Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight

Chaf’orm’bintrano snorted. “What consequences?”

“To begin with, the Eighth Family will not permit a Trial-born to simply renounce his affiliation,” Thrawn said.

“They’ll insist on a hearing… and I don’t believe they’ll let me go.

Not when they see the prize I’ll be bringing them.”

Chaf’orm’bintrano stiffened. “You wouldn’t dare,” he rumbled, his voice dark with menace. “If Outbound Flight reappears at an Eighth Family stronghold—”

“Outbound Flight is gone,” Thrawn cut him off. “And I refer to another technology entirely.” He waved a hand out at the stars. “To be specific, the device I used to bring both Outbound Flight and the Vagaari fleet out of hyperspace.”

Chaf’orm’bintrano sent a startled look at Ar’alani.

“The—? Are you saying they didn’t come here of their own choosing?”

“The choosing was mine alone,” Thrawn assured him.

“I can provide you a demonstration if you’d like.”

“That device is not your property,” Ar’alani warned, her neutral expression suddenly gone. “It belongs to the Chiss Defense Fleet.”

“And if I remain a member of the Expansionary Fleet, I will of course turn it over to you,” Thrawn assured her. “But if my military position is revoked, I will no longer have any official loyalty except to my adoptive family. At that point…” He left the sentence unfinished.

Chaf’orm’bintrano was clearly having no trouble connecting the dots. “Admiral, you can’t permit him to manipulate you this way,” he insisted. “This is nothing less than extortion.”

“This is nothing less than reality,” Thrawn corrected.

“And Admiral Ar’alani has nothing to say about it. You’re the one threatening to revoke my position.”

For a long minute the two Chiss locked eyes. Then, abruptly, Chaf’orm’bintrano turned and stalked out of the conference room.

“That didn’t look good,” Doriana murmured.

“Actually, it was,” Car’das said, looking at Thrawn. “At least, I think so.”

“Yes,” Thrawn confirmed, his face and body sagging a little. “He’s furious, but he doesn’t dare revoke my position now.”

He looked at Ar’alani. “And once the Defense Fleet has the gravfield projector, I’m certain they’ll protect me from any future efforts on his part.”

Ar’alani’s lips twitched. “We’ll do what we can,” she said. “But understand this, Commander. If you continue to act outside the legal boundaries set by the Defense Fleet and the Nine Families, there may come a point where we can no longer stand with you.”

“I understand,” Thrawn said. “Understand in turn that I will continue to protect my people in whatever way I deem necessary.”

“I would expect nothing less from you,” Ar’alani said.

Her eyes flicked once to Doriana and Car’das. “I release your prisoners to you. Return to Crustai, and leave me to deal with the rest of the Vagaari debris.”

“I obey,” Thrawn said, bowing his head to her. “The gravfield projector will be waiting for you at Crustai whenever you wish to retrieve it.”

Ar’alani bowed in return and left the room.

Thrawn took a deep breath. “And with that, I believe it’s finally over,” he said. “A shuttle is waiting to take us back to the Springhawk.” He gestured to Doriana. “And then I will return you and Vicelord Kav to your vessel.”

“Thank you,” Doriana said. “We’re looking forward to returning home.”

And as they filed out of the room, Car’das wondered at the odd stiffness in Doriana’s back.

They were passing through one of the systems midway through the star cluster when the hyperdrive finally died. “No chance of fixing it?” Thrass asked.

Lorana shook her head. “Not by me,” she said.

“Possibly not by anyone, at least outside of a major shipyard.”

Thrass gazed out the canopy at the distant sun. “You have five other Dreadnaughts here, each with its own hyperdrive,” he reminded her. “Could we move across to one of the others and use its systems?”

Lorana rubbed her forehead, wincing as the pressure accentuated the throbbing pain behind her eyes. “According to the status readings back in ComOps, none of the other hyperdrives is operational,” she said. “And all the control lines to the other Dreadnaughts are down, besides. Whatever your brother used to… to stop C’baoth’s attack, it scorched a great deal of the delicate equipment aboard. It’s going to take months, maybe even years, to tear them apart and fix them.”

Thrass tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the edge of the nearest console. “Then this system is where we stop,” he said.

“We’ll shut down the drive, take the Delta-Twelve craft you spoke of, and go try to make a bargain for your people.”

“I don’t think we should shut down the drive,” Lorana said, trying to think. “The shape it’s in, if we shut it down we might not be able to start it up again.”

“But if we don’t shut it down, Outbound Flight won’t take long to travel all the way through this system,” Thrass pointed out. “We could be away for a month or more negotiating with the Defense Force and Nine Families. By that time, the vessel could have passed into interstellar space, where we would have difficulty locating it.”

And if the hyperdrives proved unfixable, interstellar space would be where Outbound Flight would remain. “Then we’d better find someplace here where we can park for a while,”

she said. “A nice, high orbit around one of the planets, say. Let’s fire up what’s left of the sensors and see what our choices are.”

The survey took most of two hours. In the end, there turned out to be only one viable alternative.

“It’s smaller than I’d hoped for,” Thrass said as they leaned side by side over the main sensor console. “Less gravity means less stability to the orbit from the perturbations of passing objects.”

“But it also means less atmosphere that might cause the orbit to decay,” Lorana pointed out. “And it’s almost directly along our vector, which means no fancy maneuvering to get us there. I say we go for it.”

“Agreed,” Thrass said. “Let’s hope the drive holds out that long.”

They had reached the target planetoid and were on their final approach to orbit when the drive gave one final surge and shut down.

“Report,” Lorana bit out as she stretched out with the Force, trying unsuccessfully to coax the system back to life.

“Thrass?”

“The red curve bends too far inward,” Thrass reported tightly from the nav console. “Fifteen orbits from now, it intersects the surface.”

A wave of despair rose like acid in Lorana’s throat.

Resolutely, she forced it down. After all they’d been through, Outbound Flight was not going to end up destroying itself. Not now. “Get to the sensor station,” she ordered him. “See if there’s a place—any place—where we might be able to land this thing.”

“This vessel was not designed with landing in mind,”

Thrass warned as he hurried to the proper console. “Could we possibly still make orbit?”

“I’m working on it,” Lorana said, crossing to the cluster of engineering monitors and searching among the red lights for something that might still be showing green. Two of the forward braking and maneuvering jets, she saw, were stilloperative. If they could somehow rotate Outbound Flight 180 degrees and then use those jets to give them a boost along their current vector…

They had slipped into the planetoid’s gravitational field and used up the first of their fifteen orbits before she reluctantly concluded that such a maneuver wouldn’t be possible.

There was simply too much mass to be moved, and too little time in which to move it. “No luck,” she said, stepping to Thrass’s side. “You find anything?”