Thrawn_Alliances_Star Wars

by Timothy Zahn

Padmé followed, looking around. Even up here, the windows were mesh-barred. As for the factory itself, aside from the cubicle barriers, there was nothing. The desks and chairs had all been removed, along with tools, electronics parts, and basic office supplies. The shelves along the walls were hard to see in the faint light, but they also looked like they’d been cleaned out.

  “This was mine,” LebJau said, stopping at one of the cubicles in the middle. “We used to have a few fold-up cots, but I guess the boss took them when the metalheads made them leave.”

  “That’s okay,” Padmé said. “I’ll manage. Are you still going to bring me food and water?”

  “There’s a water dispenser by the lavatory over there,” he said, pointing to the side of the room. “Should still be running. Food…I’ll try. But they’ve been shifting our cleanup times lately, and I might not be able to get here every day.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Padmé said. “I’ve still got food bars—it was the water I was worried about. How are they shifting your work times? Earlier, later, more often?”

  “More often,” he said. “They cover everything and rush us in, we clean up the mess, then they rush us out again.”

  “And then they go back to their work?”

  LebJau shrugged. “I guess. Look, I gotta get back. Huga’s already twitchy about someone noticing I’ve been leaving every night. If someone tells the metalheads, we’ll be in the Bins in nothing flat.”

  “We certainly wouldn’t want that,” Padmé said. So getting captured by the droids would get someone taken into the east wing. She tucked the idea away for possible future use. “How secure are they, anyway?”

  “Very,” LebJau said, giving her a suspicious look. “The Bins are in a block, all thick permacrete, inside another enclosure that has just one access door.”

  “Locked?”

  “Double-key system, yeah.”

  “Are there any similar Bins in this wing?” If she could see what she was up against, maybe she could figure out an escape trick. If she could, it might make sense to let the droids take her.

  “No, just in the east wing,” LebJau said. “They always promised to put some in here, but that never happened. I wish they had—people were always stealing other people’s stuff. Didn’t happen in the east wing, not after the Bins were set up. Why do you want to know all this?”

  “I’m just concerned that you might get tossed into one,” Padmé said. “If that happens, I’ll want to know how to get you out.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, good luck with that. Look, I better go.”

  “Sure,” Padmé said. “Get some sleep, and I’ll see you whenever you can get back. And thank you again.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said. “Good night.”

  A minute later he was gone. Two minutes after that, Padmé felt a faint, brief draft as he opened and then closed the service-level trapdoor again.

  Her first task was to check out the windows. She started with the outer set, approaching at an angle and as low to the floor as she could manage. In theory, an unused and sealed wing shouldn’t be under close surveillance, but all it would take would be a chance glance by a droid or one of their overseers to ruin everything.

  Unfortunately, the mesh barring the windows was as solid as it looked. Whoever had built this place had been serious about keeping out intruders.

  Which just served to underline what LebJau had said about the secure storerooms. Maybe getting herself captured and stuck in there wouldn’t be a good move after all.

  A check of the inward side windows yielded the same negative results. If she was going to get out of this part of the factory, it wouldn’t be through the windows. Not without some tools and a lot of time.

  A search of the entire room came next. Again, her original cursory assessment proved accurate: no tools, no equipment, no scraps or bits of electronics, nothing.

  But at least she was out of the boat and into the facility itself. Progress, however slight.

  Tomorrow, she decided, she would set herself up by one of the inner windows where she hopefully wouldn’t be seen and give the other wings of the factory a few hours’ worth of surveillance. She would look for traffic patterns in the courtyard, see which windows had the most activity behind them, and try to get a count of droids and the people overseeing them.

  Though she’d have to use her monocular without its enhancements, lest someone pick up the electronic signature and track it back to her. Still, straight optical magnification would be better than nothing—

  And right in the middle of that thought the inner, factory-side windows exploded with a blaze of light.

