by Timothy Zahn
First on the list was to create a little confusion. Stretching out to the switches by the far door, he turned off the lights.
* * *
—
Four of Mokivj’s ten moons were high in the night sky as Padmé led the way through the hidden exit. They were small moons, smaller than any of Naboo’s three, but even through the attenuation of the energy shield their reflected light was enough for her to get a clear view of the south wing’s outer wall as it towered above them. “What’s your plan?” Thrawn asked, coming up beside her.
“The windows on the west wing were covered with a protective metal mesh,” she told him, slinging her backpack over one shoulder and pulling out her monocular. “So are these,” she confirmed, peering through the device. “The mesh is open enough for the grapple to catch, and should be strong enough to hold our combined weight. We fire the grapple, engage it, then the motor in the grip pulls us up.”
“How many grapples do you have?”
“Three, but we won’t need more than one,” Padmé said, putting the monocular away. “The telescopic sight cylinder rotates ninety degrees and locks, and is reinforced to work as a second handhold. You hang on to that one, I hang on to the main grip, and we go up together.”
“Once we’ve reached the top of the line, how do you propose to gain the rooftop?”
Padmé peered up at the wall again. That was a good question, actually. The top of the upper window was a solid meter below the level of the roof, and she couldn’t see anyplace where they could brace their feet. “I guess one of us will have to stand on the other’s shoulders in order to reach the top.”
“A difficult maneuver,” Thrawn warned. “I doubt you can take my weight, and my own chest and shoulder muscles have been somewhat compromised.”
“By…?”
“Enemy weapons fire,” Thrawn said. “I suggest instead that you set a grapple at each of two adjacent windows. If your ascension gun is sturdy enough, the cables would form a V-shape that one of us could use as a foothold while stretching to the roof.”
Padmé measured the distances with her eyes. “Yes, that should work,” she agreed. Her backpack was still hanging by one strap. She started to shift it back into proper position on her back—
“I’ll take this,” Thrawn said, deftly pulling it off her shoulder.
“That stays with me,” Padmé said, trying to snatch it back. But he kept it moving out of her reach as he slipped it on. “Thrawn—”
“I need these,” he interrupted, sliding the E-5 blaster Anakin had given him through the straps. He winced a little, she noticed, as the weapon slid across his chest. “Your weapons are smaller and can be secured without using your hands. Mine cannot.”
She glowered at him. But again, his argument made sense. “Fine,” she said. “But I get it back once we’re up top.”
“Agreed.” He gestured toward the wall. “At your convenience, Ambassador.”
Padmé had never tried using two separate lines and grapples from the ascension gun at the same time. But she remembered the manual saying it could be done, and the operation came off without a hitch. The next part, climbing that last meter up to the roof, was a bit trickier. But Thrawn had apparently done something like this before. With Padmé hanging from the gun, he used the lines to climb to their intersection point, balanced on the S-5’s muzzle, then continued holding on to one line while he walked his hand up the wall to a grip on the narrow rim at the top. Once he was up, he set the E-5 and backpack aside and lay down at the roof’s edge, pulling up on one of the lines until the gun was within reach. After that, it was a matter of gripping Padmé’s wrist, giving her a steady pull upward until she could get her other hand on top, then retrieving the S-5 and the grapples. A moment later, with Thrawn in the lead with his E-5, and Padmé following with her backpack and the S-5 once again in blaster mode, they headed off across the moonlit roof.
Padmé had assumed this would be the most dangerous part of the trip. Even if Duke Solha hadn’t sent any of his B1s up here, the vulture droids were surely keeping a close watch on the factory. But she and Thrawn reached the eastern edge of the south wing and continued onto the east wing roof without so much as seeing a vulture, let alone being challenged by one.
Thrawn seemed to think it odd, as well. Six paces ahead of her, he was muttering something under his breath in an unknown language, as if trying to work out the puzzle aloud.
