Or could there be something else lurking back there, hidden from the Springhawk’s view? An orbital defense platform, maybe, or even a bigger warship?
On the bridge display, Samakro stepped to Thrawn’s side. “They don’t look very friendly,” he commented.
“Perhaps they’re just being cautious,” Thrawn said. “Is the drone shuttle ready?”
“Ready, sir,” Kharill called back.
Thalias nodded to herself as she got the answer to a small puzzle. She’d noticed on her way in that the secondary control helm console seemed more active than most of the rest of them, as if the officer there had been planning to take over from Azmordi’s bridge station. Now she realized that this was where the drone shuttle would be flown from.
“Adjust vector toward starboard planetary rim and launch,” Thrawn ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Thalias frowned. One puzzle solved; another manifesting. She’d assumed he was trying to draw out the alien ships’ intentions by sending a clearly unarmed shuttle to rendezvous with them. But he was instead sending the shuttle in the opposite direction?
On one of the outside displays the drone appeared, accelerating away from the Springhawk en route to the far edge of the planet. “Let’s see what they do,” Samakro commented.
The words were barely out of his mouth when all five of the closer gunboat group opened fire with spectrum lasers, sending a withering barrage at the drone.
Beside Thalias, Che’ri inhaled sharply. “It’s okay,” Thalias said softly, putting a soothing hand on the girl’s arm. Normally, she and Che’ri were nestled safely away in their suite when all the shooting started.
“Evasive,” Thrawn ordered calmly.
Thalias held her breath as the drone went into a convulsion of jerky movements, matching the smaller but no less intense movements of the helm officer on Laknym’s far side. The drone ducked in and out of the laser blasts as the operator tried to confuse the gunboats’ targeting.
And it was working, Thalias saw. If the drone could keep it up a little longer, maybe a minute or two, it might make it out of the gunboats’ effective range. At that point, if they still wanted to destroy it they would have to chase it down.
Which would mean crossing right in front of the Springhawk.
Thalias smiled tightly. Of course. Thrawn was trying to lure them in where he could use his lasers and breacher missiles to destroy them with a flanking attack right when their main forward-aiming lasers would be useless against him.
She was still working out the details in her mind, congratulating herself on how Thrawn’s informal teaching methods had sharpened her analytical skills, when a final laser barrage shattered the drone into shards.
Thalias sighed. So much for that plan.
“Too bad,” Samakro said. “I thought that at that range they’d have to use their missiles.”
“It’s not too late,” Thrawn said. “Perhaps we can convince them to launch if we offer a more suitable target.”
“I don’t know,” Samakro said doubtfully. “With fifteen fighters already on station, they may think they can get away with just their lasers.”
Thalias felt her eyes narrow. Were he and Thrawn suggesting they wanted the gunboats to launch missiles at the Springhawk? She looked sideways at Laknym, wondering if he knew the plan or whether he was also in the dark. But his face was expressionless, his full attention on his board.
“We should at least give them the opportunity,” Thrawn said, his voice as calm as Samakro’s. “Azmordi: Take us toward the leading group. Low speed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thalias?” Che’ri whispered tensely.
“It’s okay,” Thalias soothed. The Springhawk was moving toward the nearest gunboats at what looked to her like a far faster pace than Thrawn’s low-speed order should have generated. Behind them, the other two enemy groups were hurrying to close the distance and join in the confrontation.
Thalias craned her neck to look at Laknym’s status boards, trying to find the electrostatic barrier readouts. But she didn’t know the boards’ layout, and her angle wasn’t good enough to make out the descriptions beneath the displays. She looked back at the main display, to see the gunboats of the first rosette splitting farther apart to allow a better field of fire from the groups moving up behind them.
“Senior Captain?” Samakro asked.
“Hold course,” Thrawn said. “Target the first rosette with spectrum lasers, but hold fire until ordered. Let’s see how much they know about the Chiss.”
Thalias frowned. The Syndicure prohibition against preemptive strikes, even against a clearly defined enemy, had never made much sense to her. It didn’t make sense to Thrawn, either, she knew, having watched him time and again find ways around the ban.
But this situation seemed far more straightforward. In destroying the shuttle, even with no Chiss having been put in danger, hadn’t the attackers handed the Springhawk all the excuse it needed to return fire?
