and world-shaping toxins." Baljos pulled off his helmet and tugged the perfumed
patches of cloth from his nose; he took several deep breaths, and a smile broke
out on his face. "Clean air. Thought I'd never experience it again."
The others followed suit. Luke took in several breaths free of the stench
of decay; he felt his spirits lift.
He checked himself before congratulating Tahiri on finding such a useful
resource. She hadn't been happy when she'd returned to the others, and she
wasn't happy now. She stared down into the red muck with an expression
suggesting suspicion, even dread.
Luke extended his own Force senses in that direction.
He could immediately feel the life-form in the tank. It was simple,
undifferentiated. It was also comparatively healthy, though he thought he felt
the slightest tinge of hunger to it.
But there was something beyond the life-form, something below. It was a
twinge of dark side energy. No, not a twinge-though not strong, it was constant.
"Did you find a way down from there?" Luke asked.
Tahiri shook her head. "I looked around for about an hour but couldn't find
the access."
"What access?" Danni asked.
There was no power in this chamber, but a surviving metal ladder gave them
an easy descent to the floor level. Up close, the tank was no more impressive;
it was a rectangular pond of villainous-looking slime.
"I think," Luke said, "that this is a devourer tank."
Mara nodded soberly. "Based on your extensive knowledge of factories and
city engineering."
"Based on something Wedge Antilles said to me once." Luke gave his wife an
expression of simulated sternness. "There was a time, a few years ago, when he
thought he wanted to give up the life of a fighting officer and turn his skills
to building things, fixing things. So he headed a military crew that was
deconstructing portions of Cor-uscant that were falling apart. So new portions
of Corus-cant could be built there and fall apart later. He described something
like this. A huge flat area filled with a living material."
"Oh, that's right," Face said. "You mentioned that the first time I met
you."
"Years ago," Luke said.
"Yes."
"But you still can't tell me when."
Face shook his head. "Official secrets. If you were to remember what I
looked like, who I was then, I still couldn't admit it to you."
Luke sighed.
"What's it for?" asked Danni. "The tank."
"It's one type of garbage disposal." Luke held a hand just above the red
surface. In the light from Mara's glow rod, he saw the fluid swell, just
slightly, toward his hand. "Anything organic that gets thrown in here is
consumed. Every so often, they pump out the goo and scrape out the material that
accumulates at the bottom of the tank."
"Here's the pumping equipment." Tahiri stood a few meters away, looking at
a wall console near tubes that led from the tank and entered the wall, She pried
the cover off the console and peered within, "Why didn't the Yuuzhan Vong smash
the tank? Everything around here was smashed. We know they've been here."
"Because it's organic rather than technological, I guess." Luke watched as
the redness under his hand rose almost to touch him; then he pulled his hand
away and it settled down again. "That's interesting. This stuff is obviously
able to sense food, and to cooperate to reach it,"
"Interesting isn't the word I'd use for it." Face sat down next to the
wall, relaxing. "Baljos, can't you fine-tune that sensor of yours to detect
intelligent, unattached ladies between the ages of twenty and forty?"
"If I could, do you think I'd still be working as a scientist?"
"Good point."
Tahiri, now up to her waist in the hole in the wall where the console cover
had been, suddenly shoved her way out. She straightened, a puzzled expression on
her face. "It's a fake."
"What's a fake?" Luke asked.
"This console. The computer equipment looks real enough, but it's not
actually hooked up to any pumping equipment."
Luke and Mara moved over to look. Luke leaned into the hole and peered down
at the jumble of wiring and machinery within the wall. It did not seem to have
been damaged by Yuuzhan Vong depredations, but he could still trace the wiring
from the pumping controls a mere meter to where it ended in a small metallic box
instead of down the wall to where the pumping equipment had to be. "That is odd.
Bhindi, computers are your strength; you want to dig into this and see what you
can tell us?"
"Sure."
Face sighed. "If we're going to be here a while-Kell, mark exits out of
this chamber, and then we'll set up a watch on the more likely Yuuzhan Vong
approaches."
"To hear is to obey, Great One."
"Appealing to my vanity will not get you out of sentry duty. Well, not this
time, anyway."
Luke returned to the tank, frowning. What was the use of having one of
these without having pumping equip, ment attached to it? Though it would take
years, the tank would eventually fill up with waste residue that would displace
the red organism, might even be toxic to it.
He opened himself more to the Force and could immediately sense the red
stuff again. He could feel its dimensions, could almost sense the sharp lines of
its width and breadth and depth-but in one place toward the center of the tank,
that depth abruptly decreased, as though there were a protrusion of some sort
from the tank's surface. "I need to go out there."
Mara, beside him, snickered. "That'll be a quick, painful swim."
"Maybe." This was a living thing, awake and aware in the Force. Perhaps...
