by Jude Watson
Suddenly Mazara stopped and gave them a shrewd look. "Attack droids
don't usually crash into each other."
"Yes, it's an unusual sight," Siri said.
She looked at them carefully. "I've traveled widely. I've seen enough
to know you aren't workers. You took those droids down, didn't you?"
The Jedi said nothing, but Mazara nodded, as though they had confirmed
her guess.
"You are Jedi," she said.
"Why do you say that?" Obi-Wan asked.
"There is word on the street that those who identify Jedi will be paid
for it," she said. "Don't worry, you can trust me. What are you doing on
Falleen? Have you come to help us?"
"We've come to investigate several of your factories," Siri said
carefully.
"That will help us, no matter what your purpose," Mazara said. "You
can take word of what is happening back to the Galactic Senate."
Anakin exchanged a quick glance with Obi-Wan. He knew that like him,
his Master had his doubts that the Senate would be able to stop what was
going on here. The Senate was roiled with its own problems as the new
movement of Separatists was fraying old loyalties and creating new
alliances. Very little legislation was being enacted, and petitions for
help from many worlds were delayed by procedure.
"Have you heard of someone called Granta Omega?" Obi-Wan asked
casually.
Mazara shook her head.
"How about Roy Teda?"
"Yes, of course, the deposed dictator of Romin. He's here." Mazara
grimaced. "Falleen seems to attract the worst of the galaxy, these days."
"Do you know where he is?" Siri asked.
"Of course. He's staying in the kind of reclusive hotel reserved for
the ultra-rich. I learned about it back in my investigative days."
"Is he staying with anyone else?"
Mazara shook her head. "Not that I know of."
Obi-Wan glanced at Siri. Roy Teda and Zan Arbor had split up, most
likely.
"You said that there were deaths at the Blackwater facility," Ferus
pointed out.
Mazara nodded. "And rumors of sicknesses that cannot be diagnosed.
Rumors that Falleen are forced to work in water tunnels. We are able to
stay underwater for long periods of time."
"Water tunnels?" Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin felt a surge of excitement. So they were on the right track
after all. They knew that Zan Arbor was trying to perfect the transmission
of her Zone of Self-Containment through water.
"That wing of the factory is restricted. It's set up for transmission
experiments," Mazara said. "Workers are forced to sign a statement of
confidentiality, and so far, no one has dared to contest it. The penalties
are unknown, but they must be severe."
"We would like to examine that wing," Obi-Wan said. "Can you get us
inside the factory?"
"That is easy," Mazara said. "There are Falleen in the employment
office who will help us. I can get you inside as workers. After that, the
rest is up to you."
CHAPTER THREE
Mazara was as good as her word. She arranged an interview for Obi-Wan
and Anakin that she promised would be a mere formality. Meanwhile, Siri and
Ferus decided to stake out the exclusive hotel where Teda was staying and
see what they could learn.
The four Jedi split up in the early morning. Their breath clouded from
the cold air as they paused in the main square of the city to say good-bye.
"So how come I get to freeze on a factory floor while you hang around
a luxury hotel?" Anakin grumbled good-naturedly to Ferus.
Ferus grinned. "Just lucky, I guess."
Obi-Wan was glad to see the ease between them. Ferus had unburdened
himself on Romin and spoken to Obi-Wan of his fears about Anakin. Obi-Wan
had been both irritated and alarmed by Ferus's insights. But it was as
though passing along his worries had freed Ferus to unbend around Anakin.
As a result, the tension between the two Padawans had lessened
considerably.
"May the Force be with you," Siri told them.
Obi-Wan and Anakin headed off to join the river of workers crowding
aboard cloud buses for the journey out to the Yellow District. They rode to
the end of the line, then hiked the remaining distance. The other workers
were silent, their faces gray and composed. The long, hard day lay in front
of them.
Obi-Wan and Anakin went directly to the employment office. There, no
questions were asked and they were given passes to the main factory floor
by the employment officer, a Falleen named Wanuri.
"We are interested in working in the transmission wing," Obi-Wan told
Wanuri as the Falleen pushed two security swipe cards across the desk to
them.
Wanuri shook his head. "Can't do it, even for Mazara. Word has come
down that no more workers are needed there. The night shift has been
canceled, so everyone will be leaving exactly at six. The last hire always
sweeps the factory floor. Be sure and lock the hydromop and repulsorbroom
back in the utility closet. Here's the card. Be sure not to stay. Two
security officers and droids make a sweep of the factory every fifteen
minutes."
