All strive for victory. But not all understand what it truly is.
To a soldier or pilot on the line, victory is surviving the current battle. To a politician, victory is an advantage one can bring to a bargaining table. To a warrior, victory is driving an enemy from the field of battle, or bringing him to surrender.
Sometimes the victory is greater than the warrior could ever hope for.
Sometimes it is more than he is able to bear.
“You’re kidding,” Arihnda said, eyeing the stack of twenty data cards her mother had handed her. “All of them?”
“All of them,” Elainye said firmly. “And if I find that other box before you drag us out of here, there’ll be ten more.”
“It’s the record of your life, Arihnda,” Talmoor reminded her. “Your dance recitals, your school debates, your first day working the mine. Everything up until you left for Coruscant.”
“Fine,” Arihnda said, managing to check her chrono without spilling the data cards all over the floor. “You’ve got fifteen minutes. And don’t forget to grab some of your own mementos.”
“You’re the most important part of our life together, Arihnda,” Talmoor said quietly.
“Well, get some of your own things anyway. You must have some memories from before I was born. The carrybags are where?”
“Downstairs, in the closet off the kitchen,” Elainye said. “There’s one big one and three smaller ones.”
“Okay,” Arihnda said. “I’ll load these in one of the small ones and bring the big one up. Remember: fifteen minutes.”
She headed downstairs, holding the data cards in a vertical stack pressed between her palms. Fifteen minutes should be enough time to get out of here before Gudry came back.
She was wrong. By exactly fifteen minutes.
“There you are,” Gudry’s voice came from behind her as she reached the bottom of the stairs.
Arihnda jerked, nearly spilling the cards as she spun around. Gudry had emerged from the dining alcove, a suspicious scowl on his face, a line of dried blood tracing out a path from the corner of his chin.
A small blaster gripped in his hand.
“Of course I am,” Arihnda said as calmly as she could. Damn. “Where else would I be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gudry said sarcastically. “Maybe at the hospital? Your mother being deathly ill and all.”
“False alarm,” Arihnda said. “We made her some tea, had her put her feet up, and she started feeling better.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Gudry said. “I can hear the party they’ve got going on upstairs. A packing party, sounds like. Where’s the teacup?”
Arihnda felt her stomach tighten. Stupid, she berated herself. She knew better than to tell unnecessary lies, especially ones that could be easily checked. “What exactly are you implying?”
“I’m saying that you deliberately gave me the slip,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I’m saying that you were never going to help me find what we needed in there.”
“You’re the professional. I didn’t think you needed any help.”
“Whereas your parents do need your help to get out before this place goes to hell?” Gudry shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart. This isn’t a rescue mission. It’s search and destroy.” He held up his comm. “Luckily for the Empire, I didn’t need you. I did the search, and now we’re ready for the destroy.”
Arihnda took a deep breath. Damn him, anyway. How could he have been so fast?
Or maybe how could she have been so slow? “Excellent,” she said. “What have we got?”
“We have an explosives cache and the shield generator.” He grinned slyly. “Oh yeah, I got all the way to the shield generator.”
Arihnda looked at his new blaster. “I assume that’s where you got the weapon?”
“Let’s just say the previous owner won’t need it anymore,” Gudry said. “I tied the triggers into my comm. Signal One is the shield, Signal Two is all the explosives.”
“All the explosives?”
“All of them,” he said. “Hell of a cache—it took four of my caps to cover all the piles. Never mind that. We’re ready, the navy task force and troops are ready, and it’s time to get the hell out of here. So put down those cards and let’s go.”
“We can still take my parents with us,” Arihnda said. “They won’t slow us down.”
“I don’t care if they can turn into Arkanian dragons and fly us out,” Gudry retorted. “A party draws attention we can’t afford. I’m in charge, and they’re not going.”
“I’m a governor,” Arihnda bit out, taking a step toward him.
“I’ve got the blaster.”
There was a sudden gasp from the stairs. Arihnda’s mother had frozen halfway down the steps, gripping a shimmering multicolored crystal, her eyes bulging at the sight of Gudry’s blaster. Arihnda took another quick step toward Gudry as he reflexively spun to face the unexpected noise—
And as he spun back toward Arihnda, she hurled her stack of data cards into his face.
