Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(37)

She keyed the hatch, wondering fleetingly what would happen if the water had penetrated the electronics or incapacitated the motors. But the hatch obeyed the command, resealing itself and cutting off the inrush. Peering upward through the viewport, she watched the play of light on the surface of the water as the pod continued to sink, then finally settled at a level of neutral buoyancy.

She checked her instruments. The readings were a little ambiguous, but it looked like the top of the pod was about four meters down. With luck, that would be deep enough to obscure her presence and let her float past the Separatists’ search.

In fact, and with even more luck, she might even be able to ride straight to the manufacturing plant itself. Most industrial processes required a plentiful water supply, and her river was heading in the general direction of Duja’s coordinates.

At any rate, until she was safely past the search area there was nothing she could do. Shutting down everything she could, propping up her feet on a section of the control board to get them out of the water, she settled in for a long wait.



* * *



—

The trip quickly turned into an exercise in patience and boredom. Still, it wasn’t entirely without its interesting moments.

The first of those moments came as she reached the vulture droids’ primary search area. Each time one of the flickering shadows interrupted the distant sunlight she felt herself tense, wondering if she’d been spotted or if the droid was merely moving past on another errand. Midway through the activity it occurred to her that, given the angle of the sun, the shadows that passed directly over her were from droids that weren’t actually overhead. The realization gave her a short period of relief until the corollary struck her: If one of the droids was directly above her, she would never know until it was too late.

But no laserfire sizzled through the water, and no torpedo blasts slammed a deadly shock wave across the pod’s surface. Gradually, the overhead shadows became fewer, then disappeared completely.

The next small diversion came an hour later in the form of a sudden swirling and roiling in the river’s otherwise leisurely pace. Her first thought was that she’d hit a rocky whitewater section, but then she spotted the large intake pipes that were drawing water out of the river near the left bank. A town, perhaps, since she seemed to still be several kilometers upstream from Duja’s coordinates.

Or perhaps not. The river flow had barely returned to its placid pace when she began to notice piles of small rocks along the riverbed’s slope. Again, her first thought was that it was something natural, perhaps erosion or runoff from a groundquake. But as the piles continued along the river she realized they were instead tailings from a mine, possibly driven off larger riverside mounds by wind or rain. The tailings continued for nearly a kilometer before dwindling; a hundred meters past them the pod was again buffeted as another set of pipes returned wastewater to the river. The pod’s sensors indicated that the temperature of the influx was noticeably higher than that of the surrounding water, again indicating some kind of mining or refining process.

So the Separatists apparently had a mine here associated somehow with their factory. But what in the galaxy could the mine be producing that it made sense to pour time and money into doing it way out here? Even doonium and quadranium weren’t that valuable.

Unless they’d found an incredibly rich deposit of one of those metals. In that case, the factory would be producing…what?

It seemed insane. Surely it would be easier to simply ship the metal to some other, more secure factory that was already geared up to produce hull plates or droid armor. But instead, they’d set up here.

Unless Duja had been wrong. Unless the mine was all there was, and she’d been mistaken about the factory.

Padmé stared out at the murky water swirling around her. No. Duja had never been wrong before. She wasn’t wrong now.

So Padmé would cultivate her patience and wait until she reached the coordinates. And then she would see what exactly her friend had sent her to deal with.



* * *



—

The sky overhead had darkened to night by the time the pod reached the factory’s coordinates.

Now came the tricky part.

Padmé had already stowed two extra outfits, boots, comm, datapad, glow rod, her favored ELG-3A blaster pistol, and the sturdier S-5 Security-grade blaster/ascension gun in a—hopefully—watertight backpack. Now, taking several deep breaths to flush as much carbon dioxide from her lungs as possible, she again hit the hatch control. This time, though, instead of just a crack she was going for a full opening.

The hatch mechanism had other ideas. It opened to the same crack it had earlier, then stopped as if unable to make more progress against the outside pressure.

Padmé tried again, forcing down the sudden surge of panic. If the hatch stayed jammed she would have bare seconds to dig her blaster out of the bag and try to shoot off the hinges before she drowned.

Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. Even as the churning water rose to her waist the pressure on the hatch equalized to the point where it could resume its outward motion. She waited until it was open just enough, then ducked down into the water and maneuvered herself outside. Ignoring the numbing cold, letting out a small trail of bubbles from the corner of her mouth to make sure she was headed the right way, she swam to the surface.

She popped up into a dark night and a welcome warmth of air. For a moment she floated with the current, awkwardly treading water with one hand while she looped the backpack’s straps over her shoulders, and looked around.