A life path may change because of important decisions or events. Those were what drove my current path.
But sometimes the smallest event can also drive a turn. In the case of Eli Vanto, that force was a single, overheard word.
Chiss. Where had Cadet Vanto heard that name? What did it mean to him? He had already spoken one reason, but there might well be others. Indeed, the full truth might have several layers. But what were they?
On a ship as large as this, there was only one practical way to find out.
Thus did my path take yet another turn. As, certainly, did his.
“Thrawn,” Parck repeated, as if trying out the name. “Very well. As I said, welcome. I want you to know that we didn’t intend to intrude on your privacy. We were looking for smugglers, and happened upon your home. One of our standing orders is to study all unknown species we come across.”
“Yes,” Thrawn said in Sy Bisti. “So also said the traders who first contacted my people.”
“He understands, sir,” Eli translated. “He knows about that order from traders who’ve contacted his people.”
“Then why didn’t you come out?” Barris demanded. “Why did you harass and kill my men?”
“It was necessary—” Thrawn began in Sy Bisti.
“Enough,” Barris cut in. “He understands Basic. That means he can speak it. So speak. Why did you harass and kill my men?”
For a moment Thrawn gazed thoughtfully at him. Eli looked at Parck, but the captain also remained silent.
“Very well,” Thrawn said in Basic. The words were heavily accented, but understandable. “It was necessary.”
“Why?” Parck asked. “What did you hope to accomplish here?”
“I hoped to return home.”
“You were shipwrecked?”
“I was—” He looked at Eli. “Xishu azwane.”
Eli blinked. He was—? “He says he was exiled,” he told the others.
The word seemed to hang in the fume-scented air of the hangar bay. Eli stared at Thrawn, thinking back to the campfire stories of his childhood. The tales had spoken of Chiss unity and military prowess.
Never once had the stories talked about them exiling one another.
“Why?” Parck asked.
Thrawn looked at Eli. “In Basic, if you can,” Eli said.
The Chiss looked back at Parck. “The leaders and I disagreed.”
“Disagreed to the point of exile?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting,” Parck murmured. “All right. So that’s why you ran Colonel Barris’s men in circles. Now tell us how.”
“It was undifficult,” Thrawn said. “Your spacecraft crashed near my place of exile. I had opportunity to examine before following soldiers arrived. The pilot was dead. I took his body and hid it away.”
“And filled his flight suit with grass,” Barris put in. “Hoping we wouldn’t notice you’d stolen his equipment.”
“Nor did you,” the Chiss said. “Important most was that you would take the flight suit and rotted pyussh berries with you.”
“The berries?” Barris echoed.
“Yes. Rotted crushed pyussh berries are lure for small animals of night.”
Eli nodded to himself. Rotted—fermented; animals of night—nocturnal. It was as if Thrawn had had a fairly good Basic dictionary to work with but was missing some of the more technical words and had to improvise. His grammar was a bit shaky, too, again suggesting that he’d learned it out of books instead of from practical conversational experience.
Did that imply the Chiss had had only limited recent contact with anyone outside Unknown Space?
“So you strapped the gimmicked blaster power packs to the animals,” Barris said. “That’s how you got them past our sentry perimeter.”
“Yes,” the Chiss said. “Also how I later attacked soldiers. With a sling I threw more berries to their armor.”
“You then crashed a starfighter,” Parck said. “How?”
“I knew spacecraft would come to search. In preparation I had strung some…” He paused. “Ohuludwu.”
“Monofilament line,” Eli supplied.
“…monofilament line between treetops. The spacecraft struck.”
“And at that altitude, the pilot wouldn’t have time to recover,” Parck said, nodding. “It wouldn’t have done you any good to capture the fighter intact, by the way. They don’t have hyperdrives.”
“I did not want the spacecraft,” Thrawn said. “I wanted the pilot’s…” Again a pause. “Ezenti ophu ocengi.”
“Equipment and comlink,” Eli said.
“But you didn’t take his comlink,” Barris objected. “We checked the suit at the encampment. It was still there.”
