Chapter 111
Anakin slammed his right fist into the console in front of him.
His frustration was shared by me. Bloody Shroud. Our speed in getting here on time to meet Thrawn had meant that there could be minimal deviation or waiting for clone trooper backup to catch up to us.
"They have effective weapons, Skyguy. We don't."
"Yes," he let out a deep breath. "We- we can't help them now. Instruct M8 to put a time delayed virus into the manufacturing process."
"You don't want us to blow this place?" I asked just for confirmation. Anakin usually defaulted to the 'blow up the bad guys' plan.
"We could, but with the size of these fusion reactors, the only safe way would be to trigger meltdowns."
"Which would only delay things, they'd just repair or replace after we left," I nodded, seeing the problem. "So anything specific you want to do?"
He stared at the diagram of the production lines in front of us, before pointing, "There, that's the process for converting cortosis ore into long fiber strands, they're using hybrid laser-molecular assembly. Probably because the material would laugh at a high temperature plasma forge. We need to introduce a fault here, something that won't be easily detected in later quality control."
"What about altering the molecular chain to only bond at five points?" I brought up a holoscreen to show the current arrangement in the system. "Currently, it's in this six bond formation. We change that, perhaps strong enough blasters like a DC15X sniper shot should still make a mess of things."
"Effectively creating another allotrope of the cortosis, will it visually look the same at least?"
"M8?" I prompted.
"Analysing… it will have a lighter sheen, mistress. Unless we compensate at some other point in the process. The cortosis will be an effective superconductor. Is that what you're aiming for?"
"Precisely. If enough energy is dumped into it, it'll fry the internal systems of a droid through radiant EM emission within the chassis. Can you do it?"
"If we add another step to the droid's armoring process during the forging, adding a layer of inert carbon in the alloy layers, then it should disguise our alteration, mistress."
I gave Anakin a look and he eventually nodded, "Do it."
"M8, create the virus, set it to infect within four hours."
My integrated droid barely took a few seconds, before the virus was ready and uploaded into the system.
"Done, mistress."
"Good girl. Where's the closest armory?"
The holo changed to an internal rendering of the factory. "Three floors down, twenty meters from the turbolift."
Anakin quickly updated Thrawn and the chiss nodded.
We combat stacked ourselves with Anakin in the lead, Thrawn in the middle and I took tail-end charlie.
We burst out of the control room and rushed down the hallway.
'Mistress, a silent alarm has just been tripped. I think it must've been the B2 being pinged on their com net and receiving a passive destruction signal.'
"Frak! Master, alarm!" I called in warning, feeling the entire factory suddenly explode with movement as the droid patrols reacted.
His only response was to switch on his lightsaber.
One of my other lightsabers flung themselves into my left hand and moments later I had all three my blades in hand or hovering around me.
We turned left at the intersection and Anakin was carefully scanning the floor before he plunged his lightsaber down into it.
Four slashes later he was pulling out a square section of the grated floor and sent it shooting down the corridor with a Force Push.
A B1 stepped into the intersection there, only to receive the heavy durasteel projectile straight in the chest.
A normal B1 would've been bowled over, ragdolled and probably lose a few limbs.
The cortosis B1's chest shattered under the kinetic hit, lodging inside and pinning it straight to the floor.
He jumped down into the hole and continued slashing until he had made us our own way of getting to the lower floor.
Thrawn jumped down, but three B1s popped into the corridor from a distant intersection and immediately opened fire on me.
My lightsabers danced through the air, intercepting each bolt with smooth efficiency as I carefully stepped backward. I didn't bother sending the blaster fire straight back and dropped down the hole the moment Thrawn was clear.
As I landed, Anakin was already using the wreckage of two B1s as kinetic bowling balls to ram into a B2.
I joined the attack, using the Force to shoot the B2 directly into the ceiling.
The B2's armor was bent and torn in a dozen places already, its arm cannon spraying blaster fire in a vain hope to hit us.
Anakin wrenched the blaster arm off with a gesture, before again plunging his lightsaber into the floor to create our next route down.
My will grabbed a hold of the combined wreckage, which I arranged into a rough shield and aimed it to my right.
I grabbed Thrawn to join me behind the improvised cortosis shield, just as six B1s and four B2s marched into the corridor and opened fire.
The storm of orange-red blaster bolts splashed off the cortosis like water or was channeled directly into the energy equivalent of a ricochet into the floor and ceiling.
'Done,' Anakin announced.
