Thrawn Chimaera : Galactic Civil War

Chapter Five

They arrived at Lothal and the Grand Admiral stationed his Fleet above the planet, all nine Imperial I-class Star Destroyers, sixteen Imperial II-class Star Destroyers, twelve Arquitens-class command cruisers, nine Gozanti-class cruisers and four Dreadnought-class heavy cruisers. It was a Fleet with a lot of firepower, Ziinuuvitas had gathered.

In the time she had to prepare, she simply changed her uniform to a fresh set and braided her hair into a bun - one approved by the Imperial guidelines of dress code. She did not unpack anything else, or even checked her new room, deciding to send a droid to get the clothes and do everything in the first refresher room she found.

That gave her extra time to go around and get to know her environment, gathering useful information to send to the rebellion: their current location and prospects of movement, current objectives, numbers of ships and crew etc.

This was a fleet structured to be sent to major conflicts, and it had been given to Thrawn. Ziinuuvitas learned in the meantime that it was actually Governor Pryce suggesting it after the incident in Batonn, when he was promoted to Grand Admiral. It was then, not a surprise, that soon after she requested his help and he obliged- he owed her.

The Grand Admiral had also, already commissioned three ICM-092792 construction modules to be placed in the planet's orbit, with other two additional ones waiting for approval by the Emperor himself. The goal, she learned, was to supervise the mining operations there.

Each Imperial I-class Star Destroyer was equipped with seven main KDY Destroyer-I ion engine units, and Cygnus Spaceworks Gemon-4 ion engines for emergency use. They also had a primary Class 2 Hyperdrive and a Class 8 for backup, a Solar ionization reactor, KDY ISD-72x shield generator domes, long range sensor system, a tractor beam targeting array with 10 Phylon Q7 tractor beam projectors. The consumables for two standard years were enough for all the crew as well.

The numbers of the crew were no less impressive, with over 37,000 on board- 9,235 officers and 27,850 enlisted personnel and the complement of 9,700 stormtroopers.

The Imperial II-class Star Destroyers were quite the same, but instead featured a communications tower between its two deflector shield generator domes.

As for the twelve Arquitens-class command cruisers, they performed detached patrol duties for now, but Ziinuuvitas learned they also acted as support to larger battle groups, serving as an armed transport and as a communications ship.

The nine Gozanti-class cruisers were modified freighters that sported a twin laser turret in a dorsal mount and a heavy laser cannon on its ventral side. They either carried four TIE/ln space superiority starfighters, or have one swapped for a TIE/sa bomber, plus two All Terrain Defence Pods on underside-mounted docking clamps which were connected to corridors inside the vessel.

There was no need to get to know the Dreadnoughts specs, as they were all relics of the Clone Wars.

Ziinuuvitas had already stored all this in a slicer spike with cloned encryption to match the key Organa had given her, one she had made herself while still on Coruscant.

Unfortunately, there was no time to use it.

The shuttle awaited them in the main hangar, Thrawn and a few guards standing at the ramp while he gave further instructions to Commodore Faro.

Seeing her approach, Thrawn dismissed Faro and turned to his new Captain.

"Ah, Captain. You made it on time."

"Yes, Grand Admiral. You told me to be here and I didn't want to delay you." She offered while approaching him.

"You still had time to inspect the TIEs and the hangars Captain." He smirked. "But since we are here, perhaps we can go in advance and instead return earlier so you can continue your thorough examination of the Chimaera."

He gestured to the inside of the Shuttle and she boarded followed by the man. He couldn't see her now, walking behind her, but she had swallowed the lump on her throat- he knew very well what she had been doing, which meant she would need to be extra careful when slicing a terminal to pass the information. He probably knew she talked to some of the crew as well, and exactly where she had been.

He had a mysterious aura that was quite powerful, and Ziinuuvitas seemed to detect the trace of an accent in his speech, but only sometimes and never when talking to other commanding officers. So she wondered if he hid his natural accent from humans, adopting a very polished Imperial one, but allowing himself to relax it when talking to other aliens. This wasn't strange per se, many alien species made efforts to speak only Basic accents.


They landed at 2203 Standard Time, although the local time marked 0315, and with the planet under mandatory curfew, Ziinuuvitas saw a scenery of heavy silence.