“No,” Thrawn said. “What was there was the comlink from the first pilot.”
Eli nodded to himself. Cleverness, tactics, and maintaining control of the situation. Those were indeed the hallmarks of the Chiss, at least according to the stories.
But still: Exile?
“Ingenious,” Parck said. “And we thought we knew what had happened, so we never bothered to check the serial number. So when we discovered the first comlink was missing and locked it out of the circuit, you still had one that functioned.”
“So you killed a man just to get his comlink,” Barris said harshly. Clearly, he wasn’t as impressed by the alien’s resourcefulness as the captain. “Why did you keep attacking my men? For the fun of it?”
“I regret the loss of life,” Thrawn said gravely. “But I needed soldiers with fuller armor to come.”
“With fuller—?” Barris broke off. “The stormtroopers? You wanted stormtroopers to come?”
“Your soldiers wear helmets,” the Chiss said, tracing an imaginary brim around his forehead. “No good for me.” He touched a hand to his face. “I needed cover of face.”
“The only way you could enter the encampment undetected,” Parck said, nodding.
“Yes,” Thrawn agreed. “I used explosive on one, to obtain armor I could study—”
“How did you do that without anyone hearing the explosion?” Barris interrupted.
“It was as I began feedback noise from comlink,” the Chiss said. “The noise enclosed the noise of explosive. From the armor I learned how to kill the soldier without noise or observable damage. I took a second soldier and his armor and walked to the ship.”
“While we were moving your equipment inside?” Barris asked.
“I selected a moment when no one was inside,” Thrawn said. “With small branches I stood the armor upright and set it outside the doorway. An explosive inside destroyed it.”
“A distraction so that we wouldn’t realize there were actually two missing stormtroopers,” Parck said. “Where did you hide during the trip up?”
“Inside the second power generator casing,” Thrawn told him. “It is nearly empty, as I have used its parts to maintain the first.”
“I gather you’ve been here for quite a while,” Parck said. “I can see why you wanted so desperately to leave.”
Thrawn drew himself up. “I was not desperate. But my people need me.”
“Why?”
“They are in danger. There are many dangers in the galaxy. Dangers to my people. Dangers to yours.” He made an odd gesture. “You would do well to learn of them.”
“Yet your people exiled you here,” Parck pointed out. “Do they disagree with you as to the magnitude of these threats?”
Thrawn looked at Eli. “Repeat?” he asked in Sy Bisti.
Eli translated the captain’s question. “We do not disagree on threat,” Thrawn answered in his accented Basic. “We disagree on process. They do not accept belief in…ezeboli hlusalu.”
Eli swallowed hard. “They don’t believe in preemptive strikes.”
“So your people need protection,” Parck said, his voice subtly changed. “How would you do this, alone and without ships or allies?”
Eli frowned. An odd question, in an odd tone of voice. Was the captain fishing for information on possible Chiss allies?
Thrawn didn’t seem to notice. “I do not know,” he said calmly. “I will find a way.”
“I’m sure you will,” Parck said. “In the meantime, you’ve had a busy day, and I’m sure you could use some rest. Commander?”
“Sir?” One of the stormtroopers stepped forward.
“You and your squad will escort our guest to the deck officer’s office while suitable accommodations and refreshments are prepared,” Parck ordered. “Thrawn, I take my leave now. We shall speak again later.”
“Thank you, Captain Parck,” the Chiss said. “I will look ahead to it.”
Eli was in his quarters, working on the after-action report he’d been ordered to complete, when they came for him.
Eli had never been in the captain’s private office. He’d never even been in this part of the Strikefast.
And he’d never been in the company of this many high-ranking officers. It was like a board certification session.
Or a court-martial.
“Cadet Vanto,” Captain Parck greeted him. He gestured to a chair that had been set in front of the line of officers. “Be seated.”
“Yes, sir.” Eli sat down, fervently hoping that his shaking wasn’t visible.
“First, I want to commend you for your conduct during the recent action,” Parck said. “You behaved admirably under fire.”