He was quick. But he was also half turned, his balance was off, and his blaster was pointed the wrong way. He ducked his head away from the flying data cards, flinging up his free hand to fend them off, then spun back toward Arihnda.
Too late. She caught his wrist with her right hand, and as he tried to break it free she swung the arm upward, ducked under it, grabbed the blaster with her other hand, and pulled his elbow down sharply across her shoulder. There was a faint sound as the joint snapped, a barely louder grunt as Gudry reacted to the pain. Arihnda twisted the blaster free of his grip and started to dive out of his reach—
And gasped in pain as he slammed the heel of his other hand against the back of her head.
She fell forward and away from him, her head spinning, her knees wobbling. She threw out her free hand blindly, managed to catch the arm of a chair as she fell past it. She pivoted around the arm and slammed onto her back on the floor.
“Cute,” Gudry growled as he strode toward her, clutching his broken elbow with his other hand. “We’ll try that again in the dojo after they put my arm back together. Get up—it’s time to go.”
“With my parents,” Arihnda managed between gasps of air.
“No,” Gudry bit out. “Let ’em die here with all the rest of these Outer Rim freaks.”
Lifting the blaster, Arihnda shot him three times in the chest.
He collapsed in a heap, dead before he even had time to change expression. Holding the back of her head, wincing at the knives of pain shooting through her skull, Arihnda climbed back to her feet.
Her mother was still standing on the stairs, her eyes even wider than before. “See?” Arihnda managed, pointing her blaster at the crystal clutched in Elainye’s hands. “You do have memories of your own.”
“Arihnda,” Elainye breathed. “Oh, Arihnda—”
“I had no choice, Mother,” Arihnda interrupted. “He was going to leave you and Father behind. And he was probably going to kill me once I’d gotten him out of the area.” Which wasn’t true, of course. But if it made her mother feel better, she was more than happy to tell the tale. “Let me get the suitcase—”
“I’ll get the suitcase,” Elainye said, finally coming unglued from the stairs and hurrying toward her daughter. “You just sit down. No—wait—let me get the medpac first.”
“Just get the suitcase,” Arihnda said. “I’ll get the medpac. We haven’t got much time.”
Elainye looked at Gudry, turned quickly away. “We’ll be ready,” she murmured.
With a last look at her daughter, and no look at all at the dead man lying on her floor, she headed toward the closet and the carrybags.
For a long moment Arihnda stared at Gudry, wondering if she should feel something at what she’d done. But there was nothing. No guilt, no sorrow, not even any queasiness. Gudry had threatened her parents. He’d gotten in her way.
He’d paid the cost.
Carefully, mindful of her shaky balance, she walked over to him. He still had all their special gear, after all, including the blasting caps, the comm trigger mechanism he’d set up, and whatever else he’d decided to bring along.
Arihnda might not need anything except the trigger. But then again, she might.
Easing down onto her knees, she began to search the body.
“Still no response from Pryce or Gudry.” Yularen’s voice came from the Chimaera’s bridge speaker. “Have you received anything?”
“Not since Agent Gudry’s transmission confirming the shield had been sabotaged,” Faro said. “I assume you also have the necessary triggering code?”
“Yes, but I’d rather not use it until and unless we give them up as captured. Or dead.”
Eli looked forward along the command walkway. Thrawn was standing by the forward viewport, his hands clasped behind his back, unmoving as he gazed at the planet below.
The admiral hadn’t had much to say since his return from that clandestine visit to the Creekpath area. Eli had received a private communication from Yularen as Thrawn was returning to the ship, but the message hadn’t said much except that questions about the admiral’s motives or strategies had been satisfactorily answered.
Satisfactorily for the colonel and ISB, maybe. Not so much for Eli. The fact that Thrawn had returned safely from Batonn had relieved a lot of his concerns and stress. But the matter of the vulnerable cruisers still hung over the situation like a dark nebula.
