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Beebee76
He collected it as an object – a thing of beauty to be displayed, admired, and studied. It was understandable. He did not know that deep within the ornate mineral casing, a living being was on the second stage of its lifecycle.
//
Thrawn had been sent to Laantos – a largely unpopulated outpost in the outer rim – to investigate a series of violent deaths. Gem hunters from the far reaches of the galaxy flocked to this obscure planet in search of the rare mineral formations, but instead of a prize discovery, they were met with a gruesome, untimely end.
He had not expected to encounter one of the unusual, rare orbs, as Thrawn was more interested in solving the murders, instead. A lucky shift in the soil had unearthed the remarkable specimen, so he retrieved it, dropped it in his pouch and resumed his search for clues.
She had now begun her tracking in earnest, hoping once again to retrieve what was hers. A small but formidable creature, she was often fatally underestimated by her quarry. She was confident that she would prevail.
Finding no clues, or other items of interest, Thrawn returned to his shuttle intending rest and prepare for the next day. He did not have time to remove his gear before he heard the movement outside the shuttle. It was close. Blaster at the ready, he stepped outside to investigate. Glowing red eyes met with shimmering yellow ones.
She immediately sensed something different about this being. An inner calm, a spark of curiosity and a complete lack of fear. In a moment of weakness, she decided to reach out, possibly communicate with this other. It could be a fatal error - one that she may not live to regret.
He maintained eye contact, as a strange sensation began to build behind his eyes. A series of images began to flash in quick succession: hordes descending upon Laantos, upending the delicate ecosystem in search of the precious orbs. Once plentiful, they were all but extinct, as the beings who once came forth from the objects.
They were the eggs of a dying species and now there was only one left.
Thrawn was overwhelmed by a profound sense of loss. It was as if every personal tragedy of his life was compressed into one moment. He understood what he must do. He carefully removed the pouch from his shoulder and placed it on the large boulder that separated them.
In a flash, both the pouch and the creature were gone.
//
After Action Reports were often tedious, but mostly boring. Thrawn thought carefully as he crafted his final words and he read them aloud:
Planet deemed hostile and uninhabitable. Recommend immediate closure of Outpost and Off-Limits Designation.
A rare smile crossed his lips and closed his data pad. He anticipated a long, restful sleep.
Bextia
“Serves us well” growled Faro under her breath, eyes fixed forward, through the bridge viewport, on the Nirauan capital ship that floated idly on space before the Chimaera.
"Orders ma'am?" Captain Noval asked, standing by her side, looking at the same ship, where Grand Admiral Thrawn was being held couple of hours ago.
"We just wait, as the Nirauans have told us. We cannot open fire or send a rescue mission or they will kill the Grand Admiral." she clenched her jaw. There were also Thrawn's orders, which he had delivered to her personally at his office this morning before boarding the Nirauan ship without an escort to accompany him, just him piloting the Lambda shuttle: do not interfere, hold back and keep a safe distance, no matter what happened. What infuriated her most was the certainty that this was all part of one of Thrawn's outlandish plans, the ones he didn't explain to anyone - well, back in the day he did explain them to Commander Vanto. But Eli was no longer on the Chimaera - and for which you had to follow orders blindly, trusting that you were doing the right thing and that this wasn't the first time Thrawn had made the wrong decision.
*****
"How is the prisoner doing?" asked first officer Slearg, entering the brig control room.
"He is sleeping, sir. A while ago he took off his uniform, folded it, used the fresher, and has been lying on the cot ever since."
The first officer frowned, leaning over the surveillance monitor, scrutinizing the image of the Grand Admiral, in his underwear, sleeping peacefully in his cell.
Something didn't make sense.
He was in charge of the ship security. Grand Admiral Thrawn had deliberately allowed himself to be made prisoner, stepping willingly into a trap by attending to the supposed negotiations in person.
Capturing him had been one - add another to the endless list - of the ridiculous ideas Prince Sprax had had. He had convinced his father of such a ridiculous plan, arguing that it would make the Empire listen to their claims.
He was now responsible for the prisoner.
A prisoner who, no doubt, had some sort of plan to escape.
But which one?
*****
"How far away is the Chimaera?" asked Prince Sprax, looking with some uneasiness at the sinister triangular silhouette that had been following them through space for over a week. The length of time Grand Admiral Thrawn had been aboard as an unwitting guest.
"We are out of range of their weaponry, my Prince," First Officer Slearg informed him.