“Thank you, sir,” Eli said. Though as he remembered it, he’d done very little except stay as clear of the fighting and confusion as he possibly could.
“Tell me, what do you think of our prisoner?”
“He seems very confident, sir,” Eli said. Why were they asking him? “Very much in control.” He considered. “Except maybe when he was captured in the hangar bay. You may have caught him by surprise there.”
“I don’t think so,” Parck said. “He surrendered quite readily, with no attempt at resistance or escape.” He cocked his head slightly. “You seem to know something about his people.”
“Not really, sir,” Eli said. “We have stories about the Chiss—more like myths, really—that have been passed down through the generations. As far as I know, none of them has been seen on Lysatra or anywhere in the area for hundreds of years.”
“But you do at least have myths, which is more than we have in the Strikefast’s records,” Parck said. “What do these stories say about them?”
“They’re supposed to be great warriors,” Eli said. “Clever, resourceful, proud. Intensely loyal to one another, too. This exile…they must really hate the idea of preemptive strikes to do that to him.”
“So it would appear,” Parck agreed. “I see you’re on track at Myomar to become a supply officer.”
“Yes, sir,” Eli said, the change in subject momentarily throwing him off balance. “My family is in the shipping business, and they thought Imperial service would be a step up—”
“Have you had any training in teaching or tutoring?”
“Nothing formal, sir,” Eli said. Was Parck going to recommend he switch to a teaching track?
He hoped not. He’d spent his youth flying cargoes for his family, and he didn’t want to be stuck in an office or classroom somewhere.
For a moment the captain gazed at him. Then he leaned back in his seat and looked at the other officers flanking him. A wordless signal passed among them…
“Very well, Cadet,” Parck said, turning back to Eli. “As of this moment, you’re assigned as liaison, translator, and aide to our prisoner. You will also—”
“Sir?” Eli blurted out, feeling his eyes go wide. “But I’m just a cadet—”
“I wasn’t finished,” Parck said. “Along with translation, you’ll also be coaching him in Basic. He has the fundamentals, as you saw, but he needs a more extensive vocabulary and some correction with pronunciation and grammar. Any questions?”
“No, sir,” Eli managed. The surprises were coming way too fast. “Actually, yes, sir, I do. Why does he need to know Basic? Aren’t we putting him back on the planet?”
There was a quiet stir among the officers, and Eli had the sudden sense that he’d just crossed an invisible line. He tensed—
“No,” Parck said. His voice was calm, but there was an edge to it, as if this was a question he and the others had already hashed over. And hadn’t necessarily agreed on. “We’re taking him to Coruscant.”
“To—?” Eli clamped his mouth shut, visions of ancient kings parading defeated enemies through the streets flashing through his mind.
But surely that wasn’t what Parck had in mind. Was it?
“I believe the Emperor will be interested in meeting him and learning about these Chiss,” Parck said. There was something in his tone that suggested the explanation was as much for his officers’ benefit as for Eli’s. “I also believe that they could prove an important asset to the Empire. Do your myths include any suggestion of where their home planet might be located?”
“Just that they come from the Unknown Regions, sir. Nothing more specific.”
“Pity,” Parck said. “No matter. That will be another of your duties over the next few days: to learn as much as you can about him, his homeworld, and his people.”
“Yes, sir,” Eli said, feeling his heart doing bounce-ups. From lowly cadet to translator and tutor to a being straight out of Lysatra’s stories.
And the only downside was what it might cost his future.
Because he’d already seen that the Empire was a massive construct of giant, unforgiving machinery. If he strayed even a few degrees off his chosen career path, he might suddenly find himself relegated to some other track, something obscure that might send him to the core deck of a forgotten starbase and abandon him there.
Still, this little detour in his path should only fill a week or so while the Strikefast transported Thrawn to Coruscant. After that, Eli would return to Myomar with the other cadets, and with a story he’d be able to tell people for the rest of his life.
And really, what could go wrong?
“You seem amused,” Cadet Vanto said. He leans back in his seat.
“Amused?” Thrawn asked.
