Saga - PT Jedi Devilry & Sith Devilry (Thrawn's POV), SW Rebels fic

JEDI DEVILRY
Summary:
After the battle of Atollon, Grand Admiral Thrawn takes a moment of self-reflection at being confronted with an entity he cannot explain. Bendu. GEN. A stand-alone, Canon compliant fic with Legends elements.
Word count: 1,700

SITH DEVILRY
Summary:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The victory against the Rebels at Atollon brings the desired result, and Grand Admiral Thrawn is shown the blue prints of the Death Star by the Emperor himself. GEN. A stand-alone, Canon compliant fic with Legends elements.
Word count: 1,100




JEDI DEVILRY
Summary:
After the battle of Atollon, Grand Admiral Thrawn takes a moment of self-reflection at being confronted with an entity he cannot explain. Bendu. A stand-alone, Canon compliant fic with Legends elements.
---------------------------

In the privacy of his command room, Grand Admiral Thrawn unfastened his chest plate armor, removed his helmet, took off his black gloves, and allowed himself a deep contemplative sigh. He sagged deep into the chair, leaning back against the padding, steepling his fingers.

The Empire scored a major victory against the Rebels today. He managed to destroy their base on Atollon and succeeded in tearing apart the nascent Rebellion in this sector, teaching them their lesson. It was Thrawn who brought them to their knees with minimum losses, and he knew it was only the combination of Konstantine's incompetence that allowed a few Rebel ships to break the blocade, Tarkin's obsession with making an example of Rebel leaders, and Pryce's need to prove herself to him, seeking her own advancement, that resulted in unnecessary waste of Imperial resources and the loss of lives of the men under his command.

Thrawn had spent months planning his move, studying his opponents carefully, preparing for all kinds of possible and impossible scenarios, fully aware that no battle plan had ever survived the contact with the enemy. But even in his wildest dreams, he would not have imagined that it would take a supernatural entity to rob him of his personal victory.

He had been this close to capturing the Ghost's crew. Or killing them, the choice was theirs. In either event, he won.

The Rebels made their decision, and Thrawn was so convinced of his own ingeniousness that he had allowed to lose his carefully controlled facade in front of them, absolutely certain that his smirk would be the last thing they would ever see.

Only to be struck down by a creature beyond his power to destroy.

He did not doubt the existence of the Force once he had experienced its effects firsthand; an energy field created by all living things, surrounding them, penetrating them, a power that could only be used by those few rare individuals whose midi-chlorian count had been high enough to manifest their skills.

In physics, energy was the property that had to be transferred to an object in order to perform work on the object, it could be converted in form, but not created or destroyed. There were many forms of energy: the kinetic energy of a moving object, the potential energy stored by an object's position in a force field, the elastic energy stored by stretching solid objects, the chemical energy released when a fuel burned, the radiant energy carried by light, and the thermal energy due to an object's temperature.

The Force was simply an another form of energy, one for which science had no explanation as of yet, but he had no doubt that in the due time someone would be able to come up with a reasonable, scientific explanation. The midi-chlorians were a proof.

Thrawn had seen both Jedi and Sith in action, he was fully aware of their superior strength, enhanced reflexes, and mental capabilities. All living things consisted of midi-chlorians, therefore all living things could be bent to their will. It made perfect sense.

But immortal creatures? Supernatural entities? Visions of the future?

That did not make any sense. Nevertheless, he has just seen such a creature with his very own Chiss eyes. At first he thought that the Jedi had been simply using his mind tricks on him, making him see things that did not exist, or using the Force to manipulate the weather, unleashing a powerful electromagnetic storm upon him.

Then the Rebels fled and the creature revealed itself to them. He tried to prove its mortality by shooting it right in the face… Not only it did not die, it evaporated into the thin air, laughing at him.

Once you eliminated the impossible, whatever remained, however improbable had to be the truth. Therefore, there had to be an another aspect to the Force, a spiritual aspect, one that he had always dismissed as mere superstition.

Witchcraft. Wizardry. Devilry.

There was no better word to describe what he had seen that day.

You cannot see... But I can... I see your defeat, like many arms surrounding you in a cold embrace.

Even if it lasted only for an instant, his heart had been gripped by fear.

All beings were capable of feeling fear; it served as a self-preservation instinct that insured the survival of an organism. A safety brake. Thrawn was a soldier, a warrior, a one who had escaped death countless times, he knew what fear felt like. He would have never survived as long as he did if he had not been capable of feeling fear. But this time, it was not the fear of his own death that would be acceptable to a Chiss. It was an irrational fear of the supernatural.

A fear so very typical of humans.

Humans and Chiss shared a common ancestry; it was humans who had colonized the cold, inhospitable planet that would have been later named Csilla, that eventually would give birth to the Chiss. And today Thrawn had been painfully reminded of just how human he was.

He has always known that he would cease to exist, one day. All beings died, sooner or later. Either of an old age, of a disease, or of a mortal wound. He was prepared for that eventuality, the death was an inescapable part of the warfare. Sometimes, when he allowed himself to think about such things, he hoped that he could die on the battlefield, taking the enemy down with him. He could accept such an ending; it was certainly preferable to succumbing to a an illness.