  She was flat on the floor in an instant, her heart pounding, her squinting eyes fighting to recover from the blast and adjust to the glare. Her backpack was on the floor a meter away; snagging it with her foot, she pulled it up to her side and slid out her S-5 Security blaster. The cubicle partitions wouldn’t be much use as defensive barriers, but they would at least let her play catch-the-mouse for a while before they ran her to ground. She eased her head and blaster around the edge of LebJau’s cubicle, lining up the weapon on the stairwell—

  A shadow suddenly cut across the blaze of light. She jerked around again, to see a pair of vulture droids in escort formation hover briefly in the light and then rise again out of her view.

  Her gun hand sagged to the floor as her whole body went limp with relief. So that was it. No intruder alert, no sudden recognition that a spy had penetrated their defenses. Just turning on the landing lights for an incoming ship and its escort.

  She gave it a couple of minutes anyway, just to be on the safe side. Then, tucking her blaster into her belt, she crawled on elbows and knees toward the inner windows. If she was lucky, maybe it would be a passenger ship and she’d see someone she knew. If so, that might give her an idea of which Separatist faction was involved. She got to the wall, slid carefully up alongside one of the windows, and eased one eye around the edge.

  The freighter wasn’t a style she was familiar with, though it had a Techno Union feel to it. Two passengers and an astromech droid had emerged and were standing midway across the courtyard, their backs to her, talking with a human who was himself flanked by a pair of B2 super battle droids. Off to one side of the conversation a group of six B1 droids stood with their blasters trained on the newcomers.

  So: not anyone in authority, or at least not someone who’d been expected. Too bad. She shifted her focus to the other man, whose cloak was rippling with his movements as he spoke and gestured.

  She caught her breath. That wasn’t just a cloak. The style, the throat clasps, the color and ribbing—all of it identified it as a royal Serennian cloak. The man was a fellow nobleman, possibly even an associate, of Count Dooku.

  And if Dooku was even peripherally connected with this place, its significance suddenly jumped a whole lot higher.

  She felt her eyes narrow. Had that been a flicker of reflection from somewhere near the conversation? But if it was, it was gone. The Serennian was heading toward the far side of the courtyard, aiming for a door in the south corner of the east wing. The newcomers were following, the B2s lumbering guard alongside them. The B1s had apparently been dismissed and were heading toward a ground vehicle parked in the courtyard’s northwest corner. Another group of battle droids was already there, along with a couple more human figures. The lights shut down, plunging the courtyard back into darkness.

  And in that same instant a new light flared out right in the middle of the first group of B1s. A blue light: tight, compact, brilliant.

  A lightsaber.

  Even as Padmé gasped in surprise the blade was in motion, slashing with dizzying speed through the patrol, turning the droids into scrap. It finished the last one, and closed down—

  And then the floodlights blazed back on, revealing a scene of sudden chaos erupting among the d
roids and people as the whole group converged on the site of the brief battle.

  Only the attacker—and the lightsaber—had vanished.

  Quickly, Padmé ducked back away from the window. With the Jedi intruder nowhere to be seen, the hunt would immediately turn every direction at once, and she didn’t dare risk someone spotting her.

  But even as she pressed herself against the wall, a sudden thrill of excitement rippled through her. There was only one Jedi she knew who had both the skill and the sheer audacity to pull off a stunt like that.

  Anakin was here.

  She really should stay hidden, she knew. But the temptation was too great. Once again, she eased an eye around the edge of the window. Was he hiding somewhere, or was he one of the two newcomers?

  He was. Despite still only seeing his back, and despite the fact he was in strange clothing, she could see now that that was indeed her husband.

  Who was now walking toward a second pair of B2s flanking that southeast door, their wrist blasters leveled at him, the first two super battle droids pressing close behind him.

  Anakin’s hands, and those of his companion, were pinioned behind their backs with heavy-duty binders.

  Again, Padmé ducked back from the window, her mouth gone suddenly dry. Anakin had been captured. His lightsaber was surely gone by now, either taken by the Separatists or deliberately hidden after his long-distance attack on the battle droids. He was probably on his way right now to the Bins.

