[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(51)

More to the point, why had he been lying low all these years, letting incompetent megalomaniacal fools like Admiral Daala bleed the Empire of resources without gaining anything to show for it?

And why, now that be was back, had he linked up with Moff Disra, of all people?

Nalgol grimaced to himself. He’d never liked Disra. Had never really trusted the man, for one thing-he’d always struck Nalgol as the type who would fight viciously to keep his share of the scraps of the Empire rather than watch it grow to someone else’s advantage. If Thrawn had thrown in with him, maybe he wasn’t as smart as legend had it.

Of course, Dorja had vouched firmly for the Grand Admiral, both for his character and his military genius. But then, Argona just as firmly vouched for the competence of Disra himself. So what did any of them know?

But at least it was Thrawn back there. The genetic analysis he’d done had confirmed that beyond the whisper of a doubt. It was Thrawn, and everyone said he was a genius. He would just have to hope they were right.

A movement to the left caught his attention, and be turned to see one of the scout ships cut across the edge of the cloaking shield, changing course to stay inside it. “Well?” Nalgol demanded.

“We’re nearly on top of it, sir,” the comm officer reported. “A small course change and we’ll be there.”

“Feed the course to the helm,” Nalgol ordered, though if that hadn’t already been done he was going to be angry. “Helm, get us moving. Comm, what about the Obliterator and Ironhand?”

“Our scouts have made contact with theirs, sir,” the fighter control officer said. “They’re coordinating our courses to make sure we don’t bump into each other.”

“They had better,” Nalgol warned icily. Skulking around out here blind and deaf was bad enough; it would be the height of professional humiliation if the three Star Destroyers managed to fumble their sightless way into collisions with each other. All the more so if the cloaking shields went down and the spectacle was laid bare right out in the open for all of Bothawui system to see.

But at the moment, of course, they couldn’t see. That was the whole point of this exercise. As far as the Bothans’ homeworld defense apparatus was concerned, there was nothing out here except the exhausts of a handful of small ships moving apparently aimlessly around.

Small ships … and one not-quite-so-small comet.

“We’re under way, Captain,” the helm announced. “ETA, five minutes.”

Nalgol nodded. “Acknowledged.”

Slowly, the minutes ticked by. Nalgol watched the blackness outside the viewport, occasionally glimpsing a drive flare as one or another of his scouts ducked back inside the shroud of the cloaking shield to check on the Tyrannic’s progress and then ducked back out again. The timer ran down to zero-he sensed the huge ship slowing&mdash

And then, abruptly, there it was, off to starboard: a slice of dirty rock and ice poking through the edge of the shield, sliding rapidly sternward. “There!” he snapped. “We’re passing it!”

“We’re on it, sir,” the helm called back. Sure enough, even as Nalgol watched, the aft motion of the comet’s edge. came to a stop and then slowly backed up until it was hanging off the starboard side just ahead of the command superstructure. “We’re stabilized now, Captain.”

“Tether lines?”

“The shuttles are on their way with them now, sir,” another officer reported. “They’ll be secured in ten minutes.”

“Good.” The tether lines weren’t nearly strong enough to physically hold the Star Destroyer and comet together, of course. Their purpose was merely to give the helm the necessary feedback to make sure the orbiting bodies stayed in the same relative positions as the comet continued its leisurely drift inward toward Bothawui. “Any word from the other two Star Destroyers?”

“The Ironhand has successfully tethered,” the comm officer reported. “The Obliterator’s in position; they should be tethered about the time we are.”

Nalgol nodded, taking a deep breath and. letting it out quietly. So they’d made it. They were here, presumably unobserved by the Bothans.

And now there was nothing to do but wait. And hope that Grand Admiral Thrawn was really the genius everyone claimed he was.





CHAPTER


8


“Yeah, all right,” the greasy-looking man on the comm display said, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Let’s try it again.”

“I’ve already told you twice,” Luke said, putting some grouchy weariness into his voice and expression. “It’s not going to change just because you think it ought to.”