Alliances (Star Wars: Thrawn, #2)(82)

“It’s better now,” Huga said. “Ah—finally.”

“This is it,” Cimy said, getting back to his feet and offering Padmé the discarded wristband. “But like Huga said earlier, we couldn’t glue it.”

“I’m not surprised,” Padmé said, peering at the wristband in the light of her glow rod. It was simple, thin plastoid, bright yellow, with a couple of barely visible wires running through the edges. “There’s an induction loop embedded in the material. If the ends aren’t lined up right, or if there’s glue or something blocking the circuit, it won’t give the right echo when it’s sparked.”

“Could we overlap and use tape or something?” Cimy asked.

“Ordinary tape won’t stick to this well enough,” Padmé said. “And you’d have to make sure the circuit ends were solidly together.”

“So what are you doing to do?” Huga asked.

Padmé pursed her lips. It was risky, but at the moment it was all she could come up with. “There are some metalheads patrolling this wing, right?”

“A few,” Huga said. “Mostly at the edges, to keep us from wandering off.”

“Do they patrol singly or in pairs?”

“Singly, most of them,” Huga said.

“The ones guarding the doors into the east wing are in pairs,” Cimy added.

“She didn’t ask about the door guards, dummy,” Huga admonished him.

“No, I need to know about those, too,” Padmé said. “You said you were in a work crew. Does it have a name or numerical designation?”

“A numeri—what?” Cimy asked.

“She means a number for all of us,” Huga said. “Yeah, we’re Maintenance Crew Herf Two. So what are you going to do?”

“Kill two birds with one rock,” Padmé said, wrapping the band loosely around her left wrist. She slipped her S-5 blaster into one of the robe’s side pockets and tucked the more compact ELG-3A into the sash at the small of her back, where it would be mostly out of sight but easily accessible. “Let’s go find one of the singles.”



* * *



—

Anakin pushed the door open about a meter, then released it and jumped back into his cell, letting the door crash shut.

The thud was quieter than he’d expected it to be. But it should be loud enough. If it wasn’t, he’d just have to try again.

“If you expect the guards to come in, bear in mind there’s little I can do while still locked in,” Thrawn warned.

“That’s okay,” Anakin said. “All you need to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”



* * *



—

Padmé’s plan had assumed that, with a Jedi supposedly running loose, Duke Solha would have patrols all over the factory.

But he didn’t. As she and her two companions headed toward the east wing they saw no one. For all appearances, Solha might have barricaded himself into his stronghold in the hope that the Jedi would eventually give up and go away.

Still, that didn’t mean he’d left the approaches to that stronghold unguarded. They rounded one final corner to find two B1 battle droids flanking a solid-looking door, their E-5 blasters leveled. “Halt!” one of them called as the three humans appeared. “Where are you going?”

“What do we do?” Cimy whispered from beside Padmé. “You said we needed just one metalhead.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll make it work,” she whispered back. Squaring her shoulders, she started toward the droids. “Maintenance Crew Herf Two,” she called. “Got an order to come clean something on the first floor.”

The droids looked at each other. “We were not alerted,” the first droid said. “Who gave you this order?”

“One of the others,” Padmé said, continuing to walk forward. “I don’t know which one—you all look alike.”

“Where is your wristband?” the second droid said.

“Right here,” Padmé said. She stopped in front of him and pushed back the sleeve of her robe, revealing the band balanced across her wrist.

“It is not correct,” the droid said. It lifted its blaster to point at her chest. “You will come with me for examination.”

“What about them?” Padmé asked, beckoning toward Huga and Cimy with her right hand. “We have a job to do, remember?”

“They will wait here,” the first droid ordered, waving its blaster back and forth between them for emphasis. “I will call for a supervisor.”

“Okay, but we were told to rush it,” Padmé said. She started walking again, watching both droids out of the corners of her eyes. The first continued to hold his E-5 on the two men as it popped the lock on the door. The second swiveled toward Padmé as she passed, its blaster tracking her movement, clearly intending to let her go by and then fall in behind her. She stepped directly between the droids—

Abruptly, she stopped. For an instant the second droid’s blaster tracked past her, out of alignment with her body—

And sweeping the blaster with her left forearm to keep it pointed away, she snatched the ELG from her sash, jammed the barrel up under the droid’s long chin to the intersection of head and neck, and fired.