Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(91)

For a moment Thrawn was silent. Then he inclined his head. “Very well, my lord,” he said. “Prepare your stormtroopers. The battle now begins.”



* * *



—

There was, Vader had noticed, a strange sort of symmetry in the Force, a balance that often manifested in patterns and resonances and strange reunions. People long separated would unexpectedly meet again; events of significance would see echoes of themselves within new events; places once visited would somehow draw a person back to create new memories, whether for good or for ill.

Mokivj.

The dry riverbed Padmé had described to The Jedi was still there, matching the fresh data Vader had extracted from the Grysk prisoners. He strode along it, ignoring the airspeeders that swooped past overhead as they traded fire with his stormtroopers. The airspeeders clearly hadn’t been expecting this kind of attack and usually came out the losers in the exchange, often bursting into flames right there and crash-landing somewhere out of sight.

Vader hardly noticed. His full focus was on the sensations coming steadily nearer; the swirl of thoughts and emotions, the mixture of hopes and fears, all of it rippling across space through the prisoners’ Force sensitivity.

And through it all wove The Jedi’s memories…and the simmering anger that Vader should have long ago recognized what the Emperor’s disturbance truly was.

Vader hadn’t seen this before. But The Jedi had. A long time ago; but he had already seen it.

The secret entrance into the factory was narrow and cramped. Vader didn’t even slow down, but slashed out a larger opening with his lightsaber as he strode through it. Two of his stormtroopers—Commander Kimmund and Sergeant Viq—slipped around in front of him as the stormtroopers filed into the service level, the two of them moving into vanguard positions ahead of Vader and the rest of the squad.

There were no defenses or other hindrances down here. Not that Vader was expecting any. The Separatists whom The Jedi had faced had sealed the east wing against intrusion from this direction, and the Grysks had undoubtedly confirmed the security of that protection when they moved in.

That the enemy were in the east wing was not in question. Vader could sense the Chiss minds, now lying directly ahead of him.

The same sense that The Jedi had felt aboard Thrawn’s ship at that first meeting over Batuu.

A pilot, Thrawn had identified her back then. But it was clear now that there was far more involved. These Chiss were Force-sensitive, and most likely Force-users as well.

Was that what Thrawn and the Emperor were being so secretive about in their private talks together? Were there Chiss Jedi in the Unknown Regions? Were they perhaps one of the threats Thrawn had warned the Emperor about at their first meeting, a threat that they were discussing together? Was the war against the Jedi, so long and so very, very painfully won, about to begin all over again?

Or could it be that the Chiss Force-sensitives were Sith?

That could be even more disastrous. The Rule of Two was all that had saved the Republic’s Sith from the level of internal warfare that could have brought about total self-destruction. Was there an echo of that same warfare going on even now on the Chiss worlds?

Vader frowned, a sudden realization breaking his train of thought. Earlier, when the Darkhawk landed near the river, he had sensed eight Chiss minds in the old factory. Now, somehow, the swirl of thoughts had diminished.

And the minds that were left had changed to the overpowering terror he’d felt back on Batuu.

The Grysks were putting them back into hibernation chambers. Or worse.

“Ahead,” he ordered the stormtroopers, picking up his pace. Whoever these Chiss were—whatever they were—he’d promised Thrawn he would bring them back. And no group of Grysk soldiers was going to stop him.



* * *



—

The dry riverbed had been exactly as Lord Vader described it to Kimmund and the other stormtroopers. So was the entrance to the sublevel, and the sublevel itself.

Clearly, the Grysk interrogation had gone well.

Of course, if Vader was right about all this, he was probably right about their east wing target area being loaded with machinery and other large objects the enemy could hide behind. Kimmund had been in enough urban combat missions to know those were among the most dangerous a stormtrooper could face.

His troops would see it through, of course, and they would succeed. How many of them Kimmund lost along the way would largely depend on how well Vader had anticipated their opponents, and whether the secret weapon Podiry and Tephan were lugging behind them functioned as well as Vader had said it would.

Hopefully, none of the aircars that had buzzed them earlier had had the necessary sensors for peeking into the coffin-sized box. Secret weapons never worked as well when the enemy knew they were coming.

The trapdoor that was their goal was just ahead, its ladder still sticking out of a plug of permacrete that had been sealed around it. At an order from Vader, Kimmund and Viq stepped to either side to let him pass, then watched as he ignited his lightsaber and stabbed upward into the material, digging a circle into and through it. He finished his cut, holding the plug in place long enough to move out of its way before releasing it to crash to the ground.

The ladder still hung precariously at the edge of the hole. But Vader clearly wasn’t in the mood to do this the slow way. Kimmund felt something invisible wrap around him, and a second later found himself flying upward through the hole. He got a glimpse of dark, half-ruined equipment and storage boxes scattered around a large, high-ceilinged room—