He jumped through the hole.
"Go!" I shouted to Thrawn.
He couldn't jump exactly without risking injury as a Jedi could, so I had to stand there and just take an ever increasing volume of fire.
It was less than six seconds for him to climb down, in that time my cortosis shield started to glow nastily on the edges.
I sent the shield towards the droids with a Force Push, causing it to burst apart like a shotgun of cortosis weave armor.
When I landed on the next floor, we had no enemy company and Anakin was cutting his way through for the final time.
A few seconds later the droid squad reached our hole above and one of them got the bright idea of dropping a thermal detonator on us.
A catching and flinging gesture with my hand, sent the spherical grenade right back up into the B1's face that had thrown it.
"You idiot!" I heard another B1's voice shout before it was drowned out in the cracking thump of an explosion.
I could sense that had wiped out the entire squad, whilst my follow up Force Push had also been enough to dampen the overpressure that had raced down our makeshift passage.
On the next floor, we restacked and sprinted down the corridor, only to run straight into a twelve strong B1 squad also heading to secure the armory.
'Snips! Wave!'
I joined him in releasing a Force Wave.
We managed to harmonize ourselves with the Force and each other, sharing the burden of the technique.
The droids were all hit, picked up off their feet and shot backwards as if a speeding hauler had crashed into them.
It was like a small hurricane of droid parts flying backward down the corridor at this point, even the air rushed in to fill the brief void created in the wake of the stupendous kinetic force.
I had to grab Thrawn by the arm to get him moving in the aftermath, as his astonishment was reaching levels where even his legendary self-control was struggling to manage.
Anakin stabbed his blade into the armory's blast door, beginning to cut his way through.
I sent one of my blades to assist after I had regained my equilibrium in the Force.
Soon we had a neat circular hole cut out of the thick door.
Anakin made a curt backwards gesture and the glowing molten plug of cut durasteel flew backward and crashed into the opposite wall.
Inside we were confronted with racks and racks of CIS weapons for their droids, enough for an entire company. The weapons we were after were mounted on a dedicated rack in the far end of the converted storage room.
The Merr-Sonn EG-32 was a rather bulky rifle, with a length close to that of the clone DC15A rifle. It was not something you could easily wield indoors. Its ergonomics were awful, with only the grip and trigger being nominally designed for a humanoid hand. The rest of the thing had blocky protrusions as a result of the manufacturer being unable to properly miniaturize the power conditioning components of the weapon. Combine this with a battery pack pushing the weight of the weapon to just under seven kilos and it was a rather hefty thing for something you were expected to wield in a firefight quickly.
I made a mental note to definitely get one for Chewie.
It at least had a sling that would allow you to carry the weight on your shoulder. Given that the CIS hadn't removed that, at least showed that someone had a brain that it wouldn't necessarily just be B1 droids wielding this weapon in an emergency.
It also only had 50 shots per power cell, which was about as big as my clenched fist.
We tried to load up with as many as we could fit on our own belts, but it was still far from a comfortable loadout to go into battle with.
"All right, primary control room or tertiary first?" I asked Anakin.
"Both locations will be reinforced heavily by now, we need to create a diversion strong enough that would pull those away."
Thrawn raised a hand, "If you are speaking about the control rooms. Might I suggest, General, that you and I first assault one of the reactors, whilst your apprentice infiltrates towards the Tertiary control with stealth."
"They will think we're trying to blow up the factory, playing into their expectations of us," Anakin nodded. "Snips, think you can manage?"
I perused that probability line before nodding, "It won't be easy, but yes, I can. I suggest you attack the reactor closest to the disused parts of the factory. Padme's group is sure to head there first. You'll be able to rendezvous and unify our efforts."
Both of us twitched when we sensed a droid squad approaching with four B2s.
"We better hurry, go Snips!"
"Are you sure coming this way is a good idea?"
The question was whispered harshly but Padme barely suppressed rolling her eyes in annoyance as LebJau asked the question for the third time in the last hour.
The maintenance worker at the factory she had managed to 'recruit' was very jittery as they moved through the deeper bowls of the structure. He was a short, muscled man with a truly impressive moustache that radiated a fair distance from either side of his face.
"Oh for the star's sake, LebJau," Huga scowled at his friend, hefting his EG32 in an awkward ready pose. "This is the shortest way to Reactor Three."
"Or do you think we can walk straight through droid patrols armed with these things?" Cimy asked sarcastically in the wake of his brother's explanation.