He lowered his left hand toward it again, trying to reach the organisms through
the Force, uppermost in his thoughts and feelings the idea, I am not food. I am
not food.
His hand came down on the surface of the organisms. He tensed, ready to
snatch his hand back, but he could feel the organism go quiet, docile beneath
his flesh. He felt no sensation of burning or any sort of pain.
He took his hand away. His palm was clean; no trace of red showed on it.
Hurriedly, he stripped off his false vonduun crab armoi "I need an air
mask," he said. "Completely inorganic material. Preferably with a faceplate."
"I have you covered." Face dug around in his pack, came up with something
irregular and gleaming, no larger than Tahiri's fist. "My backup. It's a hood
made of transparisteel foil with an oxygen canister. It'll give you maybe five
minutes."
"Perfect."
"Luke, I don't want to discourage your curiosity, but I have to remind you,
if something goes wrong, this is an exceptionally embarrassing way to die."
Luke grinned at Mara. "I'll trust you to improve the story. Luke Skywalker
goes out in a blaze of glory in battle with a hideous red devourer." He handed
her his lightsaber.
Armor off and hood in place, Luke looked over the red pond awaiting him. I
am not food. 1 am not food. He swung over the lip of the tank and dropped into
the goo, felt it close around his legs, rise to his wais
t.
But there was no pain. He moved forward. The stuff was warm and heavy
enough to significantly retard his progress-much like the thickest of the
sludge-ponds he'd struggled through on Dagobah, so many years ago.
In the Force, he could clearly feel the place where the red goo became more
shallow, and in moments he stood next to that point. He turned on the oxygen
canister, offered his wife and Tahiri a jaunty wave, and went under the surface.
Darkness closed on him immediately. Not a job for the claustrophobic, he
decided. / am not food. I am not food.
Reaching down, he groped around until he felt the object he was seeking. It
had a curved edge and was a little larger than some circular steering controls..
. As he felt around it, he realized that it was a metal wheel, solid of
construction, attached to a hub attached to the tank's surface.
It was, in fact, identical to the sort of hatch-closing wheel found on many
types of war vessels.
It wouldn't spin in one direction, but obligingly rotated a quarter-turn in
the other... and immediately Luke felt a vibration in the metal wheel, in the
tank throughout the goo. He hurriedly rose. When he stood up in the middle of
the tank, the goo fell away from him, not clinging.
The chamber was changing.
From the floor in front of the tank something was rising-a rectangular plug
three meters wide by three meters long.
The top portion of the plug was metal plating, half a meter thick. Below it
was stone, and the stone portion kept rising, one meter, two, three, while Luke
slogged his way over toward the side of the tank.
Then the stone gave way to machinery, another three meters of metal
construction, before the whole apparatus clanked to a stop.
Mara and the others were well back from the apparatus, covering it with
blasters. "What did you do?"
Luke pulled the breathing mask off. "I turned a wheel. Something obviously
still has power."
He saw Face glance in his direction and grin. Tahiri, in the light from the
glowrods, looked at him, flushed red, and turned away, staring back at the plug.
Danni joined her in this scrutiny.
Mara suppressed a laugh; it came out as a cough. "Luke, before you step out
and join us, out of respect for those of us you're not married to, you might
want to be sure that you're presentable."
Luke glanced down. His torso was bare. He reached down into the goo. The
submerged portions of his garment were missing, too.
He reached the edge of the tank and stood close to it. "I guess I forgot to
tell the stuff, 'My clothes aren't food, either.' "
"I guess you did."
"Could you pass me my pack?"
The plug was a turbolift housing. Once Luke was out of the tank and dressed
in spare clothes-his black cling-suit, which was more likely to be visible in
the joints and gaps of his false vonduun crab armor-he could see the doors that
gave access to the turbolift within. They opened readily enough when Luke neared
them, spilling bright artificial glow out onto the floor.
He peeked within. The control panel had only three settings: MAINTENANCE,
HOUSING, and RESEARCH.
"Research," Danni said.
Luke snorted. "1 knew you'd say that."
"We all did," Bhindi said. "But I have no objection."
Face brought up his comlink. "Kell, Elassar?"
"We hear you." The voice was Kell's.
"We may be gone for a little while. Don't be surprised or alarmed."
"As long as Aunt Tahiri is going to be back in time for my bedtime story,
I'll be all right."
Tahiri sighed. "He's starting to get on my nerves. Doesn't he know that's a
bad idea?"
Baljos snorted. "He knows. But he's a demolitions expert. He likes playing
with things that blow up in his face."
They entered the turbolift. Its doors shut them in. Luke hit the button
reading RESEARCH.
The turbolift did not immediately move. An antiquated droid voice, coming
from an overhead speaker, addressed them: "State your name and Bluenek
authorization code. You have ten seconds to comply... before you die."
