Thalias, for her part, spent the entire trip listening to the conversation and feeling miserable and guilty.
She had no reason to feel guilty, she insisted to herself. Dealing with this sort of thing was far out of any of her training or experience. Neither Uingali nor Thrawn nor anyone else could expect her to simply step calmly into this situation.
But Uingali knew the Magys far better than she did. What if he was right, and she refused to talk to Thrawn or Samakro? Would the Chiss just turn around and leave the refugees to whatever the future held for them?
In that case, shouldn’t Thalias at least try?
Logic and reason told her she should. But there was a huge emotional difference between standing idly by and letting a crisis happen and stepping in, trying to solve the problem, and failing.
It would be all right, she told herself over and over. Thrawn was good at everything. He would find a way to fix it.
She was still telling herself that when they finally arrived.
The refugees had been housed in what appeared to be a school or office building, with many midsized rooms opening off identical tiled hallways. At the moment they were all gathered together in what would have been a convocation hall in one of Thalias’s old schools, seated cross-legged in concentric circles.
She eyed them as Uingali led the way toward the group. They were wizened creatures, smaller and thinner than Chiss, with brown skins and flowing white hair cut in asymmetric but clearly deliberate patterns. Their clothing consisted of loose shirts and trousers of various colors and styles with wraparound shoes on their wide feet. Their facial skin was tight, looking almost like it had been stretched over their cheeks and split jawbones.
She frowned, taking another look at the way the circles were laid out. It was hard to tell age or gender, but—
“You can see that they present themselves in a specific pattern,” Uingali said softly as their group approached the outer circle. “Inward from the outer edge are the younger males, then the older males, then the older females, followed by the younger females and children. The Magys sits in the center.”
“The tactics of desperation,” Thrawn said thoughtfully. “Interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Thalias asked.
“The outer rim consists of those who can fight and best defend the others,” Thrawn explained. “They’re followed by the next best at defense, the older males, should the first line fall. Then the females, with those most expendable protecting those of child-bearing capability. Then the children, and finally the Magys.”
“Who will be killed only when there’s no one left for her to lead,” Samakro muttered.
“As I said: the tactics of desperation,” Thrawn said. “I assume the Magys expects us?”
Before Uingali could answer, the two young males closest to the Chiss on the outer circle stood up and stepped close to the ones on either side, opening up a narrow space between them. One by one, the pairs farther inward also stood and moved aside until they had formed an open path to the center.
“I believe the Magys is inviting me in,” Thrawn said. He started forward—
“Another moment,” Uingali said, holding a cautioning hand in front of him. Two of the children from the center were on the move, standing and walking out through the path the others had created. They passed through to the outer rim and moved to the sides, again clearing the way.
“They have made space for you in front of the Magys,” Uingali continued. “Now you may go in.”
Thrawn nodded and continued forward. Thalias watched him go, feeling the weight easing from her shoulders. Certainly Thrawn would do a much better job than she would. Briefly, she wondered if she would be able to hear the conversation from where she and the others stood. Not that it really mattered—
“No!” a crackly voice bit out the Taarja word.
Thrawn stopped. “I am Senior Captain Thrawn of the Chiss Asce—”
“No,” the voice said again. This time, Thalias could see that it was the Magys who had spoken. “Not you.” The alien lifted a hand.
And to Thalias’s surprise and horror she pointed straight at her. “That one,” the Magys said. “That one only.”
Thrawn glanced over his shoulder to see who the Magys was pointing at, then turned back. “She is not prepared to speak with you,” he said. “Her language skills are inadequate to the task.”
“That one only,” the Magys repeated.
Thrawn hesitated, then turned around. “Thalias?” he asked.
Thalias took a deep breath, the full weight of the responsibility she’d hoped to avoid crashing down again on her shoulders. She wasn’t ready for this.
And yet…
Back in Boropacc, when Uingali first proposed she talk to the aliens, the suddenness of the request had all but frozen her brain. But somehow, in the intervening four hours, her mind had worked through much of that shock and all of the crippling fear.
She still felt wholly inadequate. But now she was at least willing to try.
She took a deep breath. “All right,” she said, starting forward. “I’ll do it.”
Thrawn stayed where he was, watching as she approached. “You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly as she reached him. “This isn’t your responsibility. This isn’t our responsibility.”
“I know,” Thalias said. She tried to smile reassuringly but was pretty sure she just managed to look scared. “But I have to try.”