“Entertained with a feeling of humor,” Vanto said. He switches back to Sy Bisti for the explanation. “Was there anything in particular about this story that you found humorous?”
“I found the story quite interesting.”
“Some of my stories you find interesting,” Vanto said. Wrinkles form across his forehead. “Others you seem to find unbelievable. A few of them you find amusing. This was one of those.”
“I do not mean to offend,” Thrawn said. “But I myself am Chiss, and never have I heard of any of my people wielding such a power.”
“I’ll concede that one,” Vanto said. The wrinkles partially smooth out. “I told you right from the beginning that these stories are barely above the level of myths. But you asked to hear them.”
“I appreciate your willingness to share,” Thrawn said. “One may learn a great deal about a people by the stories they tell of others.”
“And?” Vanto asked. The wrinkles return. His head turns slightly to his right.
“I do not understand.”
“I ask what you have learned about humans,” Vanto said. His eyes narrow slightly.
“I misspoke. Apologies. I meant to say I could learn about one person, you, from the stories you choose to tell.”
“And what have you learned about me?” Vanto asked. His eyes return to normal size. His vocal tone lowers in pitch.
“That you do not wish to be here,” Thrawn said. “You do not wish to act as translator and assistant. You certainly do not wish to act as interrogator.”
“Who said I was an interrogator?” Vanto asked. His tone rises slightly in pitch and volume. The musculature beneath his sleeves tightens.
“You wish to return to your numbers and inventory lists,” Thrawn said. “That is where your talents lie, and where you desire your path to lead.”
“Fascinating,” Vanto said. His tone takes on a new, rumbling texture. The corners of his lips tighten briefly. “I suppose that as a big important military commander you find logistics and supply beneath your dignity?”
“Do you?”
“Of course not,” Vanto said. His torso stretches slightly upward in his chair. His voice takes on a fuller tone. “Because I know better. My family has done that kind of work for three generations. I’m just doing it for the Imperial Navy now instead of for my own family, that’s all.”
“I presume you are good at it.”
“I’m very good at it,” Vanto said. “Lieutenant Osteregi told me I’m one of the best cadets he’s ever had aboard. As soon as I finish my last term at the Academy, I’ll be guaranteed an assignment aboard a ship of the line.”
“Is what you wish?” Thrawn asked.
“Absolutely,” Vanto said. The fuller tone partially fades from his voice. “What I don’t know is why you care.”
“Why I care about what?”
“Why you care about me,” Vanto said. His eyes narrow again. His tone returns to the lower pitch. “You’ve been studying me—don’t think I haven’t noticed. You ask me to tell you one of the legends I learned as a child, then you ask about my home or background or childhood. Always small questions, always delivered very casually. What I want to know is why.” He folds his arms in a crisscross pattern across his chest.
“I am sorry,” Thrawn said. “I meant no harm. I was merely interested in you, as I am interested in everything about your Empire.”
“But why me?” Vanto asked. “You never ask about Captain Parck or Major Barris or any of the other senior officers. Or even about Emperor Palpatine or the Imperial Senate.”
“They are not connected to my immediate survival,” Thrawn said. “You are.”
“With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong,” Vanto said. He shakes his head, back and forth, sideways. “Captain Parck could order you shoved out an air lock at any time. Major Barris could trump up charges or implicate you in something and have you shot. As for the Emperor—” The musculature of his throat tightens briefly. There is an enhanced infrared glow from his face. “He has absolute power over everyone and everything in the Empire. If he isn’t amused or pleased with you, you’ll end up dead.”
“Captain Parck seeks honor and promotion,” Thrawn said. “He believes me to be the path to that end. Major Barris dislikes me but will not risk angering his captain. As for the Emperor…we shall see.”
“Fine,” Vanto said. The musculature of his throat relaxes partially, but not fully. “Personally, I’d be a lot more concerned about him, but that’s up to you. But I’m still the bottom man on the roster. Why do you even care about me?”
“You are my translator. You hold my words in your hand, and their meanings. A misjudged translation will confuse or anger. A deliberate error could lead to death.”