"And... the Grand Admiral is well?"
"Yes, my Prince. He eats with appetite and sleeps most of the time."
"Good!" the Prince seemed satisfied by the report, turning away from the viewport. "Keep watching him. All well on the ship?"
"Yes, my Prince," nodded the first officer. He wasn't about to report the most relevant incident of the day, which had consisted of a clog in the pipes leading to the port main scrubber. All was quiet.
Too quiet.
*****
"How far away is the Chimaera?" asked Prince Sprax, now visibly annoyed at the sight of the Star Destroyer, which was still patiently trailing behind them. It had been two weeks now.
"Still out of range of their weaponry, my Prince, as always."
"And why is there no water in my personal quarters?"
Slearg sighed "There is no running water in any of the cabins, my Prince. The main supply pipes are clogged and the port scrubbers are out of service."
"Why?" the Prince asked, more upset at the lack of fresh water than the ominous presence that followed them.
"There are some... creatures in the water system. Engineering is trying to get rid of them before they cause further damage."
"Creatures? What creatures, mynocks? I hate mynocks, those beasts are repulsive," the Prince said in disgust.
"No, my Prince, mynocks live in the vacuum of space, not inside ships. These are aquatic creatures. Stone eels, according to the search we've done on HoloNet."
"How did these... stone eels you called them? boarded my ship?"
"I don't know yet, my Prince. All crewmembers know it is highly forbidden to bring their eggs on board or eat them three days prior to embarking because of the threat they are to the water systems. Actually, our life support system will be compromised in less than 20 hours if their propagation is not controlled. We will have to evacuate the ship in such case, and the closest ship to answer our distress call is... " he looked at the viewport, to the Chimaera.
"Find the person responsible for such negligence and bring him to me so that he may be duly punished." ordered the Prince. "Now I need to take a bath, send someone to bring water to my chambers."
Slearg’s comm beeped.
~Sir?~ said the brig officer.
“What is it?” he asked, preparing for the worst
~It’s Grand Admiral Thrawn, he has put his uniform back on. It's like... he's getting ready to leave?~
Slearg cut the communication and looked at the Prince. He knew who and how had brought the stone eels on board.
*****
The door to Thrawn's office closed behind her and Faro took a seat in front of his desk, a smile on her lips.
"How?" she asked, "How did you sabotage the Nirauan ship?".
"Stone eel eggs," he merely said.
"How did you smuggle them aboard?"
"I ate them. I had been told once that some of the eggs would survive the trip through the digestive system. The day after I ate them, they came out of my body. And then it was only a matter of time before the surviving eggs reached the ship's water cycle and hatched."
"...and the Nirauans had to turn themselves in because their ship was in danger because their life support systems were under critical failure."
"Situation solved, without firing a single shot."
She nodded, smiling.
"Congratulations, sir." she stood up to leave and stopped by the door. "Wait... does that mean you have more of these eggs stored on board... just in case?"
"Perhaps."
[This is a reference to chapter 60 of "The Replacement"]
Diamond Dove
"Sir... Thrawn… dear.." Pellaeon tried desperately to get through to Thrawn. "No!"
"Hmm," Thrawn hummed, he was bent over the collection of sticks cobbled together to make the Ysalamiri enclosure. Enclosure being a vague term since the damn things were usually everywhere else but on it. He was clearly not listening.
"I said no," said Pellaeon, disappointed that his voice sounded less definitive and more pleading.
Thrawn ran his finger down the Ysalamiri- snuggle Buns- back, he didn't speak or turn around.
"Fine!" Pellaeon said. "Let me see the damn thing at least."
Thrawn smiled his facial twitch of a smile and carefully slid his hands under the Ysalamiri's belly. He carefully extracted a palm size brown egg. Snuggle Buns hissed and glared daggers at Pellaeon with its four beady eyes.
"No," said Pellaeon.
Thrawn gently put back the egg, "You said fine."
"To seeing it!" Pellaeon's voice was getting shrill. "Not to keeping it. What if it hatches?"
"Well that would be the point, wouldn't it," Thrawn said snidely he had gone back to using a finger to pet Snuggle Buns. "Besides, they are both male."
"Well, clearly not, sir," Pellaeon deadpanned.
Thrawn sat back on his heels and rose to his feet. He turned towards Pellaeon with a glint in his eye.
Pellaeon stepped back, "Having sex with me will not change my mind," he said.
