by Kathy Tyers
Ionized air danced around the figure. “You are going to Bakura,” it answered.
“Is it that bad?” Luke asked bluntly, not really expecting an answer. Ben rarely gave them. He seemed to come mostly to reprimand Luke, like a teacher who could not give up hounding his student after graduation (not that Ben had stayed around to finish his training).
Obi-wan shifted on the bed, but the bed didn’t shift with him. The manifestation wasn’t literally physical. “Emperor Palpatine achieved first contact with the aliens attacking Bakura,” said the apparition, “during one of his Force meditations. He offered them a deal, one that can no longer be honored.”
“What kind of deal?” Luke asked quietly. “What danger are the Bakurans in?”
“You must go.” Ben still didn’t hear Luke’s questions. “If you do not attend to the matter—personally, Luke—Bakura—and all worlds, both Allied and Imperial—will know a far greater disaster than you can imagine.”
Then it was as serious as they feared. Luke shook his head. “I need to know more. I can’t rush in blindly, and besides, I’m—”
Shimmering air brightened and rushed inward, stirring faint air currents as the image vanished.
Luke groaned. Somehow he’d have to persuade the medical committee to release him, and then convince Admiral Ackbar to give him the assignment. He would promise to rest and heal himself in hyperspace, if he could figure out how. Suddenly the notion of battle no longer excited him at all.
He shut his eyes and sighed. Master Yoda would be pleased.
“Artoo,” he said, “call Admiral Ackbar.”
Artoo burbled.
“I know it’s late. Apologize for waking him. Tell him …” He glanced around. “Tell him if he doesn’t care to come to the clinic lounge, we can set something up in the war room.”
“So, you see …” Luke glanced up. The clinic lounge’s door slid open. Han and Leia paused in the hatchway, then squeezed in between General Madine—who stood nearby—and Mon Mothma, seated on a stasis unit.
“ ’Scuse us,” Han grunted. Too-Onebee had approved the conference, provided Luke didn’t leave the medical suite. This crowded little lounge, spotless white like the rest of the suite, doubled as interim storage for cold stasis units. Mon Mothma’s “seat” held a mortally wounded Ewok, who rested in suspended animation until the Alliance transported him to a fully equipped medical facility.
Han backed up against the bulkhead. Leia sat down beside Mon Mothma.
“Go on.” Admiral Ackbar’s projected image (in miniature) shone on the floor beside Artoo, who stood at attention maintaining the projection. “General Obi-wan Kenobi has given you orders?”
“That’s it, sir.” Luke wished Leia and Han hadn’t interrupted his explanation right at the most impressive moment.
Admiral Ackbar flicked chin tendrils with a webbed hand. “I have studied the Kenobi offensive. It was masterful. I have little faith in apparitions, but General Kenobi was one of the more powerful Jedi Knights, and Commander Skywalker’s word is generally reliable.”
General Madine frowned. “Captain Wedge Antilles should be fully recovered by the time any battle group could reach Bakura. I’d thought to put him in charge of the group—no offense, General,” he added, smiling faintly at Han.
“None taken,” Han drawled. “Separate me from the Ambassador there, and I’ll resign my commission.”
Luke covered a smile with one hand. Mon Mothma had already assigned Leia to represent the Alliance on Bakura, and to the Imperial presence there, and even requested that she attempt to contact the aliens. Imagine how solidly the Alliance could challenge the Empire, if our ranks were swelled by that alien military force, Mon Mothma had said cautiously.
“But Commander Skywalker is in considerably more serious condition,” Ackbar declared.
“I won’t be, by the time we can reach Bakura.”
“We must plan for every contingency.” Ackbar’s ruddy head bobbed. “We must defend Endor now, and we’ve promised General Calrissian assistance with liberating Cloud City—”
“I talked to Lando on the comlink,” Han cut in. “He says he’s got ideas of his own, and thanks anyway.” Imperial forces had taken over Cloud City when Lando Calrissian—its baron-administrator—fled with Leia and Chewie, chasing the bounty hunter who’d flown off with Han as his carbon-frozen prisoner. Lando had had to forget Cloud City while he led the attack on Endor. They had indeed promised him all the fighters they could spare.
But Lando had always been a gambler.