“Krayt spit,” Vanto said. He makes a snorting sound through his nose.
“Forgive me?”
“I call krayt spit,” Vanto said. “You’ve picked up a lot of Basic in the past couple of days. You speak it as well as I do. Probably better—you don’t have a Wild Space accent people can make fun of. The last thing you need is a translator.”
“You make my case for me,” Thrawn said. “What is meant by krayt spit?”
“It’s a slang term for nonsense,” Vanto said. The left corner of his lip twists upward. “Especially nonsense that the speaker knows is nonsense.”
“I see. Krayt spit. I will remember that.”
“Don’t,” Vanto said. His tone is deep, the word sharply clipped. “It’s not polite. It also reeks of backwater places like Lysatra. Backwater means any planet that’s not part of the Core Worlds and the elite and powerful people who live there.”
“I presume there exists a hierarchy of worlds and the people who inhabit them?”
“Finally—a question about the actual Empire,” Vanto said. “Yes, absolutely there’s a hierarchy. A big, impressive, mostly unwritten, but absolutely rigid hierarchy. If you were counting on me to introduce you to the high and mighty, you’re going to be seriously disappointed.”
“You give yourself too little credit, Cadet Vanto,” Thrawn said. “Or perhaps you give the social hierarchy too much. I am content to have you as my translator.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” Vanto said. His tone rises slightly in pitch. His throat musculature still shows tightness. “Not that you had any choice in the matter.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “Tell me, when do we arrive at your capital world?”
“My orders are to have you in the forward hangar bay—that’s the one you tried to escape from—at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow morning,” Vanto said.
“And I will meet with the Emperor soon after that?”
“I have no idea what happens after that,” Vanto said. The muscles under his tunic stiffen slightly, and wrinkles return to his forehead. “But odds are it won’t be anyone even close to the Emperor. Probably some senior administrator. Maybe even a junior one.”
“Will you come with me?”
“That’s up to the captain,” Vanto said. “I do still have other duties aboard the Strikefast. I also need to prepare for my return to the Myomar Academy.”
“Your duties and studies are of course important,” Thrawn said. “We shall see what decision Captain Parck comes to. Until morning, Cadet, I bid you farewell and good evening.”
“Yes, Vanto said. The tension in his musculature decreases. But it is not entirely gone. “Until morning.”
Captain Parck’s personal Lambda shuttle left the hangar at precisely oh-seven-oh-five the next morning. Apart from Parck, Thrawn, and Eli, the passenger list included Major Barris, three of the navy troopers who’d been on the planet when Thrawn was running everyone in circles, and two stormtroopers, presumably also part of the group who’d seen the alien in action.
There were also ten heavily armed navy troopers. If Parck was worried about hard-eyed High Command administrators, he also wasn’t taking any chances on his prisoner making a break for it once they reached the planet.
Like everyone else in the Empire, Eli had seen hundreds of holos of Coruscant. He’d also spent a couple of hours studying planetary maps the day after Parck announced they were heading there.
None of it prepared him for the breathtaking grandeur of the real thing.
He gazed at the passenger cabin’s repeater display, watching in utter fascination. The entire planet was surrounded by half a dozen rings of orbiting transports, passenger ships, and military vessels, each awaiting its turn to head to the surface. Elsewhere, steady streams of outgoing ships created subtle fountains of light as they joined the various exit corridors for passage through the atmosphere, then scattered in all directions once they reached space.
As the Lambda continued inward, Eli watched the array of glittering starlike points that covered the planet slowly resolve into buildings and towers. Still closer, and the gridlines of repulsorlift vehicles wove their packed way between the towering buildings, doing their intricate dance as they headed for a thousand destinations. A sobering thought occurred to him: Right now he could probably see more vehicles than were on his entire home planet.
