Nine years, eight months, and twenty-nine days after the Battle of Yavin...
Or the forty-fourth year, eight months, and twenty-nine days after the Great Resynchronization.
(Four months and fourteen days since the Arrival.)
The officers' mess was empty. So much so that the four sentients sitting at one table felt as if the weight of the entire universe had fallen on them.
And it was so unusual — because they had felt nothing like this until the ship exited hyperspace.
Or were these echoes of their own emotions regarding the news that the Mon Calamari had given them after their conversation with the Grand Admiral?
The Order of the Jensaarai? Seriously? Could there be a dumber name?
"Something is coming," Master Jedi Bre'ano Umakk suddenly said, setting aside his utensils. "I sense a disturbance in the Force."
"It's just stale lunch," Reynar grumbled, continuing to mechanically shovel mashed potatoes into his mouth. From what Fodeum saw, the Inquisitor was eating without even trying to chew.
"No, I sense it too," Ahsoka Tano rubbed her hands together as if trying to remove dust or sweat. "The Force says bloodshed is coming."
"We're on board the flagship of Grand Admiral Thrawn," Reynar reminded. "If anyone knows about bloodshed, it's here."
"I don't feel anything," Fodeum admitted.
"Free your thoughts from routine," Bre'ano Umakk said. "Find a point of balance within yourself. Listen to your sensations..."
"Or just get angry," Obscuro suggested, dropping his spoon onto the plate. The metallic clang echoed through the mess hall. "You Jedi purists."
"We hold you in equal esteem," Ahsoka assured him. "But truly — a battle is coming."
"Did Thrawn tell you himself?" Reynar snorted, rising from the table and adjusting the folds of his black-as-night clothing.
"No," the Togruta shook her head. She extended a hand, pointing at the monitor behind the former Inquisitor. "If you're so smart, then tell me what you see there."
Reynar snorted once more, turning his head to study the ship's sensor data, which indicated what was directly ahead of the Chimaera.
"The Grand Admiral has an assignment for you," meowed the gray-skinned alien, as if he had grown out of the deck. Moreover — none of the Force-sensitive had sensed his approach.
Though this was common practice on Dominion ships — in certain zones of the ships, the Force seemed to abandon its adepts. What caused this phenomenon, no one knew. And to ask directly... they didn't dare.
"Is it what I think it is?" Obscuro looked at Thrawn's bodyguard.
"Yes," the latter replied quite laconically. "And you are in the vanguard."
With these words, he placed a small bag before the Force-sensitives, at the bottom of which could be seen quite familiar lightsaber hilts.
"I didn't even get to touch dessert," Fodeum sighed sadly, rising from the table. He unerringly identified his own lightsaber among several, took it out, and clipped it to his belt.
Which caught the Togruta's attention...
"I'm dying to hear the story of how that lightsaber came into your possession, little one," the Togruta declared, squinting as if he had done something wrong.
"Um..." the Jensaarai blinked. "Thrawn gave it to me..."
"Interesting," Tano drawled, arming herself. "Well then, shall we head to the hangar? Let's show off our blades..."
"If the Force wills it," Bre'ano Umakk said vaguely, heading for the exit first. And at a very, very brisk pace.
Only a couple of minutes remained before the battle stations alert...
* * *
Until this hour, Tyberos had been literally eaten by impatience about when he could talk to his mother.
But preparations of the Black Pearl for the campaign, along with classes at the commanders' school, consumed all his free time.
So he only got to hear the story he had been craving to learn all this time today.
Now he literally wanted to wipe the last thirty minutes of conversation from his head.
Not every truth you want to know. Far from it.
"At least I don't have tentacles," he said, looking toward Captain Nym sitting in the corner of the cantina. The Fiorin had spent the entire time of his mother's revelations there, not even raising his eyes to his son.
Frankly, Tyberos didn't even recognize the leader of the Lok Revenants. As if his inner core had been removed. That which made this Fiorin the very terror of pirates.
Now he was no longer a ruthless warrior, raider, authority among his thugs.
Now he was simply a broken, spineless commoner, who couldn't even lift his eyes to look at the one he had wanted to kill.
In the eyes of his own son.
"I'm glad of that too," Aurra Sing said in her typical manner, looking disgustedly toward the Fiorin. He didn't even stir. "Son, you have a mission and..."
"Don't call me that," Tyberos declared, emerging from behind the bar. He tossed a few small credits to pay for drinks. The droid bartender snatched the cash and instantly stashed it somewhere in its chassis. "Never call me your son again, Aurra Sing."
On the white face of the bounty hunter, astonishment was reflected. It seemed as if her tail of pale-red hair literally stood on end. But that was, of course, just an illusion, nothing more.
"Very well," she said slowly. "I suggest we go on a job together and..."
"I'd sooner kiss a rancor than spend another minute near you," Tyberos stated his priorities. "And you too," he pointed a finger at Nym. "You're both disgusting. An idiot and a stupid female who didn't have the courage to even admit she was carrying another man's child."
"Tyberos, listen," he tried to walk past her, but the hunter grabbed his arm tenaciously. "Your father wouldn't have understood, and I needed..."
