Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(23)
He got him wedged between the droid and canopy rim. Then, remembering to keep the body’s limbs moving in a hopefully realistic manner, he climbed into the cockpit and closed the canopy. Easing in the repulsorlifts, he rose into the sky.
The Actis’s jammers were designed to block enemy fighter transmissions hundreds of kilometers away. But that required a focused field, one that was primarily aimed forward toward where those enemies would normally be in battle. Still, the field spread out a short distance in all directions around the fighter, which meant he should be able to block anything from Black Spire up to around a dozen kilometers away. Rotating the Actis in midair, moving at a leisurely pace in order to give Thrawn as much time as he could, Anakin lined up the nose with Padmé’s distant ship. He eased in the thrusters—
An instant later there was a dull thud from beneath him and the Actis suddenly rolled sideways, dropping nearly all the way onto its left side.
“Artoo!” Anakin snapped as he jabbed the repulsorlift controls. Even as his brain registered the urgently glowing red lights on the monitor the fighter leapt forward, pressing him back into his seat as the thrusters came on at full power, burning them through the air at maximum acceleration. A second later the compensators kicked in, easing the pressure and letting him get to the controls again.
Only there was nothing he could do. The thud he’d heard, he realized now, had been a small explosion from the Actis’s portside repulsorlift. The only thing that had prevented the fighter from dropping onto that side and falling out of the sky was R2-D2’s quick thinking in kicking in the thrusters. That had given them enough forward motion to create sufficient lift over the stubby airfoil wings to compensate for the lost repulsorlift.
The only problem was that they were now blazing across Batuu at nearly a thousand kilometers an hour, leaving Black Spire far behind.
Lifting the jamming Thrawn was counting on to force their quarry out into the open.
To make matters worse, somewhere in all of that flurry of activity the body they’d decoyed their quarry with had slipped off the Actis and vanished into the forest far below.
Cursing under his breath, Anakin grabbed the control yoke and sent the fighter into a tight 180-degree turn. Once he was pointed back at Black Spire the communications blanket should come back into play. If their quarry had missed that brief window of opportunity, or if Thrawn had at least tagged him, they might still be able to pull this off.
R2-D2 warbled a question. “I don’t know,” Anakin told him. “The landing field, I guess. Unless he bought or rented a house here he’s probably living out of his ship. How much speed do we need to stay level without the repulsorlift?”
The droid’s answer wasn’t encouraging. “No chance of going a little slower?” Anakin asked hopefully, cranking the thrusters back to just above R2-D2’s estimated danger speed.
The reply this time was more emphatic. “No, landing on our portside wing isn’t really an option,” Anakin said with a sigh. “What about Thrawn’s ship, the one in orbit? Did it have a port we could dock in?”
Another whistled negative. “Yeah, I didn’t see one, either,” Anakin said. “Nothing to do but head back to Black Spire. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
By the time the outpost was once again in sight on the horizon he had a plan.
It wasn’t much of a plan. Anakin himself didn’t really like it. R2-D2 absolutely hated it.
But Thrawn was down there alone, injured, and facing a killer who might know where Padmé was. If Anakin was going to be in time to help out, this was his only option.
The landing field was a smaller clearing in the forest to the west of Black Spire. Anakin turned the Actis toward it, dropping to treetop level and keeping his speed as low as he could without losing control. The near end of the clearing flashed beneath him—he caught a glimpse of Thrawn crouched behind his landspeeder exchanging blasterfire with a hooded figure that was moving toward him—
Yanking back on the stick, he turned the Actis straight up, its nose pointed toward the sky, its thrusters blasting at the ground below. The sudden increase in air resistance against the fighter’s belly pressed him into his seat and sent its forward momentum plummeting. He watched the airspeed indicator, mentally crossing his fingers…
He was halfway across the landing field when he saw that the deceleration wasn’t going to be enough. Long before the fighter came to a midair halt it would be over the forest again, with no guarantee that there would be an open area where he could set it down.
Which left him only one option. Punching the canopy control with one hand and his restraint release with the other, he stretched out to the Force and jumped.
His head barely cleared the still-opening canopy. But the gamble worked. With the Actis rapidly slowing, and the Force adding speed and strength to his jump, Anakin found himself dropping almost straight down toward the clearing below. A quick twist of arms and hips to orient himself for a feetfirst landing—
He’d had barely enough time to grab his lightsaber when the hooded figure below raised his blaster and opened fire.
Six bolts blazed through the air at him before he hit the ground amid a crunch and flurry of dead leaves. He bent his knees to absorb the impact, holding that crouching pose as his assailant continued to fire. Through the blaze of red blasterfire against blue lightsaber blade he had a clear view of the face beneath the hood.