By the time she lifted her eyes from the questis, she saw that Wutroow and Samakro had made it through, as well. The two officers were gazing at the sections of table in front of them, their expressions a mixture of surprise, disbelief, and apprehension.
She shifted her gaze to the end of the table. Thrawn was waiting patiently, trying to hide his own anxiety. “Well,” she said, setting down her questis. “It’s inventive, I’ll give it that.”
Some of Thrawn’s anxiety faded away. Apparently, a lot of his concern had been centered on how she would react. “Thank you,” he said.
“With all due respect, Senior Captain, I’m not sure that was a compliment,” Samakro spoke up. “The plan may be inventive, but I don’t think it’s physically possible.”
“Actually, Mid Captain, I’ve seen it done,” Ar’alani said. “Back at the Academy, Captain Thrawn pulled off this same maneuver.” She raised her eyebrows. “On the other hand, that was a patrol ship. This time you’re talking about a heavy cruiser. Big difference.”
“Not as big as it might seem,” Thrawn said. “True, the Springhawk’s mass is greater, but its thrusters and maneuvering jets are correspondingly more powerful. With proper care and preparation, I believe it can be done.”
“And you’re sure this is the right system?”
“The indications are there,” Thrawn said. “I won’t know for certain until I’ve examined the mining station.”
Ar’alani pursed her lips and picked up her questis again. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy. The place Thrawn proposed to infiltrate was what was colloquially known as a box system: unusually strong electromagnetic fluxes wrapped around the outer edges, interacting with the solar wind to create even more obstruction to hyperspace travel than usual. Unless a ship was willing to come out of hyperspace outside the cometary belt and spend days or weeks traveling through space-normal to the inner system, there were only a dozen reasonably safe inward pathways.
Even more intimidating was the fact that some cataclysm millennia ago had seeded the inner system and much of the outer system with large meteors, making the entire area a sort of miniature version of the Chaos itself. Taking those additional navigational hazards into account, the number of safe lanes to the inhabited planet dropped to exactly three.
Three routes to one single, isolated planet, unknown to the Ascendancy and apparently unconnected with any known species in the area. A somewhat larger selection of pathways to the outer asteroid belt, which consisted of several tightly packed clusters and a number of possibly abandoned mining space stations.
But while the mining stations might be abandoned, the rest of the system was active enough. Thrawn’s brief reconnaissance had picked up a fair amount of travel within the system, mostly between the planet and a handful of colony or manufacturing stations orbiting it. Unfortunately, the Springhawk had been too far out to tell whether or not those ships were similar to the destroyed refugee ships whose records Thrawn had now shared with her and Wutroow.
And just to add spice to the whole thing, all three of the entry routes were being patrolled by small warships of a completely different design.
“So you think this is the system the refugee ships came from,” she said, looking up at Thrawn again. “You further think they’re under blockade by these other ships.”
“Less a blockade than an interdiction,” Thrawn said. “You can see the patrol ships’ configuration is mainly designed to control access to the main planet. The asteroid stations aren’t as heavily guarded and are therefore more accessible.”
“But they are still guarded,” Wutroow pointed out. “And I’m only counting three good paths in and out of the system.”
“Only if you want the planet,” Thrawn said. “If you want the asteroid station I’ve indicated, there are several other workable vectors.”
“At least until the blockaders get a few more ships,” Ar’alani said.
“Indeed,” Thrawn agreed. “It therefore seems to me that if we want to do this, we have to do it soon.”
“How long did you sit out on the edge observing them?” Ar’alani asked.
“Only three days,” Samakro said.
“A full three days,” Thrawn corrected. “Long enough for me to analyze their patrol pattern and learn how to penetrate it.”
“Again, unless they’ve gotten more ships in the past fifteen hours,” Ar’alani said.
Thrawn’s lip twitched. “Yes.”
For a few moments, the conference room was quiet. Ar’alani gazed at her questis, pretending to study it, weighing the options. For anyone else, she knew, three days wouldn’t be nearly enough to analyze an alien patrol pattern, let alone figure out a way through it.
But for Thrawn, three days probably really was enough, Samakro’s doubts notwithstanding. Ar’alani couldn’t have come up with a plan herself this quickly, but she could see that Thrawn’s had a good chance of working.
On the other hand, this was hardly going to be a sleepwalk. Thrawn’s proposed course should get them in well ahead of any pursuit from the handful of patrol ships watching the outer system, but if the blockade’s commander detached some of his closer-in planetary forces he might catch the two Chiss ships in a pincer. “What about exit strategy?” she asked. “We’ll need one immediately, and you’ll need one eventually.”
“There we have two interesting options,” Thrawn said. As if, Ar’alani thought wryly, this whole thing didn’t come under the heading of interesting. “The typical box system is bounded for the most part by external flux patterns interacting with solar wind. These two points”—he tapped his questis—“mark the outer system’s two gas giant planets.”
Ar’alani smiled tightly as she saw it. “Planets which carve out small holes in the solar wind as they travel along their orbits.”
“Holes you can pop in and out of without confusing your hyperdrive or your sky-walker,” Wutroow said. “Huh. Hard to hit from the outside, though, unless you’ve got really good planetary data.”
“But not as difficult going from the inside,” Ar’alani said, “since you know right where the planets and the gaps are.” She looked at Thrawn with sudden realization. “That’s how the refugee ships got out past the patrols, isn’t it?”
“That’s my assumption,” Thrawn said.
“And now, of course, we’ve also got the planetary data we need,” Wutroow added. “So we go in through Shadow Number One and exit through Shadow Number Two?”