by Timothy Zahn
A big man was coming toward them from the direction of the first-level door, a battle droid’s E-5 blaster rifle gripped in his hands. He jerked to a halt, his eyes widening as he saw the lightsaber blade. “Whoa!” he said, stooping down hastily and dropping the E-5 to the floor.
“It’s okay,” Padmé said quickly. “That’s LebJau—he’s been helping me.”
“What do you want?” Anakin asked, glaring at the intruder over the pulsing blade. Generally, he trusted Padmé’s judgment. But the man had charged in on them without warning while carrying a Separatist weapon.
“I got everyone moving, like she said,” LebJau said, his eyes seemingly locked on the lightsaber. “I just thought she might need me, that’s all.”
“I promised him and his friends some reward money if they didn’t hand me over to Duke Solha,” Padmé added.
“Is the payment of ransom for ambassadors a common practice in the Republic?” Thrawn asked.
LebJau’s eyes widened a little more. “Ambassador? You didn’t say you were an ambassador.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Anakin said. “Those.” He pointed at the group of techs still cowering beside the row of B2 blanks. “They’re still here. Get rid of them.”
“Sure.” LebJau beckoned to the techs. “You heard the man, Vipke. Let’s go. I said let’s go.”
Silently, the techs unglued themselves from the wall and headed across the room. Their expressions, Anakin noted, ran from nervous to frightened to angry. “Frost you,” one of them muttered, glaring balefully as he passed Anakin. “You’ve ruined everything.”
“Move it,” LebJau growled. Still watching Anakin, he stooped and gingerly picked up the blaster again. The last tech passed him, and he fell in behind them, holding the blaster at the ready. Thrawn set off again toward the bins, Anakin and Padmé behind him.
“You know, we could have asked them about the droids,” Padmé said quietly.
“Yeah, we could have,” Anakin agreed. “Didn’t really want them around. Okay, Thrawn—let’s hear it.”
“An experiment.” Thrawn pointed to the bin with the fibrous material. “Touch your lightsaber blade to this.”
Anakin did so. Once again, the blade instantly vanished.
“The material is called cortosis,” the Chiss said. “It’s very rare—I’ve heard stories about it, but never seen any. It’s rumored to have unusually high energy absorption and transmission coefficients, to the point where many energy weapon blasts will be dissipated along the fibers without damaging the fibers themselves.”
“That’s why the blaster shots didn’t hurt it,” Padmé murmured.
“Yes,” Thrawn said. “It’s also soft and frangible, useless for building into armor or other protective materials.”
“Solha seems to have solved that problem,” Anakin said.
“Indeed,” Thrawn said. “It appears they’ve found a method for weaving the cortosis into a network within a protective matrix. An energy impact is therefore dissipated across the entire network and throughout the entire droid armor shell.”
“They’ve covered the walls with it, too,” Padmé said. “The blaster bolts you deflected did the same sunburst thing as the ones you sent into the B2s.”
“I imagine it took considerable experimentation to learn how to use a minimal amount of cortosis while still weaving it into a pattern where each fiber touches at least one of the others,” Thrawn said. “It would appear they used their failures to add extra protection to their factory.”
“So blasters won’t work unless you give a really massive jolt?” Anakin said, looking over at the two sand-angel droids Thrawn had taken out with his lightning gun.
“Or perhaps a very specific jolt,” Thrawn said. “A blaster shot is a single energy pulse, which can be dissipated throughout the matrix. The arc-cannon delivers a prolonged energy profile that overloads even the cortosis’s ability to dissipate.”
“Not to mention putting a massive charge on the skin so that the limbs repel each other,” Padmé pointed out. “That’s a nice touch.”
“Completely unexpected, I assure you,” Thrawn said. “The side effects of combat can be unpredictable.”
“So what’s the deal with my lightsaber?” Anakin asked. “It delivers a prolonged energy profile, too.”
