Vision of the future

Flim's drink back to him. 'I'd remind you that three brand-new treaties is a very good return for a week's work.'

'Only if Coruscant doesn't come down on us like a wounded rancor,' Disra countered sourly.

'You push them hard enough and long enough and they will.'

'This hardly qualifies as pushing, Your Excellency,' Flim said. His voice, too, was a little too close to insubordination for Disra's taste. 'We haven't opened or provoked any hostilities, and we've gone only where we've been invited. On what possible grounds could Coruscant attack us?'

'How about the grounds that a state of war still exists between us?' Disra snapped. 'Either of you ever think of that?'

'Political suicide,' Flim sniffed. 'We've been invited by these systems, remember? If Coruscant tries to stick its collective nose in—'

He broke off as a shrill whistle sounded from the repeater displays. 'What's that?' he demanded.

'Emergency battle alert,' Tierce said tightly, nearly splashing the rest of Flim's drink onto his pristine white uniform as he shouldered past the con man and dropped into the command chair.

'Admiral, get over here,' he added, his hands darting over the controls. The tactical display came up, turning the room into a giant holographic combat display; and as it did so, the comm unit twittered. 'Admiral, I believe we're about to come under attack,' Dorja's voice said calmly. 'Eight Marauder-class Corvettes have just jumped into the system, heading our direction.'

Disra consciously unclenched his teeth as he looked around the room for the flashing symbols that would mark the incoming Marauders. Of course Dorja was calm—he thought he had the great Grand Admiral Thrawn aboard his ship, with matters undoubtedly under control.

But he didn't, and they weren't. And unless Disra did something fast, this whole tenuous soap bubble was going to blow up right in their faces.

Flim was at Tierce's side now, and the major was reaching for the comm switch. 'Tell Dorja he's to take over,' Disra hissed toward them. 'Tell him this is too small or too trivial for you to bother with—'

'Shh!' Tierce hissed, cutting him off with a glare and a chopping motion of his hand. 'Admiral?'

'Ready,' Flim said, and Tierce tapped the key. 'Thank you, Captain,' the con man said smoothly; and once again, it was suddenly Grand Admiral Thrawn standing in the room. 'Have you identified them?'

'No, sir, not yet,' Dorja said. 'They have random-noise generators blanketing their engine IDs. Highly illegal, of course.'

'Of course,' Thrawn agreed. 'Launch a half squadron of Preybirds to intercept.'

'Yes, sir.'

Tierce flipped off the comm unit. 'Are you crazy?' Disra snarled. 'A half squadron of starfighters against—?'

'Calm down, Your Excellency,' Flim said, throwing Disra a coolly calculating look. 'This was one of Thrawn's standard techniques to sniff out an unknown opponent's identity.'

'More to the immediate point, it buys us time,' Tierce added, his fingers skating madly across the computer console. 'Marauder Corvettes, Marauder Corvettes... here we go. Mostly used by the Corporate Sector these days, with a few in assorted Outer Rim system defense fleets.'

'Interesting,' Flim commented, leaning forward to read over his shoulder. 'What would the Corporate Sector want with us?'

'I don't know,' Tierce said. 'Disra? Any ideas on that one?'

'No,' Disra said, pulling out his datapad. No, he didn't know why anyone in the Corporate Sector might want to attack them this way... but on the other hand, the mention of Marauders had triggered a vague memory at the back of his mind.

'Do you have a list of the other systems who use them?' Flim asked.

'Running it now,' Tierce said. 'Nothing really jumping out at me... there go the Preybirds.' Disra glanced up to see the marks indicating the starfighters speeding outward toward the distant intruders, then lowered his eyes to his datapad again. It had had something to do with Captain Zothip and the Cavrilhu Pirates, he remembered. There, that was the section...