by Timothy Zahn
Only now, with his lightsaber stretched out to the side between Janott and Thrawn, there was no chance he could bring the weapon back in time to block the attack.
He tried anyway, spinning as quickly as he could. Over his shoulder he caught a sideways glimpse of Oenti, raised up on his left elbow, lining up a blaster he had grabbed from somewhere. There was a sizzle from behind Anakin, a brilliant bolt scorching the air past his side—
Oenti collapsed to the floor, his dying shot burying itself in Janott’s couch.
Double vision: bolts coming at torso from the long-snouts—
This time, there was no problem deflecting the shots. One went into the crates; the other went into the shooter.
And then, it was over.
“Are you injured?” Thrawn asked in the fresh silence.
“No,” Anakin said, surveying the battlefield.
Oenti was dead. The five thieves were dead, taken out by Anakin’s ricochets or Thrawn’s less vigorous but adequately precise return fire. Only Janott the bartender was still alive, breathing in quick, shallow gasps as he stared in horror at the carnage around him.
“I let him live,” Thrawn continued, as calmly as if he were talking about the weather. “There may still be information he can give us.”
“I don’t know,” Anakin said doubtfully, eyeing the bartender. “We know the Separatists are bringing in supplies for a base on Mokivj through Janott’s cantina. We know this ring of thieves was stealing from those shipments.” He raised his eyebrows at Janott. “And we know now that Cargo Inspector Oenti was in on the scheme.”
“How do we know that?” Thrawn asked.
“Because otherwise he’d have made a break for the door, either to escape or to call in the others outside, instead of trying to hold me down long enough for the thieves to get to their blasters,” Anakin said. “And because he wouldn’t have known where to find that hidden blaster he came up with unless he’d spent a lot of time here.”
“Yes,” Thrawn said. “Very good.”
“Thanks,” Anakin said drily. Normally, he reflected, he would have been irritated by the Chiss’s condescending words.
But to his mild surprise, he felt a touch of satisfaction instead. Thrawn was clearly the type who stayed a couple of steps ahead of his opponents. It was nice to know that he, Anakin, could keep pace with him. “So the question is, what can he tell us that would persuade us to leave him alive?”
“She left unharmed,” Janott blurted out. “The woman—the second woman. She sang a song to her friend and then left unharmed and unhindered.”
“Her ship’s still here,” Anakin said, lowering his lightsaber blade over the bartender’s chest.
“She left Black Spire, but landed somewhere else,” Janott said, stumbling over the words in his haste to get them out. “She then left in another ship. A smaller ship.”
“How do you know?” Thrawn asked.
“The—” the bartender swallowed visibly. “The police. There aren’t many officers here, but there are some. They thought she was a smuggler and chased her for a bit. But her ship was fast, and hard to lock onto, and she left them behind.”
“Did they fire on her?” Anakin asked.
“I—don’t—”
“Did they fire on her?”
“I don’t know,” Janott said, cringing again. “I think they might have. But they didn’t damage her. She escaped. Really.”
“Does he speak truth?” Thrawn asked.
“Yes,” Anakin said, glaring at the bartender. It was all very well to say that Padmé had escaped; there could easily have been damage from the skirmish that wouldn’t show up until later. If her hyperdrive had been damaged, or her hull breached—
Stop it, he ordered himself. She was fine. She had to be.
“So do we kill him?” he asked Thrawn, stretching out to the Force. He had no particular interest in killing the man, but sometimes a threat was enough to shake loose information.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t sense anything in Janott that might suggest he was still sitting on any additional bargaining chips.
“No need,” Thrawn said. “The fact that the cantina attackers were part of the smuggler group, yet the attack was designed by those who understand Jedi tactics and abilities, suggests that the Separatists themselves either persuaded or hired the smugglers to launch that assault. Possibly knowingly; possibly not.”
