Thrawn_Alliances_Star Wars

by Timothy Zahn

  “Where they don’t care as much about being seen,” Anakin said. “How do you figure they’re using slave labor?”

  “Isn’t that a reasonable assumption from Separatist patterns?” Thrawn asked. “But I also note that the edges of the corridors we traveled along were less clean than the center. Either the laborers are slaves, who do only the minimum work required, or else they are locals, whom Duke Solha wishes to rush quickly through their jobs lest they see something he wishes to keep hidden.”

  “And the fact that these cells are also in the eastern wing implies that this is where they can keep the best eye on us,” Anakin said.

  “Indeed,” Thrawn said. “Though the design of these spaces suggests they were originally storage compartments and not cells. That may make escape easier.”

  “It may,” Anakin said. “So now we at least know where to begin our investigation once we’re out of here. And after we find Padmé.”

  “Yes.” Thrawn paused. “Remember what I said about victory being the most important goal.”

  “Yes,” Anakin said. Yes, he remembered. He remembered very well.

  But that didn’t mean he’d ever agreed.

  The first day, as Padmé had expected, was the hardest.

  She spent the whole day in the unfinished boat’s cabin, moving around as little as possible, listening to the occasional sound of vulture droids flying in the distance, listening for the rhythmic clanking that would indicate battle droids on patrol along the dry riverbank or swishing through the bushes and grasses surrounding it.

  Fortunately, the vultures never came close. She heard no sign of battle droids at all.

  The boat itself proved to be more of a problem. The metal of the deck slowly heated up in the sunlight, and by midafternoon the temperature had become oppressive. Still, the additional heat carried its own hidden benefit, making it less likely that any of the vulture droids would pick up her infrared signature.

  Though it was hard to think that positively when her clothing was plastered to her body with sweat.

  LebJau had promised to come back that evening with food and bedding. But she knew better than to rely on promises from strangers, and so rationed herself to one meal bar and a liter of water for the day.

  She was feeling hungry and more than a little dehydrated when, to her relief and mild surprise, LebJau slipped back aboard the boat two hours after sunset with a thin bedroll, some dried meat, bread, and vegetable paste, and four liters of water.

  He also brought the news, equally welcome, that the metalheads didn’t seem to have noticed her presence.

  Still, he was skittish enough about that possibility that he didn’t stay long. But before he left he promised that he would return the next night with more food and water, and assured her that Grubs would be heading into town the next day to send out her messages.

  Padmé spent the second day sitting beside one or the other of the cabin’s rough-edged portholes, waiting for droid patrols to make an appearance so that she could start mapping out their routine. But none came within her sight. During the afternoon she switched to looking up, watching for vulture droids. She spotted a few, but not enough for her to work out any pattern.

  At first that bothered her. Separatists were usually better than this at local security. Maybe the operation was smaller than Duja had thought.

  And that thought really bothered her. For Duja to give her life for an important discovery was one thing. To give it for something minor that would hardly affect the overall war effort was something else.

  Still, LebJau had said there used to be more people here, and Cimy had suggested that the bulk of the earlier work had been research and development for whatever they were doing. The fact that this had been a major facility, coupled with the fact that they hadn’t simply shut it down and left, suggested that Cimy had been right.

  Whatever it was, though, Padmé would see that it was demolished. She owed Duja that much.

  Though she was still having problems with the reason the factory was here in the first place. Whatever they were doing, why couldn’t they do it somewhere else? There were thousands of places closer to home where the Separatists could set up a factory without anyone knowing about it.

  Was it something to do with the mine? But that didn’t make sense, either. Granted, high-value cargoes like doonium or quadranium attracted pirates and thieves, and might easily come to the Republic’s attention. But losing a cargo or two en route would hardly be a disaster, even if it opened the possibility that this secret base wouldn’t remain secret.

  Unless it was supposed to be secret from everybody. Could this be some faction of Separatists trying to build up funds or resources without the rest of the Confederacy knowing about it?

  If so, that might be the crack in Separatist unity that Coruscant had been desperately hoping for. If the member systems or corporate backers fell into squabbling among themselves, the whole thing could collapse in a matter of weeks.

  That might explain the puzzling lack of security, as well as the absence of high-end programming droids. The fewer the personnel, and the fewer the droids, the easier it would be to keep anyone from noticing that valuable resources were inexplicably missing.

  It was an intriguing thought. It also led to another, even more intriguing one.

  If the Separatist droid patrols were really cranked back down to barely visible levels, maybe Padmé could sneak upriver and see what exactly they were digging out of the ground.

  Anakin would disapprove of such a plan. Probably vehemently. But Anakin wasn’t here, and until he arrived there was precious little else that Padmé could do. If she could at least find out whether it was doonium, quadranium, or something else, they might have a head start on figuring out what the Separatists were making.

