“Understood,” Arihnda said. “Thank you, Commander. I think I know what to do now.”
“One other thing.” Thrawn’s half-hidden eyes seemed to burn into hers. “It may be that your advocacy group will indeed prove to be more than you know. If you are to have Colonel Yularen’s ultimate support and protection, you may need to turn your back on your colleagues. Are you prepared to do that?”
Arihnda smiled bitterly. Her colleagues. Driller, her boss. Juahir, her roommate. The only two people on Coruscant she knew well. The only people on this planet she’d ever called friends. “Absolutely,” she said.
—
The Higher Skies office was deserted when Arihnda arrived an hour later. Nor was anyone likely to drop by. Driller knew she’d been off to see Ottlis, and would undoubtedly have relayed that information to Juahir. Arihnda’s failure to return to their apartment would probably be seen as evidence that she and Ghadi’s bodyguard had progressed from combat sparring to other forms of physical activity.
A year ago, doing something so blatant or obvious would have embarrassed her. Now she barely noticed, let alone cared.
All she cared about was that she now had all night to work without fear of interruption.
It was just past dawn when she finally made the call.
“This had better be important,” Ghadi growled. “And I mean damn important. I’m this close to having Ottlis whipped for waking me up, and you don’t even want to know what I want to do to you.”
“It’s important,” Arihnda assured him. “You were right—Higher Skies is keeping watch on many important people. I’ve found the files.”
“Of course I was right,” Ghadi said blackly. “Any reason this revelation couldn’t have waited until later?”
“It probably could have,” Arihnda conceded. “But I thought you’d want to hear as soon as possible about the Tarkin file.”
There was a brief silence. “They have a file on Tarkin?” he asked, the grumpiness abruptly gone. “What’s in it?”
“I don’t know,” Arihnda said. “This one’s under a different encryption than everything else I’ve found. But if it’s like the ones I’ve been able to read, it probably has a lot of secrets in it. Things Tarkin wouldn’t want anyone else knowing about.”
“Perfect,” Ghadi said. “Yes. I absolutely want those files.”
“I thought you would,” Arihnda said. “I can collate them with the other files I’ve been able to find. But I wanted to make sure you wanted this one.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said. “You have the weapon I need to take down Tarkin, and you want to know if I want it? Get it on a data card and bring it to my office. Now.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Arihnda said. “As I said, though, at the moment it’s unreadable. If you give me time, I may be able to decrypt it.”
“Just bring it to me,” Ghadi growled. “I’ll decrypt it. Let’s see how high and mighty Grand Moff Tarkin is when I’m shoving his dirty little secrets down his throat.”
“Very well, Your Excellency,” Arihnda said. “Do you also want the other information? Or do you want to wait until I’ve decrypted it?”
“I’ll take anything you’ve found on any of the other moffs,” he said. “You can hold off on anything else.” He muttered something unintelligible under his breath. “Tarkin.”
“I’ll bring this over at once, then,” Arihnda said. “Who in your office shall I give the data card to?”
“Mm—good point,” Ghadi said. “Yes, you’d better bring it directly to me here.” He gave her a Whitehawk Tower address. “Ottlis will meet you at the door and take the data card. Give it to him, and only to him.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Arihnda said. “I’ll leave at once.” She keyed off the comm.
It was done.
Or at least, half of it was done.
But she had time. She had plenty of time.
There are three ways to take down a wild tusklan.
The average hunter takes a large-bore weapon with which to shoot the animal. When it works, the method is quick and efficient. But if the first shot fails to hit a vital organ, the tusklan may be upon its attacker before a second shot can be aimed and fired.
The wise hunter takes a smaller-bore weapon. The method is less likely to produce a first-shot kill, but the second, third, or fourth shot may succeed. However if the bore is too small, none of the shots will penetrate to vital points, and the tusklan will again triumph over its attacker.
The subtle hunter takes no visible weapon at all. He instead induces a thousand stingflies to attack the tusklan from all sides. The method is slow, and destructive of the pelt. But in the end, the tusklan is dead.
And it dies never knowing where the attack came from.
—
Eli sighed as he looked at the navigational repeater display in Thrawn’s office. Another day, another crisis.
Another small-time, minor-world, petty-plated crisis.
“So what’s this one about, sir?” he asked.
“It appears to be a land dispute, Ensign,” Thrawn said.
Eli clenched his teeth. Ensign. Thrawn had promised that he would try to get him the promotion both agreed was long overdue. So far, it hadn’t happened.
And only Eli knew why.
He thought about that brief and long-ago meeting with Moff Ghadi’s flunky Culper. He thought about it a lot. At the time, he’d dismissed Culper’s threat to keep him at the bottom of the navy’s officer corps as empty hyperbole designed to scare him.
But as the old saying said, it wasn’t a bluff if you had the cards. Moff Ghadi clearly had the cards.
And for all of Thrawn’s military cleverness, he had no idea how to navigate Coruscant politics.
“On one side is the Afe clan of the native Cyphari,” Thrawn continued. “On the other side is a group of human colonists in an enclave pressing up against Afe territory. The colonists claim the Afes have been raiding their border settlements, and demand concessions and a safety buffer zone that would together take nearly half the Afes’ land and force them to move into territories controlled by their fellow Cyphari. The Afes claim they have lived on that land for centuries, and state their attacks are in retaliation against trespassing and border raids from the humans.”
Eli suppressed another sigh. “And we are here why?”
“Because I requested the assignment,” Thrawn said. “With the assistance and support of Colonel Yularen.”
“I see,” Eli murmured. And with the further backing of the Emperor?
Possibly. Thrawn’s informal connection to Yularen wasn’t something that normally happened between navy officers and ISB, and Eli had long suspected the Emperor’s silent hand in the relationship. Certainly it made sense: Yularen could smooth Thrawn’s path through the High Command’s datawork and sheer inertia, while Thrawn in turn often spotted details that were useful to Yularen’s investigations, particularly with the whole Nightswan puzzle.
But the arrangement, and the perks that went with it, hadn’t gone unnoticed by others in the navy. Eli had caught the occasional odd look from other officers in passing, and formal communications with the Thunder Wasp sometimes carried undertones of resentment or envy.
Thrawn, naturally, didn’t seem to notice anything except the perks.
“Here,” Thrawn said, swiveling around his desk display. “Tell me what you see.”
Eli leaned closer. It was a summary of the planet’s shipping records for the past six months, displayed side by side with a breakdown of cargo types. He ran his eye down them, his brain automatically sorting, merging, and analyzing…
He smiled tightly. “Shellfish.”
“Precisely,” Thrawn said. “The volume of shellfish exports has nearly doubled in the past four months.”
“About the time the land dispute began?”
“The dispute has been ramping up for approximately twice that long,” Thrawn said. “But the recent escalation in cross-border incidents does date from that point. The petition to Coruscant dates from one month afterward.”