And in the swirling chaos of a shipboard assault, accidents inevitably happened. "I wonder if I might have permission to accompany the attack force," he said. "I'd like to observe Chiss soldiers in action."
Mitth'raw'nuruodo inclined his head slightly. "As you wish, Commander Stratis. I think you'll find it most instructive."
"Yes," Doriana agreed softly. "I'm sure I will."
The vibrations from the Dreadnaughts above, transmitted faintly through the metal of the connecting pylons, finally came to an end. "Is it over?" Jorad Pressor asked timidly.
Carefully, Lorana let her hand drop from the bulkhead where she'd been steadying herself. The sudden, awful flood of death from above had finally ended as well, leaving nothing behind.
Nothing.
"Yes," she said, trying hard to give the boy an encouraging smile. "It's all over."
"So we can go back up?"
Lorana lifted her eves to Jorad's father, and the tight set of his mouth. The children might not understand, but the adults did. "Not quite yet," she told Jorad. "There's probably a lot of cleaning up they're having to do. We'd just be in the way."
"And would have to hold our breath," someone muttered from the back of the group.
Someone else made a shushing noise. "Anyway, there's no point in hanging around here," one of the older men spoke up, trying to sound casual. "Might as well go back to the Jedi school where we can at least be a little more comfortable."
"And where we'll be properly locked in?" Uliar added sourly.
"No, of course not," Lorana said, trying to get her brain back on track. "There's plenty of spare building material crated up in the storage areas. I'll cut a section of girder and prop open the door. Come on-everyone back."
The crowd turned and shuffled back the way they'd come, some of the children still murmuring anxiously to their parents, the parents in turn trying to comfort them. Lorana started to follow, paused as Uliar touched her arm. "So what's thereal damage?" he asked softly.
She sighed. "I don't sense any life up there. None at all."
"Could you be wrong?"
"It's possible," she admitted. "But I don't think so."
He was silent for a moment. "We'll need to make sure," he said. "There may be survivors who are just too weak for you to sense."
"I know," she said. "But we can't get up there yet. The fact that the turbolift cars won't come implies the pylons are open to vacuum somewhere. We'll have to wait until the droids get them patched up."
Uliar hissed between his teeth. "That could take hours."
"It can't be helped," Lorana said. "We'll just have to wait."
Chapter 23
The battle had been over for nearly three hours, and Car'das was starting to get seriously bored when he finally heard the rhythmic tapping at his back.
He half turned over and rapped the same pattern with the edge of the macrobinoculars. Then, turning back around to face the stars, he worked the kinks out of his muscles and waited.
It came in a sudden flurry of activity. Behind him, the door to his prison popped open and he felt the sudden tugging of vacuum at his lungs and face as the air pressure in his bubble exploded outward, shoving him backward out into the corridor. He caught a glimpse of vac-suited figures surrounding him as he was enveloped in a tangle of sticky cloth. Before he could do more than scrabble his fingertips against it in an effort to push it away from his face there was a harsh hissing in his ears, and the cloth receded from him in all directions.
And a moment later he found himself floating inside a transparent rescue ball.
"Whoa," he muttered, wincing as his ears popped painfully with the returning air pressure.
"Are you all right?" a familiar voice asked from a comlink connected to the ball's oxygen tank.
"Yes, Commander, thank you," he assured the other. "I gather it all worked as planned?"
"Yes," Thrawn confirmed, his voice carrying an odd tinge of sadness to it. "For the most part."
One of the other rescuers leaned close, and to his surprise Car'das saw that it was the human who'd introduced himself aboard theDarkvenge as Commander Stratis. "Car'das?" Stratis demanded, frowning through the plastic. "What areyou doing here?"
"Luring the Vagaari into my trap, of course," Thrawn said, as if it were obvious. "Or had you forgotten that the Chiss do not engage in preemptive attacks?"
"I see," Stratis said, still eyeing Car'das. "So those spy accusations you were throwing around aboard theDarkvenge were nothing but smoke? Something to cover you in case the whole thing fell apart?"
"It was protection, yes, but not for me," Thrawn said. He gestured, and the rest of the group began maneuvering Car'das's rescue ball down the corridor. "It was to protect Admiral Ar'alani, the officer commanding the transport that arrived an hour ago to take the freed Geroon slaves back to their world."
"And who couldn't afford to be even unofficially involved in any of this," Stratis said, nodding. "But whocould make sure to look the other way at all the right times, leaving you and Car'das to take the blame if anything went wrong."
"Never mind the blame," Car'das put in. "What happened with Outbound Flight? I saw the starfighters take off after it."
Thrawn and Stratis exchanged looks. "We were forced to go farther than I'd hoped," Thrawn said.
Car'das felt his heart freeze in his chest. "How much farther?"
"They're dead," Thrawn said quietly. "All of them."
There was a long silence. Car'das looked away, his eyes catching glimpses of dead Vagaari as the Chiss continued carrying him along. Thrawn had abandoned his attack on known slavers and murderers to destroy thousands of innocent people?
"There wasn't any choice," Stratis said into his numbness. "C'baoth was using his Jedi power to try and strangle the commander. There was no other way to stop him."
"Did you ever give them a chance to just leave and go home?" Car'das retorted.
"Yes," Thrawn said.
"More than just one chance," Stratis added. "More than I would have offered them, in fact. And if it matters any, I was the one who actually pushed the button."
Car'das grimaced. On one level, it did matter. On another, it didn't. "You're sure there aren't any survivors?"
"The Dreadnaughts were taken out by radiation bombs," Stratis told him. "We haven't actually sent anyone over yet to check, but if the commander's weapons stats are accurate there's no way anyone could have lived through that."