  And here Padmé stood. Trapped in a cell every bit as escape-proof as his.

  Powerless to help him.

  Seven times the Chimaera had made forays into the same region of space. Each time they came in from a different angle. Each time they found nothing. Each time they accomplished nothing.

  Grand Admiral Thrawn had failed seven times. Now he was trying it an eighth.

  Vader watched the Chiss, listening as he gave orders or studied the displays or gazed out at the hyperspace sky. Madness, an old saying went, was doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. By that definition, Thrawn was clearly mad.

  But he wasn’t. Vader knew he wasn’t. More important, the Emperor knew he wasn’t.

  And the grand admiral’s hour was nearly gone.

  What Vader couldn’t decide was what all this was supposed to accomplish. Thrawn had already agreed that there were no cloaked gravity-well generators out here, and any generator large enough to project its effect beyond the Chimaera’s inner sensor range would be running such a huge power generator that it would practically light up the sky.

  What was Thrawn doing? Was he really thinking he would find something after seven failed attempts?

  Or was he simply stalling for time?

  The Grysk had escaped with the source of the Force disturbance. Thrawn had tacitly admitted that, as well. But what was it? Force-sensitive beings of some sort? Force-sensitive animals, if such a thing existed?

  Rogue Jedi?

  True, the thoughts and emotions Vader had sensed from the disturbance hadn’t been like anything he’d ever experienced. But that could have been distortion caused by the hibernation process.

  Were the Grysk hiding some Jedi from Imperial justice?

  Was Thrawn helping them?

  Unthinkable. Thrawn had sworn loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire. Such a betrayal would be treason.

  And yet…

  Thrawn had claimed that his failure to capture or kill Kanan Jarrus at Atollon had been due to the strange creature that had unexpectedly intervened in the battle. The reports from the death trooper guard had appeared to corroborate that.

  But what if they were wrong? What if Thrawn had deliberately allowed Jarrus to escape?

  Ahead, the hyperspace sky became starlines and collapsed back into stars. “Navigation mark!” Faro snapped. “Sensors at full range.”

  “Mark, aye.”

  “No objects in range,” the sensor officer reported.

  “Very good,” Thrawn said. “Again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Faro said. “Helm: new course on board. Execute.”

  “Yes, Commodore.” The Chimaera began wheeling around in preparation for its return to hyperspace.

  Abruptly, Vader came to a decision. Eight failures now on record, and the hour Thrawn had begged for was nearly over. “Admiral,” he said.

  Thrawn turned to face him. What he saw in Vader’s stance, or what he’d heard in Vader’s voice, apparently warned him this was serious. “Yes, my lord?”

  “We will speak,” Vader said.

  Again, the grand admiral knew better than to argue. He nodded and gestured Vader toward the forward viewport, where they would be out of earshot of Faro and the men and women in the crew pits.

  Vader strode past him, sensing Faro’s sudden uneasiness as his cloak brushed her shoulder. Thrawn turned again as Vader passed, and the two of them continued on, walking shoulder-to-shoulder.

  Vader stopped an arm’s length from the viewport. Thrawn, again with proper deference, waited until then to also stop. For a moment they stood in silence, still shoulder-to-shoulder, gazing out at the mottled hyperspace sky. “You asked me to trust you,” Vader said quietly.

  “I did,” Thrawn agreed. “I continue to ask that.”

  “Then you will tell me what we are doing,” Vader said. “And I do not wish to hear again of your search for weapons that are clearly not here.”

  “Then I will not speak of them,” Thrawn said. “But your opposition to this experiment is not solely because of that.”

  So Thrawn was daring him to come out with it? Fine. “No, it is not,” Vader said. “Your actions on Batuu and your continued refusal to speak of the Grysk prisoners strongly suggest that you are walking the edge of betrayal and treason.”

  “In what way?”

  “You swore an oath of allegiance to the Empire,” Vader said. “Yet you seem intent on putting the needs of your own people above the wishes and desires of the Emperor.”

