Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [75]
“A computer simulation isn’t evidence!” Cray shouted. “I can program a simulation like that with my eyes shut! I demand that counsel be provided for me—”
“You kidding, trooper?” demanded Kinfarg. He’d cut the face out of a white stormtrooper helmet and wore the cranium of it on the back of his head, the face on his chest like a bizarre skull mask. The effect was, against all probability, chilling. “No decent counsel’s so disloyal he’d defend a known Rebel. What you want us to do?” He chuckled thickly. “Get a Rebel to come and defend you?”
The Justice Station’s screen wiped. Then green lines of letters flickered into being:
• “All military offensives shall be considered under law as states of emergency, and subject to the emergency military powers act of the Senate.”
Senatorial Amendment
to Constitutions of
New Order
Decree 77-92465-001
• “Without necessary capital powers it is considered impossible to maintain the stability of the New Order and the security of the greatest number of civilizations in the galaxy.”
Capital Powers Act
Preface, Section II
“What am I supposed to do?” retorted Cray furiously. “Fall on my knees and confess?”
• Standing confession will suffice
“Like hell I will, you rusted-out pile of scrap!”
Luke wanted to leave, but knew he could not, even if the Gakfedds would let him. He had come not only to make sure Cray was still alive and more or less well, but to observe the background for clues, to look for whatever hints he could find as to where the Klaggs might be. Apprehension turned him cold as the Justice Station’s screen flashed the new message,
• In view of the prisoner’s intransigence, sentencing will take place tomorrow at 1200 hours. All personnel are required to assemble to view sentencing. Absence from viewing lounge will be construed as sympathy with the ill intentions of the prisoner.
The screen went dark.
———
“Find out anything?” Luke leaned his shoulder against the wall, watching the stolid, bronze-colored SP-80 plod a few meters down the corridor and resume its sponging of the walls in a new spot.
Had C-3PO possessed lungs, he would have produced a martyr’s sigh. “Master Luke, I did try. Indeed I did. And far be it from me to disparage the programming of Single-Purpose units, because what they do, they do admirably well. But as I said, they are limited.”
“Is there any way we can change their programming?” Luke scratched his cheek; he was beginning to get the fair, almost invisible brown stubble of a beard, itchy in the scars the snow creature had long ago left. “Program them to seek out Gamorreans—by the smell probably—rather than spots on the walls?”
“I expect when they attempted to wash the Gamorreans they found their functioning would cease in short order,” reflected Threepio. “And we’re already surrounded by Gamorreans.”
“Not if we went up to Deck Eighteen or higher,” said Luke. Threepio’s search of Deck 17 had yielded him no more than Luke’s investigation of the Detention Block and its vicinity, though Threepio, like Luke, had encountered many blast shields and doors that simply would not open. Luke wondered if these concealed classified areas, or if the Will was trying to herd Threepio as it had herded him. “Could you program an SP to find Gamorreans on one of those decks, so that we could simply follow it? Can their long-range sensors be extended that far?”
“Of course,” replied the droid. “That’s brilliant, Master Luke! Absolutely brilliant! It would take a minimum of—”
“You!”
Luke spun. Ugbuz stood behind him, drool dripping from his heavy snout, staring at him with flinty suspicion in his gaze.
“You’re the friend of that Rebel saboteur, aren’t you?”
Luke’s fingers traced the small circle of focus, gathering the Force to his soft voice. “No,” he said quietly. “That was somebody else. I never was near her.”
Ugbuz frowned, as if trying to match two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in