“This way!” he yelled, and swept the light again, picking up, far off in the darkness, what looked like human artifacts: a raised path among the dead caldera, a barely seen trace of stairs, and, at the top of a low black rise, outlined in the jeweled glow of colored lichen, a circle of stone pillars.
“We can pick ’em off the path!”
The second group of attackers was already halfway to the head of the path. Han leaned into his dash, the Wookiee loping ahead of him on his longer legs, their original attackers a feral pack not four meters behind. The first of the new group reached the path at the same moment as Chewbacca, slashing at the Wookiee with a metal bar stolen from some ancient workshop. Chewbacca fired his bowcaster and the impact knocked the attacker backward into an old mud pit, filled with what Han had at first taken for a pale, delicate formation of curled and cranial-looking sinter or limestone.
As the attacker—a Mluki, he looked as if he had been, before madness and neglect had turned him into a screaming beast—went sprawling into the pit, the limestone formation came alive, a sudden heaving of rippling membranes, thrashing layers of fleshy, carnivorous mold. The Mluki, bleeding already from Chewbacca’s energy bolt, rolled over and tried to get up, tried to run, but the thing in the pit gripped it with tentacles like elastic white snakes, dragging it down …
The whitish membranes, like a heaving flower or a mass of writhing tripe, slowly turned red, a color that spread among the membranes to the edges of the pit.
Han and Chewie fled past, the path narrowing among crater after crater filled with the carnivorous pit-mold, which rippled furiously and reached for their feet with snakelike tentacles. Behind in the darkness more shrieks resounded, but Han dared not look back to see what other creatures were emerging from the darkness in pursuit.
At the top of the path, in the circle of pillars, was a well.
A low curb surrounded the ten-foot hole. Below, Han could hear the rushing of water, feel the relative coolness of the rising air damp on his burned face. By the white glow of the luminator he could see the things shambling up the path behind them, mouths open and shrieking from hairy, scarred, madness-twisted faces. Some still wore the rags of what had been clothing, and waved makeshift knives and clubs. Some had been human.
Their eyes were crazed blanks. Drub McKumb’s eyes.
They were coming fast. What had been a Gotal got too close to the edge of the path and was seized by a tentacle from the pit-mold alongside; the others didn’t even look back as it was dragged screaming into a mountain of shuddering membranes. Chewbacca’s first shot with the blaster rifle took out a hirsute skeleton that had been a Whiphid; his second missed and blew half-cooled mud from a minor crater like an explosion of steaming goo over everything in sight. The ground shook again, like a sullen warning. Flame sprang up from the mud pits and hot liquid began to creep out in glowing trickles.
None of the attackers even noticed.
Even with both of them shooting, Han knew, they’d never hit them all before they were overwhelmed.
There was no path down from the mound.
“Down the well!”
Chewie roared in protest.
“Down the well! There’s a way out, that water’s flowing, I can hear it …”
Whether the way out included space to breathe was problematical, of course.
A horrible Devaronian fell on Chewbacca, its arm already torn off by blaster fire, rending at him with a chunk of broken steel. Chewbacca flung it back into the others, fired another blast to cover them while Han sprang up on the well curb and flashed the light down at the water.
Five meters or so. As he’d thought, it wasn’t a well so much as a shaft into an underground stream.
He stepped off the edge and dropped.
The water was hot, just below scalding—only contrast with air superheated by the surrounding rock had made the updraft feel cool—and the current vicious. Han clung to the worn stone of the low arch in the well’s side until he heard Chewbacca’s heavy splash and reassuring growl. Then the water tore his grip free, swirled him along in utter blackness, pounding him against rock, pelting like a millrace to smash him breathless on some unseen obstacle.
Bars. There were bars across the stream’s course.
Water slammed into his face, and he felt/heard the splash of something else striking the bars. He groped and felt the reassuring touch of soaked fur.
Chewbacca congratulated him on the excellence of his escape arrangements.