“There I can only speculate, as the stories of cortosis include no such weapons,” Thrawn said. “But I suspect it’s analogous to the functioning of a superconductor. Most such materials can be overloaded by a sufficiently large surge. The far sharper energy gradient at the edge of the lightsaber blade may momentarily block the cortosis effect, sending the energy bouncing back into the blade. There must be something in the return profile that causes the mechanism to shut down.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Anakin insisted. “I can bounce against another lightsaber blade without anything like that happening.”
Thrawn shook his head. “As I say, I can only speculate. But certainly the ability to block lightsabers would be of paramount importance to the Separatists.”
“That it would,” Anakin agreed heavily, igniting the blade again. It looked, felt, and sounded exactly as it usually did. “So what we need to do is destroy all this”—he waved at the cortosis bin—“so they can’t make more of these super battle droids.”
“You could do that,” Thrawn agreed. “But there may be more of the material available that we have no access to.”
“There’s also a mine,” Padmé said. “That’s where they’re getting it.”
“Then we have to shut that down, too,” Anakin said impatiently. “So let’s get started.”
“A moment,” Thrawn said, his glowing eyes narrowed in thought. “Instead of attempting to shut down the factory, a better solution might be to let them waste their time and resources on a lethally flawed project.”
Anakin glanced at Padmé. She looked as puzzled as he felt. “And how do you propose we do that?”
“We have the assembly-line control system available to us,” Thrawn said, pointing to the control table. “We have your astromech droid. Why not reprogram the war droids for failure?”
“You mean leave some spots open so blaster bolts can get in?” Padmé asked. “Won’t they notice that?”
“I suggest something more subtle,” Thrawn said. “The mesh encompasses nearly all of the droid’s surface. We can merely extend it slightly by adding a few threads across the discharge capacitor within the blaster emission cylinders.”
Anakin frowned. And then he got it. “So that every time it fires, it’ll send a burst of energy of its own into the system?”
“Exactly,” Thrawn said. “If we also reroute some of the inner mesh threads to lie closer to the control processor…?”
“Then the more it fires, the faster it fries its own brain,” Padmé said, a cautious excitement creeping into her voice. “Only it’ll do it slowly enough that they won’t notice. It’ll look fine and pass all the tests.”
“And then five minutes into combat it’ll start falling apart,” Anakin said. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s plug Artoo in and see what he can do.”
Standard Republic protocol called for astromech droids to be memory-wiped after every mission, lest a Separatist capture offer the enemy a treasure trove of classified information. Anakin had routinely ignored that order, despite the trouble it had occasionally gotten him into with both the military leadership and the Jedi Council.
But as a result, R2-D2 still had all the stray bits and pieces of data and procedure that he’d picked up over the years. One of those bits of procedure involved factory architecture and graphic rewriting.
“Okay, he’s on it,” Anakin said as the droid warbled his confirmation. “Any other suggestions?”
“Only that he hurry,” Thrawn said, cocking his head. “My pilot’s diversionary attack ha
s ended. They may return at any minute.”
“I thought you said you weren’t bringing your ship,” Anakin said, focusing on the sounds around them. Sure enough, the rhythmic thudding from earlier had stopped.
“I said I didn’t wish to arrive with it,” Thrawn reminded him. “We may need to create a diversion to permit Ambassador Padmé and the droid to complete their task.”
“LebJau said they did the cortosis sifting and sorting in the western end of the north wing,” Padmé said. “Then they took it to the eastern north wing, and here to the east wing.”
“They’re making unstoppable B2s here,” Anakin said. “Any idea what they’re making in the north wing?”
“He didn’t say. He probably doesn’t know.”
Anakin cocked an eyebrow at Thrawn. “You feel like finding out?”
“It would be as good a place as any for a diversion,” Thrawn said.
Anakin suppressed a grimace as he headed across the floor toward the wing’s northern door. With his real mission now completed, had the Chiss lost interest in what else the Separatists might be doing here?
