Thrawn Chimaera : Galactic Civil War

Chapter Nine

Ziinuuvitas had a lot to think about: Thrawn was providing a real challenge, and she was even finding it hard to argue against his reasoning. Not that she would do that, openly, but in her head...

The best was to avoid thinking too much about philosophical matters and focus on the mission. She knew her mission, her goal, and she knew exactly why she was doing it. To loose focus of that was to compromise the mission. To allow the empire to corrupt her, and she would never let that happen.

They took another shuttle to Syndulla's residence where they were welcomed by Captain Slavin and several troopers.
It looked like the Empire was well installed already, and the few Twi'leks around the place were used as servants. There were patrols everywhere, and scout-troopers leaving and arriving, crates being moved in and out.

"Captain Slavin. I see there's an evolution around here." Thrawn greeted the man that was approaching them with an escort of stormtroopers of his own, while their own guard stood in line, two behind Thrawn and two behind Ziinuuvitas.

"Grand Admiral Thrawn." Slavin said pompously. "And you, Agent." He sneered to her.

"Captain, Marek." Thrawn corrected. "She will be advising and overseeing the security."

"Advising me?? Why I never-!"

"Captain Marek is under my direct command and will enforce my plan. Our devised strategy will ensure the good functioning of this place, as well as relieve you from the burdens of tactical defence planning." Thrawn interrupted with a slight tone of annoyance.

Ziinuuvitas saw Captain Slavin's face change: he was clueless truly. Thrawn had just insulted his capacity to plan a good defence, but he had taken it proudly, thinking that Thrawn was simply giving a meaningless task to a lesser officer.

"Very well then." Slavin answered.

"Now if you excuse me, I will inspect the crates of native cultural artefacts." Thrawn said. "I will meet you within one hour, Captain." He looked at Ziinuuvitas straight in the eye, a look that told her: I'm trusting you with this, see that I don't regret it.

"I'll have everything in order then." Slavin replied instead of her.

Talking Slavin out of his ridiculous plans was more difficult than taming a Rancor. The man was careless and made her wonder how in the name of all Galaxy had this man risen to his position in the first place. She had to insist a lot in certain things, constantly reminding him that it was the Grand Admiral's wish that things were done in a certain way and not the other.

There was still a great deal of details that Slavin was extremely incompetent about, things she would need to tell Thrawn later. It wasn't that she enjoyed doing her job well, because that meant more troubles for the rebellion. But it was her rebel job to do her imperial job well. She had to remind herself.

It was obvious that Slavin had a problem with her. She was a young, a woman. Imperial environment wasn't favourable to women in charge, there was still a lot of resistance on that.

Hopefully, it helped the fact that her leader was Thrawn, in a way. At least he had a strange, creepy, yet positive sensitivity to life, and wasn't a total idiot. His company was even nice on occasion, when she wasn't trying to control her nerves to avoid stabbing him in the eye.

And sometimes she wondered how different things could be if only he was a Grand Admiral of the Rebellion instead.

While checking the inventory of the weaponry, she chuckled to herself with the idea: the Rebellion would probably be much different with this man taking a lead. For starters, there would be no malfunctioning ships and no useless crew. Force knew sometimes she had to deal with the same kind of idiots in the rebellion that she had in the imperial navy so far. They weren't short in hot-headed fly-boys with their own ideas of what was right or wrong to do, constantly going around direct orders just to prove something.