Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(40)

“I don’t know,” Huga said again. But he was still rubbing the gem gently between his thumb and fingers.

“You’ve got nothing to lose,” Padmé pointed out. “If I run, you’ll still have the gem, remember?”

“Okay,” Huga said. He still had reservations, she could tell. But for the moment, at least, greed was winning out over fear. “How do we contact this uncle of yours?”

“I have a contract with one of the independent message services in the region,” Padmé said. “Interstel Systems. I can—what’s the matter?” she interrupted herself as something flashed across all three faces.

“Nothing,” LebJau said. “It’s just that we heard the other day that Interstel’s comm triad is down.”

“Someone was grousing about having to hand-ship messages over to Plood or Batuu,” Cimy added. “Pain in the neck.”

“Really,” Padmé said between suddenly stiff lips. “What are they doing about it?”

“Probably just hanging on to the messages until they’ve got enough to make it worth a trip to Plood to hook ’em into the triad there,” Cimy said. “That’s what they usually do.”

“I see,” Padmé murmured. How convenient that the system had just happened to crash right when she needed it.

Could someone have spotted Duja’s outgoing messages to Coruscant and wrecked the triad to keep anything else from leaking out? If so, did that mean neither of her messages had made it to Anakin?

Because that would be a disaster. Her ship had copies of all her messages; but assuming he could even find the ship, those records were all wrapped in the Senate’s automatic encryption.

She squared her shoulders. So Interstel needed a thick stack of messages before they would do anything? Fine. She was more than happy to oblige. “Any idea what the magic number is that’ll get them to send a ship to Plood?” she asked.

Huga shrugged. “Dunno. A couple of hundred, probably. Not that much traffic out here.”

“Fine,” Padmé said. “We’ll send five hundred.”

Huga’s jaw dropped. “Five hundred?”

“Hopefully, that’ll get their attention,” Padmé said. “And Uncle Anakin’s. I’ll put a message together as soon as you get me settled. Oh, and my name’s Padmé. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” Huga said, still sounding sandbagged. “Sure. Well…come on. Watch out for the roots.”

He headed off deeper into the copse of trees, Cimy at his side, Padmé and LebJau walking behind them. They’d gone about ten meters when LebJau wrapped his hand gently around Padmé’s upper arm. “Careful,” he murmured. “It goes down.”

Padmé nodded—she’d already seen Huga’s head dip as he and Cimy headed down a steep slope. The defile was nearly five meters deep, she saw as she and LebJau followed, the end running into the river. A dry creekbed, from the look of it, possibly part of a seasonal tributary, and almost certainly the cut in the ground she’d noticed before LebJau grabbed her. Huga turned his back on the river flowing past the end and headed up the gorge.

The defile was deep enough that the Separatist building was mostly out of sight as they made their way along the rocky ground. But there were places where other cuts intersected theirs, and as they passed those spots Padmé was able to catch glimpses of her destination.

Her first impression had been that the place was like a castle. But now she could see that that wasn’t quite accurate. What she’d taken to be turrets at the corners were in fact the narrow pyramid shapes of vertical anchors for the vulture droids, sites where they could hook on and refuel, yet could launch into action at a moment’s notice without the need to come out of a hangar. The rest of the building was low and wide, no more than fifteen meters tall but a solid half kilometer wide and at least that deep.

“Used to be a multi-factory,” LebJau said, nodding toward the building. “Big power generators in the center courtyard, with a bunch of hundred-by-hundred-meter fabricators and manufacturers under the same roof.”

“Everyone had windows and sunlight coming in both sides,” Cimy added wistfully. “?’Course, one side was also kind of noisy, with the generators. But at least there was light.”

“Right,” LebJau said. “But then the duke and the metalheads came in, threw everybody out, and took over.”

“Any idea what they’re doing in there?” Padmé asked.

“Stuff that’s none of our business,” Huga growled back over his shoulder.

“It used to be our business,” LebJau countered sourly. “We worked in one of the electronics factories. Now they’ve got us doing maintenance.”

“Hey, at least we got jobs,” LebJau said. “Not everyone got hired back, you know.”

“What kind of maintenance?” Padmé asked, frowning. Maintenance at Separatist facilities was usually a droid job.

“Cleanup, mostly,” LebJau said. “Sweeping and carrying out any trash.”

“Ah,” Padmé said. “I suppose all the tech work is done by other droids?”

“No, that’s who else they hired back,” Cimy said. “Materials specialists—folks who make new plastoids and ceramics and stuff—and a bunch of engineers to remake some of the assembly lines.”