It didn’t matter. Anakin still cared. More to the point, if Thrawn had really sent his ship away, their borrowed freighter was still the Chiss’s only way off Mokivj.
And he didn’t just need the freighter; he needed Anakin. The only reason for Thrawn to have a pilot was if he couldn’t fly a ship himself. Interested or not, he would still have to tag along.
“Fine,” Anakin said. “I’ll take point. Try to keep up.”
* * *
—
As Padmé had pointed out, the walls were at least partially immune to lightsabers. Fortunately, the door leading to the north wing wasn’t. As she watched from the control desk, Anakin carefully sliced through the lock and hinges. A wave of his hand, and the heavy panel floated back out of the doorway. Anakin and Thrawn stepped through, Anakin with his lightsaber ready, Thrawn with his lightning gun still slung over his back.
Padmé watched as they disappeared from view, her mind churning with mixed feelings. She was glad that Thrawn had come back, especially given that Anakin might well be dead if he hadn’t. But the fact that he’d apparently been perfectly willing to abandon them once he had what he needed still rankled.
Maybe that wasn’t unreasonable. Maybe in his place she would do the same.
Maybe what really troubled her was his suggestion that the Republic and Separatists all played by those same rules.
Because she’d seen that happen all too many times. Diplomats, senators, governors, entire planetary systems—the minute they got what they wanted they were gone, without a single thought for anyone else.
Was that how it always was?
A movement caught her eye: The door Anakin had just gotten rid of was being set up back in the opening. Just before it blocked Padmé’s view she had a glimpse of Anakin on the other side, an annoyed set to his mouth.
Which probably meant that putting the door back up had been Thrawn’s idea, not his.
Padmé smiled. Anakin had never been one to take orders graciously. Some days even good suggestions were pushing it.
R2-D2 beeped. “You’re in?” Padmé asked, looking down at him. “How long?”
The droid warbled an estimate: ten to fifteen more minutes. “Good,” Padmé said. That should give Anakin and Thrawn enough time to figure out what Solha was doing in that wing. Hopefully, they could find a fix as clever as Thrawn’s plan for the B2s. She reached up and gently touched the super battle droid’s arm. It felt a little warmer than the usual metal armoring, but aside from that not much difference.
At least now she knew why the Separatists had set up their droid factory here instead of just shipping the cortosis somewhere else in their territory. A captured ship carrying an unknown material would spark suspicion and investigation. A captured ship carrying super battle droids wouldn’t even raise any eyebrows, but would merely be sent somewhere to have its cargo crushed or dismantled. Odds were the workers or droids handling that task would never even notice anything unusual about them.
Without warning, the B2 twitched.
Padmé jerked her hand back. “Artoo?” she breathed. “You did shut down the data transfer, right?”
She wasn’t sure she completely understood the little astromech’s response. But it sounded like the transfer had already been completed, and the B2 was simply waiting on its internal processor to sort the data and set up the internal programming. “How long?” she asked.
The answer was almost inevitable: ten to fifteen minutes.
“Great,” she muttered, looking up at the big droid. “Work fast, Artoo.”
He gave a slightly snooty beep—of course he was working at top speed.
“Right,” Padmé said, smiling. No matter what danger might be threatening, despite being in the middle of chaos, R2-D2 just kept on doing what he had to. It was a lesson a lot of people she knew could benefit from.
She looked over at the row of B2s still standing along the walls. Thrawn’s bit of sleight of hand—almost literally, it belatedly occurred to her—would hopefully work for any future battle droids. But those eight finished ones could give the Republic forces serious trouble if they got out.
Maybe there was a way she could sabotage them, or at least mark them so that the clones and Jedi could see them coming. Leaving R2-D2 at his task, she crossed to the B2s. She studied their torsos, wondering if she dared put scratch marks on them—
“Hello, Jedi,” a calm voice came from across the room.
