by Timothy Zahn
“Wait a minute,” Anakin said, frowning. “You and Padmé? Wouldn’t it make more sense for me to go up and get it?”
“We cannot create nearly as wide-ranging a diversion as you can,” Thrawn pointed out.
Abruptly, somewhere in the distance, an alarm began to sound. “Well, that’s going to wake them up,” Anakin said. He really didn’t like the idea of letting Padmé go off alone with the Chiss.
But he was right. With the Force allowing Anakin to throw objects and even fire blasters from a distance, he could make the Separatists think they were facing a whole army. Even Padmé and Thrawn together couldn’t do that.
And it wasn’t like Padmé couldn’t take care of herself. “Fine,” he growled. “If Padmé’s okay with it.”
“No problem,” Padmé said, eyeing Thrawn thoughtfully. “I’ve been told there’s a massive assembly line taking up the first and second floor just down the hall. Stairway’s right behind me.”
“I’ll check it out,” Anakin said, taking her arm and turning her back out of the doorway. “We’ll go up together, and then you can head to the roof.”
“We’ll do better to go out the hole in the south wing service level,” Padmé said. “There are a couple of trapdoors leading down from that wing that the locals use to sneak in and out. I don’t think the droids know about the hole, and we can go up the outside of the building and get to your lightsaber. It’s on top of the east wing, right?”
“Yes, next to one of the floodlights,” Anakin said. It was all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms…but Thrawn was here, and the Chiss already was suspicious of their relationship.
Though why Anakin should even care about that he didn’t know. It wasn’t like Thrawn would ever go to Coruscant and tell anyone.
“We’ll bring it to you,” Padmé promised. “Second floor of the assembly line?”
Anakin nodded. Trust Padmé to quickly grasp all the details and their tactical significance. The second floor of a two-floor operation would give him the best overall view, and launching an attack at the assembly line itself was his best guarantee of keeping Duke Solha from looking anywhere else in his little kingdom. “I’ll be doing a one-man Marg Sabl.”
“Sounds good,” Padmé said. “Be careful.” Her hand twitched, as if she, too, was fighting the urge for a quick hug. Then she turned and hurried away.
Anakin caught Thrawn’s arm as he started to follow. “Protect her,” he said quietly, handing him the droid’s E-5.
“I will,” the Chiss promised.
And then they were gone.
Over the still-warbling alarm Anakin could hear the sounds of voices and hurrying footsteps. Taking a deep breath, forcing himself to hand Padmé’s life and safety to the Force, he prepared for combat.
Padmé and Thrawn had passed the two downed droids and were halfway to the trapdoor she was aiming for when LebJau suddenly appeared around a corner in front of them.
“Look out!” the big man called, leaping toward her.
“It’s all right,” Padmé said quickly, holding her left hand palm-outward toward him and lifting her blaster, muzzle-up, in front of Thrawn. The last thing she wanted was a battle between two allies, especially with her in the middle. “He’s a friend.”
“Doesn’t look like a friend to me,” LebJau rumbled. “Or an uncle.”
“He’s a friend of Uncle Anakin’s,” Padmé said. “Listen, I’ve got a job for you. This place is about to get very unhealthy. I need you to wake up everyone and get them out of here.”
“What?” LebJau asked. “What are you talking about?” His eyes narrowed. “What are you planning?”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid we need to take this factory down,” Padmé said. “I need you to get everyone to the river—”
“No,” LebJau bit out, bunching his hands into fists. “This is our factory. Our jobs. Our world. You can’t just come in here and—frost it, Padmé, this isn’t fair. It isn’t right.”
“Let me explain your choices,” Thrawn put in. “Your factory is going to be destroyed. That is not negotiable.”
“Who do you think you—?”
“Your only options,” Thrawn continued, “are to watch that destruction from a distance, or to watch it from the inside.”
A shiver ran up Padmé’s back. Thrawn’s voice had been measured, without emotion or emphasis. But there was a strength behind it, and an absolute conviction, that she’d seldom heard even in the most passionate Senate speeches.
LebJau heard that conviction, too. He swallowed, looked furtively at Padmé, then gave a reluctant nod. “All right,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “I just—how long do I have.”
“We’ll give you all we can,” Thrawn said. “But understand that we’re not fully in command of that timing.”
“Just go,” Padmé added. “Please.”
LebJau’s lips compressed briefly. Then he nodded again and hurried away.
“Where’s this trapdoor you spoke of?” Thrawn asked. His tone, Padmé noticed with another shiver, hadn’t changed.
“This way,” she said, continuing on. “Are you really planning to destroy the whole factory?”
“That’s a decision for you and General Skywalker,” Thrawn said. “This is your war. These are your enemies. But the workers need to be prepared for the worst.”
“I suppose,” Padmé said. Put in that light, it didn’t sound nearly as heartless.
But the voice and the tone still nagged at her.
“Here,” she said, stopping beside the trapdoor.
“Is this where you came up?” Thrawn asked, crouching down for a closer look at the lid.
“No, I came up through the one at the other end of this wing,” Padmé said. “But this one’s closer. If we can get it open.”
