hum of Chiss voices filled his ears. He pulled off the headset, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the muted bridge light, and peered through the viewport.
They had arrived.
Casually, he looked around him. All the stations were occupied, but none of the Chiss seemed to be watching him. Keeping his movements small, he reached into one of the storage pouches built into his ID sash and keyed his comm. He’d spent the last three rest periods recording a message for the Nikardun ships lurking out there and then figuring out how to tap into the ship’s short-range transmitter.
A sharp voice from the Chiss at the sensor station cut through the conversational hum. Qilori ran his eyes quickly over the displays, found the tactical one—
He felt his cheek winglets flutter. Three ships were angling in toward the Springhawk, one from starboard, the other two from behind. The markings on the display were all in unreadable Cheunh script, but he knew the ships had to be Nikardun.
His winglets fluttered harder. If the attackers had gotten his message—and if the blockade commander decided a Pathfinder was worth saving—they might go easy on their prey, at least until they’d battered most of the life out of it.
If the commander wasn’t feeling so charitable, Qilori had seen his last star-rise.
The deck gave a sudden jolt. Qilori jerked in response, fully expecting to see a flash of laserfire or a wall of flame from a missile blaze through the bridge wall. But nothing. He looked at the tactical again, frowning.
And tensed. The jolt hadn’t been a Nikardun attack, but the recoil as a shuttle separated from the Springhawk’s flank. Even as he watched, it headed toward the inner system and the planet Rapacc at an incredibly high acceleration.
He clenched his teeth. If Thrawn was hoping whoever was in there would escape, he’d already lost his gamble. The two aft pursuers veered off, accelerating in turn as they chased after the shuttle. Qilori couldn’t read the markings on the velocity/intercept curves, but he had no doubt the two Nikardun would catch the craft long before it reached Rapacc or even the relative safety of one of the asteroid clusters. They would catch it, and with a barrage of laserfire or the more delicate twist of a tractor beam they would destroy or capture it.