Thrawn Chimaera : Galactic Civil War

Chapter Nineteen

Thrawn arrived to his room after several hours on interrogation, having concluded that the sabotage of the speeder-bikes had nothing to do with the slavers. In fact, one of the runaways had been found dead a few miles from the location of the main event, the cause: his stolen speeder exploded.

Although they couldn't exclude his involvement with the slave operation itself, it seemed that Sealla Reindar had nothing to do with the incident: to Thrawn's dismay, because he had hoped that it was related since it offered a good explanation, someone to blame, with a history of that kind of thing, a motive, and... it would have narrowed down the search for this man.

But no. Instead, they were dealing with yet another problem, a problem in the Factory producing the bikes which was the same one developing his project for the TIE Defender.

He was angry of course, yet keeping his emotions at bay to allow his mind to piece the puzzle with clarity. But the anger was there, making his blood boil.

Not only there was a threat to his secret project, this was a proper act of terrorism. It had nothing to do with fighting the Empire, or whatever heroic quest people wanted to call it these days. This was just terrorism, those bikes served several purposes after all, from delivering supplies inside a city, to patrolling and serving the men and women tasked with protecting civilians.

It was also a waste of resources, which in turn translated into needing more supplies and manpower: supplies that would need to be acquired anyhow, manpower that would need to be acquired... anyhow.

People complained that they were stripped of their land and forced to find work: work only available in the service of the Empire, either in the military or in those factories. People saw their food and goods rationed in many places.

Why? Because people insisted in supporting insurgents. They were harvesting their own problems of course.

But unhappy people meant more effort into pacifying the worlds, more credits invested in infrastructure, food, equipment, more men... It robbed the Empire from resources that would have been better applied elsewhere.

So Thrawn was very angry.

And to add to it all, his freshly formed elite ground unit had suffered the heaviest blow so far. He couldn't ignore it, even less now after learning the name they had chosen for themselves, an obvious (if unnecessary in his opinion), ode to the Chimaera, therefore a display of loyalty.

The Cerulean Claw Company: it was a honour he didn't seek, but one he couldn't ignore. If all the years so far had taught him something, was that, regardless of duty, when said duty was carried with an extra passion, it should be acknowledged. It didn't have to be anything big, but it had to be noticed. This was politics, he wasn't good at those but that much he could comprehend.

They were just doing their duty, yes, but they were doing so with that extra layer of loyalty.

They had not expecting a reward because they knew him, they knew that they were just doing their job as they should. Maybe with another leader they would have expected a reward, but they knew him. So they had done it out of respect. Because they were loyal. To him. Not the Empire.

And when he considered the fact that it was her, being in charge...

It added more to his anger: his Senior Captain, his General, almost died.

Ziinuuvitas was a name he dared not to use but that flashed on his head all the time, a name that almost vanished because of a pathetic, low act of pure terrorism. She almost died doing her job, doing something good for the galaxy that few others bothered with.

He made a mistake in the game and almost lost his most prized piece. A white Queen.

He was very, very, very angry.

And if his calculations were correct, this was the time of the month where she would soon start to feel worse from whatever afflicted her: it was cyclical, one standard galactic month after she would get suddenly better, she would get worse.

The difference resided only in the time it would take her to do whatever she did in secret to get better. He had already picked on that pattern.

Tiredness and the darkening of the lips, tips of the fingers, nose and ears were the first symptoms.