Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy (Book I: Chaos Rising) (Star Wars: The Ascendancy Trilogy) by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2020-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ar’alani had seldom known General Ba’kif to be angry. At least, she’d seldom known him to be angry with her.

He was more than making up for it now.

“What in hell’s name were you thinking?” he snapped, glaring as if he was trying to melt her into slag by eyeflame and willpower alone. “Allowing a sky-walker to be separated from her caregiver is bad enough; actually engineering that separation takes matters to an entirely new level of illegality.”

“Never mind that,” Syndic Zistalmu ground out, doing his best to aid in Ba’kif’s fire-starting efforts. In contrast with the general, Ar’alani was quite familiar with Zistalmu’s anger. “Those are minor military matters, and they’re not why Syndic Thurfian and I are here. What we want to know is how you could let Senior Captain Thrawn insert himself—again—into Garwian politics.”

“Indeed,” Thurfian seconded. Unlike the heat radiating from Ar’alani’s other two interrogators, his tone and face were the frozen shell of Csilla. “Did the Aristocra somehow fail to make ourselves clear?”

“Captain Thrawn wasn’t inserting himself into politics,” Ar’alani said, keeping her voice even. She’d never found much credence in the old saying that soft words eroded hard ones, but she certainly didn’t want to make Ba’kif or Zistalmu any angrier than they already were.

Especially with Zistalmu a nanosecond away from demanding that the entire Syndicure convene to consider charges against her. Unlike her first officer, Ar’alani didn’t have a conduit into the sort of family intrigues that could provide her with a counterattack or an exit strategy.

“Really,” Zistalmu said, his voice heavy with sarcasm. “He travels aboard a Garwian diplomatic ship, in the company of a Garwian envoy, to a world we ourselves have no political ties to; and that has nothing to do with politics? Have the Garwians converted their diplomatic corps into a knitting club?”

“The mission was one of reconnaissance,” Ar’alani said. “Captain Thrawn is trying to determine where else the Nikardun may have established themselves—”

“Have these Nikardun attacked the Ascendancy?” Thurfian interrupted. “Have they shown any indication that they might attack the Ascendancy?”

“They destroyed a refugee ship within one of our systems.”

“So you claim,” Zistalmu said. “The Syndicure has yet to see solid evidence that the Nikardun are the ones responsible.”

“All of which is irrelevant anyway,” Thurfian said. “If there’s neither attack nor imminent attack, it’s not a military matter but, as Syndic Zistalmu has already stated, a political one.” He turned his glare onto Ba’kif. “Unless you’re prepared to claim that General Ba’kif personally authorized this mission.”

“Not at all,” Ar’alani said quickly. This tactic, at least, she knew: Zistalmu throwing his net wide in the hope of sweeping in as many people as he could. She and Thrawn were already tangled in the mesh, and she had no intention of letting Ba’kif be drawn in alongside them. “But as I’m sure you’re aware, Syndic, situations sometimes arise where events proceed too quickly for consultation with superiors.”

“An interesting assertion,” Thurfian said, the temperature in his voice dropping a few more degrees.

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