They reached the line of floodlights. Padmé looked up, making a quick visual sweep of the sky. Sooner or later, at least one of the vultures ought to show up.
“Wait a minute,” Padmé said, frowning as something caught her eye. In the distance to the east, a small, shimmering-white sphere was falling slowly from the sky. “Thrawn—over there,” she said, pointing. She glanced around again—
And tensed, her eyes sweeping the horizon. All around them, several kilometers away, more of the faintly glowing spheres were drifting downward. Three—five—ten—twenty—“Thrawn!” she called again.
And then, even as she watched, two of the spheres directly in her line of sight abruptly blazed with spears of green light. They flared briefly and were gone.
But not before their dying light illuminated the dark shapes shooting past them.
The vulture droids had finally come out to play.
“Don’t worry,” Thrawn called as the distant vultures came around and fired at another of the spheres.
Padmé looked back. He was crouching beside one of the floodlights, Anakin’s lightsaber in his hand. “Come,” he called, beckoning to her.
Two more spheres had been destroyed by the time she reached him. “What are they?” she asked.
“Decoys,” he said. “Give me the ascension gun.”
“Decoys for what?” she asked, wincing as three more spheres were caught by the vultures’ fire. Still, there were at least fifteen more drifting across the sky.
“My ship,” he said, taking the ascension gun from her. “Do you see it?”
Padmé scanned the horizon, paying particular attention to the dark sections where none of the spheres were falling. Conventional military doctrine was to put decoys where you wanted the enemy to look.
But she could see nothing. “Where?” she asked.
“Not there,” he said, hooking one of the grappling hooks into the lighting support struts and getting a grip on the ascension gun. “Above.”
Padme looked up. There it was: a shadowy shape, visible only as it blotted out the muted starlight, dropping straight out of the sky toward them. “What in—?”
But Thrawn was already gone, falling backward off the roof and rappelling along the wall toward the courtyard.
And he’d taken the lightsaber with him.
In a two-person, single-line rappelling exercise, the Naboo military manual recommended the first person to the ground return the ascension gun to lift mode and let it reel itself up to the person still on top. Padmé had no intention of waiting that long. Shrugging off her backpack, she wrapped the straps around the line for padding, got a good grip, and rolled off the edge of the roof.
Thrawn was apparently in even more of a hurry. By the time Padmé reached the ground he was already in the center of the courtyard. “Hold it!” she snapped, scooping up the S-5 where he’d left it and cutting off the line. “Where do you think you’re going?”
A second later, she got her answer. He came to a halt beside the shield generator, peered for a moment at the lightsaber—
And the brilliant blue blade flashed into existence.
Padmé stopped short, raising her blaster, her first horrified thought being that Thrawn was about to turn the lightsaber on her. But even as she wondered where he’d learned to use such a weapon the blade slashed downward, digging into the ground beside the generator. He stepped to the next side and slashed downward again.
> Padmé wrinkled her nose. Of course. Thrawn’s ship was coming for him, and the factory’s shield was blocking its way. And so here he was, using Anakin’s lightsaber to cut through the power cables. Above her, the starlight suddenly brightened as the shield collapsed.
And then, to her surprise, Thrawn crouched down and shifted to a horizontal cut, slicing through the permacrete foundation beneath the generator. “It’s already down,” she called to him.
“I know,” he called back. He finished the cut, looked up at the sky above him, then shut down the lightsaber and walked over to her. “General Skywalker’s weapon,” he said, holding it out to her in his right hand. “And your communicator,” he added, holding out the comm in his left.
Padmé stared at the weapon and comm. So he hadn’t been talking to himself on the trip across the rooftop. She’d wondered how his ship had known to come for him at that precise moment. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly, making no move to take either device.
“I was given a mission, Ambassador Padmé,” he said. “We’d observed this factory from afar, and seen the generator of the shield protecting it. We have nothing that holds this much power in such a compact form. I was ordered to obtain it and bring it home.”
