Thrawn shook his head. “I don’t believe they were responsible for that attack.”
Samakro winced. Personally, he didn’t believe it, either, but that didn’t mean it was something a senior officer should be saying out loud. Especially when a large percentage of the Syndicure did believe it.
“Perhaps,” Ar’alani said, her words and tone a much more politically acceptable neutral. “That’s for others to investigate. Get to your repairs, and let me know when you’re ready to leave. Admiral out.”
There was the sound of the comm disconnecting. “Mid Captain, please initiate a full status check,” Thrawn said. “Pay particular attention to weapons and defense systems.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said, feeling a trickle of relief. And with that, they were done with politics. At least for now. “All personnel: Full examination of the ship. Section chiefs report status when completed.”
There was a chorus of acknowledgments, and the bridge descended into a studious silence as the personnel began their scans. “I hope you’re right about the Paataatus,” Samakro said. “Just because the Csilla attackers used different ships doesn’t mean they hadn’t scavenged something that would hide their identity.”
“No,” Thrawn said. “You saw their tactics here—swarming with overwhelming numbers. Their tactics don’t allow for what we saw at Csilla, particularly not a halfhearted attack that costs three ships. No, the Csilla attack was launched by someone else.”
“Why couldn’t they have talked someone else into doing it for them?” Samakro suggested, perversely unwilling to let it go. He’d never been comfortable with gut-level conclusions, and as far as he could tell that was all Thrawn had here. “There are pirate gangs out there that could be hired to launch a feint.”
“The purpose of the attack was certainly to draw our attention,” Thrawn said. “But not from this part of the border.” His lips compressed briefly. “Once we’ve left the rest of the task force, I’ll be able to tell you and the other senior officers about the mission Admiral Ar’alani mentioned.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said, eyeing him closely. He’d never been comfortable with top-secret missions, either. “Any chance of a preview?”
Thrawn gave him a small smile. “Yes, I always hated sealed orders, too,” he said. “What I can tell you is that there may be a new threat on the other side of the Ascendancy. Our task is to locate, identify, and evaluate this threat before they turn their attention to our worlds.”
“Ah,” Samakro said. So that was why they’d suddenly had a sky-walker assigned to them. Jump-by-jump was an inefficient way to travel any real distance into the Chaos, and with this kind of investigation there was no telling how far out the search would take them. “May I ask if you’re expecting this search to end in combat?” he added, his mind flicking back to Thrawn’s specific instructions to check the Springhawk’s weapons and defenses.
“There’s always that possibility,” Thrawn said. He saw the look on Samakro’s face and smiled again. “Don’t worry, Captain. I’ve had the protocols concerning preemptive attacks carefully and specifically laid out for me.”
“Yes, sir,” Samakro said. “With your permission, I’d like to personally supervise the checks on the barrier.”
“Very good, Captain,” Thrawn said. “Carry on.”
Samakro headed toward the defense station, his stomach tight. The electrostatic barrier was the Springhawk’s first line of defense against any attacker and, as such, needed to be in perfect working order.
Because he’d heard some of the stories about Thrawn. And just because the protocols had been laid out for him didn’t necessarily mean he’d listened.
In nearly four years at Taharim Academy, Senior Cadet Irizi’ar’alani had built up a spotless record. She’d distinguished herself, she was well on the way to command rank and position, and not the slightest hint of scandal had ever touched her name.
Until now.
“Senior Cadet Ziara,” Colonel Wevary intoned in the voice he saved for the most heinous of offenders against Taharim’s traditions, “a cadet under your tutelage has been accused of cheating. Have you anything to say in your or his defense?”
Under your tutelage. All Ziara had done was to proctor the damn simulation exercise Cadet Thrawn had been taking.
But her name was attached to the charge, and so here she sat.
Not that there was much chance of serious consequences. Certainly the Irizi representative seated at one end of the three-officer panel didn’t look worried. At the other end of the table—
She felt a flicker of sympathetic pain. Thrawn was the one standing on the brink here, and yet the Mitth family representative hadn’t even shown up. Either he’d forgotten about the hearing or else he just didn’t care. Either way, it didn’t bode well for Thrawn’s future.
The strangest part was that none of this made any sense. Ziara had looked up Thrawn’s records, and he was already far ahead of his classmates. The last thing he needed to do was cheat on a simulator exercise.
Still, while his normal simulator scores were consistently high, most of them were within or only slightly above the academy’s high-water marks. On this particular exercise, no one in Taharim’s history had ever gotten even close to Thrawn’s score of ninety-five. There had been only one logical explanation for such a high score, and Colonel Wevary had come to it.
Ziara shifted her attention to the accused. Thrawn was sitting stiffly in his chair, his face a rigid mask. He’d already pled not guilty to the charges, insisting that he hadn’t cheated but merely taken advantage of the parameters the exercise had set up for him.
But as one of the other panel members had already said, that was exactly what a guilty person would also say. Unfortunately, too many cadets in the past had gamed the system by secretly running practice sessions with their upcoming test parameters, a cheat the instructors had countered by making sure no simulations could ever be exactly rerun. That built-in limitation meant that Thrawn couldn’t repeat his technique and prove his innocence.
Presumably, the instructors could dig into the programming and change that. But it would take a lot of time, and apparently no one thought a single cadet was worth that much effort.
Mentally, Ziara shook her head. The other part of the problem was that the records of the exercise were limited to the points of view of the three attacking patrol ships. One of the records had gone blank at the wrong moment, showing nothing of the climactic encounter, while the other two simply showed Thrawn’s patrol ship vanishing for several crucial seconds.