by Timothy Zahn
“Excellent,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo said. “Perhaps you will begin by telling me the true story of your quest.”
“I thought you already knew,” Anakin said, his neck tingling again. “You know about Padmé’s ship.”
“The Nubian?” There was a brief pause, and Anakin somehow had the impression of Mitth’raw’nuruodo shrugging. “The design and power system were unlike anything else I’ve seen in this region. Your craft displays similar characteristics. It was logical that one visiting stranger was seeking the other.”
“Ah.” If there was one thing Mitth’raw’nuruodo had in abundance, Anakin reflected, it was quick and reasonable answers. “You’re right, the Nubian is one of ours. It carried a Republic ambassador who came here to collect information from an informant. When she failed to contact us, I was sent to look for her.”
“I see,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo said. “Was this informant trustworthy?”
“Yes.”
“You are certain of that?”
“The ambassador was.”
“Then betrayal is unlikely. Has the informant contacted you?”
“No.”
“In that case, the most likely scenarios are accident or capture,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo said. “We need to travel to the surface to determine which it was.”
Finally. “That’s where I was heading when you barged in,” Anakin growled. “You said you knew where her ship was?”
“I can send you the location,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo said. “But it might be more convenient for you to first come aboard. I have a two-passenger shuttle in which we can travel together.”
Anakin smiled tightly. He would definitely like a look at the inside of Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s ship.
But not yet. Not until he trusted the Chiss a whole lot more. “Thanks, but I’ll take my own ship in,” he said. “Like I said, we might need Artoo down there.”
“Very well.” If Mitth’raw’nuruodo was offended that Anakin hadn’t taken him up on the offer, it wasn’t apparent in his voice. “I’ll lead the way.”
“Fine,” Anakin said. He’d prefer to have the Chiss in front of his laser cannons anyway. “Whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll make preparations at once,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo said. “One additional thought. Chiss names are difficult for many species to properly pronounce. I suggest you address me by my core name: Thrawn.”
“That’s all right, Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Anakin said. Did this being go out of his way to be annoying and condescending? “I think I can handle it.”
“Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” the alien said.
“That’s what I said,” Anakin said. “Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”
“It’s pronounced Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”
“Yes. Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”
“Mitth’raw’nuruodo.”
Anakin clenched his teeth. He could hear a slight difference between his pronunciation and the alien’s. But he couldn’t figure out how to correct his version. “Fine,” he growled. “Thrawn.”
“Thank you,” Mitth’raw’nuruodo—Thrawn—said. “It will make things easier. My shuttle is prepared. Let us depart.”
* * *
—
Padmé’s ship was parked in a small clearing in a forested area thirty kilometers from Black Spire Outpost. Unlike most clearings Anakin had seen—and the one he’d landed his Actis in a kilometer away—this one was overhung with branches that concealed anything parked there, yet was nevertheless accessible via a narrow corridor through the surrounding trees that allowed for an approach that would leave no traces.
And the ship wasn’t alone.
Two rough-looking men and a couple of nonhumans of different species were gathered around the hatch, with another five humans sitting in cargo vehicles parked at the edges of the clearing. The postures and stances of all nine indicated impatience. The group by the ship was working on the hatch with cutting torches.
Anakin glared at them from behind a concealing tree, his lightsaber already gripped in his hand. He and Thrawn had had to land in different spots, and Anakin had promised to wait outside the clearing until the Chiss arrived so that they could begin the investigation together.
But that had been before Anakin found the ship under assault. More important, just because he couldn’t sense Padmé didn’t mean she wasn’t still aboard, possibly injured or unconscious.
And that changed everything. Waiting for his new ally when nothing was happening was one thing. Waiting for him when Padmé might be in danger was entirely different.
Behind him, R2-D2 gave a soft, questioning warble. “No, you just stay here, Artoo,” Anakin murmured. “If I need backup, I’ll call. And stay out of the line of fire this time, okay?”
R2-D2 made a wounded-sounding gurgle.
“I said no,” Anakin said firmly. A month ago, the techs had spent three days putting the droid back together after he’d taken a bolt from a B2-RP super battle droid for no better reason than that the little astromech had wanted to see what was going on.
R2-D2 made one more brief protest, then went silent. Taking a final, careful look around the area to make sure there weren’t any surprises, Anakin stepped around the tree into view. “Hold it right there!” he called.
Every eye swung toward him, the torches shutting down as their operators turned to the unexpected interloper. Anakin started toward them, watching the group at the hatch, trusting the Force to alert him to any threat from the vehicle drivers.
He’d taken barely five steps when his peripheral vision spotted the men in the two vehicles farthest from each other slide blasters from their holsters. He took one more step, settling his mind and body into combat awareness…
Double vision: the Force showing him the present overlaid with a glimpse of a moment into the future—two blaster bolts coming from the drivers of the two vehicles—the first scoring into his upper chest, the second into his lower side—
With a snap-hiss his lightsaber blade blazed into existence—
He swung the blue blade against the first bolt, then the second, and paused.
