“We have decided to grant your request. You can join Siri on Nar Shaddaa,” Adi Gallia told him. He saw a rare crack in her regal bearing as she hesitantly put out a hand toward him, then withdrew it. “I know you will be careful, Obi-Wan, so I should not say it. But I must. Siri is in great danger. She has risked much. Please…”
Adi Gallia was a reserved and careful being. She did not ask for comfort and usually kept herself aloof. But Obi-Wan was moved by her distress and reacted spontaneously. He captured her hand and pressed it between his palms. “I will not fail you,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
The siren blared, then clanged, announcing the start of another day. A day like yesterday. A day like tomorrow. If you survived it.
He had been here only five days, and it felt like a lifetime.
It could be far, far worse for us, Annie.
He understood Shmi’s words now with every cell of his being. Compared to this, working for Watto on Tatooine had been a paradise.
The factories on Nar Shaddaa rose hundreds of stories and were spread out over hundreds of meters. The spice went through a multistep processing system. It could not be exposed to light, so the slaves lived in perpetual darkness. Much of the spice was off-loaded from ships that had made the Kessel Run. Other spice was cut in huge underground caverns. All of it was ferried up to the processing levels where the spice was dried or frozen, then processed into blocks.
Enormous power plants supplied energy for the endeavor. At the end of the long day, the workers filed out from the darkness, almost blinded, only to walk under a sky thick with toxic fumes. Taking a deep breath of the gray, particulate-laden air could lead to a long coughing fit.
Anakin already knew that the death rate among slaves was high. Children and the elders were especially vulnerable. From what he could see, many were dying by degrees.
Security was constant. The slaves were guarded by patrolling natives of Nar Shaddaa as well as droids. Escape was impossible. Even if one could manage to elude the guards and security devices, there would be nowhere to hide. The native citizens of Nar Shaddaa benefited from the slave trade. If they dissented, they were either threatened or bought off with huge bribes. The spaceports of this moon world were tightly controlled by Krayn. There was no way to break out and nowhere to go.
The whole operation ran incredibly smoothly, Anakin thought in disgust. Greed did not make Krayn sloppy.
Anakin had been assigned to gravsled duty. It was his job to transport the cut spice up to the processing levels. It was tedious, filthy work, much of it spent breathing in the dirt and dust from the caverns as he loaded the gravsled. Anakin was not aware of the fact that his job was considered lucky until he accidentally almost ran down a processing worker.
The slave, a female Twi’lek, had stepped back un-expectedly from her position at the loading dock, right into the path of his gravsled. Only Anakin’s excellent reflexes prevented him from ramming her.
She whirled, her long head tails almost slapping Anakin in the face. “Watch where you’re going, schutta.”
Anakin didn’t know what a schutta was, but he knew when he was being insulted. “You’re the one who stepped back,” he pointed out. It was close to the end of a long day, and his mind and muscles were strained to the limit.
She advanced on him angrily, her blue skin flushed to a deeper hue. “Don’t tangle with me, soft boy. Your privileges don’t count around here.”
“Quiet!” A slave on the assembly line warned them in a hiss. “Guard droid.”
Anakin saw a droid with an electrojabber wheeling down the aisle at a quick pace. A red beam shot out from the guard’s chest and circled. This was how the droids kept track of each slave.
“It’s looking for me,” the Twi’lek said. “We can’t leave the line, even for a moment.” Her defiance was gone, and she sounded scared.
The slaves on the line immediately closed up so that the space where the Twi’lek had stood was gone. Anakin reached out and grabbed her arm. “Hop on.”
She did as he said, and he reversed the gravsled and took off down another aisle.
“Crouch down underneath those bins,” he murmured. “I’ll look busy until it goes away.”
“We all look alike to those droids,” the Twi’lek muttered. “If I can slip back in place before it starts a head count, I might get away with this. Otherwise it’s a prod or two with the electrojabber.”
“Don’t worry.” Anakin gritted his teeth. On his first day, he had seen such an assault, on a slave too exhausted to work quickly. The guard droids were programmed to be especially vicious. They did not use “a prod or two,” but employed the jabber until the victim was stunned into unconsciousness.