Thrawn Ascendancy Book 3: Lesser Evil

Raamas was waiting on the bridge when Roscu returned to the Orisson. “How did it go, Captain?” he asked, eyeing her closely. “The Patriarch’s order sounded … rather harsh.”

“It was fine,” Roscu said, her mind still back on that final scene in Rivlex’s office. “You got my order to set course back to Ornfra?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Raamas said, pulling out his questis and tapping something. “First, though, this arrived half an hour ago with instructions to pass it on to you.”

Roscu frowned at the note that had now appeared on her own questis. There was nothing there but a list of numbers. “Looks like a set of coordinates.”

“Yes, they are,” Raamas confirmed, tapping his questis again. “It’s a spot in the outer system near the Junkyard.”

“Is it, now,” Roscu said, eyeing the map that had replaced the numbers. “Which part of the Junkyard is this, exactly?”

“It’s just spinward of the Gem,” Raamas said.

“Mm,” Roscu murmured. The so-called Junkyard was a group of metal-rich asteroids in the outer part of the Rhigal system that had been pushed together hundreds of years ago by an Ufsa family mining consortium who thought gathering them closer together would facilitate extraction and refining. Those resources had long since played out, though, and the region had been abandoned.

But rumors still occasionally popped up that new veins had been found by one family or another and that mining was about to begin again. The Gem, once the richest area, now the most mined-out one, usually figured prominently in those rumors. “Where did you get this?”

“That was a little hard to track down,” Raamas said. “The transmission was via tight-beam, and the sender clearly wanted to remain anonymous. But from what I’ve been able to piece together, it looks like it came from someone in the Stybla Patriel’s office. Possibly the Patriel himself.”

“Really,” Roscu said, sifting through the possibilities. The Stybla weren’t anyone’s allies in particular, but they maintained industrial and transportation operations throughout the Ascendancy. If there was something going on out in the Junkyard, they would be the perfect ones to have tumbled to it.

Which of course then raised the question of why they would pass on such information to the Clarr in general and Roscu in particular. “Well, if the Stybla think it was worth pointing out to us, I suppose the least we can do is take a look,” she decided, keying her questis for nav. A direct heading would be simplest, but with the Ascendancy in its current state it might pay to be a little more circumspect. She certainly didn’t want anyone else on or orbiting Rhigal to figure out where they’d gone. “Set it up as two in-system jumps,” she continued, making a pair of marks on the questis and sending them to the helm. “First will be out and to the side, more or less in the direction of Ornfra; the second will take us across and back to the Gem. How does that look, Commander?”

Raamas stepped over to the helm station and leaned over the pilot for a closer look. “It’ll put us about fifty kilometers from the Stybla coordinates,” he confirmed. “Close enough to see if there’s a secret mining operation, far enough to keep from spooking them.”

“Good,” Roscu agreed. “Might as well also have that Ornfra course ready. A quick look at the Gem, and then we’ll be off.”

“Yes, Captain,” Raamas said, gesturing the order to the pilot as he checked the nav displays. “We’re out of the gravity well, ma’am … hyperdrive’s spinning up … ready for the first in-system jump.”

“Stand by to jump,” Roscu said. “Three, two, one.”

The planet behind them vanished. Roscu watched as the pilot confirmed their position, made a yaw rotation to bring the Orisson into position for the second jump, and calculated the numbers. “Ready with second jump, Captain,” Raamas confirmed.

“Stand by,” Roscu said. “Full scan as soon as we arrive; passive sensors only. Pilot: Three, two, one.”

The starscape twitched again, and they were there.

“Combat range clear,” the sensor operator reported, leaning a little toward her displays. “Mid-range—” She caught her breath. “Captain!”

“I see them,” Roscu said, fighting to keep her voice calm as something dark and heavy gripped at her throat. In the distance, sitting right at Raamas’s coordinates, were a group of warships.

Large warships. Alien warships.

“I’m counting six of them,” Raamas confirmed Roscu’s own observation, his voice showing the same strain Roscu was feeling. “Could be more—there may be others being blocked from our view.”

“Acknowledged,” Roscu said as she tore her gaze away from the viewport and looked at the sensor display. Her voice sounded marginally calmer this time. “They look dark.”