“Don’t get smart on me, Chewie, I got us out of the cave, didn’t I?” As he spoke he felt for a foothold, a handhold, anything he could find in the bars, stretched and felt his way up along the corroded metal. The bars ended in a slit in the rock ceiling a half meter above the surface of the water, a slit into which he could barely fit his hand. As he worked his fingers in, they brushed something leggy and chitinous that moved sharply, and he jerked his hand back with a cry of disgust. “Let’s try down the other way.”
Taking a deep breath, he turned over, climbed down the bars. They went deep, deep, the current crushing his body against them, always more blackness, always more water …
What was he going to do if they went deeper than he could climb on a single breath?
The thought made him panic, drag himself down and farther down.
Rock. And a space of about thirty centimeters, gouged in the bottom of the streambed by the vicious race of water over the years.
He snaked his body through, climbed desperately, wondering what he’d do if he became disoriented, climbed sideways, climbed down again, got swept away by the current that was dragging him, clutching him, sweeping him on into blackness.
He thought, I may not survive this one.
His head broke water just as he thought he couldn’t hold his breath another second. He felt weak, sickened, but at least he could hook his arms through the spaces between the bars and not rely on the dwindling strength of his hands. “Down at the bottom,” he gasped. “Way down.”
The water ripped him away.
Han and Chewbacca lay for a long time on the grass beside the warm spring, gasping for air like half-drowned vermin belched from some Coruscant sewer. Far off, a dim gold low-power light marked where a path lay. Phosphor bugs played like truant diamonds among the trees. The smell of bowvine fruit and damp grass almost drowned the faint, putrid whiff of sulfur from the stream. Skreekers and peepers made a tiny bass line under the warbling of a night-bird in the orchard.
Han rolled over, threw up a considerable quantity of water, and said, “I’m getting too old for this.”
Chewbacca concurred.
At least they wouldn’t catch cold, Han reflected. The river that ran from Plett’s Well was hotter than bathwater and the air around it not much cooler. Vapor wraiths surrounded them from the hotter springs that came to the surface lower in the orchard, piped from the cellars of the ancient houses. He wondered if they’d get into much trouble just falling asleep where they were.
But he recalled something about what had happened in the crypts, and decided that might not be such a good idea.
With considerable effort, and some misgivings, he propped himself up on his elbows.
“You notice something about our pals back in the crypts, Chewie?”
The Wookiee’s sardonic reply made Han wonder why some people said the species had no sense of humor.
“When the second and third and fourth batches showed up,” said Han quietly, “they knew where to find us.”
Chewie was silent. For certain species of cave apes—perhaps even for Wookiees—this would have been no oddity. Smell, and echolocation, were highly developed in races and species used to the dark.
But these, Han had seen, were not members of those races and species, unless you counted the Gotal, who had been one of the first batch of attackers. They were, he suspected, exactly what Drub McKumb had been: smugglers, or friends of smugglers, who had heard the rumors about the crypts that weren’t supposed to exis
t, who had their “calculations.” Who had gone seeking the source of the xylen chips and gold wire that had formed the basis of Nubblyk the Slyte’s brief wealth, and had found … what?
“C’mon, Chewie,” he said tiredly. “Let’s get home.”
Chapter 11
Watching Cray’s face, Luke tried to ascertain whether she had remembered who she was, whether she was still under the influence of the Will’s programming.
From the small image in the section lounge vidscreen, it wasn’t easy to tell. Bruises marked her cheeks and chin and her shoulder, visible through a tear in her tunic; her pale hair was stiff with sweat and grime. But her eyes, as two Klagg boars pulled her the length of the displayed chamber to the small black podium of the Justice Station, were desperate, hard with fury and frustration.
“Soap-lovin’ Klagg!” howled Ugbuz, standing by the table at Luke’s side. “Prissy-butt!” “Flower-nose!” “Cabbage-eater!” yelled the other Gakfedds, clustered close around the vidscreen in the dim confines of the lounge.
