Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil

“I sure hope so,” Wutroow said, putting some caution into her voice. “Any of this gets back to the admiral and I’ll be up to my neck in rabid growzers. You know the type.”

“All too well,” Roscu said. “So she’s gotten more vindictive in her old age, has she? Good. Let her past eat her from the inside.”

“Trust me, her past is having a fine meal,” Wutroow assured her. “Come on, don’t keep me in suspense—she could be back any minute. What’s going on?”

“The short version: When she was my commander, she covered up a serious policy violation by one of her officers,” Roscu said. “I called them both on it and had them brought up on charges. They both managed to skate free, but I imagine it made a nice mark on her perfect record. She’s resented me ever since.”

Ar’alani sighed silently. She hadn’t resented Roscu then, and she didn’t resent her now. But Roscu apparently saw things differently.

So which one of them, exactly, was being eaten from the inside?

“Wow,” Wutroow said, sounding awed. “And she was your superior? That takes a lot of courage.”

“It just takes conviction and integrity,” Roscu said. “Something the people who covered for her and Thrawn apparently missed out on. But that’s all right. Let her have her nice white uniform and her ship and no family. I hope I was at least a bump along that road.”

“Given her reaction just now, I’d say you were more than just a bump,” Wutroow said. “Though it doesn’t much matter where you are on the command ladder right now, not with whatever the hell is going on. At least you just have the Clarr family to take care of and won’t be getting caught in any crossfires. So what is going on? You have any idea?”

“Of course I do,” Roscu said disdainfully. “I’m not surprised Csilla hasn’t figured it out yet. But then, they’re the same people who were blind to Ar’alani and Thrawn. Now they’re just as blind to the Dasklo.”

“Blind is blind, and a lot of people never learn,” Wutroow agreed. “So what are the Dasklo up to this time?”

“Just more of their usual conniving,” Roscu said. “They’re letting this Jixtus alien get everyone worked up and looking at everyone else while they secretly build their family fleet up past the legal limits.”

“Sounds nasty,” Wutroow said. “They’re figuring to take out the Clarr once and for all, I suppose?”

“Or at least knock us down,” Roscu said. “Maybe even try to push us out of the Nine.”

“That’s crazy,” Wutroow protested. “Your family fleets are the same size, aren’t they? How do they think they can go up against you?”

“Weren’t you listening?” Roscu growled. “I said they’re going to build up their fleet. Only it’s not going to look like they’re doing it.”

“Sorry, but you’ve lost me.”

“It’s very simple,” Roscu said patiently. “They’re going to look like they’ve got lots of help. They’re going to come at us pretending the Erighal, Pommrio, and Xodlak are supporting them.”

“That’s exactly what Jixtus has been saying,” Wutroow said eagerly, as if her slower brain had finally managed to latch onto something important. “He said the Dasklo are building an alliance with those three families.”

“That’s what he says,” Roscu said. “Maybe even what he thinks. But he’s wrong. There will be lots of ships with the Dasklo when the attack comes, but they won’t be from the Erighal or anyone else. They’ll all be Dasklo.”

Wutroow raised her eyebrows questioningly at Ar’alani. Ar’alani shrugged back. Ask her, she mouthed.

Wutroow nodded acknowledgment. “Sorry, but you’ve lost me again,” she said to Roscu.

“It’s very simple,” Roscu said again, her patient tone shifting into the patronizing mode that Ar’alani remembered driving all the rest of the Parala’s officers crazy. “The Dasklo are making fake Erighal patrol ships.”

“They’re what? How?”

“With a little sleight of hand, and a lot of sheer audacity,” Roscu said, clearly enjoying Wutroow’s apparent astonishment in the face of Roscu’s own superior knowledge and intellect. “Patrol ships all have the same basic hull, after all. You pick up someone else’s ship, copy the crest and family design ornamentation onto a freshly built ship of your own, and there’s your fake.”

“But if they were caught—no, that can’t be,” Wutroow said. “How could they get away with it? They’d never get away with it.”

“They already have,” Roscu said, her voice now going dark. “No one on Csilla would ever notice, but two of the alleged Erighal patrol ships that attacked our freighters at Jamiron were exact duplicates of each other. Obviously supposed to make us think the Erighal have gone rogue; just as obviously built by the Dasklo.”