Huga and Cimy were tall, blonde haired, identical twins, wearing blue and green maintenance overalls. They had been the first she had managed to convince in her crusade to make Duja's death mean something. They in turn had managed to convince her that bringing LebJau was a good idea because of his expertise in the electronics around the fusion reactors.
The problem was, the man was very excitable and prone to jump at shadows, thinking that droids would pop out of every corner to ambush them. He had already wasted a number of electric blasts from his rifle on the inert, dusty equipment they had passed.
Padme could admit that the abandoned parts of the factory were not exactly a pleasant experience to walk through. The noises of creaking machinery, their footsteps echoing through the large spaces, the minimal lighting as they passed through the skeletons of various old assembly lines, all contributed to an eerie feeling that had settled in her spine and didn't want to go away.
"I know it's the shortest way, but what if the Separatists put in extra sensors we don't know about, what if Duke Solha is here-" LebJau's nervous babbling was interrupted by Cimy giving the man a light slap upside the head.
"Get yourself together, all right? I know this is scary, Leb, but we can do this."
"Ow, okay, yes, yes," LebJau took a deep breath. "Sorry guys and… uh, senator." The man was also supremely awkward in Padme's presence and she could see his boyish crush practically written on his forehead. "It's just if the Duke catches us-"
"Don't think about that, LebJau," Padme said reassuringly, smiling at him as they walked out of the abandoned assembly line and into an adjacent corridor. "Think only about our success. That we'll stop this factory and the Separatists from making more weapons and droids."
"Will that actually help?"
"It might at very least settle your nerves."
"I'll- I'll try."
"Also Duke Solha is nobility from Serenno and the last place we would find him is in the dirty, abandoned parts of the factory he owns. Have you three even seen him once?"
"No, we just know thanks to our supervisor and when we were hired initially," Huga shrugged, his face serious as he scanned his eyes into the distance down the corridor. "All right, we take a right at the next junction and we'll be in the active parts of the factory. Reactor is only a dozen meters further. Absolute silence from now on. Leb, we need you to work your magic on the surveillance circuitry before we get there."
LebJau visibly steeled himself and with confidence that didn't reach his eyes said, "I'll get it done, Huga."
"You don't, this is over before it begins."
The twin had taken the lead in the factory after a brief but childish game with his brother using their hands with some form of sign language, something they apparently did to settle all disputes between them.
He held up a hand to pause their advance at the junction and pointed at the wall to their left.
LebJau carefully put down his EG-32 on the floor, making sure it wouldn't fall over, before pulling out a hydrospanner from his toolbelt and getting to work on the joins of a wall panel.
Behind it was a blinking agglomeration of switches, conduits, smaller cables, all marked in a jumble of Aurebesh characters that Padme couldn't make heads or tails of.
He brought out more tools and it was the work of a few minutes before he made a positive signal with his hand.
Huga gestured to follow and Padme drew her blaster. Mostly just to make herself feel better.
They carefully crept down the corridor, staying to one side of it and strained their ears to hear any indication of approaching droids.
According to Huga, there were only four B1s as a general rule guarding the fusion reactor room.
With the energy rifles it would help even the odds, but Padme was under no illusion that it would be easy. These three weren't soldiers and she couldn't help but feel guilt that she was probably leading them to their deaths here. She had played on their desire to see their world free of the hidden CIS influence. There was just… no other choice. She couldn't do nothing.
Calling home to either Naboo or Coruscant risked alerting the ever pervasive spies of the CIS. Even if her call managed to elude them, it would surely cross the desk of Palpatine eventually and he would definitely inform Dooku.
Then there was the other option.
The closed mental door in her mind leading towards Anakin and Ahsoka 'glared' at her with a renewed ferocity. She had no idea why her mind was getting that impression. It wasn't as if that door had eyes.
At this point, she imagined Anakin was somewhat irked at her for going so long without some form of mental contact.
Both he and Ahsoka were neck deep in the war and she was sure their mission to Zygerria had long since concluded successfully.
Huga halted them at the primary blast doors to the reactor room. He took out a code cylinder from his pocket, inserted it and also typed in a secondary code.
With a hiss and whine of motivators, the huge door rose up into the bulkhead housing.
He snuck a brief peek with one eye and immediately ducked his head back, holding up four fingers.
"Hello?! Anyone there?" asked the voice of a B1 droid
The clanking of mechanical feet getting closer reached their ears.
