Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 01_ Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson [107]
“No.”
His response apparently shocked Qwi enough that she took a step backward and let out a startled musical squawk. “You have to! I’m one of the top scientists here.” Her mouth hung partly open in confusion. She began to pace around the pillar where he had been bound, forcing Han to turn his head. The effort nearly made him pass out.
“What good does it do to withhold information?” Qwi asked. “Information is for everyone. We build on the knowledge we have, add to it, and leave a greater legacy for our successors.”
Qwi struck him as being impossibly naive. Han wondered how long she had been sheltered in the middle of the black hole cluster. “Does that mean you share your information with anyone who asks?” he said.
Qwi bobbed her head. “That’s the way Maw Installation works. It is the foundation of all our research.”
Han barely managed a grin of triumph. “All right, then tell me where my friends are. I came in here with a young man and a Wookiee. Share that information with me, and I’ll see what I can remember about the Death Star.”
Qwi’s uneasy reaction told him that she had never before considered anything but clear-cut cases. “I don’t know if I can tell you that,” she said. “You don’t have a need to know.”
Han managed a shrug. “Then I see how much your own code of ethics means to you.”
Qwi glanced toward the door, as if contemplating whether to summon the stormtroopers after all. “It is in my charter here as a researcher that I have access to all the data I need. Why won’t you answer my few simple questions?”
“Why won’t you answer mine? I never signed your charter. I’m under no obligation to you.”
Han waited, fixing his eyes on her as she fidgeted. Finally, Qwi pulled out her datapad and hummed as she keyed in a request.
She looked at him with wide deep-blue eyes that blinked rapidly. Her hair seemed like a glittering waterfall of fine down spilling to her shoulders. When she whistled again, the datapad gave a response.
“Your Wookiee companion has been assigned to a labor detail in the engine-maintenance sector. The physicist formerly in charge of concept development and implementation always swore by Wookiee laborers. He had about a hundred of them taken from Kashyyyk and brought to the Installation when it was formed. We don’t have many left. It’s hard and dangerous work there, you know.”
Han shifted his position, still finding it difficult to move. He had heard rumors that Wookiee slaves had been put to work during the actual construction of the first Death Star. But Qwi spoke of these things with simple frankness.
“What about my other friend?” Han asked.
“Someone named Kyp Durron—is that him? He is still aboard the Gorgon in the detention area, high security. I don’t see much of a report from his debriefing, so apparently he didn’t have much to tell them.”
Han frowned, trying to assess the information, but Qwi became animated again. “All right, I’ve shared the information you wanted. Now tell me about the Death Star!” She stepped closer to him but remained well out of reach.
Han rolled his eyes but saw no reason not to. The Death Star had been destroyed long ago, and the plans were safely locked inside the protected data core of the former Imperial Information Center.
Han told Qwi about the corridors, the noises. He knew the most about the hangar bay, the detention area, and the garbage masher, but she didn’t seem much interested in those details.
“But did you see the core? The propulsion systems?”
“Sorry. I was just running interference while someone else knocked out the tractor-beam generators.” Han pursed his lips. “Why are you so interested in all this anyway?”
She blinked her eyes. “Because I designed most of the Death Star!”
Before she could notice Han’s shocked response, she trotted over to the near wall and worked a few controls that turned a section of the metal plating transparent.