Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(103)

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?”