Especially since Eli had now proved, at least to his own satisfaction, that Admiral Kinshara had been right about the insurgents sneaking ships off Denash.
It hadn’t been just a few ships, either. His estimates, gleaned from the lists of spare parts and equipment shipments that Kinshara had retrieved from the captured base, indicated there were no less than thirty midsized ships lurking somewhere nearby. All of them armed, all of them ready to pounce.
Even for an Imperial Star Destroyer, a force of thirty armed ships wasn’t to be taken lightly. In a situation like that, the Chimaera needed its screening vessels close at hand.
Only it didn’t have them. The three cruisers were still sitting in their private little circles of isolation, far distant from the Chimaera, each half cocooned with supply ships and repair barges. The two frigates were useless, having been sent by Thrawn to high observation duty in case Nightswan attempted to bring new weapons or personnel to his ground forces.
Eli had reported his findings to Faro, who had responded by emptying the Chimaera’s hangars and doubling the TIE fighter sentry screen around the planet. But the TIEs couldn’t begin to cover everything, and the nearest warships that could respond to a call were over thirty hours away. By the time any aid could arrive, the battle would be over.
Eli looked at the tactical, feeling his stomach knot up. Every ship of the 96th was vulnerable. But there was only one that truly mattered. If Nightswan’s thirty lurking ships took out the Chimaera, the whole system was open to them. If they didn’t, they’d already lost.
The Chimaera wasn’t just a target. It was the target.
“Colonel Yularen, what is your troop status?” Thrawn called.
“We don’t have enough for an encirclement, Admiral, but we can probably mount a solid punch-through,” Yularen said. “I should also mention that Gudry’s report of an unknown number of gunships and skim fighters has the ground commanders a bit worried.”
“Once the shield is down, those fliers should not be a problem,” Thrawn assured him. “The Chimaera can descend to effective firing distance within three minutes, more than enough time to deal with combat aircraft of that size.”
“We’ll probably need that support, sir.”
“You shall have it,” Thrawn said. “Before all the troops are committed to battle, I want you to separate out a special-duty squad for me.”
“Yes, sir. Their mission?”
“Once the battle begins, I want them to make their way to the house of Governor Pryce’s parents,” Thrawn said. “If she and Agent Gudry were compromised, they might have taken refuge there.”
“Understood, sir,” Yularen said. “Actually, we may not need to wait for the battle to get under way. If I’m reading the maps and images correctly, the house is far enough out from the center that we should be able to slip a squad in whenever we want.”
“That was also my conclusion,” Thrawn said. “But the situation on the ground is often more complex than it appears from orbit. How long will it take the squad to reach the house?”
“Give me fifteen minutes to cut out a squad and prep them,” Yularen said. “Probably thirty more to slip them through the outer picket line and make their way inward. Forty-five minutes, an hour at the most.”
“Good. Proceed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And inform the commanders that they are to ready their troops,” Thrawn added. “If Governor Pryce and Agent Gudry are not at the Pryce home, and if we have not otherwise heard from them by then, we will assume their mission has failed and proceed accordingly.”
“Yes, sir,” Yularen said.
“Captain Faro?”
“Admiral?” Faro replied, taking a step down the walkway.
“Prepare the Chimaera for combat,” Thrawn said. “I expect enemy forces to appear at any moment.”
“Yes, sir.” Faro gestured to the crew pits. “Turbolasers stand ready. Shields at standby power.”
“Shields at standby, sir,” a voice acknowledged.
“Turbolasers at—” a second voice began.
“Incoming!” the sensor officer snapped. “Midsized ships—ten—incoming on vector one-ten by eighty. Range, one hundred thirty kilometers.”
Eli turned to the tactical, his throat tightening. The ten ships had jumped out of hyperspace thirty kilometers behind the Shyrack and were heading straight toward it, accelerating to attack speed as they came. Exactly as he’d feared. “Admiral—the Shyrack—”
“Incoming!” the sensor officer cut him off. “Eleven more midsized on vector—”
“Two more groups incoming,” the secondary sensor officer corrected, her voice tight. “This one also eleven vessels. Admiral, they’re targeting the cruisers.”
