“I don’t know, sir,” Apros said. His eyes shifted away from Thrawn’s gaze to Samakro, as if hoping to find support or at least sympathy.
Samakro kept his face expressionless. If that was what Apros wanted, he was out of luck. Family and family politics be damned—as far as Samakro was concerned, abandoning a command post was unthinkable.
And for Apros to have stood by and let her go without trying to stop her was equally unthinkable.
“Did she give you any hints?” Thrawn asked.
“No, sir,” Apros said, reluctantly bringing his eyes back to the senior captain. “I’m not sure she even knew at that point. The message said the Xodlak family members were to assemble at Celwis. If it said any more, she didn’t share it with me.”
“Did you at least try to talk her out of it?” Samakro demanded.
“I talked as hard as I could for the three minutes she allowed me,” Apros shot back. He didn’t dare show anger to a superior officer like Thrawn, but he apparently figured another mid captain like Samakro was fair game. “She and Lakwurn were gone before I could do anything else.”
“Lakwurn?” Thrawn asked.
“Hyperdrive specialist,” Apros said. “He got the same message Senior Captain Lakinda did.”
“So the Xodlak aren’t merely seeking command officers,” Thrawn said, his tone turning thoughtful. “They want all military personnel.”
“So it would seem,” Apros said. “I did some checking along the way. The Xodlak warships at Celwis consist of two partially crewed light cruisers on an orbital defense station and an uncrewed reserve frigate.”
“What are they doing, setting up for a battle?” Samakro asked, frowning.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Apros said grimly. “Because during one of our sky-walker breaks on our way to meet you we got another set of transmissions, two of them in family codes. Our weapons officer, Senior Commander Erighal’ok’sumf, subsequently informed me that he and the other two Erighal aboard had received family emergency summons of their own.”
“Did you let them go, too?” Samakro growled.
“Of course not,” Apros said stiffly. “Nor did Ghaloksu ask. We were engaged in an imminent threat situation, which rendered the summons void. But given Senior Captain Lakinda’s abrupt departure, he thought I should know about it.”
“Were the Erighal also supposed to rendezvous at Celwis?” Thrawn asked.
“No, at Copero,” Apros said. “But it gets stranger. After Ghaloksu came to me, I made some inquiries and discovered that the Pommrio had also sent out an emergency summons.”
Samakro felt his eyes narrow. Three of them?
“They were to assemble at Sarvchi,” Apros continued. He gave a small, helpless-looking shrug. “I don’t know what it all means, sir. But I don’t like it.”
“Nor should you,” Thrawn said, his eyes narrowed slightly. “Celwis, Copero, Sarvchi. All systems at the Ascendancy’s east and southeast sectors. Tell me, Mid Captain, was there any indication that Csilla or Naporar had been alerted?”
“There were no transmissions to me or to the Grayshrike proper,” Apros said. “And as I mentioned, the others came in under family encryptions. Whatever’s going on, it seems to only involve those three families.”
“Unless there are others not represented among your officers and warriors,” Thrawn pointed out. “Without access to those encryptions, you wouldn’t know of those summons.”
Apros’s lip twitched. “Yes, sir. That’s true.”
“Regardless, the lack of any official alerts indicates that the Ascendancy as a whole isn’t facing a threat,” Thrawn continued. “That would seem to rule out an invasion or any kind of widespread natural disaster.” He turned to Samakro. “Mid Commander Samakro. Thoughts?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Samakro admitted. “I note that all three families are of the Forty, which might imply some sort of joint operation. Perhaps a salvage or rescue mission.”
“If they’re just looking for people to crew their ships, I would assume they would exclude combat command officers from the summons,” Thrawn said. “For that matter, why call on the fleet at all? Surely there are enough family members in the merchant services to handle a nonmilitary situation.”
“Could it have something to do with your mission?” Apros asked. “We’re currently to the southeast-nadir of the Ascendancy. Could the families have heard something about the Vagaari, maybe not solid enough to call in the Defense Force, but solid enough to warrant extra security for those three systems?”
“Security in the form of antiquated ships?” Samakro scoffed. “Anyway, as Senior Captain Thrawn pointed out, in that case why not call the Defense Force? Planetary security is what they’re there for.”
“Plus the Vagaari rumors appear to be unfounded,” Thrawn said. “I’ve spoken to Captain Fsir, and he claims he was merely hired to engage the Springhawk in battle.”
