Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [76]
“But you was the kid who stopped us questioning that saboteur?”
“No,” said Luke, drawing the Force about him, projecting it into Ugbuz’s limited—and rather divided—mind. He found that even this small and simple exercise was difficult under the effects of pain and fatigue. “That was someone else also.”
“Oh.” Ugbuz’s frown deepened. “The Will says there’s something going on on this ship.”
“There is,” Luke agreed. “But none of it has anything to do with me.”
“Oh. Okay.” He disappeared back into the lounge, but in the doorway Luke saw him turn and glance back over his shoulder as if puzzling about edges that did not match.
Just what I needed, thought Luke. Something else to worry about.
“Let’s go,” he said softly. “I want to reprogram one of the SPs on Deck Eighteen, and there’s something else I want to try up on Deck Fifteen.”
“Great galaxies, Captain, there’s hundreds of them!” The Affytechan second-in-command swung away from the blank screen—they were in the central lounge of Deck 15 this time, bent intently over the dead consoles of games and visi-readers—and fluttered all its tendrils and ramifications in horror. “They were lying in wait for us behind every asteroid in the field!”
“Gunnery! What’s our status?” It was a different captain, ligulate, delicious pink grading into magenta, and extravagant with stalks and tassels. The former captain was in charge of a glitterball console at the far end of the lounge.
“Down to fifty percent, Captain,” reported a tubulate mass of azure and periwinkle. “But we’ve still got enough juice to make ’em think twice!”
“That’s the spirit, men!” cried the captain. “We’ll have ’em yelling for their mothers before we’re through. Can I help you?” The captain’s lacy florets all turned in Luke’s direction as Luke and Threepio approached the two chairs, piled one atop the other, which constituted the makeshift bridge.
“Major Calrissian, Special Services.” Luke saluted, a gesture the captain returned smartly. Though all the screens and consoles were dead—including, Luke suspected, the main viewer on which the Affytechans had supposedly watched Cray’s trial—at least the lights still worked. Luke couldn’t be sure, but he thought there were more Affytechans than there had been before.
“New assignment, sir, which supersedes all previous orders.” As Luke spoke he collected the Force, projected it into the mind—if there was a mind—within that mass of color and fluff.
“There’s been a minor malfunction of the schematics library. Sabotage, we think. Nothing to worry about, but we need to know the location and status of all transport craft on board. It’s a tough assignment—dangerous.” Luke made his face grave. “I’d hesitate passing it on to inexperienced men, but you … Well, you’re the best we have. Think you can handle it?”
The captain sprang down from his chair, a good meter and a half to the floor, and returned Luke’s salute again. Whatever creatures the Affytechans relied upon for cross-pollination, they clearly found some rather strange enzymes appealing; the Affytechans, especially when they moved quickly, gave off an amazing galaxy of stenches, acrid, ammoniac, or gluily musky. In the damaged air-conditioning of the Deck 15 lounge the effect was overpowering.
“You can count on us, Major. Men …”
The Affytechans abandoned the battle midmaneuver and lined up in the center of the lounge, standing at rigid attention while their captain outlined the assignment and gave them a pep talk worthy of the great general Hyndis Raithal herself.
“It never ceases to amaze me, sir,” said Threepio, as the exuberant crew streamed out of the lounge, “the ingenuity of the human species. Say what she will—and I certainly intend no criticism of either Dr. Mingla or her preceptors—I have never yet encountered a droid program capable of the kind of lateral thinking one sees in human