"I don't give a damn what you needed," the privateer snarled, pulling his hand free. "You're nothing to me. And I don't want to know what your motives were. You lied to me — and did so my entire life. You don't do that to family. To temporary allies, enemies, some random sentients — yes. But not to family. That's what my father taught me — the one this wretch," he pointed at Nym again, "killed. Because you were able to keep your mouth shut, but not your legs."
"Tyberos!" the woman grabbed his arm again, at which the mercenary, without much ceremony, slapped her.
"Don't touch me," he looked into Aurra Sing's eyes full of hatred and incomprehension and saw in them only a reflection of his own fury. "If I see you near me again — I'll crack your bald skull with a pickaxe. Got it?"
Pulling his hand from her weakening grip, he headed toward the exit.
His fingers barely trembled with rage — not every day do you learn you were conceived in a drunken party frenzy after a successful raid. And you certainly don't expect to have been raised by a sentient who isn't your biological parent.
But what infuriates most is that because of the lies of one bald beast, you, like an idiot, spent years wanting to kill your own biological father.
"Nym!" he heard Aurra's voice. "Stop him! We're not done talking!"
"Don't even think about it, old man," Tyberos said threateningly, seeing the pathetic weakling stir and block his exit. "Don't you dare stand in my way. And don't even think about opening your filthy mouth. I'll take your head off with even more pleasure than before I learned I came from your loins."
"Son," Nym lifted his gaze from the floor. "We've lost so much..."
"Yes," Tyberos agreed, placing his hand on his pickaxe. Only a few meters separated them. "Get out of the way and you'll live."
"I don't want to fight," Nym said. "Everything I have will be yours and..."
He didn't get to finish.
With a crunch and a subsequent squelch, the pickaxe entered the left side of his head, essentially piercing it through. The privateer, bracing his foot on the chest of the still-twitching body, yanked the weapon back, breaking facial bones.
The weakling collapsed heavily to the floor, while Tyberos, seething with rage, shook off the remains of bone, teeth, blood, and brain from his weapon with a practiced circular flick of his wrist.
Stepping over the corpse, he stopped in the doorway of the cantina, tucking his weapon into the back sheath. Turning at the sound of the twitching corpse, he looked at Aurra Sing.
"In one thing he was right," Tyberos declared. "Everything he had was mine. Or soon will be."
"You're a monster," the bounty hunter said with undisguised contempt on her snow-white face, spitting emphatically on the floor.
"My best trait," Tyberos grinned. He jabbed a finger at the corpse. "Look at him carefully. I killed Nym because I promised him that many years ago. Next time you want to remember that your egg contributed to my existence, think about what I'll do to you if I see you again."
"I'll remember," Sing replied bitterly.
"You'd better write it down," Tyberos advised, turning away from the woman who supposedly said something about being his relative.
Stepping outside, he took a deep breath of the cool night air of Lok.
Tasteless, mixed with dust, irritating...
Can't wait for the raid.
"I see the family squabble went according to plan," a voice sounded from the alley.
Tyberos indifferently looked toward the source of the sound, watching as a short shadow in an Imperial uniform emerged from the darkness under the dim artificial lights of the small town that had grown near Nym's fortress.
"Aren't you afraid to walk without guards, Tavira?" he asked. "Rumor has it that in this backwater's heyday, they used to rape a dozen women an evening."
"Well, if they weren't against walking at night knowing such sad statistics, then who's to judge them?" her violet eyes sparkled mischievously. "Besides, I have no doubt Thrawn's Noghri are always nearby. Even if you don't see them, that doesn't mean they're not there."
Leonia approached almost close. She seemed even tinier, barely reaching Tyberos's chest.
"You smell of blood," she said thoughtfully, extending her small fingers to him and removing a lump of gray matter from his gear. "I see Nym used his brain for something..."
"Literally," Tyberos confirmed, suppressing the urge to sink his hand into that black hair with silver streaks and smash her head into the cantina wall.
"You broke my gift," she clicked her tongue. From somewhere unknown, a whip appeared in her hand. "You need to be punished!"
Her thin bones nearly crunched when he intercepted her tiny fist with his powerful palm. His other hand grabbed a handful of her uniform, easily lifting Tavira a good meter off the ground.
"If you do that again, I'll twist your head off before the Noghri even get here," the privateer promised.
"I like it!" Leonia exclaimed enthusiastically. "I... I..."
"Hyperdrive motivator," Tyberos voiced a bearded Outer Rim joke. "You're not going to give up, are you?"
"From such a man?" Tavira feigned sincere surprise. "Never! I almost peed myself with happiness when I found out I'd be governing the planet where you are, Tyberos."
"Don't worry," the privateer promised. "Soon you'll also shit yourself with happiness. But we'll record your condition as an achievement."
"Huh?" the girl blinked her long eyelashes.
But the privateer had already slung her over his shoulder like a sack of vegetables, casually walking toward the hotel where he had rented a room.
The Noghri who briefly appeared from the shadows of the buildings were sent away by Leonia with just a satisfied smile.
* * *
"I'm not as crazy as Sair Yonka!" Captain Pellaeon kept repeating the same thought over and over, watching through the main viewport as the Chimaera approached its target.
