Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(65)

Whatever it was, though, Padmé would see that it was demolished. She owed Duja that much.

Though she was still having problems with the reason the factory was here in the first place. Whatever they were doing, why couldn’t they do it somewhere else? There were thousands of places closer to home where the Separatists could set up a factory without anyone knowing about it.

Was it something to do with the mine? But that didn’t make sense, either. Granted, high-value cargoes like doonium or quadranium attracted pirates and thieves, and might easily come to the Republic’s attention. But losing a cargo or two en route would hardly be a disaster, even if it opened the possibility that this secret base wouldn’t remain secret.

Unless it was supposed to be secret from everybody. Could this be some faction of Separatists trying to build up funds or resources without the rest of the Confederacy knowing about it?

If so, that might be the crack in Separatist unity that Coruscant had been desperately hoping for. If the member systems or corporate backers fell into squabbling among themselves, the whole thing could collapse in a matter of weeks.

That might explain the puzzling lack of security, as well as the absence of high-end programming droids. The fewer the personnel, and the fewer the droids, the easier it would be to keep anyone from noticing that valuable resources were inexplicably missing.

It was an intriguing thought. It also led to another, even more intriguing one.

If the Separatist droid patrols were really cranked back down to barely visible levels, maybe Padmé could sneak upriver and see what exactly they were digging out of the ground.

Anakin would disapprove of such a plan. Probably vehemently. But Anakin wasn’t here, and until he arrived there was precious little else that Padmé could do. If she could at least find out whether it was doonium, quadranium, or something else, they might have a head start on figuring out what the Separatists were making.

She spent the next couple of days studying the maps of Mokivj that Duja had included in her report, looking for a path that might get her to the mine undetected. The fastest way would be to cross the river and make her way through the town on the far side, where most of the region’s roads connected. But interacting with locals required local clothing and money, ideally accompanied by local speech and mannerisms.

The speech and mannerisms she couldn’t do much about. But the money and clothing were another matter.

The obvious source for such things was LebJau. But cultivating the big man proved surprisingly hard. LebJau’s second visit was just as brief as his first. For all his willingness to take a few risks to help her out, he was clearly still afraid that the metalheads might catch them together. Padmé tried to get him to sit down and talk, but he brushed off her efforts and disappeared back into the night and the factory.

Still, for all his obvious fear, it was also obvious that he found her intriguing, and not just because of her family’s supposed wealth. On the third night she finally managed to exchange a few sentences with him, focusing her questions on his day and his plans for the boat once the Separatists left. The fourth night saw the conversation stretch out a bit more.

Finally, on the fifth night, she broached the subject of new clothing, suggesting that her outfit was starting to chafe from lack of proper cleaning and repeated exposure to her own sweat in the daily heat. But even her best smile and the full range of her diplomatic skills couldn’t make any headway against his fear that a set of missing clothing might be noticed even faster than missing food, bringing the Separatists down on him.

She spent the next day sweating, studying maps, and trying to find an alternative route to the mine area. When LebJau appeared again, at his usual two hours past sundown, she could sense that something was different.

Starting with the food itself.

“This is really good,” she told him as she bit off a piece of the dried fish that had come instead of the usual slice of meat. “Is this one of the fish you caught the night I arrived?”

“Yes,” he said. “Not too dry, is it?”

“No, it’s fine,” she assured him. “The spice mixture complements it perfectly, too. Thank you.”

“No problem.” He sat in silence while she ate a few more bites. “I’ve been thinking about you wanting new clothes.”

“It really would help,” she said, hunching her shoulders as if the material was sticking to her skin. As it actually had been earlier in the day.

“I told you I couldn’t get anything that wouldn’t be missed,” he said. “Not a lot of women here, and nobody has more than a couple of changes of clothes. But maybe there’s something else I can do.”

“Any help you can give me would be wonderful,” she assured him.

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing. You can’t come into any of the work or living areas without one of these.” He pulled back his sleeve to reveal a bright yellow wristband. “It lets you get through the doors. Not the big main doors,” he added, “but all the little ones where they don’t mind us going.”

“So there’s some kind of transponder inside?” Padmé asked.

“I guess,” LebJau said. “The metalheads also make spot checks sometimes in the south wing, where most of us live. You get caught without one, and they’ll take you to the Bins.”