“Anakin said you came to help him find me.”
“We’d observed the arrival of your companion on Batuu,” Thrawn said. “But we were unable to discern her fate. As I was observing the planet General Skywalker arrived. It seemed to me that we could help each other with our respective missions.”
“Did he know this was your true mission?” Padmé asked, her stomach twisting with the all-too-familiar ache of betrayal.
“No,” Thrawn said. He lifted the lightsaber a few centimeters. “He’ll need this. And he’ll need you.”
“So you’re just going to leave?” Padmé demanded. “Duke Solha’s up to something here, something terrible. You’re not going to help us find out what it is?”
“I was given a mission.”
“We need you,” Padmé said, a part of her wondering why she was fighting so hard on this. A reluctant ally was often worse than no ally at all. But something within her couldn’t just let it go. “Is this how your people do things? Just go along until you’ve gotten what you want, then abandon everyone else?”
“Is that how your Republic does things?” Thrawn countered.
“This isn’t about politics,” Padmé shot back. “It’s about individuals. People. Honor.”
“Politics is built from individuals,” Thrawn said. “The Separatists wished to leave the Republic. Why didn’t you simply allow them to go?”
“Because they attacked us. They started the war.” Padmé slashed a hand of dismissal through the air between them. “That’s not the issue here.”
“Perhaps it is,” Thrawn said. “We need to understand you. We need to know what drives you.”
“Right now, what drives me is that my—friend—Anakin is going to die in there if we don’t help him,” Padmé said. “We can’t do this alone, Thrawn. We need your help.”
“My mission comes first,” Thrawn said. “My people come first.”
For a long moment, Padmé gazed into those glowing red eyes. But there was no emotion there; no regret, no shame, no triumph. He was just a soldier, obeying his orders, with neither satisfaction or regret.
He might as well have been a battle droid.
“I’ll say goodbye for you,” she bit out. Snatching her comm and Anakin’s lightsaber from his hands, she spun around.
“The door at the south end is closest to where he’ll be,” Thrawn called as she jogged toward the east wing.
Padmé didn’t answer.
Maybe she was right. Maybe she and Anakin couldn’t do this alone.
But they would have to try.
“There,” Faro said, pointing out the Chimaera’s main viewport. “That moon right there.”
“I see it,” Thrawn said calmly.
Calmly, but Faro could sense the grimness beneath the words.
From behind them came a set of heavy footsteps. “We have arrived?” Lord Vader asked.
“Yes, my lord,” Thrawn said. “Have we arrived in time?”
Vader stopped beside Thrawn, his long cloak settling around his shoulders, and for a moment he stared out the viewport in silence.
Or at least, Faro assumed he was staring out the viewport. For all she could tell from his helmet faceplate, he could be taking a quick nap in there.
Mentally, she slapped herself across the cheek. Stop that. It was rumored the Dark Lord could read people’s thoughts, and that was not a thought she wanted him to know about.
Vader stirred. “Yes,” he said. “They are there.”
“Excellent,” Thrawn murmured. “I had hoped the Grysks would believe themselves safely hidden here. Can you tell where precisely they are?”
“Not from this distance,” Vader said. “We shall need to move closer.”
“Commodore?” Thrawn asked.
“Velocity unchanged, sir,” Faro reported. “Do you want the drive activated?”
Thrawn eyed the distant planet. “Not yet,” he said. “Let us close the distance a bit more before we announce our presence.”
“Those ships,” Vader said, raising a gloved hand to point out the viewport. “What are they doing?”
“What they have done at least four times before,” Thrawn said. “They are taking one of the moons.”
For another moment Vader was silent. “That makes no sense.”
“On the contrary, my lord, it makes perfect sense,” Thrawn said, his voice dark. “We have already seen their goal of closing off this region to easy and rapid hyperspace travel. The gravity projectors are effective, but they are costly and have only limited range and lifetime. Far more efficient in the long run to move lunar- or planetary-sized masses into hyperlanes, where they will continue to disrupt travel for decades or centuries to come.”