For perhaps two seconds no one moved. Then, as if on signal, the other seven snatched their blasters from their holsters and opened fire—
Double vision: blaster bolts coming at torso, at side, at head, at side—the Force speeding his perception, slowing down time—moving his hands in a blur—no longer deflecting bolts away, but sending them back to their points of origin—
Anakin had given the first attack what Obi-Wan liked to call a second-thoughts chance, deflecting the bolts into the woods instead of bouncing them directly back into the shooters. Now, with nine-to-one odds, he didn’t have that luxury.
Double vision: bolts coming at chest, at chest, at head—controlling with precision, sending back to arm, to leg, to shoulder—
But not to kill. Only to wound, to disable and dissuade. If Padmé wasn’t here, they might know where she was.
If Padmé was here, and if they’d hurt her, her attackers would need to suffer a little before they died.
Double vision: bolts coming at head, at torso—attack faltering as wounded enemies cease fire—
“Kunesu!” a voice called from somewhere.
Abruptly, the attack ceased. Anakin waited a couple of seconds to make sure the barrage wasn’t going to start again, then lowered his lightsaber a few centimeters and looked around.
Standing a few meters inside the clearing a quarter of the way around the edge was a tall, slender man. Or rather, not quite a man. His eyes were glowing red, his skin blue, his hair blue-black. He was dressed in a black military-style uniform with a burgundy patch on one shoulder and silver bars on his collar. Something was holstered on his right hip—a sidearm of some sort—with a slender, lightsaber-sized tube holstered on his left.
Thrawn.
For a long moment, no one spoke or moved, except for those who were writhing silently in their transports as they clutched their self-inflicted blaster wounds. Thrawn’s eyes swept slowly across the men and machines, then he spoke again in a language Anakin didn’t recognize.
“Artoo?” Anakin prompted quietly.
The droid made a negative sound. So he couldn’t translate the language, either.
Not really surprising. Briefly, Anakin wished there’d been enough room in the Actis to bring C-3PO along.
One of the men at the ship spoke. Thrawn replied. The other spoke again, this time gesturing with the hand holding his blaster. Anakin lifted his lightsaber again in warning, but the man made no attempt to open fire. For a minute the two of them continued to converse in the same language. Then Thrawn said something, the man called out to the rest of the group, and all of them reluctantly holstered their blasters. Thrawn shifted his eyes to Anakin and beckoned to him. Anakin gave the clearing one final scan, then closed down his lightsaber and walked across to the Chiss.
“General Skywalker, I assume,” Thrawn said in Meese Caulf as Anakin reached him.
“Yes,” Anakin confirmed. “What’s going on? Who are they?”
“They claim to be simple merchants,” Thrawn said.
“Armed merchants?”
“Most travelers in this part of space are armed,” Thrawn said. “They claim this landing area is normally reserved for their ship, and that they were dismayed to find it occupied by another. When their attempts to communicate with those aboard failed, they resolved to force an entry to render any aid the crew might require.”
“I’m sure they did,” Anakin said, watching the men by the hatch. They were clearly unhappy with the situation, but at the moment none of them seemed inclined to continue their attack. “Do you believe them?”
“Partially,” Thrawn said. “They’re surely smugglers, not simple merchants. I’m furthermore not convinced that they attempted communication before attempting to force their way aboard. But I do believe they expected to find an open landing area and were upset to discover that was not the case.”
Anakin eyed the crates stacked on the cargo carriers. There wasn’t much reason to haul all of that out here unless they were planning to load it onto another ship.
Or maybe to load it onto this ship? “Or else they knew Padmé’s ship was here and were planning to steal it,” he growled.
“No,” Thrawn said. “Note the number of crates on each vehicle, and how low those vehicles lie upon their lift fields. Each crate is far too heavy for the beings here to transfer by hand.”
“Unless they have loadlifters.”
“There’s no room for lifters of sufficient size to be aboard the vehicles.”
Anakin nodded sourly. “Which means the lifters are aboard their ship. And since there’s no way of knowing if there would be anything like that aboard this one, there’s no point in trying to steal it.”
“I would put it more strongly,” Thrawn said. “The design of this ship is that of a diplomatic or passenger craft. It’s highly unlikely that it would have the necessary loading equipment aboard.”
“Or enough cargo space for all that,” Anakin conceded, the taste of defeat in his mouth. “So if they didn’t do anything to Padmé, who did?”
“A question for which we do not yet have an answer,” Thrawn said. “Nor do I believe have they. What do you wish done with them?”
Anakin frowned. “What?”
“You are a general,” Thrawn reminded him. “I am a commander. You stand higher in military hierarchy.”
Anakin looked sharply at him. Was the Chiss mocking him? “You seem to be the expert on things that happen in this region,” he said. “You also know their language.” He nodded toward the smugglers. “Not to mention that they know you. Or at least, they recognize the uniform.”
“They don’t know me,” Thrawn said. “I also doubt they’ve ever seen this uniform. But they recognize that it is a uniform, and deduce therefore that I’m a person of authority. It’s also likely they’ve heard of the Chiss.” He smiled slightly. “Though perhaps only as myths.”
Anakin thought about all the places he’d been, all the small backwoods worlds he’d visited while chasing down Separatists. Some of the people there had only distant memories—or none at all—of the Jedi. “Not necessarily a bad thing,” he said. “It can be useful for people to underestimate you.”