“Ah,” Anakin said. Thrawn had said the cantina attack wasn’t simple, but that particular detail hadn’t occurred to him. “So the Separatists know all about the ring. And there are still a couple of Separatists alive out there—damaged a little, but alive—to pass the word to the rest of their forces.”
“There may be more elsewhere on Batuu, as well,” Thrawn said. “As to the thieves, they now know that the Separatists’ plan to eliminate us has failed, and that many of their comrades are dead. Given the circumstances, they may suspect the bartender of collusion.”
“I’m sure they will,” Anakin agreed, closing down his lightsaber. “Which adds up to you not being very popular right now, Janott. If I were you, I’d find someplace nice and quiet where I could stay out of sight for a while.”
“Yes,” Janott breathed. “Yes. I can do that.”
“You will do that,” Anakin said.
Janott’s eyes flicked to the dead smugglers. “I will do that,” he agreed.
“Then we’re done here,” Thrawn said. “Let us be on our way.”
* * *
—
There was no crowd gathering around the remnants of the street fight as Anakin and Thrawn left the shop. In fact, aside from a few curious looks being directed toward the Separatists slowly coming back to consciousness, the passersby seemed to be ignoring the carnage completely.
But then, death and destruction were probably daily events in Black Spire.
“Do you really think there are more Separatists around?” Anakin asked when they were once again in their landspeeder and heading toward the Larkrer. “Or were you just saying that to scare him?”
“There may be others, though no more than two or three,” Thrawn said. “You may have your droid examine the oxygen and food usage records during our voyage if you wish accurate numbers.”
“We’ll see,” Anakin said. Right now, exact numbers weren’t a high priority. “The question is whether there’ll be anyone functional enough to warn the Separatists at Mokivj before we get there.”
“There won’t be any warnings,” Thrawn said confidently. “They’ve taken great pains to conceal this base. Sending a warning through a private and presumably untested message service would threaten that secrecy.”
“Not just untested,” Anakin said, shaking his head. “Completely unreliable.”
“How do you reach that conclusion?”
“Because if Janott was telling the truth, Padmé was here long enough to send me a message,” Anakin said. “Probably more than one. But I never received anything. The question is whether they’ll be able to find another ship after we take theirs.” He looked sideways at Thrawn. “We are taking their ship, right?”
“I have no wish to arrive in mine,” Thrawn said. “Do you wish to arrive in yours?”
Anakin felt his lip twist. Showing up at a secret Separatist base in an Actis starfighter. Right. “Point taken.”
“As for their finding another ship, that won’t be a concern,” the Chiss continued. “As long as they’re at least a few hours behind us, they won’t be a problem.”
That assumed, of course, that he and Thrawn could track down Padmé that quickly. Anakin wasn’t at all sure about that part. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we should take an hour and disable everything in the landing area.”
“That would only gain a few more hours at the most,” Thrawn said. “Really, don’t concern yourself with them.”
>
Anakin pursed his lips. But the Chiss was probably right. Unless they could disable every ship on Batuu, they could hardly keep the surviving Separatists from coming after them. “Fine,” he growled. “By the way, how did you know that it was Mokivj?”
“The planetary data,” Thrawn said. “Only Mokivj’s listing included information that would be useful for inbound navigation.”
“The ten moons,” Anakin murmured. “Nice. But what if you were wrong?”
“The Separatists outside will soon recover,” Thrawn said. “If we’d failed to force a reaction with the thieves by naming Mokivj we could have tried a different system on them.”
“And you wanted a larger crowd than the Separatist you captured because you wanted to goad them into attacking us?”
“Correct,” Thrawn said. “They wouldn’t want us to leave with such vital information, but only with what they assumed would be overwhelming odds on their side would they dare to act.”
There was a moment of silence. Anakin watched the forest rush past on either side of them, trying not to worry about Padmé. Either she was all right, or she was in danger, and until he got to Mokivj there was nothing he could do about any of it.
“The duke that Oenti mentioned,” Thrawn said into his broodings. “Is he the leader of the Separatists?”