“I understand,” he said, and she thought she saw a hint of approval in his eyes. “I’ll be here if you need me.”
“Thank you,” she said, and started toward the aliens. It was a comforting offer, and she had no doubt it was sincere.
But Thrawn would be out here, and Thalias would be in there, and there would really be no chance for him to help or even offer advice. For the moment, at least, it was all on her. She would have to do the talking, the listening, and the observing.
She reached the gap in the circles. Bracing herself, she headed in.
The path was narrow, and Thalias’s shoulders brushed each of the flanking aliens as she passed. She winced at each touch, wishing they would take the hint and move farther apart, wondering if she should turn sideways and try to edge her way through.
But none of the aliens were moving, and she had a strong feeling that turning to avoid them would be seen as weakness or insult or both. Forcing herself to continue, still cringing at each small bump, she reached the center. The Magys had meanwhile lowered her gaze to the open spot in front of her where the two children had been sitting.
Thalias reached the spot and lowered herself to the floor. “Good day to you,” she said in Taarja, trying to cross her legs in the same way as the alien female. It wasn’t easy—Chiss knees didn’t bend quite as far as the aliens’ did—but she managed it. “My name is Thalias. What’s yours?”
“I am the Magys,” the woman said, looking up. Her Taarja was heavily accented and with a lot of the same pronunciation and grammar problems Thalias remembered working through during her own first months of instruction in that language. Did that mean these aliens didn’t have cause to use trade languages very much?
“I see,” Thalias said. So the woman didn’t have a name, but only a title? Or did they simply not give their names to strangers? “My people are the Chiss. May I ask what you call yourselves?”
“I am the Magys. We are the people.”
So they didn’t give out even their species name. So much for Thalias’s vague hope of connecting with them on a more personal level. “I’m told your world has suffered a great deal of devastation. We came here hoping we can help.”
“How?” the Magys demanded. “Do you bring back our cities? Do you bring back our people? Do you bring back our children?”
Thalias winced. “Some things are beyond anyone’s power to change,” she admitted.
“Then do not speak of help.” The Magys opened her mouth wide, and Thalias saw now that the two jutting sections of jaw each came with its own tongue. “The cities are fallen. The people are lost. Our time is ended.” She closed her mouth and again lowered her head. “All that remains is the final hope, and for me and my remnant to join our fathers, mothers, and children.”
Thalias looked down at her hands, noticing to her surprise that they’d clenched into fists. She hadn’t realized her reaction to the Magys’s outburst had been so intense. “I understand you’re angry and fearful,” she said, forcing her hands to relax. “But you must not give up hope for your people.”
“Are your children dead?” the Magys shot back. “Are your father and your mother dead? Then do not lecture on hope for the people.”
“I have no children,” Thalias murmured, her mind flicking back to Syndic Thurfian’s efforts a few months back to make her betray Thrawn, and his mocking references to her blood family before her adoption into the Mitth. “And I never knew my father and mother. What I do know is that our world, too, was once destroyed.”
The Magys spat something, both tongues flicking out with the word. “You lie,” she said. “Destroyed is destroyed. If it was truly gone, no one would be left to speak of it. You would not be left to speak of it.”
“I never said the people were all destroyed,” Thalias said, feeling a touch of annoyance creeping into the sense of helplessness. People who fell back on pedantic nitpicking always irritated her. “I said the world was destroyed. Our sun’s output suddenly changed, and the temperature dropped until the entire surface was frozen beyond anyone’s ability to survive.”
Almost unwillingly, Thalias thought, the Magys raised her eyes again. “What did you do?”
“What we had to,” Thalias told her. “A few of the bigger cities were left in place, with heavy insulation added to the buildings and transport structures to protect the inhabitants. Many live there still. The rest were moved deep underground, where heat from the planet’s core could balance the cold from the surface.”
“Are you mole creatures, that you could thus burrow into the ground?”
“You can see that our hands are not built for such digging,” Thalias said, holding out her hands with the palms upward. “A few were housed in existing caverns, modified to create homes for them. But most were moved to places created especially for the crisis, vast chambers torn from the rock and fitted with homes, power supplies, and systems for growing food and creating clean air.”
“A massive undertaking for such small return,” the Magys said, flicking her tongues out again. “How many can possibly live in such squalor? A thousand? Ten thousand?”
Thalias felt her back straighten with pride. “It’s not squalor. And it’s not just a thousand, or ten thousand. It’s eight billion.”