"Your anxiety is understandable, Captain," came the voice of Grand Admiral Thrawn, who had approached and taken position beside him.
"Oh really?" flashed through his mind.
"Not many sentients in this galaxy can boast of single-handedly facing an Executor-class Star Super Destroyer," the Grand Admiral continued his "encouragement." "And surviving, of course."
"Are we among them?" almost slipped from the lips of the gray-haired commander of the Chimaera.
But he restrained himself within the bounds of propriety.
The Guardian was silhouetted in the main viewport of the Chimaera, shining in all its nineteen-kilometer beauty. Elegance and power that could not be overshadowed by punctures or scorch marks stretching from bow to stern.
Even in its current half-destroyed state, more resembling ruins than a fully functional warship that had once come off the docks, the Star Super Destroyer was an impressive sight.
The superstructure, already mangled during the battle near Tantive V, topped with a single deflector generator dome, seemed even more menacing for its ability to survive such extensive wounds. Just think — it took only one precise hit to that part of the Executor to end its existence, along with hundreds of thousands of lives of excellent officers and enlisted personnel.
It's hard to imagine that nightmare again in reality: the out-of-control Executor colliding with the unfinished hull of the second Death Star in orbit of the forested moon of Endor. And then — the same ship, disappearing with it in a cloud of a colossal explosion.
The loss of such a ship was itself an irreplaceable loss for the fleet, but it could have been endured, not without difficulty, but still... But the death of the entire crew, the best specialists in the galaxy who manned Darth Vader's personal flagship... No, the Imperial Navy never truly recovered from that.
The mighty Imperial warship was drifting in orbit around a large blue-green world. However, one didn't need cybernetic vision enhancers to recognize the growing light in the Guardian's aft section — its sublight engines were coming to life.
Admiral Gaen Drommel had detected the approach of an unknown ship to the planet Sollex and was beginning to react.
"It seems the scanning systems aboard the Guardian are not as useless as the analysts reported," Thrawn stated.
"So it seems," Pellaeon hissed.
Based on studying the volume of purchased spare parts and testimonies of detained pilots from the Guardian, an analyst group had prepared a report that the Star Super Destroyer's systems were non-functional and would unlikely detect an approaching ship even from fifty units, let alone the standard two hundred.
Gilad glanced at the Grand Admiral.
Thrawn was, as ever, both calm and focused simultaneously.
But at the same time, one could read a hint of... admiration? Interest?
Really? The Grand Admiral was examining the Guardian as if seeing such a remarkable ship for the first time in his life. Which was completely incomprehensible, given that recently they had already encountered the Reaper twice, the sister ship of the Guardian, which was in much better condition.
"Credit must be given to Admiral Drommel," Thrawn said. "His specialists have worked admirably."
"Sir?"
"Note the starboard side, Captain," the Grand Admiral advised. "Do you see a slight difference in the shades of the plating and armor?"
Gilad honestly tried.
"No, sir," he admitted.
"An interesting feature of vision," Thrawn remarked to no one in particular. "But in any case, the crew of the Guardian has restored the integrity of the starboard side under such difficult conditions. Judging by the shade of armor, they have added over two kilometers of plating. Given the absence of deformation, the most obvious conclusion is that the internal compartments and bulkheads have also been restored. Remarkable diligence."
"When you want to live, you'll work even harder," Gilad thought.
"Declare combat alert?" the commander of the Chimaera inquired.
"Yellow level will be sufficient," the Grand Admiral assured him. Well, at least the crew had taken positions according to battle stations, and the triangle was covered with deflector shields. That meant they could withstand one or two salvos. That was something. "And, order the nose of the Chimaera to be lowered by three degrees. There's no need for the Guardian to know we have a fast corvette under our belly."
"Drommel may order fighters launched," Gilad reminded. "I don't think he's happy about the intrusion on his seclusion."
"In that case, why didn't he do it immediately?" asked Thrawn.
There was no argument.
"Open a communication channel with the Guardian," the Grand Admiral ordered. "Time to begin negotiations for surrender."
Glancing toward the Star Dreadnought that had already turned to present its starboard side, training at least two dozen batteries on them, Pellaeon couldn't help but ask himself:
"And who exactly is supposed to be surrendering here?"
"Check the hangar to see if our Jensaarai have launched yet," Thrawn requested.
Is that all that concerns him right now?
"Yes, sir. Of course..."
* * *
"Sir, the ship has closed to visual identification range," the watch officer reported through the speaker of his personal comlink.
Gaen Drommel looked up from his reading — a paper copy of an adventure novel — and fixed the major with a dark glare. He was still trying to remember the man's name, but the attempt proved unsuccessful.
"Details now, Major," he demanded.
"Sir, it's not our shuttle," the man said quickly. "Not even a parts freighter. It's a Star Destroyer."
The Admiral, outwardly calm (unlike the seething, conflicting emotions raging inside him), laid the ancient book on his desk. The leather cover of the heavy tome responded with a faint, barely audible creak upon contact.
"Its name," he demanded.
"Chimaera, sir," the officer replied just as hurriedly. "I've already ordered us to present starboard batteries..."
