Hitchhiker, continued

Wynssa Starflare was turning out to be a regular guy, Rory Mikam reflected. Thrawn had told him to get her as inconspicuous a job as possible until the danger was past, and the two of them found themselves drafted into an emergency detail containing a fire started by a direct sublight torpedo hit into one of the "Revenge" 's fuel reserves, rerouting the intact fuel cells. Rory had considered for half a minute leaving Wynssa at it, but he wasn't sure Thrawn would have wanted her alone in a potentially explosive area. And when did I start taking orders from my pal Red-Eyes? he asked himself wryly. Anyway, the civilian engineer in charge of the detail had bawled him out for slowing down the movement; and there he was now, ordering especially clumsy, not to mention reluctant, kitchen droids to stock energy packs among the durasene tanks, in the middle of an indescribable mob scene.

"You want to keep the tritium bars well away from the durasene!" Wynssa shouted. "One teeny-weensy shock and you'll get a really nice bonfire!"

Kreth. That means I've got half my work again cut out for me. He looked up at the holostar operating a forklift hovercar with considerable expertise. One strand of blonde hair was now stuck to her sweaty brow, and she sported a soot stain on her left cheek. She still looked like a gazillion credits. "How come you know this? Come to think of it, where did you learn to work a forklift car?"

The fork zoomed down next to him, deposited a pile of fuel cells within easy reach of the closest kitchen droid, hiked back up with a clang.

"Long story short, my parents have a refueling station at Gus Treta, that's in the Corellian sector. I can't say I liked the work, but I could do it half-way decently when they nagged me enough to make myself useful."

"And now you're a major holostar, Navy captains fall about to give you the run of their Star Destroyers, and zingo, you're back at fuel detail again. Ain't life a bitch."

She burst out laughing. "Tell you what, Lieutenant Mikam-"

"Rory."

"Tell you what, Rory, I'm sorry if I shouldn't be saying this, but this is a lot more fun than dinner with Captain Corlag. What happened to him?"

Mikam packed off the indignant chief kitchen droid with a consignment of tritium bars, turned back. "I biffed him one."

"You what?"

Zoom, plop, clang. Another half-tonne dispatched. They were getting pretty good at this, he reflected.

"You've seen a bit of what Corlag is like. That's when he's sober. When we got the red alert, he showed up on the bridge an hour late, drunk as a Trall, and started to frell up, pardon my Hutt, all of Commander Piett's battle plans. Your boyfriend's too. When he-"

The lift stopped abruptly, the fuel cells balancing awkwardly in mid-air. "My what?" Wynssa asked awfully.

"Thrawn. When he-"

"Lieutenant Thrawn is not my boyfriend," she enunciated carefully, depositing the fuel cells with extra caution.

"Oh come on, you like him and he sure likes you. In the past day or so, he's been behaving a lot more normally than I've ever seen him, and I bet you're the reason why."

Clang. "I don't suppose I can make you change your mind, lieutenant."

Zoom. "Nope."

He sent off another droid, looked up in case she really was mad, but she was grinning again. "Well, we'll see about that. Have you known him long?"

"Thrawn? We've been bunking for nine months now, but truth is, I don't think I ever knew him until yesterday. Which ain't telling much. Don't tell me this is the last load!"

"Sure is." She wiped her face with the cap, smearing more soot, pulled it back on. "What do we do now?"

Mikam looked at her with narrowed eyes. "Look, I've got to get back to the bridge, but now I've seen you operating this, I wonder if you couldn't come help one of the gunnery teams. We were short to begin with, and what with the hit that got Captain Corlag-"

"I thought you did?"

"Kreth! Sorry, Wynssa, but you're not really supposed to know that, okay?"

She nodded and climbed down from the forklift hovercar. "Not a word, but you will tell me that story, won't you?"

She really had the most brilliant eyes he'd ever seen. He grinned. "It's a deal. This way."

***

Commander Piett eyed the non-human lieutenant standing at attention next to the relay weapons status station with a mixture of fascination and irritation. Thrawn was proving to be by far the best tactician he'd ever met in any staff. He was also demonstrating a sneakiness that had just crossed the line from brilliant to duplicitous. This, Piett told himself, definitely had to be nipped in the bud. He cast a quick glance around to check that there was no danger he'd be overheard, unless he raised his voice, something he was not in the habit of doing. He didn't want any more hostile reactions to Thrawn among the rest of the officers than absolutely unavoidable. But that didn't mean he was going to give the lieutenant an easy go of it.