He pushed the card across the table. Obi-Wan pocketed it.
"Great," Anakin murmured as they headed to the factory floor. "Not
only do we have to work all day, we have to clean up afterward."
"He gave us the job as a way to stay behind," Obi-Wan told Anakin. "We
can hide somewhere until everyone leaves. He also told us how security is
handled."
Obi-Wan and Anakin clipped the swipe cards to the front of their red
unisuits, the uniform of the workers. They were given a manager to report
to. He split them up into two different areas of the factory.
Obi-Wan took his place in a line of workers who were checking levels
on machines that monitored the injection of liquid into small canisters. He
could only assume that the Zone was packaged somehow within the canisters,
but he didn't know if it was liquid or gas or some kind of suspended
particles.
He was surprised at how disorganized the factory floor was. It was
hard to tell what, exactly, was being manufactured. Each part of the
factory was sealed off from the next, and Obi-Wan had no idea where the
final product was being assembled.
Deep troughs were cut in the factory floor for the waste, which was
simply flushed down through the floors to outflow valves. If a worker
stepped or fell into the trough by accident, he or she was coated in waste
material. There was no way to know if the material was toxic. Unlike other
factories, there were no decontamination rooms.
The work wasn't hard, just grindingly dull. The workers were used as a
double-check to the machines, which rarely made errors.
The interesting thing to Obi-Wan was that supervision was light. A
tier ran around the upper level of the vast space, where managers were
supposed to monitor the workers below. But he noted that the managers
rarely looked down. They were more concerned with eating, drinking tea, and
joking with one another. There seemed to be no central
authority making
sure everything was getting done.
This worried Obi-Wan. It wasn't like either Omega or Zan Arbor to run
a slipshod organization. Was he in the wrong place?
He confided his doubts to Anakin at the break. Anakin nodded.
"I've noticed the same thing, Master. My work partner said the
managers all changed two weeks ago. The workers haven't had to work as
hard. They're all relieved."
But Obi-Wan wasn't. He was uneasy.
"We're wasting time if this factory isn't preparing the Zone for use,"
Obi-Wan said.
"We'll find out tonight," Anakin said.
But would it be too late? Obi-Wan couldn't shake his uneasiness.
The rest of the day passed in repetition and drudgery. The workers
were bored and worked at half speed, and none of the managers cared.
Before the end of the workday, Obi-Wan reported to the manager in
order to clean the factory floor. Together with Anakin, they swept and
mopped. There was no one to oversee them or make certain they did a good
job. When the buzzer sounded, signaling the end of the workday, Obi-Wan and
Anakin headed to a utility closet. They placed the repulsorbroom and
hyrdomop inside. With a quick glance to make sure no one was watching, they
ducked inside the closet, too.
The noises of the departing workers faded. They heard a lone security
guard make his rounds. Then everything shut down at once. They heard the
locks slam home on the doors outside. The tiny light in the closet shut
off.
They waited a few minutes, listening intently for any movement outside
the door. Then Obi-Wan opened the door carefully. They quickly moved down
the hallway and peeked out on to the factory floor. The machines looked
like sleeping creatures in the dim light.
"We have about eleven minutes before the droid sweep," Obi-Wan
murmured. "Let's head for the wing."
They ran down the aisle, keeping an eye out for the security guard.
They hurried to the door that led to the restricted wing.
Now they were faced with a double-coded lock.
"Our swipe card will work if we can override the code," Obi-Wan said.
"We don't want to tip anyone off that we were here."
He worked at the keypad for several minutes. "Master, the droid sweep.
"
Frustrated, Obi-Wan tried another combination. He had studied codes at
the Temple with the great Jedi Master Nan Latourain, but this code was
proving too difficult for him.
"Master!"
Obi-Wan jumped away as he heard the whirr of the droids. He and Anakin
hid behind a gravsled as the droids swept by, their surveillance unit
revolving steadily. As soon as they were gone, the Jedi re-emerged.
Obi-Wan attacked the keypad again.
"Let me try," Anakin suggested.
Obi-Wan stepped aside. He watched Anakin work. He felt Anakin call
upon the Force. The Force grew around them, pulsing and shimmering, but the
Force could not unlock keypads.
"We're stuck," Anakin said. "There has to be another way."
Obi-Wan felt the same uneasiness, the same sense of urgency, he had
felt earlier today.
