Or could there be something else lurking back there, hidden from the Springhawk’s view? An orbital defense platform, maybe, or even a bigger warship?
On the bridge display, Samakro stepped to Thrawn’s side. “They don’t look very friendly,” he commented.
“Perhaps they’re just being cautious,” Thrawn said. “Is the drone shuttle ready?”
“Ready, sir,” Kharill called back.
Thalias nodded to herself as she got the answer to a small puzzle. She’d noticed on her way in that the secondary control helm console seemed more active than most of the rest of them, as if the officer there had been planning to take over from Azmordi’s bridge station. Now she realized that this was where the drone shuttle would be flown from.
“Adjust vector toward starboard planetary rim and launch,” Thrawn ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Thalias frowned. One puzzle solved; another manifesting. She’d assumed he was trying to draw out the alien ships’ intentions by sending a clearly unarmed shuttle to rendezvous with them. But he was instead sending the shuttle in the opposite direction?
On one of the outside displays the drone appeared, accelerating away from the Springhawk en route to the far edge of the planet. “Let’s see what they do,” Samakro commented.
The words were barely out of his mouth when all five of the closer gunboat group opened fire with spectrum lasers, sending a withering barrage at the drone.
Beside Thalias, Che’ri inhaled sharply. “It’s okay,” Thalias said softly, putting a soothing hand on the girl’s arm. Normally, she and Che’ri were nestled safely away in their suite when all the shooting started.
“Evasive,” Thrawn ordered calmly.
Thalias held her breath as the drone went into a convulsion of jerky movements, matching the smaller but no less intense movements of the helm officer on Laknym’s far side. The drone ducked in and out of the laser blasts as the operator tried to confuse the gunboats’ targeting.
And it was working, Thalias saw. If the drone could keep it up a little longer, maybe a minute or two, it might make it out of the gunboats’ effective range. At that point, if they still wanted to destroy it they would have to chase it down.
Which would mean crossing right in front of the Springhawk.
Thalias smiled tightly. Of course. Thrawn was trying to lure them in where he could use his lasers and breacher missiles to destroy them with a flanking attack right when their main forward-aiming lasers would be useless against him.
She was still working out the details in her mind, congratulating herself on how Thrawn’s informal teaching methods had sharpened her analytical skills, when a final laser barrage shattered the drone into shards.
Thalias sighed. So much for that plan.
“Too bad,” Samakro said. “I thought that at that range they’d have to use their missiles.”
“It’s not too late,” Thrawn said. “Perhaps we can convince them to launch if we offer a more suitable target.”
“I don’t know,” Samakro said doubtfully. “With fifteen fighters already on station, they may think they can get away with just their lasers.”
Thalias felt her eyes narrow. Were he and Thrawn suggesting they wanted the gunboats to launch missiles at the Springhawk? She looked sideways at Laknym, wondering if he knew the plan or whether he was also in the dark. But his face was expressionless, his full attention on his board.
“We should at least give them the opportunity,” Thrawn said, his voice as calm as Samakro’s. “Azmordi: Take us toward the leading group. Low speed.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thalias?” Che’ri whispered tensely.
“It’s okay,” Thalias soothed. The Springhawk was moving toward the nearest gunboats at what looked to her like a far faster pace than Thrawn’s low-speed order should have generated. Behind them, the other two enemy groups were hurrying to close the distance and join in the confrontation.
Thalias craned her neck to look at Laknym’s status boards, trying to find the electrostatic barrier readouts. But she didn’t know the boards’ layout, and her angle wasn’t good enough to make out the descriptions beneath the displays. She looked back at the main display, to see the gunboats of the first rosette splitting farther apart to allow a better field of fire from the groups moving up behind them.
“Senior Captain?” Samakro asked.
“Hold course,” Thrawn said. “Target the first rosette with spectrum lasers, but hold fire until ordered. Let’s see how much they know about the Chiss.”
Thalias frowned. The Syndicure prohibition against preemptive strikes, even against a clearly defined enemy, had never made much sense to her. It didn’t make sense to Thrawn, either, she knew, having watched him time and again find ways around the ban.
But this situation seemed far more straightforward. In destroying the shuttle, even with no Chiss having been put in danger, hadn’t the attackers handed the Springhawk all the excuse it needed to return fire?
Maybe that was the point. Maybe Thrawn and Samakro wanted to see if their attackers knew precisely where the invisible line was that Chiss warships weren’t supposed to cross.
“Apparently, they know something about our rules of engagement,” Samakro commented. “We’re well past the point where they fired at the drone. Probably think we can’t engage until the ship itself is attacked, so they’re trying to close to a better kill range.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “Alternatively, they could be waiting for us to move deeper into the planet’s gravity well.”
“There’s that,” Samakro conceded. “Orders?”
“Let’s continue to behave as they clearly expect us to,” Thrawn said. “Prepare a breacher missile, targeted down the center of the lead rosette pattern.”
“Down the center, sir?”
“The center,” Thrawn confirmed.
“But—ah.” Samakro nodded in understanding. “If there’s no actual threat, there’s no official attack.”
“Exactly,” Thrawn said. “It can be tactically advantageous for an enemy to believe in limits that don’t actually exist.”
Surreptitiously Thalias looked over her shoulder at Kharill in his command chair, noting his stony expression. Maybe he wasn’t as certain that the attack on the shuttle was a sufficient reason to engage the gunboats. Maybe he just wasn’t certain that the Syndicure would see things that way.
Still, Thrawn’s plan of firing first into the center of the enemy formation should mollify even the fleet’s harshest critics.
Or maybe Kharill simply didn’t like the idea of wasting time playing games when there were ten more gunboats coming up behind the first group.
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said briskly. “Breacher ready.”
“Fire.”
On the display the missile leapt from its launch tube, burning through space toward the cluster of incoming gunboats. The closest rosette spread a little wider as the missile arrowed toward them …
And in perfect unison five lasers lanced out, one from each gunboat, converging on the missile. The breacher’s armor held out for a second or two, and then the missile disintegrated, its acid payload gushing into space.
“There,” Thrawn said, nodding toward the expanding cloud. “You saw it, Mid Captain?”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said. “Our reputation does indeed precede us.”
“That it does,” Thrawn agreed.
“What did he mean?” Che’ri whispered.
Thalias shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Laknym leaned closer to them. “Letting a normal explosive missile get that close before destroying it would have endangered the gunboats,” he explained softly. “But destroying a breacher farther out would have risked the acid spreading far enough outward to splash them. That means they know how our missiles work.”