That was what she expected. What she got was silence, emptiness, and more debris.
A lot more debris.
“Looks like our mysterious friends with the sledgehammers got here first,” Wutroow commented as she and Ar’alani stood gazing out at the twisted shards of metal and ceramic floating across the starscape. Most of the wreckage was dark or dulled, but there were occasional small glints as something turned enough to catch the light from the distant sun.
“So it would seem,” Ar’alani agreed, frowning at the rubble. Something about the whole scene seemed odd. Odd, and wrong.
“That base,” Wutroow said, pointing toward the twisted and broken metal shell drifting in the midst of the field. “Does it look too big to you?”
“Too big for a listening post, you mean?” Ar’alani eyed the shell. “Probably. But Yiv’s records didn’t specifically identify this base as such. We just assumed that because that’s what all the rest of his group were.”
“I know,” Wutroow said. “And that bothers me, too. All the rest of the bases were marked as to size and purpose: listening post, scout refueling depot, sector coordination base—whatever. Why not this one?”
“Good point,” Ar’alani said. Wutroow was right. But there was something else out there…
Abruptly, she had it. “Biclian: that clump about thirty degrees starboard, ten nadir,” she called toward the sensor station. “The one that looks almost spherical. Scan that and tell me what it is.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Biclian said, his hands moving across his control board.
“Looks like ordinary battle debris to me,” Wutroow said, craning her neck to check the main sensor display.
“Probably,” Ar’alani said. “But it seems to be clumped too close together.”
“Good point,” Wutroow said, her voice suddenly thoughtful. “A normal explosion should have sent the pieces way farther apart. And you’re right about the array being too spherical. Not a missile, then. A spectrum laser barrage?”
“I don’t think so,” Ar’alani said. “It’s too clean, somehow.”
“It’s also too rocky,” Biclian put in. “It’s not refined metal, ceramic, or plastic, Admiral, but solid rock. Spectral analysis suggests it’s the remnants of an asteroid.”
Ar’alani and Wutroow looked at each other. “So our mysterious attackers are taking potshots at asteroids now?” Wutroow asked.
“Or something else is going on,” Ar’alani said grimly, a strange thought starting to form in the back of her mind…“Octrimo, take us over there,” she instructed the pilot. “Slow and easy—I don’t want to disrupt the debris field any more than we have to. Biclian, does our asteroid clump have any overall vector?”
“Yes, Admiral, it does,” Biclian said. “Backtracking it now.”
“Good.” The asteroid’s path would likely have been distorted by the battle that had taken place around it, Ar’alani knew, but a backtrack might still be useful. “Specifically—no,” she interrupted herself.
“Admiral?” Biclian asked, frowning at her.
“I was going to offer a thought, but I don’t want to influence your analysis,” Ar’alani said. “Carry on.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Biclian turned back to his board.
“If you can’t tell him, can you at least tell me?” Wutroow asked.
“I especially can’t tell you,” Ar’alani said, giving her a wry smile. “Your brain is the one I rely on to make sure mine is functioning properly.”
“Ah.” Wutroow gave Ar’alani a sideways look. “Always something of a disappointment when you open up a compliment and find a no wrapped inside.”
“Patience is a virtue,” Ar’alani reminded her.
“So I’ve heard. Not a big fan of it, myself.”
For a few minutes the bridge was silent as Octrimo delicately maneuvered the massive warship through the debris toward the odd cluster of rock. Ar’alani found herself gazing at the remains of the Nikardun base, studying the damage with particular focus on the large gaps where heavy missiles had gotten through the defenses. That big one had probably been the first impact, she decided, shifting her attention back and forth between the wreckage and the analysis data scrolling across the secondary sensor display. The edges of the jagged hole had some odd coloration to them, the scan had noted, which the analysts were still working to identify.
“Got it, Admiral,” Biclian spoke up. “Asteroid backtrack on the tactical.”
Ar’alani looked at the display. The plot was fuzzy, reflecting the inherent uncertainties of tracking something that had been drifting through multiple volleys of missiles and laserfire.
“And here,” the sensor officer added, his voice going darker as the new data overlaid the plot, “is where I estimate it was when the pieces first came apart.”
Wutroow muttered something under her breath. “I will be—” She shot a look at Ar’alani. “How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” Ar’alani said, her stomach tightening. If Biclian’s track was accurate, the asteroid had broken apart directly in front of the gap in the station she’d identified as the point of first impact. “I just wondered why anyone would waste a missile on an asteroid.”
“Because no one did,” Wutroow said darkly.
