Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(89)

But Thrawn was already gone, falling backward off the roof and rappelling along the wall toward the courtyard.

And he’d taken the lightsaber with him.

In a two-person, single-line rappelling exercise, the Naboo military manual recommended the first person to the ground return the ascension gun to lift mode and let it reel itself up to the person still on top. Padmé had no intention of waiting that long. Shrugging off her backpack, she wrapped the straps around the line for padding, got a good grip, and rolled off the edge of the roof.

Thrawn was apparently in even more of a hurry. By the time Padmé reached the ground he was already in the center of the courtyard. “Hold it!” she snapped, scooping up the S-5 where he’d left it and cutting off the line. “Where do you think you’re going?”

A second later, she got her answer. He came to a halt beside the shield generator, peered for a moment at the lightsaber—

And the brilliant blue blade flashed into existence.

Padmé stopped short, raising her blaster, her first horrified thought being that Thrawn was about to turn the lightsaber on her. But even as she wondered where he’d learned to use such a weapon the blade slashed downward, digging into the ground beside the generator. He stepped to the next side and slashed downward again.

Padmé wrinkled her nose. Of course. Thrawn’s ship was coming for him, and the factory’s shield was blocking its way. And so here he was, using Anakin’s lightsaber to cut through the power cables. Above her, the starlight suddenly brightened as the shield collapsed.

And then, to her surprise, Thrawn crouched down and shifted to a horizontal cut, slicing through the permacrete foundation beneath the generator. “It’s already down,” she called to him.

“I know,” he called back. He finished the cut, looked up at the sky above him, then shut down the lightsaber and walked over to her. “General Skywalker’s weapon,” he said, holding it out to her in his right hand. “And your communicator,” he added, holding out the comm in his left.

Padmé stared at the weapon and comm. So he hadn’t been talking to himself on the trip across the rooftop. She’d wondered how his ship had known to come for him at that precise moment. “What are you doing?” she asked quietly, making no move to take either device.

“I was given a mission, Ambassador Padmé,” he said. “We’d observed this factory from afar, and seen the generator of the shield protecting it. We have nothing that holds this much power in such a compact form. I was ordered to obtain it and bring it home.”

“Anakin said you came to help him find me.”

“We’d observed the arrival of your companion on Batuu,” Thrawn said. “But we were unable to discern her fate. As I was observing the planet General Skywalker arrived. It seemed to me that we could help each other with our respective missions.”

“Did he know this was your true mission?” Padmé asked, her stomach twisting with the all-too-familiar ache of betrayal.

“No,” Thrawn said. He lifted the lightsaber a few centimeters. “He’ll need this. And he’ll need you.”

“So you’re just going to leave?” Padmé demanded. “Duke Solha’s up to something here, something terrible. You’re not going to help us find out what it is?”

“I was given a mission.”

“We need you,” Padmé said, a part of her wondering why she was fighting so hard on this. A reluctant ally was often worse than no ally at all. But something within her couldn’t just let it go. “Is this how your people do things? Just go along until you’ve gotten what you want, then abandon everyone else?”

“Is that how your Republic does things?” Thrawn countered.

“This isn’t about politics,” Padmé shot back. “It’s about individuals. People. Honor.”

“Politics is built from individuals,” Thrawn said. “The Separatists wished to leave the Republic. Why didn’t you simply allow them to go?”

“Because they attacked us. They started the war.” Padmé slashed a hand of dismissal through the air between them. “That’s not the issue here.”

“Perhaps it is,” Thrawn said. “We need to understand you. We need to know what drives you.”

“Right now, what drives me is that my—friend—Anakin is going to die in there if we don’t help him,” Padmé said. “We can’t do this alone, Thrawn. We need your help.”

“My mission comes first,” Thrawn said. “My people come first.”

For a long moment, Padmé gazed into those glowing red eyes. But there was no emotion there; no regret, no shame, no triumph. He was just a soldier, obeying his orders, with neither satisfaction or regret.

He might as well have been a battle droid.

“I’ll say goodbye for you,” she bit out. Snatching her comm and Anakin’s lightsaber from his hands, she spun around.

“The door at the south end is closest to where he’ll be,” Thrawn called as she jogged toward the east wing.

Padmé didn’t answer.

Maybe she was right. Maybe she and Anakin couldn’t do this alone.

But they would have to try.





“There,” Faro said, pointing out the Chimaera’s main viewport. “That moon right there.”