Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 05_ Agents of Chaos 02_ Jedi Eclipse - James Luceno [34]
Two hose-thick, pulsating ducts projected from the yammosk’s bulbous head to disappear into the arching, membranous ceiling of the hold. Skidder assumed that at least one of them furnished the creature with a required mix of respiratory gases, though Chine-kal assured that yammosks became oxygen breathers as they matured into actual war coordinators.
At the moment the clustership’s commander was completing a circle on the grated walkway that ran around the lip of the yorik-coral basin. Concentric to the basin stood a company of lightly armed guards.
“For all the revulsion it seems to invoke in some of you, the yammosk is an extremely sensitive creature,” he was saying. “One effect of its powerful desire to bond is empathy of a high order, which later culminates as telepathy, of a sort. As part of its early training, the yammosk is conditioned to regard select dovin basals as its children, its brood—the same dovin basals that provide thrust for our starships and the single-pilot craft the New Republic military refers to as coralskippers. When, then, we enter into engagements with the forces of your worlds, the yammosk sees its children as threatened and attempts to coordinate their activities to minimize loss.”
Chine-kal came to a halt close to where Skidder and the others stood, and gestured to the ceiling. “The darker blue of the throbbing arteries that enter the yammosk just above the eyes is linked even now to the drive of this ship, because the yammosk is still in the process of familiarizing itself with the dovin basal. The kinder you are to the yammosk, the more affection you show for it, the better you make it feel, the better its link with the dovin basal, and the better the ship performs.”
The commander pivoted to face one of the membranous walls. In a blister visible to all the captives sat a pulsing, heart-shaped organism.
“Here you see a small dovin basal, approximate in size to the ones housed in the noses of the coralskippers. Its color indicates how well you are succeeding at your task, and its current pale red tells me that you are doing reasonably well, but not as well as you might. So what we’re going to do is increase the pace of our strokings in time with the count provided by the dovin basal. If we’re successful, the ship will respond in turn. So let us begin …”
Skidder braced himself. It wasn’t so much that the handwork itself was fatiguing, but intense and constant tactile contact with the tentacles quickly left everyone exhausted, almost as if the yammosk was feeding off the captives’ expended energy to somehow enhance itself. It was easy enough to refuse participation, but holding back led only to someone being singled out and punished.
As the dovin basal began to pulse more rapidly, the captives increased the speed and force of the strokings and kneadings, struggling to find a rhythm. The pulses grew even more rapid; the manipulations grew more urgent and frantic. The count quickened once more. Many of the captives were breathing hard, some of them wheezing. Rills of sweat coursed down faces and arms. Those who couldn’t sustain the pace collapsed, doubled over atop their assigned tentacles, or slid down into the gluey nutrient. But the rest had found a collective beat the yammosk responded to by sending ripples down its tentacles.
Skidder could almost feel the clustership surge.
Then the dovin basal slowed and gradually returned to a gentle pulsing.
“Good,” Commander Chine-kal said at last. “Very good.”
Skidder swallowed hard and calmed himself. Sapha and Roa were panting, and Fasgo looked delirious.
Chine-kal began another circuit on the organic walkway. “As some of you have already learned, battle coordination is only one of the yammosk’s talents. When I told you earlier that its empathy bordered on telepathy, I was not overstating things. Also as part of its training, the young yammosk is conditioned to establish a cognitive rapport with