by Rae Carson
“We did it!” Qi’ra said.
“I told you we’d get lucky,” Han said.
“The Force heard my prayers,” Tsuulo said. Han rolled his eyes.
“So what are duct rats anyway?” Qi’ra asked.
“Beings who crawl around the air vents and machinery intakes, cleaning them of ash and soot, chemical residue, the occasional life-form.”
“And it’s dangerous?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s really easy to take a wrong turn and find yourself in the intake of a live machine. And sometimes people get a bad cough—the killing kind.”
“Why don’t they use droids?”
“The particulates tend to gum up their joints, among other things. Besides, good droids are expensive. It’s easier and cheaper to just use desperate people.”
They reached the entrance, where a Kel Dor stood sentry, his breather mask wheezing with age and grime. “We’re here for duct cleaning duty,” Han said. “Which way?”
The Kel Dor opened the door for them, revealing a massive, bustling assembly floor, but he pointed right toward a branching hallway. The three of them strode into the factory.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Qi’ra said.
“Me neither,” Han muttered.
“What?”
“I said, I told you it would.”
Qi’ra lowered her voice. “Now we need a distraction. So we can slip away to the basement.”
The air was hot and dry, a welcome change from outside at first, but within moments, Han felt sweat breaking out on his neck. Everything smelled of smoke and overheated lubricant, all tinged with a sharp metallic bite. Parts clanked and conveyer belts groaned. Stamping presses crashed down on metal sheets, and drill bits screamed holes into stubborn joists. Mechanical arms set in ceiling mounts moved blindingly fast, sorting and tagging, dropping adhesive here, trimming away excess there. Through it all, a flock of droids and organics checked equipment, supervised conveyers, cleaned metal shavings and black oil from the floor.
Everyone was haggard and dazed, going through the motions on autopilot. Han didn’t see a single smile or hear a word of conversation. Many were missing fingers or limbs. One Besalisk fellow had a constellation of burn scars across his cheek; he’d obviously gotten a face full of hot metal shavings.
The Foundry was a joyless, luckless place, and for the thousandth time, Han was glad he’d joined the White Worms instead of embracing the factory life.
“Han? Any idea for a distraction?” Qi’ra prompted. “We could accidentally crash one of these conveyers. See that guy pushing the janitor cart?”
She was pointing to a human male, no older than they were, pushing a large cart full of scrap. He paused occasionally to sweep something up. When his cart was full, he’d take it to the smelter.
She said, “We could spill the scrap onto the belt where they’re making those…thingies….”
“Alluvial dampers.”
“Whatever. All those shavings and scrap bits would stop the conveyer in its tracks, right?”
“Right,” Tsuulo said. “But then we’d—”
A scream erupted, overpowering the noise of the factory. Then came a heartrending keen that made the hair on the back of Han’s neck stand up straight. Everyone on the assembly floor left their posts to congregate around something.
A red light came on, pulsing from the ceiling high above, and an emergency siren flooded their ears.
What was that? Qi’ra mouthed, but Han couldn’t hear her over the sound of the siren.
Han smelled blood. A moment later, bodies parted and Han glimpsed a man lying on the floor in a pool of crimson, clutching at his empty elbow socket. His severed forearm lay stiff beside him.
“That’s our distraction,” Han said in her ear. “Let’s go! The basement is this way.”
Han hastened them down the side of the building toward the back, where an access corridor would lead them to a freight lift. “I guess we got lucky again,” he said.
“Our luck was that man’s loss,” Tsuulo pointed out. “The great philosopher Flayshil Crena speculates that luck is a finite thing, to be doled out in increments. Maybe the galaxy’s luck will run out someday.”
“Tsuulo, remind me to never get an education,” Han said.
“Better him than us,” Qi’ra said, and even though Han agreed with her, it didn’t quite sit right.
They reached the corridor, turned right, and came to a turbolift. Han was about to activate the console when the doors slid open and a tall white-haired man wearing a management uniform strode out.
