Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [154]
“Here goes.”
He plunged the hose into the first of the sugar-water drums, watching the connection between the small pump surge and stiffen with the pressure of the stuff, then, a moment later, the line between the small pump and the large.
Callista called up, softly, to the oblivious Sand People inhabiting the regions above the pump room, “Here’s looking at you, kids.”
They pumped, in all, close to twenty gallons of concentrated sugar water into the Sand People’s water supply.
“Leave it,” said Luke, as Nichos turned back from the door to fetch the portable pump or tidy the buckets. “We’re not coming back.”
“Ah,” said Nichos, remembering that everything was going to be ion vapor this time tomorrow, and shook his head deprecatingly. “Perhaps a touch too much tidiness programmed in.” The next moment he glanced sidelong at Cray, realizing that the jest might have been construed as a criticism—or simply as a reminder that he was, in fact, a collection of programs—but she managed a smile, and for the first time met his eyes.
“I knew I shouldn’t have cribbed that part out of one of those SP Eighty wall washers.”
They stood looking at each other for a moment, startled and not quite certain how to deal with her admission of having programmed him, of his being a droid … then she reached out and touched his hand.
“Think they’ll mind if we crash their party?” whispered Callista when they reached the top of the gangway. The noise from the shuttle hangar the Sand People had taken for their headquarters was tremendous: groaning, grunting, howling; whoops and clatters as machinery or weapons—gaffe sticks? rifles?—were hurled here and there. Every now and then they’d all begin to yowl together, hair-raising ululations that rose and fell in volume and pitch and then died away into raucous shrieks and crashes.
“Let’s sit this one out.” Luke leaned back against the wall, aware that he was trembling and that sweat rolled down the sides of his face, glittering in the chill of the corridor lights. He wanted to sit down, but knew that if he did he’d probably never get up. He was burningly aware of Callista beside him, close by him, as if she were merely invisible and would become visible again later …
He pushed the thought away.
Triv hunkered down, listening but coiled to spring up again, his blaster in his hand. Threepio stood a meter or so away down the corridor to their backs, auditory sensors turned up to highest gain. Awkwardly, Cray and Nichos stood together, as if not certain what to say.
Cray asked, “Will you be okay, Luke?” and Luke nodded.
“This shouldn’t take too long.”
“A bunch of deep-water cy’een herders’d have these boys under the table before they’d even warmed up their elbows,” commented Callista.
More whoops.
“Maybe that’s why they killed that storekeeper.”
The riot subsided. A few broken grunts and shouts, then silence. Someone yelled his opinion about something to his by now oblivious fellow tribesmen, and then there was a clatter, as if of a dropped metal drinking vessel.
“Right,” said Luke. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time. Threepio, get the Talz.”
“Certainly, Master Luke.” The droid creaked off briskly into the darkness.
The shuttle hangar was carpeted in somnolent Sand People. Sugar water was spilled everywhere, soaking into the dirt-colored robes and head wrappings, and several bore dark, harsh-smelling stains on their robes, as if of ichor or blood. A small, square service hatch on one wall was scratched and dented as if hacked at by maniacs—gaffe sticks and spears strewn like jackstraws all around it amply indicated that someone had thought it a useful target to demonstrate everyone’s skill. The wall around the square hatch bore considerably more damage than the hatch itself.
“Swell party,” commented