Though disheveled and exhausted, aside from her bruises Cray looked unhurt. In his utterly fruitless search of the Detention Block on Deck 6, Luke had been haunted by the dread that the Will had implanted in the Klaggs the notion that as a Rebel saboteur, Cray had to be interrogated, and this nightmare had kept him combing the corridors around the Main Block for several additional hours until he’d made certain that Cray had never been there, the Klaggs had never been there, and all the interrogator droids remained in their original places, still hooked to their chargers on the walls.
He’d disconnected them and pulled whatever wiring he could reach.
Though ultimately reassuring, the search had been far from pleasant, and, knowing the Gamorreans, Luke was aware that it was perfectly possible they’d preferred to dispense with the interrogator droids and do it themselves.
It didn’t look as if they had, though.
Ugbuz poked Luke in the ribs with an elbow like a battering ram and pointed to the fat white Klagg boar standing next to the Justice Station’s cold black viewscreen. “Kinfarg,” he explained in an undertone. “Captain of the stinkin’ Klagg sons of sows.” He added commentary on Captain Kinfarg’s personal habits, which Luke suspected were purely speculative. The Gakfedds jeered and catcalled as Kinfarg swaggered up the aisle to take his position next to the podium, but when he began to speak they fell silent, as if by magic.
“What made you turn against your vow to the Imperial Service and join the Rebels, Trooper Mingla?”
Cray straightened up. Luke wondered where Nichos was—the cameras were focused solely on the Justice Station—and whether he was in the room with her, still held to inactivity by his restraining bolt.
“It has yet to be established that I have done anything of the sort, Commander Kinfarg.”
The Gakfedds around Luke hooted and whistled derisively, except for those engaged in trying to prevent the half dozen Talz and the small herd of tripods from escaping the section lounge in which they sat.
“You stupid yammerheads, you gotta watch this!” Krok was growling. “It’s the Will!”
The Talz scratched their heads, wuffled a little, and tried the other door, with much the same results. The tripods just wandered dazedly around, bumping now and then into the furniture or into the stolid ranks of the forty-five Kitonaks whom the Gamorreans had carried laboriously in, standing them like squashy, yeast-colored statues in the rear half of the lounge.
The Gakfedds at least were taking the Will’s orders that everyone watch very seriously.
Presumably, thought Luke, the Affytechans were gathered around a screen in some other lounge. There was a good chance they’d forgotten to switch that screen on, of course, but to the Affytechans it wouldn’t matter.
“That will now be established,” Kinfarg said to Cray. It was still strange beyond words to hear excellent, if colloquial and a little slurred, Basic coming out of those bestial, snouted faces.
Behind him on the black podium screen, green letters rippled to life.
• You are a known associate of other Rebel spies and saboteurs
• You have assisted saboteurs on this vessel in damaging the fabric of this vessel and thus jeopardizing its mission
• You have attempted violence against officers of this vessel in the course of their rightful duties
• You were seen attempting to damage weaponry and landing vessels necessary to the completion of this mission
“That’s a lie!” cried Cray furiously. “It’s all lies! Show me one piece of evidence …”
• You are a known associate of other Rebel spies and saboteurs
1. Your name was given by Rebel spies taken in a raid on Algarian
2. Holograms and retina prints given by the government of Bespin after a Rebel raid match yours
3. You were taken prisoner in a raid on a group of known dissidents and troublemakers on board this vessel
“That’s a complete and absolute falsehood!” Cray was almost in tears of fury. “Not a single one of those allegations is correct, nor are they backed up with evidence—”
“Shut up, trooper!” Kinfarg struck her again, with the same casual violence as before, though Cray saw it coming and rolled with it this time. “ ’Course there’s evidence. Wouldn’t be in the computer without evidence.”
“I insist that the evidence be presented!”
Luke closed his eyes. He knew what was coming.