“I see them,” Thrawn said, his voice like glacial ice.
Then do something! The words screamed in Eli’s brain. The three attack squadrons hadn’t yet opened fire, but the respite would only last another few seconds. Another twenty kilometers, and their blaster cannons would cut through the defenseless cruisers like a fruit knife through a demi-husk.
And once they’d destroyed the cruisers, there was nothing between them and the Chimaera.
Eli gazed at the display, his mind beating furiously at the situation, trying to find a way out. But there wasn’t one. The Chimaera was too deep in Batonn’s gravity well to jump to lightspeed. With the main drive still on standby, it would take nearly ten minutes to climb to the necessary distance. There were no ground-based weapons that could assist, and Batonn had no orbiting weapons platforms. All that remained was for the Star Destroyer to sit here and slug it out with the enemy ships.
Was that Thrawn’s plan? To make the attackers waste energy on the cruisers, possibly burning out some of their weapons in the process, then hope that the Chimaera’s armor and weapons would be enough to hold them off? Certainly the admiral couldn’t want the newcomers joining Nightswan and his insurgents on the ground—was this his way of making sure they stayed in space and out of Nightswan’s reach until the Creekpath battle was over?
A motion caught Eli’s eye, and he turned to see Thrawn walking back along the command walkway. Not hurrying, as if he were concerned about being too close to the viewport when the attack began, but with the measured tread of a man secure in his plan and his command.
He paused beside the comm section of the crew pit, almost as if it were an afterthought. “Signal the ground commanders,” he ordered. “The units on the west and north may open fire on the Creekpath insurgents. But they are to remain on the edges of the complex—harassment fire only—until the shield is down or until I give further orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thrawn continued down the walkway, stopping before Eli and Faro. “Colonel Yularen’s retrieval squad will benefit from diversionary fire elsewhere on the perimeter,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Eli said, a small part of his mind feeling a twinge of chagrin that he’d been so preoccupied with the attacking ships that he hadn’t put those pieces together. “Sir…the ships?”
“Yes, Commander: the ships,” Thrawn agreed, turning again to gaze out the viewport. “Let us now discover how well I have read our opponent.”
“And whether we’re about to die,” Eli muttered.
“Yes,” Thrawn said. “And whether we are about to die.”
Arihnda and her parents were nearly to the insurgents’ outer picket line when the complex to the north and west lit up with blasterfire.
“Talmoor?” Elainye murmured tensely, clutching at her husband’s arm.
“I hear it,” Talmoor said, his voice grim. “So it’s happened. I hoped it wouldn’t.”
Arihnda peered across the semi-lit area in front of them, trying to spot the Imperial troops out there. But they were still hunkered down and quiet, just as they’d been when she and Gudry headed inward earlier across their line. Had those squads missed the order to attack?
Hardly. If they were still in place, it was because they’d been ordered to stay that way.
In which case the attacks in the distance were either a single-vector penetration or a diversion.
She smiled tightly in the darkness. Of course. She’d been ignoring the increasingly frequent calls on her comm and the comm she’d taken from Gudry, not wanting to speak to Thrawn until she knew exactly what she was going to say. If that blasterfire was a diversion, it was so that a team could head in from some other direction to look for her.
Her smile faded. The logical place to start a search would be her parents’ house. If the team made it there and found Gudry’s body…
She might be able to talk her way out of it. But she might not. The fact that Gudry was dead without Arihnda and her parents sporting so much as a blaster scorch would require a very tricky lie to explain.
“We need to go,” Elainye said, her eyes still on the flickering lights in the distance. “Arihnda?”
“In a minute,” Arihnda said, looking around. A few meters to her right was a bulldozer-type machine, probably set there by the insurgents so that this part of their picket line would have somewhere to fall back to when the shooting started. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
Gudry’s bag of tricks had included six comm-triggered blasting caps. She had a single one of them left.
Affixing it beneath the bulldozer was the easy part. Keying Gudry’s comm to detonate it was the trick. He’d run through the procedure with her on the transport, but it had been a perfunctory explanation from a man who’d clearly never expected her to have to use that knowledge.
