Chapter Text
The return to realspace was unexpected.
The Chimaera lurched. All alarms were already blaring, so Ezra only registered the sudden deceleration when he slid across the floor and into the chassis of a console panel.
It hurt. He blinked the hyperspace trance out of his eyes. Maybe this was the purrgil leaving them, in the middle of unknown space. But that didn’t explain their pain and concern, or was that his pain and concern?
Groaning, Ezra sat up slightly and focused. The purrgil were just as confused as he was.
The bridge was empty. The crew had evacuated behind the blast doors on the admiral’s orders, and only Ezra’s blaster trained on Thrawn had prevented them from taking him with them. The man himself was propped against the helm, and he was watching Ezra.
“Gravity well,” Thrawn said. His voice was hoarse, a palm pressed to his chest. “We need the bridge crew.”
There were thumping noises from the other side of the blast door. It seemed the rest of his surviving officers agreed.
Ezra’s eyes darted between Thrawn and the door.
“Ezra Bridger,” said Thrawn, blinking blood and dust out of his eyes, and he actually sounded about as tired as Ezra felt. “Let them in. We’re under attack.”
They filed in, orderly once they saw Ezra’s blaster back on Thrawn.
“Do not harm Ezra Bridger,” said Thrawn tersely. Someone helped him into a chair. “Is that understood?” A reluctant, if audible chorus of acknowledgement. “Sensors. Report.”
“Most of the sensing equipment has been damaged,” said an officer. Her cap was lost, and her forehead was bruised. She eyed Ezra with suspicion, but it was cursory, which more than anything led Ezra to believe the threat was real. “We have optical and a limited longwave range. Two vessels, heavy cruisers, engaged in battle.” She gulped. “Sir. It’s not certain but I think one of them is the Steadfast. And the other is –”
“Jam all signals,” snapped Thrawn. “Jam all signals now.”
“The array is down,” said another of the bridge officers, frantically typing into the console.
“Reroute through the auxiliaries,” said Thrawn. “We don’t need finesse. Enhance power and cast a broadband scramble.” He turned to Ezra. “Bridger,” he said intently. “Tell the animals to leave.”
“What?” said Ezra. His head was pounding.
“They are panicking. There is an artificial gravity field here, and they will cause too much damage.” Thrawn’s eyes were so bright, thought Ezra dizzily. “Tell them to leave.”
“I —” He coughed, and couldn’t stop coughing, dry and hacking.
“Hydrolytes,” ordered Thrawn, and someone handed him a packet of gel. “Drink this.”
“What’s happening?” said Ezra weakly.
Thrawn turned to look down at the cracked console, shutters still sealed over the damaged viewing ports. He was holding his ribs where the purrgil had pressed him against the bulkhead, his torn and scuffed uniform a reminder that it had happened not so long ago, but he looked far more worried now than he had then.
The Grysks, Thrawn told him, pointing at the sensor screen, preyed on entire species, and had long had the dominion of the Unknown Regions in their sights. They used gravity technology cannibalised from pirate fleets to immobilise their targets, and telepathic minions to subdue them.
They were in one ship, and his people, the Chiss, were in the other. And the Chiss were losing.
When the Chiss lost, the Grysks would come for them.
The ships were locked together, the final stages of boarding and hijack. “This is now a humanitarian mission,” Thrawn said. “I trust you have no objections.”
“Sublight’s operational, sir,” reported one of his officers.
“Good,” said Thrawn. One hand was resting on the command centre projector table, bearing rather more weight than it might have normally. “Set course for the Steadfast.”
They wouldn’t make it in time. Ezra examined the feeling, a foreign urgency rising up and threatening to overwhelm him. “Thrawn, the purrgil are angry.”
Angry wasn’t quite the right word. They were responding to a strong and desperate cry for help, like the one the purrgil used amongst themselves to rescue a member of the pod trapped or captive.
Thrawn considered him, then tilted his head towards the optical feed. An invitation to continue. Ezra hesitated, even as his eyes were drawn to the screen. “I think they’re picking up the emotions of someone on the ship.”
Thrawn’s eyes bored into him. “Which ship? Speak carefully.”