Huga gestured a hand frantically, his eyes telling them to wait as he properly settled the EG-32 into his shoulder and brought the barrel up.
Cimy and LebJau also raised their weapons and Padme could see the fear on their faces. For her part she brought up her blaster in an entirely futile gesture.
The B1 stepped into view, its weapon still at waist level.
A whipping crackle that snapped through the air, followed by a flash of blue light, heralded the B1 getting hit by two of three streams of arc energy.
LebJau shot again, this time hitting the droid on the shoulder, but it was already dead - the cortosis armor smoking with three glowing holes in it.
It fell over with a loud clang on the grated floor.
"Go!" snapped Huga frantically.
He flung himself forward to land prone on the floor, his twin frantically jumping forward over him to land in a rather painful manner.
Huga fired again to cover his twin's recovery, missing twice and only hitting the walls near the other B1 he was targeting.
LebJau rolled along the floor in a rather comedic fashion, but managed to frantically shoot as well, choosing another B1 as his desperate target.
Padme brought her blaster to bear, exposing only her right arm and as little as she could manage and pulled the trigger frantically.
Her first shot missed, splashing ineffectually off the cortosis armor, but the next three hit the B1 right on its blaster rifle.
The remaining B1s return fire missed just over the heads of her small team, slamming into the floor and sending up fountains of sparks.
Huga managed to finally hit a droid, hitting it in the lower part of the chassis. Bright electric arcs played over its form as the cortosis tried to dissipate the energy, but then a shot from Cimy hit as well and dropped it.
Padme shifted aim as quickly as she could, trying for another shot on the last B1s weapon.
The three maintenance workers fired frantically as fast as the EG-32s would cycle.
The B1 died under a hail of arc and blaster fire.
All three men were left in a stupefaction because of their success and just stared as the last B1 fell over backwards with a clatter of cortosis armor on durasteel.
"We did it," said LebJau faintly, his moustache twitching and eyes dilated.
The twins were also frozen on the floor surveying the room that reeked of ozone and blaster discharge.
The fusion reactor was mounted in a large spherical casing, hung overhead from large struts that had been welded into the superstructure. That thankfully meant that none of their stray shots had come close to impacting it and only some of the monitoring equipment and screens along the walls had suffered damage.
"We did it!"
LebJau practically cheered, jumping up with his rifle held above his head.
Her instincts screaming, she rushed forward and grabbed a hold of the rifle, gently prying away the man's hand from the trigger and firmly encouraging the weapon downward until he had it in a proper grip. Padme gave him a mild glare, to which he gave a chastised apologetic half-grin.
The twins recovered at this point, getting wearily to their feet, visibly shaking as they came down from their adrenaline highs. Huga even had to quickly put down his weapon and gave a few dry heaves, spitting out coagulated saliva.
Cimy coughed and gave a raised eyebrow to her, "Senator, you… handled that rather well…"
"I'm no stranger to this, you all did the best you could, thank you."
"We… you told us what we were getting into. There's just nothing that can prepare you for facing the real thing…" he coughed again, shaking his head to clear it.
"All right, Leb, you take fuel input," Huga pointed, his hand shaking. He deactivated his weapon and slung it over his shoulder. "Cimy, output regulation and I'll handle the main computer."
"How long will this take?" Padme asked.
"Safe shutdown? Two minutes," Huga said as he began tapping on the largest control panel in the room. "Sabotaging in a way that they don't detect when they switch it back on, another few minutes at least."
She holstered her blaster and picked up his energy rifle, intending to cover the main door and their only real exit from the reactor room.
Only to jump back when the blast door slammed shut in her face.
She whirled around to ask the twins what was going on, only to find the computer panels they had been working at were all dark.
"Ah, jaddik!" Huga swore, smashing his fists into the dead panel. "They locked us out. They know!"
"Yes, we do."
A single monitoring station on the wall came alive with the regal, aristocratic face that Padme wanted to shove a blaster bolt into.
Duka Solha's cold blue eyes regarded them with thinly veiled contempt. His perfectly combed gray-white hair reached his neck, with a thick moustache that flowed into a beard but left his chin smooth. It was a style she had only ever seen serennian men really adopt.
"Senator Amidala," Solha bowed his head slightly. "A pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I've heard so much about you from the good Count."
"I have nothing to say to you and am interested in nothing you have to say," Padme scowled.
"Now that is quite rude from someone of your stature and pedigree, senator. We might be enemies, but that is no reason to be discourteous. Oh, is this perhaps because of the fate of your dear Duja?"
