Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(88)

“Once we’ve reached the top of the line, how do you propose to gain the rooftop?”

Padmé peered up at the wall again. That was a good question, actually. The top of the upper window was a solid meter below the level of the roof, and she couldn’t see anyplace where they could brace their feet. “I guess one of us will have to stand on the other’s shoulders in order to reach the top.”

“A difficult maneuver,” Thrawn warned. “I doubt you can take my weight, and my own chest and shoulder muscles have been somewhat compromised.”

“By…?”

“Enemy weapons fire,” Thrawn said. “I suggest instead that you set a grapple at each of two adjacent windows. If your ascension gun is sturdy enough, the cables would form a V-shape that one of us could use as a foothold while stretching to the roof.”

Padmé measured the distances with her eyes. “Yes, that should work,” she agreed. Her backpack was still hanging by one strap. She started to shift it back into proper position on her back—

“I’ll take this,” Thrawn said, deftly pulling it off her shoulder.

“That stays with me,” Padmé said, trying to snatch it back. But he kept it moving out of her reach as he slipped it on. “Thrawn—”

“I need these,” he interrupted, sliding the E-5 blaster Anakin had given him through the straps. He winced a little, she noticed, as the weapon slid across his chest. “Your weapons are smaller and can be secured without using your hands. Mine cannot.”

She glowered at him. But again, his argument made sense. “Fine,” she said. “But I get it back once we’re up top.”

“Agreed.” He gestured toward the wall. “At your convenience, Ambassador.”

Padmé had never tried using two separate lines and grapples from the ascension gun at the same time. But she remembered the manual saying it could be done, and the operation came off without a hitch. The next part, climbing that last meter up to the roof, was a bit trickier. But Thrawn had apparently done something like this before. With Padmé hanging from the gun, he used the lines to climb to their intersection point, balanced on the S-5’s muzzle, then continued holding on to one line while he walked his hand up the wall to a grip on the narrow rim at the top. Once he was up, he set the E-5 and backpack aside and lay down at the roof’s edge, pulling up on one of the lines until the gun was within reach. After that, it was a matter of gripping Padmé’s wrist, giving her a steady pull upward until she could get her other hand on top, then retrieving the S-5 and the grapples. A moment later, with Thrawn in the lead with his E-5, and Padmé following with her backpack and the S-5 once again in blaster mode, they headed off across the moonlit roof.

Padmé had assumed this would be the most dangerous part of the trip. Even if Duke Solha hadn’t sent any of his B1s up here, the vulture droids were surely keeping a close watch on the factory. But she and Thrawn reached the eastern edge of the south wing and continued onto the east wing roof without so much as seeing a vulture, let alone being challenged by one.

Thrawn seemed to think it odd, as well. Six paces ahead of her, he was muttering something under his breath in an unknown language, as if trying to work out the puzzle aloud.

They reached the line of floodlights. Padmé looked up, making a quick visual sweep of the sky. Sooner or later, at least one of the vultures ought to show up.

“Wait a minute,” Padmé said, frowning as something caught her eye. In the distance to the east, a small, shimmering-white sphere was falling slowly from the sky. “Thrawn—over there,” she said, pointing. She glanced around again—

And tensed, her eyes sweeping the horizon. All around them, several kilometers away, more of the faintly glowing spheres were drifting downward. Three—five—ten—twenty—“Thrawn!” she called again.

And then, even as she watched, two of the spheres directly in her line of sight abruptly blazed with spears of green light. They flared briefly and were gone.

But not before their dying light illuminated the dark shapes shooting past them.

The vulture droids had finally come out to play.

“Don’t worry,” Thrawn called as the distant vultures came around and fired at another of the spheres.

Padmé looked back. He was crouching beside one of the floodlights, Anakin’s lightsaber in his hand. “Come,” he called, beckoning to her.

Two more spheres had been destroyed by the time she reached him. “What are they?” she asked.

“Decoys,” he said. “Give me the ascension gun.”

“Decoys for what?” she asked, wincing as three more spheres were caught by the vultures’ fire. Still, there were at least fifteen more drifting across the sky.

“My ship,” he said, taking the ascension gun from her. “Do you see it?”

Padmé scanned the horizon, paying particular attention to the dark sections where none of the spheres were falling. Conventional military doctrine was to put decoys where you wanted the enemy to look.

But she could see nothing. “Where?” she asked.

“Not there,” he said, hooking one of the grappling hooks into the lighting support struts and getting a grip on the ascension gun. “Above.”

Padme looked up. There it was: a shadowy shape, visible only as it blotted out the muted starlight, dropping straight out of the sky toward them. “What in—?”