Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [81]
It is as if the Yuuzhan Vong want to inflict pain and suffering just to see how long it takes for their slaves to break and run. The problem this idea gave Corran was that he primarily understood slavery in terms of greed. With a slave, one got work with minimal compensation to the worker—very economical for the owner of the slaves, especially if the slaves could be controlled enough that revolt was impossible. Using the slaves as agony engines just made no sense unless the pain in some way sustained the Yuuzhan Vong or had some other significance for them. If that is true, this invasion is going to be worse than any war of political or economic gain. Victory for the Yuuzhan Vong demands that every sentient creature live in pain.
He shivered, then rolled to his feet. He pulled on his blaster belt. His lightsaber dangled at his right hip, just in front of the holstered blaster. He adjusted the belt until it rode snugly on his hips, then descended through the passage to the excavation chamber.
In addition to Jens and Dr. Pace, Corran found Ganner and Trista waiting for him. Ganner just glared at him, whereas Dr. Pace turned to Jens and nodded.
The blond archaeogeneticist waved a hand at a holograph that showed images of all three beetles. “Despite having only a couple of specimens of each beetle to work with, I’ve been able to figure a number of things out. Mostly I’ve been analyzing their excreta—”
Corran arched an eyebrow. “Bug dust?”
Jens rolled her blue eyes. “More than that. The sentinel beetle, the one that raised the alarm about the slave, is fairly unremarkable. The other two, though, are interesting. The littlest ones are excreting a compound that is being laced into the soil. Chemically it’s a lot less complex than stink, but its molecular makeup is such that it bonds to the olfactory neuroreceptor sites in the slashrats. It’s what is keeping them away from that camp, since all the dirt there, as far as the slashrats are concerned, is permeated with stink.”
“The beetles are making synthetic stink?” Corran frowned. “That’s some fairly advanced genetic engineering, isn’t it?”
Jens shook her head. “Not really. These beetles, along with a lot of other life-forms—ourselves included—have a symbiotic relationship with microscopic organisms in their bodies. We might chew food and produce acid that breaks it down further, but it’s the bacteria in our guts that takes complex molecules and chops them up into things our bodies can absorb. They nourish themselves on the food we provide, too, and give off waste products. In this case, some of the bacteria in the beetle’s gut produces this stinklike substance. Engineering a bacteria is much easier than engineering the beetle; they’re just the packaging for the bacteria.”
Ganner nodded and pointed to the image of the middle beetle. “What does it do?”
“I’ve been analyzing the gases it gives off, and it is producing a lot of carbon dioxide. The content of carbon dioxide in the valley, based on the air in the sample bottles that you filled there, is elevated beyond that of the rest of Bimmiel. If I had to guess, since you’ve reported the growths on the slaves are hard and rocklike, the elevated carbon dioxide content might be promoting growth of the things on the slaves.”
Trista bit at her lower lip for a moment. “If enough of those beetles were let loose, could they raise the carbon dioxide content enough to help the world retain heat during its outward orbit?”
The blond geneticist thought for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s possible. I don’t have the sort of planetary data needed to figure out how long it would take, but if these beetles are prolific in their reproduction, it could happen. Staving off the winter would utterly destroy the ecosystem here, since we’d have moisture, but too little solar energy to let the plants grow. The shwpi come