If there was ever a time that Padme wished she was Force sensitive and trained to use it as Ahsoka was, now was that time. She wanted nothing more than to reach through the screen and strangle the high-bred bastard.
"Surprised I know her name, senator? I make a point of studying my enemies in depth, no matter how seemingly insignificant and inconsequential they are. Even your three newly acquired associates," Solha smiled at the three men with a knowing look, then looked off to the side, clearly reading from a screen out of view. "Let's see, Huga and Cimy Lilde, first generation Mokivj, born of colonist parents originally from Corellia. LebJau Thind, formerly of Chandrilla, family of first generation colonists. Your local addresses, comlink codes, Holonet IDs… I have it all."
Padme bore the weight of guilt, knowing what Solha was likely going to do next with that information.
"What do you want?" she asked, with gritted teeth.
"Now that is the question, senator. Isn't it? On the one hand, I could just send a dozen B2s to your location and have you gunned down. You may have those EG32s, but they won't help against that many cortosis droids. I could flood the room with fire suppressant, killing you all with the flick of a switch. Count Dooku would certainly reward me handsomely once I present him with your dead body."
"Then what is in your other hand?" she asked, if only to keep the man talking.
"You become my permanent guest on my estate here on Mokivj. You see, I don't doubt that someone of your stature came all this way out here without leaving behind insurance. You have no doubt discovered all that Duja knew and more so, therefore you sent out a call for assistance when you left Batuu. It therefore won't be long until a Republic warship is hovering over our heads."
It wasn't difficult to see where he was going with this.
"I will not be held hostage, Solha," Padme shook her head, glaring.
"Do you really think you have any choice in the matter, senator?"
"There is always a choice," she retorted and slowly drew her blaster.
Solha frowned, blinking at the resolve she was projecting with her face. "What are you doing, senator?"
She raised the weapon and without flinching twisted it inward and held the barrel against her temple.
Solha scoffed, his eyes widening, "Don't be ridiculous! You'd seriously take your own life, instead of being held hostage?"
"As you said, you'd be paid very well to deliver my head to Dooku on a silver platter. However, the Republic will then have a free hand to invade this world and shut down the factory permanently. Not to mention making use of the cortosis. Thank you for finding the mine, by the way. My death will then have been the catalyst for the end of this war. I can think of no better way to die really."
He stared at her like she had just declared herself goddess of the universe. "You- you mean it? You… that's impossible. You can't seriously think it'll go down that way?"
She flicked the safety switch and the blaster's energy audibly whined to lethal firing mode. "It might, it might not. Either way, I've made my choice. What is yours?"
"My choice… my choice, senator. Is to not play this game at all! You can stay and rot there for all I care!"
The screen shut down.
Padme kept her blaster right where it was.
LebJau shook himself out of the terrified stupefaction he had been trapped in. "Uh, s- se- senator? You can drop the gun now… Can't you?"
"He's still watching and I'm not bluffing," Padme said flatly, staring into the black screen. "I hear one droid coming, I'm pulling this trigger. I won't be his hostage or killed by droids."
A whine of plasmatic energy echoed in the reactor room.
Padme was startled so badly she nearly pulled the trigger.
She whirled around and saw what was clearly the front leading edge of a blue lightsaber piercing through the blast door.
It was a hue of color that she would know anywhere.
It felt like her heart both skipped a beat and soared, yet she still had a con to run. Her mind raced and struggled to arrive upon an acceptable course of action. Solha could still kill them all with the push of a button and if Anakin was here, then he'd already been making life hell for the serrenian.
The lightsaber had carved a large hole in the thick durasteel and the newly made plug was supernaturally pulled out with the Force.
Anakin arrived in a blur of movement through it, then reached out with an open hand to make a fist.
She heard the whine of metal twisting and the popping of broken electronics echoing throughout the room.
"Senator," he said in greeting, his stormy eyes taking in her blaster's position. "I've disabled the fire suppression system, you can put the blaster down."
Padme flicked the blaster's safety and lowered it. Their eyes met and after far too long, she opened the door of her mind, letting him in. She also felt Ahsoka doing the equivalent of poking her head in before retreating, clearly very busy.
She basked in his returned presence as he stretched the moment of time.
Their minds intertwined in the warmest embrace she had ever felt.
How she had missed this.
'You were seriously faking him out?' his voice was amused.
'It was working. I wouldn't seriously kill myself in this situation, but I needed him to believe I would.'