Ar’alani nodded, mentally re-creating the scenario. A harmless-looking asteroid, drifting through the Nikardun station’s defense perimeter…reaching its closest approach to the base…the outer shell shattering to reveal the missile launcher concealed inside it…a single massive missile, blasting through the base’s hull before the Nikardun had any hope of reacting…the rest of the attackers then blazing in through the confusion to wreak havoc on the stunned and disorganized defenders.
“They would have had to set that up well in advance,” Wutroow continued, clearly thinking aloud. “Start the asteroid from far enough out that the Nikardun didn’t spot it.”
“And have it moving leisurely enough that it didn’t look out of place,” Ar’alani agreed. “We’re talking months of prep time to make it work.”
“Before Yiv’s little empire even collapsed?” Wutroow asked doubtfully. “Who knew back then what was going to happen to him?”
“I don’t know,” Ar’alani said. “Maybe it wasn’t anything to do with Yiv. Maybe someone just didn’t want anyone else setting up shop in this part of space.”
Wutroow made a sound in her throat. “That sounds ominous.”
“I know.”
“Admiral?” Biclian said. “We have an analysis of the blast hole edge discoloration now. It’s a chemical reaction to unusually high amounts of flash-burned missile fuel.”
“Consistent with a missile fired at point-blank range,” Wutroow said, nodding. “Most of the time they get to burn off more of their fuel before they reach their target. This one’s tanks burst open and were fried the same time the warhead went off.”
“Yes.” Ar’alani took a deep breath. “I want full sensor and tactical readings on everything here,” she ordered, raising her voice to carry across the entire bridge. “Deploy a squad to check out the base, see if there’s anything useful in there, and send a shuttle to examine the asteroid fragments. Full sensor scan there, too, and collect a few pieces to take back to Csilla.”
She looked at Wutroow. “After that, we’ll head back to that last Nikardun base, the one our friends here also got to first, and do a full analysis of that one. If we’re lucky, between the two of them we’ll find a clue as to who exactly is trying to move into this neighborhood.”
Thalias hadn’t thought very much of her first time down in the secondary command room. She’d hoped her second time would be better.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t looking likely.
But there was no choice. Thrawn wanted the Magys on the bridge in case he had any questions about what they found, or needed to talk to someone on the ground. He also needed Che’ri and her Third Sight to bring the ship in across the last few light-years and to be ready to get them out quickly if the need arose, which meant the girl needed to be at a control console.
Technically, of course, only Che’ri had to be down here. But there was no way Thalias was going to abandon the girl at such a critical moment, especially among a group of officers neither of them knew very well.
As Thalias had noted the first time she was here, the room’s designers had apparently never thought a caregiver might join the sky-walker and therefore hadn’t included a dedicated chair for her near the nav station. At that first visit, Thalias had simply stood behind Che’ri, squeezing herself into the narrow space behind the girl. This time, though, Senior Commander Kharill was in charge, and he insisted that everyone be properly seated and strapped in.
Thalias was fully prepared to fight that ruling if she had to. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Kharill didn’t argue against her presence, but instead found a way to shuffle the sensor officer elsewhere so that Thalias could have the seat next to Che’ri.
Though from the scowl on Kharill’s face, she guessed that the repositioning and accommodation hadn’t been his idea.
Almost there. Thalias looked closely at Che’ri’s face, expressionless while at the same time with an underlying concentration as her Third Sight guided the Springhawk through the final minutes of the flight. The space between Rapacc and the Magys’s world was more tangled than usual, even for the Chaos, which had put an additional strain on Che’ri. Thalias could only watch the girl struggling with her task and hope that this side trip would be worth it.
“Your strap’s twisted.”
She looked up. Laknym, the plasma sphere specialist she’d met the last time she and Che’ri were down here, had unstrapped and was maneuvering into the narrow space between the helm and his own seat at the weapons station. “What?” she asked.
“I said your strap’s twisted,” he repeated as he sidled behind Che’ri to Thalias’s side. “Pop the catch and I’ll fix it.”
Thalias craned her neck, trying to look over her shoulder. Sure enough, there was an extra half turn in the strap. “Thanks,” she said, releasing the tension on the restraints.
“It’s easy to do,” Laknym said, giving the strap a half turn and handing the end back to her. “Not as much room for the anchors down here, so the restraints are done a little differently than those on the bridge.”
“Hopefully we won’t need them,” Thalias said. “You’re on official duty here now? I thought the last time was just a one-shot.”
“So did I,” Laknym said, giving Che’ri’s restraints a quick look and nodding in satisfaction. “As you may have noticed, sometimes Senior Captain Thrawn throws people into new positions or situations just to see how they react. For whatever reason, I guess he or Mid Captain Samakro liked what they saw the last time he put me down here.”
“Unless this is another one-time thing.”