“Let’s find out.”
Laying down his E-5, he got a grip on the lid and pulled upward. To Padmé’s relief, it opened without trouble or even a noticeable squeak. “This one’s been used recently,” he said, retrieving the blaster and peering down the opening. “Have you a light?”
“Right here,” Padmé said, pulling out her glow rod and offering it to him.
He made no move to take it. “You know the route,” he pointed out. “You lead.”
“Fine,” Padmé said, making a face as she got a grip on the ladder and started down. Again, not unreasonable. But having an armed unknown at her back didn’t exactly help with her already high sense of vulnerability.
Still, Anakin vouched for him. That counted for a lot.
Once again, the service level seemed deserted. With Thrawn behind her, Padmé led the way toward LebJau’s secret exit, feeling a little strange about the lack of opposition. Earlier, she’d speculated that Duke Solha might have barricaded himself in with his main assembly line. If that was true, she may have just sent Anakin into the dead center of a droid army. Alone, and without even his lightsaber.
“What’s a Marg Sabl?”
Padmé blinked away her sudden fears. “What?”
“General Skywalker said he’d be a one-man Marg Sabl,” Thrawn reminded her. “What did he mean?”
“Oh,” Padmé said, trying to remember the details. It had been a long time since Anakin had told her about Ahsoka’s inspired maneuver. “It’s a battle tactic invented by his former Padawan apprentice. A warship turns its hangar bay away from its attacker and launches its fighters unseen. They stay in the ship’s visual shadow while they form up and accelerate to attack speed. Then they come around their ship from all sides, attacking the enemy from every direction at once.”
“Interesting,” Thrawn murmured. “I can see how that could be useful against certain species. Those in particular who have difficulty focusing in more than one direction.”
“It worked pretty well against the droid fighters Ahsoka wa
s up against at the time, too,” Padmé said. “Anakin told me that a marg sabl is a type of Togrutan flower that opens its petals in a sunburst shape every morning.”
“I see,” Thrawn said. “So the one-man Marg Sabl he referred to will involve appearing to strike from all directions?”
“Probably,” Padmé said, feeling a fresh twinge of worry. A one-man anything sounded risky at this point. “Did you happen to notice what the rooftop was like when you flew in? I’m wondering if there’s a parapet that’ll take a grappling hook.”
“No, there isn’t,” Thrawn said. “The surface is slightly concave, toward a drainage line in the center. There’s a small ridge at the edge, but not large enough to properly engage a hook. We’ll need an alternative plan.”
“Don’t worry,” Padmé said. “I’ve got one.”
* * *
—
Anakin had hoped that Duke Solha would keep him, Thrawn, and R2-D2 together for the hurried interrogation that he assumed would follow the courtyard lightsaber show. But splitting R2-D2 away from the others had always been a possibility, which was why Anakin had set up the oil drip in the first place.
He followed the trail out the door and down a wider corridor heading north along the east wing’s western side.
Right up to where it disappeared beyond a locked and armored door set in a solid permacrete wall.
Anakin scowled as he studied the door. All the other ones he and Thrawn had been rushed through since leaving the courtyard had been simple latch-and-hinge swinging doors, probably the factory’s original equipment, with no special security added in. Apparently, Solha didn’t care whether the locals Padmé mentioned could get into and out of those areas.
The main assembly chamber, though, was a different matter. For a moment Anakin considered going back to the stairway Padmé had pointed out and seeing if the security there might be easier to bypass. But unless Solha was incredibly stupid, that door would be just as well protected.
Still, they probably needed to bring workers in there on occasion, and of course the guard droids needed to get in and out as well. In a remote location like this, working among primitives who might never even have heard of the Separatists, security might reasonably be traded for convenience.
Battle droids, Anakin had long since learned, were heavier than most people realized. Occasionally that had proven useful, such as when he or his clone troopers needed to hold a prisoner for later pickup and didn’t have any binders with them. A couple of downed B1s settled across the captive’s arms and legs usually did the trick.
None of that weight mattered to a Jedi, of course. Using the Force, Anakin floated one of the droids he’d crumpled in the cell block up the stairs to the second floor. Mentally crossing his fingers, he maneuvered the droid’s torso up to the door.
It was still a meter away when he heard the faint snick of a disengaging lock.
He smiled tightly as he pushed open the door and floated the droid through. Convenience over security; and he wasn’t going to make Solha’s mistake himself. Closing the door behind him, he balanced the droid against it on his side. Its transponder should be close enough to keep the door unlocked for when Padmé and Thrawn returned, but opening the door and pushing the droid aside should make enough noise to alert him.
The door opened onto a short foyer that ended in a section of scaffolding. Staying low, his hand automatically reaching for the lightsaber that wasn’t there, he moved to the edge of the scaffolding and looked down.
