It was, she quickly discovered, excruciatingly boring.
Jump to a system. Come out of hyperspace. Confirm position. Move through space-normal to the departure point necessary to line up for the next jump. Recheck possible hyperspace anomalies between points. Jump to the next point on the list, which was seldom more than five or six star systems away. Come out of hyperspace. Repeat.
And repeat, and repeat, and repeat.
There was really nothing anyone could do about it. They had to follow the Watith freighter in order to get to the Vagaari base, or whatever was at the end of this game, and since Fsir had no navigator that meant traveling jump-by-jump.
Unfortunately, the expected trap might not wait to the end, but could be sprung at any of the midpoints where the victim might be expected to be less alert. If that happened, Thrawn might decide on a quick exit and would need Che’ri ready and waiting.
At least Thrawn had set them up in secondary control, where procedure and etiquette were a bit looser than on the bridge. Here Che’ri could get up and stretch her legs during their periods in hyperspace without bothering anyone. Senior Commander Kharill, again in charge of secondary command, had even relaxed his usual stiffness enough to have a cot brought in and squeezed into the back where Che’ri could take a quick nap during the longer hyperspace legs if she needed one.
Thalias’s biggest fear was that the whole journey would take longer than a few hours. If it stretched to the point where Che’ri needed a sleep period, the Springhawk would be flying at risk during the hours where their sky-walker wasn’t available.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t simply stop for those few hours, as Chiss warships sometimes did when their sky-walkers needed sleep. A delay like that would be hard to explain to Fsir, since a normal jump-by-jump could theoretically run for several days straight as long as there were enough pilots available to rotate the helm duty. Fsir would never believe the Springhawk didn’t have enough personnel to handle a round-the-clock flight, and they couldn’t afford to let him become suspicious.
Thrawn had told Thalias and Che’ri that his reading of Fsir’s crew indicated only one of the twenty-three Watith aboard had any pilot training. Theoretically, that meant a journey longer than a day would also require Fsir to suspend their jump-by-jump so that his pilot could rest, which would then give Che’ri the sleep time she needed. But as the hours dragged on, and Fsir showed no signs of stopping, Thalias wondered if Thrawn had been wrong.
Fortunately, he hadn’t. Ten hours after their departure, they reached the final leg of the journey.
“This is Senior Captain Thrawn,” Thrawn’s voice came from the secondary command room’s bridge monitor. “Captain Fsir informs me that one final twelve-minute jump will take us to the Vagaari base. I consider it likely that we’ll emerge into a combat situation. All officers and warriors stand ready.” There was a click as the comm shifted from ship-wide mode to the private link between the bridge and secondary command. “Status, Senior Commander Kharill?”
“Secondary command is ready, Senior Captain,” Kharill said. “Sky-walker is in position.”
“Acknowledged,” Thrawn said. “Hopefully, we won’t need her. Lieutenant Commander Brisch?”
“Yes, Senior Captain,” the comm officer said. “Signal sent; confirmation received. All is ready, sir.”
“Very good,” Thrawn said. “Lieutenant Commander Azmordi, on my mark: Three, two, one.”
The star-flares erupted, then settled into the hyperspace swirl.
Beside Thalias, Che’ri hunched her shoulders forward and settled her hands on the controls. Her profile looked tense, Thalias saw, her cheek muscles clenching and unclenching. At the station on Che’ri’s other side, Laknym was sitting just as rigidly at his weapons console, his eyes narrowed in concentration. He seemed to sense Thalias’s eyes on him, and turned his head. For a moment their eyes met.
And to her mild surprise Thalias realized that what she’d taken to be concern was instead a grimly eager anticipation.
Small wonder. The Springhawk was about to go into battle, likely a battle for its very life. This was Laknym’s chance to prove himself in the eyes of Thrawn and Kharill, his chance to show that he was indeed worthy of continued fleet advancement. He flashed Thalias a smile, then returned his full attention to his board.
Thalias turned back to the bridge monitor, watching the chrono count down the time to arrival. She looked at Che’ri, who seemed slightly less tense now. The timer ran to zero—
With a flash of star-flares, the Springhawk emerged from hyperspace.
“Mid Commander Dalvu?” Thrawn prompted.
“Combat range clear,” the sensor officer reported. “Mid-range…there they are, sir. Twenty fighters, gunboat size, drifting in ultrahigh planetary orbit. No power emanations detected. Far range…nothing else visible between us and the planet.”
“Did we catch them sleeping?” Che’ri whispered.