“No, that’s Count Dooku,” Anakin said. “The other real driving force of their military is General Grievous. No idea who this duke might be.”
“I’ve heard of Count Dooku,” Thrawn said. “A Jedi like you, is he not?”
“A fallen Jedi,” Anakin said, a bit more curtly than he’d intended. “Not like me. But don’t worry, we’ll get him. We’ve got Chancellor Palpatine on our side, and I’d put him up against Dooku and Grievous any day.”
Thrawn was silent for a moment. “Just remember that the goal in war is victory, not revenge.”
“Don’t worry. We all know that.”
“Good,” Thrawn said. “Remember that on this mission, as well.”
Anakin frowned. “What?”
“This is no longer merely a search for a missing ambassador,” Thrawn said. “It’s become an important part of your Clone War. Remember that victory is the goal.”
“And not revenge?”
“No.” He felt Thrawn’s eyes on him. “Nor even rescue.”
Anakin looked away. Nor even rescue?
Unthinkable. Padmé’s life was the most important thing in the galaxy. To him, and to many others besides.
“Do you hear me?” Thrawn persisted.
“I hear you,” Anakin growled.
And he would not give up that life for some vague and probably minor Separatist operation in a forgotten corner of the universe. “We’re wasting time. Can this thing go any faster?”
Duja’s ship—Padmé had never known its real name, but the current ID beacon listed it as the Possibility—was small and cramped and, to the casual observer, completely harmless.
But the casual observer would be wrong. The ship boasted extra shielding, twin laser cannons in the front and one in the rear, and a pair of top-grade proton torpedoes. More a pocket fighter than a simple transport, it had evaded Batuu’s pitiful police force with ease.
It should, she thought dully from inside the cockpit escape pod, make for a spectacular crash.
She still didn’t know how that vulture droid had gotten her. She’d arrowed straight into Mokivj as soon as she hit the system, then crossed the wide expanses of plain, scrubland, and lake at the lowest altitude she dared. Combined with the Possibility’s compact size, that should have let her slip past anything patrolling the area around Duja’s coordinates.
Clearly, it hadn’t worked. The vulture had nailed her, and she’d never seen it coming. Apparently, the Batuu police pursuit had damaged her ship more than she’d realized. She’d barely had time to kick it high enough to give the escape pod time to deploy before the whole thing began to come apart.
And now, as she burned at a controlled fall toward the hills below, she watched the multiple pieces of the Possibility arcing their fiery way toward the distant landscape.
Like Duja herself, the ship had faced its final challenge and lost. Now it was up to Padmé to avenge them both.
Though that was starting to look increasingly unlikely. The fragments of the Possibility were still blazing and smoking their way through the air, and already she could see a handful of vulture droids starting to gather over the horizon ahead. So far they didn’t seem to have spotted her pod amid the rest of the debris, but the minute her repulsorlifts came on they would probably spot the unnatural shift in trajectory.
Even if they didn’t, the terrain below hardly offered much hope for escape. The hillside was covered in jagged rocks, grass, and wide bushes, with no decent cover for several kilometers around her. There was a glint of sunlight from the river meandering its way downslope; she could see the bushes rippling in a breeze coming over the hill—
She caught her breath. The river.
It would be risky, but right now it was the only shot she had. Taking a last look at the distant vulture droids, she settled her hands on the controls and got to work.
The pod had the standard range of steering capabilities that would offer the passenger a choice of landing sites. But like the repulsorlifts, using the thrusters ran the risk of drawing the vultures’ attention. Fortunately, the river was nearly below her, and it took only a small and brief nudge on the controls to bring her onto the proper vector. She watched the river rushing toward her, trying to judge the exact trade-off point where the risk of droid detection and the chances of breaking her back with the impact were both at their lowest. Fifty meters…forty…thirty…ten…
Bracing herself, she hit the repulsorlift control.
