Thrawn Chimaera : Galactic Civil War

Chapter Thirteen

With Thrawn away, the bulk of the Fleet continued the operations on Lothal under the command of Commodore Faro, and Captain Marek as her second for all effects.

There was the matter of Sealla Reindar, an investigation she had to personally oversee until the Grand Admiral was back.

She had woke up the morning after their meeting, unsure about how she had ended up in bed, until a flash of memories reminded her of the humiliating fact that Thrawn had carried her to bed, bridal style, and cared for her as if they were close.

Not only that...

He had left, in the low table of her office, that strange box she had eyed at first. It wasn't just a strange small box with a vintage style from the High Republic Era. No.

It was a kriffing vintage chess.

The intricate box opened and was unfolded in half, each piece was obviously sculpted by hand too. More, each piece had magnetic grip to be played in low gravity mode, and the board had it's own computer to record the games for later review, it could show the previous moves by casting a holographic projection of each piece being moved, and, it had an AI that could be programmed to memorize up to 5 different modes for each side: strategy, types of attacks and defences, favourite moves etc: Five Modes.

That was the same has having a total of 10 different AI's mimicking different players.

Is he mad?

The kriffing chess must have cost a big enough fortune to buy a small ship!!

She had assumed he forgot it there of course. Until she saw the message on her datapad:

<<An exquisite entertainment, for a very preoccupied mind.>>

That's what he wrote.

Gone were the days where she was a princess. Years gone... ...
Were her dirty rebel hands even allowed to touch such a beautiful object?

It seemed to her, that it was the sort of thing that would set an museum alarm off.

He could have offered her a normal chess, a holochess even. That would have been great actually, she would have been happy.

What am I thinking?? Of course not. He shouldn't have given me anything, not even a holochess!!

She groaned, eating the flatcakes on her desk while reading the last reports.

Actually, being the Grand Admiral of a Fleet was a lot of hard work. She was stepping in those shoes a bit, with him gone, while Commodore Faro focused on manoeuvring the ships in the patrols and staying on the Bridge. But Ziinuuvitas was behind it all now, more than ever. As his aide/secretary, it was already a lot of work. She assumed he was dumping most of it on her out of spite or something...

But now she could see that his job was... Madness.

No wonder he's so desperate for an aide that can keep up with him...
Who in all the moon's of Gama-Drell can take this job?!

She concluded that, besides his former aide and herself, probably no one. One had to function on a certain amount of craziness in order to follow Thrawn. For anything really.

And she knew for a fact he was unique in this obsession with perfection. No one else would give themselves this amount of work, and anyone else would just assign several people to deal with all there was.

He however, demanded omniscience, from himself and his right-hand.

No... It's worse than that. As his aide, he expects me to actually solve certain matters before he learns about them even. He counts on me to keep things running smoothly so that he can focus on even more important matters.

She had no time for herself really. And upon running through all the work, Ziinuuvitas found herself deadpaning because the overwhelming amount also included things that...