Disclaimer: Star Wars is the property of Disney. Thrawn is the property of Timothy Zahn. The Aeneid, which I'm referencing a bit here, is the property of Vergil. Although I seriously doubt Vergil will sue me. All OCs are the property of moi.

This is a one-shot that refused to fit with other one-shots. So, like that one awkward kid on the playground, it's hanging out on its own.

This is my first time trying to write Thrawn directly, so go easy on me, please. It's probably pretty bad characterization. And if any uber-fans are reading this who note that some of my technology descriptions aren't exactly right (i.e., Thrawn was cloned in a Spaarti cylinder), yes, I'm doing this on purpose for the sake of plot.

Please read and review and tell me what you think. Even if it's only :) or :(

Underworld

At an unholy hour which I previously would have called "too blasted early," but which I now call "0200 hours", we went down to Nirauan. Other troopers had already been there with architects and engineers, finishing the building.

We walked in a garrison through the doorways in an orderly patch of white over the gray ground. Pretty desolate planet, craggy and rocky. Our new station just looks like another outcropping. It's almost done. Tarps still fly around it like Imperial banners. I stopped to look upwards at the building for a moment. Contemplating and all that. Command yelled at me and shoved me down the path.

Strange building. Looks like a hand pointing at the sky. Fitting, I guess - Empire, onward, upward, and all that. Still creepy as anything.

I had nightmares about the building for weeks. Odd nightmares; premonititions, almost. Of water flooding and the sleek lines of a ship fading into the hazy squiggles of an explosion and the building falling down.

I get these dreams a lot. They involve death, mostly. Sometimes they come true. Sometimes they have yet to come true. It's only a matter of time.

Blasted mynocks are flying all around and swarming the building. Driving me crazy. Good target practice though. Most of the guys are shooting at them. I've only hit one so far.

As we went in the high, square-arched door, I think everyone was a bit intimidated. Towering gates creaked behind us, as if we'd never escape.

Maybe it's just nerves.

My job was to come in and help set up a cloning cylinder. Not one of the shoddy Spaarti ones, but an antique. Kaminoan. Some of the guys asked Command if they were sure it was reliable. They said it had been fixed up fine.

Not that Command (in the form of our leading officer, Purkheim. Stupid-sounding name, although he had nicknames that were far worse. Arrogant son of a...well, never mind.) knew anything about anything.

Kaminoans were the best of the best, used in the original Clone Wars. Those clones didn't go insane (well, not because of any genetic defect anyway, but what can you say about war?) like the Spaarti ones. I've heard of them. They were good. But come on, it's been like twenty years. Nothing lasts that long.

To get to the station, we had to wind around down a little into the rock. I gulped a little when I found out the station extended underground. Slight claustrophobia. Nothing medically significant, nothing that would prevent a young technician/soldier/jack of all trades if he really wanted to get off his osik homeworld and if he paid a recruiter a bit of cash. As we walked down through the comfortingly straight passageways, I still found myself breathing a little harder.

It was as a descent into the depths of the underworld.

We went about our work and started setting up. We took the Kaminoan cylinder out of the crate. Well. It was a beautiful piece of work.

For four or so hours, we went about putting it up. The foundation wasn't half unstable, and so some of the crew had to be delegated to blasting out the rocky ground before anything could be done. Then, controls had to be modulated, and chemical balances had to be regulated. The work was the most challenging I'd had in a while. It took all my attention.

So much so that I barely even noticed the stormtrooper standing in a small, dark recess in the back of the cave. You could barely see him, just a hint of light from the half-set-up cloning cylinder glinting off the armor.

"Who are you?" Purkheim snapped. "Get out of there and start helping set up this confounded Spaarti cylinder."

A soft pause preceded the stormtrooper's words. "Actually, it's not a Spaarti cylinder," he said.

Purkheim snorted. "Shut up, you're not even the technician! Incompetent barve. Get to work," he groaned, and muttered under his breath, "the sooner you do, the sooner I can sleep."

I caught an aura of smug confidence, as if the trooper was giving a slight, thin-lipped smile behind his helmet. "You are quite correct," he replied. "I am not a technician."

And then I noticed he wasn't just standing in a corner. The indistinguishably rugged walls and the lack of light hid this, but he was standing at the mouth of a winding tunnel. Which he had just entered from.

So that when he took off his helmet, all you could see was red eyes shining out from the black expanses behind.