Ezra bristled. He opened his mouth to retort, when a purrgil slammed into the Grysk ship, shearing it off from the Chiss one. An unpleasantly familiar pulsing light pattern and then they were gone.
“That answers it,” said Thrawn crisply, and if watching a ship get abducted by purrgil — just as he had been only a short time earlier — unsettled him, he didn’t show it. “Helm, take us in.”
The Chimaera, even with its extensive structural damage, was still larger than the Chiss ship. There was a flurry of activity as the crew sealed hatches, the fully armoured boarding party standing by.
Now, the stormtroopers had instructions to protect him. Ezra shook his head internally, but he didn’t have time to think further on it because Thrawn was pulling him aside. “There are five children on the Steadfast. I need you to find them.”
“What?” said Ezra. “Why?”
“Their capture and enslavement would have been the aim of this raid,” said Thrawn. “They will be well-hidden at best. Hostages at worst. Your skills will be eminently useful.”
Before he could object, the connecting hatch unsealed with a pneumatic hiss.
“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” said the Chiss ship’s captain, unmistakable not for the white uniform but an air of complete control, somehow still glacially calm despite the tactical vest strapped over her uniform and blood matted across her brow. “Your timing is remarkable.”
The Chiss ship had been overrun; the captain made that clear. She was intimidating if only by how Thrawn deferred to her sharp instructions. Ezra eyed the Chiss crew members warily. They seemed incredibly relieved to see Thrawn, which made sense. There was nothing out here, and Ezra didn’t like to think about what would have become of this ship if they hadn’t arrived.
The precision attack of the purrgil had thrown both parties into disarray, but to the Chiss’s favour; and it seemed the Chimaera’s makeshift jammers had prevented any remote detonations. They were now routing the Grysks from its depths. Thrawn was giving instructions to his boarding party. With a severe language barrier, they would mostly stand guard along the secured areas, leaving the Chiss warriors to expand their search in a vessel they were much more familiar with.
The remaining purrgils circled with continued anxiety at the edges of his mind. This was taking too long. Ezra tapped Thrawn’s shoulder. “This way,” he said.
The Chiss captain looked at Thrawn, then turned her red eyes to Ezra. “Ozyly-esehembo?”
Her gaze was piercing. If none of her subordinates had noticed the animosity between him and Thrawn’s crew, she certainly had.
Thrawn only nodded, and she didn’t stop them as he turned to follow Ezra.
Both he and Ezra were flagging; the stim hypos were wearing off with an alacrity that Ezra didn’t want to examine too closely. He couldn’t keep track of the turns they had made. The connection was leading him through areas of significant carnage. Their small escort, all that could be mustered, was slowly whittled down as they carried survivors back to the triage centre.
The last Chiss warrior looked at Thrawn, a question on their face as they slung an injured comrade over their shoulder.
Thrawn looked at Ezra. Ezra shook his head. They were close; there was no time to wait for backup. The warrior departed without fanfare, and then it was just the two of them.
When Ezra stepped into the corridor, he knew. There were Grysks lying along the length of it, most of them disfigured by detonations Ezra had come to learn was their preferred method of surrender. The way was closed off by a blast door, blackened with carbon scoring.
In front of it lay a single humanoid form.
“Vanto,”’ said Thrawn sharply. “Vanto.”
Vanto did not respond.
“Bridger,” said Thrawn. “Ensure the children are safe.”
He knelt, or perhaps his knees buckled. Ezra only hoped he would be able to stand again because he sure as hell wasn’t carrying Thrawn back. He eyed the blast doors dubiously. Despite significant effort to the contrary, they were intact. The controls had been destroyed and now could only be opened from the other side. He stepped forward, intending to inspect the panel, when the doors slid half-open.
A decidedly not-child stood before him. One arm hung limp from a shoulder injury; the other held a weapon.
She said something in a sharp tone.
Thrawn seemed to gather himself. Without looking at her, he replied in what sounded like the same language. He repeated the last part for Ezra in Basic. “All clear.”
The woman eyed Ezra, then thrust her blaster at him. Ezra fumbled with it as the woman spun around, lunged downwards and flung her good arm out.