But after a few false starts, she got it keyed to the Signal Three setting. Tucking the comm invisibly in her hand, she returned to her parents.
They were still staring into the distance, as if by sheer willpower they would be able to see what was happening over there. “Time to go,” she murmured to them. “Let me do the talking.”
She’d hoped the guards on the insurgent line would have all their attention directed outward, and that she and her parents would be able to slip through without being spotted. Once again, luck was against them. “Halt,” a quiet voice ordered from just ahead. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I need to get my parents out of here,” Arihnda said. He was an older man, and he held his blaster like he knew what he was doing. A Clone Wars vet, maybe. “Mother’s not well,” she added as she started toward him, gripping Gudry’s comm tighter in anticipation. “I need to get her to—”
“Let’s see some IDs,” the guard cut in. “All of you.”
This was it. So far everyone they’d met had known her father, by name if not by face, and the odds were good that this man would, too. If he did, and if he started asking questions—or worse, if he called over a suspicious superior—
“That won’t be necessary,” Talmoor said, stepping forward. “I’m Talmoor—”
Clenching her teeth, Arihnda triggered the comm.
The blasting caps had only limited power, and the explosion wasn’t a huge one. But it was big enough, and loud enough, to draw everyone’s attention to the bulldozer as it shuddered and rocked up briefly onto one side.
As the guard gaped, Arihnda stepped close to him, pressed the muzzle of her blaster against his chest, and fired.
With the sound of the shot muffled by his body and further covered by the echoes from the explosion, she doubted anyone heard it. The guard certainly made no noise as he crumpled to the ground, his blaster clattering softly against the pavement. Arihnda glanced around as she slid the blaster back inside her tunic, but saw no other pickets.
“Arihnda, what was—Arihnda!” her mother gasped. “What happened?”
“Probably caught a piece of shrapnel,” Arihnda said, taking her arm and pulling her along. “Father? Come on.”
“But we have to help him,” Elainye said.
“It’s too late,” Arihnda said, tugging harder. “Father, come on.”
“In a moment,” her father said, his voice strange.
Arihnda looked back over her shoulder, the movement sending another needle of pain through the back of her head. Talmoor was standing over the freshly dead body, gazing down at it. “Father!” she said in a loud whisper. “Come on.”
He looked at the body for another moment. Then he stirred and followed.
And even in the faint light Arihnda could see the pain and revulsion in his eyes.
She’d expected to be challenged at least once more before they reached the Imperial line. But the explosion had apparently sent the rest of the insurgents scrambling for cover while they figured out whether or not the attack was starting. Ahead, she could see a line of armored personnel carriers, their bulks dark against the lights of Paeragosto City in the distance—
“Halt!” a brisk professional voice came from behind them.
Arihnda looked back. Two men in black navy trooper uniforms were striding toward them, blaster carbines held ready. She had no idea where they’d been hiding. “It’s all right,” she said quickly. “I’m Arihnda Pryce. I’m here on special assignment from Colonel Yularen.”
“Governor Arihnda Pryce?” one of the troopers said, picking up his pace. “About time, Governor. The colonel’s been worried about you. You’d better give him a call—the team’s already gone in.”
“What team?” Arihnda asked.
“The rescue team heading to your parents’ house,” the trooper said. “These them?”
“Yes, these are my parents,” Arihnda confirmed, her heart beating faster. She’d hoped the team would wait until the battle started before going in.
Maybe there was still time to stop them. “When did they leave?”
“I don’t know,” he said, giving her pass a quick look. “Probably twenty minutes ago. You’ll have to ask Colonel Yularen. Wasn’t there supposed to be someone else with you?”
“We got separated,” Arihnda said, clenching her teeth. Twenty minutes. Depending on how stealthy they’d had to be on the inward trip, they could be within sight of the house by now.
For that matter, they could already be inside.
“I’ll call him right away,” she said, glancing up. The stars, what could be seen of them through the hazy glow from the complex, showed the extra flicker that came from their light being sifted through an energy field. They were still under the edge of the Creekpath shield. “Where’s your HQ?” she asked the troopers. “I need to get my parents to the city and some proper care.”
