The Vagaari attempted to enslave and plunder the Geroons by attacking their homeworld of Geroon. Force Commander Thrawn used possibly one of his favorite tactics, the Thrawn Pincer here. Thrawn stole the Vagaari ship net, a primitive version of the Gravity well projector, but was injured in the battle.
The Vagaari fleet, numbering over 100 warships, attacked the Geroon homeworld. The Geroons put up a fight, but they were too outnumbered. Force Commander Thrawn investigated the battle and discovered that the Vagaari had made a practical gravity well projector. He noticed that one of them was relatively unprotected with three war vessels, and sought to steal it. His purpose was two-fold, to obtain this useful technology for the Chiss, and to provoke the Vagaari into attacking the Chiss, in which retaliation would be justified. Jorj Car'das and Maris Ferasi, two captives from the Republic, accompanied Thrawn on the Springhawk.
Thrawn ordered his fighters to make a hyperspace jump toward the gravity projecter depending on the gravity well to pull them out when they got close. He then told them to clear out enemy fighters and create a defensive perimeter between the projector and the war vessels. The Springhawk followed when the fighters had been eliminated. Thrawn ordered Assault Teams One and Two to board the projector and neutralize the operational crew while Chief Engineer Yal'avi'kema and three of his crew tried to find a way to collapse the projector to take it aboard or attach it to their hull for transport. Soon the boarders had eliminated the Vagaari crew and were working on collapsing the projector. Car'das noticed there were Zero-g plastic bubbles on the ships and when Thrawn called for a close up they realized that a slave was held in each of the bubbles. Thrawn knew he could do nothing about it, however, and he ordered his fighters to fire full missile bursts and shock nets at all three warships, the shock nets aimed at the vessels' bridges and command stations. The gravity projector was spark-welded to the Springhawk's hull and they were ready to jump into hyperspace.
However, before they could jump, a Vagaari attack hit the bridge. Thrawn was injured and thrown to the floor by the blast. Maris and Car'das tried to put a sealant patch on a tear in his vacc suit, but it would not bond to the material. Maris was forced to lie chest-to chest over him pressing her stomach against the wound until two Chiss brought a larger sealant patch and carried him away. The Springhawk made the jump to hyperspace.
The Vagaari defeated the remaining Geroons, and began to pillage the planet. The Chiss lost two warriors, which had later consequences as the raid was seen by some as overt aggression. Thrawn soon recovered at the Crustai base. The theft of the gravity well projector would make a difference in later battles, and the techniques that Thrawn developed from this helped secure him many victories.