Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(8)

Vader gazed out the viewport. Where there had once been lush grasslands and forests there were now lifeless plains and deserts across a great swath of the planet’s surface, with only pockets of greenery offering faltering defiance against the surrounding devastation. Clouds covered much of the sky: not white feathery clouds or the gray strata of rain clouds, but brooding masses that promised nothing but the darkness and chill of blocked sunlight.

“Perhaps it was something even more cataclysmic than a comet,” Thrawn said. “Commander Hammerly, how many moons are you reading?”

“Moons, sir?” Hammerly asked, sounding bewildered.

Vader turned to face her. Again, one of Thrawn’s subordinates questioning the admiral’s orders. Perhaps it was time to deliver a reminder of the need for instant and unquestioning obedience. “Yes, sir—moons,” Hammerly added quickly.

Vader looked at Thrawn. There was no indication that he was considering punishing the commander, not even with a verbal rebuke, for her questioning of his orders. Indeed, he seemed merely intent on receiving her answer.

Mentally, he shook his head in contempt. Perhaps the admiral’s lack of proper discipline of his subordinates was the reason the rebels at Atollon had escaped him.

“There should be ten,” Thrawn continued. “Six are relatively small, but four are large enough for their internal gravity to have shaped them into spheres.”

“What does this matter?” Vader asked. He hooked his thumbs into his belt, feeling a fresh awareness of the lightsaber hanging there.

“There is little else to occupy our attention while we traverse the system,” Thrawn pointed out. “Besides, I am curious as to the completeness of the Chimaera’s archives.”

It was a reasonable enough answer, delivered in an eminently reasonable tone.

But Vader wasn’t fooled. There was a point to everything this Grand Admiral Thrawn did, a hidden plan or motivation or scheme. Once again, he felt the presence of his lightsaber…

“Your pardon, Admiral, but that’s not what we’re reading,” Hammerly said, frowning at her board. “I count six moons, only one of which is spherical.”

“The other four must be on the other side of the planet,” Vader said, feeling a stir of impatience. That one was obvious.

“I think not, my lord,” Thrawn said. “Note the gravity-interaction overlay Commander Hammerly has placed on the display. It indicates no other significant masses in the planetary system.”

Vader looked at the overlay. He couldn’t do the calculations himself—that was what droids were for—but the sensor officer’s conclusions were laid out at the bottom of the display. “Are you suggesting the missing moons fell to the surface?” he asked.

“Unlikely,” Thrawn said, a quiet intensity in his voice. “Four masses that size would have turned Mokivj into a blazing inferno of groundquakes and lava.”

Like Mustafar, Vader noted silently. “Then where are they?”

Thrawn shook his head slowly. “That is a mystery we must solve.”

“No,” Vader said.

A sudden silence descended on the bridge. “Excuse me, my lord?” Thrawn asked, his voice under careful control.

“We are not here to solve random mysteries,” Vader said firmly. “We are here to seek out the disturbance the Emperor sensed. That, and nothing else.”

“Of course,” Thrawn said. “But we may discover that the two are connected.”

“Are they?”

“I do not know, my lord,” Thrawn said.

For a long moment, Vader gazed at him, trying to read that alien mind. But if there was duplicity hidden behind those glowing red eyes, he couldn’t sense it. “Then let us be on our way,” he said.

“Of course, my lord.” Thrawn turned to Faro. “Commodore, as soon as we are cleared to the hyperlane you will make all speed toward Batuu.”

“Yes, sir,” Faro said.

The Chiss turned back to Vader. “I would point out one other thing, Lord Vader. If the Emperor is aware of a presence in this part of space, that same presence may similarly be aware of you.”

That thought had already occurred to Vader. Many times. “Perhaps,” he said. “But awareness does not necessarily imply preparedness.”

“No,” Thrawn said quietly. Perhaps the grand admiral, too, was looking back at a distant and unpleasant past. “It does not.”





“I’ll tell you one thing, Artoo,” Anakin said darkly as he detached his Eta-2 Actis-class Interceptor fighter from its hyperdrive docking ring. “If something’s happened to Padmé, someone on Batuu is going to be very unprepared for what’s about to happen to them.”

R2-D2 warbled his agreement. That was one of the great things about R2-D2, Anakin thought as he maneuvered the Actis away from the ring and headed lower toward the planet below: the little droid’s willingness to do whatever was necessary to follow his master on the most difficult and dangerous roads.

Here, the first problem would be to even find the proper road.

That wasn’t something he usually had to worry about. In space, the Separatist fleets were big and obvious, and on the ground there was always enough smoke and blasterfire to mark the key sites pretty clearly. On the rare occasions when Republic forces got there first, there was usually someone on the ground ready to guide them to where the hostilities were about to begin.