Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [36]
“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 equipment 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 armor. “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