Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight

And through the swirling combat drifted the debris and bodies and dead hulks of perhaps twenty more ships.

This wasn’t a pirate attack. This was a war.

“Interesting,” Thrawn murmured. “I seem to have miscalculated.”

“No kidding,” Car’das said, the words coming out like an amphibian’s croak. He wanted to tear his eyes away from the carnage but found himself unable to do so. “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.”

“No, you misunderstand,” Thrawn said. “I knew the battle would be of this scale. What I hadn’t realized was the Vagaari’s true nature.” He pointed through the canopy at the distant cluster of ships. “You see those other vessels?”

“The ones waiting their turn to fight?”

“They’re not here to fight,” Thrawn corrected him.

“Those are the civilians.”

“Civilians?” Car’das peered out at the distant points oflight. “How can you tell?”

“By the way they’re grouped in defensive posture, with true war vessels set in screening positions around them,” Thrawn said. “The error I spoke of was that the Vagaari aren’t simply a strong, well-organized pirate force. They’re a completely nomadic species.”

“Is that a problem?” Maris asked. She was gazing calmly at the panorama, Car’das noted with a touch of resentment, almost as calmly as she’d faced the piles of bodies aboard the Vagaari treasure ship.

“Very much so,” Thrawn told her, his voice grim.

“Because it implies in turn that all their construction, support, and maintenance facilities are completely mobile.”

“So?” Car’das asked.

“So it will do us no good to capture one of the attackers and use its navigational system to locate their homeworld,”

Thrawn said patiently. “There is no homeworld.” He gestured out at the battle. “Unless we can destroy all of their war vessels at once, they will simply melt away into the vastness of interstellar space and regroup.”

Car’das looked at Maris, feeling a fresh wave of tension ripple through him. A bare handful of ships at his disposal, and he was talking about destroying an entire alien war machine?

“Uh, Commander…”

“Calm yourself, Car’das,” Thrawn said soothingly. “I don’t propose to destroy them here and now. Interesting.” He pointed out into the melee. “Those two damaged defenders, the ones trying to escape. You see them?”

“No,” Car’das said, looking around. As far as he could tell, no part of the battle area looked any different from any other part.

“Over there,” Maris said. Pulling him close to her, she stretched out her arm for him to sight along. “Those two shipsheading to starboard with a triangle of fighters behind them.”

“Okay, right,” Car’das said as he finally spotted them.

“What about them?”

“Why haven’t they jumped to hyperspace?” Thrawn asked. “Their engines and hyperdrives appear intact.”

“Maybe they feel it would be dishonorable to abandon their world,” Maris suggested.

“Then why run at all?” Car’das said, frowning at the scenario. The fighters were rapidly closing, and the escapers were already far enough outside the planet’s gravitational field to make the jump to lightspeed. There was no reason he could see how further delay would gain them anything.

“Car’das is correct,” Thrawn said. “I wonder… there!”

Abruptly, with a flicker of pseudomotion, the lead ship had made the jump to safety. A moment later, the second also flickered and vanished.

“I don’t get it,” Car’das said, frowning as the pursuing fighters broke off and curved back toward the main part of the battle. “What were they waiting for? Clearance?”

“In a sense, yes,” Thrawn said. “Clearance from the laws of physics.”

“But they were already clear of the planet’s gravity field.”

“From the planet’s field, yes,” Thrawn said. “But not from the Vagaari’s.”

He looked up at them again, a glitter in his glowing eyes. “It appears the Vagaari have learned how to create a pseudogravfield.”

Car’das felt his jaw drop. “I didn’t even know that was possible.”

“The theory’s been around for years,” Maris said, her voice suddenly thoughtful. “We used to talk about it at school.

But it’s always required too much energy and too big a generator configuration to be practical.”

“It would seem the Vagaari have solved both problems,” Thrawn said.

Car’das gave him a sideways look. There was something in the commander’s voice and expression that he didn’t care for at all. “And this means what to us?” he asked cautiously.

Thrawn gestured at the canopy. “The Vagaari are obviously using it to keep their prey from escaping until they can be obliterated. I think perhaps I could find more interesting uses for such a device.”

Car’das felt his stomach tighten. “No. Oh, no. You wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Thrawn countered, his eves sweeping methodically across the battle scene. “Their main attention is clearly elsewhere, and whatever defenses they have around their gravity projectors will be arrayed against a possible sortie from their victims.”

“You assume.”

“I saw how they defended their treasure ship,” Thrawn reminded him. “I believe I have a good sense for their tactics.”

Which, translated, meant that Car’das had zero chance of talking him out of this lunatic scheme. “Maris?”

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “Besides, he’s right. If we want to grab a projector, this is the time to do it.”

Something cold settled into the pit of Car’das’s stomach. We? Was Maris starting to actually identify herself with these aliens?

“There,” Thrawn said abruptly, pointing. “That large spherical gridwork.”

“I see it,” Car’das said with a sigh of resignation. The sphere was near the Chiss edge of the battle, where they could get to it without haying to charge halfway through the fighting.

There were three large warships hovering protectively between it and the main combat area, but only a handful of Vagaari fighters actually within combat range of it.

A tempting, practically undefended target. Of course Thrawn was going to go for it. “I’d just like to remind everyone that all we have is the Springhawk and six heavy fighters,” he pointed out.

“And Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Maris murmured.

Thrawn inclined his head to her, then swiveled around toward the port side of the bridge. “Tactical analysis?”

“We’ve located five more of the projectors, Commander,” the Chiss at the sensor station reported. “All are at the edges of the battle area, all more or less equally well defended.”

“Analysis of the projector layout and the jump pattern of the escaped vessels indicates the gravity shadow is roughly cone-shaped,” another added.

“Are the three defending war vessels within the cone?”

Thrawn asked.

“Yes, sir.” The Chiss touched a key and an overlay appeared on the canopy, showing a wide, pale blue cone stretching outward from the gridwork sphere into the battle zone.

“As you see, the three main defenders are inside the cone, which limits their options,” Thrawn pointed out to Car’das and Maris. “And all three vessels are positioned with their main drives pointing toward the projector. Years of success with thistechnique has apparently made them overconfident.”

“Though those close-in fighters are dipping in and out of the cone,” Car’das pointed out.

“They won’t be a problem,” Thrawn said. “Does the projector itself appear collapsible?”

“Unable to obtain design details at this distance without using active sensors,” the Chiss at the sensor station reported.