  She spent the next couple of days studying the maps of Mokivj that Duja had included in her report, looking for a path that might get her to the mine undetected. The fastest way would be to cross the river and make her way through the town on the far side, where most of the region’s roads connected. But interacting with locals required local clothing and money, ideally accompanied by local speech and mannerisms.

  The speech and mannerisms she couldn’t do much about. But the money and clothing were another matter.

  The obvious source for such things was LebJau. But cultivating the big man proved surprisingly hard. LebJau’s second visit was just as brief as his first. For all his willingness to take a few risks to help her out, he was clearly still afraid that the metalheads might catch them together. Padmé tried to get him to sit down and talk, but he brushed off her efforts and disappeared back into the night and the factory.

  Still, for all his obvious fear, it was also obvious that he found her intriguing, and not just because of her family’s supposed wealth. On the third night she finally managed to exchange a few sentences with him, focusing her questions on his day and his plans for the boat once the Separatists left. The fourth night saw the conversation stretch out a bit more.

  Finally, on the fifth night, she broached the subject of new clothing, suggesting that her outfit was starting to chafe from lack of proper cleaning and repeated exposure to her own sweat in the daily heat. But even her best smile and the full range of her diplomatic skills couldn’t make any headway against his fear that a set of missing clothing might be noticed even faster than missing food, bringing the Separatists down on him.

  She spent the next day sweating, studying maps, and trying to find an alternative route to the mine area. When LebJau appeared again, at his usual two hours past sundown, she could sense that something was different.

  Starting with the food itself.

  “This is really good,” she told him as she bit off a piece of the dried fish that had come instead of the usual slice of meat. “Is this one of the fish you caught the night I arrived?”

 
“Yes,” he said. “Not too dry, is it?”

  “No, it’s fine,” she assured him. “The spice mixture complements it perfectly, too. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” He sat in silence while she ate a few more bites. “I’ve been thinking about you wanting new clothes.”

  “It really would help,” she said, hunching her shoulders as if the material was sticking to her skin. As it actually had been earlier in the day.

  “I told you I couldn’t get anything that wouldn’t be missed,” he said. “Not a lot of women here, and nobody has more than a couple of changes of clothes. But maybe there’s something else I can do.”

  “Any help you can give me would be wonderful,” she assured him.

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. You can’t come into any of the work or living areas without one of these.” He pulled back his sleeve to reveal a bright yellow wristband. “It lets you get through the doors. Not the big main doors,” he added, “but all the little ones where they don’t mind us going.”

  “So there’s some kind of transponder inside?” Padmé asked.

  “I guess,” LebJau said. “The metalheads also make spot checks sometimes in the south wing, where most of us live. You get caught without one, and they’ll take you to the Bins.”

  Padmé frowned. “Mokivj factories come with their own prisons?”

  “No, the Bins were storage compartments for extra-valuable stuff,” LebJau said. “The duke changed them into holding cells for people who break the rules or go where they’re not supposed to. Anyway, what I was going to say is that we’re not using the west wing at all. If you’re quiet and don’t go near the windows during the day you could probably hide there until Uncle Anakin gets here with the money.”

  “Really,” Padmé said, feeling a surge of hope. Wristband or no wristband, if she could get into the factory proper she could at least get started on some rudimentary surveillance. “What’s it like in there?”

  He shrugged. “Quiet. Empty. Everything movable was taken out when the duke showed up and kicked everyone out. But our back door into the wing isn’t easy to use. Once you’re in there, you’re not getting out without my help.”

  “That’s okay,” Padmé assured him. “Not much different than here, really, except more comfortable. When can we go?”

  “I want to make sure you understand,” he persisted. “You can’t go into the south wing where we are, not without a wristband. The only way into the west wing is through the service level underneath everything.”

  Padmé pricked up her ears. There was a service area that offered access to the whole place? “They haven’t blocked it off?”

  “They’ve blocked off everything that matters,” LebJau said.

  “Like the refinery areas?”

  “There’s no refining here,” LebJau said, sounding puzzled. “Why would there be? The stuff they’re bringing in just needs sifting and sorting, and that’s all done in the western part of the north wing. After that they take the stuff to the east wing and the eastern part of the north wing.”

  “Ah,” Padmé said. So it wasn’t doonium after all? “You said you used to work in one of the electronics factories. Where was it?”

  “West wing, third floor,” he said. “But like I say, once you’re in you’re not coming out. And there’s still no guarantee the metalheads won’t catch you.”

  “You said all the important work is in the north and east wings,” Padmé reminded him. “So that’s where the metalheads will be watching. Shouldn’t be too many left to bother with the west wing.”

  LebJau sighed. “Okay, if you’re sure,” he said. “I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

  “I do,” Padmé said. “Just get me inside the west wing. I’ll handle everything else.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, everything else?”

  “Just that I won’t get caught,” Padmé said, wincing. She’d spent so much time soothing frightened people and assuring them the Republic was on their side that the words had automatically slipped out.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, glowering. “I was right, wasn’t I? Back when we first saw you. You’re a spy.”