“HQ’s over there,” the man said, pointing to a larger version of the armored carrier. “Major Talmege. He’ll arrange for transport.”
“Thank you.” Arihnda beckoned to her parents. “Come on, let’s find a place where you can sit this out.”
They headed off, Arihnda herding her parents in front of her. Another few steps, she told herself. Just another few steps.
The attacking ships, all three clusters, were within firing distance of the cruisers now. Eli clenched his teeth, wondering when they would begin the slaughter. The attackers continued on, reached point-blank range—
And in smooth unison their formations split apart, the ships swinging wide around the cruisers and support vessels. They cleared the obstacles, re-formed their clusters, and continued inward toward the Chimaera.
Without firing a single shot.
“What in the world?” Faro muttered.
“Nightswan learned from our attack on Scrim Island,” Thrawn said calmly. “You see how he brought his ships in along the precise vectors where our fire would be blocked by the cruisers for the first leg of their attack.”
“Yes, sir,” Faro said. “Speaking of our fire…?”
“Patience, Commander,” Thrawn said. “Senior Lieutenant Lomar, inform the cruisers to break free of the barges immediately.”
“You’re sending them away now, sir?” Eli asked. “I thought you put them out there so they could jump before an enemy force could open fire.”
“An incorrect assumption, Commander,” Thrawn said calmly. “The attackers were never going to fire on them. Remember, we face Nightswan, who insisted that the Dromedar’s crew be held captive by pirates who wanted to kill them. He would never order his forces to fire on ships that could not fire back.” He gestured out the viewport toward the Shyrack. “From a purely tactical point of view, having our undamaged ships and their crews behind his attackers and directly in our line of fire should also make us hesitate to open defensive fire.”
“And that’s why you’re sending them away?” Faro asked. “So we can finally fight back?”
“I am not sending them away.” Thrawn gave her a small smile. “Patience, Commander. Commander Vanto, report on the repair barges.”
“They’ve pulled away from the Shyrack,” Eli said, studying the display. “Same for those around the Flensor and Tumnor…” He paused, peering at the group of repair structures. Was something emerging from behind them? “Admiral? Are those—?”
“They are indeed, Commander,” Thrawn said quietly. “TIE fighters, a full squadron from each location. Brought into the Batonn system concealed inside the repair barges.”
Eli exhaled a quiet breath, the knot in his stomach suddenly loosening as he finally understood. “Waiting for the attacking ships to pass by.”
“Yes,” Thrawn said. “And now, thanks to Nightswan’s strategy, they are perfectly positioned behind their targets.”
Even as Eli watched, the TIEs curved smoothly around the barges and accelerated to attack speed, bearing down on the incoming insurgent vessels. “Our TIEs are still on sentry screen,” he said. “Where did these come from?”
“The Judicator,” Thrawn said. “Admiral Durril was kind enough to loan them to us. Commander Faro?”
“Sir?”
“Instruct our turbolasers to stand by to fire,” Thrawn said. “Remind them not to overshoot against the TIEs.”
“Yes, sir,” Faro said, a tight smile on her face. “Fire control, you heard the admiral. Enemy incoming. Get ready to take them down.”
It was time.
Arihnda’s parents were safely inside Major Talmege’s HQ. Arihnda was standing behind the vehicle. The steady light of the stars overhead showed they were finally out from under the Creekpath shield.
And no one was watching.
She couldn’t stop Yularen’s special squad. She couldn’t prevent them from finding Gudry’s body. All she could do was make sure they never reported it.
Raising Gudry’s comm, she keyed the remote.
Not the Signal One remote, the one that would destroy the shield. The Signal Two remote, the one that would set off Nightswan’s cache of explosives.
And suddenly, the world shattered into a blaze of fire.
Whatever Eli might think of Durril’s abilities as a tactician, the Judicator’s starfighter pilots were among the best he’d ever seen. By the time the attackers reached the Chimaera’s close-firing range, their numbers had been decreased by nearly two-thirds.