"Let me get this straight. You organized this broadcast by Wynssa Starflare behind my back and had one of your fellow-officers send it out before I'd approved the notion of getting those pirates to board us?"

The other nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Tell me, lieutenant, what part exactly of the chain of command is not entirely clear to you? Why did you do this?"

"I felt we had very little time before we were completely destroyed, sir."

"All of us here felt there was very little time before we were completely destroyed." Except possibly that ass Corlag, and I've just all but sanctioned young Mikam's outrageous initiative, which would have gotten him shot for mutiny by most of the COs I've served with. But Mikam never premeditated this coldly. "Let me make something crystal-clear, lieutenant. I value about everything you've contributed to this battle. I don't know how you got Starflare to send out her message, but it was absolutely brilliant, and the fact that nothing has hit us in the past five minutes may mean it did get us where we wanted. All the same, if you ever pull another of your little tricks without clearing it with me first, I'll have you demoted to private faster than you can switch this console on. I don't give a frell how irregular your thinking is. You can walk all over the manual for all I care, but you're not going to walk all over me, is that perfectly understood?"

The glowing red eyes held Piett's gaze for an instant, then Thrawn nodded.

"I understand, sir."

"Good. You may not have had enough experience of being-trusted-by your superiors here; but I assure you this does not apply in my case. As long as you give me no reason not to trust you. Got me?"

Another bob of the blue-black hair. "Aye, sir."

"Now let's see how this boarding party is moving, and I want the sublight engines prepped. Trooper report?"

"Colonel Tyfas's men are deployed in Hangar Bay 2, and ready, sir," Thrawn's cool voice said.

"Excellent. Let's spring that trap."

Per Theel couldn't believe his eyes. Mikam had returned from wherever that jerk Piett had sent him, with none other than Wynssa Starflare in tow, and he'd set the holostar in the middle of the port turbolaser gunnery crew, doing The Maker knew what, dressed up as a technician. What amazed him most was that apparently, the others hadn't recognized her. Well, it had taken him a minute or two, but the profile, and one strand of blond hair escaped from the cap, were unmistakable. That dirty dog Piett. How did he manage to nab Starflare? And why bring her to the bridge? Although it could well be that her cabin had been hit. Anything with viewports and one level down from the captain's ready-room was exposed. That sneak Mikam sure had pulled a cushy job after sucking up to Piett's pet, the blue freak. Rory was all over Starflare now, not that Per could blame him. For a brief moment, Theel had hoped that Piett and his alien buddy would get their comeuppance, but that was before Corlag banged his head against the command station and went out like a light. Drunk, they said, and he could well believe it. Still, Per felt there was something fishy there - it was too bloody convenient for Piett, for one thing. If they managed to scrape through this battle, Theel promised himself he'd go sniff around a bit. Like check out the bridge security recordings. They were theoretically ISB, but he'd long been able to slice into them. It helped quite a bit to know when the surprise inspections were planned. Yup - he certainly would have a look.

***

"You did what?"

"Got her to give Janred's second crew a hand. They were short three guys anyway after the big one hit, and she's no slouch with a router. I figured if things turned really downhill, you'd want her somewhere under your eye."

For the second time in less than an hour, Rory Mikam had managed to surprise Thrawn, something no officer on the "Empire's Revenge" had achieved in nine months. His bunkmate grinned. "She's a good sort. Parents have a refueling station somewhere in the Spine, knows one end of a tritium bar from the other, left to make it in holos at 17. Hey, did you realize she's the one who got Corlag drunk?"

Thrawn's fingers froze over the keys of the tac console, in the middle of recalculating the "Empire" 's jump coordinates. "How so?" he asked very quietly.

"Seems the Cap'n showed up in her cabin yesterday evening with a bottle and two glasses, and she got him talking and drinking for hours instead of, er, the alternative. He was still at it when the alarm rang. That a go computation you have here?"

Thrawn shook his head, resumed his work, hit a last key. "Yes. Transmitting now." He straightened up. "Inputting the jump coordinates now, sir," he called to Piett.

"Thank you, lieutenant," the first officer said, his voice not entirely free of relief. "Helm, that's a go: full power ahead, now."

They jumped.

