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:
“Dark and cold,” Raamas confirmed. “Whatever they’re doing here, they’ve been doing it for at least a couple of days.”
“Waiting for someone,” Roscu said. “Or something. Sensors?”
“Rest of mid-range clear, Captain,” the sensor officer said. She sounded mostly back on balance, too. “Far range … clear. There could be more of them behind some of the other asteroids, though. I can’t tell with just passives.”
“Well, we’re sure as ice not firing up the actives,” Roscu told her. “Thoughts, Commander Raamas?”
“We have to call it in, Captain,” he said. “This many alien ships, lurking in a Chiss system? And they’re definitely warships—that configuration can’t be anything else.”
“Agreed,” Roscu said, her throat tightening a little more as a strange thought occurred to her.
“So do we call it in?” Raamas pressed.
“Not yet,” Roscu said. Pulling out her questis, she keyed for the data Ziinda had sent them during their Ornfra confrontation. “Pull up the Grayshrike’s records of the asteroid attack at Sunrise. Tell me what you see.”
“All right,” Raamas said, frowning as he worked his questis. “It’s the asteroid … it pops open … there’s the missile …”
“No, no, go farther,” Roscu said, fast-forwarding through the record. There it was, just as she’d remembered. “Move it to there,” she added, keying the mark to him. “The big ship the Grayshrike is charging toward. The one that’s engaging the Vigilant.”
“Oh, my—” Raamas broke off, looking up at the sensor display, then down at his questis again. “Captain, it’s the same design.”
“Yes, it is,” Roscu agreed. “They’re smaller, but they definitely come from the same shipyards.”
“Captain, we have to call it in,” Raamas insisted. “The homestead—the Patriarch—they’re sitting flashflies.”
“Are they?” Roscu countered grimly. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Patriarch told me he’d made a deal,” Roscu said. “Specifically, he said the Clarr now had a family fleet the likes of which the Ascendancy had never seen.” She pointed out the viewport. “I think those are his new ships.”
“His new—?” Raamas broke off. “Captain, these are the same sort of ships that attacked the Vigilant and Grayshrike. Where could the Patriarch have gotten them?”
“From Jixtus, of course,” Roscu said. “From the very start, he was offering ships to bolster our own forces.”
“But if they’re from Jixtus—” Raamas breathed a curse. “Then Senior Captain Ziinda was right. About Jixtus, the asteroid missile—everything.”
“So it would appear,” Roscu said. “Or maybe it’s not that easy. What if there are two factions of the same aliens out there, one led by Jixtus, the other by someone else? What if the someone else attacked Sunrise, while Jixtus is just trying to arm us to fight back against them?”
“That seems a little far-fetched,” Raamas said cautiously. “If that’s the case, why doesn’t he just tell us?”
“I don’t know,” Roscu conceded. “I assume he has his reasons. But far-fetched doesn’t mean impossible. Until and unless we have evidence to the contrary, we have to obey our Patriarch and assume he has the best interests of the Clarr in mind.”
“And assume he knows what he’s doing?” Raamas countered.
“Careful, Commander,” Roscu admonished. “Comments like that are not only disrespectful but border on the disloyal.”
“My apologies, Captain,” Raamas said. To Roscu’s ears he didn’t sound especially apologetic.
“I’ll also point out that if those ships came to attack Rhigal, there’s no reason for them to still be sitting here,” Roscu said. “They could have popped in from hyperspace, blasted the homestead or any other location to slagged rubble, and been gone before anyone could even have sent out an alert. With the Defense Force and Expansionary Defense Fleet ships dispersed all around the Ascendancy, there wouldn’t have been a chance of stopping them.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Raamas said reluctantly. “So we do nothing?”
“Of course we do something,” Roscu said. “We slip away and continue on to Ornfra as we’ve been ordered. Pilot?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the pilot said. “Turning onto vector.”
The fleet and stars shifted as the Orisson made another yaw turn back toward the distant Ornfra system. Raamas hesitated, then stepped away from the helm and crossed the bridge to Roscu’s command chair. “There is one other possibility, ma’am,” he said, lowering his voice.
“Which is?”
“I’m thinking about the fact that the coordinates for that alien fleet skulking in the Junkyard were given to us by the Stybla Patriarch on Rhigar,” Raamas said. “The histories say the Stybla voluntarily handed over their rule to the Three Families. But I’ve never quite believed that.” He gave Roscu a significant look. “And if their power was taken away, they might see the current state of the Ascendancy as their chance to get it back.”
“I hope not,” Roscu said. “We’ve got enough trouble with the Dasklo without having to fight the Stybla, too.”
“I hope not, too,” Raamas said. He nodded toward the viewport, where the alien fleet was just disappearing from sight as the Orisson continued its rotation. “But you have to admit that an ambitious member of the Forty that doesn’t have a fleet of its own might be tempted by something like that. And if Jixtus offered ships to the Clarr, why not to the Stybla?”
“Good point,” Roscu said. “All I can say is what I’ve already said. We stick with our Patriarch and trust his decisions.”
“Captain?” the pilot said. “We’re in position, ma’am.”
Roscu looked at the nav display. The vector alignment wasn’t perfect, but right now neatness was less important than getting out before someone spotted the Orisson skulking around. They could return to space-normal and correct the vector anywhere along the way. “Prepare for hyperspace,” she said.
“I hope you’re right, Captain,” Raamas murmured. With a nod, he headed back across the bridge to the helm.
“So do I, Commander,” Roscu muttered under her breath as she gazed out at the silent warships. “So do I.”
She raised her voice. “Hyperspace: Three, two, one.”
Generalirius Nakirre had resigned himself to the necessity of having to periodically take the Whetstone out of hyperspace so that Jixtus could receive messages and information updates. Accepted it, but never really liked it. The stops slowed their journeys, sometimes for hours on end, and afterward Nakirre often had to endure Jixtus’s gleeful cackling as the pieces of his quiet campaign against the Chiss came together.
The delays were even more irritating now that the Kilji Illumine’s own fleet, the Kilhorde, had finally received Grysk permission to move against the small nations south and southeast of the Chiss Ascendancy, the ones Jixtus had chosen as being ready for Kilji enlightenment. Some of the influx of messages to the Whetstone now came from Nakirre’s field commanders, giving details of their victories and mapping out the progress of their campaigns.
And Nakirre, instead of being there to guide and inspire, was stuck traveling the Ascendancy with Jixtus.
It wasn’t right. Not for Nakirre, not for his commanders, not for the wretched beings who would soon look up from their battered worlds to the hope that only Kilji enlightenment could provide. Now Nakirre began to eagerly await Jixtus’s communication stops, hoping each time to hear that the Ascendancy had exploded into anarchy and that the Grysk fleet was ready to move in as soon as the passions died and the flames of war finally burned themselves out. Then and only then could Nakirre take Jixtus back to his FateSpinner flagship and finally be free to join his people in their own march to this glorious new concept of conquest.