“Then we shall send Bakura a small but strong strike force,” Ackbar declared, “to support Princess Leia in her role as chief negotiator. Most of your fighting will probably be in space, not groundside. Five Corellian Gunships and a Corvette will escort our smallest cruiser-carrier. Commander Skywalker, will that be enough?”
Luke started. “You’re giving me command, sir?”
“I don’t see that we have any choice,” Mon Mothma said quietly. “General Kenobi has spoken to you. Your record in battle is unmatched. Assist Bakura for us and then rejoin the Fleet immediately.”
Elated by the honor, Luke saluted her.
Early the following day, Luke examined the status boards of the newly commissioned Rebel carrier Flurry. “She’s ready to jump,” he observed.
“Ready and eager, Commander.” Captain Tessa Manchisco nudged his elbow. Fresh from the Virgillian Civil War, Captain Manchisco wore her black hair hanging in six thick braids down the back of her cream-colored uniform. She’d accepted the Bakura assignment with relish. Her Flurry, a small, unconventional cruiser-carrier retrofitted with all the stolen Imperial components that opportunistic Virgillians could cram on board, carried a Virgillian bridge crew: besides Manchisco, three humans and a noseless, red-eyed Duro navigator. Inside the Flurry’s hangar bays, Admiral Ackbar’s crews had packed twenty X-wing fighters, three A-wings, and four cruiser-assault B-wing fighters, as many as the Alliance could spare.
Peering out the Flurry’s triangular viewport, Luke spotted two of his Corellian Gunships. Riding shotgun above the carrier—even in zero gravity they habitually established a “bottom” to every formation—drifted the hottest souped-up freighter in this quadrant of the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon. Han, Chewbacca, Leia, and See-Threepio had boarded the Falcon less than an hour ago.
Luke’s initial elation over being given command had already faded. It was one thing to fly a fighter under someone else’s orders, with the Force as his ally. Strategy was something else. He carried responsibility for every life and every ship.
Still, he’d been studying strategic and tactical texts. And now—well, to tell the truth, he was almost looking forward to it.…
Whoops. Abruptly his knuckles stung. He heard or remembered Yoda’s soft laughter.
Frowning, he shut his eyes and relaxed. Everything still hurt, but he’d promised Too-Onebee that he’d rest and self-heal. He wished he felt better.
“Hyperdrive stations,” called Manchisco. “Commander, you might want to strap down.”
Luke glanced around the spartan hexagonal bridge: three stations besides his command seat, an array of battle boards now darkened for transit, and a single R2 droid socket occupied by the Virgillians’ own unit. He buckled in, wondering what “disaster” waited at Bakura unless he dealt with it personally.
• • •
On an outer deck of a vast battle cruiser called the Shriwirr, Dev Sibwarra rested his slim brown hand on a prisoner’s left shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said softly. The other human’s fear beat at his mind like a three-tailed lash. “There’s no pain. You have a wonderful surprise ahead of you.” Wonderful indeed, a life without hunger, cold, or selfish desire.
The prisoner, an Imperial of much lighter complexion than Dev, slumped in the entechment chair. He’d given up protesting, and his breath came in gasps. Pliable bands secured his forelimbs, neck, and knees—but only for balance. With his nervous system deionized at the
shoulders, he couldn’t struggle. A slender intravenous tube dripped pale blue magnetizing solution into each of his carotid arteries while tiny servopumps hummed. It only took a few mils of magsol to attune the tiny, fluctuating electromagnetic fields of human brain waves to the Ssi-ruuvi entechment apparatus.
Behind Dev, Master Firwirrung trilled a question in Ssi-ruuvi. “Is it calmed yet?”
Dev sketched a bow to his master and switched from human speech to Ssi-ruuvi. “Calm enough,” he sang back. “He’s almost ready.”
Sleek, russet scales protected Firwirrung’s two-meter length from beaked muzzle to muscular tail tip, and a prominent black V crest marked his forehead. Not large for a Ssi-ruu, he was still growing, with only a few age-scores where scales had begun to separate on his handsome chest. Firwirrung swung a broad, glowing white metal catchment arc down to cover the prisoner from midchest to nose. Dev could just peer over it and watch the man’s pupils dilate. At any moment …
“Now,” Dev announced.