***

Colonel Tyfas's troopers' mop-up action had turned pretty messy, Piett told himself distastefully. The pirates' ragtag boarding party - a motley assortment of species with ill-matched weapons - nonetheless fought hard and viciously, setting up explosive charges to try and break away from the stormtrooper ambush in the hangar through the bulkheads. A small party of them had actually managed to escape into the bowels of the "Empire's Revenge", shooting indiscriminately and eventually barricading themselves in a utility room with two hostages. Busy with the microjump - that had worked exactly as planned, with the "Revenge" reverting behind the reddish dying star exactly where Thrawn had predicted, taking with her only a damaged boarding pinnace which he'd promptly ordered blown out of space - Piett had at first left Tyfas deal with it. Unfortunately, things looked pretty much at a standstill now, he reflected, and he'd better find a solution fast. One of the hostages was the ship's engineer, the other one was a cadet, and he didn't dare trust the rabble inside with their lives for very long.

"Commander Janred, you have the conn", he said. "Try and get the damage assessed - we have about six hours to fix things until our friends on the "Judicator" show up. I'm off to see to this pirate incident."

"I have the conn, sir." Janred signaled to Mikam to take over his station as he sat in the bridge command chair.

"If I may, sir?" As Piett spun to leave, Thrawn stepped one careful pace from the tactical station.

"Yes, lieutenant?" I'm beginning to dread this oversmooth Coruscant voice asking "If I may, sir?" Although to be honest, it's offered mostly good advice so far.

"I wonder if you'd allow me to come with you? I might be familiar with some of the pirates' species."

Now that was probably a good idea. "Good point. Lieutenant Casrah, take over tac, will you? Come along, lieutenant Thrawn."

They reached the standoff point, some 60 levels below, as Tyfas's troops were exchanging blaster bolts with the besieged pirates. Piett and Thrawn crouched behind a hastily erected barricade made up of lockers and desks.

"Nothing new, sir," Tyfas shouted in the unnaturally loud voice of someone who'd just spent half an hour under fire. "There's food vending machines lining the walls of the room they're in, which provides them with both extra cover and sustenance. We could pull their trick again and blow a hole in one of the walls, but we'd have to pierce all the way through one of the automats as well."

"And they would have killed the hostages long before we were through," Thrawn said.

Tyfas stared at him with a look that clearly meant And who are you to interrupt two superior officers? "Colonel, this is Lieutenant Thrawn, who may speak one of the languages the pirates use," Piett said. "How many inside? What species?"

Tyfas threw another assessing look at Thrawn. "At least ten, one Devaronian, one Duros, not sure of the others."

"Who's been negotiating with you, sir?" Thrawn asked.

When you're not used to it, that accent always throws you. Piett nearly smiled at the conflicting expressions on Tyfas's face as he heard the alien lieutenant's precise, cultured voice. But the colonel was not one to be distracted long. "The Duros, if you can call shouting behind the struggling body of a hostage negotiating. They're pretty trigger-happy, sir," he said, turning to Piett. "I hope the hostages are still alive, but we haven't seen them in a little while now."

"If the Duros is in charge, he won't have killed them before referring to his leader," Thrawn said. "But he may only be the Basic-speaker of the lot. Colonel, may I ask how many of the main boarding-party you now have in custody?"

"All of the ones we haven't killed," Tyfas snorted. "That's about sixty out of perhaps two hundred."

"Where are they now, sir? And the bodies?"

Tyfas threw him a cold stare. "I ordered the bodies spaced, must be done by now. The surviving pirate scum are in an empty cargo bay, level 54, behind a forcefield, until the Captain or Commander Piett tell me what to do with them." And I'm ready to space'em the minute they say the word, his expression all but said out loud.

"They haven't been interrogated yet, sir?"

Piett admired silently the non-confrontational phrasing of the question. Left to his own devices, I don't expect Tyfas would have bothered with the niceties of an interrogation. But of course Thrawn's quite right on this. Interestingly, Tyfas himself seemed to understand the implications. "Not yet, but it can be arranged." He even sounds interested, miracle of miracles for an Army type.

"May I go see them now, sir?"

Tyfas looked from Thrawn to Piett, and the first officer nodded. "Good idea, lieutenant. In fact, I'll go with you."

***

The young lieutenant crouching on the edge of the port crew pit was definitely handsome, Wynssa thought, with that thick short chestnut hair and those green eyes. He was smiling down at her, too. "It's miss Starflare, isn't it? How are you doing here?"

Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, seventy-eight. She entered the figure into the wall router controller, as chief-gunner Rotham had shown her, then raised her eyes. "Hello, lieutenant. We must have met at one of the reviews, but I'm afraid I've forgotten your name, forgive me."

"It's Theel. Per Theel."

"Hello, lieutenant Theel. Well, nobody's actually hit me yet, so I have to assume I haven't entirely messed up."

"I don't think anyone would dare touch such a good friend of Commander Piett's, miss Starflare, so I'm confident you're safe."

"I'm sure that would be true if I knew which one is Commander Piett, lieutenant," Wynssa said pleasantly, "but as it is, you haven't quite reassured me yet." A bleep came from the controller: another inventory list had loaded up. "Which means I'd better be careful not to get on anyone's bad side down here. Nice talking to you, lieutenant."

They looked a sorry lot behind the shimmering forcefield, some standing, most dejectedly sitting - for a few, it was difficult to tell the difference - on the durasteel deckplates, some obviously wounded, all guarded by twelve armed stormtroopers. Tyfas wasn't taking any risks, Piett judged. He could tell a couple of Duros, a Barabel, two Twi'leks, a Rodian, but there were many more species he'd never encountered before. There were even a handful of humans, not overly prepossessing. The stormtrooper sergeant at the door came to attention, and he nodded imperceptibly at Thrawn to take over. I wonder how he's going to handle this.

"Good day, sergeant. Could you get me some of the prisoners here? The human in the corner, the first Duros there, that Rodian, the Bimm in yellow, and the Dug."

"Yes, sir - er, what's a Dug, sir?" the sergeant's electronically-modulated voice asked.

"That chitinous creature seated next to the injured Twi'lek. Shackle them individually, send four men, please."

"Yes, sir."

Interesting. So that's what Bimmisaari natives look like. And Thrawn could tell the... Dug was seated, which wasn't obvious, to say the least, from his - her? - strangely articulated members.

Soon enough, the five prisoners were brought limping out of the containment field to stand before them. The Dug especially must've been in bad shape - even if you didn't know the species, it was obvious he - it? - was favoring one side heavily.

"Thank you, sergeant. Space the others. We don't need that scum."

Piett held his pace by dint of an almost superhuman effort. The prisoners didn't. The human's face went slack-jawed in alarm, then swiveled to the penned-in group. The Rodian took a step forward, to be restrained by the nearest stormtrooper, while the others around the cargo bay armed their weapons. Good reflexes, Piett thought. I'll have to commend Tyfas. The Dug and the Duros edged closer together, chattering rapidly. Only the Bimm remained silent. Maybe it didn't speak Basic.

"Na ta diva di wonga," the Duros started urgently. "Espensi na gotga ta chura!"

"Te haka na chura wa hoki," Thrawn replied in a space-cold voice. "Ta fissa!"

So Thrawn spoke fluent Huttese, did he? A rimworlder himself, Piett was nevertheless unable to detect any trace of an accent. Talented sonovanek. Yup, he'd gotten their attention all right.

"Don't think you can stall me," he was saying in Huttese. "We've jumped. Your fleet is far away. We've killed most of your party. You're more expensive to keep than droids, and you're less reliable. I can get all the information I need from you five. Why should I keep the others?"

The Duros started to answer, but the human pirate interrupted him in Basic. "Since when does the Empire employ non-humans? They're just using you to trick us."

"That assumes you still have something I can trick you of," Thrawn said in smooth Basic. "Don't flatter yourself."

He raised his hand as if to summon the rest of the stormtroopers. The Dug hissed something incomprehensible, and Thrawn's hand froze in mid-air. The alien lieutenant answered a few words in the same hissing tongue, then turned to the sergeant, pointing at the Bimm, the Rodian and the human. "Sergeant. Call up an escort for these three pirates here, have them locked up in the main brig. Have four of your troopers get me the other Duros in there" - a nod at the containment field - "and shackle him to his friend here and the Dug. I'm going to need them and the troopers for a little time. Don't space anyone until I return."

***

Well, well. So it wasn't Piett who'd ordered Mikam to bring Wynssa Starflare to the bridge. That, or the holostar was keeping it quiet to avoid problems with Corlag, which was always a possibility. Still, Per Theel thought, this opened interesting new lines of thought. He cast a quick look around the bridge. Hmmm. Piett and the freak had both vanished someplace. High time I went and had a chat with my pal Rory.