Maybe that was the point. Maybe Thrawn and Samakro wanted to see if their attackers knew precisely where the invisible line was that Chiss warships weren’t supposed to cross.
“Apparently, they know something about our rules of engagement,” Samakro commented. “We’re well past the point where they fired at the drone. Probably think we can’t engage until the ship itself is attacked, so they’re trying to close to a better kill range.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “Alternatively, they could be waiting for us to move deeper into the planet’s gravity well.”
“There’s that,” Samakro conceded. “Orders?”
“Let’s continue to behave as they clearly expect us to,” Thrawn said. “Prepare a breacher missile, targeted down the center of the lead rosette pattern.”
“Down the center, sir?”
“The center,” Thrawn confirmed.
“But—ah.” Samakro nodded in understanding. “If there’s no actual threat, there’s no official attack.”
“Exactly,” Thrawn said. “It can be tactically advantageous for an enemy to believe in limits that don’t actually exist.”
Surreptitiously Thalias looked over her shoulder at Kharill in his command chair, noting his stony expression. Maybe he wasn’t as certain that the attack on the shuttle was a sufficient reason to engage the gunboats. Maybe he just wasn’t certain that the Syndicure would see things that way.
Still, Thrawn’s plan of firing first into the center of the enemy formation should mollify even the fleet’s harshest critics.
Or maybe Kharill simply didn’t like the idea of wasting time playing games when there were ten more gunboats coming up behind the first group.
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said briskly. “Breacher ready.”
“Fire.”
On the display the missile leapt from its launch tube, burning through space toward the cluster of incoming gunboats. The closest rosette spread a little wider as the missile arrowed toward them…
And in perfect unison five lasers lanced out, one from each gunboat, converging on the missile. The breacher’s armor held out for a second or two, and then the missile disintegrated, its acid payload gushing into space.
“There,” Thrawn said, nodding toward the expanding cloud. “You saw it, Mid Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said. “Our reputation does indeed precede us.”
“That it does,” Thrawn agreed.
“What did he mean?” Che’ri whispered.
Thalias shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Laknym leaned closer to them. “Letting a normal explosive missile get that close before destroying it would have endangered the gunboats,” he explained softly. “But destroying a breacher farther out would have risked the acid spreading far enough outward to splash them. That means they know how our missiles work.”
“I wonder if they know about plasma spheres, too,” Samakro commented.
Laknym nodded. “They do,” he said.
“You have something to say, Laknym?” Kharill spoke up.
Laknym winced. “I was just commenting on Mid Captain Samakro’s question about the spheres,” he said, looking back at Kharill. “From their formation—”
“Don’t tell me, Laknym,” Kharill interrupted. “Tell them.” He keyed his mike. “Sir, Laknym has a comment.”
Thrawn looked at the monitor. “Laknym?” he invited.
Thalias saw Laknym’s throat tighten at being suddenly pushed into the spotlight. “I believe they know about plasma spheres, sir,” he said. “Their formation is wide enough to avoid breachers, but compact enough to allow any one of them to move back to the center position in time to intercept a sphere if they wanted to protect a larger target behind them.”
“Sounds a bit heavy on the speculation,” Samakro said.
“Well…” Laknym floundered.
“But essentially correct,” Thrawn said, coming to his rescue. “Particularly because the rosette is slowly closing as we approach and the time they would need to execute that sort of blocking maneuver decreases.”
“Doesn’t that tactic assume they actually have a larger target behind them that requires protection?” Samakro asked, a little stiffly.
“Not necessarily,” Thrawn said. “Battle tactics are often so deeply entrenched that they’re followed even when a given situation doesn’t require them. But you raise another interesting point.”
“That there may in fact be a larger ship out there?” Samakro asked.
“Exactly,” Thrawn said, his voice gone darker. “In which case, now that we’re sufficiently deep to prevent a quick escape it should make its appearance.”
Thalias winced. She’d seen enough of Thrawn’s logic and deductions to know there was a good chance he was right on this one, too.
And if the hidden ship was something nasty, the Springhawk could be in serious trouble.