“How is this achieved?” Vader asked. For once, even the Dark Lord sounded awed. Faro guessed that didn’t happen very often. “What is their technology?”
“I do not know,” Thrawn said.
Vader rumbled in his throat. “Whatever it is, I have no doubt it will fall to turbolaser fire.”
“I agree,” Thrawn agreed. “But not yet.”
Faro smiled to herself. Of course not yet. There was nothing Thrawn valued more than information and knowledge. He would absolutely not attack until he figured out a way to infiltrate a team into the network of ships surrounding the moon and collect the Grysks’ secrets.
“Commander Hammerly?” Thrawn called.
“Not yet, sir,” the sensor officer replied from her crew pit position.
“What are you waiting for?” Vader demanded.
Faro mentally shook her head. They were waiting for Thrawn to come up with his infiltration plan, of course.
“The moon they are moving still endangers the planet,” Thrawn said. “We must wait until they have given it escape velocity.”
Faro frowned. Endangering Mokivj…but surely that wouldn’t matter if Thrawn was simply sneaking into the enemy fleet. Was he actually thinking—?
“Clear, sir,” Hammerly confirmed. “Escape velocity achieved. The moon can no longer impact the surface.”
“Stand by to attack,” Thrawn said. “Commodore, is my ship ready?”
“It is, sir,” Faro said, feeling the universe tilting a little around her. When he’d ordered her to prepare the Chimaera for combat, she’d assumed it was merely a contingency plan in case his real plan was somehow disrupted.
Did this mean that simply wading in and destroying the Grysk forces was his real plan?
“Activate all systems,” Thrawn ordered.
“Activating all systems, sir,” Faro repeated, looking over at the s
tatus board. Lights were rapidly turning from orange to green as the systems that had been on standby while the Chimaera drifted unseen toward the planet came back to life. “Combat readiness in twenty seconds.”
Thrawn nodded acknowledgment. “Lord Vader, I will need to know as soon as possible in which ships the prisoners are located.”
The twenty seconds had passed, and the Chimaera had lit its thrusters and was driving toward the distant Grysk ships before Vader answered. “A small number are located aboard the ships. Two, perhaps three. The remainder are on the planet.”
“Understood,” Thrawn said. “Commodore Faro, you will initiate an attack on the Grysk forces. Lord Vader, I request a favor: that you assign the Darkhawk and a squad of First Legion stormtroopers to accompany me to the surface.”
“What of your duties to the Chimaera?” Vader countered.
“Commodore Faro is more than capable of handling the assault,” Thrawn said. “Commodore, the enemy response to your attack will most likely be to launch multiple counterattacks from—”
“Precise orders to the commodore are unnecessary, Admiral,” Vader interrupted. “You will remain aboard the Chimaera and lead the attack.”
“My lord—”
“I will take the First Legion to Mokivj,” Vader continued. “You will deal with the ships, Admiral Thrawn. I will deal with the planet.”
For a moment Thrawn was silent. Then he inclined his head. “Very well, my lord,” he said. “Prepare your stormtroopers. The battle now begins.”
* * *
—
There was, Vader had noticed, a strange sort of symmetry in the Force, a balance that often manifested in patterns and resonances and strange reunions. People long separated would unexpectedly meet again; events of significance would see echoes of themselves within new events; places once visited would somehow draw a person back to create new memories, whether for good or for ill.
Mokivj.
The dry riverbed Padmé had described to The Jedi was still there, matching the fresh data Vader had extracted from the Grysk prisoners. He strode along it, ignoring the airspeeders that swooped past overhead as they traded fire with his stormtroopers. The airspeeders clearly hadn’t been expecting this kind of attack and usually came out the losers in the exchange, often bursting into flames right there and crash-landing somewhere out of sight.
