Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [137]
Both his feet and one hand were wedged in narrow cracks to hold him in the precarious spot, his body pressed tight to the wall against the tearing wind. His free hand held his own comlink close to one ear.
He had listened in on the conversation between Evazan and the senator. He had heard the two depart. Now he listened to the grotesque squooshing sound as the creature enveloped his last comrade.
With a crackling of shorted power the comlink channel went dead, and the man’s face tightened into a grim expression.
Hanging his comlink back on his belt, he clambered up the castle wall with great dexterity, onto a slanting section of roof. A long-range comlink unit in backpack form was fastened to the smooth slate by suction-support webbing. Cramming his body into a corner between the roof and a spire to secure himself against the wind, he pulled the comlink headset from the pack and spoke urgently into its mouthpiece.
“Hello, Mother? It’s Gurion. Do you copy?” He looked up to the clouded sky with some concern. “Are you still up there?”
“Still in orbit, Gur,” came a reply. “What’s the report?”
“All dead,” Gurion answered bluntly. “All but me. Evazan must have some heavy protection inside there. They were the best.”
After a heavy silence, the voice came again, carrying a tone of sorrow not fully masked. “That’s it, then. You get off there, Gur. Right now. We’ll pick you up.”
“No. Not me,” he said firmly. “I’m going to go inside, get close to him. It’s the only way to be sure of nailing him.”
“By yourself?” said the voice in surprise. “That’s suicide!”
“If it has to be. I don’t care,” Gurion said fiercely. “I mean to get to him, and I think I know how!”
Within the castle, Evazan and guest descended a long spiraling stairway. The deeper they went into the mysterious lower sanctums of the doctor’s lair, the more apologetic the Andoan senator became.
“For my part, there’s never been a question of your integrity,” the alien explained in a voice pitched ever higher by his rising concern. “It’s my Senate colleagues who have been picking up rumors. Some are saying you have the death sentence on ten systems.”
“Twelve, actually,” Evazan said carelessly. “It may be more by now. I haven’t checked.”
“Really?” said the senator, his voice rising a bit more. “And then there have been tales of some of your … ah … medical practices.”
“I won’t deny there’s some truth to them, too,” the doctor admitted. “I don’t apologize for what I’ve done. It was all to a good end.”
They reached the bottom of the stairwell. Evazan unlocked and opened a massive metal door. It creaked back on its hinges, and they both passed through.
Beyond, a single space took up all the huge castle’s basement area. Squat pillars and heavy arches of stone held up the high ceiling. Stretching into the far shadows, bank after bank of large glass cylinders glowed faintly, filled with gold liquid … and something else.
The senator stepped forward, staring in shock. Each cylinder appeared to contain some type of being.
He walked farther forward, looking down a row of creatures floating in amber fluid. There were giant Wookiees and diminutive Jawas, skeletonlike Givins and one-eyed Abbyssins. There were horned humanoids from Devaron and insectlike creatures of the Kibnon race, along with countless other species from planets all across the galaxy.
“Are they … dead?” the senator nervously inquired, peering into the cylinder of a reptilian Arcona who stared back with blank, jewellike eyes.
“Unfortunately,” said Evazan. “Preserved in my special embalming fluid. They’re some of my patients who didn’t survive my surgical attempts to help them. But the medical work I did on them has still been of great value to me.”
The senator looked at the corpses again, more closely. All had been worked upon in a manner that might loosely have been termed “surgical,” though the word “butchery” might better have been applied. Most were