Heir To The Empire (7 page)

“In a sense, that’s true,” Thrawn agreed. “The Rebels did indeed fight better, but not because of any special abilities or training. They fought better than the Fleet because the Emperor was dead.”

He turned to look at Pellaeon. “You were there, Captain-you must have noticed it. The sudden loss of coordination between crew members and ships; the loss of efficiency and discipline. The loss, in short, of that elusive quality we call fighting spirit.”

“There was some confusion, yes,” Pellaeon said stiffly. He was starting to see where Thrawn was going with this, and he didn’t like it a bit. “But nothing that can’t be explained by the normal stresses of battle.”

One blue-black eyebrow went up, just slightly. “Really? The loss of the Executor-the sudden, last-minute
TIE
fighter incompetence that brought about the destruction of the Death Star itself-the loss of six other Star Destroyers in engagements that none of them should have had trouble with? All of that nothing but normal battle stress?”

“The Emperor was not directing the battle,” Pellaeon snapped with a fire that startled him. “Not in any way. I was there, Admiral-I know.”

“Yes, Captain, you were there,” Thrawn said, his voice abruptly hard. “And it’s time you gave up your blindfold and faced the truth, no matter how bitter you find it. You had no real fighting spirit of your own anymore-none of you in the Imperial Fleet did. It was the Emperor’s will that drove you; the Emperor’s mind that provided you with strength and resolve and efficiency. You were as dependent on that presence as if you were all borg-implanted into a combat computer.”

“That’s not true,” Pellaeon shot back, stomach twisting painfully within him. “It can’t be. We fought on after his death.”

“Yes,” Thrawn said, his voice quiet and contemptuous. “You fought on. Like cadets.”

C’baoth snorted. “So is this what you want me for, Grand Admiral Thrawn?” he asked scornfully. “To turn your ships into puppets for you?”

“Not at all, Master C’baoth,” Thrawn told him, his voice perfectly calm again. “My analogy with combat borg implants was a carefully considered one. The Emperor’s fatal error was in seeking to control the entire Imperial Fleet personally, as completely and constantly as possible. That, over the long run, is what did the damage. My wish is merely to have you enhance the coordination between ships and task forces-and then only at critical times and in carefully selected combat situations.”

C’baoth threw a look at Pellaeon. “To what end?” he rumbled.

“To the end we’ve already discussed,” Thrawn said. “Power.”

“What sort of power?”

For the first time since landing, Thrawn seemed taken aback. “The conquering of worlds, of course. The final defeat of the Rebellion. The reestablishment of the glory that was once the Empire’s New Order.”

C’baoth shook his head. “You don’t understand power, Grand Admiral Thrawn. Conquering worlds you’ll never even visit again isn’t power. Neither is destroying ships and people and rebellions you haven’t looked at face-to-face.” He waved his hands in a sweeping gesture around him, his eyes glittering with an eerie fire. “This, Grand Admiral Thrawn, is power. This city-this planet-these people. Every human, Psadan, and Myneyrsh who live here are mine. Mine.” His gaze drifted to the window again. “I teach them. I command them. I punish them. Their lives, and their deaths, are in my hand.”

“Which is precisely what I offer you,” Thrawn said. “Millions of lives-billions, if you wish. All those lives to do with as you please.”

“It isn’t the same,” C’baoth said, a note of paternal patience in his voice. “I have no desire to hold distant power over faceless lives.”

“You could have just a single city to rule, then,” Thrawn persisted. “As large or as small as you wish.”

“I rule a city now.”

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed. “I need your assistance, Master C’baoth. Name your price.”

C’baoth smiled. “My price? The price for my service?” Abruptly, the smile vanished. “I’m a Jedi Master, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he said, his voice simmering with menace. “Not a mercenary for hire like your Noghri.”

He threw a contemptuous look at Rukh, sitting silently off to one side. “Oh, yes, Noghri-I know what you and your people are. The Emperor’s private Death Commandos; killing and dying at the whim of ambitious men like Darth Vader and the Grand Admiral here.”

“Lord Vader served the Emperor and the Empire,” Rukh grated, his dark eyes staring unblinkingly at C’baoth. “As do we.”

“Perhaps.” C’baoth turned back to Thrawn. “I have all I want or need, Grand Admiral Thrawn. You will leave Wayland now.”

Thrawn didn’t move. “I need your assistance, Master C’baoth,” he repeated quietly. “And I will have it.”

