The other was already calling up the record. “It was a routine report, sir,” he said. “Time log … fourteen hours ten minutes ago.”
Thrawn turned to face him. “Fourteen hours?” he repeated, his voice suddenly very quiet and very deadly. “I left orders for them to report every twelve.”
“Yes, Admiral,” the comm man said, starting to look a little nervous. “I have that order logged, right here on their file. They must have …” He trailed off, looking helplessly at Pellaeon.
They must have forgotten to report in, was Pellaeon’s first, hopeful reaction. But it died stillborn. Stormtroopers didn’t forget such things. Ever. “Perhaps they’re having trouble with their transmitter,” he suggested hesitantly.
For a handful of heartbeats Thrawn just stood there, silent. “No,” he said at last. “They’ve been taken. Skywalker was indeed there.”
Pellaeon hesitated, shook his head. “I can’t believe that, sir,” he said. “Skywalker couldn’t have taken all of them. Not with all those ysalamiri blocking his Jedi power.”
Thrawn turned those glittering eyes back on Pellaeon. “I agree,” he said coldly. “Obviously, he had help.”
Pellaeon forced himself to meet that gaze. “Karrde?”
“Who else was there?” Thrawn countered. “So much for his protestations of neutrality.”
Pellaeon glanced at the status board. “Perhaps we should send someone to investigate. We could probably spare a Strike Cruiser; maybe even the Stormhawk.”
Thrawn took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “No,” he said, his voice steady and controlled again. “The Sluis Van operation is our primary concern at the moment—and battles have been lost before on the presence or absence of a single ship. Karrde and his betrayal will keep for later.”3
He turned back to the communications officer. “Signal the freighter,” he ordered. “Have them activate the cloaking shield.”
“Yes, sir.”
Pellaeon turned back to the viewport. The freighter, bathed in the Chimaera’s lights, just sat there looking innocent. “Cloaking shield on, Admiral,” the comm man reported.
Thrawn nodded. “Order them to proceed.”
“Yes, sir.” Moving rather sluggishly, the freighter maneuvered past the Chimaera, oriented itself toward the distant sun of the Sluis Van system, and with a flicker of pseudovelocity jumped to lightspeed.
“Time mark,” Thrawn ordered.
“Time marked,” one of the deck officers acknowledged.
Thrawn looked at Pellaeon. “Is my flagship ready, Captain?” he asked the formal question.
“The Chimaera is fully at your command, Admiral,” Pellaeon gave the formal answer.
“Good. We follow the freighter in exactly six hours twenty minutes. I want a final check from all ships … and I want you to remind them one last time that our task is only to engage and pin down the system’s defenses. There are to be no special heroics or risks taken. Make that clearly understood, Captain. We’re here to gain ships, not lose them.”
“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon started toward his command station—
“And Captain …?”
“Yes, Admiral?”
There was a tight smile on Thrawn’s face. “Remind them, too,” he added softly, “that our final victory over the Rebellion begins here.”
C H A P T E R 31
Captain Afyon of the Escort Frigate Larkhess shook his head with thinly disguised contempt, glaring at Wedge from the depths of his pilot’s seat. “You X-wing hot-shots,” he growled. “You’ve really got it made—you know that?”
Wedge shrugged, trying hard not to take offense. It wasn’t easy; but then, he’d had lots of practice in the past few days. Afyon had started out from Coruscant with a planetary-mass chip on his shoulder, and he’d been nursing it the whole way.
And looking out the viewport at the confused mass of ships crowding the Sluis Van orbit-dock area, it wasn’t hard to figure out why. “Yeah, well, we’re stuck out here, too,” he reminded the captain.
The other snorted. “Yeah. Big sacrifice. You lounge around my ship like overpriced trampers for a couple of days, then flit around for two hours while I try to dodge bulk freighters and get this thing into a docking station designed for scavenger pickers. And then you pull your snubbies back inside and go back to lounging again. Doesn’t exactly qualify as earning your pay, in my book.”
Wedge clamped his teeth firmly around his tongue and stirred his tea a little harder. It was considered bad form to mouth back at senior officers, after all—even senior officers who’d long since passed their prime. For probably the first time since he had been given command of Rogue Squadron, he regretted having passed up all the rest of the promotions he’d been offered. A higher rank would at least have entitled him to snarl back a little.
Lifting his cup for a cautious sip, he gazed out the viewport at the scene around them. No, he amended—he wasn’t sorry at all that he’d stayed with his X-wing. If he hadn’t, he’d probably be in exactly the same position as Afyon was right now: trying to run a 920-crew ship with just fifteen men, hauling cargo in a ship meant for war.
And, like as not, having to put up with hotshot X-wing pilots who sat around his bridge drinking tea and claiming with perfect justification that they were doing exactly what they’d been ordered to do.
He hid a smile behind his mug. Yes, in Afyon’s place, he’d probably be ready to spit bulkhead shavings, too. Maybe he ought to go ahead and let the other drag him into an argument, in fact, let him drain off some of that excess nervous energy of his. Eventually—within the hour, even, if Sluis Control’s latest departure estimate was anywhere close—it would finally be the Larkhess’s turn to get out of here and head for Bpfassh. It would be nice, when that time came, for Afyon to be calm enough to handle the ship.
Taking another sip of his tea, Wedge looked out the viewport. A couple of refitted passenger liners were making their own break for freedom now, he saw, accompanied by four Corellian Corvettes. Beyond them, just visible in the faint light of the space-lane marker buoys, was what looked like one of the slightly ovoid transports he used to escort during the height of the war, with a pair of B-wings following.
And off to the side, moving parallel to their departure vector, an A-class bulk freighter was coming into the docking pattern.
Without any escort at all.
Wedge watched it creep toward them, his smile fading as old combat senses began to tingle. Swiveling around in his seat, he reached over to the console beside him and punched for a sensor scan.
It looked innocent enough. An older freighter, probably a knockoff of the original Corellian Action IV design, with the kind of exterior that came from either a lifetime of honest work or else a short and spectacularly unsuccessful career of piracy. Its cargo bay registered completely empty, and there were no weapons emplacements that the Larkhess’s sensors could pick up.
A totally empty freighter. How long had it been, he wondered uneasily, since he’d run across a totally empty freighter?
“Trouble?”
Wedge focused on the captain in mild surprise. The other’s frustrated anger of a minute ago was gone, replaced by something calm, alert, and battle-ready. Perhaps, the thought strayed through Wedge’s mind, Afyon wasn’t past his prime after all. “That incoming freighter,” he told the other, setting his cup down on the edge of the console and keying for a comm channel. “There’s something about it that doesn’t feel right.”
The captain peered out the viewport, then at the sensor scan data Wedge had pulled up. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“Me, either,” Wedge had to admit. “There’s just something … Blast.”