The Ghost

1

"Admiral." Woman's voice with a crisp Imperial accent rang through the comm. "We brought something you may want to see for yourself."

Thrawn frowned and stopped reading. They must've found something intriguing down there, the crew knew better than to waste his time on trivial things.

"I will be there in a moment, lieutenant." He dropped the datapad onto the desk and made his way to the landing bay.

The team of researchers he sent to what supposed to be an old lab discovered on Hoth was just disembarking the shuttle. The big repursorlift sledges that came back with the team were piled with tech fragments resembling very old computers and droids. But what instantly drew his attention were two large tubes placed on the second sledges. They looked very much like cryogenic hibernation capsules but what set them apart from any similar tech he knew was their design.

It was utterly alien.

Lieutenant joined him. "Sir, we found all of it deep below the surface. It was a very small place, maybe even built exclusively to store these two." She nodded at capsules and scratched her head.

Thrawn regarded the capsules in silence. They were much slimmer than commonly used on the starships and much sturdier by the look, without any glass, just pure, sleek metal. The switches were marked with unrecognisable signs and markings. Steady, albeit dimmed light was still flickering on one of the tubes, the other didn't display any signs of life. In all his years of studying the art of all the alien civilisations he never saw anything resembling these designs.

"Are these still functional?" Thrawn asked.

The woman nodded. "One of them is. It was connected to the power source which, miraculously, was also still working. Whoever built this did a very good job. They must have a lot of experience in building in such extreme conditions. The other one wasn't hooked to the power output, for some reason. We haven't got enough time to do any proper checks down there."

Thrawn acknowledged with a short nod. They were ordered to regroup with the fleet and he had to cut the expedition short.

"Any idea how old these are?" He pointed to the tech and the capsules.

"No sir. I have never seen tech like that before. It seems to be much more sophisticated in many ways compared to what we have." A big frown creased her forehead.

"Maybe the occupant of this will be able to shed some light on this." Thrawn gestured at the still functional tube. "If they are still alive. Get medical personnel to work on that immediately. I want the full report in two hours." He glanced one more time at the capsules and turned around making his way to the bridge.

"Yes, sir."

Ten hours later.

"Sir." Calm voice in his comm belonged to Chimaera's medical chef. "We managed to open both of the capsules." The long silence followed.

"And?" Thrawn prompted.

"The functional one contained a female Chiss. She is alive."