Because that's the only section of this ship that still has any working weapons, Drommel realized silently.
"Ground bases are on alert, we're ready to begin transferring the crew and—"
"Stop wasting time on idiotic and completely unnecessary tasks, Major," Drommel advised. "The Chimaera is commanded by Captain Gilad Pellaeon. He doesn't have the stomach to power up his turbolasers against us."
"Sir, but that's Grand Admiral Thrawn's flagship," the watch officer reminded him, citing the latest news from the HoloNet. "And they're hailing us!"
This is what happens when you replace unreliable crew members with ground-pounders who shit their pants at the first sight of a warship.
Admiral Gaen Drommel.
"Grand Admirals don't travel without an escort," Drommel explained lazily. "Especially not when they're meeting a Star Dreadnought. Stop panicking. I'll be on the auxiliary bridge shortly."
I'd rather use the main bridge... but the tower is a ruin — it's dangerous just to stand watch there.
The image of the stunned major on the screen flickered for a moment, then vanished entirely. The Admiral pulled his gloved finger from the control panel and quietly left his quarters.
* * *
"I don't give a damn about this kind of boarding!" Reynar roared, barely managing to stabilize himself in space with his jetpack.
Grabbing a handhold — the kind EVA specialists used for repairs — he hauled himself toward the airlock doors.
"Is it your first time?" Ahsoka asked from another such hold. Only a couple meters of space separated them, but the Dark Guard still felt deeply annoyed. He absolutely, with every fiber of his being, did not want to be here. Not at all! Why wasn't this a stormtrooper job?
"Yes," he snapped. "An Inquisitor has no business flying around on jetpacks."
"I once knew a Jedi Master who claimed flying was for droids," the Togruta snorted.
"Hope he died in space," Reynar replied, pulling an electronic lockpick from his pocket and inserting it into the universal port to the left of the airlock doors. The device immediately began blinking, signaling it had connected to the ship's network and would soon be able to fool the ship's electronics and open the doors without anyone on the bridge — or anywhere else on the ship — knowing.
"Rumor has it that's exactly what happened," Ahsoka said, her expression darkening slightly.
An awkward silence fell, punctuated only by the blinking lights...
The semicircular doors slid apart silently.
"Shouldn't the airlock be decompressing?" Reynar asked doubtfully.
"This is an outer airlock," Ahsoka reminded him. "It's always vacuum here, so if the hull gets breached, there's no oxygen leak. Standard shipbuilding rule: at least one compartment from the armor is always kept without oxygen. Usually service areas, storage, things you don't mind losing in a fight. Though, they often get punched straight through, and then the attackers reach the next compartment, which does have atmosphere."
"Whatever," Reynar said, hauling himself into the airlock. "I hate open space."
"I'm sure the feeling's mutual," the Togruta chuckled, following her partner into the Guardian.
* * *
Silence reigned on the auxiliary command center of the Star Dreadnought — a true feat given the amount of personnel occupying the vast space. Drommel crossed the deck with his usual long, measured strides until he stood face-to-face with a junior officer.
"So, what does the Chimaera want?" he asked.
"We don't know, sir," the same watch officer said. "The message is addressed to you personally and—"
"Idiot," Drommel declared, assessing the limits of his subordinate's intelligence. "A watch officer's duty is to receive the message, identify the sender and the purpose of the communication, and only then report to the addressee."
"My apologies, Admiral," the man bleated. "I simply assumed you would want to speak with them personally and—"
A sharp, hissing sound — very distinctive — rang out. The major collapsed onto the polished floor, a smoking, singed hole in the center of his tunic.
Drommel holstered his smoking blaster and swept his gaze across the others gathered on the bridge.
"Has everyone learned their lesson for today?" he asked the crew grimly. As always in recent years, these were mostly "army types," unconditionally loyal to him. The bulk of the crew had been sent down to the planet to reduce resource consumption aboard the ship. They were only brought back to the Guardian for repairs, nothing more.
No one spoke a word.
"Good," Drommel nodded, stepping carelessly over the corpse. "Now, get me that Hutt-spawn Chimaera on the line. And be ready to attack it covertly if I don't like what we have to discuss."
* * *
Bre'ano Umakk grunted in surprise as he turned to continue on his way.
Instead, he found Fodeum standing before him, already squeezed into a stormtrooper's armor.
"Quick work," the Mon Calamari noted.
The Jensaarai stood frozen, his eyebrows raised in astonishment.
He was wearing the suit, but not the helmet — it was too small for him. Judging by his reddened ears, the boy had nearly lost them trying to force the thing onto his head.
"Now I see why stormtroopers never ask questions," he said. "Not enough brainpower in a skull that fits inside that bucket."
Bre'ano chuckled at the slang the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic had used for their helmets.
Their infiltration through the emergency hull airlock had gone off without a hitch.
After eliminating a pair of stormtroopers who happened to be nearby and hadn't even raised the alarm, both of them prepared to push toward their objective. Using stormtrooper armor as a disguise was Fodeum's idea — he claimed his body dimensions matched the decapitated enemy's.
