[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(69)

And with a scream of horribly stressed electronics, the X-wing came to a sudden dead stop.

There wasn’t even enough time for Luke to wonder what aboard his ship could possibly have made a scream like that before he was again thrown, even harder this time, against his harness. His thumbs, ready on the firing buttons, jabbed down hard, sending a pair of proton torpedoes lancing forward; simultaneously, he pulled the X-wing upward. The Star Destroyer’s tractor beam, tracking him along his path, had momentarily gotten lost by his sudden maneuver. If the computers guiding that lock would now be considerate enough to latch onto the proton torpedoes instead of him-And suddenly the torpedoes were gone, leaving behind only a wisp of their exhaust trail to show that they’d been snatched off their original course. The gamble had succeeded; the Star Destroyer was now steadily pulling in the wrong target.

“We’re free!” he snapped to Artoo, throwing full power to the drive. “Get ready for lightspeed.”

The droid trilled something, but Luke had no time to look down at the computer scope for the translation. Realizing their error, and recognizing there was insufficient time to reestablish a tractor lock, the Imperials had apparently decided to go for a straight kill. All the Star Destroyer’s batteries seemed to open up at once, and Luke suddenly found himself trying to dodge a virtual sandstorm of laser fire. Forcing himself to relax, he let the Force flow through him, allowing it to guide his hands on the controls the way it did his lightsaber. The ship jumped once as a shot got through; in his peripheral vision he saw the tip of his dorsal/starboard laser cannon flash and disappear into a cloud of superheated plasma. A near miss burned past overhead; another, closer, scorched a line across the transparisteel canopy.

Another warble came from the scope: they were clear of the Interdictor’s gravity shadow. “Go!” Luke shouted to Artoo.

And with a second, even more nerve-wrenching electronic scream from behind him, the sky ahead abruptly turned to starlines.

They’d made it.

For what seemed like a small eternity Thrawn gazed out the viewport, staring at the spot where Skywalker’s X-wing had been when it had vanished. Surreptitiously, Pellaeon watched him, wondering tautly when the inevitable explosion would come. With half an ear he listened to the damage control reports corning from the Number Four tractor beam projector, carefully not getting himself involved with the cleanup.

The destruction of one of the Chimera’s ten projectors was a relatively minor loss. Skywalker’s escape was not.

Thrawn stirred and turned around. Pellaeon tensed- “Come with me, Captain,” the Grand Admiral said quietly, striding away down the bridge command walkway.

“Yes, sir,” Pellaeon murmured, falling into step behind him, the stories of how Darth Vader had dealt with subordinates’ failures running through his mind.

The bridge was uncommonly quiet as Thrawn led the way to the aft stairway and descended into the starboard crew pit. He walked past the crewers at their consoles, past the officers standing painfully erect behind them, and came to a halt at the control station for the starboard tractor beams. “Your name,” he said, his voice excruciatingly calm.

“Cris Pieterson, sir,” the young man seated at the console answered, his eyes wary.

“You were in charge of the tractor beam during our engagement with the starfighter.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, sir-but what happened wasn’t my fault.”

Thrawn’s eyebrows arched, just a bit. “Explain.”

Pieterson started to gesture to the side, changed his mind in midmotion. “The target did something with his acceleration compensator that killed his velocity vector-“

“I’m aware of the facts,” Thrawn cut in. “I’m waiting to hear why his escape wasn’t your fault.”

“I was never properly trained for such an occurrence, sir,” Pieterson said, a flicker of defiance touching his eyes. “The computer lost the lock, but seemed to pick it up again right away. There was no way for me to know it had really picked up something else until-“

“Until the proton torpedoes detonated against the projector?”

Pieterson held his gaze evenly. “Yes, sir.”

For a long moment Thrawn studied him. “Who is your officer?” he asked at last.

Pieterson’s eyes shifted to the right. “Ensign Colclazure, sir.”

Slowly, deliberately, Thrawn turned to the tall man standing rigidly at attention with his back to the walkway. “You are in charge of this man?”

Colclazure swallowed visibly. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“Was his training also your responsibility?”