Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy (Book III: Lesser Evil) (Star Wars: The Ascendancy Trilogy) by Timothy Zahn

Author:Timothy Zahn [Zahn, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2021-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

Ar’alani had never been in this part of the Syndicure complex before. It was deeper than the main office and functional areas, deeper than the staff living areas, deeper than the storage, recycling, and power-generation equipment that serviced the entire region, deeper even than the emergency refuges built for the Aristocra.

And as she walked along the bare corridor, listening to the echoing of her footsteps and those of the four armed warriors walking stolidly at her sides, she decided that she never wanted to be here again.

There was evil down here. Evil that had once brought sudden, violent, or torturous death, sometimes to a few, sometimes to thousands. Evil that for one reason or another the Syndicure or Council had decided needed to be kept alive. She could feel the brooding of the occupants, the angry hopelessness, the utter hatred.

But she’d asked for this, and her request had been granted, and she would see it through.

There were five guarded checkpoints between the elevator that had brought her to this level and the small room that was her destination. When they reached the end of the last corridor, her escort unlocked the door and retreated behind the last checkpoint to wait. Straightening her shoulders, reminding herself firmly that there was nothing to be worried about and anyway that she’d asked for this, she watched as the metal panel slid back over the face of the stone wall and stepped through the doorway into the brightly lit room.

Sitting in a bolted-down chair in a posture of casual arrogance, the tendrils of the fungoid symbionts undulating idly as they hung over his shoulders, was General Yiv the Benevolent.

“Hello, General Yiv,” Ar’alani said in Minnisiat as she took another step into the room. Behind her, the door again slid closed. “My name is Ar’alani. I thought we might have a chat.”

“Did you?” Yiv asked, his cleft jaw opening slightly like the mouth of a predator deciding whether or not he was hungry enough to pounce on a bit of promising prey. “Did you also consider that you were intruding upon my solitude?”

“I’d have thought you’d have had enough of solitude.”

“And that I would thus welcome conversation?” Yiv asked. “With you?” The jaw snapped shut, the tendrils on his shoulders giving a slightly magnified twitch. “For someone who has made the arduous trek to my final resting place, you are curiously ignorant of my situation.”

“How so?”

“I have had many conversations over these last months,” Yiv said. “All have been long. None has been pleasant. Solitude is my companion, not my enemy. Do you think you have found a new topic that would change that balance?”

“Not a new topic, no,” Ar’alani said. “But perhaps I have a new angle on an old topic you probably thought you’d grown weary of.”

“And what would that topic be?”

“Betrayal.”

Yiv gave a booming laugh that seemed to echo oppressively from the stone walls of his private prison. “You are indeed a lost child,” he said scornfully. “So many have pressed me in vain to betray my generals or my people.

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