Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil

“Captain Roscu—”

“They’ve cut off comm, Senior Captain,” Shrent said. “I’ll try to get them back.”

“What was that all about?” Apros asked, frowning at Ziinda.

“No idea,” Ziinda said, the back of her neck tingling. There was something very wrong here. “Mid Commander Shrent?”

Shrent shook his head. “Sorry, ma’am. They’re not responding.”

“Those two Dasklo destroyers are still moving toward her,” Wikivv said. “Maybe she’s talking to them.”

“There’s no evidence of any comm activity from the Orisson,” Shrent said.

“Apros, pull up the specs on that ship,” Ziinda said. “I want to know its towing limit.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Apros said, working his questis. “Do you want me to check on Mitth spy platforms, too?”

“Get me the Orisson’s towing limit first,” Ziinda said. “Wikivv, I’m seeing an aspect change. What are they doing?”

“Looks like a yaw-pitch rotation, ma’am,” the pilot reported. “Seem to be lining up on a new outward vector.”

“Vimsk, track along the Orisson’s likely vector cone,” Ziinda ordered. “I want to know what they’re aiming for.”

“The Dasklo destroyers are picking up speed,” Wikivv said. “I’m guessing they’ve spotted the turn, too.”

“Afraid that Roscu is going to cut and run,” Apros commented. “Here’s the towing data, Senior Captain.”

“That’s not the plan I was hearing from her,” Ziinda said, looking at her chair displays as Apros’s numbers appeared. As she’d expected, the Orisson could tow pretty much anything up to a medium-large freighter.

So how big was this Mitth spy platform she thought she was seeing? “Vimsk, what have you got?”

“There are no likely systems along that vector cone,” Vimsk said. “In-system, none of the planets line up. There are a few asteroids stretching out toward the outer system—”

And with a horrible shock, Ziinda got it. “Shrent—emergency comm system,” she snapped. “Get Roscu’s attention—I don’t care how you do it—”

“There she goes,” Wikivv cut in as the Clarr light cruiser disappeared from the viewport and displays. “Looked like an in-system jump.”

“Track it,” Ziinda ordered. “And go to battle stations.”

“Senior Captain?” Apros called tensely over the noise as the battle station alert sounded.

“You heard Vimsk,” Ziinda said, cutting off the sound. All across the bridge the officers were hunched over their boards, and on the status displays the patterns of standby lights flicked to green as the Grayshrike’s weapons systems came fully to life. “The moving camera that you spotted in the vid. It wasn’t just moving—it was doing a slow inward orbit, like an asteroid.” She pointed at the tactical. “Like one of the asteroids Roscu is chasing down.”

“Oh, hell,” Apros bit out, his eyes going wide. “You mean like the asteroid at Sunrise? But she said it was a Mitth spy platform.”

“She was told it was a Mitth spy platform,” Ziinda retorted, looking at the sensor display. Vimsk had refined her data now that the Orisson’s final exit vector was known, but there were still at least five possible targets the Clarr ship might be headed for.

But which one?

Ziinda felt sweat breaking out on her forehead. The Orisson was charging straight into a trap, and the Grayshrike was the only ship that could react fast enough to save it. But there would only be time for a single in-system jump. If Ziinda guessed wrong, Roscu and her crew were dead.

And the hell of it was that it would be a guess. The Orisson had made a brief hyperspace jump, arriving almost instantly somewhere else in the system. But its image and drive emissions were all heading back from that spot at the far slower speed of light. Depending on how far Roscu had gone, it could be seconds, minutes, or even hours before the Grayshrike or anyone else on Ornfra could physically spot it.

“Senior Captain, I think she missed,” Wikivv said.

“What?” Ziinda asked, frowning.

“I think she missed with her jump,” Wikivv repeated. “It’s been too long. She should have shown up by now at one of the three most likely asteroids.”

“She might have jumped to one of the farther ones,” Apros pointed out.

“No, she’s right,” Ziinda said with a renewed bit of hope. “Those others are all too far away. If Jixtus is trying to drive the Clarr and Dasklo into all-out war, he needs all of Ornfra to see the Orisson get destroyed.”