Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [34]
And its smelly seats.
Zekk’s eyes opened. “Are we on Corellia yet?” His voice was pitched as a whisper.
Jaina shook her head. “Not for several hours.”
His eyes closed. Then they reopened. “Are we on Corellia yet?”
Despite herself, Jaina grinned. “Why don’t you go play outside for a while?”
CORUSCANT
There was a lot of open floor space between the office and dormitory portions of the room, and Wedge made use of it, taking his rolling chair there and playing a new game. Sitting facing one wall, he would suddenly stand, propelling his chair backward with his knees, and then turn to see how close he’d come to placing the chair near a mark he’d made on the floor.
At exact six-hour intervals, Titch came in with Wedge’s meals. When at the office desks, Wedge habitually sat at the one closest to the outer door, with his back to the door; he thought of it as the number one desk. Every six standard hours, morning, noon, and evening, Titch brought Wedge’s food and drink to the next desk to the left, the one Wedge thought of as the number two desk, and set the meal down there.
The first time Titch entered while Wedge was playing his rolling-chair game, Titch paid him no special attention. This was exactly what Wedge expected; Titch, Barthis, and possibly more security officers had to be watching his activities on hidden holocams, and so were already aware of Wedge’s new preoccupation. Titch merely set Wedge’s meal down in the usual place, then gave the older officer a condescending, pitying shake of the head before walking out the door and letting it slide shut behind him.
Wedge grinned after him.
Six hours later, minutes before the evening meal was due to arrive, Wedge sat at his usual desk, the terminal alive before him. Of course, it didn’t give him access to the worldwide datanet; that would defeat the purpose of his captivity. But it did apparently sample the datanet once or twice a day, allowing Wedge to follow Coruscant and galactic news, and offered a wide variety of thirty-year-old games and battle simulation programs. Now he brought up one of those simulations—this one allowing him to re-create, at squad-action level, the ambush of Rebel Alliance ships at Derra IV, an action that had taken place before either of his captors had been born—and began playing it through from the Rebel side.
The little chron at the top right of the terminal screen told him that he had five minutes to wait before his next meal would arrive.
He took a sip from his tumbler of water, untouched since his noon meal arrived. It was still almost full. Slowly, his attention still apparently full on the battle simulation before him, he lowered the hand with the tumbler to his lap. He positioned it under the lip of the desk until it was beneath desk number two, and then, with excruciating, silent care, poured most of the water out onto the floor there. It broadened as a slowly spreading, all-but-invisible pool.
Three minutes left. He couldn’t cut things too close. Titch might vary his schedule by a few seconds. Young officers weren’t that dependable.
He held the tumbler over desk number two, inverted it as close to instantly as he could, and set it down rim-first. To observers, it would—well, should—look as though he were merely setting aside an empty drink container. Water began pooling out from under the rim and spread out in all directions—toward that desk’s chair, toward the lip adjoining Wedge’s desk. Like the water on the floor, it should be all but invisible to the sort of low-resolution holocams