“Not necessarily,” Laknym said. “At this range, standby and complete shutdown look pretty much the same to passive sensors. They could be wide awake and just sitting back with their feet up, watching for trouble.”
Thalias peered surreptitiously over her shoulder. Speaking of trouble, if Kharill caught the civilians talking…
But Kharill wasn’t glaring at Thalias or looking ready to reprimand Laknym. His full attention was on the visual display, his eyes narrowed, his expression intense.
And in the middle of that concentration Thalias thought she could see a small smile.
“There,” Dalvu said sharply. “There they go, sir.”
Thalias looked back at the display. The silent, darkened gunboats were starting to come to life: running lights coming on, some of them drifting out of their orbits as thrusters ramped up, attitude positions changing as they turned one by one to face the incoming Chiss cruiser.
“They see us!” Fsir’s panicked voice came over the speaker. “Senior Captain Thrawn, they see us!”
“So they do,” Thrawn said. “Unfortunately for them, they have nowhere to go.”
“Don’t be a fool!” Fsir pleaded, his wheezing voice almost managing a screech. “If they send word to the base—there!” He gasped as two of the gunboats spun around and blasted off in the direction of the planet. “You must stop them!”
“There’s no base back there, Captain Fsir,” Thrawn said.
“Fool!” Fsir spat again, sounding even more frantic. “The base is an orbiting weapons platform—you can’t see it because it’s on the far side of the planet. But it’s there, and it’s horribly powerful and dangerous. If you don’t stop those fighters before they can sound the alert, neither your people nor mine will ever see another moonrise.”
Thalias felt a hard knot form in her stomach. Good tactical advice…except that the two fleeing gunboats were well to the rear of their companions. The only way for the Springhawk to get to them would be to first fight its way through the other eighteen. With all the gunboats now alert and fully powered up, even Thrawn couldn’t handle odds like that.
And then, to her amazement, she heard a sound from behind her. A rumble that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
She turned. The small smile she’d seen on Kharill a minute ago had become a full-grown smirk.
Was he actually glad that Thrawn was facing impossible odds?
But that made no sense. Back when Thalias had first come aboard the Springhawk, Mid Captain Samakro had accused her of being a spy, and for a long time after that she’d sensed reluctance and even hostility toward Thrawn from some of the other officers. But surely by now they’d realized their commander knew what he was doing, and that they could trust him.
Especially since a failure on Thrawn’s part here would take all their lives, including those of Kharill and any other naysayer.
The gunboats were spreading out from their orbital paths now, expanding outward toward the Springhawk like a blossoming flower. “Afpriuh, target the two closest gunboats,” Thrawn said, his voice showing no signs of tension. “Lasers only. Kharill?”
“Yes, sir?” Kharill called.
“You’ll be handling plasma spheres,” Thrawn said. “I’ll want a full spread, targeted on all but the leading two gunboats. They’ll be moving and obscured when you fire, so Laknym will have to use his best judgment.”
“Understood,” Kharill said. The smile, Thalias noted, was still there. “Laknym?”
“Ready, sir,” Laknym said confidently.
“Launch at my command,” Thrawn said. “Afpriuh, lasers on my mark. Three, two, one.”
On the visual display, the Springhawk’s spectrum lasers flashed out, spraying light and vaporized metal from the two leading gunboats. Out of the corner of her eye, Thalias saw Laknym working feverishly at his board, his eyes flicking across the displays as he set up his targeting. The two gunboats under attack tried to dodge out of the way of Afpriuh’s lasers, but they were still sluggish, and their hulls continued to boil away. They made one final attempt to dodge—
An instant later both of them exploded into roiling blasts of fire.
“Spheres: Fire,” Thrawn ordered.
Laknym’s fingers jabbed into the launch controls. Thalias looked at the visual, then at the tactical, trying to see through the smoke and expanding clouds of debris. The view cleared as the dust and fragments spread out into the darkness.
Belatedly revealing to the gunboats the plasma spheres blazing toward them.
But the enemy had apparently anticipated the Springhawk’s attack. Even before the obscuring material thinned Thalias could see that the gunboats were on the move, angling away from the incoming spheres. Only two of them were caught by Laknym’s spread, and those only with glancing blows that left them limping but still functional.
Thalias winced. Two gunboats destroyed. Two more partially disabled. Fourteen still alive, armed, and heading for the Springhawk.
“Did you see it, Mid Captain Samakro?” Thrawn asked.
“Yes, sir, I did,” Samakro confirmed. “I suggest we finish it before they get in range.”