“Or you’ll do what?” C’baoth sneered. “Have your Noghri try to kill me? It would almost be amusing to watch.” He looked at Pellaeon. “Or perhaps you’ll have your brave Star Destroyer captain try to level my city from orbit. Except that you can’t risk damaging the mountain, can you?”

“My gunners could destroy this city without even singeing the grass on Mount Tantiss,” Pellaeon retorted. “If you need a demonstration-”

“Peace, Captain,” Thrawn cut him off calmly. “So it’s the personal, face-to-face sort of power you prefer, Master C’baoth? Yes, I can certainly understand that. Not that there can be much challenge left in it-not anymore. Of course,” he added reflectively, glancing out the window, “that may be the whole idea. I expect that even Jedi Masters eventually get too old to be interested in anything except to sit out in the sun.”

C’baoth’s forehead darkened. “Have a care, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he warned. “Or perhaps I’ll seek challenge in your destruction.”

“That would hardly be a challenge for a man of your skill and power,” Thrawn countered with a shrug. “But then, you probably already have other Jedi here under your command.”

C’baoth frowned, obviously thrown by the sudden change in subject. “Other Jedi?” he echoed.

“Of course. Surely it’s only fitting that a Jedi Master have lesser Jedi serving beneath him. Jedi whom he may teach and command and punish at will.”

Something like a shadow crossed C’baoth’s face. “There are no Jedi left,” he murmured. “The Emperor and Vader hunted them down and destroyed them.”

“Not all of them,” Thrawn told him softly. “Two new Jedi have arisen in the past five years: Luke Skywalker and his sister, Leia Organa Solo.”

“And what is that to me?”

“I can deliver them to you.”

For a long minute C’baoth stared at him, disbelief and desire struggling for supremacy on his face. The desire won. “Both of them?”

“Both of them,” Thrawn nodded. “Consider what a man of your skill could do with brand-new Jedi. Mold them, change them, re-create them in any image you chose.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And with them would come a very special bonus . . . because Leia Organa Solo is pregnant. With twins.”

C’baoth inhaled sharply. “Jedi twins?” he hissed.

“They have the potential, or so my sources tell me.” Thrawn smiled. “Of course, what they ultimately became would be entirely up to you.”

C’baoth’s eyes darted to Pellaeon; back to Thrawn. Slowly, deliberately, he stood up. “Very well, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” he said. “In return for the Jedi, I will assist your forces. Take me to your ship.”

“In time, Master C’baoth,” Thrawn said, getting to his feet himself. “First we must go into the Emperor’s mountain. This bargain is dependent on whether I find what I’m looking for there.”

“Of course.” C’baoth’s eyes flashed. “Let us both hope,” he said warningly, “that you do.”

It took seven hours of searching, through a mountain fortress much larger than Pellaeon had expected. But in the end, they did indeed find the treasures Thrawn had hoped for. The cloaking shield . . . and that other small, almost trivial, bit of technology.

The door to the Grand Admiral’s command room slid open; settling himself, Pellaeon stepped inside. “A word with you, Admiral?”

“Certainly, Captain,” Thrawn said from his seat in the center of the double display circle. “Come in. Has there been any update from the Imperial Palace?”

“No, sir, not since yesterday’s,” Pellaeon said as he walked to the edge of the outer circle, silently rehearsing one last time how he was going to say this. “I can request one, if you’d like.”

“Probably unnecessary,” Thrawn shook his head. “It looks like the details of the Bimmisaari trip have been more or less settled. All we have to do is alert one of the commando groups-Team Eight, I think-and we’ll have our Jedi.”

“Yes, sir.” Pellaeon braced himself. “Admiral . . . I have to tell you that I’m not convinced dealing with C’baoth is a good idea. To be perfectly honest, I don’t think he’s entirely sane.”

Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. “Of course he’s not sane. But then, he’s not Jorus C’baoth, either.”

Pellaeon felt his mouth fall open. “What?”

“Jorus C’baoth is dead,” Thrawn said. “He was one of the six Jedi Masters aboard the Old Republic’s Outbound Flight project. I don’t know if you were highly enough placed back then to have known about it.”

“I heard rumors,” Pellaeon frowned, thinking back. “Some sort of grand effort to extend the Old Republic’s authority outside the galaxy, as I recall, launched just before the Clone Wars broke out. I never heard anything more about it.”

“That’s because there wasn’t anything more to be heard,” Thrawn said evenly. “It was intercepted by a task force outside Old Republic space and destroyed.”

Pellaeon stared at him, a shiver running up his back. “How do you know?”