“Blast,” Qi’ra whispered.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded. Then his head cocked as he recognized the siren wailing in the next building.
“Uh…some guy lost an arm back there,” Han said. “Blood went everywhere. Conveyer belt got gummed up, threw alluvial damper parts all over the floor, knocked a few people in the head. The shift supervisor sent us to grab all the cleaning and medical supplies we can carry.”
Qi’ra added, “He said there’s a supply closet this way?”
Han resisted the urge to kick her. When lying, it was always best to keep your embellishments to a minimum.
But the white-haired man thumbed toward the lift. “Down two levels, out the door and to your right. Hells, really? The alluvial damper line? We haven’t had a dismemberment on that line for almost two years.”
And with that he strode away without giving them a second glance.
“That could have gone very badly,” Qi’ra said, staring after him.
“But it didn’t!”
She narrowed her eyes at Han. “You’re very good at talking your way out of things.” It didn’t sound like a compliment.
And that rankled, because maybe he wanted it to be. A little respect from her shouldn’t be so hard. Not that her opinion mattered. It wasn’t like she was his friend or anything.
Tsuulo directed the lift to the basement level, which turned out to be a damp, cluttered storage space for old assembly works. It reminded Han a little of the White Worm lair, with its defunct machines and rusty pipes and everywhere the slick sheen of seeping water.
“This way,” Han said, and he took them to the door that he knew led into the underground bunker, the one where Tool had been shot while throwing the datacube to him. “Be ready for anything,” he said, and he keyed the door open.
The sick-sweet scent of carrion nearly overpowered them.
“What in holy moons is that?” Tsuulo said, waving a hand in front of his face.
“Dead body,” Han said. “So watch your step.”
The room was pitch-black; all that blaster fire must have destroyed the lighting.
“We have to close the door behind us,” Qi’ra whispered. She was right on his heels. “We have to.”
“I’ll fire up my datapad,” Tsuulo offered, and sure enough within moments their way was lit by a soft blue glow.
Qi’ra closed the door while Han took stock. The floor was sticky with blood. Blaster marks scorched the walls. There was only one dead body; Han would never have recognized him except for the ridiculous mustache that still drifted down his face even in death. Mustache Guy was definitely the source of that awful smell. It had only been a little over a day, but he was in a ripe state of decomposition thanks to the Foundry’s hot atmosphere—and the fact that blaster fire had ripped open his belly, spilling his guts on the floor. Tiny rodent paw prints smattered the floor around him.
“Poor fellow,” came Qi’ra’s voice.
Han had seen worse. Still, he had to look away. No sign of the Kaldana woman; she must have been one of the people who’d chased him into the sewer. “Tool?” he whispered. Tsuulo’s datapad only lit the space around him, leaving the edges of the room in darkness.
Han heard—or maybe only thought he heard—a slight mechanical whirring.
“Tool?” he said again.
The sound came again, stretched out and slippery as if coming fro
m a dying power source. “Haaaaan.”
“Tool! Tsuulo, over here. Can you light this corner for me? I think he…Oh, hell.”
Tool was crumpled on the floor, legs splayed, his back against the wall. His head drooped down to his chest, and his welder had broken off; it lay dismembered on the ground beside him. He was badly dented and covered in scorch marks, and the light indicator for his power core was dim, blinking out at irregular intervals.
“Haaaaan,” Tool said, his voice garbled and scratched. “Need reeepaaaair.”
“Help me turn him over!” Han ordered. “I need to open his access compartment.” Qi’ra and Tsuulo bent to help.
They grunted and heaved, but Tool hardly budged. “This is the oldest droid I’ve ever seen,” Tsuulo said, catching his breath. “He has a fusion power core! That’s ancient! I bet a collector would pay top credits for—”
“Less talking, more lifting,” Han said as they tried again.
This time, they managed to get him onto his shoulder. Han ripped open the access compartment in his back and rerouted all the power from his legs and attachments to his receptors and memory banks.