Vannix, Vankalay System
"We can probably manage twenty or more public appearances in the next four
days," Leia said. She was whispering, her words nearly drowned out by her other
voice, the one emerging from R2-D2, who was replaying the recording of an
argument they'd had a few days ago about Corellia's Senators. "I'm not sure what
the anti-jedi sentiment is on Vannix; if there's any significant amount, we
ought to downplay me and promote you. Han Solo, the Hero." She sat at one end of
the most comfortable of the chamber's couches.
Han lay stretched out on his back on the couch, his head in Leia's lap. He
stared incuriously at the ornate floral pattern on the ceiling of their
quarters. "Sounds like a lot of work."
"Politics is hard work, Han. Hasn't being married to me all these years
taught you that?"
"Oh, yes. Which is one reason I'm still not a politician. And I have to
point out, we could do all that work and she could still win."
"It's true."
"In which case the Yuuzhan Vong get another allied world, and we don't get
our submersibles. And I've already sent off for the transport for them, so I'll
look like an idiot."
"Also true. So?"
"So there are two reasons to play sabacc, Leia. For fun, or to make money.
If your main goal is to have fun, losing a little money isn't too bad. If you're
out to make money, and you do, not having fun isn't much of a hardship."
Leia looked into her husband's eyes, suspicious, "I worry whenever anything
that sounds even vaguely like philosophy comes out of your mouth. What are you
getting at?"
He flashed her a trust-me grin. "I'm getting at the fact that you're
talking about playing a fair game. It's much better under these circumstances to
cheat at cards. Better, faster, and surer."
Coruscant
Luke ignited his lightsaber and held the blade over his head, the better to
deflect any blaster damage raining down upon them. But he didn't know what sorts
of booby-traps had been set up on this turbolift, didn't know if it would be
blaster damage or poison gas, blades, or acid, attacks from above or below.
"Mara, cut the door open," he said.
His wife looked confused, eyes flickering back and forth, not focusing on
the door before them.
"You have five seconds remaining," said the droid voice.
"Tahiri," Luke said. "The door."
Tahiri lit her lightsaber with a snap-hiss and plunged its point into the
metal at the seam. The door began to glow and soften, but it was obvious that it
would take far more than five seconds to cut an exit-sized hole in it.
"Authorization Bluenek two seven ithor four nine na-boo," Mara said.
"Accepted," said the droid voice. "Welcome, Mara Jade."
The turbolift dropped. Tahiri, thrown off-balance, stumbled, her lightsaber
blade swinging around toward Bhindi. Luke caught and deflected the accidental
blow, and Tahiri snapped her lightsaber off almost instantly. "Sorry," she said.
"Don't be." Luke shut his o
wn weapon off. He turned to Mara. "You knew
about this?"
The turbolift stopped and the doors snapped open, revealing a hallway, its
contents and walls made visible by light spilling in from doorways to either
side. The hall was strewn with wreckage, pieces of chairs, chunks of ceiling,
fragments of droids.
The air was cool, but strong with the smell of decay; it overpowered the
perfume in Luke's nostrils. But there was, in Luke's ears, for the first time in
days, the hum of air-processing units and other powered equipment: the hum of
civilization.
There were, however, no voices. No distant noises suggesting broadcasts or
recordings being listened to.
Tahiri looked at black scorching on the wall nearest her. "Lightsaber hit,"
she said. Her voice was subdued, a whisper appropriate to this setting. "It
looks like some of the droids got if that way, too."
Luke returned his attention to his wife. "Mara?"
Recovering, Mara shook her head. "No, I didn't know about this. But there
was a chance-I used various access codes back when I was the Emperor's Hand.
Some gave me access to credit accounts, to weapon caches, to military
cooperation. I had a Bluenek Section code I never had occasion to use. It's been
a long time. I almost didn't remember it."
Baljos rose from a pile of rubbish-a collapsed desk, a toppled cabinet, a
spray pattern of body parts Luke thought were more droid components until he
took a closer look at them. "Fatality here," Baljos said, his voice unusually
subdued. "Human female, middle-aged, cut into about eight pieces. Lightsaber
damage again, I think." He turned away from the grisly spectacle. "Danni?"
Danni held one of her sensors in her hand. "There's a lot of
electromagnetical. From functioning equipment, I think. It's masking any major
biological energy, if there is any."
Luke closed his eyes and extended his perceptions into the Force.
He didn't find any signs of large living organisms. He couldn't. As soon as
he began to extend his awareness, he became aware of it, the darkness he'd
detected from above. Here, it was much closer, a suffusion of anger and violent
intent that threatened to make him sick to his stomach. He opened his eyes and
shook his head at the other Jedi. "We search the hard way," he said.
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