Watching Heir To The Empire

Chapter 8

For a long minute Grand Admiral Thrawn sat in his chair, surrounded by his holographic works of art, and said nothing. Pellaeon kept himself at a motionless attention, watching the other's expressionless face and glowing red eyes.

Obi-Wan repeated his gesture, trying not to think about the fate couriers of bad news had often suffered at the hands of Lord Vader.

"All died but the coordinator, then?" Thrawn
asked at last.

"Yes, sir," Pellaeon confirmed. He glanced across the room, to where C'baoth stood studying one of the wall displays, and lowered his voice a bit. "We're still not entirely sure what went wrong."

"Instruct Central to give the coordinator a thorough debriefing," Thrawn said.
"What report from Wayland?"

Pellaeon had thought they'd been talking too quietly for C'baoth to hear them. He was wrong.
"Is that it, then?" Cbaoth demanded, turning away from the display and striding over to tower over Thrawn's command chair.
«Your Noghri have failed; so too bad, and on to
more pressing business? You promised me Jedi, Grand Admiral Thrawn.»

Thrawn gazed coolly up at him.
"I promised you Jedi," he acknowledged. "And I will deliver them.» Deliberately, he turned back to Pellaeon. «What report from Wayland?" he repeated.

Pellaeon swallowed, trying hard to remember that with ysalamiri scattered all through the command room, C'baoth had no power whatsoever. At least for the moment.
"The engineering team has finished its analysis,
sir,» he told Thrawn.
"They report that the cloaking shield schematics seem complete, but that to actually build one will take some time. It'll also be highly expensive, at least for a ship the size of the Chimaera."

"Oh, no," Anakin murmured and looked at Obi-Wan. "This isn't good, Master. If they actually do build it-"

"I know," he interrupted him, shaking his head. "I know, Anakin."

"Fortunately, they won't have to start with anything nearly this big," Thrawn said, handing Pellaeon a datacard. "Here are the specs for what we'll need at Sluis Van."

"The shipyards?" Pellaeon frowned, taking the datacard. The Grand Admiral had so far been very secretive about both his goals and the strategy for that attack.

"Yes. Oh, and we're also going to need some advanced mining machines--mole miners, I believe they're informally called. Have Intelligence start a records search; we'll need a minimum of forty."

"Yes, sir." Pellaeon made a note on his data pad.
«One other thing, sir." He threw a quick glance at C'baoth. "The engineers also report that nearly eighty percent of the Spaarti cylinders we'll need are functional or can be restored to working order with relative ease."

"Spaarti cylinders?" C'baoth frowned.
«What are those?"

"Just that other little bit of technology I was hoping to find in the mountain," Thrawn soothed him, throwling a quick warning look in Pellacon's direction.

An unnecessary precaution; Pellacon had already decided that discussing Spaarti cylinders with C'baoth would not be a smart thing to do.

"So. Eighty percent. That's excellent, Captain. Excellent." A gleam came into those glowing eyes. "How very thoughtful of the Emperor to have left such fine equipment for us to rebuild his Empire with. What about the mountain's power and defense systems?"

"Also operational, for the most part," Pellaeon said."Three of the four reactors have already been brought on line. Some of the more esoteric defenses seem to have decayed, but what's left should defend the storehouse
more than adequately."