Samakro frowned. He’d known Thrawn had had a brief conversation with Fsir, but he’d been so busy monitoring the collection of the wayward gunboats that he hadn’t had a chance to learn the results of that interrogation. “But not hired by the Vagaari?”
“Apparently not,” Thrawn said. “Nor was he hired by the Paataatus, if that was your next question. He claims he was contacted by an unknown alien, given the region we would likely be searching, and told to destroy us or, if that wasn’t possible, to at least keep us occupied. Since then he has been moving between the likely systems, hoping he would hit one at the same time we did.”
Samakro nodded. And once he’d made contact, he could lure them into the trap he’d already set up with the rest of his gunboats.
It was just his bad luck that his target had been Thrawn and the Springhawk. “Did he describe this seriously overconfident alien?” he asked.
“Only that he was robed and hooded with a veil obscuring his face,” Thrawn said, picking up his questis. “A more complete interrogation will have to wait until we can return to Csilla. Mid Captain Apros, how many of those gunboats do you think you can carry, either towed or anchored to the Grayshrike’s hull?”
“I thought you were going to examine them here,” Apros said, frowning.
“There’s no time,” Thrawn said. “Whatever’s happening in the Ascendancy’s southeast sectors, we need to identify it and see if we’re needed to help resolve it.”
“It doesn’t sound like the Expansionary Defense Fleet was invited,” Samakro pointed out.
“Do you care?” Thrawn asked.
Samakro looked at Apros. Command officers abandoning their ships…“Not really.”
“Neither do I,” Thrawn said. “Mid Captain Apros?”
“I’m not sure,” Apros said, his forehead wrinkling in concentration. “Probably eight or nine.”
“Make it nine,” Thrawn said. “Mid Captain Samakro?”
“Assuming you also want to bring the freighter, we should be able to handle it plus five gunboats.”
“I agree,” Thrawn said. “We’ll leave the pair still heading for the planet and the two that Lieutenant Commander Laknym hit with his plasma spheres. That gives us fourteen in good shape. Mid Captain Apros, you’ll return to the Grayshrike at once to oversee your part of the anchoring operation and to prepare your ship for departure.”
“Yes, sir,” Apros said, tapping on his questis. Samakro beat him to the punch, getting his own order logged before Apros finished with his. “Orders logged and my people on it.” A brief and slightly pained expression flickered across Apros’s face. “One more thing, Senior Captain, if I may.” He dug into a pocket and pulled out a small, cloth-wrapped item, which he set on the table in front of Thrawn. “I was asked to give you this, sir.”
“What is it?” Samakro asked, craning his neck as Thrawn unwrapped it.
“A piece of jewelry,” Thrawn said, sounding bemused. He held it up, and Samakro saw that it was a delicate brooch made of interlocked metal threads.
“There’s a note with it,” Apros said, pointing to the data cylinder nestled against the side of the brooch. “My apologies, sir—with everything that’s happened today I almost forgot. It was given to a Xodlak rancher, sent to another family member on Naporar, then on to Senior Captain Lakinda.”
“Who entrusted it to you,” Thrawn said, setting down the brooch and slipping the cylinder into his questis.
“The rancher obtained it from an alien group called the Agbui. Apparently, it’s stirred up a great deal of official interest.” He looked at Samakro. “On Celwis.”
Samakro felt his eyes narrow. The planet where Xodlak officers and warriors were currently flocking. “Enough interest to warrant an emergency summons?” he asked.
“If not, we’re looking at a remarkable coincidence,” Thrawn agreed. “Thank you, Mid Captain Apros. Return to your ship and do all you can to expedite our departure.”
“Yes, sir,” Apros said, standing up. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.” Nodding to Thrawn, then to Samakro, he left the conference room.
“I wish he could have been more helpful, too, sir,” Samakro said, scowling at the brooch. “A bit of jewelry isn’t much to go on.”
“Perhaps more than he realizes,” Thrawn said. “We know now that three families are involved—perhaps more, but three at least. We know all three are from the Forty Great Families.”
“And that all of them are allied to different Ruling Families,” Samakro added.
Thrawn’s forehead creased briefly. “I was unaware of that.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said, wincing. Once again, Thrawn’s ignorance of political realities was peeking through. “The Xodlak are allied with the Irizi, the Pommrio are supporters of the Plikh, and the Erighal are with the Dasklo.” He nodded toward the brooch. “I assume we’re going to start with Celwis?”