“Perhaps we should reconsider our own strategy, sir,” Samakro said, just loudly enough for the bridge mike to pick up. “Getting a blast profile on their missiles doesn’t do much good if we’re not around to take that data back to the Ascendancy.”
“I think we can proceed a bit longer,” Thrawn said. “Any warship that comes around the planet will offer us plenty of warning.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when a ship suddenly appeared. Not from behind the planetary disk, as Thrawn had predicted, but jumping in from hyperspace in the distance behind the rearmost of the gunboat formations.
Thalias frowned, focusing on its design. Hadn’t she seen that configuration before somewhere?
Abruptly, she caught her breath in stunned disbelief. She’d seen it before, all right. It was—
“Oh, great,” Kharill bit out from behind her.
“What is it?” Che’ri asked, her voice cracking. “Is that a Nikardun?”
“Not a Nikardun,” Kharill said grimly. “Just a problem. A big problem.”
“Breakout in thirty seconds,” Wikivv called from the Grayshrike’s helm.
“Acknowledged,” Lakinda said. She sent her gaze slowly around the bridge, checking each station in turn, making particularly sure Senior Commander Erighal’ok’sumf was at his weapons console and that all the indicators there showed green.
Some of the warriors had grumbled a bit about that—mostly out of her hearing, of course—wondering if their captain was erring way too far on the side of caution, especially for a non-combat incursion into a presumably dripwater system in the middle of nowhere. Even Mid Captain Apros had tactfully pointed out that it was extremely unlikely that a blind jump would put the ship so close to a combat situation that they wouldn’t have plenty of time for a leisurely ramp-up to full alert status.
Lakinda didn’t care about any of that. Standing regs recommended it, she was pretty sure Thrawn would do it, and whatever was at the end of this trip she was not going to let him and the Mitth show her up again.
At least Ghaloksu was enthusiastically on her side on this one. Not really surprising—Lakinda had never yet seen her weapons officer pass up the chance to give his crews a little exercise.
The hyperspace swirl faded into star-flares into stars. “Full sensor sweep,” Lakinda ordered, looking through the bridge viewport and then checking the tactical display as the sensors began filling it in. There was a cluster of asteroids nearby, but no planets or ships. “Double-check those asteroids,” she added. “Make sure nothing is lurking in there.”
“Combat range clear,” Vimsk reported from the sensors, her large hands and stubby fingers displaying an unlikely deftness as she worked the sensor station controls. “Mid-range clear. Far range continuing. Asteroids show negative for ships or platforms.”
“Acknowledged,” Lakinda said. Though the more she looked at the asteroids, the more they seemed like an excellent place to stage an ambush, should one be required. Something to keep in mind if the Ascendancy ever needed to mount a military operation here.
“Laserfire!” Ghaloksu snapped. “Bearing thirty degrees level.”
Lakinda bit back a curse as the image came up on the tactical. In the far distance, she could see the tiny flashes of laserfire glinting against the half disk of a planetary body. “Full mag,” she ordered.
The scene wavered a moment, then came back with the slight fuzziness inherent in a high-magnification image. A large ship was silhouetted against the light side of the planet, she saw, its bow facing partially toward the sun. The ships currently firing lasers were too small for even the sensor’s best magnification to resolve, but the number of shots indicated there were at least five of them. “Ship ID?” she called.
“Full ID impossible at this range,” Ghaloksu said. “But profile and emissions are compatible with a Chiss heavy cruiser.”
“The Springhawk?” Apros suggested.
“Who else would be here?” Lakinda said, feeling her eyes narrowing. What was Thrawn up to now?
Abruptly, a small explosion burst over the dark side of the planet, and the attackers’ lasers went dark. “Something went boom,” Lakinda said. “Any idea what it was?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t on it,” Ghaloksu said.
“I was,” Vimsk said, peering closely at the sensor station’s displays. “It was small. Shuttle or missile boat size.”
Lakinda looked at Apros. “Could have been one of the Springhawk’s shuttles.”
“Possible,” Apros said. “Or Thrawn may have gotten himself in the middle of the civil war the Paccosh mentioned, and he’s watching the two sides shoot at each other.”
And no doubt trying to get them to stop their war. Thrawn’s exaggerated concern for aliens and alien worlds that the Ascendancy had no business caring about was both a joke and a curse.