The pilot eased them into one of the higher lanes, one that seemed reserved for military vehicles. They were close enough now that Eli could pick out specific landmarks. There was the Royal Imperial Academy, where the Empire’s elite trained for the army and navy. Beyond it and to the east was one of the industrial areas, with tall towers spewing superheated wastewater vapor high into the atmosphere. In the distance beyond that he could see an open area that was far below the tops of the surrounding towers, yet still many levels above the actual planetary surface. A landing area, most likely, probably for elite politicians or larger military vessels. He spotted the top of the Imperial Senate Building in the other direction.
He caught his breath. If the Senate was there and the Royal Academy back there…
They weren’t heading to either the Admiralty or the Imperial Security Bureau headquarters, which he’d concluded were the two most likely destinations.
They were heading straight for the Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace?
No—that couldn’t be. Not for a single, random, blue-skinned near-human captured on an unnamed world out in Wild Space. There was no possible way the Emperor would even notice such an event, let alone take a personal interest in it.
And yet that seemed to be exactly what had happened.
Surreptitiously, Eli looked across the aisle, where Thrawn and Parck sat together surrounded by guards. The captain looked unnaturally stiff, as if he couldn’t believe their destination any more than Eli could. The guards looked the same way, except that some of them looked quietly but genuinely terrified.
As well they should be. These were the men and women whose mistakes had allowed Thrawn to get aboard the Strikefast in the first place. There were dark stories about what the Emperor did with people who’d failed him.
But Thrawn himself didn’t look frightened, or even concerned. All Eli could see in his face was that maddening confidence of his.
Maybe Parck hadn’t told him where they were going. Maybe he hadn’t told him about the Emperor’s history, or his reputation.
Or maybe he’d told Thrawn everything and the Chiss simply assumed that whatever their destination, he would have things under control.
Eli turned back to the display, the old stories of Chiss military power echoing through his mind. As far as he had been able to ascertain, that whole culture and society had been lost from Republic knowledge for centuries, maybe even millennia. Now, suddenly, they’d reentered history.
Was Thrawn’s level of confidence unique to him? Or were all the Chiss like this?
As someone who might someday be called upon to fight them, he hoped fervently it wasn’t the latter.
Eli had almost managed to convince himself that the group would merely be meeting with some Palace official when they were ushered past a pair of red-robed and red-helmeted Imperial Guards into the Emperor’s throne room.
Even more than Coruscant itself, the holos and vids Eli had seen of Emperor Palpatine paled in comparison with the real thing.
At first glance, the Emperor didn’t seem like much. He was dressed in a plain brown hooded robe, with no ornamentation or glitz of any sort. His throne, while massive, was solid black and very simple, again with no ostentation about it, raised a mere four steps above the floor. In fact, the darkness of his robe made him almost disappear from sight into the black of the throne.
It was as the group drew closer that the eeriness began.
First was the Emperor’s face. The holos and vids always showed him as a dignified, older man, aged somewhat with the experience of life and the cares of leadership. But the holos were wrong. The face beneath the hood was old; old, and creased with a hundred deep wrinkles.
Not ordinary wrinkles, either, the kind Eli’s grandparents had earned from years under the open sky. These creases were less like age, and more like scars or burn tissue.
The histories stated that the Jedi traitors’ last attempt to seize power had been an attack on then-Chancellor Palpatine. The histories hadn’t mentioned that his victory over the assassins had come at such a terrible cost.
Perhaps that was also what had happened to his eyes.
A shiver ran up Eli’s back. The eyes were bright and intelligent, all-knowing and utterly powerful. But they were…strange. Unique. Disturbing. Damaged, perhaps, by the same treachery that had ravaged his face?
Intelligence, knowledge, power. And even more than with Thrawn, a sense of complete mastery over everything around him.
The Emperor watched in silence as the party walked toward him. Parck led the way, Barris and Eli behind him, followed by Thrawn and the navy trooper and stormtrooper witnesses. The guard contingent Parck had brought remained outside the door, six of the Imperial Guards having taken over their escort duty.
It seemed to take forever to reach the throne. Eli wondered how close they would be permitted to approach, and how Captain Parck would know when he had reached that point. The question was answered as Parck came to within five meters and the two Imperial Guards at the foot of the steps glided to positions directly in front of him. Parck stopped, the rest of them following suit, and waited.