He and the 501st had attacked plenty of droid assembly facilities over the years, and most of them followed one of only a few standard patterns. Not this one. The line was creating a version of B2 super battle droids—that much was clear from the molds and the size of the conveyers, not to mention the eight finished B2s standing rigidly against the far wall. But unlike other droid factories, the armored sections weren’t coming out of red-hot injection forges; they were instead laid out along a pair of separate belts with only low-temperature plastoid molds in sight. Between the belts were bins of metals, plastoid pellets, and something that looked vaguely fibrous. Possibly the material he and Thrawn had seen in the courtyard, though he still had no idea what it could be. The assembly process was also far outside the norm, with what looked like an adhesive or catalytic process for putting the pieces together instead of the usual welding torches. A set of support pillars ran down the center of the room, maybe ten meters apart, and he wondered briefly if there might be unpleasant surprises lurking behind any of them.
The only occupants were three men and two women, working feverishly at a large control table near the center of the room. A B2 droid stood motionlessly beside them, a thick cable leading from the console to the programming access port under the droid’s left arm. Three more B2s stood guard nearby, though whether they were protecting the techs or preventing them from leaving wasn’t clear.
R2-D2 was on the opposite side of the table, and for a moment Anakin wondered if the techs were doing something with him, too. But a closer look showed that the little astromech wasn’t connected to the rest of the system by any cables. Apparently, the techs were trying to upload the proper programming into the B2’s brain, and R2-D2 had simply been parked there out of everyone’s way.
Anakin frowned. Programming was normally part of the whole droid assembly process, with the new droids coming off the assembly line fully functional and ready to fight. This batch had apparently been created as blanks, with programming to be added later.
That was probably a decision Solha was regretting. Every B1 Anakin had seen in the courtyard—minus the ones he’d shredded—seemed to be here, along with seven hulking B2s besides the three at the control table. Solha was hunkering down, and the fact that he had his techs activating his new blanks was evidence that he wasn’t feeling particularly safe.
On the other hand, if the duke was running scared, why wasn’t he in here where droids could protect him? For that matter, the more Anakin studied the B2s, the more it looked like the ones that weren’t at the table had been deployed mostly to defend the bins of fibrous material beside the armor plate molds.
Thrawn had pointed out the mining truck in the courtyard, with the suggestion that it and its cargo were important. But at the time Anakin had been too preoccupied with choreographing his disappearing-Jedi trick to pay much attention.
Far across the room, the armored door at the far end swung open—
Anakin felt his jaw drop . Marching into the factory as if he owned the place, a blaster gripped in his hand and a pair of B2s trailing behind him, was a clone trooper.
Anakin’s first, wild, thought was that he was imagining things. His second was that it was a crazy coincidence, that somehow this far-flung world had managed to come up with armor that mimicked that of Republic troopers.
Neither was correct. The person striding along down there was indeed wearing genuine clone trooper armor. Not only that, but it looked from the markings like he was from the 212th, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s unit.
So that made him…what? A loyal clone who’d somehow gotten innocently mixed up in this? A non-loyal clone, who was deliberately working for Solha and the Separatists? Or was he a decoy, here to create the precise confusion and uncertainty that Anakin was currently feeling?
The trooper stepped over to the programming table. He dropped his blaster back into its holster and pulled off his helmet.
It wasn’t a clone, of any alignment. It was, instead, Duke Solha.
Anakin puffed out a silent breath. At least that cleared up the question of why Solha hadn’t been here. Apparently, he’d been off scrounging up some extra protection.
Where he might have come up with clone armor was an entirely different set of questions. But Anakin didn’t have time right now to wonder why the duke had such resources at hand. Even as Solha set his helmet down on the edge of the desk, the door opened again a
nd two more clone-armored figures came in. This pair was leading a group of B1s that were lugging bins of more fibrous material, with another pair of B2s running rear-guard behind them.
The two troopers popped their helmets as the door closed behind them, revealing the other man and woman who’d been in the courtyard. The B1s, for their part, headed to the armor conveyer and the other bins, the B2s following to reinforce the droid guard already there. Solha left the table and crossed to the other Serennians, meeting them halfway, and the three of them paused for a quiet but clearly intense conversation.
Anakin pursed his lips. This whole thing was starting to look way more complicated than he’d expected.
Still, sorting it out could wait until he had Padmé safely back at his side. And the best way to ensure her safety was to keep Solha and his droids busy right here.
Reaching out to the Force, he focused on one of the B1s near the door. A little nudge to its blaster’s aim; a small twitching of the trigger…
The blast echoed off the high ceiling as the bolt slammed into one of the B2s standing stoic guard beside the bins.
It was a glancing blow, and the B2 barely even twitched from the impact. But even as the B1 yelped in confusion the super battle droid’s programmed reflexes kicked in, spinning it around and raising its right arm, its dual wrist blasters tracking toward the source of the attack.
Luckily for the B1, Solha was faster. “Hold!” he shouted, cutting short his conversation and yanking out his own blaster. Anakin briefly considered snatching it away from him, then decided it would be better to keep the true situation muddled as long as he could.
Unfortunately, Solha was quick on that one, too. “It’s the Jedi!” he shouted, swinging around in a slow circle, his eyes darting back and forth. “He’s in here somewhere, making you shoot at each other. Spread out and find him.”
And here, Anakin knew, was where it got fun.