For a moment Thrawn didn’t answer, but gazed in silence at the brooch. He turned it over in his hands, his fingers tracing the intricate pattern. “No, I think we’ll start somewhere closer to home,” he told Samakro, standing up. “Come with me, Mid Captain. I have a thought.”
Che’ri had decided that she was too tired to eat a full meal, but too hungry to take a nap. They compromised, with Thalias making her a snack to ease her rumbling stomach and then packing her off to bed.
Thalias was finishing up her own snack and mentally tucking herself into her own bed when the door signaled a visitor.
“Good day, Caregiver,” Thrawn said, nodding to her. “My apologies for the intrusion.”
“No problem, Senior Captain,” Thalias said, stepping back and letting him and Samakro come in. The first officer looked puzzled, she noted, while Thrawn looked unusually grim. “Has something happened?”
“I assume Sky-walker Che’ri is asleep?” Thrawn asked, looking at the closed hatch to the girl’s sleeping room.
“She went down about ten minutes ago, so probably,” Thalias said. The last time he’d come here and asked about privacy—“Is this about my—uh—other roommate?”
“Yes,” Thrawn said, crossing toward Thalias’s room. “This time, I also need to talk to her.”
“Of course,” Thalias said automatically. To talk to her? She glanced again at the growing understanding and uneasiness on Samakro’s face, then hurried to catch up with Thrawn.
He’d removed the blanket from the hibernation chamber and was studying the control panel when she and Samakro entered. “Do you know how to operate that, sir?” Samakro asked.
“The procedure is quite straightforward,” Thrawn said. Lifting a protective cover, he pressed the button beneath it. “This may take a few minutes,” he added. “Perhaps you’d prefer to wait in the dayroom, Caregiver?”
“I’m fine,” Thalias said, wincing as the indicator lights began running a slow sequence. “May I ask what this is about?”
“I want her to look at this.” Thrawn showed her a rather beautiful brooch made of metal wires. “I want to know if she recognizes the design.”
“I thought Apros said it came from aliens called the Agbui,” Samakro said.
“So he did,” Thrawn said. “But look at the Magys’s clothing. You can see for yourself the style similarities between the pattern and the brooch.”
Samakro peered through the canopy, then looked questioningly at Thalias. She shook her head and gave him a small shrug. Whatever Thrawn was seeing, it wasn’t obvious to her, either. “Are you saying the Agbui are some of the Magys’s people?” she asked.
“Not at all,” Thrawn said. “The note included pictures, and the two species are quite different.” He looked at her. “Let me tell you about the conversation we’ve just had with Mid Captain Apros.”
By the time he’d finished the tale of family emergencies, aliens with fancy jewelry, and attempts to destroy the Springhawk, the hibernation chamber had finished its cycle and the Magys was awake.
And she was not happy.
“How do you do this to me?” she demanded, stumbling over the Taarja words as she struggled into a sitting position in the chamber. “How dare you deny me the right and weight of leadership? Do you betray me and my people with no guilt or consequence?”
“Would you betray your people for no reason?” Thrawn countered. “Or are guilt and consequence only for others?”
“I do not betray,” the Magys shot back. “My people are gone. I and my remnant have no right of lingering survival.”
“We don’t yet have proof of that,” Thrawn said. “At any rate, that is a question and a decision for another day. For the moment, I need you to look at—”
“The decision is now,” the Magys spat. “You wish to seclude me from my remnant? You seek to make them wait in vain for my word and my decision?” She drew herself up. “So be it. I lay down my leadership. They may touch the Beyond in their own stead and time, as I myself will now do.”
Thalias tensed. The Magys’s companion, she remembered, had killed himself at her order, without the use of any obvious weapon. If she could do the same thing—“What if your people aren’t gone?” she spoke up.
“You speak words of which you know nothing,” the Magys bit out.
“And you do?” Thalias retorted. “You saw your world from space. From space. You have no way of knowing what’s really going on down there.”
“If I do not know, neither do you.”
“Or maybe I do,” Thalias said, her heart pounding. She was taking a horrible risk here, and there was no way of knowing whether pushing the Magys would do anything except hasten her death. But she had to try something. “What if your people are even now rebuilding their homes and their cities? What if they’re growing food and putting your civilization back together? What if your remnant, far from following the rest of your people into death, would in fact be leading them there?”
“You know nothing about it,” the Magys insisted.
“Don’t I?” Thalias demanded. “Do people look for luxury when they’re starving? Do they build amusement centers when they have no homes? Do they make these—” She plucked the brooch from Thrawn’s hand and slapped it into the Magys’s. “—when they don’t even have basic clothing?”