The deceleration she’d programmed in was more intense than she’d expected, slamming her hard into her seat with an abrupt multiple g-force. Even so, the pod hit the river with an impressive splash, and she watched the water level run up the viewport as the pod submerged. She shut down the repulsorlifts and huffed out a relieved sigh.
She wasn’t prepared for the repulsorlifts to suddenly reactivate themselves.
She grabbed the controls again, forcing a manual shutdown. But it wasn’t enough. Even without them the pod had enough buoyancy to start a slow drift back toward the surface. Probably a deliberate safety design, and under most circumstances she would have welcomed it.
Here, though, a bobbing escape pod would pretty well guarantee her capture.
She ran her eyes over the panel, looking for inspiration, trying to find some trick of airfoil or ballast that would let her circumvent the safeties and take her back down again. But the pod’s designers clearly hadn’t anticipated this particular situation.
Which left only one chance. Clenching her teeth, watching the level of the water on the viewport, she keyed the hatch.
For a moment nothing happened. The water continued to recede down the viewport as the pod made its way upward. Then, with a creak of protest, the servos managed to shove the hatch open against the outside pressure.
And with a hissing rush, the river began to pour into the pod.
Padmé gasped as the icy stream blasted across her side and legs, far colder than she’d expected. The water quickly collected around her feet, rising up her shins, numbing the skin beneath her loose trousers. The pod’s slow climb wavered, then stopped; and as the water level approached Padmé’s knees the pod began to slowly sink again.
She keyed the hatch, wondering fleetingly what would happen if the water had penetrated the electronics or incapacitated the motors. But the hatch obeyed the command, resealing itself and cutting off the inrush. Peering upward through the viewport, she watched the play of light on the surface of the water as the pod continued to sink, then finally settled at a level of neutral buoyancy.
She checked her instruments. The readings were a little ambiguous, but it looked like the top of the pod was about four meters down. With luck, that would be deep enough to obscure her presence and let her float past the Separatists’ search.
In fact, and with even more luck, she might even be able to ride straight to the manufacturing plant itself. Most industrial processes required a plentiful water supply, and her river was heading in the general direction of Duja’s coordinates.
At any rate, until she was safely past the search area there was nothing she could do. Shutting down everything she could, propping up her feet on a section of the control board to get them out of the water, she settled in for a long wait.
* * *
—
The trip quickly turned into an exercise in patience and boredom. Still, it wasn’t entirely without its interesting moments.
The first of those moments came as she reached the vulture droids’ primary search area. Each time one of the flickering shadows interrupted the distant sunlight she felt herself tense, wondering if she’d been spotted or if the droid was merely moving past on another errand. Midway through the activity it occurred to her that, given the angle of the sun, the shadows that passed directly over her were from droids that weren’t actually overhead. The realization gave her a short period of relief until the corollary struck her: If one of the droids was directly above her, she would never know until it was too late.
But no laserfire sizzled through the water, and no torpedo blasts slammed a deadly shock wave across the pod’s surface. Gradually, the overhead shadows became fewer, then disappeared completely.
The next small diversion came an hour later in the form of a sudden swirling and roiling in the river’s otherwise leisurely pace. Her first thought was that she’d hit a rocky whitewater section, but then she spotted the large intake pipes that were drawing water out of the river near the left bank. A town, perhaps, since she seemed to still be several kilometers upstream from Duja’s coordinates.
Or perhaps not. The river flow had barely returned to its placid pace when she began to notice piles of small rocks along the riverbed’s slope. Again, her first thought was that it was something natural, perhaps erosion or runoff from a groundquake. But as the piles continued along the river she realized they were instead tailings from a mine, possibly driven off larger riverside mounds by wind or rain. The tailings continued for nearly a kilometer before dwindling; a hundred meters past them the pod was again buffeted as another set of pipes returned wastewater to the river. The pod’s sensors indicated that the temperature of the influx was noticeably higher than that of the surrounding water, again indicating some kind of mining or refining process.