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By Root 951 0

orient himself with the most ephemeral of landmarks, and his training as a Jedi had sharpened and heightened this ability to an almost preternatural degree, but there were miles of corridor, hundreds of identical doors. SP-80s patiently made their rounds along the wall panels, removing already invisible smudges and stains, so there was no sense in marking his way physically with chalk or engine oil. MSEs scurried on their automated errands, as undistinguished from one another as the carefully cloned bepps grown in Bith hydroponics tanks: Luke had heard the expression “as alike as bepps” all his life without ever meeting anyone who actually enjoyed eating the precise, six-centimeter-square, pale-pink, nutritionally balanced and absolutely flavorless cubes.

Down a darkened hall a square of white light lay against a wall. Shadows passed across it, and Luke’s quick hearing picked up the mutter of voices. Dragging himself along on a crutch, silence was out of the question, but he moved slowly, keeping his distance, extending his senses to listen, to pick out the words …

Then he relaxed. Though they were saying things like “All gunnery ports cleared, Commander,” and “Incoming reports on status of scouts, sir,” the lisping musicality of the voices—several octaves higher than those of human children—let him know that he’d just stumbled on an enclave of Affytechans.

The room was some kind of operations systems node, more likely connected to the ship’s recycling and water-pumping lines than to its weaponry. Not that it mattered to the Affytechans. The gorgeous inhabitants of Dom-Bradden—petaled, tasseled, tufted, and fluttering with hundreds of tendrils and shoots—were bent over the circuit tracers and inventory processors, tapping the responseless keyboards and gazing into the blank screens with the intensity of Imperial guards on a mission from Palpatine himself.

And perhaps they thought they were. Luke had never been quite able to tell about the Affytechans.

Did they know, he wondered, leaning in the doorway, that the levers weren’t moving, the knobs weren’t turning? That the screens before them were dead as wet slate? “Prepare to launch TIE fighters, Lieutenant,” sang out the obvious commander, a frilled purple thing with haloes of white fur outlining the yellow exuberance of its stamens, and the lieutenant—sixteen shades of oranges, yellows, and reds and big around as a barrel—gripped levers in its talons and produced an amazing oratorio of sound effects, none of which had the slightest relation to any mechanical noise Luke had ever heard.

As far as Luke had been able to ascertain, the Affytechans, unlike the Gamorreans, sought to harm no one. Their consciousness, if they had any, was wholly sunk into the dreams of the Imperial Space Service, not divided between dream and reality.

“They’re firing on us, Captain!” cried a beautiful thing of yellow and blue. “Plasma torpedoes coming in on port deflector shields!”

Three or four others made what they clearly fancied were explosion noises—rumblings like thunder and shrill cries—and everyone in the room staggered wildly from one side of the chamber to the other as if the ship had taken a massive hit, waving their flaps and petals and shedding white and gold pollen like clouds of luminous dust.

“Return fire! Return fire! Yes?” The captain’s lacy sensors turned like a breeze-tossed meadow in Luke’s direction as Luke hobbled over to it and saluted.

“Major Calrissian, Special Services. 22911-B. Where are they holding the Rebel saboteur they caught?”

“In the detention area of Deck Six, of course!” cried the captain, out of at least six mouths in exquisite harmony. “I have no time for questions like that! My men are being slaughtered!”

Its vast, flinging gesture took in the doorway behind it. Luke touched the opener and saw, to his shock and horror, in the small lounge that lay behind, the dismembered bodies of four or five Affytechans scattered over tables, chairs, desks. Someone had activated the fire-prevention sprinkler in the ceiling, turning the nozzles so that a spray