Until that point in the conversation, the rest of the nearby aliens had made no sound and showed no reaction. But now a soft ripple of surprise or disbelief ran through them. “You lie,” the Magys said accusingly. “Or you speak the wrong word.”
“I speak the correct word,” Thalias said firmly. “And for what reason would I lie? Whether eight billion survived or eight thousand, that is still a victory when measured against the death of all. If we can bring our world back from the brink, you can do the same with yours.”
“That is indeed the hope,” the Magys said. “That is why we must die.”
Thalias frowned. Had she mistranslated something in her mind? Or had the Magys completely missed the whole point she’d been making? “The hope for your world is why you must live,” she said.
The Magys’s tongues flicked out again. “You do not understand,” she said. “Tell me, how long has it been since you touched the Beyond?”
Another mistranslation? “I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I don’t know what the Beyond is.”
“Certainly you have touched it,” the Magys insisted. “I can see it in you. That was why I wished to speak only to you. Only you would truly understand. I ask again: How long since you touched it?”
And then, suddenly, Thalias understood. “You’re talking about my time as a sky-walker,” she said. “Many years ago, when I used Third Sight.”
“Third Sight,” the Magys said thoughtfully, as if listening to the sound of the words. “You speak strangely of the Beyond. But that is correct. You have touched the Beyond, as we, too, will soon rest in it. Do you now understand?”
“No,” Thalias said. “Will you please explain?”
The Magys did a sort of double twitch of her tongues. Impatience? Resignation? “Our time is ended,” she said. “The people are gone. But we may perhaps still bring healing to our world.”
“You said that before, that your time is ended,” Thalias said. “What does that mean?”
“That there is no reason to go back,” the Magys said. “No hope that others of the people still live. So we will therefore die and rest in the Beyond, and through the Beyond bring healing to our world.”
“How can you bring healing when the people are gone?”
Another double tongue flick. “Do you not even listen to your own words?” the Magys said scornfully. “You said it yourself: The world is not the people. Our world has been torn and scarred, but perhaps it can be healed. We will join the Beyond and make the attempt.”
Thalias frowned, trying to make sense of it all. So the Magys believed that by dying she and the rest of her group could join with some greater cosmic system and through it work to heal the damage caused by their civil war? “But what’s the point of healing the world if there’s no one left to live there?” she asked.
“There are others in the universe,” the Magys said. “Many others. Some of them may one day come to live on the world we leave to them. Why should we not strive to properly prepare it?”
“Because those others may or may not come,” Thalias said. “You and your people, on the other hand, are already here. Shouldn’t you be trying instead to return and rebuild your world and culture for yourselves? We did. Why not you?”
“No,” the Magys said. “We are not you. It cannot be done.” She lowered her eyes again. “All that can be done is death, and the Beyond.”
Thalias took a deep breath. So much for trying optimism and real-life positive examples. Arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere, either. What she needed was an idea, something positive to present.
Or maybe just something that could delay the Magys’s decision until she could come up with that better idea. “You say redemption of your people can’t be done,” she said. “You say they are lost. Here’s what I say: Prove it.”
The Magys looked up again, both tongues sticking out of her slightly opened jaw. “What do you say?”
“Let us travel to your world and see what has become of it,” Thalias said, feeling her stomach tighten as she belatedly realized that she had no authority whatsoever to make this offer. If Thrawn decided a long side trip wasn’t within their mission parameters, he could simply say no, and that would be the end of it. In that case, the Magys would almost certainly proclaim death, and the rest of the aliens would meekly go along with it.
But then that was the end that had faced them before the Springhawk arrived anyway. She might as well give this a try and see if she could talk Thrawn into it. “By your own statements to the Paccosh, you admit the battles hadn’t yet ended when you left. The situation there may not be as bad as you think.”
“The time is close at hand,” the Magys said quietly. “The situation is without hope.”
“Then let us prove it,” Thalias said. “If it is—if your people truly can’t be saved—then we’ll bring you back here and you can do as you wish.”
“And if you are right?”
For the first time since the conversation started, Thalias felt a stirring of hope. Was that actually a crack in the Magys’s steadfast belief that her people were gone? “Then we’ll figure out together what needs to be done,” she said. “Will you come with me to your world?”
For a long moment, the Magys stared at her. Then her tongues flicked out again. “I will,” she said. “One other will join us as witness to all that occurs.”
