Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [39]
“The man’s malingering! Everyone had a physical before signing up. That’s Fleet regulations, and there’s no excuse for this kind of thing! Too many damned malingerers on this ship!”
Ugbuz snapped his fingers. Another Gamorrean—Krok, Luke thought—headed for the food slots and coffee machines with the heavy, rolling stride typical of the race while Ugbuz and the others took seats at a table. Luke saw that Cray and Triv Pothman were among them.
Dim memories crowded back from the past several days. He remembered eating, sleeping, sometimes trying to convince his commanding officer to let him go to sick bay when the pain and dizziness got too bad … practicing occasionally in the ship’s gunnery range, though his head ached too much for him to shoot well … with other stormtroopers.
In his memory they were all human.
The white fluffies moved back a little to let the Gamorrean stormtrooper get coffee for himself and his mates, scratched their heads and made cooing noises as they watched the group around the table with puzzled unease. They, too, bore the fading singe marks of a cerebral feed, and Luke deduced that the indoctrination had taken on some species more firmly than on others. One of the tripods stumbled vaguely toward the stormtrooper table; it got too close and Triv Pothman swatted the thing with a vicious backhand, sending it stumbling among the chairs. The aging savant had shaved, and his face wore the hard expression of careless arrogance with which Luke was familiar among the troopers of the Empire: an utter sureness of position, the knowledge that whatever deeds he might commit, they would be sanctioned by those above.
The same look was on Cray’s face.
Luke understood. He had felt like that himself for the past several days.
He sighed, and picked his way between the tables toward them, wondering if he could channel the healing of the Force sufficiently at this point to lead Cray out of her indoctrination. His head ached and every limb felt weighted, but the pounding nausea of the earlier stages of the concussion was gone. In a pinch, he thought, he could rally enough concentration, enough power of the Force, to touch the Force within her.
The Gamorreans—or at least the Gakfedd tribe of them—were obviously born to be stormtroopers. They seemed to have made themselves thoroughly at home: The floor of the mess hall was littered with plastic plates, bowls, and coffee cups, rising to a drift almost a meter deep near the food slots themselves. MSE droids moved over and around the mess like foraging vermin, but were mechanically unable to pick up the dishes and return them to the drop slots that would take them back to the automated kitchens. Near one of the several sets of sliding doors, a stolid SP-80 droid was methodically washing a spatter of foodstains off the wall.
“Captain.” Luke saluted Ugbuz—who returned the gesture with military briskness—then took a seat next to Cray.
“Luke.” Her greeting was casual, buddy-to-buddy. She’d cut off her hair—or Ugbuz, in his persona of a stormtrooper officer, had made her cut it. The centimeter-long bristle lay close and fine against her scalp. Without makeup, and in the olive-gray uniform only slightly too large for her tall frame, she looked like a gawky teenage boy.
“Pull up a chair, pal, rest your bones. You figure the jump this morning was our last pickup? Get us some coffee, you,” she added, with barely a glance in the direction of the two droids. “You want any, Triv?”
“I want some coffee.” The elderly man grinned. “But I guess I’ll have to settle for that gondar sweat those machines are puttin’ out.”
Cray laughed, easy and rough. It was the first time Luke had seen her laugh in months—oddly enough, the first time he’d ever seen her this relaxed.