Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [133]
“Give the Lady Bullyak my compliments and tell her that I’ve discovered a path to allow her husbands and the other boars of the tribe to redeem themselves in truly heroic combat against worthy enemies.”
The sow sat up. Her greenish eyes gleamed like evil jewels in their pockets of warty fat.
“She says that her husbands and the other boars have all become stupid and idle from looking at the computer screens too much, and have neglected their duties to their tribe and to her. She would be grateful to you if you could recall them from this stupid enslavement to the thing in the monitor screens that thinks more about catching vermin than it does about the need of boars to act like boars. She adds further detail that has no apparent connection to the matter at hand.”
Luke suppressed a grin. In his mind he could almost hear Callista’s snort of laughter.
“Ask her where her husbands might be found.”
“Behind you, Rebel scum!”
They were actually grouped in the doorway—empty-handed, for which Luke was profoundly glad. Having paid off the Jawas with the corpse of the G-40 to cut certain power lines, he’d feared his grubby hirelings would be caught in the act.
Ugbuz shoved Threepio aside, sending the droid sprawling with a clatter. Two other boars seized Luke’s arms.
“This outage is your doing, eh?” snarled the Gamorrean. “You and your Rebel saboteurs …”
Bullyak surged to her feet. “You can be brave warriors against a puny little cripple and a walking talk machine,” translated Threepio, rather feebly, from the floor. His voice was nearly drowned by the sow’s thunderstorm of shrieks. “But given the chance to meet and fight those stinking misbegotten soap-eating Klaggs, you all run away like morrts to do the bidding of something behind a screen that never even shows itself.”
Ugbuz hesitated. The Gamorrean in him was clearly at war with his indoctrinated stormtrooper persona. “But it’s orders,” he argued at last. “It’s the Will.”
“It’s the Will that you act like true boars,” put in Luke gently. In spite of the sweat-stringy hair hanging in his eyes and the bruises all over one side of his unshaven face, his voice was the voice of a Jedi Master, reaching to touch the minds of those with little mind of their own. “Only by being true boars can you be true stormtroopers.”
The big boar hesitated, almost visibly wringing his hands. Luke added, to Bullyak, “I have heard that Mugshub laughs at you for having a feeble tribe that won’t fight, and calls you Piglet-Mommy.”
Bullyak let out a furious squeal and, as Luke had expected, struck him hard enough to have knocked him reeling had the warriors not been holding him. He went limp and rolled with the blow; the infuriated sow kicked Threepio halfway across the hold, then started slapping Ugbuz and every boar in sight, screaming obscenities that Threepio, from his corner, dutifully translated in a startling wealth of anatomical detail.
“But it’s the Will!” insisted Ugbuz helplessly, as if this were self-explanatory. “It’s the Will!”
Threepio translated what, in Bullyak’s opinion, Ugbuz could do with the Will, and added, “But I’m afraid that doesn’t sound at all physically possible, sir.”
“Perhaps the Will has changed,” offered Luke in his soft voice. “Perhaps now that a way has been found for you to do your duty as fighting boars, it is consonant with the intent of the Will that you do this.”
As one, Ugbuz and his men dashed into the big hut at the far end of the hold, Bullyak in high-volume pursuit. Luke picked himself up from the floor where he’d been dropped, helped Threepio to his feet, and, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth, limped after them.
He found them clustered breathlessly around the monitor screen. In spite of the fact that all computer lines had been cut to the