Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(62)
“You don’t get it,” Anakin insisted. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thrawn trailing behind him, running along slightly behind the lumbering B2s, with R2-D2 gamely trying to keep up. “We threw him off the ship. Now he’s coming after us.”
“Don’t be stupid,” the Serennian said scornfully. “Didn’t you hear your friend? He let you throw him off so that he could stow away.”
“What?” Anakin asked, giving the Serennian a bewildered look that gained them another five steps toward the door. If he could keep up the charade long enough for him and Thrawn to get out of view of everyone out here, they should be able to ditch the Serennian and lose themselves in whatever maze of rooms and corridors they found inside.
They were ten steps from the door, and he was starting to think this whole thing would go off without a hitch, when the door swung violently open and two more B2s strode out, stopping just inside the courtyard and completely blocking the opening.
“But you’re right—we don’t want him getting to you,” the Serennian continued, again getting a grip on Anakin’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’ve got a nice, safe spot for you.”
* * *
—
“You’ve got to be joking,” Anakin protested as he stood in the doorway of his new home. The door, a swing-up panel that was stretched out like a canopy above him, was a slab of transparisteel attached to the upper cell wall by a pair of hinges the size of his forearm. Aside from two horizontal thirty-centimeter-long slits, the door was completely solid. The cell itself, four meters square and three meters high, was made of plain white permacrete slabs.
To Anakin’s right, Thrawn had already been ushered into his own cell, and out of the corner of his eye Anakin watched as one of the B1s the Serennian had picked up along the way swung the door down into place across the opening and slid a pair of tapered dowel pins through the fasteners at either side of the bottom edge. Across the corridor, R2-D2 was standing nervously beside the Serennian, with the two B2s flanking them. One of the B2s held the prisoners’ comms and weapons, including the small hold-out blaster in Thrawn’s boot that the Chiss had somehow forgotten to mention. “What if he comes after us?” Anakin asked again. “You’re only guessing he wanted us to throw him off.”
“I don’t guess, thief,” the Serennian said, finally putting away his comm. He’d been on it since they all fled from the courtyard, jabbering orders to someone to drag the techs out of bed and put them to work. What the techs were supposed to do, Anakin hadn’t been able to figure out from the one-sided conversation. “He wanted to get here, and this was the simplest way to do it.” The man lifted his blaster. “For that alone I should shoot you.”
“Your boss wouldn’t be too happy if you did that,” Anakin warned. “You still need us to get your freighter back.”
“The Larkrer?” The Serennian wrinkled his nose. “It would almost be worth it not to have to listen to your voice anymore.” He drew himself up to his full height. “And for your information, I am the boss. I am Duke Solha of the Free System of Serenno.”
Anakin snorted. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“You will be,” Solha promised darkly. “Trust me. Now: inside.”
Glowering, Anakin backed into the cell. The B1 reached up and took hold of one of the side hasps, pulling the door closed, then lowered the two dowel pins into their eyelets. Solha turned and strode away, pulling out his comm again. The two B2s lumbered along in front and behind, followed by a clearly reluctant R2-D2, with the two B1s at the rear.
And as R2-D2 passed, and only because Anakin was watching for it, he spotted the small drops of lubricating oil begin to slowly drip from the droid’s underside. A trail that would hopefully remain unnoticed by the Separatists and allow Anakin to track down the droid wherever Solha ultimately took him.
Assuming, of course, Anakin and Thrawn could get out of here.
The footsteps continued down the short passageway and through the outer door that led into the cell block. The door closed with a thud.
And he and Thrawn were alone.
“You okay?” Anakin called softly, looking around. Like the cell door, each of the walls also had a pair of slits. His first thought was that they were for observing or feeding prisoners, but he realized now that they were more likely ventilation openings.
“I’m unharmed,” Thrawn said. “As I assume you are as well. Let us review. We’re inside the base, as desired, though perhaps not in the most preferred situation.”
“That’s okay—this was always one of the possibilities,” Anakin assured him. “I know Separatists, and their first answer to any problem is to throw it behind a locked door.”
Though he’d hoped that the locked door would be that of an office, someplace with a dataport where he and R2-D2 could sift out the base’s secrets and figure out where Padmé was.
Still, the sudden revelation that there was a Jedi on Mokivj had gotten them inside the facility and into a spot where they weren’t being watched. Good enough.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Thrawn said, perhaps a bit too drily. “Do you know this Duke Solha?”
“Not really,” Anakin said. “Padmé mentioned him once, though. He’s from the same planet as Count Dooku. He’s got some family—a brother, I think, and maybe a sister.”