Che’ri said something that sounded strangely urgent. Thalias looked over, discovering to her surprise that the girl was half standing up and hanging on to Yiv’s right arm, dragging down the weapon he had clutched in that hand. Yiv was trying to pull free, while at the same time cuffing Che’ri around the head and shoulders. A moment of thought convinced Thalias that he shouldn’t be doing that, and she got her own arms wrapped around the arm he was hitting the girl with. She had a vague sense that there was something else she was supposed to do, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

And then, suddenly, Thrawn was there, plucking Yiv’s gun from his hand and wrapping a breather mask around Thalias’s face. “Are you all right?” he asked, his voice distorted by his own mask.

“Um-mm,” Thalias said brightly as Yiv made a sort of halfhearted lunge. Thrawn evaded the attack easily, sending the Nikardun to land heavily on all fours on the deck. Thrawn gave him a hefty squirt from a tava canister of his own, setting Yiv’s shoulder symbionts into a frenzied wriggle, then turned to Che’ri. By the time he’d asked her the same question he’d asked Thalias and had the girl’s breather mask in place, Thalias’s head was starting to clear. “Data library?” Thrawn asked as he pulled Yiv’s arms behind him and fastened the wrists together.

“I think it’s that console over there,” Thalias said, marveling at how quickly and thoroughly her mind had recovered from the gas. “He also keeps a kind of questis in a compartment in the left armrest of his chair.”

“Excellent,” Thrawn said. “You get his questis. I’ll get Yiv aboard the freighter, then see what I can copy before the rest of the crew breaks through the bridge door.”

“We’re not going to destroy his ship?”

“I never intended to destroy his ship,” Thrawn said. Reaching down, he took hold of one of Yiv’s arms and levered the unconscious Nikardun up off the deck. “All I need to do is destroy him.”

“What about them?” Thalias persisted, pointing to the Nikardun crew members twitching or muttering on the deck. “Once you pull the freighter out of the viewport, won’t they all die?”

Thrawn’s face hardened. “As Yiv has already said,” he reminded her quietly. “No witnesses.”

Memories XIII

It was, Ar’alani knew, necessary that she and Thrawn have a talk about what had happened at Solitair. But she managed to find enough excuses to put it off until they were nearly home.

Finally, she couldn’t delay it any further.

“I should have seen it,” Thrawn said, his eyes fixed on an otherwise unremarkable corner of Ar’alani’s office. “I should have seen the signs.”

“No,” Ar’alani said. “I should have. But not you.”

“Because you’re more experienced?”