  Thrawn turned to face him, an odd expression on his face. “Is that what you fear?” he asked.

  “I do not fear it,” Vader growled. “I accuse you of it.”

  “I see.” Thrawn turned back to the viewport.

  But not before Vader caught a hint of a smile. “Do you find this amusing?” he demanded.

  “No, not at all, my lord,” Thrawn said. “I was simply…perhaps gratified is the wrong word.”

  Vader frowned. “Gratified? By what?”

  For a long moment, Thrawn continued to gaze out the viewport, an orderly flow of thoughts and emotions running through him. “I have experienced a great deal of opposition during my time in the Empire,” he said at last. “Some of the hostility was because I am not human. Much of it stemmed from the fact that I was not part of the Empire’s social and political elite, nor did I have family or friendship ties to that elite.”

  He turned back to Vader, the faint smile now taking on a note of sadness. “Not until now have I faced opposition that stemmed solely from loyalty. Your loyalty, specifically, to the Emperor. I am pleased, and gratified, at the reason for your reservations, my lord. For I, too, prize and cherish loyalty.”

  “Breakout in ten seconds, Admiral,” Faro called from behind them.

  “Very good, Commodore,” Thrawn called back. He paused, the smile fading. “This will be the end of it,” he said quietly. “May I have your trust one more time?”

  Vader stared at the hyperspace sky. He should say no, of course. Order the Chimaera onto a new course, and follow up with a lesson Thrawn wouldn’t soon forget. The Chiss was already pushing the limits—had already pushed the limits—and any lesser person would have been dealt with long ago, both for the impudence of it and for wasting the Dark Lord’s time.

  But he could sense that orderly mind working hard. He could fe
el the confidence and the anticipation. Whether Thrawn’s expectations turned out to be correct, the Chiss clearly believed they would turn out that way.

  And for all Vader’s impatience, he had to admit that he was curious.

  “One more time,” he said.

  A moment later the stars again shone around them. “Navigation mark!” Faro called in the now familiar litany.

  “Mark, aye.”

  “No objects in range.”

  “Very good,” Thrawn said, lifting his datapad and transferring the mark to the group he’d already compiled. “Hold here.”

  For a minute he gazed at the datapad in silence. Then he held up a finger, paused another moment, and tapped a new spot on the map. “Here,” he said, keying the point back to the others. “Lieutenant Pyrondi, that is your target zone. Full spread; ion cannons only.”

  “Full spread with ion cannons,” she repeated briskly. “Ready.”

  “Fire.”

  The glowing red-tinged bursts of green ion clusters shot away from the Chimaera, blasting through the area Thrawn had marked. Vader watched, wondering if this was yet more stalling. For all Thrawn’s talk about loyalty, he noticed that the Chiss hadn’t actually answered his question.

  Abruptly, one of the ion bursts seemed to explode into a small cloud. Vader frowned, keying in his helmet’s electrobinocular setting. A second ion cluster struck that same area, coming apart into the same sort of splash—

  And then, suddenly, there it was: a large cylinder floating in the blackness of space.

  “There, Admiral,” the sensor officer snapped. “Bearing—”

  “I see it, Commander,” Thrawn said calmly. “Commodore Faro, move to intercept and retrieve.”

  “Yes, sir,” Faro said briskly. “Helm, take us into tractor range.”

  “As you see, my lord,” Thrawn said quietly. “Your trust was not unwarranted.”

  Vader gazed at the object. It was indeed the size and shape of the objects Commander Kimmund had seen in the freighter’s wrecked cargo bay.

  “As you said, it is impossible for a gravity projector and a cloaking device to operate at the same time,” Thrawn continued. “But the designers of this device knew that was not necessary. At the moment when a gravity projector brings a passing ship out of hyperspace there is a brief power surge. The designers simply used that power surge to shut down the projector and activate the cloaking device. By the time the ship is fully into realspace, the projector is completely hidden. When the ship leaves sensor range, the cloaking device shuts down and the projector is reset.”