by Timothy Zahn
And having all the Separatists gathered together in one spot could be very handy. “How do you know all this?”
“After the battle, while you were still unconscious, I took the precaution of putting a listening device on the bartender’s clothing,” Thrawn said. “I’ve been following their conversations ever since.”
Anakin felt a tight smile tug at his lips. “And since the bartender isn’t awake yet, everyone’s just sitting around waiting and worrying out loud. And since our jamming’s still going, none of them can talk to anyone else—”
He broke off, frowning. “Wait a minute. How are you getting messages from the bartender if we’re jamming all communications?”
“My listening device does not utilize normal communication methods,” Thrawn said. “It translates speech into powerful sonic signals at frequencies far above those detectable by any known species. The signals are received by another device, which I placed on a wall near the cantina, which further translates the sound into a pattern of invisible flickering lights. The lights are reflected from nearby objects—here, the stone trees—and collected by a device on my vehicle. They’re then translated back into high-frequency sound, which is again converted to speech by my earpiece.”
Anakin whistled under his breath. “That’s quite a system. A lot of work, though, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Thrawn said. “Yet I have communication, and they do not.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Anakin agreed. “Okay. Artoo, stay here and see what else you can find out. Commander Thrawn and I have a party to go to.”
The residents who had gathered earlier to gawk at Anakin’s starfighter had long since moved on, some of them gathering around street carts for quick food or drink, others haggling with the owners of the various shops, still others moving furtively on darker errands. A few of the patrons seated at the cantina’s handful of outdoor tables were watching Anakin and Thrawn as they approached, but none seemed inclined to comment or question, let alone interfere. “Where are they?” Anakin murmured as they parked their landspeeder across the winding street. The cantina’s window shutters, he noted, were still closed. “Inside?”
“A moment.” Thrawn reached to the landspeeder’s displays and made a small adjustment. “They’re indoors, approximately fifty meters away.”
“I’m guessing over there,” Anakin said, eyeing a doorway that led into one of the many dingy shops. Five hard-looking men were loitering near the door, eating small hand meals that looked like they’d come from a street vendor.
So much for Thrawn’s fancy surveillance equipment. Sometimes all it took was someone with eyes and a brain to figure these things out.
“Very possibly,” Thrawn said. “I assume the one eating with his dominant hand is the leader.”
Anakin frowned. Dominant hand? What was Thrawn talking about?
Then he got it. All five had blasters on their right hips, but only one was holding his meal in his right hand. The others were instead eating with their left hands, leaving their gun hands free. The underlings needing to be ready to fire at a moment’s notice, while the boss could be a little more leisurely about it?
It seemed like a leap to Anakin, but possibly Thrawn was seeing something else that he wasn’t. Certainly the right-hander didn’t seem any less thuglike than the others. With droids making up the main Separatist forces—and with none of the droids he’d seen moving around Black Spire less than thirty years old—whoever was running the secret base had probably had to hire local talent for his muscle. “The boss, and the hired help,” he commented.
“Perhaps,” Thrawn said. He reached into the speeder’s side storage pocket and pulled out a small set of powered optics. He lifted them to his eyes, paused a moment, then nodded. “However, their clothing all follows the same pattern, and not the pattern of those who attacked us in the cantina,” he continued. “If they’re hired help, they share the same origin as their commander.” He held up a finger. “The bartender has regained consciousness. Let us observe the actions of the humans in the street.”
The wait wasn’t long. Barely ten seconds after Thrawn’s announcement the five men were on the move, tossing their food away and settling their hands on their blasters. One of them glanced both ways down the street—
And stiffened as he caught sight of Anakin and Thrawn.
“We’ve been spotted,” Anakin growled, drawing his lightsaber but keeping it below the level of the windscreen where it was out of the thugs’ view. All five were now looking surreptitiously at them. “You have a plan?” He nodded his head sideways at Thrawn’s damaged tunic. “You’re not exactly in top form for a fight.”
“Indeed I’m not,” Thrawn conceded. “Are you familiar with a beast known as a reek?”
Anakin snorted. The petranaki arena back on Geonosis, and the horned monster that had tried to eviscerate him, Padmé, and Obi-Wan…“Quite familiar,” he assured the Chiss drily.
“Prepare to emulate one.”
Prepare to emulate one? Anakin opened his mouth to ask what in the world Thrawn meant by that—
And suddenly the landspeeder leapt forward, accelerating down the winding street directly toward the five thugs.
They’d traveled maybe a third of the distance, and the thugs had all drawn their blasters, when he finally got it. Standing up, he got a grip on the windscreen and jumped over it to land on the vehicle’s hood. He slid all the way forward and slipped the fingers of his left hand into an air intake vent to keep from falling off.
And with the landspeeder now indeed looking like a Jedi-horned reek, he ignited his lightsaber.
The thugs had just enough time for their eyes to widen in stunned disbelief and scramble for cover before the landspeeder blew into their midst.
The two closest went flying as the vehicle rammed into them, throwing them five meters backward. The next two had made it just far enough to the sides to avoid getting run down—
Double vision: blaster rising close at hand, preparing to fire—
The first of the two, the one Thrawn had identified as the leader, jerked back as Anakin’s close-in lightsaber slash sliced his blaster in half.