***

In the shelter of the makeshift barricade, Colonel Tyfas considered the small group led by Piett and Thrawn doubtfully. "Nothing's much changed this end, sir. What do you want me to do?"

Piett half-turned to his junior officer. "This one's lieutenant Thrawn's baby, Colonel. He has - I assume - a plan."

Thrawn nodded, then walked to the stormtrooper holding the first Duros's binders. He wound the plasteel lead around his left wrist, then, pulling his blaster from his side-holster, nudged the shackled Duros toward the half-blocked entrance to the besieged utility room. He stopped about mid-way, still shielded by the Duros's body, and shouted out something which got answered by a blaster bolt. Immediately, the Duros started yelling.

"What's he saying, sir?"

"No idea," Piett said, "but at a guess, it would be 'stop shooting'."

It had worked, too. From the utility room came a voice in the same unknown language, then the screech of some heavy piece of metal being moved, and finally one of the pirates appeared, shielding himself behind a young human in olive-green uniform whose hands and feet were tied. The pirate was a Duros armed with a laser machine-gun.

"That's cadet Lynan, sir," Tyfas whispered.

Thrawn said something which got the Duros pirate shouting back furiously. Eyes closed, the young cadet looked very scared, as well he might, Piett thought. Thrawn's voice replied on the same even tone he'd used from the beginning of the incident. He'll have to tell me what this was all about. The sibilants went back and forth, and finally, the besieged Duros released the arm that half-choked Lynan, and gave a shove in the young cadet's back that almost threw him to the ground.

"Come to us, cadet," Thrawn called out in Basic. "You're being exchanged for this character here."

Sure enough, he'd released the Duros's lead. In the dead silence that had fallen on the scene, the two prisoners shuffled slowly toward one another, their legs hampered by their respective bonds. At a sign from Tyfas, two troopers stepped out to help Lynan as soon as the exchanged Duros vanished inside the utility room. The kid was shaking badly, Piett saw, which honestly couldn't be held against him. "Nice job," Tyfas conceded, assessing Thrawn with alert eyes. "What did you tell them? What next?"

"What I said so far doesn't much matter, sir, it's what the Duros prisoner I just sent in will tell them - that we're about to space all the survivors save a couple. He's obviously either their leader or the deputy of the Dug we have here. I'd give them ten minutes to get that message, then we can start negotiating again."

***

"Hey, Rory."

Mikam raised his eyes. Theel had sauntered from the relaying comm station to the weapons station Rory had temporarily taken over from Lieutenant-Commander Janred. Strictly speaking, they were still under orange alert conditions, but the atmosphere on the bridge had considerably relaxed after the microjump. Stationary behind the system's red dwarf, the "Empire's Revenge" had powered down to conduct a thorough check of the damage undergone in the recent battle, and as many repairs as could be undertaken outside a proper shipyard. At every station, checks had been run, and whoever had completed his had practically nothing to do until they powered up again. He could see two of the sensor techs having a quiet game of traveling sabacc, throwing a dice in a transparent cube to simulate the randomizer; and Casrah was reading a datapad. Mikam yawned - they'd only slept a couple of hours, after all.

"Hi, Per. Everything okay your end?"

"Sure. Say, how did you manage to hook up with Wynssa Starflare? What's she doing with the gunnery crew?"

"Hook up- Hey, Per, I wish," Rory said, thinking fast. "Piett worried that her quarters were too exposed. He sent me to get her here."

"Ah?" Theel said, looking hard at his bunkmate. "Now that's funny, she just told me she doesn't even know which one of us is Piett."

Kreth. "Well, she's a holo actress, whaddya expect? For all I know, Corlag told Piett to do it, and he farmed it out to me."

"Could be," Theel said in a tone that sounded all but convinced. "Frelling convenient for Piett that Corlag ain't here. He gets the command chair, the holostar, and the blue sidekick."

I so don't like where this is going. "Corlag was drunk as a Drall and he practically fell down on me. If you'd locked him in a bedroom with Starflare, he wouldn't have been able to get to first zone."

"Yeah, well, Corlag's been under the weather before. Never stopped him until now. So what I'm saying is, it's prakking convenient, know what I'm sayin'? And if ISB finds out bloody alien-lover Piett rigged this somehow, Piett can kiss his rank squares goodbye."