When he opened them again he saw that the Justice Station’s screen had blandly displayed a screenwide and infinitesimally tiny reproduction of forms, reports, finger- and retina-print dupes, and tiny holo screens of Cray’s image and the images of various “Rebels” talking in minute, tinny voices about Cray’s involvement in Rebel activities.
“A computer simulation isn’t evidence!” Cray shouted. “I can program a simulation like that with my eyes shut! I demand that counsel be provided for me—”
“You kidding, trooper?” demanded Kinfarg. He’d cut the face out of a white stormtrooper helmet and wore the cranium of it on the back of his head, the face on his chest like a bizarre skull mask. The effect was, against all probability, chilling. “No decent counsel’s so disloyal he’d defend a known Rebel. What you want us to do?” He chuckled thickly. “Get a Rebel to come and defend you?”
The Justice Station’s screen wiped. Then green lines of letters flickered into being:
• “All military offensives shall be considered under law as states of emergency, and subject to the emergency military powers act of the Senate.”
Senatorial Amendment
to Constitutions of
New Order
Decree 77-92465-001
• “Without necessary capital powers it is considered impossible to maintain the stability of the New Order and the security of the greatest number of civilizations in the galaxy.”
Capital Powers Act
Preface, Section II
“What am I supposed to do?” retorted Cray furiously. “Fall on my knees and confess?”
• Standing confession will suffice
“Like hell I will, you rusted-out pile of scrap!”
Luke wanted to leave, but knew he could not, even if the Gakfedds would let him. He had come not only to make sure Cray was still alive and more or less well, but to observe the background for clues, to look for whatever hints he could find as to where the Klaggs might be. Apprehension turned him cold as the Justice Station’s screen flashed the new message,
• In view of the prisoner’s intransigence, sentencing will take place tomorrow at 1200 hours. All personnel are required to assemble to view sentencing. Absence from viewing lounge will be construed as sympathy with the ill intentions of the prisoner.
The screen went dark.
———
“Find out anything?” Luke leaned his shoulder against the wall, watching the stolid, bronze-colored SP-80 plod a few meters down the corridor and resume its sponging of the walls in a
new spot.
Had C-3PO possessed lungs, he would have produced a martyr’s sigh. “Master Luke, I did try. Indeed I did. And far be it from me to disparage the programming of Single-Purpose units, because what they do, they do admirably well. But as I said, they are limited.”
“Is there any way we can change their programming?” Luke scratched his cheek; he was beginning to get the fair, almost invisible brown stubble of a beard, itchy in the scars the snow creature had long ago left. “Program them to seek out Gamorreans—by the smell probably—rather than spots on the walls?”
“I expect when they attempted to wash the Gamorreans they found their functioning would cease in short order,” reflected Threepio. “And we’re already surrounded by Gamorreans.”
“Not if we went up to Deck Eighteen or higher,” said Luke. Threepio’s search of Deck 17 had yielded him no more than Luke’s investigation of the Detention Block and its vicinity, though Threepio, like Luke, had encountered many blast shields and doors that simply would not open. Luke wondered if these concealed classified areas, or if the Will was trying to herd Threepio as it had herded him. “Could you program an SP to find Gamorreans on one of those decks, so that we could simply follow it? Can their long-range sensors be extended that far?”
“Of course,” replied the droid. “That’s brilliant, Master Luke! Absolutely brilliant! It would take a minimum of—”
“You!”
Luke spun. Ugbuz stood behind him, drool dripping from his heavy snout, staring at him with flinty suspicion in his gaze.
“You’re the friend of that Rebel saboteur, aren’t you?”
Luke’s fingers traced the small circle of focus, gathering the Force to his soft voice. “No,” he said quietly. “That was somebody else. I never was near her.”
Ugbuz frowned, as if trying to match two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in his mind. “Oh.” He turned and started back for the door of the lounge—the Talz were wandering out, wuffing to one another and shaking their soft white heads, heading en masse for the mess hall a few doors down. Then he turned back.
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi Page 17