Now, though, Umakk regretted that he'd killed his own stormtrooper by splitting his head open with a lightsaber. That guy's helmet had definitely been bigger.
At that moment, the heavy fire door suddenly slid back, and a shiny silver droid peered into the service room.
Silence hung for a moment, then the droid shrieked in alarm, waving its clumsy arms and trying to turn and run: "Intruders! Spies! Admi—"
It got no further. The Mon Calamari's pale-blue lightsaber blade decapitated the droid, and its remains were snatched up by the Force and shoved into the service room alongside the two stormtrooper corpses.
"Let's hope no one heard that," Fodeum said.
And just then, the corridors of the Guardian erupted with the howl of battle stations.
* * *
Drommel watched as the impassive face of the Grand Admiral stared at him through the hologram.
His own expression remained neutral, though after what he'd just heard, no one would have dared come close to him.
"Say that again," he asked the alien, who had just dictated an ultimatum. After hearing it, Drommel had given a coded signal to declare a ship-wide alert. Though the siren wasn't audible on the bridge, the flashing emergency light confirmed the order had been carried out. "You want to take my ship?"
"And its entire crew," Thrawn corrected. "As I understand it, it's made up of residents of the Oplovis sector. That sector is currently under the control of the Dominion, which I lead. To avoid bloodshed, I offer you the chance to surrender the ship and spare the crew's lives. After so many years of confinement in the Fardon system under your ineffective command, after the loss of the sector fleet and the effective loss of control over the Sector, I, as Supreme Commander, hereby strip you of your rank, relieve you of your post, and terminate your authority."
The Admiral focused on a junior technician who was frantically trying to revive the fire control system. That temperamental computer had failed three years ago, and without the right spare parts, it was impossible to get it working again.
And manual targeting... Well, anyone who'd ever seen army troops shoot — not stormtroopers, but actual infantry from army units stationed in remote garrisons, which the Oplovis sector was — wouldn't trust them with even a heavy blaster. Unless it was to shoot themselves with.
And even then, there was a good chance they'd miss.
That's why the technician was currently, in the most vandalistic way possible, frantically dismantling the main reactor control terminal — to cannibalize its parts and restore the more essential system.
"You didn't appoint me to this post, Grand Admiral," Drommel declared. "You don't have the authority to remove me from it."
"I know exactly how you earned your promotion, and why you were given a fully equipped sector fleet — which you then recklessly lost," Thrawn said.
I need to stall — there's a lot to do, to set up, and then...
How fortunate that this verbose alien is too dim to realize that soon, he and his ship will be in for a world of pain. And in the end, the Guardian will have a great supply of spare parts. I just need to keep the Chimaera's main reactor and backup hyperdrive intact — they'll come in handy for the Star Dreadnought.
"I don't know how you earned your rank bars, Thrawn," he said, "but I earned mine by fighting tooth and nail—"
"In verbal battles, buttering up Grand Moff Tarkin," the Grand Admiral finished for him. "You were given a full-strength sector fleet solely because Tarkin was your friend and patron, and because your sector was relatively close to the first Death Star's construction site. But you never demonstrated even a hint of understanding of what was actually happening."
Drommel scowled angrily.
He didn't like hearing the truth about himself. Especially from someone he considered subhuman. And, frankly, he considered everyone subhuman.
"At a time when the galaxy was being torn apart by civil war, and your own sector was occupied by the New Republic and used as a staging ground for operations against the Empire, you sat here, holding your own crew hostage, without even attempting to return to the fight," Thrawn continued his verbal indictment. "Because of you and people like you, the Empire fell. And today — I will judge you."
"Well, try it, alien," Drommel laughed. "The Guardian is damaged, but still battle-ready. Your Star Destroyer is going to become spare parts..."
The Grand Admiral's expression didn't even flicker.
"In my homeland, there's a saying," he said. "'Give an intellectually deficient being a transparisteel statue, and it will break the statue and cut its hands.'" Someone behind Drommel even seemed to laugh. Well, that one didn't have long to live. "You already demonstrated your supposed professionalism during the Battle of the Tantive IV, losing your Star Destroyers. Fortunately, I've already managed to recover the Wolf's Claw. It's eagerly awaiting the moment when worthy sons of the Oplovis sector come aboard to serve in defense of their home. As part of the Dominion. But that will be without you, Mister Drommel. Whether you like it or not."
The Admiral shot him a look full of suspicion and distrust.
Where does this xeno know so much from? Even at the Imperial Court, no one dared even think about such things aloud.
Drommel couldn't suppress a faint smirk.
Conjecture. That's all it is.
It can't be anything more.
The enemy is trying to intimidate him, in the best traditions of Tarkin's own Guardian Doctrine. As if he knows everything about Drommel, and is only now hinting that he possesses such information.
But in reality, the alien has nothing else.
Fear was extremely effective at maintaining order — a lesson he'd learned from Tarkin. The Admiral considered himself more than just a student of humanity. True, he had learned from great men, but more importantly, Drommel had learned from their mistakes. And he certainly wouldn't repeat such foolish errors.
No one would pull one over on him.
He glanced at the technician, who signaled with hand gestures that the surviving artillery was at full battle readiness.