“Of course,” Thalias said, her newfound hope fading a little. Getting Thrawn to let a single alien aboard his ship was already problematic. Adding a second to the mix was going to strain her persuasive abilities to the limit.
But she could hardly tell the Magys that she couldn’t bring along someone else, whether as witness or protector. At least she hadn’t asked to bring all two hundred of them.
“I’ll make the arrangements,” she said, uncrossing her legs and standing up. A small jolt of pain shot through her knees as the joints complained about their mistreatment. Nodding to the Magys, she turned and made her way back between the pairs of silent aliens.
Thrawn and Samakro were still where she’d left them, though Uingali had moved to the side of the chamber and was conversing with two of the Paccosh who’d been here when their group arrived. “What have you concluded?” Thrawn asked.
“First of all, it’s not as simple as her killing herself out of hopelessness,” Thalias said. “She believes that the people of her world are dead, but that if she and the others here…die…they’ll join something called the Beyond and be able to heal their world. And by world, I mean the physical planet.”
“How do they expect to do that?” Samakro asked.
“I don’t know,” Thalias said. “But she seems to think this Beyond is connected somehow to how I used to navigate as a sky-walker.”
“The Force,” Thrawn murmured, his voice thoughtful.
Thalias frowned at him. “The what?”
“A concept from Lesser Space that General Anakin Skywalker told me about when we were working together,” Thrawn said. “He defined it as an energy field created by all living things from which he and others could draw power and guidance.”
“So that’s what sky-walkers do?” Thalias asked.
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “The concept seemed somewhat vague. But if living things create the Force, perhaps it can work in reverse, with the Force creating or nurturing living things.”
“In order to heal the planet,” Thalias said, nodding. So that was what the Magys was getting at.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Samakro said firmly. “If these alien deaths are what’s necessary to fix their planet, and if all the millions or billions who died in the war weren’t enough, what makes her think an additional two hundred will make the difference?”
“Another good question, Mid Captain,” Thrawn agreed. “Unfortunately, we may not have a chance to inquire further.”
“Or we might,” Thalias said. “I’ve persuaded her to hold off for now. But to do that, I had to promise we’d take her back to their world and see whether the situation there can be fixed.” She stopped, mentally bracing herself for the verbal explosion.
To her surprise, it didn’t come. “Excellent,” Thrawn said calmly. “Did you specify a time frame?”
“I—no, I didn’t,” Thalias said, feeling a bit sandbagged. Thrawn didn’t seem the least bit angry that she’d overstepped her authority. Even more surprising, neither did Samakro. “I’m sorry—I thought you’d be angry.”
“Not at all.” Thrawn gestured to Samakro. “Mid Captain Samakro has been doing some research.”
“Senior Captain Thrawn asked me to take a look at the region the refugees most likely came from,” Samakro said, making a notation on his questis. “There are a couple of small Nikardun listening and comm relay posts in that area, but nothing on Yiv’s list of conquered worlds. As far as we can tell, he never really focused much attention there.”
“But then why did the Nikardun chase the refugees here and put Rapacc under siege?” Thalias asked.
“An interesting question,” Thrawn agreed. “If he wanted their world, why didn’t he move to take it? Conversely, if it was of no use to him, why spend the effort to foment a civil war there?”
“If he did start or at least encourage it,” Samakro cautioned. “That still hasn’t been established. It’s possible the war was just coincidence and had nothing to do with Yiv.”
“Except—” Thalias began.
“Except that, as you just pointed out,” Samakro continued, talking over her, “the Nikardun did spend some effort chasing down the refugees. Even if Yiv wasn’t the primary instigator of the war, something about the system or its people seems to have caught the Benevolent’s interest.”
“Or it caught some Nikardun’s interest,” Thrawn added. “We’ve already seen how the general’s disappearance caused a splintering of his empire as his top captains rushed to claim parts of it for themselves. It could be the refugees’ situation was interesting to one of those captains but not Yiv himself. Regardless, Mid Captain Samakro and I have already agreed we need more information, which fits very well with your agreement.”
“Yes, I see,” Thalias said, wilting a little with relief. So not only had she avoided a rebuke from her commander, she also didn’t have to tell the Magys that the deal was off. “I wish you’d told me that was what you wanted before I went in there.”
“The lack of direction wasn’t intentional,” Thrawn said. “You’d already begun your conversation by the time the mid captain finished his analysis and we agreed on the optimal course of action. All is well.”
“For the moment,” Thalias said, wincing. “But if the damage to their people is as bad as she expects…”
“If it is, we’ll deal with it then,” Thrawn said.