The Imperial military tends to stomp out basic reflexes and replace them with its own. So, my first response was to come to attention to salute Grand Admiral Thrawn.

My second impulse was to shudder at the predictably horror-story image of glowing-eyes-in-the-dark.

My third reaction was to laugh at my own fear of such a child's story.

My fourth reaction was to shudder with fear of this Grand Admiral, who, as they said, commanded life and death and never lost a battle. It was the ordinary nervousness one felt around a jackbooted, uniformed superior. Combined with the fear of a juggernaut's reputation.

And there wasn't a fifth reaction.

Purkheim's words choked in his throat. "Grand Admiral, sir-I'm sorry-I..."

The troopers should have enjoyed Purkheim's embarassment much more, but we were too busy experiencing the same thing ourselves. We stood with bowed heads behind masks of armor, waiting for a scolding or - we didn't even know what. Thrawn's reputation was legendary, but nebulous. Demotion or death?

Thrawn raised an eyebrow. "Sorry for the disrespect you appear to exhibit to your troops routinely? Or sorry you were caught?"

I caught a sense of stormtroopers mentally fist-pounding one another, overlaid with disappointment from Thrawn.

"Now, as I was saying," Thrawn continued, "this can't be a Spaarti cylinder. In fact, it's not even human."

Purkheim, properly chastised, dutifully played his role. "Not human, sir?"

"For a start, Spaarti cylinders were designed and produced almost exclusively by humans. Yet, this channel has a range of patterns in ultraviolet, a range in which humans cannot see. Observe the height at which the controls are placed; much higher than the comfortable reach of an average human. The controls are spread out, to accomodate a larger hand, with non-human digital dimensions." Thrawn turned and fixed Purkheim with his disconcerting gaze.

Purkheim looked away and shifted uncomfortably. "What species made it, sir?"

Thrawn sounded meditative. "I'm not sure of the name. They certainly have a love of clean lines; from this, I'd judge they're technologically based, but less so than they wish to appear." He paced around the transparently glinting shaft. "Rather vain about their skill, reclusive. You can tell from the chiaroscuro of the material's texture. You can see the slightly luminous material, lurking, hiding, almost just under the surface. It's still perfect in appearance, even though the base shows that the cylinder is much older than it appears. They're obsessed with detail..." Extending a long finger, he traced one of the thin, half-reflective lines on the ivory surface through their filigreed spirals. "Obsessed with perfection."

I stepped forward, eyes firmly fixed on the floor, immediately cursing my idiocy in having spoken. "Admiral, sir, that sounds like the Kaminoans, sir. Uh, they're the race who made this cylinder, sir." I mentally cursed myself. I sounded just like Purkheim.

"Kaminoan?"

"Yes, sir. These clones take longer to grow, but they're much higher quality, sir. The clones have less risk of developing terminal mental instability."

I cursed my propensity for giving excess information. I waited for the blow that never seemed to come.

He raised a hand to his chin. "Well, that's comforting..."

A flash of - some emotion, I couldn't tell - rippled through the room and burst.

"The cylinder is not yet set up, sir," Purkheim interjected. "If we just had more time-" Thrawn pierced him with a single glance from those unsettling eyes. Turned to me.

"Soldier, name and number."

"TK-987, sir. Andre Indiro."

"Well, Indiro, how long do you estimate it will take to finish the installation of the cylinder?" And he turned to full-on face me for the first time. His gaze filtered through the computerized filters of the helmet. Still, the red glow of his eyes burned into me.

I fought to see him head on. Remember, I thought, he's not telepathic or anything. He can't see you behind the helmet. You're just one of a number.

Lasted four long seconds before I looked away. My eyesight blurred from the strain and focused on a grease spot on the floor, glinting maroon under the shadow of a soldier's boot.

"So," Thrawn cocked an eyebrow. "New, are you? Still think the Imperial helmet will be your mask and your guardian to protect you from harm?" He lowered himself carefully. Sat on a large boulder next to the Kaminoan cylinder. Pulled up his armor-clad knees to his chest, as if deliberately adopting the casual pose of the typical stormtrooper. Futilely trying to blend in. Dim light from the cloning tank cast grey streaks through his hair. He caught the critical nature of my surreptitious sideways glance and smiled. "You're young, and you've a lot to learn, Stormtrooper Indiro. But you've also learned a lot. In a very short timespan. How long?"