But never in his life he had considered the possibility that his fate could have been already carved into a stone. That he could have been a mere pawn in the dejarik game played between omnipotent entities. That no matter what he had done, the result would have been the same. Such thing was absolutely unacceptable.

I see your defeat, like many arms surrounding you in a cold embrace.

He cursed the immortal creature for being so cryptic. Had it really spoken of his future? Or had it simply spoken of his past?

The moment he had been almost killed by Jedi Master Jorus C’Baoth aboard the Outbound Flight certainly felt like many arms surrounding him in a cold embrace; Thrawn's throat had been gripped by invisible hands, his consciousness slipping away, with one of his human captives trying to break the spell by pressing the switch that would launch the radiation bombs Thrawn had prepared, causing the death of his would-be murderer and deaths of 50,000 civilians in the process.

That was the first time Thrawn's plans had sent innocent beings to their deaths, and he even had lost his own brother in the process, the only person in the universe who had never allowed him to stray from his path, the only person in the universe who had the power to make him stop.

He could not stop; not now, not ever, not even because of the Death Star. Especially because of the Death Star.

Thrawn had sacrificed his entire life and career at the Chiss Defense Fleet because he believed only he could protect his people from their own short-sightedness. It resulted in his exile to the Galactic Empire, and he would have done it again. He made a deal with the Emperor, and he would have done it again if it gave him the power he wanted. The power he needed to protect those who depended on him from the enemies that froze the blood in his veins, the things far more evil than the Galactic Empire.

He cursed that immortal creature for being right... He could not see.

But one day, he would.

The Force.

It all came back to the Force.

Thrawn pressed a switch on his command chair and turned on the holographic gallery, calling up the ancient art of people of Atollon. There were many records of this supernatural entity, the Bendu, they had called it. That would be his first clue.

Later he could ask Darth Vader about the Dark Side of the Force. He would have to thread carefully around him for the Sith Lord was known for his temper but Thrawn was certain that they would be able to find a common ground.

However, there was no way Darth Vader would be willing to talk to him about the Light Side of the Force. He needed an alternate source, a Jedi. Kanan Jarrus could not have been more than a mere Padawan by the time the Jedi Purges ended, but at this time he was the most experienced Jedi known to him. He would have to capture him and make him talk. Threats and violence would not have worked on him, the Grand Inquisitor tried in the past and failed. He would have to offer him something in return. But what?

And he would have to try to capture and have a word with Agent Kallus, too. A pathetic little traitor he might have been but he was correct in one thing. Even against all odds, the Rebels had found a way to beat him.

Kallus... What an ally he could have been. If there was anything in the universe Thrawn loathed, it would be traitors, saboteurs, and fools who had the audacity to lie right to his face. They deserved death. Agent Kallus had been all three. Nothing would have brought Thrawn a bigger satisfaction than having Kallus on the bridge watching all of his traitorous friends die before his summarily execution.

And yet Thrawn had always believed that all thoughts were worth listening to, whether later judged to be of value or not. To defeat his enemies he had to understand them, to study their history, their philosophy, their art. Obviously he had not studied his Rebel opponents enough. No. Not only them. He had not studied the Force enough. His information was bad, incomplete.

Bad information lead to bad tactics. Incomplete information lead to flawed strategy. Both lead to defeat. And though the Empire scored a major victory today, Thrawn himself suffered a crushing defeat.



THE END

 

SITH DEVILRY

Summary:
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The victory against the Rebels at Atollon brings the desired result, and Grand Admiral Thrawn is shown the blue prints of the Death Star by the Emperor himself. A stand-alone, Canon compliant fic with Legends elements.
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The Emperor was certainly not pleased that Thrawn deduced the size and power of the project entirely on his own, however, once Thrawn had done so, once Palpatine told him of the purpose, once Thrawn presented him an another victory against the nascent Rebellion, Palpatine couldn’t resist the human urge to show him the source of his pride and amusement, inviting him to have a look at the blue prints, asking him for his personal opinion.

And while Thrawn was reading through the blue prints of the battle station that must have cost more than the ten years budget of the entire Imperial Navy, he noticed a very peculiar thing. An oversight of the designer: A thermal exhaust port leading to the reactor core, a critical error that, if left uncorrected, could potentially lead to the destruction of the whole station.

A detail so insignificant that would have gone unnoticed by anyone else.

“What is the name of the designer of the reactor core?” Thrawn calmly raised his eyes to meet the gaze of the human.

“Galen Erso,” the Emperor replied with a smirk, the yellow eyes gleaming with malice.

Galen Erso. One of the most renowned polymaths in the galaxy, a gifted theoretician, mathematician, and experimental physicist, a recipient of the Kuat Systems Engineering Medal, the Ashgad Prize and the Roche Foundation Prize.

It couldn’t have been a mere oversight then. It was a deliberate act of sabotage.

Whoever came up with the name for the battle station, whether it was the Emperor, Darth Vader, Grand Moff Tarkin, or even possibly Director Krennic, the person put in charge of the project, they deserved recognition. Thrawn could hardly think of a more fitting name.

