Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(71)

“Yes,” Vader rumbled. Like everything else Thrawn saw or deduced, it was very simple once it was explained. “Then we could have returned to hyperspace immediately?”

“Indeed,” Thrawn said. “Rather, we could have returned until we reached the next projector in line. In fact, that was exactly what happened during our first trip through this region. Several projectors were laid out along the hyperlane to disrupt all traffic.”

He pointed at the distant object. “The challenge in finding it was that the gravity well was not spherical, but was projected asymmetrically to cover as much of the hyperlane as possible. I needed to find the edge of the field from several different directions in order to calculate the asymmetry and define its precise position.”

The projector’s slow drift abruptly became a rapid approach as the Chimaera’s tractor beam locked on and began reeling it in. Vader thought back to their earlier attempt to pass through the hyperlane, to the hours of travel and the repeated and failed attempts to return to hyperspace. “Why?” he asked.

Thrawn half turned to him. “Explain.”

“Why did the Grysk do this?” Vader asked. “What did they hope to gain by blocking the route to Batuu?”

“I do not yet know if Batuu itself is of any significance to them,” Thrawn said. “Sealing the Batuu corridor could be a test project, the first step in closing this part of the Unknown Regions to Imperial incursion.”

“So they wish to avoid the might of the Empire.”

“They wish to block Imperial incursion,” Thrawn said. “That is not necessarily the same thing.”

“How is it not?”

“The hyperlanes are not the only way to move in and out of the Unknown Regions,” Thrawn said. “A jump-by-jump method is also able to breach the boundary. But that method is far slower. More significantly, it does not lend itself to the passage of an armada.”

Now, finally, there it was. “No, it does not,” he agreed. “So you fear that when these Grysk attack your people, you will be unable to bring Imperial forces to their defense?”

“That is one consideration,” Thrawn conceded. “There are others.”

“But none so close to your thoughts.”

Thrawn was silent a moment. “We spoke earlier about loyalty,” he said. “The Emperor, too, once asked where my thoughts and heart would lie if the choice came to defend the Chiss Ascendancy or the Empire.”

“Your answer?”

“My answer to him then was the same as my answer to you now,” Thrawn said. “I am a warrior. A warrior may retreat. He does not flee. He may lie in ambush. He does not hide. He may experience victory or defeat. He does not cease to serve.”

“But to serve whom?” Vader countered. “That is the question you have yet to answer.”

“I do not believe I must make a choice,” Thrawn said. “I believe in this instance we can serve both.”

“We do not serve both,” Vader ground out, waving an arm to encompass the Chimaera and its entire crew. “We serve only the Empire. And while you stand aboard this ship, that is your duty as well.”

“The Grysk are a threat to us both, my lord,” Thrawn persisted. “I believe I can demonstrate why our service to the Empire requires their defeat.”

Vader shook his head. “Not good enough, Admiral.”

Again, Thrawn remained silent. Vader stretched out to the Force, trying to read the sense of the figure standing beside him. But the Chiss’s thoughts were as closed to him as always. “Many years ago, I served briefly alongside General Anakin Skywalker,” Thrawn said at last.

Vader felt an unpleasant sensation creep across his back. Was the Chiss really going to invoke The Jedi’s name now?

“There came a moment when I had completed the task the Chiss Ascendancy had set for me,” Thrawn continued. “At that point I was free to abandon him to his own task.” He turned to face Vader. “You have that same freedom of choice. I am asking that you remain at my side.”

Vader stared into those glowing red eyes. No—it was impossible. The relationship between him and The Jedi was one of the darkest and most impenetrable secrets in the galaxy. It was unthinkable that the Chiss could have found his way through the barriers.

Unless the Emperor had told him.

At Vader’s belt, his lightsaber twitched, reacting through the Force to the surge of emotion that suddenly boiled up within him. No—that was even more impossible. The bond between Master and apprentice was unbreakable. No matter how deeply the Emperor might have taken Thrawn into his confidences—no matter how close the two of them might have become over the years—that was a boundary Vader’s Master would never cross.

He scowled, forcing back the emotion. That couldn’t have been what the Chiss meant by that comment. Vader had simply misread it, that was all. “Anakin Skywalker is dead,” he said.

“So I was informed,” Thrawn said. He bowed his head slightly—acknowledgment or sorrow; Vader couldn’t tell which. “But for his sake, and for the sake of the Republic he served and the Empire that the Republic became, I ask you to return the debt of my service to its proper balance.”

Vader clenched his teeth. Balance to the debt. Balance to the Force. Without knowing it, Thrawn was hitting all the trigger words, and in the process pulling up far too many of The Jedi’s unwanted memories. “There is no debt,” he said. “You had a choice. You made it. The Empire does not owe you.”