#marinith

They got the Lady as repaired as one could hope. The damned whales apparently used the refined Clouzon fuels to come back here to die after spawning. The Chimaera's crew had been too busy dying or with damage control to see the beasties having it off in hyperspace. Grace and Little Gods only knew if she'd hold together making the jump, but with the materials of other crashed ships, they'd been able to put her back together.

Shipwide Communication: All Hands

Thrawn has not been to see him. Ezra's admission that he tried to calm Pyrondi down using the Force repulsed Thrawn at gut level. In a way, Ezra could reluctantly see why. It was interference with someone's actual physical brain, their soul itself. Even Marinith expressed that if Ezra ever dared to do anything of the sort, he'd be disintegrated so fast he'd enter his next life leaving his mother like a shot torpedo.

That the Imperial captains seemed to know they had Force users in their ranks made Ezra deeply uneasy. Marinith was one such. The man's mind was like hitting a solid wall, and Marinith hitting him was like being hit by a wall and warned not to do it again, boy.

A new prison coverall popped out of a slot, and Ezra stripped down to get hosed. At least he was clean and fed. Bored out of his mind, but alive. The brig cells were utterly silent, not even the shipwide announcements reached him, no change of watch sounds, no klaxons, no nothing. The worst thing was that his sense of direction was completely screwed, and he couldn't sense more than a ship's length away. It was as if this part of space existed to mindfuck Jedi. Maybe Sith, too, as the Emperor never came this far out. Maybe even Thrawn didn't know where they were.

He greeted Marinith with, "The food here sucks."

Then came a voice he really didn't want to hear. "Then suck space, Haimo'dyk."

Pyrondi.

"Whatever you just called me-"

"Malignant spirit."

"-I'm not that."

The petite officer stepped out from behind Marinith and gave him a grin that was less a smile than a wolf showing her teeth. "The Grand Admiral says that if you tamper with my mind again, I get to kill you. My choice of method."

Ezra raised his hands, backing up and sitting down. The bridge crew, the ones from the main watch, they were terrifying. All of them with untapped potential, trained in their specialties, all of them true believers not so much in the Empire as much as they believed in Thrawn.

"No murdering the cadet, Senior Lieutenant.

"Sir."

Cadet. That sounded ominous.

"Today, Bridger, you start getting an education. Today is an education in what you did, now that we have the full sensor logs pulled and sorted."

Marinith threw a datapad at his head, which Ezra caught easily. On it was Lothal from a system defense station, all the ships delineated in green for civilian traffic, yellow for commercial ships, red for Imperial ships, blue for customs and commercial stations, yellow for Imperial construction docks and supply depots. The date in the upper right corner was the day before the Purrgil.

"You can thank Agral, Barlin, Hammerly, Lomar, Pyrondi, and Yve for this little presentation. Major Partagaz supplied the logistics, and our analysis groups cleared it."

Marinith leaned in and tapped the green arrowhead, starting the play.

The civilian and commercial traffic cleared away, a running tally at the bottom of the screen showing the number of ships and the tally of the crew. The commercial and civilian stations were moved out of the way, and added to the tally. He had no idea how many ships were in Lothal's space, how many they crewed. All of them carried Clouzon in their hyperdrive engines, the stations all had refueling depots equivalent to the tankage of an ISD. Imperial stations moved next, the construction rings were towed to higher orbits and the Seventh Fleet vacuum packed Lothal. Nothing in or out.

The bombardment started.

The Purrgil arrived and latches on to the parked civilian and commercial ships first and tore them apart. Ezra heard a scream and realized it was him. The stations were next, Imperial and non-combatant alike filled with Clouzon. The Imperial refueling depot held enough to service the whole Seventh and any departing Imperial vessels. The fleet was next. Some ships torn to bits in atmosphere and falling immediately to the city below, others dragged in flames into vacuum. Some sucked dry and dropped back to the world below.

"Those ships deorbiting didn't have time to get anyone to the escape pods. The survivors were burned to death on re-entry," Marinith noted.

Two counters appeared, one tagging probably noncombatant deaths and combatant deaths. The Imperial count stopped at 1.25 million. The noncombatant counter was still running as deorbiting wreckage smashed through the construction rings, destroying them and adding more wreckage to the atmosphere. Fires started across the world below, crates appeared where there were once towns, bands of thick black smoke scrawled across the surface of the world like clawmarks. Where the wrecks entered water, huge impact waves washed out coastal areas, and likely killed everything in the water for klicks around.

The civilian tally climbed and climbed until the display suddenly went black. The green letters scrolled across the screen.

"Sensors offline 22:17:44."

The civilian estimated tally of deaths stood at 3.3 million.

"Not counting casualties, or those who will die in the coming weeks and months."

"You also removed Lothal's defense against pirates, slavers, wreck strippers, and whatever central government there was," Pyrondi added. "You left them wide open, unless the Empire sends in another fleet, emergency relief, and rebuilding support."

"Even then, people will die of wounds, die in the wreckage of their cities and towns, die from exposure to toxic substances, from disease, lack of emergency services and medical care." Marinith stood, straightening his tunic." More will die from hunger, exposure, contaminated food and water, civil unrest. The Jedi I remember could feel deaths as sensations in the Force. I guess your teacher left that part out."

Ezra looked at the datapad, but he didn't need to. Everything had been branded into his brain.

"Actions have consequences. These are yours." Pyrondi took the datapad from his unresisting fingers. "The lesson concludes for today."

Ezra was moved from medbay to a detention block some days after Thrawn came to see him. The ceiling had the normal light rings and the not-normal disintigrator arrays. Any attempt at escape and bip! Your atoms would be cleaned up by the Chimaera's enviro system. His meals - a ration bar and a can of rehydration - came out of a slot in the wall. He stood to be hosed off by a nozzle in the ceiling. Then he had a visitor.

He wished it was Thrawn. Or even Pyro.

It was Captain Marinith.

Neat of uniform with the build of a beanpole, the man had greying red hair and icy-blue eyes. He was also one of the Force users Ezra sensed after Pyro almost fried him. If he thought he was going to throw the man off by dangling that bit of information, that balloon went pop a second later.

"Of course, you idiot. I've been in uniform for thirty years, worked with Jedi - and you are no Jedi - and was tested at their temple as a child." The man took a seat, crossing his legs so that the ankle of his left rested on the knee of his right. "If I were you, I'd be much more interested in the method of your execution. Right now feeding you to Sally is running neck-and-neck with taking you down to the hangar and dropping you out in hyperspace."

"Sally?" He had a feeling that he'd regret asking.

"The dianoga that lives in central waste processing."