Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(31)

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—