“Eli!” shrieked a child’s voice, shrill. A small girl, wild-haired, barefoot, clothing over-large, dropped from the ventilation shaft and ran straight for the opening in the blast doors. A scuffle, one the woman won single-handed. Then a struggle that Ezra would know without a word of the language: let me go.
She was still shouting Eli’s name. The woman did not let her go.
The white fabric of Thrawn’s uniform pants, already streaked with dirt and debris, were stained where he had knelt. Ezra could see the man was Human, not Chiss, and although he was unnaturally still Ezra could sense the beat of his heart, and from where he was cradled against Thrawn’s chest perhaps Thrawn could feel it too.
The woman said something to Thrawn, her back to him, unfazed to have a screaming child throwing fists into her even as she blocked her from seeing anything past the doors.
Thrawn’s eyes flicked to Ezra.
“Look after them,” he said, and then he was gone.
Eli Vanto, Ezra decided, was an exceptional man, which he had learnt from only through two things: the small girl who ran her fingers over his face, finally quietescent, then had let him pick her up; and the thought of Thrawn, unrattled even by his fleet being crushed by the purrgil, looking shocked and pale at the sight of this one man gravely injured.
Or maybe that had been the blood loss. Ezra was also feeling a little woozy, and more than a little mental whiplash.
The purrgil, the Force. The Imperials turned temporary allies. The alien warship he was now helping defend.
“Eli?” said the girl, again.
“He’ll be fine,” he tried. She didn’t know Basic, but she frowned anyway.
“He’s getting help,” he said reassuringly. That, at least, he was confident about. She looked unconvinced, but her vice-like grip slackened.
Ezra said, “Ezra.”
“Ez-ra,” said the girl slowly.
“Yep,” he said, attempting a smile. “That’s me.”
He had no spare hands with which to point at himself; the other one was still holding the blaster-like weapon. The woman had returned, four other children in tow, but had not asked for it back. She looked at Ezra and the girl he was carrying, and beckoned them down the corridor.
At the junction, she said something. She cocked her head at his bemusement and tried several other languages.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
She let go of one of the girl’s hands to gesture at the crossroads in the corridors. She wanted to know which way was safe. Ezra looked down each path cautiously. With the urgent pull of the Force gone, they all looked very similar: ominously dark with only the emergency lighting. Bodies slumped against the bulkhead.
The klaxons, tuned out by the urgency of their search, now sounded so loud. He gulped, clawing for focus. The girl in his arms said something, then put a small hand on his cheek.
“Ezra,” she said encouragingly, and put her other hand on his forehead.
This, too, transcended language. He would know it anywhere. Let me in, she was saying, with her mind and heart.
Ezra closed his eyes.
His next coherent memory was of being coaxed into a chair.
“Ezra,” said the woman. She said something to the person next to her.
“You have… sparklevision?” asked Thrawn. “Vertigo? A migraine?”
Ezra huffed a laugh before he could stop himself, then groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah… sparklevision. Let’s go with that. Are they all safe?”
“Yes,” said Thrawn gravely. “The ship has been secured and the children returned to Admiral Ar’alani’s care.”
It was an oddly peaceful moment, warm with success, until Ezra recalled exactly who he was talking to.
“Hey.” He used the last of his energy to jab his finger towards Thrawn. “You know the Empire abducts Force-sensitive children? Just like these Grysks? If you’re so against that, why are you working with them?”
“The objectives of the Inquisitorius were not made available to me,” said Thrawn. “Though I suspected as much.”
Ezra didn’t have enough in him to stay angry. It’d keep for another time. He felt safe, oddly so, letting his eyes fall shut and his spine slump, only realising its source when a small hand worked its way into his. “And Vanto?”
Thrawn blinked. “He will make a full recovery.”
Ezra cracked an eye open to watch him turn away to answer a question from an out-of-breath Imperial just arrived in the medbay. It was momentary, but Ezra hadn’t imagined it: a frisson of wariness. Suspicion.
Ezra’s family was safe from Thrawn, now. Thrawn was wondering if his people were safe from Ezra.
The girl climbed into his lap. You don’t know anything about us, thought Ezra defensively, petting the top of her head gently. We aren’t like you. But recalling Thrawn’s wild-eyed command as he left Ezra to look after the children — perhaps he did.