Frell. "In your dreams, Per. Wasn't Piett doing the drinking, it was Corlag. Dunno how you can rig that."

"Oh, I'll find out somehow," Theel said. "Trust me, I will."

Chief Engineer Bron hid his shakes better than the young cadet, but it was obvious he'd thought he wouldn't get out of this alive, Piett judged. A tough-looking, middle-aged Rimworlder, he'd understood part of the negotiations, and thanked Thrawn profusely when all was over. "I hope I can make this up to you one day, kid," he was saying, which brought a smile to Piett's lips. I don't think many have ever called Lieutenant Thrawn "kid". Thrawn replied in an unexpectedly respectful tone, calling Bron "ta Chuba", "Ancient One" in Huttese - and, as Piett well knew, a mark of great consideration. Now what's that all about? But even though the pirates had finally surrendered, the situation still required a bit of attention. More than that, in fact - Thrawn and Tyfas sounded close to a slanging match.

"What's all this? What seems to be the problem, Colonel?"

"Lieutenant Thrawn seems to think he has authority over my prisoners, sir," Tyfas answered curtly.

"Sir," Thrawn started, "I don't think the prisoners should be spaced. We promised them their lives in the negotiation."

"You promised," Tyfas spat. "At any rate, you can imagine how I care about guarantees given to pirates under duress. How do you think they'd behave in our place?"

"That's irrelevant, sir" Thrawn said coldly. "What I'm saying here is that this story will be known, and any other Imperial officer caught in a similar situation will no longer be able to negotiate."

"If they're space junk, they won't talk."

"Do you intend to execute the troopers who'll space them, Colonel? And then the ones who carried out the executions? What do you think this will do to ship's morale?"

"I'll thank you to leave questions of ship's morale to your superiors, Lieutenant," Tyfas said frigidly.

Time to step in. "Very well, I'll take that decision," Piett said. "The prisoners are not to be spaced. Have them all transferred to the lower-level brig, after sending whatever inmates we have there to another detention area. I don't want to mix this bunch of murderers with our own people, but I'm not about to let it be said that the word of a Naval officer is worthless. Besides, they might have useful information for our coming assault on their main fleet when the "Judicator" joins us. Lieutenant Thrawn, you speak their lingo, you're in charge of that. You have two hours to come up with useful intel. I'll see you on the bridge."

***

Per Theel had decided to go check on captain Corlag in the "Revenge" sickbay. What he certainly hadn't expected was this... zoo, with what looked like dozens of repulsive aliens and dirty-looking humans crowding the place, being examined by Too-OneBee droids or nursing assistants under the watchful eye of armed stormtroopers.

"What the frell- You, there! What's going on here?"

Several droids ignored him. He was luckier with the stormtrooper sergeant. "Lieutenant Thrawn's orders, sir. He sent the prisoners he's finished interrogating to be patched up."

"He what? Who the kreth does he think he is, wasting our med bay resources?"

The sergeant, possibly wary of assenting to criticism of one officer by another, prudently stayed silent. Theel pushed his way into an inner office, where another of the... creatures was being examined by a Too-OneBee. I've never seen anything uglier in my life. How can you tell which are legs and which are arms? Yechh. It looks like a giant, bad-tempered locust.

"Your chest will be fine, but I can't do anything for the limp. You broke all your hind legs far too long ago," the med droid said, in a curiously warm baritone. Probably programmed for optimum bedside manner.

"Yeshh. Podrasshhing accident, very bad, nearly kkilled me. Fankss for trying. I was a great sshhhampion thhhen. Femaless all loved me."

"I'll schedule medicine for you. You can go."

The thing picked itself - himself? - up slowly from the examining table, but Theel didn't wait for it to leave the room. "I've come to see Captain Corlag. Where is he?"

"Cubicle one, but he's still sedated and sleeping," the Too-OneBee said. "He has concussion."

Blast. "So why aren't you taking care of him instead of this menagerie? How would you even know what to do to them anyway?"

"Most galactic species have been registered in our databanks for centuries," the droid said with dignity. "I hadn't seen a Dug in fifteen years at least. This is excellent practice."

"Practice for what?" Theel said brutally. "It'll be a lot more than fifteen years before you see another, I can tell you."

Jostling his way past the limping Dug, Theel walked out of the office again. He could see a row of numbered doors at the far end of the main room. Pushing his way through the distasteful crowd, he reached door one and palmed it open. Corlag's massive, snoring bulk, covered by an infirmary synthlin sheet, took up a regulation cot to the last centimeter. "Captain?" he called out in an undertone.

