“The Springhawk could just be in the comm shadow on the far side of the planet,” Apros reminded her. “Unless Thrawn’s in an unusually high orbit, it shouldn’t be more than an hour before he’s back in range.”
Lakinda tapped gently at her lips. True enough. But she wasn’t ready to just sit here doing nothing but sending transmissions into the Chaos for the next hour. “New signal, non-encrypted,” she ordered, keying her mike. Thrawn’s report on the Paccosh, she remembered, listed Taarja as one of their preferred trade languages. “Rapacc government, this is Senior Captain Lakinda aboard the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet warship Grayshrike,” she said in Taarja. “I have a message for Senior Captain Thrawn. Is he currently with you and your people?”
She keyed off the mike. “Continuous transmission, both that message and the encrypted one to Thrawn,” she ordered Shrent.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We don’t know if the Paccosh even have long-distance communication,” Apros pointed out as he stepped away from Shrent and rejoined her at her command chair. “We may have to go all the way to Rapacc if we want to talk to them.”
“I know,” Lakinda said. The only problem with that was the fact that for the next few hours their sky-walker was on break. Rapacc wasn’t too far away, but if they had to get there via jump-by-jump it was going to take more hours than she wanted to spend.
Not to mention the problem that if she picked the wrong moment to enter hyperspace, she and Thrawn could easily run communications tag against each other.
But unless she got an answer from someone in the next half hour, she would just have to try it. “Commander Wikivv, run a course plot to Rapacc,” she ordered. “Jump-by-jump, best time.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wikivv said, busying herself with her board.
“For the record,” Apros said quietly, “and given that the message for Thrawn likely came from the Syndicure, you could legitimately invoke emergency regulations to get Bet’nih back before her sleep time is over.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Lakinda said. “We’ll give Thrawn half an hour to respond, then head for Rapacc.”
“Captain, we’ve got a signal from Rapacc,” Shrent called. He keyed his board—
“Greetings, Senior Captain Lakinda.” The accented voice came from the bridge speaker, the alien’s Taarja noticeably better than Lakinda’s. “I am Uingali foar Marocsaa, with the honor of speaking for the Paccian Governance. How may the Paccosh serve you?”
Lakinda exhaled a silent breath as she keyed her mike. Finally. “Greetings, Uingali foar Marocsaa,” she replied. “As my message stated, I’m trying to communicate with Senior Captain Thrawn. Is he still with you?”
“Not at the current time,” Uingali said. “He and his ship are returning the leader of a refugee group to her world, there to discover whether their civil war has left any of their species still alive.”
“He’s doing what?” Apros muttered under his breath.
Lakinda threw him a glance. “Uingali foar Marocsaa, I don’t understand. Senior Captain Thrawn had no orders to travel anywhere except the Rapacc system.”
“It is a humanitarian gesture,” Uingali said. “If their world is lost, the Magys is determined that she and all the refugees under her authority shall give up their lives.”
“Why?” Lakinda asked.
“I am not certain,” Uingali said. “The reasons are largely unclear to me. Senior Captain Thrawn hopes to ease their minds and thus spare their lives.”
“I see,” Lakinda said, frowning. She hadn’t heard of any civil wars out this way, at least among the various nations the Ascendancy got sporadic information from. Something new? “Who are these people? What do they call themselves?”
“We do not know.”
“What do they name their world?”
“We do not know.”
Lakinda keyed off her mike and looked up at Apros. “Comments?”
“Awfully convenient, not giving us anything we can look up,” he said, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You suppose they caught the Springhawk unprepared and captured or destroyed it?”
“With Thrawn in command?” Lakinda shook her head. “Not likely. If they’d tried, I doubt there’d be much left of their authority structure still able to talk to us.” She keyed her mike back on. “Do you have the coordinates for the refugees’ system? And when exactly did Senior Captain Thrawn depart?”
“He left approximately seven hours ago,” Uingali said. “I’m sending you the coordinates the Magys gave us, plus recordings of the interactions between Senior Captain Thrawn and the refugees, as well as some of the interactions between the senior captain’s people and mine.”
Lakinda looked over at Shrent, got a nodded confirmation that a transmission was coming through. She pointed at Wikivv’s helm board, got another nod. “Did he say how long he’d be staying there?” she asked Uingali.
“If he made such a decision, it was not shared with me,” Uingali said. “But I believe he was motivated by a desire to prove the planet inhabitable, and the refugees thus worthy of continued life. I do not know how long such proofs would require.”
Unfortunately, neither did Lakinda. A cursory flyby could be done in hours; a more detailed ground examination could take weeks. “Understood,” she said. “One moment.” She keyed off again. “Commander Wikivv?”
“Got it, ma’am,” Wikivv said, peering closely at her displays. “There’s definitely a star at those coordinates. We don’t have a data list for it, so I don’t know if it has any habitable planets. But the star’s spectrum is compatible with standard life-form parameters.”
“How far away is it?”
“For Thrawn, coming from Rapacc, approximately sixty-three hours via jump-by-jump,” Wikivv said. “Fifteen by sky-walker.” She made another adjustment. “Actually, we’re currently quite a bit closer than he is—the system’s back toward the Nikardun bases we’ve been clearing out.”
Lakinda checked the nav display, where Wikivv had now marked the target system. She was right; it was back toward the area where they’d left the Vigilant, though north and a little bit zenith of that position.
“For us, approximately forty-two hours via jump-by-jump,” Wikivv continued. She half turned toward Lakinda, her expression wooden. “Ten hours via sky-walker.”
“Understood,” Lakinda said. In other words, if she hauled Bet’nih out of her rest time, the Grayshrike could get to the target system barely two hours behind the Springhawk. That would all but guarantee she could rendezvous with Thrawn and deliver her message without the two ships playing blindman’s tag all over the Chaos.
But in her mind’s eye she could see how tired and stressed Bet’nih had looked as she left the bridge.
She keyed the mike. “What password did Senior Captain Thrawn give you to confirm you were speaking for him?”
“A password?” Uingali echoed, his smooth speech pattern faltering. “I was given no password. Unless he spoke one and I did not recognize its true meaning. I have sent you the recordings—perhaps you will find it in there.”
“Perhaps,” Lakinda said. “Very well. We’ll seek him at the refugees’ location. If he returns prematurely, please inform him we’re looking for him. Even better, give him the recording you’re certainly making of this conversation.”