“It can be equally useful for them to overestimate you,” Thrawn said. “What do you wish done with them?”
“Tell them to get themselves and their cargo out of here,” Anakin said. “We’ll move the ship when we’re ready to do so. Until then, they stay away.”
Thrawn nodded and spoke again.
The smuggler chief replied, his tone clearly indicating a protest. But he nodded and gestured to his crew. The ones still standing beside the ship headed to the vehicles, some of them shoving the injured drivers roughly across the wide seats and taking the controls.
Two minutes later, Anakin and Thrawn were alone.
“I presume you can get us into the ship?” the Chiss asked.
“I think so,” Anakin said, looking over at the hatch. He needed to check on Padmé, but the last thing he wanted was to let an untested alien into her ship. “It normally opens to a transponder, but there’s also a key code I can punch in. I’ll go see if she’s inside while you look around out here for clues.”
“I might be of more use inside,” Thrawn offered. “My eyes see a slightly different spectrum than yours.”
“I’d rather you check out here,” Anakin said firmly. Even this close to the ship he couldn’t sense Padmé’s presence, which meant she was either not there, already dead, or critically close to death. He needed to get inside and find out which, and he wasn’t in the mood to argue the point. “You can have Artoo to help,” he added. Looking back at the tree where the little droid was hiding, he raised his voice. “Artoo?”
There was a twitter of acknowledgment, and R2-D2 rolled into view. Giving a small burst from his jets to fly over a fallen log, he settled back onto his wheels and rolled awkwardly across the uneven ground toward them. “I’m going inside,” Anakin told him. “You and Commander Thrawn look for clues out here.”
There were all sorts of reasons why Padmé might have changed the key code on her ship. Luckily, she hadn’t. A minute later Anakin was inside.
He checked out the most likely places first: galley, sleeping chamber, control cabin. Then, lightsaber in hand, senses alert for trouble, he went methodically through the entire ship.
No Padmé: dead, injured, or alive. No signs of attack, or indications that she might have had to leave the ship in a hurry. The escape pods were still in place, and hadn’t been activated or prepped. The comm showed that she’d sent two messages, but with the obligatory encryption overlay he couldn’t read them.
His sense of anxiety, which had abated somewhat with the discovery that his beloved wife wasn’t lying dead in her ship, was growing again as he finally stepped back outside. Padmé had apparently left the ship under her own volition. But where had she gone?
Thrawn and R2-D2 both turned to him as he joined them at one end of the clearing. “Any news?” Thrawn asked.
Anakin shook his head. “No one inside. No signs of accident or violence. Her computer’s nav log shows she came straight here from Coruscant.”
“Your ships maintain the data of your travels?” Thrawn asked, frowning.
“Sure, if you don’t wipe the nav computer after you arrive,” Anakin said. “Why, don’t yours do that?”
“We use a different navigational method,” Thrawn said. “Yes, of course you would have records.”
“Yeah,” Anakin said. Odd comment. “There were also two messages in her outgoing file, but they’re encrypted and I c
an’t read them.”
“Her personal message records are encrypted?”
“It’s a diplomatic ship,” Anakin reminded him. “Nothing an ambassador does or says is truly personal. Transmission records are routinely encrypted in case the ship is intercepted—we don’t want the Separatists reading our messages.”
“Yes; the Separatists,” Thrawn said. “The origins and driving force behind this Clone War are still somewhat opaque to me.”
“And we’re not going to discuss them now,” Anakin said firmly. “Did you find anything?”
“There’s no damage to the ship’s exterior,” Thrawn said. “No indications of fuel loss, sensor failure, or other problems that might have forced a landing. Also no detectable blood or torn clothing.” He indicated the ground in front of them. “You spoke of an informant. Was he local, or was he also traveling to Batuu?”
“She,” Anakin automatically corrected. “And yes, she was traveling here. Or had traveled here. I’m not sure of the timing.”
“Have you details of her ship?”
“Not really,” Anakin said. “Artoo, did Padmé ever mention the kind of ship her handmaidens used?”
There was a short pause as R2-D2 searched his datafiles. Then, with a warbled affirmative, he leaned forward and projected a holo of a small ship onto the ground. “That’s it,” Anakin told Thrawn. “He says it’s a Nomad Four, a civilian version of the Seltaya military courier ship.”
“What is the scale?” Thrawn asked. “And may I see the underside?”
“Artoo?” Anakin prompted.
The image flipped over, and a scale crosshatch appeared over it. “Yes,” Thrawn murmured. “Do you see these marks?”
He pointed to the ground at his feet. If he squinted, Anakin decided, he might imagine he could see a wide depression there. “Are you saying that’s the mark of a Nomad’s landing skid?”
“Yes,” Thrawn said. “Furthermore, do you see the grass within the mark?”
“Yes,” Anakin said. It looked like all the other grass around them. “And?”
“Note the darker color in the veins on the undersides of the leaves,” Thrawn said. “I believe the leaves were crushed in a ship’s landing, beginning their return to full life only when it departed.”