Firwirrung touched a control. His muscular tail twitched with pleasure. The fleet’s capture had been good today. Alongside his master, Dev would work far into the night. Before entechment, prisoners were noisy and dangerous. Afterward, their life energies powered droids of Ssi-ruuvi choosing.
The catchment arc hummed up to pitch. Dev backed away. Inside that round human skull, a magsol-drugged brain was losing control. Though Master Firwirrung assured him that the transfer of incorporeal energy was painless, every prisoner screamed.
As did this one, when Firwirrung threw the catchment arc switch. The arc boomed out a sympathetic vibration, as brain energy leaped to an electromagnet perfectly attuned to magsol. Through the Force rippled an ululation of indescribable anguish.
Dev staggered and clung to the knowledge his masters had given him: The prisoners only thought they felt pain. He only thought he sensed their pain. By the time the body screamed, all of a subject’s energies had jumped to the catchment arc. The screaming body already was dead.
“Transferred.” Firwirrung’s fluting whistle carried an amused undercurrent. Such a paternal attitude made Dev feel awkward. He was inferior. Human. Soft and vulnerable, like a wriggling white larva before metamorphosis. He longed to sit for entechment, and transfer his life energy to a powerful battle droid. Quietly he cursed the talents that sentenced him to go on waiting.
The catchment arc hummed louder, fully charged, more “alive” now than the limp body on the chair. Firwirrung faced a bulkhead stippled with hexagonal metal scales. “Ready down there?” His question came out as a rising labial whistle, ending with a snap of the toothed beak, then two sibilant whistles falling to throat-stop. It had taken Dev years to master Ssi-ruuvi, and countless sessions of hypnotic conditioning that also left him yearning to please Firwirrung, head of entechment.
Entechment work never ended. Life energy, like any other, could be stored in the right kind of battery. But brain wavelength electrical activity, which accompanied life energy into the droid charges, eventually set up destructive harmonics. The droids’ vital control circuits “died” of fatal psychosis.
Still, human energies lasted longer than any other species in entechment, whether slaved to shipboard circuits or motivating battle droids.
Deck 16 of the huge battle cruiser finally whistled an answer. Firwirrung pressed his three-fingered foreclaw against a button. The catchment arc fell silent. The lucky human’s life energy was even now sparking in a reservoir coil behind one small pyramidal battle droid’s sensor clusters. Now he’d be able to see at additional wavelengths and in all directions. He would never again need oxygen or temperature control, nourishment or sleep. Free from the awkward necessity of will, of ever making his own decisions, his new housing would respond to all Ssi-ruuvi orders.
Perfect obedience. Dev bowed his head, wishing it were him. Droid ships suffered no sadness or pain. A glorious metamorphosis, until one day enemy laser fire destroyed the coil … or those destructive psychotic harmonics unlinked it from control circuits.
Firwirrung retracted catchment arc, IVs, and restraints. Dev pulled the body husk off the chair and slid it into a hexagonal deck chute. It thumped away into blackness.
Tail-down relaxed, Firwirrung swept away from the table. He poured a cup of red ksaa while Dev brought down a nozzle arm and sprayed the chair several times. Biological byproducts flushed harmlessly through drains in the center of the seat.
Dev raised the spray arm, locked it at standby, then waved at a switch for the chair to warm itself dry. “Ready,” he whistled. Eagerly he turned to the hatchway.
Two small, young P’w’ecks brought in the next prisoner, a wrinkled human with eight closely spaced red and blue rectangles on the breast of his green-gray Imperial tunic, and a disarrayed shock of white hair. He struggled to wrench his arms out of his guards’ foreclaws. The tunic provided pitifully little protection. Red human blood welled through his skin and torn sleeves.
If only he knew how unnecessary all this resistance was. Dev stepped forward. “It’s all right.” He held his paddle-shaped ion beamer—a medical instrument that could double as a safe shipboard weapon—in the blue-and-green side stripes of his long tunic. “It’s not what you think, not at all.”
The man’s eyes opened so wide that obscene white sclerae showed all around the irises. “What do I think?” the man demanded, his feelings a Force-swirl of panic. “Who are you? What are you doing here? Wait—you’re the one …”
“I’m your friend.” Keeping his own eyes half closed to hide the sclerae (he had only two eyelids, unlike his masters’ three), Dev rested his right hand on the man’s shoulder. “And I’m here to help you. Don’t be afraid.” Please, he added silently. It hurts when you fear me. And you’re so lucky. We’ll be quick. He pressed his beamer to the back of the prisoner’s neck. Still gripping the activator, he ran it swiftly down the man’s spine.
