Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight

The battle had been over for nearly three hours, and Car’das was starting to get seriously bored when he finally heard the rhythmic tapping at his back.

He half turned over and rapped the same pattern with the edge of the macrobinoculars. Then, turning back around to face the stars, he worked the kinks out of his muscles and waited.

It came in a sudden flurry of activity. Behind him, the door to his prison popped open and he felt the sudden tugging of vacuum at his lungs and face as the air pressure in his bubble exploded outward, shoving him backward out into the corridor.

He caught a glimpse of vac-suited figures surrounding him as he was enveloped in a tangle of sticky cloth. Before he could do more than scrabble his fingertips against it in an effort to push it away from his face there was a harsh hissing in his ears, and the cloth receded from him in all directions.

And a moment later he found himself floating inside a transparent rescue ball.

“Whoa,” he muttered, wincing as his ears popped painfully with the returning air pressure.

“Are you all right?” a familiar voice asked from a comlink connected to the ball’s oxygen tank.

“Yes, Commander, thank you,” he assured the other. “I gather it all worked as planned?”

“Yes,” Thrawn confirmed, his voice carrying an odd tinge of sadness to it. “For the most part.”

One of the other rescuers leaned close, and to his surprise Car’das saw that it was the human who’d introduced himself aboard the Darkvenge as Commander Stratis. “Car’das?

” Stratis demanded, frowning through the plastic. “What are you doing here?”

“Luring the Vagaari into my trap, of course,” Thrawn said, as if it were obvious. “Or had you forgotten that the Chiss do not engage in preemptive attacks?”

“I see,” Stratis said, still eyeing Car’das. “So those spy accusations you were throwing around aboard the Darkvenge were nothing but smoke? Something to cover you in case the whole thing fell apart?”

“It was protection, yes, but not for me,” Thrawn said.

He gestured, and the rest of the group began maneuvering Car’das’s rescue ball down the corridor. “It was to protect Admiral Ar’alani, the officer commanding the transport that arrived an hour ago to take the freed Geroon slaves back to their world.”

“And who couldn’t afford to be even unofficially involved in any of this,” Stratis said, nodding. “But who could make sure to look the other way at all the right times, leaving you and Car’das to take the blame if anything went wrong.”

“Never mind the blame,” Car’das put in. “What happened with Outbound Flight? I saw the starfighters take off after it.”

Thrawn and Stratis exchanged looks. “We were forced to go farther than I’d hoped,” Thrawn said.

Car’das felt his heart freeze in his chest. “How much farther?”

“They’re dead,” Thrawn said quietly. “All of them.”

There was a long silence. Car’das looked away, his eyes catching glimpses of dead Vagaari as the Chiss continued carrying him along. Thrawn had abandoned his attack on known slavers and murderers to destroy thousands of innocent people?

“There wasn’t any choice,” Stratis said into his numbness. “C’baoth was using his Jedi power to try and strangle the commander. There was no other way to stop him.”

“Did you ever give them a chance to just leave and go home?” Car’das retorted.

“Yes,” Thrawn said.

“More than just one chance,” Stratis added. “More than I would have offered them, in fact. And if it matters any, I was the one who actually pushed the button.”

Car’das grimaced. On one level, it did matter. On another, it didn’t. “You’re sure there aren’t any survivors?”

“The Dreadnaughts were taken out by radiation bombs,” Stratis told him. “We haven’t actually sent anyone over yet to check, but if the commander’s weapons stats are accurate there’s no way anyone could have lived through that.”

“So you got what you wanted after all,” Car’das said, feeling suddenly very tired. “You must be happy.”

Stratis looked away. “I’m content,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I’m happy.”

“Well?” Kav demanded as Doriana stripped off his vac suit in the privacy of one of the Springhawk‘s prep rooms. “I hear no wailings of despair for the fallen captain.”

“That’s because the captain isn’t fallen,” Doriana said.

“I never had an opportunity.”

“Did not have one?” Kav asked. “Or did not make one?”

“I never had one,” Doriana repeated coldly. He was not in the mood for this. “You want to try to assassinate a military commander in front of his men, you go right ahead.”

He finished undressing in silence. “Yet he must die,”

Kav said as Doriana began pulling on his own clothing. “He knows too much about our part in what has happened.”

“Mitth’raw’nuruodo is no ordinary alien,” Doriana pointed out. “And there’s still a matter of finding an opportunity.”

“Or of making one.” Stepping close, Kav pressed something into Doriana’s hand. “Here.”

Puzzled, Doriana looked down. One glance was all it took. “Where did you get this?” he hissed as he hurriedly closed his hand around the small hold-out blaster.

“I have always had it,” Kav said. “The shot is small and hard to see, but highly intense. It will kill quickly and quietly.”

And would condemn Doriana in double-quick time if he was caught with it. Feeling a sudden sheen of sweat breaking out beneath his collar, he slipped the weapon out of sight into a pocket. “Just let me handle the timing,” he warned the other. “Idon’t want you hovering around like an expectant mother avian.”

“Do not worry,” Kav growled. “Where is the commander now?”

“Gone to the transport ship to talk to the admiral,”

Doriana said, finishing with his tunic and starting to pull on his boots. “Car’das went with him.”

And that was another problem, he reminded himself soberly. Like Mitth’raw’nuruodo, Car’das knew far too much about what had happened out here. And unlike the Chiss, he definitely would soon be traveling back to the Republic. After he dealt with Mitth’raw’nuruodo, Doriana would have to make equally sure that Car’das never told his story to the wrong people.

The rescued Geroons had been herded into the cargo bay, the only place aboard the transport big enough to hold them all. Most were sitting cross-legged in small groups, talking quietly among themselves, the most recent arrivals still working on the food sticks and hot drinks Admiral Ar’alani’s warriors had provided them. All of them looked a little dazed, as if having trouble believing they were actually free of the Vagaari.

Standing to the side just inside one of the bay doors, trying to stay out of the way of both the Geroons and the Chiss crewers moving about them, Car’das looked out at the multitude, his heart and mind fatigued beyond anything he’d ever experienced. A thousand times in the past day he’d wondered what he was doing in the middle of this whole thing; wondered how in the galaxy Thrawn had managed to talk him into playing bait for the Vagaari.

But it had worked. It had all worked. The Geroons had been freed, not only these particular slaves but probably their entire world as well. Admiral Ar’alani had already said that when the transport returned the slaves to their home she would bring along a task force of Chiss warships for protection. Any Vagaari still hanging around the system wouldn’t be lunging around there for long.

And as for Outbound Flight…

He closed his eves. Fifty thousand people dead, the entire populace of the six Dreadnaughts. Had that really been necessary? Stratis had said it had, and Thrawn hadn’t contradicted him. But had that really been the only way?