“That’s exactly how I would have done it,” Tsuulo said.
“Sorry, pal,” Han said to Tool. “This will leave you paralyzed for now, but at least you’ll be able to talk to us.”
“Could not move anyway,” Tool said, and Han was relieved to hear the clarity in his voice. “A blaster severed the central servomotor cable in my back. I was helpless even to reroute power. I’m very glad you came when you did.”
“We can fix you up,” Han assured him.
“His fusion core shut down due to overheating,” Tsuulo said, peering into the compartment. “He’s been on auxiliary power all day. Once the core cools off, I can get it humming again. Tool, is it all right with you if my datapad talks to your internal processor? It’s the fastest way for me to run a diagnostic.”
“Please do,” Tool said. “But I will thank you to stay out of my memory banks. I assume you came to get more information about that datacube. Do you still have it, Han, does it remain intact.”
“I have it. Well, Tsuulo does. It’s intact,” Han assured him.
“And we do need information,” Qi’ra said. “Will you help us?”
Tool cocked his head, as if his photoreceptors weren’t working quite right. “Ah, yes, the girl. Everyone is looking for you too. I heard a lot of chatter about you both on the holonet before my fusion core powered off.”
“Why?” Qi’ra pleaded. “Why does everyone want to kill us over that thing?”
“Oh that is nice,” Tool said flatly. “Very nice what a relief.”
“I’m powering your coolant system with my datapad,” Tsuulo said. “But once your fusion core is running, I’ll need a recharge in return.”
“Of course.”
“The datacube?” Qi’ra prompted. “There’s a dead guy with cooked intestines on the floor over there because of it, and I want to know why.”
Han put a hand on her shoulder. “Easy, Qi’ra.” Once she was on a mission, it was all she thought about. She was like one of Rebolt’s hounds with a biscuit. Sometimes, that could be a good thing. But other times, like now, you had to feel your way through a situation. And Tool was not going to talk easily, especially if Qi’ra bludgeoned him with questions.
To the droid, he said, “You’re not supposed to talk about it, are you?”
“I am not.”
“This is very important to you.”
“It is.”
“You threw the cube to me, remember? Because you trust me. Which turned out to be a smart move. I’m back, and the cube is fine.”
“What are you going to do with it,” Tool asked.
“That’s why we need your help. Without more information, we don’t know what to do.”
“Wow,” said Tsuulo, sifting through the data on his pad. “You’ve made a lot of improvements. You’re like an illegal street speeder. Ugly on the outside, but full of surprises.”
Han could swear that Tool was beaming with pleasure. “Thank you,” the droid intoned.
“The cube?” Qi’ra prodded. “Tool, what do you think we should do with it?”
“Give it to the Droid Gotra of course. We won that bid fair and square.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s start there. What is the Droid Gotra?”
Tool said nothing.
“I have something that might change your mind about talking to us,” said Tsuulo, pulling a big metal lump out of his pocket.
“What is that,” Tool asked.
“This,” Tsuulo said, “is a holo-flames attachment.” He flicked a switch, its tiny projectors lit up, and flames danced all through the room, lighting the walls in dreamlike blue. The blood on the floor glinted slickly.
“Oh,” said Tool. “My.”
“I could program it to contour itself to your shape.”
“I don’t know of any other droids who have one,” Tool said.
“You’d be one of a kind,” Han assured him.
Suddenly, Tool couldn’t talk fast enough.
Qi’ra couldn’t believe their luck. First they’d just walked right into the Foundry. Then Han had smooth-talked his way past that manager at the turbolift. And just now Tsuulo had figured out the perfect way to get Tool to talk. Things like that never happened to her.
Things like that never happened to her when she was alone, she corrected herself. But strangely, unexpectedly, she and Han and Tsuulo were turning out to be a good team.
“The Droid Gotra,” Tool said, “is an organization dedicated to droid emancipation.”
