Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(58)

“Captain Boroklif isn’t here,” Anakin growled. “There was trouble at Black Spire. Boroklif and his crew weren’t in any condition to fly. Do I have to draw you a picture?”

“Are you saying they’re dead? All of them?”

“I don’t know,” Anakin said, “because we didn’t stick around to see the end. But I can tell you that your boys were definitely losing.”

There was a pause. “Why are you here?”

“Because we’ve got your cargo,” Anakin said. “I figured you’d want that. Provided you can pay.”

Another pause, longer this time. “You can land in the courtyard,” the other said. “Feeding you the coordinates.”

“What about the shield?” Anakin asked, eyeing the sensor display. “Or do you want me to just fly in under the edge?”

“Don’t be smart,” the other growled. “I’ll open it when you need it open. Not before. Once you’re down, you’ll leave the ship—all of you—and wait at the foot of the ramp for your escort. Unarmed. If we see any weapons, we’ll kill you.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it,” Anakin said. “See you.”

He keyed off the comm. “You get the coordinates?” he asked Thrawn.

“Yes,” the Chiss said, gazing thoughtfully at the ground display. “Do Separatist shields in fact end before ground level?”

“Many shields do,” Anakin said. “When you run them all the way to the ground the people inside start running out of breathable air. Unless they’re just ray shields, of course, in which case that doesn’t matter. But ray shields will let in missiles and torpedoes, so they’re not nearly as useful.”

“Ah,” Thrawn said. “I also note that factories don’t typically have courtyards.”

“That’s probably just what they call their landing area,” Anakin said. “Having it inside puts the ships under the shield’s protection.”

“It also requires the shield to be opened for each landing and lift,” Thrawn pointed out. “That leaves the base vulnerable. A better design would be for the landing area to be outside the base, so the shield would only need to be contracted to the factory’s walls to permit travel.”

“So the place was originally built as something else,” Anakin concluded. “Not a huge revelation. It’s always easier to repurpose someone else’s building than put up your own.”

“Indeed,” Thrawn said. “But once again we come to the question of why here?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out,” Anakin said. “Let’s do this.”

Anakin had been right: The base did indeed look like it had begun life as something else.

What that something was, though, wasn’t nearly so obvious.

“That type of square structure is common to fortresses,” Thrawn said as Anakin settled them onto their final vector. “The large courtyard can serve as protected storage for air vehicles.”

Anakin nodded. The courtyard was currently unoccupied, but it was big enough to hold four freighters the Larkrer’s size or a bunch of smaller craft. At the base’s corners were vertical vulture droid anchors, also currently empty. Each of the structure’s rectangular sides was about five hundred meters long and a hundred meters thick and probably three stories tall. Plenty of room in all of that for a factory, a major research facility, or a sizable droid army. “Could be from a pre-shield era.”

“The walls are too low for most ancient fortresses,” Thrawn pointed out. “Is that the shield generator in the center?”

“Yes,” Anakin said, eyeing the squat lumpy shadow sitting on a permacrete foundation in the center of the courtyard. “Looks like something from the KR series. The Separatists like those.”

“Amazingly compact,” Thrawn said. “The power supply will be underground?”

“Probably,” Anakin said. “But if you’re thinking about knocking it out, don’t bother. Unless you’ve got a fleet standing by, that wouldn’t gain us anything.”

“Sadly, I have no fleet,” Thrawn murmured.

“Didn’t think so,” Anakin said. “Doesn’t matter. If Padmé’s in there, we’re getting her out.” He pointed ahead out the viewport. “Looks like that’s where they want us to land. See the four droids with lights standing in a rectangle?”

“Yes,” Thrawn said. “The defined space looks barely adequate for a ship this size.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Anakin said with a tight smile. “I guess they want to see how good a pilot I am. Let’s show them.”

Years of warfare had taught him how to use the Force to focus on flying, maneuvering, and landing a wide range of spacecraft sizes and styles. Not just Republic and Separatist, but independent designs as well. The Larkrer was no exception, and he managed to set it down perfectly in the space that had been allotted him.

He was shutting the engines down when the courtyard abruptly blazed with light.

“I see they have lighting after all,” Thrawn said calmly.

“So they do,” Anakin said, squinting out the viewport. The illumination was coming from a set of six floodlights spaced out along the top of the eastern courtyard wall, the one the Larkrer was currently facing. He leaned forward and looked left and right, confirming that there were no such lights on the north and south walls, while from the shadows it was clear that there weren’t any on the west wall behind them, either. Above them, the vulture droids that had escorted them in dipped briefly into the light and then headed back out on patrol. “Probably just for unexpected visitors and other special occasions.”