Thrawn huffed, reaching out and placing a hand on Pellaeon's chest as he walked by. His hand, a cool press on his chest, made Pellaeon's heart flutter, and heat spread in his body. But to Thrawn Pellaeon just wrinkled his nose. "And consider washing your hands," he added.
Thrawn smirked, his eyes traveling down Pellaeon's body before he sashayed away, making sure Pellaeon got a good look at his ass.
(Meet Mr. Snuggle Buns)
Alric
Thrawn had been watching the nest for a full day and a half, trying to figure out the mother fowl’s schedule. Fowl were similar the galaxy-over, and she was displaying all necessary nesting behaviors, which likely meant there were eggs in that nest.
And if the size of the mother was any indication, those were huge eggs.
His ribs ached, and he was pretty sure that some little bone in his wrist was broken - among other injuries - but he ignored the pain as he began to climb up the side of the rockface slowly. It was climb, or starve, since Ezra didn’t seem too keen on hunting. It’d been a rough awakening for the boy, finding out that surviving in a city was much, much different from surviving in the wild. They’d been fortunate that they’d found ration bars in the wreckage of the Chimaera, but the supply was not infinite, and they needed to supplement them soon. Eggs would fit that bill nicely, since they were one of the few things that reliably wouldn’t kill you.
The mother had left the nest at roughly the same time as the day prior, which hopefully meant that she wouldn’t be back for another half hour. He hissed with pain when he put too much weight on his injured wrists, his lungs burning - he was far, far too injured for this, but the climb wasn’t too steep, and it wasn’t too far, and….well, Bridger was useless.
He just barely managed to get two eggs out of the nest and down to the ground before the shadow of the mother could be seen gliding across the grass. He heard her scream as he hurried off to the cover of the treeline - she’d discovered two of her eggs gone.
Ezra, as expected, was less than pleased about the eggs.
“What if that species is endangered? We could be killing them off by doing this,” he said, cradling one of the eggs gently.
Thrawn could only stare, incredulously, as he fought to contain his ire. “You just killed tens of thousands of people, and nearly killed yourself, and you’re worried about eggs,” he said, his voice low from the effort of staying calm.
Ezra opened his mouth, but closed it in short order.
“In any case, it’s this, or try to kill the mother for meat. If we fail, she kills us. If we succeed, we have taken a breeding female out of the population - a breeding female that will lay no more eggs. Not to mention that the young in the current clutch would die,” Thrawn said, placing the eggs down next to the fire.
“We could eat plants. I thought I saw berry bushes not far from here.”
“Go right ahead. If you die, I will know they’re not safe.”
Ezra scoffed, and then sighed, crossing his arms over his chest petulantly. “Fine. Fine! But we can’t only eat eggs.”
“No. We can’t. Which is why tomorrow, you’re going to go looking for herbivores.”
“I still say we could try the berries-”
“Bridger,” Thrawn said sharply. “There are a thousand ways to die in the wilderness. I realize that you’re trying to assuage what is left of your conscience, but if we’re to survive until someone comes to find us, you are going to have to do something that will make you uncomfortable.”
Ezra looked thoughtful for a moment, then sighed once more. “Ok. Tomorrow I go looking for herbivores.” He shrugged, and then leaned back against a tree. “How come you know so much about survival, anyway.”
Thrawn looked up, and frowned. “It’s a long story.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we don’t exactly have a shortage of time.”
Now it was Thrawn’s turn to look thoughtful. The boy was right, they had nothing but time and not a lot to do, at least before tomorrow, but it’d been a long time since he’d recounted the story. He didn’t even think Eli knew the whole story. He reached over and adjusted the eggs, turning them to allow the heat to cook them.
“Alright. I’ll tell you.”
Cordage
It took skill, patience, and a steady hand, as with most art. The shell, scraped away just enough to reveal shades of blue, green, aquamarine, but not so deep as to break the egg.
The process would be relatively simple, in technical terms. Carving with the long, sharp nail on their second thumb would provide not only extra control, but also encourage individuals to pursue their own style unique to the ridges in their keratin-adjacent fingertips. In practical terms, however? Now that was the thing to ponder, to mull over whilst gazing at the E-ru-m eggs in his collection.
