Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [59]
Next to the stall was a chair. In it sat a Bothan male, bound hand, arm, and foot. Leaning over him was a human male in a mechanic’s jumpsuit.
Tam thought for a moment that the Bothan was diseased. There were irregular bumps on his face, on his fur wherever his garments did not cover it. Then he realized that the bumps were moving, writhing.
Bugs of some sort. As Tam watched, the mechanic brought his hand to the Bothan’s forehead. There was an audible crunching noise and the Bothan screamed again. When the mechanic lowered his hand, the Bothan’s forehead had one more wiggling bump on it.
Wolam, where are you? But Tam realized that he could neither wait for Wolam to finish persuading the security forces to come, nor speed that process along. The Bothan might die, a death that truly would be on Tam’s conscience.
But what could he do? He took stock of his possessions. One hand-sized holocam, various data cards, a comlink, a small vibroblade he’d always carried because it made him feel better, not because he knew how to use it well.
And his brain. A brain that didn’t always work in an admirably efficient fashion.
He left the vibroblade switched off and put it between his teeth. He had other tools. The chamber below was dark, lit only by terminal screens. Screams would cover small noises. And he was a strong man—though no fighter, he had size and muscle mass that fighters had often admired.
On the ledge where the moss grew, he set the holocam. He advanced it through its recording memory until he reached one recently recorded scene, then set it to play back on a sixty-standard-second timer.
He waited until he heard another question, answer, and scream. As the scream began, he lowered himself into the chamber below.
Now all the mechanic—a Yuuzhan Vong operative, it was obvious, possibly a warrior—had to do was turn his head to see Tam. One look, one attack, and Tam would be dead.
But the mechanic didn’t turn. He leaned in close to witness the Bothan’s agonies. Tam, at arm’s extension, let go with one hand and swung, but the extra reach brought his toe into contact with the floor. A moment later, when with wrist strength he stopped swaying, he let go and stood.
And knelt. And immediately crept to the side of the room, huddling in the deep shadow beside a bank of unlit terminals. He took the vibroblade from his mouth, positioning it so that its switch was beneath his thumb.
He’d always been inconspicuous despite his size. Now he feared that, even with his best efforts and wishes, he wouldn’t be inconspicuous enough.
“Now, again. Where is the crystal—”
A voice floated out of the tunnel Tam had just left, a woman speaking with a Corellian drawl: “Yes, we’re going to pound the Vong, pretty much.”
The mechanic snapped upright, turning to stare at the hole. His expression displayed no emotion, but his body language spoke eloquently of alarm, confusion.
The voice continued, “It doesn’t matter how hard they hit us. We have twenty thousand years of galactic civilization to draw on. They can’t ever destroy that.”
The mechanic ran to stand beneath the hole, then leapt up.
Tam charged forward, thumbing the vibroblade on. He could see the Bothan’s expression, alarm and pain, through the rivulets of blood that flowed down his face. Tam slashed the man’s bonds, one-two-three, and they fell away from the Bothan. “Run,” Tam whispered.
There was a crunching noise from the tunnel opening, hate-filled words in the Yuuzhan Vong language, then a scraping noise as the mechanic descended.
And there it was, a moment of decision, an initiative to seize or abandon. With it was fear, more fear than Tam had ever felt, even when he had been a Yuuzhan Vong captive and certain that every moment would be his last.
Tam turned and charged back toward the hole. As he