“Is what you wish?” Thrawn asked.
“Absolutely,” Vanto said. The fuller tone partially fades from his voice. “What I don’t know is why you care.”
“Why I care about what?”
“Why you care about me,” Vanto said. His eyes narrow again. His tone returns to the lower pitch. “You’ve been studying me—don’t think I haven’t noticed. You ask me to tell you one of the legends I learned as a child, then you ask about my home or background or childhood. Always small questions, always delivered very casually. What I want to know is why.” He folds his arms in a crisscross pattern across his chest.
“I am sorry,” Thrawn said. “I meant no harm. I was merely interested in you, as I am interested in everything about your Empire.”
“But why me?” Vanto asked. “You never ask about Captain Parck or Major Barris or any of the other senior officers. Or even about Emperor Palpatine or the Imperial Senate.”
“They are not connected to my immediate survival,” Thrawn said. “You are.”
“With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong,” Vanto said. He shakes his head, back and forth, sideways. “Captain Parck could order you shoved out an air lock at any time. Major Barris could trump up charges or implicate you in something and have you shot. As for the Emperor—” The musculature of his throat tightens briefly. There is an enhanced infrared glow from his face. “He has absolute power over everyone and everything in the Empire. If he isn’t amused or pleased with you, you’ll end up dead.”
“Captain Parck seeks honor and promotion,” Thrawn said. “He believes me to be the path to that end. Major Barris dislikes me but will not risk angering his captain. As for the Emperor…we shall see.”
“Fine,” Vanto said. The musculature of his throat relaxes partially, but not fully. “Personally, I’d be a lot more concerned about him, but that’s up to you. But I’m still the bottom man on the roster. Why do you even care about me?”
“You are my translator. You hold my words in your hand, and their meanings. A misjudged translation will confuse or anger. A deliberate error could lead to death.”
“Krayt spit,” Vanto said. He makes a snorting sound through his nose.
“Forgive me?”
“I call krayt spit,” Vanto said. “You’ve picked up a lot of Basic in the past couple of days. You speak it as well as I do. Probably better—you don’t have a Wild Space accent people can make fun of. The last thing you need is a translator.”
“You make my case for me,” Thrawn said. “What is meant by krayt spit?”
“It’s a slang term for nonsense,” Vanto said. The left corner of his lip twists upward. “Especially nonsense that the speaker knows is nonsense.”
“I see. Krayt spit. I will remember that.”
“Don’t,” Vanto said. His tone is deep, the word sharply clipped. “It’s not polite. It also reeks of backwater places like Lysatra. Backwater means any planet that’s not part of the Core Worlds and the elite and powerful people who live there.”
“I presume there exists a hierarchy of worlds and the people who inhabit them?”
“Finally—a question about the actual Empire,” Vanto said. “Yes, absolutely there’s a hierarchy. A big, impressive, mostly unwritten, but absolutely rigid hierarchy. If you were counting on me to introduce you to the high and mighty, you’re going to be seriously disappointed.”
“You give yourself too little credit, Cadet Vanto,” Thrawn said. “Or perhaps you give the social hierarchy too much. I am content to have you as my translator.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” Vanto said. His tone rises slightly in pitch. His throat musculature still shows tightness. “Not that you had any choice in the matter.”
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. “Tell me, when do we arrive at your capital world?”
“My orders are to have you in the forward hangar bay—that’s the one you tried to escape from—at oh-seven-hundred tomorrow morning,” Vanto said.
“And I will meet with the Emperor soon after that?”
“I have no idea what happens after that,” Vanto said. The muscles under his tunic stiffen slightly, and wrinkles return to his forehead. “But odds are it won’t be anyone even close to the Emperor. Probably some senior administrator. Maybe even a junior one.”
“Will you come with me?”
“That’s up to the captain,” Vanto said. “I do still have other duties aboard the Strikefast. I also need to prepare for my return to the Myomar Academy.”
“Your duties and studies are of course important,” Thrawn said. “We shall see what decision Captain Parck comes to. Until morning, Cadet, I bid you farewell and good evening.”
“Yes, Vanto said. The tension in his musculature decreases. But it is not entirely gone. “Until morning.”
—
Captain Parck’s personal Lambda shuttle left the hangar at precisely oh-seven-oh-five the next morning. Apart from Parck, Thrawn, and Eli, the passenger list included Major Barris, three of the navy troopers who’d been on the planet when Thrawn was running everyone in circles, and two stormtroopers, presumably also part of the group who’d seen the alien in action.
There were also ten heavily armed navy troopers. If Parck was worried about hard-eyed High Command administrators, he also wasn’t taking any chances on his prisoner making a break for it once they reached the planet.
Like everyone else in the Empire, Eli had seen hundreds of holos of Coruscant. He’d also spent a couple of hours studying planetary maps the day after Parck announced they were heading there.
None of it prepared him for the breathtaking grandeur of the real thing.
He gazed at the passenger cabin’s repeater display, watching in utter fascination. The entire planet was surrounded by half a dozen rings of orbiting transports, passenger ships, and military vessels, each awaiting its turn to head to the surface. Elsewhere, steady streams of outgoing ships created subtle fountains of light as they joined the various exit corridors for passage through the atmosphere, then scattered in all directions once they reached space.
As the Lambda continued inward, Eli watched the array of glittering starlike points that covered the planet slowly resolve into buildings and towers. Still closer, and the gridlines of repulsorlift vehicles wove their packed way between the towering buildings, doing their intricate dance as they headed for a thousand destinations. A sobering thought occurred to him: Right now he could probably see more vehicles than were on his entire home planet.
The pilot eased them into one of the higher lanes, one that seemed reserved for military vehicles. They were close enough now that Eli could pick out specific landmarks. There was the Royal Imperial Academy, where the Empire’s elite trained for the army and navy. Beyond it and to the east was one of the industrial areas, with tall towers spewing superheated wastewater vapor high into the atmosphere. In the distance beyond that he could see an open area that was far below the tops of the surrounding towers, yet still many levels above the actual planetary surface. A landing area, most likely, probably for elite politicians or larger military vessels. He spotted the top of the Imperial Senate Building in the other direction.
He caught his breath. If the Senate was there and the Royal Academy back there…
They weren’t heading to either the Admiralty or the Imperial Security Bureau headquarters, which he’d concluded were the two most likely destinations.
They were heading straight for the Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace?
No—that couldn’t be. Not for a single, random, blue-skinned near-human captured on an unnamed world out in Wild Space. There was no possible way the Emperor would even notice such an event, let alone take a personal interest in it.