Suddenly in his mind, he saw Qui-Gon Jinn's easy smile.
You know the answer. Why don't you trust it?
Obi-Wan withdrew his lightsaber and slashed through the lock in one
motion. The door swung open.
"Well, that's one way," Anakin commented.
They found themselves in a short hallway with another security door.
Obi-Wan didn't hesitate this time, but buried his lightsaber in the
durasteel. It peeled away in a glowing arc of light and smoke.
They hurried through. They were now in a large room that served as a
laboratory. Anakin quickly headed to the console, where he thought the
files might be kept. Obi-Wan made a survey of the room.
"There are valves here that go to tunnels," he told Anakin. "Big
enough to walk in. I suspect that despite the laws, they experimented on
the workers themselves."
"They did," Anakin said, reading from the files. "Different levels of
the Zone. The four worker deaths were from overexposure. They were trying
to calibrate exact amounts for large crowds. Thousands at once. This
factory is definitely Omega's. Zan Arbor can't be far off."
Obi-Wan strode over to read over Anakin's shoulder.
"Zan Arbor had already perfected one-on-one transmission," Obi-Wan
said. "But this indicates she's searching for a way to infect a whole city.
"
"So we were right," Anakin said. "The proof is in these files."
Obi-Wan pointed to the bottom of the file.
TRACK A EXPERIMENT VOIDED.
TRACK B EXPERIMENT BEGUN.
"Track A and Track B? I wonder what that means," he said.
"This science is over my head," Anakin said, flipping through the
holofile. "We'll have to get inspectors in."
"We have enough evidence to go straight to the Supreme Chancellor,"
Obi-Wan said. "That's the only way things get done, these days."
Anakin looked at his chrono. "We have another six minutes before the
next droid sweep."
"Let's check out the tunnel."
Quickly they opened the valve and stepped inside the tunnel. They
walked down, using their glow rods for illumination. Vents were spaced
evenly on the tunnel walls, and the plastoid sides were smooth.
Obi-Wan stepped over to the side and peered into a vent. "I see some
ducts and hoses. This must be how the Zone is administered," he said. He
stepped away to study a schematic drawing that was light-lasered onto the
wall. Tunnels branched out from the main tunnel, and it appeared to be an
extensive system.
"The tunnels go on for whole kilometers," Obi-Wan said, surprised.
"Enough to approximate an entire small city, right here in the factory.
This tunnel dips underground and joins the main system. It connects to
other smaller tunnels..."
Anakin cocked his head. "Master..."
"It's so detailed. I wonder if it's based on an actual city system....
"
"Master." Anakin's voice was urgent now.
Obi-Wan turned. "The droids? I doubt they sweep the tunnels."
"Not droids," Anakin said. "Water."
Obi-Wan whipped around just as a wall of water rushed down the tunnel.
His feet were swept out from under him and he was propelled forward,
smashing against the side of the tunnel and then somersaulting out of
control against the power of the water. He fought his way to the surface,
kicking and stroking. Once his head cleared, he saw Anakin nearby. They
were careening down the tunnel with the force of the current.
"Aqua breathers!" Obi-Wan shouted.
He drew his out of his utility belt. Anakin did the same. At least
they would not drown. But it would be impossible to fight their way back up
the tunnel against the water. On the drawing, the tunnel seemed simply to
end in bedrock. They would be smashed against it at this rate.
Then Obi-Wan heard a worse noise, one he hadn't expected. Fighting the
pull of the water, he thrashed around until he was facing behind him, the
way they had come. At first he could only see the wall of churning wate
r,
waves of it coming toward him. Then he realized what was happening.
The tunnel was imploding behind them. In another few seconds, they
would be crushed in the collapse.
CHAPTER FOUR
Anakin saw the danger at the same time as his Master. He did not waste
time worrying. His gaze raked the tunnel sides, looking for a way to
escape, even as the torrent of water turned him end over end in a tumbling
motion that left him dizzy.
Most of the vents were too small, but Anakin remembered something. He
had glanced only briefly at the schematic plan, but he remembered a larger
vent that came a quarter-kilometer from the end of the tunnel. It had
connected to another tunnel that had seemed to come to a dead end. But it
would have to do. That would be their only chance to escape the water. That
is, if the side tunnels had not been flooded as well.
But how far had they traveled? Which vent was the right one?
Obi-Wan must have had the same thought, but Anakin's Master had