  “I’m here to help you,” Padmé said. “All of you. This place, with all its secrecy—do you really think the Separatists will just leave you all alive when they close it down?”

  “They’d have a job of it,” he rumbled. “Just because we’re not in the big fancy center of the galaxy doesn’t mean we don’t know how to fight.”

  “You haven’t seen what vulture droids can do to a town,” Padmé said grimly. “And trust me, you don’t want to. I’m your only hope of keeping that from happening.”

  LebJau stared down at the empty food wrapper on her lap. “I don’t believe you,” he muttered. “But I suppose it doesn’t really matter. When do you want to go?”

  “Right now,” Padmé said, setting the wrapper aside and picking up her backpack. “The sooner we find out what they’re up to, the sooner we can stop it and chase them off your world.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Victory or death, huh? Yeah. Probably death. Fine. Come on, and stay close.”

  * * *

  —

  Earlier, during one of the long, tense nights Padmé had been stuck on the boat, she’d considered trying to find LebJau’s secret door into the factory on her own.

  Now, as he led her through the darkness, she was very glad she hadn’t.

  For starters, the dry riverbed itself was trickier than she’d realized. Not only was it littered with debris that had probably been part of the washed-out road, but the gaps beneath some of the larger pieces had become home to various creatures or even whole families of them. Padmé didn’t know which of them were dangerous, and it wasn’t something she wanted to find out the hard way. Luckily, LebJau knew where to walk to avoid unpleasant encounters.

  The entrance itself, once they got there, also proved a surprise. The door LebJau had talked about was still there, an imposing panel set into the wall about five meters above the rocky floor with a small section of the old road still attached to a support mesh at its base. But LebJau didn’t even glance at it, instead leading Padmé to another pile of debris and a hidden gap tucked away behind a large slab of broken permacrete. Twenty meters and three switchback turns later, they were finally inside.

  “Careful,” LebJau said, flicking on a glow rod. “The footing is tricky.”

  “Right,” Padmé said, looking around. The area they were in was all permacrete, low-ceilinged and with fat floor-to-ceiling pillars every ten meters or so. The floor was littered with bits of wire, discarded cable ties, and occasional whole coils of cable. A second look at the ceiling showed spots where more cables rested in permanent loops. “Is this the service level?”

  “Yes,” LebJau said, turning to the left and picking his way carefully through the debris.

  “And you said it runs under the whole complex?” Padmé asked, digging out her own glow rod and turning it to narrow beam. Sure enough, there were no walls or other barriers as far as the light reached.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” LebJau said. “But forget it. The permacrete is two meters thick—has to be, to support all the weight—and there are only eight ways up into the rest of the building. And the metalheads have sealed all the ones leading into the north and east wings.”

  “Yes, that could be a problem,” Padmé agreed.

  Only Anakin would be here soon…and even two-meter-thick permacrete was no match for a lightsaber.

  If LebJau had sent those messages. “What about my messages?” she asked.

  “Grubs says he sent them two days ago,” LebJau said. “How long before someone comes with our money?”

  “Once Uncle Anakin gets the messages, a few days at the most.”

  LebJau gave
a grunt. “Fine. Okay. This way.”

  The next ten minutes were spent picking their way through the rubble to a rusty ladder leading up into a conical indentation in the ceiling. At the top was a hinged trapdoor, which seemed to take all of LebJau’s strength to push open. “The wristbands don’t open these service hatches,” he said as he offered her a hand up the ladder. “We can turn on the ones in the south wing, but only for a minute or two at a time.”

  “Power here is shut down, I assume?” Padmé asked as she climbed.

  “Yeah,” LebJau said. “And I’m going to have to close this behind me when I go. Leaving it open would create air currents the metalheads might notice. You won’t be able to use your glow rod in here, either.”

  “I know,” Padmé said, looking around. The room they’d entered was much larger and less confined than the service level, with high ceilings and windows at both sides. With their glow rods off the place was pretty dark, but there was some starlight coming in. All the windows looked like they were mesh-barred, blocking any movement either in or out.

  “I’m saying again that you won’t be able to get out,” he said. “You got that, right? With the power off, these lids are heavy. Too heavy for someone your size.”

  “I understand,” Padmé said, looking around. The level was virtually empty, with only a row of support pillars down the center of the building breaking up the monotony.

  Maybe she could find something useful on one of the higher levels? “How many floors are there?”

  “Three.” LebJau pointed across the floor. “There’s a stairway over there in the middle, and two more at the corners. Come on—my old workplace was on the third floor. That’ll probably be safest.”

  Minutes later they emerged from the stairwell into another deserted factory. This one was laid out differently from the one on the lower level, with the space sectioned off into smaller cubicles hemmed in by thin, meter-tall partitions. “My station was over here,” he said, leading her through the maze.