Che’ri frowned. “How did you know that?”
“The pictures you’ve been drawing with the markers your caregiver gave you,” Thrawn said. “You like drawing birds and flashflies.”
“They’re pretty,” Che’ri said stiffly. “Lots of kids draw flashflies.”
“You also draw landscapes and seascapes as seen from above,” Thrawn continued calmly. “Not many your age do that.”
“I’m a sky-walker,” Che’ri muttered. Thalias had no business showing Thrawn her pictures. “I see things from the sky all the time.”
“Actually, you don’t.” Thrawn paused and touched a key on his control board.
And suddenly all the lights and keys on his board went out and the board in front of Che’ri lit up.
She jerked back. What in the name—?
“There are two handgrips in front of you,” Thrawn said. “Take one in each hand.”
“What?” Che’ri asked, staring numbly at the handgrips and glowing lights.
“I’m going to teach you how to fly,” Thrawn told her. “This is your first lesson.”
“You don’t understand,” Che’ri said, hearing the fear and pleading in her voice. “I have nightmares about this.”
“Nightmares about flying?”
“About falling,” Che’ri said, her heart thudding. “Falling, being blown around by wind, drowning—”
“Can you swim?”
“No,” Che’ri said. “Maybe a little.”
“Exactly,” Thrawn said. “It’s fear that’s driving those nightmares. Fear and helplessness.”
A touch of annoyance rose above the bubbling panic. First Thalias, and now Thrawn. Did everyone think they knew more about her nightmares than she did?
“You feel helpless in the water, so you dream of drowning. You feel helpless in the air, so you dream of falling.” He pointed to the handgrips. “Let’s take some of that helplessness away.”
Che’ri looked at him. He wasn’t joking, she realized. He was deadly serious. She looked back at the handgrips, trying to decide what to do.
“Take them.”
Abruptly, she realized something else. He wasn’t ordering. He was offering.
And she really had always wanted to fly.
Setting her jaw, choking back the fear, she reached out and gingerly closed her hands around the grips.
“Good,” Thrawn said. “Move the right one to your left, just a bit.”
“To portside,” Che’ri corrected. She knew that one, anyway.
“To portside,” Thrawn agreed with a smile. “See how the positions of the stars changed?”
Che’ri nodded. Their ship had turned a little to the left, the same way she’d moved the handgrip. “Yes.”
“The display just above it—there—shows the precise angle of your turn. Now move the same lever forward a bit.”
This time, the changing stars showed the ship’s nose had dropped a little. “Aren’t we getting off course?”
“It’ll be easy enough to get back,” Thrawn assured her. “Now, the left-hand grip controls the thrusters. Right now it’s set at its most delicate level, so that a small movement translates to a small increase or decrease in thrust. Rotating the grip will change that; we won’t bother with that right now. Ease it forward—just a little—and note how our speed changes on that display—that one right there.”
By the time they finished the lesson, half an hour later, Che’ri’s head was spinning. But it was a strangely exciting kind of spin. She hardly noticed any strain over the next few hours as she used Third Sight to guide the ship toward the edge of the Chaos.
When she was done navigating for the day, after they ate dinner together, she asked if he would give her another lesson.
And that night, for the first time she could remember, she had a dream about flying that wasn’t a nightmare.
Thrawn had told Che’ri that there was an arc of systems a short distance into the Lesser Space regions outside the Chaos that should be promising. So far, though, the arc had turned out to be a bust.
One of the worlds had looked interesting, but aside from a local patrol force it didn’t seem to have any military presence at all. The next three worlds were only sparsely settled, though one of them was at least civilized enough to have a long-range triad transmitter.
But the fifth world…
“What are those?” Che’ri asked, staring at the small objects flitting back and forth across the long-range sensor display. They looked like shuttles or missiles or fighter craft, but they seemed hardly big enough for even a pilot, let alone a passenger or two.
“I believe those are robotic combat craft,” Thrawn said, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he gazed at the display. “Powered and operated by artificial intelligences called droids.”
“They run their warships with machines?”
“Some of them, yes,” Thrawn said. “Indeed, if the reports are true, one side of the massive war taking place in Lesser Space is largely being waged by such droids.”
Che’ri thought about that. “Seems kind of stupid,” she said. “What if someone gets into the controls and turns them off? Or gets into the factory and changes all the programming?”
“Or if their intended programming leaves errors and blind spots that can be exploited,” Thrawn said. “The desire to minimize warrior deaths is futile if the war is then lost. Increase the focus on Sensor Four, please.”
Che’ri nodded and keyed the correct control, a small part of her brain noting with satisfaction how comfortable she’d become in the cockpit over the past few days. Thrawn had turned out to be a much better teacher than she’d expected.
Or maybe she was just a really good learner.
“What do you see there?” Thrawn asked.
Che’ri frowned. There was something weird in the center of the display she’d just adjusted: perfectly round and giving off a strong but alien energy signature. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“I have,” Thrawn said thoughtfully. “But the energy shield I saw was aboard a ship. This one appears to be protecting a building.”
“It’s a shield?” Che’ri asked. Now that he mentioned it, it was shaped like the shields of the old-time warriors she’d seen pictures of. “Is that like our electrostatic barriers?”