'Yes, I know, but things are more complicated.'
He unfurled a string of memories she watched with him. She saw their meeting with a brand new species of the Unknown Regions, saw their infiltration, the problems with sabotaging such an extensive factory in any meaningful way actually had. Not to mention the greater implications of a cortosis mine being on the planet.
The moment passed.
"Wow, a Jedi," said LebJau faintly and then visibly caught himself, panicking as if he hadn't meant to say that out loud.
Padme, aware of her audience, quickly introduced her small 'support squad'.
"Pleasure to meet you all and you have my personal thanks for supporting the senator and Republic in this," Anakin said with a bow. "I will ask that you continue doing so and follow me. We're going to need every EG32 we can muster."
Huga and Cimy looked at each other, before nodding. "As you say, Master Jedi. We've come this far already."
"Let's go!" said LebJau eagerly and rushed out of the reactor room.
They hurried outside, awkwardly ducking through the hole in the blast door.
'We're going to have trouble with that one,' Anakin thought.
Back in the corridor, Padme's attention was completely on the chiss.
It was so strange to see what to her eyes was a pantoran, but with completely red eyes and missing the traditional facial markings. It would be interesting to see a genetic analysis of the two races. Had they been one people in the past, but cast to different parts of the galaxy? The differing conditions leading to divergence.
She formally bowed her head. "Greetings Commander Thrawn," she said in her rather rusty Meese Caulf.
"Greetings, Ambassador Amidala?" he asked leadingly.
"Senator," she corrected.
"Fascinating, are your people in the habit of sending sector governors on spy missions?"
Padme could only chuckle, "It depends on the individual senator."
Anakin emerged and quickly organized them into a column, with him taking the lead, Thrawn as the rear guard, and her three recruits taking up the middle around her.
Their group of six now carefully advanced, taking a right turn at the first intersection, marked with a sign that indicated 'Assembly Line 9'.
A few minutes walk later, they stopped at a blast door that Anakin opened with a gesture.
Without pause he guided them in and Padme gaped at what she was seeing.
It was a huge industrial area, with multiple individual assembly lines, automated machines at each point manipulating, attaching, scanning and painting.
But it was not war droids being assembled here… it was clone armor.
Cortosis weave clone armor.
Her mind struggled to make sense of it at first, why would Solha be building cortosis armor meant for…
Then the realization hit and Ahsoka's briefing during the induction into Fulcrum brought everything into perspective. As usual, the manipulative hand of Palpatine was laid bare and Padme could only marvel at the master plotter at work.
On the one hand, cortosis droids, on the other, cortosis armored clones and in the middle - Jedi.
Solha was probably convinced he was building the clone armor for infiltrators to wear.
Anakin guided them over to a production line that had chest and back pieces of cortosis clone armor. He picked up one set, immediately walked over to Padme and dropped it on her shoulders, beginning to adjust the shoulder straps.
"General," she objected in annoyance.
"It's not going to be a comfortable fit, senator, but at least it'll keep you alive," he said, locking the clips at the waist. Padme looked down and couldn't help but feel utterly ridiculous. The chest plate was pushing uncomfortably on her bust and her waist would clearly bump around as she walked. "You three, grab one and armor up. Thrawn, you as well."
Anakin rushed over to another nearby assembly line and grabbed a clone helmet, which he shoved into Padme's hands.
"Really, general?" she asked.
"These droids could get lucky and we're not just fighting them. Solha also has two others working for him here, family members, and a number of smugglers. We took care of most of them, but there might still be more he can call on."
Padme put on the helmet, seeing his logic, but ended up having to push in her hair bun awkwardly to get it down.
It was a novel experience to actually see what the troopers experienced when having these on. The field of view was generally adequate, but it blocked off parts of her peripheral vision, especially downward.
"Tap the side here," Anakin demonstrated with another helmet, before throwing it at Huga.
Padme did so and flinched as the interior of the helmet came alive with holographics.
It presented a bearing indicator at the top of her vision, which shifted with her head. It showed a small diagram at the bottom left, showing a small humanoid body with green chest and head, but red legs and arms - indicating missing armor pieces. Bottom right it had already interfaced with her blaster and showed how many shots she had left in it.
LebJau was the last to don his helmet and was marvelling at its features-
"Everyone down!" Anakin called urgently. His command somehow wormed its way straight through her brain and into her legs.
She found herself ducking down behind the closest solid piece of the assembly line.
