Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil
- Автор: Зан Тимоти
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Random House
- ISBN: 9781473596580
- Жанр: Боевая фантастика
Электронная книга - «Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil». Краткое содержание книги:
And when Patriarch Thurfian fell, she would make absolutely sure that Senior Captain Thrawn fell with him.
“Asteroid is rotating, Senior Captain,” Ghaloksu said tensely. “Bringing the missile launcher to bear.”
Ziinda nodded, her throat tight. The Grayshrike was too far away for Ghaloksu or Vimsk to pick out the hex pattern that would definitively tell them which of the two Chiss warships was the attackers’ target.
But she had little doubt as to which one the hidden controllers would choose. The Grayshrike was far enough away to have at least a chance of destroying or disabling the missile before it could cover the distance between them. The Orisson, on the other hand, was a sitting flashfly.
And it was the Clarr and Dasklo families that Jixtus seemed determined to force into open warfare. A Clarr family ship destroyed in a predominantly Dasklo system might be all it would take. “Shrent?”
“Still ignoring our calls, ma’am.”
“Fine,” Ziinda bit out. If Roscu wouldn’t talk, she’d just have to give the stubborn idiot something she couldn’t ignore. “Ghaloksu: Sequential laser burst across the Orisson’s bow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ghaloksu said, his fingers moving rapidly across his board as he set up the shot.
“Senior Captain?” Apros asked, a note of warning in his voice.
“I’m banking on her being the type to come charging at us to demand an explanation, or at least to tell us why shooting at her was a bad idea,” Ziinda said. “If we can get her to move even a little, it’ll buy us some time to make her understand what she’s walked into. Ghaloksu: Fire.”
The bridge lit up with reflected light as the lasers cut across the empty space between the Orisson and the asteroid. “Fire again,” Ziinda said. “Shrent? Keep trying—”
“What the hell are you doing?” an outraged voice boomed over the bridge speaker.
Ziinda twitched involuntarily even as she belatedly recognized the fury-distorted voice as Roscu’s. “You’re in danger, Captain,” she called. “That asteroid—”
“This is my prize, Irizi,” Roscu snarled. “You will back off, and you will back off now.”
“Orisson’s moving, Senior Captain,” Vimsk murmured. “But it’s not …”
Ziinda looked at the display, her heart sinking. The Orisson had turned toward the Grayshrike, bringing its main weapons to bear on the larger ship.
But it wasn’t moving away from the asteroid, as Ziinda had hoped it would. In fact, if anything, it was drifting closer to the floating rock.
And with the Orisson’s flank now presented to the hidden missile, it wouldn’t have even the slightest chance of surviving an attack.
Ziinda hadn’t made the situation any better. She’d just made it worse.
Somehow, she had to find a way to fix that.
“And if you think you can intimidate me, or order me away, you and the whole Irizi family can go straight to—”
Ziinda took a deep breath. This was her only chance. “Shut up, you blithering ass!” she bellowed.
It was a word that Ziinda had seldom used, and never to another officer’s face. But despite that, or perhaps because of it, the word and the sheer ferocity behind it had the desired effect. For the first time since both ships arrived at Ornfra, the Clarr captain was shocked into silence.
“Now listen carefully,” Ziinda said, her voice low and under rigid control. Her own bridge had gone totally quiet, too. “That is not a spy platform. It’s an artificial asteroid shell concealing a remote-controlled missile. A big, nasty, hull-shattering missile that can blow open the side of an armored space station. It’ll destroy the Orisson, and if you had a sister ship beside you it would destroy that, too. Do you understand?”
“I’m listening,” Roscu said, her voice under the same rigid control as Ziinda’s.
“Ar’alani and I tangled with one of these things over Sunrise,” Ziinda said. “My first officer is sending over the record now.” Across the bridge, Apros broke out of his stunned paralysis and keyed his questis. “The asteroid is turning to line up the launcher,” Ziinda continued. “When it finishes, you and your crew will die. We need to figure out a way to get you clear before that happens.”
“Understood,” Roscu said, and Ziinda could hear both the dread and the steel now coloring her voice. A quick skim of the relevant parts of the Grayshrike’s Sunrise record and she was finally up to speed. “I assume I can’t maneuver fast enough to get out of the way. An in-system jump?”
“Can she do it, Wikivv?” Ziinda asked.
“Depends on their sensor capabilities,” Wikivv said. “They’re close enough that they might be able to detect the hyperdrive spinning up before it’s ready—”
“Too late,” Vimsk cut in, her voice taut. “The asteroid’s stopped turning. The missile’s lined up.
“They’re going to die.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The seconds ticked by, each one stretching toward eternity. Ziinda stared out the viewport at the Orisson and the asteroid, poised together like an oblivious whisker cub sitting beside a hungry groundlion, a knot of futility twisting in her stomach. So that was it. She’d tried to save the Orisson, and she’d failed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Vimsk working at her board …
“Senior Captain?” the sensor officer spoke up, her voice odd as it broke the taut silence. “I checked back … ma’am, the asteroid’s been in position for nearly a minute.”
Ziinda turned her eyes to the secondary sensor display, watching as Vimsk replayed the record. She was right: The missile had been ready to fly since before the two captains even began talking about an in-system jump.
So why hadn’t it?
“Some kind of malfunction?” Roscu asked. “In that case, I’m getting clear—”
“No, no, don’t move,” Ziinda interrupted, her brain racing. It wasn’t a malfunction. Not with these people. No, for some reason they’d deliberately decided not to fire.
But why? Were they waiting for one of the Dasklo destroyers to make an appearance? Having both families present when the Orisson was destroyed would give an extra push to their hoped-for war, a bigger slap across the face than if the Clarr warship died out here on its own.
But there was something else. Something Ziinda could sense, but not quite put her finger on.
And then, abruptly, she had it. Their hoped-for war.
“It’s not a malfunction,” she told Roscu. “Remember why they sent the missile into the Ornfra system. They’re trying to goad the Ascendancy into war.”
“Yes, I got that,” Roscu said impatiently. “Why aren’t they firing?”
“Because they’re hoping they won’t have to use it,” Ziinda said. “It’ll look better if we start fighting on our own, without any more help from them.”
“So what do we do?”
“Exactly what they want.” Ziinda braced herself. “You’re going to open fire on the Grayshrike.”
“What?” The word came simultaneously from Roscu and Apros.
“I fired across your bow,” Ziinda said. “They’ll have seen that as a challenge, and you need to respond.”