“Cruiser’s on the move,” Ghaloksu reported. “Heading toward origin of laserfire.”
Apros muttered a curse. “He’s going to attack them, isn’t he?”
“Could be,” Lakinda said. “Vimsk, read me his altitude. Is he inside the gravity well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Lakinda hissed out a breath. Which meant that whatever Thrawn was doing—whether he was on the edge of violating Ascendancy standing orders or merely preparing to defend himself—a quick escape wasn’t an option.
And with that, she no longer had a choice. “Wikivv, get me an in-system jump,” she ordered. “Take the position of the attackers, extrapolate a reasonable backstop depth behind them, add fifty percent more for safety, and put us there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wikivv said, turning toward her board.
Apros took half a step closer to Lakinda. “So we’re going in?” he asked, his voice low.
“The Springhawk’s in danger,” Lakinda said. “With luck, we’ll come out behind whatever Thrawn’s facing and get them in a pincer.”
Apros’s lip twitched. “You realize, ma’am, that we’re dangerously close to joining in a preemptive strike.”
“No, we’re coming to the aid of a fellow Ascendancy warship,” Lakinda corrected. “Thrawn’s the one walking that particular line.”
Apros looked out the viewport. “I hope you’re right.”
As do we all, Lakinda thought. “Wikivv?”
“Ready, Senior Captain.”
“All warriors: Stand ready for combat,” Lakinda called, feeling a trickle of satisfaction. She’d been right to have the Grayshrike on full battle alert. She’d been right, and all the rest of them had been wrong. Score one for the Xodlak. “Wikivv, as soon as we arrive, spin us around toward the Springhawk where we can target whoever’s facing it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Stand ready,” Lakinda said, squaring her shoulders. There was no way the Mitth were going to spin this one into Thrawn being the hero. “Three, two, one.” There was a brief flicker from the starscape, almost more imagined than seen, and the Grayshrike had arrived.
And in a single frozen instant, everything went straight to hell.
Even as Wikivv began the yaw rotation that would bring them to Lakinda’s planned pincer position, the proximity alarm sounded, warning of a large vessel within combat range. Lakinda twisted her head to look that direction—
She felt her breath catch in her throat. The ship was coming up fast around the curve of the planet, where up to now it had been out of sight of both her and Thrawn. “Ghaloksu?”
“Warship, Battle Dreadnought class, unknown configuration,” the weapons officer snapped. “Coming up fast on portside.”
Lakinda felt her throat tighten. Battle Dreadnoughts were a class of alien warships, ranging from a little smaller than a Chiss Nightdragon man-of-war to half again as large. This particular version was about midway in that range, slightly larger than a Nightdragon and probably comparably armed.
Which made it considerably larger than the Grayshrike and Springhawk combined.
“Wikivv, belay the yaw turn,” Lakinda ordered, checking the tactical as the sensor sweep began filling it in. Moving away from her, heading toward the Springhawk, were three groups of five small ships, gunboat or missile boat size. The lead group, presumably, were the ships that had been pumping out all the laserfire she’d seen when the Grayshrike first arrived in the system.
She clenched her teeth. Now that she knew about the Battle Dreadnought, the smart move would be to jump before the Grayshrike drifted inward across the invisible marker that would also put them too deep in the planet’s gravity well to escape into hyperspace.
But that would leave the Springhawk to face this new threat alone. And extricating Thrawn from the mess he’d gotten himself into had been the whole idea behind this sortie in the first place.
Still, her first duty was to her own ship and the Ascendancy. If this was a new and hitherto unrecognized threat, the Grayshrike needed to survive long enough to bring a warning to Csilla. If that meant she had to abandon the Springhawk—
“Incoming!” Ghaloksu called. “Three missiles from the Battle Dreadnought.”
“Lasers: Target and destroy,” Lakinda ordered.
And with that, the decision had effectively been made for her. The Grayshrike had been attacked without warning or challenge…and if whoever was master of that ship thought a Chiss commander of her reputation and family was going to cut and run from such a provocation, they were about to receive a very rude awakening.
“Shrent, signal the Springhawk,” she said, the sudden surge of pride and determination washing away the uncertainty and caution. “Tell Thrawn we’re going in.”