And waited.
It was probably only five seconds. But to Eli it felt like a medium-sized eternity. The entire throne room was utterly still, utterly silent. The only sound was the thudding of his pulse in his ears, the only movement the shaking of his arms in his sleeves.
“Captain Parck,” the Emperor said at last, his gravelly voice neutral. “I’m told you bring me a gift.”
Eli winced. A gift? For the Chiss of the stories, that would have been a deadly insult. Thrawn was behind him, and Eli didn’t dare turn around, but he could imagine the expression on that proud face.
“I do, Your Majesty,” Parck said, bowing low. “A warrior reportedly of a species known as the Chiss.”
“Indeed,” the Emperor said, his voice going even drier. “And what, pray tell, would you have me do with him?”
“If I may, Your Majesty,” Thrawn put in before Parck could answer. “I am not merely a gift. I am also a resource. One you have never seen the like of before, and may never see again. You would do well to utilize me.”
“Would I?” the Emperor said, sounding amused. “Certainly you’re a resource of unlimited confidence. What exactly do you offer, Chiss?”
“As a start, I offer information,” Thrawn said. If he was offended, Eli couldn’t hear it in his voice. “There are threats lurking in the Unknown Regions, threats that will someday find your Empire. I am familiar with many of them.”
“I will learn of them soon enough on my own,” the Emperor countered placidly. “Can you offer anything more?”
“Perhaps you will learn of them in time to defeat them,” Thrawn said. “Perhaps you will not. What more do I offer? I offer my military skill. You could utilize that skill in making plans to seek out and eliminate these dangers.”
“These threats you speak of,” the Emperor said. “I presume they’re not simply threats to my Empire?”
“No, Your Majesty,” Thrawn said. “They are also threats to my people.”
“And you seek to eliminate all such threats to your people?”
“I do.”
The Emperor’s yellowish eyes seemed to glitter. “And you wish the help of my Empire?”
“Your assistance would be welcome.”
“You wish me to assist the people who exiled you?” the Emperor said. “Or was Captain Parck incorrect?”
“He spoke correctly,” Thrawn said. “I was indeed exiled.”
“Yet you still seek to protect them. Why?”
“Because they are my people.”
“And if they withhold their gratitude and refuse to accept you back? What then?”
There was a slight pause, and Eli had the eerie sense that Thrawn was giving the Emperor one of those small smiles he was so good at. “I do not need their permission to protect them, Your Majesty. Nor do I expect their thanks.”
“I’ve seen others with your sense of nobility,” the Emperor said. “Most fell by the wayside when their naïve selflessness collided with the real world.”
“I have faced the real world, as you call it.”
“You have indeed,” the Emperor said. “What exactly do you wish from my Empire?”
“A state of mutual gain,” Thrawn said. “I offer my knowledge and skill to you now in exchange for your consideration to my people in the future.”
“And when that future comes, what if I refuse to grant that consideration?”
“Then I will have gambled and lost,” Thrawn said calmly. “But I have until that time to convince you that my goals and yours do indeed coincide.”
“Interesting,” the Emperor murmured. “Tell me. If you served the Empire, yet a threat arose against your people, where would your loyalties lie? Which of us would command your allegiance?”
“I see no conflict in the sharing of information.”
“I’m not speaking of information,” the Emperor said. “I’m speaking of service.”
There was a short pause. “If I were to serve the Empire, you would command my allegiance.”
“What guarantee do you offer?”
“My word is my guarantee,” Thrawn said. “Perhaps your servant can speak to the strength of that vow.”
“My servant?” the Emperor asked, his eyes flicking to Parck.
“I do not refer to Captain Parck,” Thrawn said. “I speak of another. Perhaps I assumed incorrectly that he was your servant. Yet he always spoke highly of Chancellor Palpatine.”
The Emperor leaned forward a little, his yellowish eyes glittering. “And his name?”
“Skywalker,” Thrawn said. “Anakin Skywalker.”