Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight

He went to bed early that night, but it didn’t do him any good. He spent most of the night thinking and worrying, his sleep coming in short, nightmare-filled dozings. Like the eerie calm before the bursting of a massive storm, he knew the quiet of the past couple of days was about to end.

Midmorning on that third day, it did.

“No,” Car’das said firmly, meeting Ar’alani’s glowing eyes as calmly as he could. “We’re not spies. Not for the Republic, not for anyone else.”

“Then what precisely did Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo mean by his accusation?” the admiral countered. “And don’t deny he said it. I have the sworn statements of the two warriors who were present at the time.”

“I don’t deny it,” Car’das said, his eyes flicking to Thrass. The syndic was standing silently a few steps behind Ar’alani, his expression harder even than the admiral’s. Perhaps he knew better than she did what a charge of harboring spies would mean to his brother’s career. “But I also can’t explain it.

Maybe he was trying to confuse the Trade Federation commanders.”

“Commanders who have apparently vanished,” Ar’alani said pointedly. “Along with an apparently intact alien warship.”

“I don’t know anything about that, either,” Car’das insisted. “All I know is what I’ve already told you: we’re merchants who had a hyperdrive accident and lost our way. Ask the rest of my crew if you don’t believe me.”

“Oh, I will,” Ar’alani assured him. “In the meantime, you’re confined to your quarters. Dismissed.”

For a moment Car’das was tempted to remind her that he was still under Thrawn’s authority, not hers, and that she couldn’t simply order him around. But only for a moment.

Turning, he stalked out of the room.

But he didn’t go to his quarters. The Chiss warriors were used to seeing him roaming freely around the base, and it hadn’t sounded like Ar’alani would make any official pronouncements to the contrary until after she’d interrogated Qennto and Maris.

He had that long to make his escape.

The shuttle was still parked where it had been the previous day. There were a few Chiss working in the area, but the time for subterfuge was long past. Striding along like he owned the place, Car’das stepped through the hatchway into the shuttle, sealed it, and headed forward.

The vessel was a civilian model, with a simpler and quicker start-up procedure than a military ship would have had.

Within five minutes he had the systems up and running. Five minutes more, and he had disengaged from the docking clamps and was making his way carefully down the tunnel.

No one followed him out. He looked around as he reached open space, half expecting to see the intact Trade Federation battleship lurking in the shadow of one of the other asteroids. But it was nowhere to be seen.

Not that it mattered. He knew where he was going, and there was no one now who could stop him. Turning the shuttle onto the proper vector, he hit the hyperdrive control and made the jump to lightspeed. The next stop, assuming he’d properly programmed in the Springhawk‘s nav data, would be the alien system where he, Thrawn, and Maris had witnessed the Vagaari attack five weeks ago. With luck, that campaign would be over.

With even more luck, the Vagaari would still be there.

Six hours later, he emerged from hyperspace to find that the battle was indeed over.

The defenders had put up a spirited defense, he saw as he eased the shuttle carefully through the debris. Blackened hulks were everywhere, floating amid bits of hull and hatch and engine. There were bodies, too. Far too many bodies.

Not that their sacrifice had done them any good. There were dozens of Vagaari ships orbiting the planet, nestled up to it like carrion avians around a fresh corpse. Most were the bubble-hulled warships they’d seen in the battle, but there were also a number of the civilian transports that had been waiting for the fighting to end. A steady stream of smaller ships weremoving in and out of the atmosphere, no doubt bringing plunder and slaves up to the orbiting ships and then heading down for a fresh load. Briefly, an image flashed into Car’das’s mind of streams of hive insects zeroing in on a dropped bit of rowel picnic salad…

A floating body bounced gently off the shuttle’s canopy, jarring him back to reality. If he had any brains, he knew, he would turn the shuttle around right now and head back to Crustai to take his chances with Admiral Ar’alani. Or else he should abandon Qennto and Maris completely and make a run for Republic space.

Swearing gently under his breath, he turned toward the largest of the orbiting warships and headed in.

Even with most of their attention on their looting, the Vagaari were cautious enough to protect their backs. The half a dozen roving fighters intercepted him before he’d covered even a quarter of the distance, and suddenly his comm crackled with melodious but evil-sounding alien speech. “I don’t understand your language,” Car’das replied in Sy Bisti. “Do you speak Sy Bisti?”

The only response was more alien speech. “How about Minnisiat?” he asked, switching to his newest trade language.

“Can anyone there understand Minnisiat?”

There was a short pause. “State your name, your species, and your intentions,” the alien voice came back, mouthing the trade language with some difficulty.

“My name is Jorj Car’das,” Car’das told him. “I’m a human from a world called Corellia.” He took a deep breath. “I’m here to offer you a deal.”

The fighters escorted him to one of the smaller warships, directing him to a starboard docking bay. A group of heavily armed and armored guards was waiting there for him: short bipeds with large hands, their features hidden byfaceplates lavishly decorated to look like fright masks. They took him to a small room loaded with sensor equipment, where he was stripped, searched, and scanned multiple times, his clothing taken away presumably for similar scrutiny. The shuttle, he had no doubt, was undergoing a similar examination. Afterward, he was taken to another room, this one bare of everything except a cot, and left there alone.

He spent most of the next two hours either trying to rest or else giving up the effort and pacing back and forth across his cell. If the Vagaari were smart, the thought kept running along the back of his mind, they would simply kill him and go on with their looting. An avian in the hand, after all, was a pretty universal maxim.

But maybe, just maybe, they would be greedy as well as smart. Greedy, and curious.

Two hours after he’d been tossed into his cell, the guards returned with his clothing. They watched him dress, then marched him out and along a corridor to a hatch marked with alien symbols. Beyond the hatch, to his relief, was a shuttle and not simply a quick death by spacing. They nudged him inside and piled in behind him, and a minute later they were off. The shuttle had no viewports, giving him no clue as to where they were going, but when the hatch opened again it was to a double row of Vagaari soldiers in fancier uniform armor than his captors. Apparently, someone in authority had decided to see him.

He’d expected to be taken someplace small and cramped and anonymous, as befit a proper interrogation. It was therefore a shock when the final blast door opened into a large chamber that rivaled the most elaborate groundside throne rooms he’d ever seen. Against the back wall was a raised dais with an exquisitely decorated chair in the center, occupied by a Vagaari clad in a heavy-looking multicolored robe with sunburst shoulder and ankle guards, a serrated cloak back, and no fewer than four separate belts around his waist. Flanking him were a pair of Vagaari in only slightly less gaudy robes—advisers or other underlings, probably. All three wore tall wraparound facemasks that reached from cheekbones to probably a dozen centimeters above the tops of their heads, decorated in the same fearsome pattern as the soldiers’ combat faceplates. A cynical thought flickered through Car’das’s mind, that the height of the masks was probably designed to compensate for the species’