Thrawn raised his eyebrows. “Because I was the force’s commander. Even at that early date the Emperor recognized that the Jedi had to be exterminated. Six Jedi Masters aboard the same ship was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Pellaeon licked his lips. “But then . . . ?”

“Who is it we’ve brought aboard the Chimaera?” Thrawn finished the question for him. “I should have thought that obvious. Joruus C’baoth-note the telltale mispronunciation of the name Jorus-is a clone.”

Pellaeon stared at him. “A clone?”

“Certainly,” Thrawn said. “Created from a tissue sample, probably sometime just before the real C’baoth’s death.”

“Early in the war, in other words,” Pellaeon said, swallowing hard. The early clones-or at least those the fleet had faced-had been highly unstable, both mentally and emotionally. Sometimes spectacularly so . . . “And you deliberately brought this thing aboard my ship?” he demanded.

“Would you rather we have brought back a full-fledged Dark Jedi?” Thrawn asked coldly. “A second Darth Vader, perhaps, with the sort of ambitions and power that might easily lead him to take over your ship? Count your blessings, Captain.”

“At least a Dark Jedi would have been predictable,” Pellaeon countered.

“C’baoth is predictable enough,” Thrawn assured him. “And for those times when he isn’t-” He waved a hand at the half dozen frameworks encircling his command center. “That’s what the ysalamiri are for.”

Pellaeon grimaced. “I still don’t like it, Admiral. We can hardly protect the ship from him while at the same time having him coordinate the fleet’s attacks.”

“There’s a degree of risk involved,” Thrawn agreed. “But risk has always been an inescapable part of warfare. In this case, the potential benefits far outweigh the potential dangers.”

Reluctantly, Pellaeon nodded. He didn’t like it-was fairly certain he would never like it-but it was clear that Thrawn had made up his mind. “Yes, sir,” he muttered. “You mentioned a message to Team Eight. Will you be wanting me to transmit that?”

“No, I’ll handle it myself.” Thrawn smiled sardonically. “Their glorious leader, and all that-you know how Noghri are. If there’s nothing more . . . ?”

It was, clearly, a dismissal. “No, sir,” Pellaeon said. “I’ll be on the bridge if you require me.” He turned to go.

“It will bring us victory, Captain,” the Grand Admiral called softly after him. “Quiet your fears, and concentrate on that.”

If it doesn’t kill us all. “Yes, sir,” Pellaeon said aloud, and left the room.

Han finished his report, sat back, and waited for the criticism to start.

It was a very short wait. “So once again your smuggler friends refuse to commit themselves,” Admiral Ackbar said, sounding more than a little disgusted. His high-domed head bobbed twice in some indecipherable Calamarian gesture, his huge eyes blinking in time with the head movements. “You’ll recall that I disagreed with this idea all along,” he added, waving a webbed hand toward Han’s report case.

Han glanced across the table at Leia. “It’s not a matter of commitment, Admiral,” he told the other. “It’s a matter that most of them just don’t see any real gain in switching from their current activities to straight shipping.”

“Or else it’s a lack of trust,” a melodic alien voice put in. “Could that be it?”

Han grimaced before he could stop himself. “It’s possible,” he said, forcing himself to look at Borsk Fey’lya.

“Possible?” Fey’lya’s violet eyes widened, the fine cream-colored fur covering his body rippling slightly with the motion. It was a Bothan gesture of polite surprise, one which Fey’lya seemed to use a lot. “You said possible, Captain Solo?”

Han sighed quietly and gave up. Fey’lya would only maneuver him into saying it some other way if he didn’t. “Some of the groups I’ve talked to don’t trust us,” he conceded. “They think the offer might be some sort of trap to bring them out into the open.”

“Because of me, of course,” Ackbar growled, his normal salmon color turning a little darker. “Haven’t you tired of retaking this same territory, Councilor Fey’lya?”

Fey’lya’s eyes widened again, and for a moment he gazed silently at Ackbar as the tension around the table quickly rose to the level of thick paste. They had never liked each other, Han knew, not from the day Fey’lya had first brought his sizable faction of the Bothan race into the Alliance after the Battle of Yavin. Right from the start Fey’lya had been jockeying for position and power, cutting deals wherever and whenever he could and making it abundantly clear that he expected to be given a high position in the fledgling political system Mon Mothma was putting together. Ackbar had considered such ambitions to be a dangerous waste of time and effort, particularly given the bleak situation the Alliance was facing at the time, and with typical bluntness had made no effort to conceal that opinion.