“Agreed,” Thrawn said. “Senior Commander Kharill, five more spheres, targeted on the Watith freighter.”
Thalias frowned. On the freighter?
“Yes, sir,” Kharill said. “Laknym?”
“Already set, Senior Commander,” Laknym said.
“At my command,” Thrawn said. “Brisch, give the word.”
“Yes, sir,” the comm officer said briskly. On the bridge monitor, Thalias saw him key a single switch…
And suddenly another warship flashed into view behind and above the gunboats. Thalias heard Che’ri gasp in surprise—
“This is Mid Captain Apros, commanding the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet warship Grayshrike,” Apros said over the speaker. “Enemy gunboats, surrender or be destroyed.”
“Launch spheres,” Thrawn said quietly.
Again, Laknym’s fingers tapped the controls. Thalias looked at the tactical.
To see the Watith freighter pitching up and away from the Springhawk, its thrusters abruptly blazing at full power, apparently and inexplicably making a run for it.
But it was too late. The freighter was barely into its turn when Laknym’s plasma spheres slammed into it, impacting with brilliant splashes of released ionic energy. The thrusters abruptly failed, and the running lights went dark, and the entire vessel began drifting along its last vector.
“Watith freighter is down,” Dalvu announced.
“So are the gunboats,” Afpriuh said.
Thalias frowned at the tactical. He was right. Every one of the fighters had gone as silent and dark as the freighter, drifting in exactly the same way. Even the two that had been racing toward the planet seemed to be dead in space.
“You were right, Senior Captain,” Samakro said, and on the bridge monitor Thalias saw him shaking his head. “I forthrightly admit I didn’t believe it. But you were right.”
“Thank you, Mid Captain,” Thrawn said, tapping his comm key. “Boarding party: Go. Make sure all personnel are secured before you shut down their remote piloting systems.”
Thalias blinked. Remote piloting systems?
“And the day may not yet be over,” Thrawn continued. “Grayshrike, we were told there was a weapons platform currently in the planetary shadow. Did you have a view of that area while you were setting up your jump?”
“We did, Senior Captain,” Apros said, “and you were misinformed. There’s nothing at all in orbit over there, weapons platform or otherwise.”
“Good,” Thrawn said. “I expected that would be the case, but there was always a chance.” He turned to Samakro. “In that case, Mid Captain, the day is over.”
“Perhaps not, sir,” Apros said before Samakro could reply. “There’s a matter I urgently need to discuss with you. Request permission to come aboard.”
“Of course, Mid Captain,” Thrawn said. “At your convenience. Before you leave, I’d appreciate you instructing your officers to assist us in gathering up the gunboats. I want to examine as many as I can, and I don’t want them drifting out of convenient reach.”
“Understood, sir,” Apros said. “The orders are given.”
“Thank you,” Thrawn said. “I’ll await your arrival.”
The comm keyed off. Listening with half an ear as Thrawn began giving orders to the Springhawk’s shuttle crews and tractor beam operators, Thalias gave Che’ri a smile. “And now,” she said, “I think it’s time we both got some sleep. Some real sleep.”
“It’s all over?” Che’ri asked, not sounding like she believed it.
“It’s all over,” Thalias said. She looked past the girl and raised her eyebrows at Laknym. “It is, right?”
“Yes,” Laknym said, giving her a tight smile. Whatever he’d been hoping to prove today, he was clearly satisfied with the outcome.
“But I don’t understand,” Che’ri said as she started to unstrap. “Senior Commander Kharill? What happened out there?”
Thalias turned around. Kharill was busy with his questis. “Senior Commander?” she prompted.
He looked up long enough to scowl at her, then returned his attention to his questis. “Lieutenant Commander Laknym will fill you in,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” Laknym turned to Thalias. “We always expected this would be a trap. Well, Senior Captain Thrawn and the other senior officers did, anyway. From their analysis of our earlier battle, they suspected that the whole thing was staged and that the Watith were actually controlling the gunboats from the freighter.”
“You mean like people playing a game?” Che’ri asked.
“Exactly,” Laknym said. “When Senior Captain Thrawn visited the freighter, he counted twenty Watith who Fsir called passengers, plus what looked like twenty control consoles. When we arrived here and saw twenty gunboats waiting for us, it looked like he was right.”
“Which was why there were no bodies or body parts on those other gunboats,” Thalias murmured. And, she realized now, why Kharill had been smiling right there at the beginning. He’d seen that the gunboat count matched with Thrawn’s, and realized his commander’s analysis had been right.