Padmé stiffened, resisting the urge to go for one of her blasters. From the direction of the voice, he’d probably come in through the south door. From the sound of his footsteps, he was walking casually toward her. If he had his own weapon ready—and he undoubtedly did—she would never get into position to take a shot before he nailed her.
She frowned. One set of footsteps. More important, one set of footsteps not accompanied by any of the distinctive muffled clanking of battle droids. Had he actually come alone?
“Good evening,” she called back, thinking fast. Anakin had said Duke Solha was in charge of this operation, and that was definitely a Serennian accent. But facing down a Jedi alone seemed beyond even the famous cultural arrogance of Serennian nobility.
On top of that, there was something wrong with his voice. Padmé frowned…
“I see you’re admiring my handiwork,” the voice continued, the footsteps still continuing in her direction. “Be good and I’ll tell you—”
Abruptly, the footsteps faltered. “What the—?”
Padmé smiled tightly. “I gather you’ve noticed my handiwork?” she countered. She turned around.
And caught her breath. The puzzle of his odd voice, at least, was now answered. Instead of the nobleman she’d seen from her hidden perch in the west wing, a man dressed in elegant Serennian tunic and cloak, she found herself facing a fully armored clone trooper. He was holding a blaster rifle on her—not the Republic’s standard-issue DC-15, oddly enough, but a battle droid’s E-5—but his helmet was turned to the side, toward the three B2s Anakin and Thrawn had destroyed. “Impossible,” he said, as if talking to himself. “They assured me…ah,” he said, the confusion suddenly gone from his voice. “Very clever. Where did you find an arc-cannon to use against them?”
“I’m very resourceful,” Padmé said. So he knew Thrawn’s lightning gun could take out the droids? Interesting. “Invulnerable battle droids. Very impressive.”
His head jerked back toward her and he leaned forward as if peering at her face. “Senator Amidala?”
“Yes,” Padmé said. “Duke Solha?”
For a moment the figure hesitated. Then, keeping his grip on his E-5, he lifted both hands and awkwardly pulled off his helmet.
It was the duke, all right. But not quite as she remembered him.
Whereas the old Solha had had the look of someone whose ambitions and desires had been thwarted at every pass, this new Solha’s eyes and face were on fire, brimming with hope and purpose and anticipation. “So you remember me,” Solha said. “I’m impressed. So many in the Republic and Senate thought of me as a joke, or didn’t notice me at all.”
“That’s not true,” Padmé said carefully. Solha was clearly working with Dooku…but in any such alliance there was always a chance of persuading someone to change sides. She needed to stall him another few moments anyway; she might as well use that time to try to sow a few seeds of doubt. “You were seen as one of the quieter but more solid supporters of justice and order.”
“When they remembered my name, you mean?” Solha scoffed. “Well, that will change. After the final Confederacy victory, everyone will know my name.”
“I’m sure they will,” Padmé assured him. “I should warn you, though, that Dooku has promised victory any number of times, and somehow the Republic still manages to survive.”
“I hope you’ll remember that boast while you await trial for crimes against the Confederacy,” Solha said. “Once Dooku has an army of these droids”—he smiled slyly—“plus a couple of other surprises, your precious Grand Army will be doomed. If you’re lucky, maybe the count will allow the Republic to continue to exist. If not—” He shrugged again. “Either way, I imagine the most bothersome members of the government will be eliminated.”
“So I would assume,” Padmé agreed, throwing a surreptitious look at the south door. Still no sign of any droids. What was Solha waiting for? “Though as a professional politician, I have to tell you that raising the level of your threats at this point really isn’t productive.”
Apparently, the glance hadn’t been surreptitious enough. “If you’re waiting for my siblings and my droids to make their appearance, you’re looking in the wrong direction,” Solha said. “Some are still in the courtyard, making sure the stolen freighter your friends arrived on won’t be flying again, at least not anytime soon. The others”—he gave her an evil smile—“are even now making their way through the north wing. Once they’ve dealt with your friends, they’ll be coming through the other door over there—”