Vision of the future

him.

But Tierce merely shook his head. 'You insist on misunderstanding,' he said.

'And you insist on working behind my back,' Disra countered. 'Gaining a system or two isn't worth the risk of scaring Coruscant into action. What's going on that you aren't telling me?' Tierce seemed to measure him with his eyes. 'All right,' he said. 'Have you ever heard the phrase

'the Hand of Thrawn'?'

Disra shook his head. 'No.'

'You answered that rather quickly.'

'I was working on this plan long before you came on the scene,' Disra reminded him tartly. 'I found and read everything in the Imperial records that pertained even remotely to Thrawn.'

'Including everything in the Emperor's secret files?'

'Once I was able to find a way into them, yes.' Disra frowned as a sudden thought struck him. 'Is this what your little trip to Yaga Minor last month was really all about?' Tierce shrugged. 'The primary purpose was exactly as we discussed: to alter their copy of the Caamas Document to match the changes you'd already made in the Bastion copy. But as long as I'd broken into the system anyway, I did spend some time looking for references.'

'Of course,' Disra said. Nothing so crude as a direct lie, simply a conveniently neglected bit of the truth. 'And?'

Tierce shook his head. 'Nothing. As far as any existing Imperial record is concerned, the term might not even exist.'

'What makes you think it ever did?'

Tierce looked him straight in the eye. 'Because I heard Thrawn mention it once aboard the Chimaera. In the context of the Empire's ultimate and total victory.' Suddenly the room felt very cold. 'You mean like a superweapon?' Disra asked carefully.

'Another Death Star or Sun Crusher?'

'I don't know,' Tierce said. 'I don't think so. Superweapons were more the Emperor's or Admiral Daala's style, not Thrawn's.'

'And he did just fine without them,' Disra conceded. 'Come to think of it, he did always seem more interested in conquest than wholesale slaughter. Besides, if there were another superweapon lying around, the Rebels would almost certainly have found it by now.'

'Most likely,' Tierce said. 'Unfortunately, we can't make it quite that final. Did your extensive research into Thrawn's history happen to turn up the names Parck and Niriz?'

'Parck was the Imperial captain who found Thrawn on a deserted planet at the edge of Unknown Space and brought him back to the Emperor,' Disra said. 'Niriz was the captain of the Imperial Star Destroyer Admonitor, which Thrawn took back into the Unknown Regions on his supposed mapping expedition a few years later.'

' 'Supposed'?'

Disra sniffed. 'It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Thrawn tried his hand at Imperial Court politics and got his fingers burned. No matter what they called it, his assignment to the Unknown Regions was a form of exile. Pure and simple.'

'Yes, that was the general consensus among the Royal Guard at the time, too,' Tierce said thoughtfully. 'I wonder now if there could have been more to it than that. Regardless, the point is that neither Parck nor Niriz—nor the Admonitor, for that matter—ever returned to official duty with the Empire. Not even when Thrawn himself came back.'

Disra shrugged. 'Killed in action?'

'Or else they did come back, but are in hiding somewhere,' Tierce said. 'Perhaps standing guard over this Hand of Thrawn.'

'Which is what?' Disra demanded. 'You say it's not a superweapon. So what is it?'

'I didn't say it wasn't a superweapon,' Tierce countered. 'I just said superweapons weren't Thrawn's style. Personally, I see only two likely possibilities. Did you ever hear of a woman named Mara Jade?'