Bolts of blaster fire seared over their heads and blew holes in the conveyor belts, even sparking off the armor pieces.
Anakin and Thrawn returned fire with their EG32s, the snap crackling of the energy bolts echoing throughout the space over the noise of the factory.
"Get ready to move!" he shouted as Huga, Cimy and LebJau joined in firing at the enemy.
Padme chanced by raising her head to look in the direction of the incoming fire but Anakin was already next to her in the next moment, getting her on her feet and they all ran for the door they had used getting in.
She looked back just in time to see Anakin making a swooping gesture with his left hand.
A massive overhead crane tore itself off the ceiling and came crashing down into the assembly lines, crushing six B2s in an instant.
They piled out of the massive room, back in the corridor and ran as fast their legs could carry them.
Things were happening so fast and she hated this cursed helmet!
Blaster bolts were now chasing them down the corridor, Anakin abruptly pushed her slightly left by the arm, whilst she heard his lightsaber slashing through the air.
She barely kept her footing as they whirled around the corner of an intersection.
"Where are we going?!"
"One of the other fusion reactors and causing as much trouble as we can along the way!"
"Why?!"
Anakin only shook his head as they ran.
'Where do you think Ahsoka is at this moment?' he thought to her.
'Oh.'
The droid patrol stomped down the corridor at a hurried pace.
I watched them go beneath me from my position in the ceiling.
Playing cat and mouse in this situation was rather annoying, as I had already managed to sabotage the production lines controlled by the Tertiary controls. Now all that remained was to deal with the Primary control room.
The droid patrol turned a corner and I lowered myself out of my little hiding place.
Pushing outwards with my senses, I waited for the gap to appear.
Duke Solha had set a pretty tight net of patrols to cover all the approaches to his location. Yet it wasn't perfect and he had only so many droids to use. He even had the survivors of his smuggler band around him, including his younger brother and sister - both in their middle ages. All of them were chips off the old block that spawned them, though the sister was clearly not enjoying her time, slumming it in the factory. They were dressed in rugged outdoor clothes, but the higher quality was so ostentatious in comparison to the smugglers, that I could practically see the credits dripping off them.
The gap opened.
Now.
A burst of Force Speed had me down the corridor within seconds, my will reaching out to short out surveillance sensors that passed me.
Their tactical droid was monitoring, but my careful approach was not enough to trip its logic about the blitzes of static from the sensors that were getting closer to the control room.
I turned a corner, lifted a section of the floor and fell into my next hidey hole.
Avoiding the sightline of another droid patrol.
When they were gone, it was another brief sprint, opening the door to a cleaning supplies store room and ducking inside.
Inside was a haphazard pile of deactivated cleaning and general maintenance droids gathering dust, some were in one piece and others had their parts strewn around.
"M8, scan these droids, how many can at least follow a program and move?"
"There are seven, mistress."
"Show me."
In my HUD, the particular droids in question were highlighted; three floating maintenance droids roughly the size of a basketball, four tracked versions of the engineering droid that was often used in the reactor rooms of starships.
"I'll switch them on, you reprogram. I want to confuse things a bit for our adversaries."
Within less than two minutes I had a small squad of helpers who were chirping and gonking at me.
"All right, set them to swarm out of the room, then approach the control room from random directions, one minute after I have left the room."
"Done, mistress."
I nodded, then snuck out and closed the door behind me.
My burst of speed put me within a revolving gap in the patrols and at this point it felt like I was in an invisible moving maze. If I went too fast, I could run right into a patrol, which was just as dangerous as moving too slowly.
At a four way intersection of corridors I took a left, rushed down twenty meters, then ducked right into an abandoned storage room.
I walked to the other side of the dusty space and felt around the wall. There was an active power conduit, a few load bearing pillars, a small AC junction that was too small for anyone to fit inside. Beyond that was another durasteel wall that was on the southern wall of the control room and my target.
Getting there conventionally was possible, but would be an awful hassle, especially when I could just cut my way through here. It was also too obvious a direction to attack from.
All the bad guys were looking towards the only entrance of the control room. All of them were also donning cortosis armor as Anakin's larger team was wreaking havoc. Now that my improvised droid helpers had been spotted by the tac droid heading in their direction, it was neatly confusing things and diverting more droids away from the control room.
My lightsabers floated up into the air under my will and lit themselves.
Their tips pointed towards the wall and hovered closer.
I gave a twist of my wrist for a bit of mnemonic help and the blades began rapidly orbiting around a point, beginning to mimic a drill.