“Right,” Laknym said. “The clincher was when Senior Commander Afpriuh blew up two of the gunboats and put a debris cloud in front of the others. You saw me launch my spheres; but you also saw that the gunboats were moving to evade them before they could possibly see them coming.”
“Because the operators were on the freighter,” Thalias said, nodding, “and they could see the spheres.”
“Exactly,” Laknym said. “We’d already made contact with the Grayshrike before we left the last system—I guess it had been sent out to assist us and was following the search pattern Senior Captain Thrawn had sent Csilla—and Senior Captain Thrawn had them shadow us here. Once we knew the freighter was controlling the gunboats, he brought them in to keep Fsir distracted while our spheres disabled it.”
“And they were trying to get away,” Che’ri said eagerly. “I saw them trying to get away.”
“Yes, they were,” Laknym agreed, smiling at the girl. “Which all by itself would have shown they were part of the trap.”
“I see,” Thalias said. “Thank you, Lieutenant Commander. We’ll get out of your way now. Come on, Che’ri.”
“We get to sleep now?” Che’ri asked as she unstrapped from her seat.
“Yes,” Thalias said. “Unless you want some dinner first.”
“I don’t know,” Che’ri said, her forehead wrinkling with concentration.
“When will you know?”
Che’ri stood up and stretched. “When I know what you’re thinking about making.”
“Another small town coming up,” Senior Warrior Yopring’s voice came over the Vigilant’s bridge speaker. As usual, the words were hard to understand through the roar of the airflow buffeting the shuttle as it flew across the planetary surface far below. “Or it could be another industrial complex.”
“Great,” Wutroow muttered from Ar’alani’s side. “One more of either and we’ll have completed yet another double zigzig card.”
“Acknowledged,” Ar’alani said, ignoring the comment. “Might as well take a closer look.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Ar’alani gazed out the viewport, stifling a yawn. Not that she didn’t sympathize with Wutroow’s boredom. They’d spent the past two weeks running a search pattern of the area the Magys had suggested was the one the alien Battle Dreadnought had been guarding. So far they’d turned up four decent-sized cities, three of them in ruins and the fourth mostly so; twenty-two industrial centers with roughly the same percent of destruction; five mines, all of them apparently deserted; and any number of small towns, villages, and farming homesteads.
The good news was that, despite the widespread devastation across Sunrise, there were definitely survivors. The search party had spotted only dribs and drabs, mostly people working the fields who weren’t able to get under cover fast enough. But the shuttle’s heat sensors had painted a different picture, a view of a society slowly but definitely coming back from the carnage. Much of it was underground or otherwise hidden—not unlike Csilla itself, Ar’alani noted—but it was coming back nonetheless.
If all the Magys cared about was that there were indeed survivors, that ought to be enough evidence to convince her to bring her refugees back to Sunrise. But if there were other criteria—quality of life, probability of long-term survival, or some critical numerical threshold she was looking for—she might still decide to go with the death-by-Beyond choice.
But at least now Ar’alani had data with which to argue the point.
“My mistake, Admiral,” Yopring corrected. “It’s not a town, but a mine, nestled up against the side of the mountains.”
“Anything moving?” Ar’alani asked.
“This one…actually, yes,” Yopring said. “In fact…whoa. It’s active, all right. There are dozens of workers down there. Maybe even hundreds.”
“Well, that’s a good marker of civilization,” Wutroow commented. “Most people don’t waste effort running mines until everyone’s got food and shelter.”
“If that’s the case, this place must be swimming in borjory sauce,” Yopring said. “I see people, some long buildings—probably communal barracks—tracks for mine carts, a landing area big enough for—damn!”
“What is it?” Ar’alani demanded. Silence. “Biclian?” she snapped.
“On it, Admiral,” the sensor officer said, peering at his displays. Out of the corner of her eye, Ar’alani saw Wutroow leave her spot beside the command chair and hurry toward the currently uncrewed weapons console. “Tracking two skycars south of Yopring’s position—”
“Sorry, ma’am.” Yopring’s voice came back, sounding a little breathless. “I was just startled, that’s all. Two skycars popped up out of nowhere, and I had to dodge to get around them—”
“Watch it—they’re on your tail,” Biclian warned.
“Four more coming in from the north and west,” Wutroow added, sliding into the weapons seat. “Looks like they’re trying to cut you off.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Yopring said. “I don’t see them yet.”