The Magys’s eyes widened as she stared at the brooch. “Where did you get this?”
“Where do you think?” Thalias countered, watching her closely.
“From my world,” the Magys whispered, her anger and frustration suddenly gone. “My world.”
“Then you do recognize it?” Thrawn asked.
“Of course,” the Magys said, her voice almost reverent. “It is the style of the Southern Mountain artisans. Only they can create such beauty from wires of metal. I feared they were dead with all others.” She looked up at Thalias. “But surely this cannot be new. Surely it was found abandoned in the rubble of destruction.”
“Of course it’s new,” Thalias said. “Do you see any stains of age or war on it?”
The Magys again lowered her eyes to the brooch. Opened her mouth, closed it again. “What will you do now?” she asked.
“The question is, what will you do,” Thrawn countered.
“The warships we saw,” she said, still gazing at the brooch. “They were not settlers.”
“No,” Thrawn said. “They were invaders.”
“Trying to take your world from your people,” Thalias added. “Are you going to let them?”
The Magys rubbed her thumbs gently over the brooch. “When all are gone, we have no future but to touch the Beyond,” she said. “But when our people are invaded and enslaved—”
She looked up at Thrawn, and Thalias saw a new set to her jaws. “You must take me to my people.”
“I will,” Thrawn said. “But not immediately. I’m afraid you’ll have to sleep a little longer.”
“No,” the Magys insisted. “I have slept enough. My people need me.”
“Which is precisely why you must return to your sleep,” Thrawn said. “No one outside this room knows you are still aboard, and we must keep them from finding out.”
“Why?”
“Because if you’re seen, my superiors will call me back home,” Thrawn said. “They will place you in confinement for study and begin an investigation of my actions which will delay your return.”
“What if I stay in here?” the Magys countered, waving a slightly shaky arm around the room. “No one will see me here.”
“They may,” Thrawn said. “Others come in at times to perform maintenance and resupply. We cannot take the risk.”
“I do not wish—”
Abruptly she broke off, and Thalias saw a subtle shift in her expression. Her eyes flicked to the side, then back to Thrawn. A flick of her eyes to Thalias…
“Very well,” the alien said, her voice also subtly changed. “If you insist, I will sleep.” She looked again at Thalias. “You will stay with me?”
“I will,” Thalias promised. “As much as I can.”
“Very well,” the Magys said again. She looked at the brooch still clutched in her hand. “You will want this back,” she added, offering it toward Thalias.
“Perhaps you’d like to hold on to it?” Thalias asked.
“I cannot ask it,” the Magys said.
“But I may offer it,” Thrawn said. “Lie down now, please. When you next wake, it will be to the sight of your people.”
The alien nodded, turning her eyes to Thalias. “Thank you,” she said, and laid back down. Thrawn closed the canopy, and again keyed the chamber. A minute later, the alien was back in hibernation.
Under the circumstances, Thalias knew, she’d better get in the first word. “My apologies, Senior Captain,” she said. “My behavior over the past few minutes has been severely disrespectful.”
“But equally productive,” Thrawn said. To Thalias’s relief, there didn’t seem to be any anger or even annoyance in his voice. “Certainly you should know by now I consider results far more valuable than etiquette. Mid Captain Samakro? Thoughts?”
“Only that the whole thing seems bizarre,” Samakro said. “Why in the world are these Agbui stealing jewelry from the Magys’s people and passing it off as their own? What does that gain them?”
“I don’t know,” Thrawn said, starting for the hatch. “Let’s find out.”
“How?” Thalias asked.
“By asking the one person we can hope will have the answers,” Thrawn said. “Thank you for your help, Caregiver. Rest well.”
A minute later he and Samakro were gone, the suite’s hatch closed behind them. Thalias returned to her sleeping room, replaced the blanket over the hibernation chamber, and lay down on her bed.
And tried to figure out what exactly had just happened.
The Magys didn’t want to go back to sleep. That much was abundantly clear. Thrawn had presented good arguments for why it needed to be, warnings that Thalias had no doubt were legitimate. But the Magys had still been ready to argue the point.
And then, without warning, she’d given in.
So what had changed?
It was only as Thalias was finally falling asleep that she remembered the sideways look the Magys had made, the glance that had seemed to end her arguments and resistance.
The look she’d sent across the suite…in Che’ri’s direction.