Double vision: the thug behind him ducking and shooting from waist-high position—
The second managed one shot. Anakin’s blade was already in position to deflect it into the wall beside him.
Double vision: Thrawn braking hard and spinning the rear of the landspeeder around toward the last thug—the thug jumping back out of the way—the thug drawing a thermal detonator from his waistband—
Anakin leapt straight up just as Thrawn began the maneuver, turning in midair as the man dodged to the side and reached for the detonator. His hand began to emerge, his lips curling into a snarl—
Which became a gasp as Anakin hurled his lightsaber, sending the blade spinning through the detonator and half of the man’s hand. The thug fell to the ground and lay crumpled against the ancient wall, his face screwed up in pain as he gripped the remains of his hand.
The landspeeder had braked nearly to a halt by the time Anakin landed on the hood again. He used the Force to recall his lightsaber to his hand, then dropped into a crouch to catch his balance and spun back to the thug who had taken that single shot at him.
Double vision: shots coming at torso and head—
He blocked both, sending the second shot into the thug’s own chest and dropping him to the street beside his comrade. Even as he collapsed, Thrawn was climbing stiffly out of the landspeeder and hurrying to the two he’d rammed earlier. “Well?” Anakin called, giving each of the other thugs a quick look.
“Both are injured and unconscious,” Thrawn said. “Have we one who can still speak?”
“I think so,” Anakin said, turning his eyes and his lightsaber toward the leader. The thug was staring back, the grip half of his bisected blaster still clenched
in his hand. “Not really sure.”
“Indeed,” Thrawn said. He crossed to Anakin’s thug, drawing his blaster as he walked. “You’re not a warrior.”
Belatedly, the man’s eyes shifted to the Chiss. “I’m…no, I’m…”
“Your name?” Thrawn prompted.
The man swallowed visibly. “Oenti,” he said. “I’m an inspector. Just an inspector. A cargo inspector.”
“Haven’t done a very good job of it, have you?” Anakin suggested mildly. “Let’s take this talk inside, shall we?”
“Yes, let’s,” Thrawn agreed. “These are your people, General. You’d best lead the way.”
“No problem,” Anakin said. He got a grip on Oenti’s arm and pulled him over to the door his group had been focused on. A double lightsaber slash through the cheap lock and equally cheap hinges, a flick of his hand to send the door flying inward with a crash, and he gave the thug a more insistent shove inside.
The room they were in was a shop of some sort, with shelves and bins loaded with exotic curios, poorly made counterfeits of Core World art objects, and a lot of unidentifiable bits of flotsam and jetsam. A faded damask curtain hung over a doorway beside the counter, and as Anakin pushed his prisoner toward it two long-snouted beings flung it aside and charged out into the front room.
And came to a sudden halt as they spotted the intruders already halfway to them. One of them raised his blaster—
“Don’t,” Anakin said, lifting his lightsaber a little higher over Oenti’s shoulder.
The would-be attacker hesitated, focused briefly on Oenti, then looked back at Anakin. “Who are you?”
“We’re not your friends,” Thrawn said, moving out from behind Anakin and taking a couple of steps to the side. “But we’re not necessarily your enemies. We seek information, and believe you can supply it.”
“Or we can kill all of you and get what we want from this one,” Anakin offered, tugging on the shoulder of Oenti’s shirt with his free hand. “Your choice.”
One of the long-snouts swallowed, a long, rippling motion of the throat, and lowered his weapon. “Yes,” he said, stepping aside and gesturing toward the curtain. “Come inside. We shall talk.”
“Yes, we shall,” Anakin said. “You can just leave the weapons here.”
The two long-snouts looked at each other. Then, wordlessly, they set their blasters on the counter, pushed back the curtain, and disappeared through the doorway.
Anakin and Oenti were right behind them.
The room looked to be a stockroom of sorts, with crates and shelves and more bins scattered randomly around. The bartender was lying on a dilapidated couch, his head propped up, still looking bleary-eyed from the aftermath of the gas attack. Two humans and another long-snout were seated on stools clustered around him, all three of them now twisted around at the waist as they stared at the newcomers. “Oenti?” one of them demanded cautiously as the first two long-snouts silently walked around behind the rest of the group and took up positions there.
“Hello, Janott,” Anakin’s prisoner said, a dark note in his voice. “Don’t bother to get up. So—Janott the friendly bartender. This explains a lot.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the bartender protested. But his eyes were suddenly awake and alert.
“Oh, I think you do,” Oenti said, looking around at the rest of the group. “Your friends are on the duke’s list, you know. The whole gang is. You realize I’d have been shot if he figured out what you were doing?”
“I don’t know—” Janott began again.
“Enough,” Thrawn said. His voice was quiet, but somehow it cut like a lightsaber through the growing argument. “We have no interest in watching you posture. Allow me to save time by telling you what has occurred. You will then tell us what we want to know.”
He gestured to Anakin. “And he will tell me if you’re lying.”