“You will in about a minute,” Wutroow said, keying the overhead view up onto the tactical. “Admiral?”
“I’m on it,” Ar’alani said, frowning at the display. The two skycars from the south had forced the Chiss shuttle away from the mine and now appeared to be trying to drive it toward the other four.
“Offhand, I’d say the miners don’t like company,” Yopring said calmly. “Orders, Admiral?”
“Hold your course,” Ar’alani said. “Let them think they’re winning. Biclian, pull up the shuttle’s telemetry, see if the skycars look space-capable.”
“They’re certainly big enough to be,” Biclian said. “They’re also heavily armored. And I’m pretty sure I see a pair of lasers racked under the altitude stubs.”
Ar’alani grimaced. Armored and armed. Terrific.
And with the whole depth of Sunrise’s atmosphere between the skycars and the Vigilant, she doubted even her spectrum lasers could punch through that much air with enough left over to take out armored skycraft. Certainly not fast enough to keep them from nailing Yopring first.
They would just have to try something else.
“All right, Yopring, here’s what you do,” she said, pulling up a copy of the tactical on her questis and tapping a spot. “Hold course to the point I’ve marked. Wutroow, when he arrives, you’ll fire a full-bore laser salvo into these two spots.” She tapped two more marks. “You think you can hit them simultaneously?”
“No problem, ma’am,” Wutroow said. “Ah. Nice.”
“Yopring?” Ar’alani asked.
“Got it, ma’am,” he said. “Up?”
Ar’alani looked at the racing skycars. If they were combat-trained, and quick enough…“No,” she said. Behind her, the bridge hatch slid open and Oeskym hurried in, making for the weapons console. Ar’alani caught his eye and waved him back. Wutroow was already in position, and there was no time for them to swap out. “Not up, but down and sideways. Then up, but only when you judge it to be safe. Ready?”
“Ready, ma’am.”
“Wutroow?”
“Ready, ma’am.”
“Stand by.” Ar’alani watched the tactical, focusing on the shuttle and counting down the seconds…“Three, two, one.”
And as Yopring reached the spot between the two converging rivers that Ar’alani had marked, the Vigilant’s lasers flashed out, burning through and roiling the atmosphere as they blazed into the flowing water on both sides of the shuttle.
The sudden energy discharge sent massive clouds of steam and condensing water vapor billowing into the air. Ar’alani held her breath…
Whoever was commanding the skycars was indeed trained and quick. The obscuring clouds were the perfect opportunity for the intruder to claw for the safety of the sky, as Yopring himself had suggested as his next move. Even as the Vigilant continued firing into the water, all six skycars pitched sharply upward in an attempt to intercept the shuttle’s presumed escape vector and take him down.
But Yopring wasn’t there. Instead, as per Ar’alani’s order, he’d dropped the shuttle to treetop level, spun a hard ninety-degree yaw turn to his left, and raced off across the landscape.
He was a good three kilometers away before the skycars reached the top of the cloud and realized he’d slipped their encirclement. By the time they were dropping back toward the ground Yopring was on the ascent, driving toward space as fast as the shuttle’s thrusters could take him.
For a moment Ar’alani thought the skycars would continue the chase. But they made only a halfhearted attempt at a fresh pursuit before breaking off. The shuttle was now too far away for a quick catch, and the higher they went into the thinning atmosphere the better the chance that the Vigilant’s lasers could take them with a single shot each. They would have to be content with chasing the intruder away.
In that, at least, they’d succeeded. The Vigilant didn’t have the ground-force capability to go back down with enough warriors and firepower to challenge the mining complex’s security. Whatever was down there would have to wait until another day.
“Nicely done, Admiral,” Wutroow said as she handed the weapons station back to Oeskym. “What now?”
“We got what we came for, Senior Captain,” Ar’alani told her. “We know there are survivors, lots of them, and that the society is starting to grow back from the ashes.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wutroow said. “And that there’s something down there someone is very interested in keeping to themselves. I assume we’re not going to let them?”
“If that someone is one of the native inhabitants, the Ascendancy will have no say in the matter,” Ar’alani reminded her.
“If they’re not?”
Ar’alani looked back at the tactical, watching the skycars heading back to their lairs. Skycars whose design was radically different from any of the hundreds of wrecked air vehicles the shuttle’s survey runs had recorded. Skycars whose guardian Battle Dreadnought had done its best to destroy the Vigilant and two Chiss heavy cruisers.
“If they’re not, we’ll find a way to make them sorry they came here,” she told Wutroow softly. “Very sorry.”