It was the Chimaera’s turn now.
The sky was filled with speeding ships and the green flashes of turbolaser blasts when, out of the corner of his eye, Eli saw the display centered on the Creekpath strongpoint light up with a brilliant burst of light.
He spun to the display, his breath catching in his throat. For another fraction of a second the smoke-swirled fire remained a near-perfect circle—
And then, with a second flicker of light from the very center, the circle vanished and the roiling mass of smoke and debris became a tangle-edged cloud as it blew farther outward.
Someone in one of the crew pits swore…and abruptly Eli understood.
The explosives Gudry had rigged had detonated. But with the shield still in place the massive blast had been contained and deflected inward and downward, demolishing not only the insurgents’ stronghold but also the multitude of civilian homes clustered around the mine complex.
What the hell had the insurgents just done?
The Chimaera’s bridge had gone quiet. Thrawn was the first to break the silence. “Commander Faro, signal Colonel Yularen and the ground commanders,” he said, his voice calm but with an edge to it. “The troopers are to enter the insurgent complex immediately.
“But not for combat. For search and rescue.”
“Understood, sir,” Faro said, her voice under rigid control. “And those?” she added, pointing at the enemy ships swarming through the blaster cannon and turbolaser fire.
“If any break off and run, let them go,” Thrawn said. “Their tales of what happened here today will hasten the demoralization of any other such groups.”
“And those that stay to fight?”
Thrawn didn’t hesitate. “Destroy them.”
“Did you see that?” Elainye asked yet again, her voice still shaking. “Did you see that?”
“I saw it, Mother,” Arihnda confirmed as she half led, half dragged her parents to the waiting shuttle. Behind them, the whole Imperial line had come alive as men and vehicles moved into the blazing buildings and scattered debris that had been the Creekpath mining complex. “And no, I have no idea what happened.”
“Such a terrible thing,” Elainye murmured. “How could the Empire have done something like that?”
“You want to blame someone, blame the insurgents,” Arihnda countered, more harshly than she’d intended. “They’re the ones who forced this confrontation.”
Her mother fell silent. Her father hadn’t spoken at all since they’d left Talmege’s vehicle.
Arihnda had to admit to a certain queasiness of her own. The shield-contained blast had been far more devastating than she’d expected.
But it had served its purpose. The explosion or the resulting firestorm had surely obliterated her parents’ home, and with it the evidence of Gudry’s murder.
In the end, that was all that mattered.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, shaking both her parents a little to make sure she had their attention. “The pilot has instructions to take you to the Paeragosto City landing field and a transport called the Duggenhei. Your passage to Lothal has already been paid. Once there, go to the governor’s mansion—I’ll call ahead and instruct them to put you in one of the guest suites. I’ll join you as soon as I can, and we’ll figure out then what you want to do. Clear?”
“But—” Elainye began.
“No buts, Mother,” Arihnda said. “Just go, and wait. Okay?”
Elainye sighed. “All right.”
“Father? Okay?”
Talmoor merely nodded.
“Okay,” Arihnda said, stopping at the foot of the shuttle’s ramp and releasing their arms. “Get going. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
She watched as they made their silent way aboard, both still moving like dreamers trapped in a horrible nightmare. The hatch closed, and the shuttle took off, heading for the distant lights of the city.
“Your parents?”
Arihnda turned. Colonel Yularen was standing a few meters back, his eyes hard on her. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sending them back home. There’s nothing here for them now.”
“Nothing much here for anyone, really,” he said. “I came to tell you that Admiral Thrawn requests our presence aboard the Chimaera.”
Which the colonel could have told her via comm, Arihnda knew. But if he’d done that, he wouldn’t have been able to follow her and see what she was up to.
Fine. Let him watch. Let him watch, and wonder, and suspect. She was Governor Pryce now, ruler of a vast array of mines, factories, and industries vital to the economic and military well-being of the Empire. As long as she continued to deliver what Coruscant wanted, she was untouchable. “Thank you, Colonel,” she said. “Do you have a shuttle ready?”
“I do, Your Excellency,” he said. “Shall we go?”