It was rather challenging as I had also had to disrupt any localized sensors in the path of my lightsabers.
The singe of energy plasma rapidly cutting steel and duracrete rang in the room.
When I had a plug of free material, a gesture had it floating past me and I carefully settled it on the floor.
I stopped the rotation of my sabers, sending them to carefully forward cut their way through further with careful slashes, avoiding the energy conduit and any other electronics. I didn't care much about the AC system so just went straight through that.
The final layer was an inch thick durasteel wall, which I cut through very carefully, wrapping my lightsabers in a mild kinetic field to silence them completely. A handy advanced trick for a Jedi who really wanted to be stealthy.
All that now stood in my way was the rear of a large control panel that covered the wall. Luckily, it didn't govern anything critical, at least for my purposes anyway.
Now what would be a suitable entrance?
I grinned.
"Would you stop that?!"
Duke Solha stood like a resolute sentinel and he raised an amused eyebrow at the annoyed exclamation of his youngest sister.
"Stop what?" Gemos gave his sister an unpleasant look.
"Stop pacing," Ralna said through gritted teeth.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said with sarcasm dripping off every syllable. "We just happen to be going up against a Jedi General and not just any general, but Skywalker!"
Ralna folded her arms against her custom cortosis armor plate and glared at her second eldest brother. "We have an entire company of droids that will laugh at his lightsaber. We're activating more droids with every minute that passes. Even if he and his little team have EG32s, they are on the run and soon will be overwhelmed."
"A Jedi is more than someone who just runs around with a lightsaber!"
"Enough," Solha said flatly, giving both his younger siblings an unimpressed look. "Arguing in front of the help is unbecoming of you."
Ralna scoffed and gave the four smugglers standing near the doors of the room, waiting in ambush, a look of contempt. "You should fire them all. It's their carelessness which tipped off that little Naboo spy in the first place."
Solha wouldn't say that he hadn't considered it and then quietly disposing of them in a more permanent fashion. It was just the issue of restarting the entire smuggling operation to bring the necessary resources to the factory, which would cost valuable time. It was pointless anyway, the spikebat had flown the coop. The closest warship the Republic could send this way would take six days to reach Mokivj, once the order was sent. He was hopeful that CIS spies could at least give some warning of when that would happen, but he wasn't counting on it.
All the droids that had been manufactured, just over three months of careful production, were already being loaded into shipping containers. The bulk cargo ships were ready to receive them. The Republic would not arrive in time to stop it.
Even Skywalker and the Mandalorian Jedi herself could not stop what had been set in motion here by his efforts.
Solha took a deep satisfied breath as he basked in the accomplishment of what he and his family had done for the cause. They would go down in history for this.
Even if they would all die right now in this room, it wouldn't change anything. The cortosis droids would fall upon the southern battlefields like a storm and sweep everything before them. The Republic would eventually prevail, orbital superiority alone would ensure that, but it would cost them too much in terms of clones. The CIS would surge forward in the wake of the overstretched and battered GAR. They would sit in space, unable to put boots on the ground, unless they committed naval clones to the ground, where they would be easy pickings for the CIS navy and ground forces.
Even if they hurriedly shipped the cortosis armor sets that had been made for the infiltration of Coruscant, it was barely a pittance in comparison to the amount of cortosis droids that had been made. There was only one production line of clone armor and the Republic would never be able to ramp production up to a level that would make a difference in time.
The south would be won.
That pleasant thought was rudely interrupted by the control console less than a meter to his left exploding.
It was rent to pieces, smoke and debris bursting outward into the room.
He felt his feet leave the floor and his body flung through the air.
His wits were dashed and he heard the odd sound of birds whistling in the air.
Even with his armor, the breath left his lungs as he slammed against something unyielding.
Then gravity reclaimed him and he landed hard on the floor.
His eyes watered, turning everything into a blur, his ears ringing…
He heard an odd crystalline shattering echo through the air, then an energetic whine.
Something fell in front of his face… the smoking head of the tactical droid.
What had happened to everyone? He suddenly had a fierce headache.
Then an armored boot stepped into his field of view and he looked up with bleary eyes.
A distinctive Mandalorian visor looked down implacably at him, a helmet shaped distinctly around the montrals of a togruta.
Every line of that visage screamed death. The end. Oblivion. That nothing mattered. That history would forget them… not even a footnote…
Her hand reached down to his face… The hand of death.
Solha screamed in terror.
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