"Oh, Grand Admiral," Drommel's lips spread into a smile. "You're about to bitterly regret your words."
* * *
Fodeum nodded at the squad of stormtroopers who ran past him, not even noticing that a lone stormtrooper was moving through the corridors with a "captured" Mon Calamari.
After all the years they'd spent in this cramped box, they'd probably learned the numbers of everyone they served with. And especially the members of a non-human species, who were such rare guests aboard the ship. But no one even asked a question. Strange fellows. On Dominion ships — at least on the Chimaera — before they got used to him, every other stormtrooper or crew member responsible for ship security demanded to see his ID or code cylinder.
And even now, things weren't much better.
Still, he should focus on the mission.
The armor was hot, the helmet heavy, and he didn't feel like playing toy soldier. Frankly, he missed the times when he'd explored the ruins of the Jedi Enclave, descended into caves...
The Jensaarai shook his head, recalling one of his Order's precepts. It was actually his mother's saying, but many of his comrades quoted it as a great mantra.
Only after he'd made it out into the wider galaxy did he learn it was just a proverb.
"Spend too much time looking back, and you won't notice the gaping abyss you're about to fall into."
Finally, they approached the blast door leading to the ship's main hold.
"Be careful," Bre'ano Umakk warned him. "The guards are starting to get suspicious."
Fodeum said nothing — he was already too close to the stormtrooper squad guarding access to what, according to rumor, was the ship's greatest treasure.
* * *
"Deflectors at seventy percent," Gilad reported, watching as the Chimaera continued to list to starboard in accordance with the Grand Admiral's orders.
"Damage on decks seven, eleven, twenty-three..." the watch officer recited like a metronome.
"Continue closing," Thrawn said, calmly observing as the Guardian's artillery methodically stripped away the Star Destroyer's shield. The SEAL system generator steadily fed power to the defenses, and the "deuce's" guns fired back furiously, but against even a single Guardian generator, a hundred turbolasers clearly weren't enough. After all, four hundred guns was more than double what a Star Destroyer — even a "deuce" could bring to bear. Of course, that was for a standard ISD-II.
The Chimaera, thanks to upgrades, was a bit tougher.
But apparently, no one had told the two hundred and fifty missile launchers that.
The interceptors, along with the corvette distracting the enemy gunners, were practically exhausting themselves shooting down the massive anti-ship missiles.
But Thrawn stubbornly demanded that the Star Destroyer, despite the damage, position itself directly beneath the Guardian's lower hangar.
And — by some Hutt's decree — perfectly perpendicular to it.
"Sir," the watch officer said anxiously, "enemy missiles have breached the hangar blast doors!"
"Jettison them," Gilad ordered.
"Belay that," Thrawn commanded. "It's too soon."
Gilad started to object, then realized the decision was actually correct. Damaged blast doors were useless — on the contrary, if the enemy kept attacking that vulnerable spot with anti-ship missiles, the best course was to preserve whatever protection remained. Even if it created a debris field when hit, that was better than letting a couple of anti-ship missiles into the hangar.
Those would definitely tear the ship apart from the inside.
"Cancel the blast door jettison," Pellaeon confirmed, though he knew it was futile — the crew had already obeyed the Grand Admiral's order.
"The Chimaera is in the main hangar's projection," the watch officer reported.
Right. And now what?
"Begin the landing," Grand Admiral Thrawn said with a slight smile on his lips, looking at Gilad. "Droidekas first, of course, Captain."
"Should I order the air group to suppress the Guardian's missile launchers?" Gilad asked hopefully. "Or strike the deflector shield generator?"
"That won't be necessary, Captain," Thrawn said, disconcertingly. "We'll need them intact. Shortly, I assure you."
Well... right.
Of course.
"Attention, sir!" a new report came from the watch officer. "Another ship has arrived! A warship! Identifying..."
Hutt knows what...
"Capturing the Guardian is no longer going to be boring, Captain," Grand Admiral Thrawn said with a grim smile.
Who said it was boring?!
* * *
Executor-class Star Dreadnought, Guardian.
And in the background, our beloved Chimaera. And...
"An Acclamator?!" Drommel looked at Colonel Niovi, who commanded the army contingent that currently made up the entire ship's crew. "Are you joking, Colonel?! What's an assault cruiser doing here?"
Colonel Gastos Niovi.
"I don't have that information," the officer replied calmly, standing by a nearby sensor station. "I'm far more concerned about the stormtroopers boarding the Guardian. I don't have enough men to repel their attack. Especially since they're being supported by droidekas."
"Well then, destroy them!" Drommel said impatiently. "You have nearly forty thousand troops! Thrawn can at most land a legion or two! Crush him!"
"Can I do just one thing?" Gastos asked. "Either fight the battle, or repel boarding parties? Or, perhaps, I should summon shuttles from the surface to bring at least a minimal crew aboard?"
"Don't get smart with me," Drommel snapped. "Solve the problem! No enemies aboard my ship. And especially no boarders! Deal with them! Immediately!"
"And what do we do when a third, fourth, fifth ship arrives?" the ground contingent commander asked.