Oh, the things Thrawn could do with the battle station if he had been chosen as its commander. A single blast to the heart of the enemy lines would have erased them from the face of the universe, saving billions of lives of both combatants and non-combatants.

In the wrong hands, however, a single blast could have very well erased whole planets from the face of the universe, resulting in a loss of trillions of lives of both combatants and non-combatants. And it was obvious even to a blind that Thrawn would never be chosen as its commander. No, the battle station would be either in the hands of the Emperor himself or in the hands of a fanatical follower of the New Order, Governor Tarkin most likely.

The Death Star.

There were things in the universe that were simply and purely evil. A warrior did not seek to understand them, or to compromise with them. He sought only to obliterate them. An indestructible battle station with a power to destroy whole planets was far too dangerous to let loose in this galaxy. It had the potential to destroy each planet, one by one, until there was nothing left but ... stardust. What a poetic code name for the project.

And it would be used. Every new weapon had to be used at least once to instill fear in the enemy or in the opposition.

And that was the reason Thrawn decided to do something very out of character for him, something he had never done before, something that would ultimately hinder all his schemes in the long run; he scrolled down, leaving the uncorrected error to be exploited by the Rebellion.

“Galen Erso is a man of many talents.” Thrawn nodded in acknowledgment to the great scientist. It was so artistically done.

“I can only repeat the words of wisdom you have said, my Emperor, once the Death Star is fully operational, its very existence will suppress all opposition. It has an appropriate name.”

Thrawn stated the facts without revealing the truth.

It was apparent that the Emperor was satisfied with his evaluation, dismissing him from the throne room, leaving him wander through the Imperial Palace on his own. As Thrawn walked through the hallways that had once been the Great Jedi Temple, his mind went back to the fateful battle of Atollon, to the words he had exchanged with the traitorous ISB Agent.

No, Thrawn didn’t have the heart of a Rebel, he had a heart of a Chiss warrior. Thrawn and Kallus were certainly nothing alike; Kallus believed he was doing the morally right thing, Thrawn believed he was doing the necessary thing, there was a significant difference between the two.

Thrawn let out a deep contemplative sigh. If the Rebellion couldn’t eliminate the threat the battle station posed not only to his own people but to the whole galaxy before it became fully operational, leading to an unnecessary loss of lives on all sides, possibly into another pan-Galactic civil war, then he would end up in one of the Nine Hells of Corellia right alongside of the Emperor Palpatine.

Fool me once, shame on you, went the human saying. The Outbound Flight.

Fool me twice, shame on me, the saying continued. The Battle of Batonn.

Fool me thrice?

The white uniform, and the power he needed to protect the ones who depended on him, came at a terrible price. His brother would not have approved of his decisions. But then, Thrass was dead.

Thrawn cared only about the results, not about the means to an end. For the things to come, he needed the Emperor as much as the Emperor needed him, therefore he would put an end to the Rebellion for Palpatine, but not before they outlived their usefulness. Ultimately, it did not matter who was the morally wrong and who was the morally right. The Rebellion could not be allowed to persist in the long run, no matter how noble their intentions might be.

Their military abilities were undeniable, but their chances for long-term stability were nonexistent. Multiple species with multiple viewpoints and racial philosophies simply could not hold military power together. The dominant voice certainly had to be wise enough to adopt ideas and methods from its allies and member peoples. But there had to be a dominant voice, or there was only chaos. As the Republic had aptly demonstrated in the past.

In this part of the galaxy, that voice was the Empire.

He shook his head and in a voice too low for human ears to hear he started singing a song he had found among personal possessions of Agent Kallus; he had kept them all for safe keeping, just like he had kept Captain Syndulla’s kalikori for the same reason.

Thrawn had always believed that all thoughts were worth listening to, whether later judged to be of value or not. To defeat his enemies he had to understand them, to study their history, their philosophy, their art. It applied to their music as well.



I spoke to God today,

and she said that she's ashamed.

What have I become, what have I done?

I spoke to the Devil today,

and he swears he's not to blame.

And I understood, cause I feel the same.



Arms wide open, I stand alone.

I'm no hero, and I'm not made of stone.

Right or wrong, I can hardly tell.

I'm on the wrong side of heaven,

and the righteous side of hell.



I heard from God today,

and she sounded just like me.

What have I done,

and who have I become.



I saw the Devil today,

and he looked a lot like me.

I looked away, I turned away!



Arms wide open, I stand alone.

I'm no hero, and I'm not made of stone.

Right or wrong, I can hardly tell.

I'm on the wrong side of heaven,

and the righteous side of hell.



I'm not defending, downward descending,

Falling further and further away!

Getting closer every day!



I'm getting closer every day, to the end.

To the end, the end, the end,

I'm getting closer every day!



Arms wide open, I stand alone.

I'm no hero, and I'm not made of stone.

Right or wrong, I can hardly tell.

I'm on the wrong side of heaven,

and the righteous side of hell.



The wrong side of heaven,

and the righteous side of hell.



THE END



Song disclaimer: "Wrong Side Of Heaven" by Five Finger Death Punch