“If she’s even willing to wait that long,” Thalias said. “She told me the time was close at hand. Any idea what she meant by that?”
“We think so, yes.” Thrawn beckoned to Uingali. “Please tell Thalias what you told us.”
“They must be out of contact from anyone with higher authority than the Magys for nine of their months before she can make this decision,” Uingali said, walking over to them again. “The Magys has been waiting for a follow-up ship from their world with a message, but none has arrived. If our calculations are correct…” He looked expectantly at Thrawn.
“We have approximately two weeks,” Thrawn finished for him. “More than enough time to make the journey and learn the status of their world and people.”
Thalias felt a shiver run through her. If the Springhawk had waited with Ar’alani until all the Nikardun bases had been dealt with, they would almost certainly have been too late. “Then we’d better get moving,” she said.
A small smile tweaked Thrawn’s lips; an equally small grimace tweaked Samakro’s. “I mean—” Thalias said, cringing to herself as she belatedly realized she’d just given orders to her commander and his first officer.
“Your enthusiasm is noted,” Thrawn said, sounding more amused than offended. “Mid Captain Samakro, alert Senior Commander Kharill to prepare the Springhawk to depart. We’ll lift directly from here with the Magys; Uingali can return to the capital aboard the Paccian transport. Let the senior commander know we’re bringing a guest, and have him prepare quarters for her.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said.
Thalias braced herself. “We’ll need quarters for her companion, too,” she said. “She wanted to bring a witness.”
“I see,” Thrawn said, again taking it in stride. “And a companion, Mid Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said, giving Thalias one last look as he pulled out his comm.
“One other thing,” Thrawn continued. “Make sure all officers are aware that, when in either alien’s presence, they’re to treat Caregiver Thalias as if she’s a senior officer.”
Samakro froze with the comm halfway to his lips. “Sir?”
“Thalias will be the Magys’s primary contact aboard the Springhawk,” Thrawn said. “By diverting the Springhawk to their world, she’s demonstrated that she has both the authority to make agreements and the power to carry them out. The Magys may have further requests, and we need her to believe that Thalias continues to have the ability to fulfill them.”
“Are we then going to do everything she demands?” Samakro asked stiffly.
“Of course not,” Thrawn assured him. “But sometimes the request alone gives information that would otherwise not come to light. The Magys clearly assumes Thalias is one of the Springhawk’s leaders, and we need to continue playing to that impression. More important, identifying Thalias as a senior officer will explain why she’s often unavailable to meet or speak with her.”
Samakro looked at Thalias. “Those being the times when she’s carrying out her caregiver duties?”
“Precisely.”
To Thalias, Samakro looked very much like he wanted to argue the point further. But he simply gave a small, stiff nod. “Yes, sir.” Half turning away, he brought the comm the rest of the way to his lips and began talking softly into it.
“With all respect, Senior Captain, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Thalias said quietly. “Asking other officers to obey my orders—or even pretend to do so—could cause discord and confusion aboard the ship. Not to mention what the Magys’s reaction might be if she finds out we misled her.”
“She won’t be aboard the Springhawk long enough for that,” Thrawn said.
“But—”
“This situation is a mystery, Caregiver,” Thrawn said. “It needs to be followed until it can be resolved.”
“Yes, sir, I understand,” Thalias said, trying one last time. “But Mid Captain Samakro—”
“Mid Captain Samakro will accept the reasoning in time,” Thrawn said, his tone making it clear the discussion was over. “Inform the Magys that she needs to gather whatever she and her companion wish to take with them. I’ll also need her navigational data before we leave here.”
“Yes, sir,” Thalias said with a sigh, flicking a quick look at Samakro’s profile as the Springhawk’s first officer continued his conversation with the ship. He was a good officer, she knew, and would follow Thrawn’s order. And he probably would accept the reasoning in time.
But that time wasn’t right now. Not even close.
Mid Captain Samakro will accept the reasoning in time, Thrawn had told Thalias at the edge of Samakro’s hearing. Maybe he would.
But then again, Samakro glowered to himself, maybe he wouldn’t.
What the hell was happening to his life? What the hell was happening to the fleet?
First he was summarily removed as captain of the Springhawk and Thrawn put in charge. Then there was the business of identifying and tracking down General Yiv and the Nikardun who were quietly chewing up territory on their way to the Ascendancy. That had ultimately turned out all right, but along the way Thrawn had taken the Springhawk right to the edge of insubordination and violation of standing orders.
