Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [74]
Cautiously he felt his head again. The pain still throbbed, but now he felt only unbroken flesh.
“You! Slave!” the tizowyrm chittered in his ear, apparently translating the brutal shout from one of the guards. The coral growth on his neck gave him a faint shock, and he knew he was being given the force of command. He went rigid and fell to the ground, jerking spasmodically. It was easy, given the agony already creeping into his head.
When he thought he’d played that role long enough, he climbed back to his knees and went back to work, knotting his chapped, raw hands around plants and uprooting them.
The Yuuzhan Vong did not care for machines even as complicated as a lever. They had biotic methods of clearing fields other than slaves, but they seemed determined to go through the slaves they had, first.
Grab weed, wriggle, pull. For the ten billionth time.
The pain reverberated behind his eyes, fading a bit, and he began to pick out details through the static.
Not his forehead, not his blood, not his senses. It was Tahiri who had been cut. Scarred like a Yuuzhan Vong.
It was almost too much. He had been feeling her pain sporadically since her capture. Sometimes it was like an itch, sometimes like burning methanol poured down his nerves. But this time it was somehow real, intimate. He could smell her breath and taste her tears. It was like holding her, in that last moment of peace they had had together.
Except she was bleeding, and here he was pulling weeds. If his lightsaber was working …
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Or one of them. And it was days before he would see Rapuung again.
“Slave.” An amphistaff lashed lightly across his back, and it took everything in him not to leap up into the guard’s face, take his amphistaff, and kill every Yuuzhan Vong in sight.
What are they doing to you, Tahiri?
But he didn’t. Instead he stood compliant, arms at his side.
“Go with this Shamed One,” the guard told him.
He then turned to the person indicated, a young female with no obvious scars. She had a deeply worn look to her, but her eyes had a certain brightness many of the other Shamed Ones’ did not. “Go to the third lambent field, nearest the perimeter. Show him how to harvest.”
“I will need more than one faltering slave to make my quota,” she said.
“You feel it is your place to argue with me?” the warrior snapped.
“No,” she replied. “I think it is a prefect’s place to assign workers.”
“The prefect is busy today. Would you rather make your quota alone?”
She maintained an expression of defiance for another beat, then grudgingly hung her head. “No. Why are you doing this to me?”
“I treat you as I treat everyone.”
She narrowed her eyes, but did not reply. Instead she beckoned Anakin. “Come along, slave. We have a long walk.”
He followed her, trying to reestablish contact with Tahiri. She was still alive, he could get that much, but more distant than the stars.
Almost as if she was fighting contact.
“What’s your name, slave?” the woman asked. It so shocked Anakin that his step actually faltered. “Well?”
“Begging your pardon, but when did any Yuuzhan Vong care to dirty her ears with the name of a slave?”
“Where did a slave get the idea that insolence would go unpunished?” she responded.
“My name is Bail Lars,” he replied.
“What’s wrong with you, Bail Lars? I saw you nearly collapse. So did that filth-bather, Vasi. That’s why he sent you with me, so I’ll fail to meet my quota.”
“He has something against you, personally?”
“Puul. It’s what he couldn’t get against me that bothers him.”
“Really? I would think—” He suddenly thought better of what he was saying and didn’t finish the sentence.
The female did, however. “Would think what? That I wouldn’t refuse a warrior?”
“No, that’s not it,” Anakin said. “I suppose I thought they—the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong, I mean—were … well, that they didn’t think Shamed Ones were, you know, desirable.”
“We aren’t, not by normal people.