"We fight to the last," Drommel said in a menacing tone. "The Guardian is mine. No one else's. I'd rather die than hand it over to anyone. Even Thrawn. Even the Empire. Understood?"
Colonel Niovi silently watched the Admiral's back — the man he'd served side by side with for nearly five years — then left the Guardian's auxiliary command center.
* * *
The doors to the central computer room — the heart of any ship — opened, drawing an indifferent glance from the duty officer. The section's personnel, dressed in black uniforms, didn't even notice the man in all black who entered. Didn't even look at him...
But when the Togruta in light combat gear followed him in, the duty officer's suspicion shot through the roof.
"Hey, you two!" He reached for his holster. "Freeze!"
The blaster didn't want to come out, forcing the duty officer to look down and yank the weapon free.
He raised his head just in time as an indistinct hum approached far too closely.
His eyes caught the spinning energy blade...
A moment later, his severed head hit the deck.
His body followed a fraction of a second later.
The operators leaped from their stations, grabbing sidearms to repel the attack on the ship's heart. Only now, as the armored blast doors began to close, did they realize why the intruders had gotten inside. The room's airtight seals had played a cruel trick on them, preventing them from hearing how two beings armed with lightsabers had turned a squad of stormtroopers into scattered chunks of flesh and armor.
Reynar Obscuro deflected the first shot with one of his lightsaber blades.
The crimson bolt flew into the ceiling, turning a light panel into a fountain of sparks and glass.
"Well," a mocking smile spread across the Inquisitor's lips, "that was a very, very bad idea, you lot..."
"Cut, don't chatter," Ahsoka said, connecting to the central computer and disconnecting it from the ship's systems.
A couple of seconds later, she joined in eliminating the enemy, stepping over the body of the duty officer she'd already decapitated.
* * *
Colonel Gastos Niovi moved quickly through the Guardian's corridors, lost in his own thoughts.
Through the shockingly empty corridors — once filled with crew members, technicians, stormtrooper patrols...
Now his soldiers were spilling blood, dying without the slightest chance to fight back.
Because they were up against droidekas — the nightmare and terror of the Clone Wars and the decades that followed.
There were no munitions aboard the Guardian that could take down those mechanical killers. No firearms powerful enough to punch through their shields.
In effect, his men — both army specialists and stormtroopers — were dying for nothing. They had lost this battle before it even began.
Drommel didn't understand that. Or more obviously, he didn't want to understand.
And that was even sadder.
Not only had they spent years out here on the rim of the galaxy, dreaming of nothing but returning to civilized space — now they had to die too? For what? For Drommel's insatiable ego? For his inability to grasp and accept what was happening?
Madness.
It had started the moment they arrived here. It continued with the repression of crew members who dared to grumble against Drommel's policies — a man who wouldn't even deign to contact anyone in the Imperial hierarchy. He was so terrified of losing his last scrap of authority, the Guardian, that he completely disregarded his subordinates' opinions.
The result: the crew was relocated to the planet with no way out. At least they'd managed to convince Drommel to set up bases on the wild world, ensuring protection for the one hundred seventy-nine thousand surviving crew members — those who'd made it past Tantive V and the admiral's purges.
In their place, for years, stormtroopers and army personnel had been refitting the ship, relying on a single shuttle that had survived the battle and remained intact.
But that shuttle never returned either.
Instead, the Chimaera arrived. And after the Grand Admiral's words, Gastos had clung to the hope that Drommel would take the offer, bargain for his freedom, and stop holding the crew hostage... Hutt's sake! Take this rust bucket and be done with it! Let the people go! Your hold is full of aurodium — buy yourself slaves, hire mercenaries, free workers, anyone! Let them waste their lives out here in the middle of nowhere!
But this madness had to end!
Only... how?
Turning into the corridor that led to the central computer, the colonel froze in his tracks.
Before him stood a squad of stormtroopers.
Nine men, locked in armor, weapons at the ready.
The colonel's gaze automatically swept over their shoulder pauldrons, intending to find out who had disobeyed his orders and why in the hell they were holding position near the secondary command post while a battle raged behind their backs.
The question never left his lips.
Instead, two objects rose into the air: the colonel's hands, and the flamethrower in stormtrooper TNX-0333's grip.
The 501st Legion already controlled the heart of the Guardian. But no one knew that yet.
* * *
A blue lightsaber blade pierced the stormtrooper's chest plate and exited through his back, ending his life.
Yanking the lightsaber from the body, Fodeum spun the weapon in his hands, deflecting a volley of shots from a group of soldiers rushing toward them, firing at the two Force-users who had breached the main hold. There was no need to wonder what the Guardian's stormtroopers intended: they were trying to kill them both.
But doing that surrounded by thousands of enormous supply containers was no easy task.
That was exactly why the pair of lightsaber-wielding beings could, without too much trouble, turn the stormtroopers' ambushes into localized skirmishes, destroying the enemy in small groups within tight spaces.
In these close quarters, it wasn't the blaster that decided how long you lived — it was your skill in melee combat.
Unfortunately for the stormtroopers, both the Jedi and the Jensaarai could give the "dolls" a hundred-point head start in that department.
And so severed arms, legs, and slashed bodies fell in every direction.
