“Yes, ma’am,” Wutroow said. “And that there’s something down there someone is very interested in keeping to themselves. I assume we’re not going to let them?”
“If that someone is one of the native inhabitants, the Ascendancy will have no say in the matter,” Ar’alani reminded her.
“If they’re not?”
Ar’alani looked back at the tactical, watching the skycars heading back to their lairs. Skycars whose design was radically different from any of the hundreds of wrecked air vehicles the shuttle’s survey runs had recorded. Skycars whose guardian Battle Dreadnought had done its best to destroy the Vigilant and two Chiss heavy cruisers.
“If they’re not, we’ll find a way to make them sorry they came here,” she told Wutroow softly. “Very sorry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I find this extremely unsettling,” Thrawn said, pinning a clearly uncomfortable Mid Captain Apros to his conference room chair with a hard-edged glare. “What kind of family emergency could make Senior Captain Lakinda leave her post?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Apros said. His eyes shifted away from Thrawn’s gaze to Samakro, as if hoping to find support or at least sympathy.
Samakro kept his face expressionless. If that was what Apros wanted, he was out of luck. Family and family politics be damned—as far as Samakro was concerned, abandoning a command post was unthinkable.
And for Apros to have stood by and let her go without trying to stop her was equally unthinkable.
“Did she give you any hints?” Thrawn asked.
“No, sir,” Apros said, reluctantly bringing his eyes back to the senior captain. “I’m not sure she even knew at that point. The message said the Xodlak family members were to assemble at Celwis. If it said any more, she didn’t share it with me.”
“Did you at least try to talk her out of it?” Samakro demanded.
“I talked as hard as I could for the three minutes she allowed me,” Apros shot back. He didn’t dare show anger to a superior officer like Thrawn, but he apparently figured another mid captain like Samakro was fair game. “She and Lakwurn were gone before I could do anything else.”
“Lakwurn?” Thrawn asked.
“Hyperdrive specialist,” Apros said. “He got the same message Senior Captain Lakinda did.”
“So the Xodlak aren’t merely seeking command officers,” Thrawn said, his tone turning thoughtful. “They want all military personnel.”
“So it would seem,” Apros said. “I did some checking along the way. The Xodlak warships at Celwis consist of two partially crewed light cruisers on an orbital defense station and an uncrewed reserve frigate.”
“What are they doing, setting up for a battle?” Samakro asked, frowning.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Apros said grimly. “Because during one of our sky-walker breaks on our way to meet you we got another set of transmissions, two of them in family codes. Our weapons officer, Senior Commander Erighal’ok’sumf, subsequently informed me that he and the other two Erighal aboard had received family emergency summons of their own.”
“Did you let them go, too?” Samakro growled.
“Of course not,” Apros said stiffly. “Nor did Ghaloksu ask. We were engaged in an imminent threat situation, which rendered the summons void. But given Senior Captain Lakinda’s abrupt departure, he thought I should know about it.”
“Were the Erighal also supposed to rendezvous at Celwis?” Thrawn asked.
“No, at Copero,” Apros said. “But it gets stranger. After Ghaloksu came to me, I made some inquiries and discovered that the Pommrio had also sent out an emergency summons.”
Samakro felt his eyes narrow. Three of them?
“They were to assemble at Sarvchi,” Apros continued. He gave a small, helpless-looking shrug. “I don’t know what it all means, sir. But I don’t like it.”
“Nor should you,” Thrawn said, his eyes narrowed slightly. “Celwis, Copero, Sarvchi. All systems at the Ascendancy’s east and southeast sectors. Tell me, Mid Captain, was there any indication that Csilla or Naporar had been alerted?”
“There were no transmissions to me or to the Grayshrike proper,” Apros said. “And as I mentioned, the others came in under family encryptions. Whatever’s going on, it seems to only involve those three families.”
“Unless there are others not represented among your officers and warriors,” Thrawn pointed out. “Without access to those encryptions, you wouldn’t know of those summons.”
Apros’s lip twitched. “Yes, sir. That’s true.”
“Regardless, the lack of any official alerts indicates that the Ascendancy as a whole isn’t facing a threat,” Thrawn continued. “That would seem to rule out an invasion or any kind of widespread natural disaster.” He turned to Samakro. “Mid Commander Samakro. Thoughts?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Samakro admitted. “I note that all three families are of the Forty, which might imply some sort of joint operation. Perhaps a salvage or rescue mission.”
“If they’re just looking for people to crew their ships, I would assume they would exclude combat command officers from the summons,” Thrawn said. “For that matter, why call on the fleet at all? Surely there are enough family members in the merchant services to handle a nonmilitary situation.”
“Could it have something to do with your mission?” Apros asked. “We’re currently to the southeast-nadir of the Ascendancy. Could the families have heard something about the Vagaari, maybe not solid enough to call in the Defense Force, but solid enough to warrant extra security for those three systems?”
“Security in the form of antiquated ships?” Samakro scoffed. “Anyway, as Senior Captain Thrawn pointed out, in that case why not call the Defense Force? Planetary security is what they’re there for.”
“Plus the Vagaari rumors appear to be unfounded,” Thrawn said. “I’ve spoken to Captain Fsir, and he claims he was merely hired to engage the Springhawk in battle.”
Samakro frowned. He’d known Thrawn had had a brief conversation with Fsir, but he’d been so busy monitoring the collection of the wayward gunboats that he hadn’t had a chance to learn the results of that interrogation. “But not hired by the Vagaari?”
“Apparently not,” Thrawn said. “Nor was he hired by the Paataatus, if that was your next question. He claims he was contacted by an unknown alien, given the region we would likely be searching, and told to destroy us or, if that wasn’t possible, to at least keep us occupied. Since then he has been moving between the likely systems, hoping he would hit one at the same time we did.”
Samakro nodded. And once he’d made contact, he could lure them into the trap he’d already set up with the rest of his gunboats.
It was just his bad luck that his target had been Thrawn and the Springhawk. “Did he describe this seriously overconfident alien?” he asked.
“Only that he was robed and hooded with a veil obscuring his face,” Thrawn said, picking up his questis. “A more complete interrogation will have to wait until we can return to Csilla. Mid Captain Apros, how many of those gunboats do you think you can carry, either towed or anchored to the Grayshrike’s hull?”
“I thought you were going to examine them here,” Apros said, frowning.
“There’s no time,” Thrawn said. “Whatever’s happening in the Ascendancy’s southeast sectors, we need to identify it and see if we’re needed to help resolve it.”