The Imperial officer’s muscles loosened. His servant-race guards let him fall to the tiled gray deck. “Clumsy!” Firwirrung sprang forward on massive hind legs, tail stiff as he railed at the smaller P’w’ecks. Other than size and drabness, they looked almost like the masterly Ssi-ruuk … from a distance. “Respect the prisoners,” Firwirrung sang. He might be young for command rank duty, but he demanded deference.
Dev helped the three lift and position the smelly, perspiring human. Fully conscious—the catchment arc would not operate otherwise—the man wobbled off the chair. Dev caught him by both shoulders, wrenching his own back. “Relax,” Dev murmured. “It’s all right.”
“Don’t do this!” the prisoner cried. “I have powerful friends. They’ll pay well for my release.”
“We would love to meet them. But we won’t deny you this joy.” Dev let his spirit center float over the stranger’s fear, then pressed it down like a comforting blanket. Once the P’w’ecks had securely anchored the restraint bands, Dev relaxed his grip and rubbed his back. Firwirrung’s right foreclaw jabbed upward, placing one IV. He had not sterilized the needles. It was unnecessary.
At last, the prisoner sat helpless and ready. Clear liquid dripped out of one eye and a corner of his mouth. The servopump sent magnetizing fluid up the IVs.
Another liberated soul, another droid ship ready to help take the human Empire.
Trying to ignore the prisoner’s wet face and enervating terror, Dev rested a slim brown hand on his left shoulder. “It’ll be all right,” he said softly. “There’s no pain. You have a wonderful surprise ahead of you.”
At last all the day’s prisoners were safely enteched—except one female, who slipped free of the servant P’w’ecks and dashed her head against a bulkhead before Dev could catch her. After several minutes’ effort at revival, Master Firwirrung’s head and tail drooped. “No use,” he whistled regretfully. “Sad waste. Recycle it.”
Dev cleaned up. Entechment was noble work, and he keenly felt the honor of involvement, even if his role was merely that of a servant who could Force calm the
subjects. He slipped his paddle-shaped beamer into the underside of an overhead storage shelf, with its flattened topside up, then pressed its pointed projection end into the sheath notch until it clicked. The knurled handle, specially made for his five-fingered hand, dangled beneath the flat paddle and behind its rounded handguard.
Firwirrung led Dev back up spacious corridors to their quarters and poured soothing ksaa for both of them. Dev drank gratefully, seated in the circular cabin’s only chair. Ssi-ruuk needed no furniture. Hissing contentment, Firwirrung settled his broad tail and hindquarters comfortably onto the warm gray deck. “Are you happy, Dev?” he asked. Liquid black eyes blinked over the ksaa mug and reflected the bitter red tonic.
It was an offer of solace. Whenever life saddened Dev, whenever he missed the sense of wholeness he’d had when his mother Force linked with him, Firwirrung took him to blue-scaled Elder Sh’tk’ith for renewal therapy.
“Very happy,” Dev answered truthfully. “A good day’s work. Much kindness.”
Firwirrung nodded sagely. “Much kindness,” he whistled back. His scent tongues flicked out of his nostrils, taste-smelling Dev’s presence. “Stretch out, Dev. What do you see tonight in the hidden universe?”
Dev smiled weakly. The master meant it as a compliment. All Ssi-ruuk were Force blind. Dev knew now that he was the only sensitive, human or otherwise, they’d ever met.
Through him, the Ssi-ruuk had learned of the Emperor’s death moments after it happened. Because the Force existed in all life, he’d felt the shock wave of power ripple through spirit and space.
Months ago, His Potency the Shreeftut had responded immediately when Emperor Palpatine offered prisoners in exchange for tiny, two-meter droid fighters of his own. Palpatine couldn’t have known how many dozen million Ssi-ruuk lived on Lwhekk, in their distant star cluster. Admiral Ivpikkis captured and questioned several Imperial citizens. This human Empire, he learned, stretched out for parsecs. Its star systems lay like nesting sands, fertile for the planting of Ssi-ruuvi life.