Anakin stretched out to the Force, getting a feel for the sense and emotions of each of them, and gave a small nod.
“You are smugglers,” Thrawn said, gesturing toward the group seated around Janott’s couch. “You are also thieves.”
He looked at Oenti. “You are part of the Separatist movement, currently at war with the Republic and Loyalist systems. Your duke has constructed a base and is shipping materials and equipment to it. Because he didn’t want anyone to know where the base is, he gathered his supplies from various origination points and sent them to Batuu, where the inhabitants don’t pry into others’ activities. But he didn’t expect interference from thieves.”
He pointed his blaster at Janott. “Nor did you know that the man who owned your chosen transfer point, the cantina, was in league with those thieves.”
“I’m not in league with them,” Janott insisted, starting to rise from his couch. Anakin flicked his lightsaber around Oenti’s side, settling the blade warningly over the bartender’s chest, and he subsided.
“With your assistance the thieves learned which shipments were the most valuable,” Thrawn continued, ignoring the protest. “The shipments no doubt arrived at wide intervals, allowing you sufficient time to steal the best cargoes and leave worthless duplicate containers in their place. You felt confident that the leisurely pace of the shipments would delay detection of the thefts until such time as you were ready to leave Batuu.
“But then another entered the scene, and with her came your downfall.”
“Duja,” Anakin murmured.
“Indeed,” Thrawn said. “She was able to identify one of the shipments and follow it to Batuu. She entered the Separatist ship and learned of the base, then sent a message to alert the Republic.”
He gestured to Oenti. “But your comrades detected her intrusion, and concluded that she was a thief.”
“Which started them looking for other thieves,” Anakin said. “Which suddenly put all of you in their viewfinders.”
“You realized you were in danger of being caught, and therefore collected all the gains you could and attempted to escape Batuu,” Thrawn said. “But before your ship could arrive, the landing space was occupied and blocked by another ship.” He looked at Anakin. “That of your ambassador.”
With an effort, Anakin held on to his temper. Flashing his lightsaber around right now wouldn’t gain them anything. Better to let Thrawn carry this, at least for the moment. “What happened to her?” he asked quietly, looking at each of the others in turn.
“We don’t know,” one of the long-snouts said.
“Neither do we,” Oenti added hastily. “She landed, went into Black Spire, then left.”
“All I know is that she came into the cantina and wrote a poem for the dead woman,” Janott said.
“So Duja is dead,” Anakin said. That had been the direction the story had been going, but it was still a wrench for him to say it aloud. “Which of you did that?”
“It wasn’t any of us,” Janott said, cringing back a little, his eyes focusing on the lightsaber blade still swinging above him.
“I wasn’t there,” Oenti said, equally quickly. “I was in the Larkrer’s hold, trying to figure out what she’d been trying to steal.”
“General?” Thrawn invited.
“They’re telling the truth,” Anakin growled. It would have been so much easier if he’d been able to sense guilt in one of them. As it was, justice would have to be delayed.
“That’s their good fortune,” Thrawn said, a dark menace in his voice. “But now the masquerade is over.”
“You going to turn us over to the Separatists?” Janott asked anxiously.
“Most of them are currently outside your door,” Thrawn said. “Though not, I grant you, currently in a position to deal out punishment. They’re now trapped here, as are the rest of you.”
Janott flashed a look at Anakin. “What are you talking about?”
“I’ve seen both the Black Spire landing field and the clearing where your comrades took their cargo,” Thrawn said. “I conclude the ship you planned for your escape is too large to land nearby without drawing unwelcome attention. Your only hope is to seize the Separatist freighter.”
Oenti stiffened. “You can’t let them do that.”
“We won’t,” Thrawn assured him.
“Why not?” Janott asked. “You’re Loyalists, right? I heard all Jedi were Loyalists.”
“We’ll give you a good price for their ship,” one of the long-snouts added.
“Shut up!” Oenti snarled. “You couldn’t take it anyway—we’ve got a full squad of combat droids ready to cut you to mulch if you try.”
“Hardly,” Anakin said. “You have three droids, and they’re general-service, not combat.” He cocked his head. “Rather, you had three droids.”
“The ship isn’t for sale,” Thrawn said. “We intend to take it ourselves.” He paused. “To the Separatist base on Mokivj.”
For a single second they all just stared at him. Anakin had just time to feel the sudden surge of fear and dismay—
Then, as if on a signal, the whole group exploded into action.
Double vision: Oenti spinning and leaping, his hands closing around Anakin’s throat—
The Separatist’s hands were still thirty centimeters from their goal when Anakin used the Force to send him flying backward across the room. As Oenti sailed past the others, Janott and the three thieves yanked blasters from their tunics, while the two long-snouts snatched weapons from hiding places among the crates.
Double vision: two blaster bolts at torso, chest, one bolt at Thrawn’s chest—
Anakin caught the first two shots on his lightsaber, bouncing them into the walls and ceiling. A quick flick of his wrist, and he managed to catch the shot that had been intended for Thrawn, as well.
Double vision: a bolt from the left into his rib cage, sending him toppling to the floor with a burnt lung—
