Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(41)

“Took about two months to do it, too,” Huga said. “Knocked out a big chunk of the east wing ceiling—the whole thing takes up about half the space of the bottom two floors.”

“You’ve seen the line, but you don’t know what they’re making?” Padmé asked.

“Never seen any of the finished product,” LebJau said. “They shut everything down before the cleanup crews go in and stuff the day’s work behind curtains.”

“But they do have droids, right?” Padmé asked.

“Metalheads? Yeah,” LebJau said. “Mostly a bunch of spindly things that walk around waving guns at us. Everything else is our people or the two overseers who work with the duke.”

“That’s another man and a woman,” Cimy put in.

“Right,” LebJau said. “I don’t think the metalheads can handle the machines and programming work.”

Padmé nodded. “I suppose not.”

Only she knew that the Separatists did have droids that could do that. They were specialized and very expensive, and Dooku and Grievous didn’t have very many of them. Still, they were functional and capable, and they didn’t need locals to feed them. Something else she needed to look into once she got inside. “So who is this duke? What’s he look like?”

“Never seen him,” Cimy said. “His overseers or the metalheads give us orders.”

“Used to be more men and women, too,” LebJau said. “A lot more. They were there for the setup, and for about a month after that. Lot of flights in and out of the courtyard, and a lot of stuff coming in from the mine. Then most of them picked up and left, and it’s been pretty quiet since then.”

“Probably all the R and D got finished, and they’re just doing production,” Cimy said.

“Ah,” Padmé said. “What do they bring in from the mine? Some sort of heavy, grayish metal?”

“No idea,” LebJau said with a shrug. “The mine was never ours—some other group owned it and had their own people working it. Never let us in. Then the duke came along and chased them off, I guess, because they all left a few months ago and haven’t come back.”

“Got a bunch more people from the town in to work it, though, so that’s good,” Cimy added. “But the metalheads keep close tabs on them, and they’ve got their own barracks on the grounds, so we don’t hear much from them. The duke’s keeping them busy, though.”

“I see,” Padmé murmured. If they were bringing in doonium or quadranium it would make sense to keep tight security around the mine.

But then why the mass exodus of staff? Even if what they were constructing here could really be so completely automated, shouldn’t they have more than just a few people here to oversee things? Maybe it wasn’t as big or important a project as Duja had thought.

Or maybe it was such a dead-dark secret that Dooku wanted the absolute minimum of people knowing about it.

Which would also explain why they would use local techs instead of programming droids to watch over the process. Not only would the absence of highly specialized droids from the war effort be conspicuous, but they would have to have their memories wiped and programming reinstalled afterward, which would be both expensive and time consuming. “You said something about a riverboat,” she said. “Aren’t we going in the wrong direction for that?”

Huga snorted a laugh. “Only if you want a real boat.”

“The boat’s LebJau’s baby,” Cimy added. “Or maybe boondoggle’s a better word.”

Padmé looked at LebJau. The big man was staring straight ahead, his lips pressed tightly together. “What does he mean?” she asked.

“He figured he could build a boat here in Kivley’s Gulley,” Cimy said, waving a hand around. “Up near the factory, where he could get scrap and maybe borrow tools when he needed them. Figured when the spring rains came and the gulley flooded the thing would float down to the river and he’d be sitting pretty.” He pointed ahead. “Only then the duke and the metalheads showed up, we got shifted to maintenance, and he can’t go outside anymore.”

“So now the thing’s just sitting there,” Huga put in. “Kilometers from town or anything else, and too big to move.”

“And nowhere near finished,” Cimy said. “So when the rains come, the water will just wash through it and leave it sitting there.”

“That’s too bad,” Padmé said. “How long until the rains?”

“Two months,” Cimy said. “Maybe three.”

“Ah.” So if she and Anakin could bring the Republic down on this place fast enough, LebJau might still be able to finish his boat in time.

She frowned as something he’d said suddenly struck her. “I thought you said you weren’t allowed outside.”

“We’re not,” Cimy said casually. “But they don’t give us enough food, and most of what we get is packaged stuff that tastes like sawdust. So we sneak out whenever we can to go catch fish.”

“We get out the door I always used to get to my boat,” LebJau said. “They had a road to it once, back before the metalheads came in, but one of the spring floods washed it away and they didn’t bother to replace it. So now it’s not used.”