Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [40]
“Whatever it is,” Face said. “The way I read it, this thing woke up, busted out, destroyed all the droids around it. With just its strength, you’ll notice, because there are no burn marks on the droids in here or on the suspended animation unit. When it gets into other parts of the complex, it gets its hands on a lightsaber and finishes the job. Then it destroys the other droids and the ysalamiri.”
Luke nodded. “That could be it. But how did it get out of this complex? With the ysalamiri dead, we’d feel it if it were still here.”
Minutes later, they had their answer.
Two levels above, on the floor that had been marked MAINTENANCE, Tahiri pointed upward into what had been a machinery-access niche. The metal panel that had been the niche’s ceiling was gone; the edges of the hole were burned. “This leads to a water and atmosphere supply shaft,” she said. “It has pipes in it, but also plenty of open space. I climbed up a pretty good distance; it leads up to a hole in a wall a couple of levels up from the chamber with the red goo.”
“Is the hole easy to access?” Bhindi asked.
Tahiri shook her head. “Not for normal people. It’s about five meters up on a ten-meter wall. But anybody with a ladder could get up to it.”
“Especially obvious?”
“No, it’s on one side of a storage house. Full of carpeting and wall decorations. Really useful stuff. No sign of people there. Why?”
“Because,” Bhindi said, “in addition to this mystery of a three-meter-tall whatever-it-is, we have here a complex that still has power, a complex that’s hidden from sight. It’s big enough to be the headquarters of the first resistance cell I organize.”
“Not a good idea,” Luke said. “That three-meter being knows where it is. He or she may come back.”
“So we close up its exit hole, hide it, maybe secure that approach against intrusion.” Bhindi fixed Luke with a grave look. “Besides, I suspect that you’re not going to let that thing keep walking around out there. Are you?”
“I hope not.” Luke looked up the hole; only a few meters of the water and atmosphere pipes were visible in the dim light from their glow rods. “It’s very strong, very evil. And I have no idea whether we have enough resources here to stop it.”
SIX
Vannix, Vankalay System
The tall man wrapped in a gray hooded cloak entered the shop. His face was shadowed by the hood; under the cloak his garments were plain, dark trousers and tunic of the sort that any laborer might wear. Behind him rolled a blue and white R2-class astromech.
The shop owner, an aged human man with a fringe of white hair and rheumy blue eyes, sighed. He moved his hand inconspicuously under the counter to grip the hilt of the blaser pistol holstered there. He hated clients who preferred to remain anonymous. So often they were on business that invited government scrutiny, and those were the best cases—the worst were when they were here to rob rather than employ. But this one, at least, had brought a droid, which suggested his business was actually in the shop owner’s line.
“You repair droids?” the cloaked man asked. His accent was foreign. Corellian, perhaps.
“We do,” the shop owner said. “We have cleverly concealed that information on the sign outside, the blinking apparatus that reads NINGAL’S DROID REPAIR.”
Apparently oblivious to irony, the visitor nodded. “I want this one fixed.”
“Certainly. What’s the nature of his malfunction?”
The cloaked man sighed. “He has a partner, a protocol droid, and they argue. The protocol droid apparently hacked into his speech translators and now all he does