Both Force-users understood perfectly that they couldn't hold out forever. But the plan never required that.
Yes, they were operating at their absolute limit — but the stormtroopers' assault was weakening too. Neither Fodeum nor his mentor knew the reason, but they suspected that Grand Admiral Thrawn's actions had somehow affected the stormtroopers' attempts to encircle them.
The ship shuddered noticeably, which meant only one thing — it was fighting. Receiving and delivering blows, snarling back furiously, trying to destroy the enemy until...
Suddenly, the tide of battle changed.
The sound of rolling metal echoed across the deck. The melodic whir of deploying deflector fields... and the unforgettable rattle of rapid-fire blasters.
"Droidekas!" someone screamed in terror from among those trying to destroy both saboteurs.
But he didn't get another word out — the sounds of gunfire and the agonized cries of dying stormtroopers, who had nothing to throw at the deadly machines, drowned out everything else.
The stormtroopers no longer had time for the pair of Jedi holding their ground near the central cluster of cargo containers.
The human and the Mon Calamari let out sighs of relief, extinguished their weapons, and slowly slid to the floor against the wall of one of the opened crates.
Deep within its depths, aurodium glinted.
* * *
With each passing microsecond, Drommel grew more furious.
"Colonel Niovi!" he roared into the comlink. "Why the hell is the central computer offline? Where are our deflector shields?!"
The colossal ship shuddered once as several breaches appeared amidships — the Chimaera continued pounding the vessel.
Even despite his attempts to maneuver, Thrawn kept his warship directly under the Guardian's belly. Right where only self-guided anti-ship missiles could reach him.
But without the central computer, that was impossible! Targeting data came from there! And the guts of that enormous computing machine received input directly from the scanning systems.
Whoever had knocked out the central computer was effectively forcing them to shoot by eye. The gunners on the turbolaser and ion batteries might still land a hit under these conditions — but the missile operators? Absolutely not. Unless it was that attack cruiser... but its captain was staying well outside weapons range, taunting and distracting the gunners almost mockingly. They'd occasionally take a potshot at the visible target when they couldn't find anything better.
Oh, if only he hadn't lost his fighters at Tantive V, he'd show them...
"Niovi!" Drommel screamed furiously, desperate for some response from his second-in-command.
Then the enormous ship lurched beneath his feet, and several officers crashed to the deck. Drommel himself slammed into a bulkhead, his shoulder smashing painfully against the metal of a control panel.
"What's happening?!" he bellowed, grabbing the nearest console to stay upright during the next impact.
"Battery Five exploded," reported a junior technician who had scrambled to his feet. "And Battery Seven too, sir..."
"The Chimaera has stopped firing but is staying under our keel, mirroring every maneuver we make," another voice informed him. "Sir, we're getting scanner data now — better late than never — they've locked onto us with tractor beams!"
So that's why we can't break away!
Another volley of ion cannons shook the Guardian, and several monitors on the bridge flickered out.
"Ion cannons," someone from the crew supplied.
Did it even matter?
"Launch our fighters!" he ordered.
"Sir, that's too dangerous," the flight controller protested. "The reactors are emitting lethal radiation! The pilots will die..."
"Better them than me," Drommel growled.
Footsteps sounded behind him. Turning, he saw Colonel Niovi approaching, followed by a squad of stormtroopers.
"Finally!" the admiral snapped disapprovingly. "Where have you been?"
"I..."
"Never mind," Drommel waved dismissively. "Are the fighters ready to launch?"
"The pilots are in position," the flight controller said in a hollow voice. "Awaiting your order, sir."
"Launch them!"
"I'm countermanding the admiral's order," Niovi said calmly.
"How dare you?" Gaen's eyes flashed as he turned to face his deputy. "They're about to—"
"Die," Niovi said quietly. "Just like all of us here if we keep fighting mindlessly."
Drommel let out a strangled cry of rage and frustration. Suddenly, a blaster appeared in his hand, aimed at the colonel.
Niovi flinched, expecting the inevitable execution.
But the next moment, he heard the roar of flames and cries of agony.
A stream of fire engulfed Admiral Drommel, consuming both the man and his rich garments.
A couple of seconds — and on the deck where the Guardian's commander had stood, only a small pile of ash remained.
"Open a channel to Grand Admiral Thrawn," the colonel ordered, heading for the communications station.
The moment Thrawn's blue-and-white hologram appeared before him, the Grand Admiral — as if unsurprised — inquired about the reason for the call.
"I am Colonel Gastos Niovi," introduced the commander of ground forces. "As acting commander of the Guardian, I officially declare a ceasefire. I request that you cease fire and spare everyone aboard this ship, as well as those on the planet's surface."
Thrawn listened to the officer's address with interest, then nodded almost imperceptibly.
"Welcome to the Dominion, Colonel. The Guardian's crew stationed on the planet has already switched to our side. Oversee the docking of our auxiliary cruiser and begin repairs on the ship."
The colonel was silent for several seconds, processing the information. Then, for the first time since the Super Star Destroyer had found itself in this trap, a smile appeared on his lips.
"Yes, sir! Honored to serve under your command!"