Nwhu-lst was a planet that supported much life. E-ru-m were known to commonly lay eggs, and thus taking some to create art had no poor effect on the environment, or so the Nwhe-rians claimed. The art would depict the environment or other animal life, but never a Nwhe-rian. Accounts could be found of them claiming art would “capture the soul” of those shown. It was an honour for the flora, the fauna, but those with Higher Thought would be trapped inside of the egg and grow mad, eventually bringing ruin to their people.
That one struck a little close to home, as Lieutenant Vanto would say.
His eyes drifted over, away from the eggs on their little stands. A carving, cheaply made, was displayed on its own table. Dwarfed by everything else, and was that a fragment of the price sticker visible, poking from underneath?
It didn’t matter - Vanto had had his eyes on it while they were planetbound for one reason or another. Where one could pluck meaning from the tone of a voice, the gesture of a hand, the twitch in a brow or lip, the truest key to the soul was through their favoured designs, patterns, pieces of work.
Eggs momentarily forgotten, Thrawn’s attention had been drawn by a dinky little souvenir, as Vanto would put it. What was so special about this little thing?
Mitth’raw’nuruodo was determined to find out.
Owl Party
“Thraaaaaaaaawn!!!!”
The scream echoed in Thrawn’s mind as he ran through the dark, close tunnels, blaster in hand. The ground had opened under Eli and he was gone, pulled in before Thrawn could do more than step forward. Thrawn had lept in after him but there was no sign of Eli, his cries drowned out by the infernal buzzing of the three-foot long insects that populated the tunnels, the walls and ceiling constantly shifting and ripping with their movements. They ignored the Chiss for the most part; either his scent didn’t have the correct chemical makeup for them to react to, or his body temperature was too low for the insects to recognize him as a living being, or some other reason that he couldn’t discern. Regardless, he was thankful for it, as it let him search for the missing Commander without needing to waste his time fighting through the hundreds or thousands of insects lurking between him and wherever Eli had been taken.
Three hours passed before Thrawn found him; if not for his infrared sight, he might never have done so.
Eli was lying in a small chamber, unconscious but alive. The insects had chewed through his tunic and undershirt, leaving his back and arms bare; his exposed skin was thickly studded with oval-shaped objects roughly as long as his forearm. Thrawn tried to remove them - first by knocking them off with his blaster barrel, then kicking at them, then finally grasping them - to no avail. They were stuck to Eli’s skin with some sort of natural adhesive, and Thrawn couldn’t remove them himself without tearing off Eli’s skin as well. He hitched Eli over his shoulder and made his way back through the tunnels, following the marks he had made on the floor as he had moved forward. Thrawn had to shoot his way to the surface once the larger, more hostile soldiers guarding the hive realized he was stealing their young; shooting and ducking their divebombing attacks until stormtroopers erupted from the waiting shuttle and took over combat, letting Thrawn focus on running to safety without dropping Eli.
Thrawn lay Eli across the seats and draped an emergency blanket over him when they were secure in the shuttle, trying not to focus on the disturbing shape the eggs underneath made of him.
They were nearly back to the Chimaera when Eli woke. When he groggily asked what had happened, Thrawn told him, omitting a few details that he felt would only upset the man. With luck, Eli would not be aware enough to notice or remember what he had been subjected to until it was no longer an issue.
Luck was not with them in that regard.
Thrawn tried to keep the blanket in place and Eli still, but when he was distracted by his comm Eli had reached to scratch the back of his arm, and when his fingers brushed the objects he had turned and looked, frozen by the sight of the eggs sticking out of his skin. Thrawn heard Eli start to whimper in confusion and horror and dropped to his knees before the man, putting his hands on Eli’s cheeks and redirecting his attention back to Thrawn alone, doing what he could to soothe the trembling, terrified man. Eli opened his mouth, throat clicking, and then fell silent, his muscles going slack and eyes distant. Thrawn was relieved; he had been afraid that Eli would react far worse to the situation. He was incredibly calm, all things considered. Surprisingly so, even.
Eli remained completely calm when he was loaded on the stretcher.
Eli remained completely calm when he entered medbay.
Eli remained completely calm as the eggs were removed from his skin, and as he went through the scans and tests to ensure that nothing had gotten inside of him.
When Eli was cleared for active duty, his behavior had returned to normal. One would hardly know that he had been through the experience he had at all.
Thrawn knew better. He was the only one that saw the deep, bloody furrows Eli had started to compulsively scratch into his skin with his own nails to make sure that there was nothing living inside him. He was the only one that heard Eli’s screams of terror through their shared door as he relived the horror of his experience, night after night after night.