The cruiser’s gunners tried their best. But they could do little against the incoming swarm. The smaller craft were too fast, too distant, and too nimble. The Thunder Wasp kept firing, but only a few of the bolts found their targets.
Meanwhile, the vulture droids’ own return fire was tearing into the Thunder Wasp’s hull, penetrating gaps in overloaded shields to destroy sensors, weapons emplacements, and a small but rapidly growing number of outer hull plates.
Eli looked at the tactical display. So far the Foremost seemed to be holding its own, but the two Raider-class corvettes were being pummeled even harder than the Thunder Wasp.
And still Commander Cheno stood on the command walkway. Unmoving. Silent.
In over his head.
Helpless.
Eli stole a look at Thrawn. The Chiss was also standing motionless, his face as impassive as Cheno’s.
But there was something about him that sent a shiver up Eli’s back. Thrawn saw something. Somewhere in all that chaos and destruction, he saw something.
Abruptly, he seemed to come to a decision. “Who here has had combat experience with vulture droids?” he called.
“I have, sir,” Hammerly called back, raising her hand.
“Turbolaser station one, Lieutenant,” Thrawn ordered.
“Commander?” Hammerly asked, looking at Cheno for confirmation.
“Go,” Cheno ordered her, his voice grim. “Secondary Sensor Officer—”
“I will take the chief sensor officer’s position,” Thrawn interrupted. “Ensign Vanto, with me.”
A few seconds later Thrawn was seated at Hammerly’s console. Eli stood behind him, trying very hard not to look as nervous as he felt. Bad enough that they were being taken apart by an attacking force they couldn’t stop. But by throwing orders around without Cheno’s approval, Thrawn had effectively usurped command. Eli’s mind flashed back to Captain Rossi and Admiral Wiskovis, and their reactions to Thrawn’s casual disregard for chain-of-command protocol. “Now what?” he asked in a low voice. “Did you already know Hammerly had been in combat?”
“I needed a reason to take her station,” Thrawn replied quietly. “I have studied vulture droids, Ensign. They do not normally fight this effectively.”
Eli looked at the display. The fighters had closed with the four Imperial ships and were swarming around them, pouring in continual fire while still largely managing to dodge the defenders’ counterattack. “Well, they weren’t designed to be very smart on their own,” he pointed out. “A few simple pre-programmed maneuvers and combat patterns, throw in huge numbers to overwhelm their targets—”
“There!” Thrawn jabbed a finger. “That group of four. Did you see it?”
Eli frowned. “No.”
“Their drive emissions suddenly increased, allowing them to speed up,” Thrawn said. “But there was no reason for extra speed. They were already evading our attack quite effectively.”
“Okay,” Eli said, frowning harder. The group Thrawn had tagged were weaving through the turbolaser blasts and coming around for another volley—
He stiffened. There it was. “I saw it.”
“Good,” Thrawn said. “Note how their combat style also changes. Instead of firing with deliberation at vulnerable spots, they fire indiscriminately whether the target point is worth shooting at or not.”
“Got it,” Eli said. The shifts in combat style were subtle, but now that he knew what to look for they were quite visible. “So what does it mean?”
“You said yourself that these droids are not clever,” Thrawn said. “Their creators assumed a given fighter would not survive long, and so programmed them to be swarming weapons.”
“So burning through their resources as fast as possible, without any long-term considerations?” Eli asked, frowning. “You sure?”
“Look at the curve of the combat pods,” Thrawn said. “The shape of the stripes, the positions of the blaster barrels. Weapons such as this not only are functional, but also incorporate the artistry of their creators. The beings who created and built these fighters believe in short, quick answers to questions and problems.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Eli said. The explanation sounded ridiculous, but he’d seen Thrawn pull equally obscure facts out of equally imperceptible visuals. “Where does that leave us?”
“They are designed to swarm,” Thrawn said. “But they only briefly show that tactic. That leads to the conclusion…?” He paused expectantly.
“That the rest of the time they’re under direct command from somewhere,” Eli said as it suddenly clicked. “Somewhere on the outer moon?”
“They were launched from there,” Thrawn agreed. “But they are not being controlled from there. The changes occur when the fighters fly through the transmission shadow of one of our ships.”
“So if we can find and analyze all the shadows, we can backtrack to the transmitter,” Eli said with a sudden surge of hope. “And you came here because you needed the sensor station to power through that kind of calculation?”
“Precisely,” Thrawn said.
Eli felt his lip twitch as the final element fell into place. By masking his insight and revelation this way, Thrawn was hoping to pass on more of the credit to the rest of the Thunder Wasp’s crew. And, by logical extension, to Commander Cheno. One last chance for him to shine in combat. “What do you want me to do?”
“I will run the calculations and coordinate the locations and vectors,” Thrawn said. “You will watch for other shadows and mark them.”
“Right.” Eli glanced at the tactical, wincing at all the spots of red that marked major damage to the Imperial ships. “Work fast.”
The next two minutes dragged by. Eli looked back and forth across the battle, catching three more of the subtle changes that marked a fighter briefly running on its own programming. He had no idea how many Thrawn spotted in that same time period, but the Chiss turned abruptly to his board no fewer than ten times.
“Corvette down!”
Eli looked at the tactical, his stomach knotting. Where one of the Raider corvettes had been, there was now a roiling cloud of shattered metal and fire-tinged debris. “Sir?” he murmured urgently.
“Done.” Thrawn touched a final key.
And abruptly, bright yellow crosshairs appeared on the planetary display. “Commander Cheno?” Thrawn called up toward the command walkway. “I believe we have isolated the ground-based transmitter that is coordinating the attack. I recommend that you pass this information to Admiral Gendling and request he target and destroy it.”
“What are you talking about?” Cheno asked, frowning down at him. “What transmitter?”
“The one feeding tactical data to the vulture droids,” Thrawn said. “The Foremost’s turbolasers are the only ones that can reach effectively to the surface.”
“I see,” Cheno said. He didn’t, Eli suspected, but he knew better than to ignore his first officer’s advice. “Comm: Contact the Foremost. Inform the admiral that I need to speak with him immediately.”
Eli huffed out a long sigh. And with that, it was over. Thrawn had come through again, and it was over.
Only this time, it wasn’t.
“Ridiculous,” Admiral Gendling scoffed. “Even if these fighters are being controlled and haven’t simply been reprogrammed, there’s no possible way for you to have located the transmitter.”
“Sir, as I explained—”
“And I’m not about to go shooting at random into a civilian city on the strength of some mid-level officer’s wild guesswork,” Gendling interrupted. “Less talk, Commander. More fighting.”
Eli winced. In general, not shooting into a civilian population was a perfectly sensible approach to combat. More sensible, in fact, than he would have expected from a lot of Imperial officers.
But in this case, the proposed attack was hardly random, and failing to act was likely to be very costly. “Now what?” he asked Thrawn.
For a moment Thrawn stared at the tactical in silence. Then, reaching to the board again, he keyed in a new order.