Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [13]
Centrally Controlled Independent Replicant technology could allegedly reproduce the watchfulness and defensive capabilities of the Noghri, though she didn’t believe it and wasn’t sure she wanted something like that on the open market. She had to admit, seeing Ashgad’s three, that they were nice looking, undoubtedly efficient, less aesthetically intrusive than droids, and certainly less unsettling than Noghri. Freed of standard droid memory system requirements, for all intents and purposes they looked like human beings, if human beings were what you wanted.
She shook her head and sat down at the comm station again, suddenly overwhelmed with fatigue. Members of Daysong, a splinter group of the Rights of Sentience Party, claimed that an honor guard was a form of servile humiliation and should be replaced by droids (Hadn’t these people ever heard of magnetic flux disruptors?). But Leia didn’t consider either Ezrakh or Yeoman Shreel, for instance, either humiliated or servile. In his off-duty moments—not that a Noghri was ever completely off duty—the little hunter-killer would tell Leia tales of his childhood on Honoghr, of his wife and children there, the same way Yeoman Shreel or Yeoman Marcopius would show her holos of their brothers and sisters and pets at home.
The Daysong folks objected violently to the synthdroids too, of course, on the grounds that synthflesh was living and had rights as well.
The Theran Listeners, wandering around the desert holding conversations with rocks, couldn’t possibly be crazier.
Leia leaned her head against the back of the chair, tired beyond words. Tired, she thought suddenly, as her hands and feet grew cold, beyond what she should be. It didn’t exactly hurt her to breathe, but every breath was an effort. The hand she raised, or tried to raise, to rub the ache behind her sternum felt as if she’d been manacled with lead.
This is ridiculous, she thought. Every member of Seti Ashgad’s party and yesterday’s good-faith inspection of the vessel had been scanned. Of course they’d been scanned. No virus, no microbe, no poison … nothing had been detected.
Dizziness swamped her. She reached across the table for the comm button, but collapsed halfway and slid to the floor in a great sigh of velvet robe.
“Your Excellency?” The door swished open. “Your Excellency, I have been attempting to monitor fleet communications, and … Your Excellency!”
Threepio toddled into the stateroom, golden hands flying up in a singularly human gesture of alarm. “Your Excellency, whatever is the matter?”
Artoo-Detoo, close on the protocol droid’s shining metal heels, rolled up to Leia’s side and directed a scanner beam over her. He tweeped informatively.
“I know she’s not well, you stupid bucket of bolts! And don’t you go quoting heart-rate readings to me.” He was already at the wall comm unit. “Infirmary? Infirmary? There’s no answer!” He turned dramatically to his counterpart. “Something terrible is going on! I attempted to get in touch with the Adamantine just now to check on our departure for the rendezvous point and there was no answer! We must …”
The stateroom door slid open, framing in its tall rectangle the slumped, small form of Dzym.
“Oh, Master Dzym!” cried Threepio. “Something terrible has happened! You must inform the emergency services …”
The man only stepped clear of the opener beam of the doorway and walked to Leia’s side. He seemed a trifle unsteady on his feet, as if drunk or drugged. His colorless eyes half-shut, he wore on his face an expression Threepio—never truly good at interpretation of human facial expression despite the most advanced of pattern-recognition