“It could be that, too,” Laknym conceded. “Either way, it’s a promising sign. Especially for someone of my rank.”
Thalias winced. Officially, lieutenant commander was a sort of probationary rank, sandwiched between lieutenant and junior commander and given to officers who showed promise of someday being deemed capable of moving up the higher command structure.
But unofficially, at least from what Thalias had been able to piece together from bits of overheard conversation, it had also become a convenient place to dump officers from the Nine Ruling Families or the Forty Great Families whom the Council had already concluded would never rise any higher. It was supposed to be a sop to those individuals, a grand-sounding label to keep the more powerful Chiss families from taking offense that their beloved blood and cousins and ranking distants hadn’t been as good as they’d all hoped.
Of course, since the whole thing had become pretty much an open secret, it hardly qualified as a subterfuge anymore. But the continued willingness of all parties to play along kept the game going.
Laknym, as a member of one of the Forty, was already poised to be in the second category. Whether he broke out of that and joined the first was something only time would tell.
“Prepare for breakout,” Thrawn’s voice came over the speaker from the bridge.
“That’s you,” Laknym said as he again squeezed past Che’ri and took his own seat. “Is she ready?”
“Yes,” Thalias said, studying the bridge monitor display. The Magys, she noted, was standing beside Thrawn’s command chair, with her companion a half step farther back. On Thrawn’s other side stood Mid Captain Samakro, his hands clasped behind him. To the rear of the whole group were two watchful guards, holstered charrics at their sides. “It’s really no different for her being down here than it would be on the bridge,” she added to Laknym.
“Civilians will be quiet,” Kharill growled from his seat behind the helm station. “And officers will not engage in idle conversation. Everyone stay sharp—we don’t know what we’re heading into.”
Thalias hunched her shoulders once, working out a bit of her tension. Whatever they found, she reminded herself firmly, Thrawn could handle it. The hyperspace swirl became star-flares became stars—
A lot of stars, she saw, emblazoned all across the exterior displays. Stars, and absolutely nothing else.
Flying blind into an unknown system, Thalias knew, was likely to put a ship into the middle of nowhere. Apparently, that was exactly where they’d landed.
“Scan for planetary bodies and space vehicles,” Thrawn ordered. “We are in your system, Magys,” he continued, switching to Taarja. “As soon as we locate your world, we will learn its condition. What is its name, if I may ask?”
“We do not share that with outsiders,” the Magys said stiffly.
“Ah,” Thrawn said. “Well, then, for our convenience, we’ll name it Sunrise.”
The Magys’s tongues darted out. “You mock our destruction?”
“Not at all,” Thrawn said. “I choose to nurture hope.”
“There is no hope.”
“We will know soon enough,” Thrawn said. “Until then, I will hold to hope.”
Belatedly, Thalias noticed that Che’ri was breathing a little heavily. “You okay?” she whispered, reaching over and touching the girl’s arm.
“Yes,” Che’ri said. “That was a little…weird.”
“In what way?” Thalias asked.
“Just…I don’t know,” Che’ri said, flexing her fingers. “It seemed harder than the charts showed.”
“Well, that’s the Chaos for you,” Thalias said. Thrawn had suspected this region would be trickier than the projections had suggested, she knew, which was why he’d wanted Che’ri to do the last leg instead of going jump-by-jump. “It’ll be easier on the way out—no time pressure,” she added. “Are you thirsty?”
“A little,” Che’ri said, looking uncertainly around the room. “Are you allowed to leave?”
“Don’t need to,” Thalias said, producing a grillig-juice packet from her pocket.
“Thank you,” Che’ri said, some of the tension fading into a tentative smile as she took the packet.
“You’re welcome,” Thalias said. “I have two more if you want them.”
“Just don’t spill it on the control board,” Laknym warned.
Che’ri rolled her eyes. Turning toward Laknym, she flipped out the packet’s sipper with exaggerated care. Laknym gave her an exaggerated pretend glower in return, changed it into a smile, then turned back to his board.
“Got it, sir,” Dalvu announced from the bridge sensor station. “Planetary coordinates sent.”
“Very good,” Thrawn said. “Lieutenant Commander Azmordi: In-system jump. Bring us in over the equator and forty thousand kilometers out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Those in-system jumps always seem tricky,” Thalias said to Che’ri. “Did Senior Captain Thrawn show you how to do those when you were out in Lesser Space?”
“I did a couple,” Che’ri said. “They’re really hard to get right. On one of them I overshot and got us way too far from the planet he wanted to look at. The other one was okay. But we mostly just did long-range scans.” She scrunched up her nose. “Most of the places we went didn’t have much to look at, anyway.”
