“Best to take those with a sideways look,” Samakro advised. “Just because Thrawn doesn’t lay out his tactics in advance for everyone to see doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them. Whatever he’s got planned for today, he’ll get us through it.”

He took a deep breath and looked again out the viewport. “Trust me.”

It was time.

The shimmering disk of the Great Presence loomed large in Qilori’s unseeing eyes. The undulating rumble echoed in his unhearing ears. Reaching blindly to the hyperdrive lever at his right, he squeezed off the locking bar and wrapped his fingers around the lever. He waited until the disk filled his vision, then delicately pushed the lever forward. He waited another moment, savoring the experience one final time, then shut down the sound-blocking part of his headset.

The Great Presence vanished as a quiet hum of Chiss voices filled his ears. He pulled off the headset, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the muted bridge light, and peered through the viewport.

They had arrived.

Casually, he looked around him. All the stations were occupied, but none of the Chiss seemed to be watching him. Keeping his movements small, he reached into one of the storage pouches built into his ID sash and keyed his comm. He’d spent the last three rest periods recording a message for the Nikardun ships lurking out there and then figuring out how to tap into the ship’s short-range transmitter.

A sharp voice from the Chiss at the sensor station cut through the conversational hum. Qilori ran his eyes quickly over the displays, found the tactical one—

He felt his cheek winglets flutter. Three ships were angling in toward the Springhawk, one from starboard, the other two from behind. The markings on the display were all in unreadable Cheunh script, but he knew the ships had to be Nikardun.

His winglets fluttered harder. If the attackers had gotten his message—and if the blockade commander decided a Pathfinder was worth saving—they might go easy on their prey, at least until they’d battered most of the life out of it.

If the commander wasn’t feeling so charitable, Qilori had seen his last star-rise.

The deck gave a sudden jolt. Qilori jerked in response, fully expecting to see a flash of laserfire or a wall of flame from a missile blaze through the bridge wall. But nothing. He looked at the tactical again, frowning.

And tensed. The jolt hadn’t been a Nikardun attack, but the recoil as a shuttle separated from the Springhawk’s flank. Even as he watched, it headed toward the inner system and the planet Rapacc at an incredibly high acceleration.