Sometimes, in the opinion of many, Thrawn hadn’t just gone to the edge but had stepped across it. Along the way he’d thrown the ship into battle after battle, skirmish after skirmish, beating it and battering it and risking the lives of every officer and warrior aboard.
And now this. There was an order to things aboard a warship of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet, regulations and protocols that needed to be followed. And while a caregiver could give orders even to the captain when a situation involved the welfare of the sky-walker, she was otherwise completely outside the chain of command. Ordering the Springhawk’s officers even to pretend that she had additional authority held the potential for confusion and hesitation and risked the smooth operation of the ship.
And the fact that it was Thalias made it even worse.
Samakro didn’t trust her. Not a single binary bit. She’d first come aboard without qualifications, and under suspicious circumstances. She professed loyalty to Thrawn and to the Springhawk, and to her credit Samakro had never caught her in anything that belied that allegiance.
But the personnel officer who’d first alerted Samakro to the irregularities in Thalias’s arrival had also told him that Syndic Thurfian had essentially forced through her request. And Samakro trusted Thurfian—or any other member of the Aristocra—even less than he trusted Thalias.
He’d met Thurfian only once, at one of the hearings the Syndicure had called after the climactic battle over the Vak homeworld of Primea, the battle that had defeated General Yiv and shattered the Nikardun Destiny as a threat. By that time the Syndicure had received the Council’s preliminary report on Yiv’s future plans against the Ascendancy, and most of the syndics had asked questions that were placid and perfunctory.
Not Thurfian. He’d pushed relentlessly against Samakro and the other Springhawk officers, leaning especially hard on questions regarding Thrawn’s role during the battle, his orders to them, and the subsequent damage to the ship. Even the other syndics had seemed surprised by Thurfian’s single-mindedness, one of them going so far as to offer a bit of mild and heavily veiled criticism.
Thurfian hadn’t even blinked. His goal seemed to be to discredit Thrawn, and if he needed to take down Samakro and the entire Springhawk in the process he seemed more than willing to do so.
What made it that much more astonishing was the fact that he and Thrawn were both from the same family. Intrafamily disputes were certainly common enough, but Samakro had never seen one bleed out into public view this way.
Which brought him straight back to Thalias. Before she’d ever come aboard the Springhawk she’d had some nebulous association with Thurfian. If Thurfian was violently opposed to Thrawn, could Thalias’s loyalty to her captain really be as solid as she professed?
He clenched his teeth. Politics. Every single time the thrice-damned Ascendancy politics came aboard his ship—every time internal squabbles or interfamily rivalries oozed their way into the precise and well-honed fleet machinery—he lived to regret it.
Not this time. Whether Thrawn was playing family games with Thalias, or whether Thalias was playing them with Thurfian, or whether all of them were playing games with, against, or sideways to one another, Samakro wasn’t going to let any of it make a mess. Not on his ship.
He finished his conversation with Kharill and closed down the comm. “All set, sir,” he said, turning back to Thrawn. Thalias, he noted, had in the meantime returned to the alien leader and was talking softly with her. “Your ship will be ready by the time we return.”
“Thank you, Mid Captain,” Thrawn said, nodding in acknowledgment. “You don’t approve.”
Samakro braced himself. “No, sir, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t like aliens aboard an Ascendancy warship. I especially don’t like heading out to an unknown system and an unknown situation without informing Csilla of our intentions.”
“Understood,” Thrawn said. “To be honest, I don’t like it, either. But the Paccosh don’t have a triad, and the Springhawk’s comm system won’t reach to any Ascendancy world from here.”
“We could head back into range and give our report,” Samakro suggested. “There should be enough time to do that, return here and pick up the Magys, and head to her world before we run into Uingali’s time limit.”
“And if that limit was miscalculated?”
Samakro scowled. There was always that possibility when dealing with three different time scales. Thrawn would certainly have checked Uingali’s numbers, but if the raw data was wrong, doing the math would only yield the same wrong answer.
And even if the numbers were right, the Springhawk could be delayed or, worse, summarily ordered to report back to Csilla. If Syndic Thurfian was still looking for something to use against Thrawn, an alien’s death aboard the Springhawk would be an entire salvo’s worth of ammunition on a platter. “Understood, sir,” he said. “I just hope this place will turn out to be worth it.”
“I think it will, Mid Captain,” Thrawn said, his voice grim. “Unfortunately.”