The forward visual display made an odd sort of twitch, and suddenly there was a planet centered in it. “Wow,” Che’ri said under her breath. “He’s good.”
“Years of practice, I imagine,” Thalias said, eyeing the distant image. Most of the habitable planets she’d seen presented a similar mixture of white clouds and mountain peaks, blue waters, brown or gray or red deserts, and mixtures of vegetation that usually ranged from dark red to vivid violet.
The planet in front of them was different. There were still decent-sized areas of white and blue, and a few ribbons with blended shades of blue-green.
But there were also patches of black. Big patches. Patches that dotted the entire sunlit side.
The Magys had been right. Her world had suffered a devastating, horrendous war.
The sensor officer a couple of stations down from Laknym muttered something shocked sounding. “What did she say?” Thalias asked him softly.
“Pattern bombing,” Laknym said, his voice grim. “You can see a lot of the black spots are along the larger rivers. Rivers are where most people build their cities.”
Thalias nodded, the taste of stomach acid in her mouth. So the damage hadn’t just been a warning, or a single reprisal against a single attack. The two sides of the civil war had each been hell-bent on wiping out the other.
“We’ve prepared a remote drone shuttle, Magys, with sensing and recording gear,” Thrawn said. “We’ll move closer, then launch it toward the surface for low-altitude studies.”
“There is no need,” the Magys said, her voice dull. “It is as I said. You can see the evidence. Our world is no more. Our people are no more.”
“There is still a great deal of vegetation,” Thrawn pointed out. “Where plant life remains, there is hope for the entire ecosystem.”
“All the more reason for us to touch the Beyond and strive for that healing,” the Magys said.
“But is not your first allegiance to your own people?” Thrawn countered. “If there are others alive, struggling and trying to rebuild, should you not add your group’s strength and numbers to aid them?”
“Our people are no more.”
“We have not yet proven that.”
“Our people are no more.” The Magys waved a hand at the viewport. “All can see that clearly.”
“We can see nothing clearly from this distance,” Thrawn insisted. “You must give us time to investigate. Thalias would want you to do that.”
“Yet she who has touched the Beyond is not here.”
“She has duties elsewhere,” Thrawn said.
Thalias winced. The proverbial unstoppable and immovable objects.
“Do you need to go talk to her?” Che’ri asked hesitantly. “I’ll be okay here.”
Thalias hesitated. Would her presence or her words really make a difference?
They might, she conceded. She should at least try. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered to Che’ri. Wondering what Kharill was going to say if she left, she got a grip on her restraints’ release—
“Captain, we have incoming,” Dalvu cut in. “Five ships, gunboat size, coming around portside planetary disk.”
“Never mind,” Thalias said, letting go of the release and reaching over for a quick reassuring squeeze of Che’ri’s arm. “I’m staying here.”
“Secondary command status?” Samakro called, looking at the bridge cam.
“Sensors?” Kharill prompted.
“Sensor repeaters confirm ready,” the secondary command room sensor officer a few stations down from Thalias said. “Pulling in both bridge and secondary feeds.”
“Weapons systems confirm ready,” Laknym added. “Repeater controls online.”
“Bridge: Secondary command is ready,” Kharill reported.
“Very good,” Samakro said. “Stand by.”
“Barriers,” Thrawn ordered. Thalias looked over at Laknym’s board, saw the indicators for the Springhawk’s electrostatic barriers go active.
“What are these ships?” the Magys asked.
“That is what we intend to learn,” Thrawn said. “Enhance image. Are these ships from your people?”
“I do not recognize them,” the Magys said. The words sounded mechanical, Thalias noted, as if neither the ships nor anything else mattered anymore. “Perhaps these are the people who have now come to take our lost world to themselves.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “Let us find out.” On the monitor, Thalias saw him key the mike control on his command chair. “Unidentified ships, this is Senior Captain Thrawn aboard the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet warship Springhawk,” he called in Taarja. “Please identify yourselves.”
There was no response. The five ships angled toward the Springhawk, shifting into a circular formation. “Well, well,” Laknym muttered.
“What?” Thalias asked.
“Civilians will be quiet,” Kharill bit out before Laknym could answer.
“What?” Thalias asked again, lowering her voice this time.
“That’s a rosette pattern,” Laknym murmured back. “Usually an attack formation.”
Thalias felt her stomach tighten. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“Not really,” he said. “Five gunboats are a decent enough battle force, but not against a heavy cruiser like the Springhawk.”
“More incoming,” Dalvu spoke up. “Two more groups of five, from portside planetary disk.”
Thalias felt her throat tighten. “Lieutenant Commander Laknym?” she whispered.
Laknym took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Fifteen gunboats is definitely a problem.”