[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(25)
“Well, Your Excellency, Admiral Pellaeon is the Supreme Commander,” Tierce said reluctantly. The stolid expression was still there, but Disra could now see a hint of tightening around the eyes. Did he suspect that Disra knew? Probably not. Not that it mattered. “I would presume be knows best our strategic situation,” Tierce went on. “Again, I’m afraid my own knowledge of grand strategy is also very limited.”
“Ah.” Disra shook his head, reaching down to the side of the desk to touch the personal-coded switch grown into the ivrooy there. There was a click, and the hidden drawer built into the bottom of the writing surface slid open. “You disappoint me, Major,” he said, fingers ruffling through the half-dozen datacards there, his eyes steady on Tierce’s face. “I would have assumed the Emperor would have insisted on only the best”
No mistake this time: Tierce’s eyes definitely tightened. But he wasn’t ready yet to give up the charade. “The Emperor, Your Excellency?” be asked, blinking with bewilderment.
“Only the best,” Disra repeated, selecting one of the datacards and holding it up for “Tierce’s inspection, “to serve in his Royal Guard.”
Disra had expected the other to pull a burst of surprise or bewilderment from his acting repertoire. But Tierce just stood there, his eyes locked on Disra’s like twin turbolaser batteries. Disra held the gaze, forcing back a sudden twinge of doubt. If he’d miscalculated-if Tierce decided his continued anonymity was important enough to murder an Imperial Moff for&mdash
Tierce exhaled softly, the hiss of a poisonous snake. “I suppose there’s no point in making loud noises of protest, is there?” he said. He straightened up from his usual slouch&mdash
And Disra found himself pressing involuntarily back in his chair. Suddenly the diffident and marginally competent Major Tierce who’d served as his military aide for eight months was gone.
In his place stood a warrior.
Disra had once heard it said that a discerning person could always recognize an Imperial stormtrooper or Royal Guardsman, whether he stood before you in full armor or lay dying on a sickbed. He’d always discounted such things as childish myths. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“How did you identify me?” Tierce asked into the silence.
It took Disra another moment to find his voice. “I did a search of the main Imperial records library after it was moved here to Bastion,” he said. “Duplicates of the Emperor’s private records are also stored there. I was able to find a way to access them.”
Tierce lifted an eyebrow. “Really. Those files were supposed to be absolutely secure.”
“There’s no such thing as absolute security,” Disra said.
“Apparently not,” Tierce said. “Well. What now?”
“Not what you’re expecting,” Disra assured him. “I have no intention of denouncing you as a deserter or whatever it is you’re worried about, even presuming I could find anyone with the appropriate authority to denounce you to. The Empire can hardly afford to waste its best people.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Speaking of which, I have to ask. How did you escape the destruction of the second Death Star?”
Tierce shrugged, a fractional lift of the shoulders. “For the simple reason that I wasn’t there. We of the Royal Guard were periodically rotated to regular stormtrooper units to keep us in fighting trim. I was on Magagran at the time, out in the Outer Rim, helping to break up a Rebel cell.”
“And the rest of your unit was destroyed?”
“By a single Rebel cell?” Tierce snorted contemptuously. “Hardly. No, we completed our mission and were ordered back. There were all sorts of rumors raging around at the time as to whether or not the Emperor had died at Endor, so as soon as we got within range of Coruscant I jumped ship and went to see if there was anything I could do to salvage the situation.”
Disra felt his lip twist. “I remember those months. Pure chaos, with the Rebels gathering pieces that might as well have been handed to them on serving trays.”
“Yes,” Tierce said, his voice and face bitter. “It was as if the whole Empire was unraveling from the top down.”
“Perhaps it was,” Disra agreed. “Pellaeon mentioned once that Grand Admiral Thrawn had a theory about that.”
“Yes: that the Emperor had been using the Force to drive his troops,” Tierce said. “I remember similar discussions aboard the Chimaera. Perhaps he was right.”
Disra frowned. “You were on the Chimaera?”
“Of course,” Tierce said. “What better place for a Royal Guardsman than at the side of a Grand Admiral? About a month after he returned from his service in the Unknown Regions, I was able to arrange a transfer to the Chimaera’s stormtrooper detachment.”