“It’s a terrorist organization,” Tsuulo said. “Everyone on Coruscant—”
“You are a victim of Imperial propaganda,” Tool said. “The Droid Gotra has occasionally gone to extreme measures, certainly, but we want nothing more than peace and freedom for ourselves, just like any sentient species.”
Tool’s voice was completely devoid of inflection, which Qi’ra found unsettling. You could tell a lot about a person by how they talked. In fact, she hadn’t realized how much she counted on inflection and affect to read a situation until it was gone. “You must be a powerful group,” Qi’ra pointed out, “to bid a billion credits for something.”
“That bid stretched our resources,” Tool admitted. “But it would have been worth it. We started as a loosely connected group of battle droids, beings who were abandoned after the Clone Wars or repurposed against their will for other functions. But now our organization is large, consisting of all manner of droids, even a few organic sympathizers. We have been working to establish a cell here on Corellia.”
Qi’ra righted one of the chairs and sat in it, turning her back to the mustached corpse. “So you’re a droid with a cause,” she said. There was nothing more dangerous than a true believer.
“The cause of droid equality is the most important in the galaxy,” he said. His words were passionate, but his tone was as emotionless as if he’d said, Please pass the rat porridge. To Tsuulo, Tool added, “I think we’ll be able to reactivate my fusion core soon.”
Tsuulo made a noise of agreement.
“So why did the Gotra want this cube so badly? We know it’s Imperial shield generator tech, created by someone called the Engineer. But we can’t read the blueprints. Not even Tsuulo over there can make heads or tails of them.”
“Heads or tails,” Tool intoned. “I will add that to my repertoire immediately.”
At Qi’ra’s confused look, Han explained: “He recently uploaded some programming that allows him to speak in clichés.”
“Metaphors,” Tool corrected.
“That’s what I mean,” Han said.
The way Han hovered over his flat-voiced friend was…interesting. He really cared about that droid. He had moved so fast, so unerringly, to get inside Tool’s innards and rewire him before he deactivated. Han was a handy guy to have around in a tough situation, she had to admit.
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“You were about to tell us about the shield tech?” she prodded.
“You are correct,” Tool said. “It is a blueprint for a shield generator. A very special shield generator.”
“How so?” Han asked. Content that his friend was safe in Tsuulo’s capable hands, Han pulled up the chair beside Qi’ra and sat.
“It has very low energy requirements,” Tool explained. “Even the smallest freighters or personal yachts could make use of it at a low cost.”
“That’s not worth a billion credits,” Qi’ra pointed out.
“I am not finished,” Tool said. “It’s also portable. In other words, you can disconnect it and lug it from ship to ship.”
“You mean it’s not hardwired into the ship itself,” Han said.
“It is not.”
“But it works just as well as any other deflector shield?” The skepticism in Han’s voice was obvious.
“Han, my boy,” Tool said. “It’s military grade. Able to deflect even low-ordnance proton torpedoes.”
Han whistled.
“Now do you see,” Tool said. “The Empire has a near monopoly on shipped goods, but this technology puts freighter and cruiseliner deflector shielding on par with that of a Star Destroyer. All for a fraction of the price. Small freight companies could actually make a living again.”
“And honest smugglers,” Han noted.
Tsuulo said something, and Han translated: “It’s a great equalizer, Tsuulo says. It puts droids on the same level playing field as organics.”
“Playing field,” Tool repeated, no doubt adding the metaphor to his repertoire. “Yes, it levels up the playing field.”
Qi’ra didn’t think that “levels up” was quite the right idiom, but she let it go. Her mind was churning with the new data and its ramifications. “That’s why the Kaldana Syndicate wanted it so badly,” she mused aloud. “With this kind of shield tech, there’d be no end to their piracy. They could take on bigger ships with more firepower. They’d become the richest syndicate in the galaxy. Bigger than the Crimson Dawn or the Pykes. Maybe even more powerful than the Hutts.”
“Yes.”
“Lady Proxima has no use for it,” Qi’ra continued. “No doubt her intent was to resell it at a higher price.”