No response. Corlag was dead to the world. Theel shifted from foot to foot irresolutely for a minute, then looked around the small cubicle. Sure enough, Corlag's uniform hung in a locker at the foot of his cot. Theel pulled the datadisk he'd meant to show him, and slid it into the uniform jacket upper left pocket. There would always be time to alert Corlag to it later.

Per Theel sauntered out of the cubicle, crossed the mob scene one last time, and left the "Empire's Revenge" sickbay. He never noticed the Dug who'd followed him to Corlag's cabin, and soon appropriated the datadisk from the unconscious captain's pocket.

***

No sooner had Theel left his post that Rory stepped up to the relaying comm station his bunkmate had just vacated, and called up the console's cache. Sure enough, the little gopher program he knew Theel used to slice into ISB recordings had last run barely five minutes before. I am now officially screwed. His stomach constricted painfully. GBH on the person of the captain - if they don't shoot me, I'll end up in the spice mines of Kessel. He didn't dare access the recording so soon after Per - it was the sort of irregular activity the ISB programmers were bound to flag. Only one solution now. He looked up. Yes, Piett was back - without Thrawn, but that didn't much matter right now. Bracing himself, Mikam walked up to the First officer.

***

A high-ranking officer - she could tell from the multicolored squares on his left breast - with a pleasant face, alert grey eyes and an assured manner stepped up to the edge of the port crew pit and greeted Wynssa. "Hello, miss Starflare. I've come to release you from duty. This rookie been giving you any trouble, chief-gunner Rotham?"

"No, sir, she's been good help. Rethel and Fark got hit by debris early one and we were really short."

"Well, you have time to get replacements from another section now, haven't you?"

"Aye, sir," Rotham said.

This one has to be the famous Piett. Vast improvement on Corlag. Piett walked to the side of the crew pit, at the top of the stairs, and she climbed out a little self-consciously, suddenly very aware of her borrowed overalls. "I was very impressed by your performance on the comm," he said politely.

"Did- did everyone hear it?"

"Oh, no. Well, on this ship; I've no idea who caught it outside. Lieutenant Thrawn replayed it for me."

Instinctively, her eyes scanned the bridge to see if she could spot him. This was not lost on Piett. "He's still interrogating prisoners in the brig. No doubt you will see him at some stage. Now, miss Starflare, I'm sure I have absolutely no authority over you, but perhaps I should make you aware of the situation for the next few hours. Thanks to Lieutenant Thrawn, and to your inspired piece of theater, we were able to jump a short distance away from the pirate fleet which attacked us. We will shortly be joined by another Imperial Star Destroyer, and shall return to attack them by surprise and destroy them. This battle will be very different from what you've just experienced, and we'll win it. However, I don't believe it would serve anyone's purpose to have you spend it in a gunnery crew. I have made sure that your cabin is in fact intact. Captain Corlag is in sickbay, and I don't expect he will recover before the pirates are defeated and we have to report to the admiral currently on the "Judicator". What I would suggest, if that is agreeable to you, is that you return to your stateroom and become once more the honored guest we have been happy to convey to Imperial Center."

Yes, this one is quite impressive. It was the voice of reason, of course. Why did she suddenly feel as if a grown-up had put an end to an afternoon's frivolous play?

"I understand, Commander," she said.

He looked at her and smiled. "Don't look so desolate, miss Starflare. I understand from Lieutenant Mikam that you are aware of - recent irregular events. If we tie up every loose end by the end of the day, the likelihood of a court-martial for myself, or any of the officers on my staff, will recede considerably."

"Could it-?"

"Not if I can help it," he said with steel in his voice.

They were much of a height. She looked into the intelligent grey eyes. "I can't imagine why you're not a captain already."

He burst out in a short laugh. "I can give you any number of good and bad reasons, but please tell me you won't say anything of the kind to the Admiral when you meet him?"

"You mean my recommendation will not carry weight with him? I don't think I'll recover."

He smiled. "I should rather think he will not recover. We understand one another, I believe. Lieutenant Mikam will take you back to your cabin. I'll see you after the battle."

Continued in Chapter 13

The fine print (how small can I make this?)... and all the usual disclaimers!  No, I'm not making any money.  It's just for fun.  George, please don't sue me.