Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(42)

“You just need to know how to dodge the scavs when they’re out on their patrols,” Huga said. “Once we’re outside the perimeter they usually don’t bother with us. A lot of townspeople come out at night to hunt, and I guess they got tired of stopping everyone to find out who they were.”

“Ah,” Padmé said. They were close enough to the fortress now that the top edge was in view even from the bottom of the gulley. “How far from the wall does the perimeter extend?”

“You tell me,” Huga said. “We’re inside it now.”

Padmé swallowed hard. And from the way the stars had suddenly gone muted they were also under an umbrella energy shield. Terrific. “How much farther?” she asked, lowering her voice even more.

“Not very,” Huga said. “Why, you getting tired?”

“A little,” Padmé said. “Also cold.”

“We’re almost there,” LebJau said. He pointed a finger over her shoulder. “There it is, just before that bend. You see it?”

“Yes,” Padmé said. At this distance, it looked less like a boat than a pile of junk filling the gulley.

Up close, she soon found out, it looked exactly the same.

“What do you think?” LebJau asked as he helped her over a low railing and led her toward a low-roofed wheelhouse in the middle of a half-finished deck.

“Interesting design,” she said in her best diplomat’s voice. In fact, the thing was about as rough and amateurish as anything she’d seen in her life. It seemed to have been constructed largely of scrap from one or more of the factories, mostly metal but with some ceramic and plastoid sections thrown in.

There was no way it would take a flooded gulley without sinking. For that matter, it might not even survive an extra-large wave.

“Thanks.” LebJau stepped to the wheelhouse and pried open the door. “You can stay down here.”

The wheelhouse was bigger than it looked, extending downward below the deck far enough that she could at least stand up without whacking her head. She followed LebJau down the three steps—one of which wobbled under her weight—and over to a plastoid ledge that would probably one day be a bunk. “There’s no real bed,” he said, apologizing as he brushed some metal shavings off the ledge. “Sorry. I can try to find something tomorrow.”

“That’s okay,” Padmé assured him, handing him back his jacket. “I’ve been in worse places.”

“When are you going to send your messages?” Huga asked. “The five hundred you said you’d send to Uncle Anakin.”

“I’ll write them out right now,” Padmé promised. Sitting down on the ledge, she slipped her backpack off her shoulders and pulled out her datapad. “How are you going to get them to Interstel?”

“We’ll have Grubs or someone take them into town,” Huga said. “Someone there can transmit them to the Interstel office over in Yovbridge.”

“Hopefully, five hundred will be enough to get them to break out their ship,” Cimy added.

“Hopefully,” Padmé agreed. “Until then, you’ve got my necklace as a guarantee of my good behavior.”

Fifteen minutes later they were gone, Cimy with the message data card and her account number, Huga with the Corusca gem, LebJau with a promise to come back the next evening with food and bedding.

And once again, Padmé was alone.

In the shadow of a Separatist facility.

I’ve been in worse places, she’d told LebJau. But at least most of those other times someone had known where she was.

She took a deep breath and pulled a meal bar from her pack. Worry, she knew, would accomplish nothing. What she needed now was food, sleep, and a plan.

The first two were straightforward enough. The third, hopefully, would come with time.

And once Anakin got here, the two of them would figure out what the Separatists were up to. They’d figure it out, and they would stop it.





“They are encircling us,” Vader warned, studying the bar. Reflected in the decorative brasswork were the distorted images of the ten Darshi as they moved quietly around behind him and Thrawn into flanking attack positions.

A simple, yet well-executed maneuver. During the Clone Wars, The Jedi had seen many such attacks from Separatist forces. The attacks from the current epidemic of loudly flailing rebel groups were significantly less professional.

Rebel groups like the one on Atollon that Thrawn had been sent to destroy.

Thrawn had tried encircling them, too, just like the Darshi here in the cantina were trying. The Chiss had failed in his effort, just as the Darshi were going to fail in theirs.

Thrawn didn’t reply. Still disapproving of Vader’s decision to launch the First Legion at the incoming ships above Batuu?

The grand admiral was hardly in a position to be critical. He’d had the Phoenix group bottled up, in space and on the ground, and a few ships had still managed to slip through the blockade.

Here, Vader didn’t have those same resources, which meant some of the ships above Batuu would inevitably escape. But the big freighter, the one he’d sent the First Legion to, would be dealt with.

He would show Thrawn how it was done.

“Do you hear that?” Thrawn murmured.