"What?"

"I meant, as I said before, how long do you estimate it will take to finish installing the cylinder?"

"Not long, sir. Half an hour at the most."

"Fine," he said. "I can wait half an hour."

And that was the end of that. He remained motionless on the rock.

Noise of construction rang hollow against my ears. I almost heard Thrawn waiting.

Endless evaluating. Planning. Watching, watching...

Karking hard to work under those conditions, considering.

But it was done in twenty minutes. "So," Purkheim, struck by doubt, unwillingly turned to the only higher authority in the room. "Will, uh, will we be alerted as to when the genetic donor will arrive?"

"He is here already."

"You, Admiral?"

"Yes. Does that surprise you?" He motioned another trooper/technician over to him. Half-paralyzed with fear, the man was. By a slow series of steps Thrawn made him to understand that he was to begin the genetic sampling. He slowly dug out a needle. Shaking, he sterilized it.

"I'm going to have to insert this into your bone marrow, sir. To obtain the pluripotent stem cells required for proper cloning. The hypodermic should go quite deep, and it will be, em, quite painful, sir."

Thrawn deftly snapped off a piece of his armor, revealing his lower arm. "Please proceed."

The trooper began to slowly press the needle into his arm, and he winced. "TK-987, come here."

I came.

"Prepare the mechanisms of the tank. Plug in this-" he groped across the rock with his unfettered arm and handed me a small data chip- "to the cylinder's computer."

"What is it, sir?"

"All the education this clone shall require. Military strategy, surely. But also art, psychology, law, science, everything." The word memories flitted across his mind. "You know-" and now he seemed almost to be addressing the entire crew, "an ancient empire once avowed that other races could surpass it in art, music, astronomy, law. Its only job was to rule, strongly and justly. Many Imperials today-" his voice lifted- "take this viewpoint. Yet I do not believe it." A slight shudder crossed his face, and I could tell the needle had now struck the heart of his bone. "The Empire must perfect all disciplines, unite all processes of learning. Or a critical weakness in our society will be exploited. One that I do not wish to continue."

The needle slowly pulled out, and I could feel his pain as it ground the inside of his muscle. "We must be a bastion of knowledge - all knowledge." He paused, and added, more loudly, "Insofar as it will allow us to defeat our throngs of adversaries and establish the Imperial society, of course." The needle pulled out, and a puddle of maroon blood pooled up on his arm. He quickly covered it with the stern perfect plasteel of his white armpiece.

"How long will it take the clone to mature fully?" he asked, rapidly standing up.

"Depends on the setting, sir. Your choice."

He thought for a second. "Ten years."

"Ten years, sir."

"How long can it be preserved after that?"

"Indefinitely."

"Indefinitely." His mind shuddered and rippled with the fear and desire of such immortality. But the iron fist of rationale firmly clamped such emotions down. "Good."

Unbidden, my mind plucked a stray thought out of the air like a gossamer thread. To grow and be reborn in the chthonic darkness of this prototype of all caves...

"Men will be required to watch the clone. To maintain its progress and growth. But more importantly, to monitor certain aspects of the news from Imperial space. Recruits from Intelligence have already been chosen to run the upper levels. Any volunteers to specifically run this cave?"

I thought. To age and die in the half-lit underground of this winding subterranean maze...

To learn - consolidate everything that made Thrawn's "bastion of culture."

To escape - the irritatingly bright mundanity of home alike with the harsh, dull military.

As words escaped my mouth like the mynocks - Qom Qae, I suddenly sensed - scurrying through the recesses of the cave, I thought of a third reason.

To study - in solitude upon my dreams and premonitions.

The words flooded from my mouth like blood from a wound, like water from the cloning tank. "I'll do it, sir."

Four other technicians volunteered. I know not how or why. I sat in a daze at what I had done.

We were set up, and the other troopers were herded away, as if never to see us again. We were invited to say our last goodbyes. I declined.

The troopers left through the straight tunnel to the right and headed to the elevator. Thrawn gave the cloning cylinder one last glance, his eyes sweeping over us, We busily checked feedbacks, readouts in order to make sure the clone formed properly in its first day of growth.

He spoke to us: "One more thing. If, in your labors of information-gathering, you ever hear rumors of my death - find the truth. Substantiate it. Set the clone to emerge ten years later."

With that, he strode off into the winding tunnel, taking the long journey back to the planet's surface.