Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 02_ Ruin - Michael A. Stackpole [58]
The Yuuzhan Vong lack of understanding of technology hurt them and helped the resistance fighters immeasurably. While the invaders had destroyed many holocams, they’d not ripped up the cables. By simply attaching a new camera to a cable, then plugging into the line through the conduit, or hooking a comlink into the line so the images could be pulled remotely, or using any of dozens of other methods, Rade Dromath and his people had been able to collect and archive hours and hours of Yuuzhan Vong war games.
Corran had ordered virtually all of the holovid duplicated and stored in the Best Chance. After studying the most recent exercises, he formulated their plan for pulling out samples of the breeding program. The Yuuzhan Vong had appeared fairly ruthless in how they dealt with the prototype soldiers, so everyone agreed that if they could get only parts, they would get parts. Preferably, however, they would capture a live soldier and see if they could smuggle him off the world, so others could work on him and perhaps redeem him.
On Belkadan Jacen had encountered beings that the Yuuzhan Vong had enslaved; through the Force, he had gotten a disturbing sense of them. It most closely equated to hearing static on a comlink channel. It wasn’t right, and was definitely wrong, and it seemed to get stronger the longer the slaves existed. Jacen felt certain that whatever the growths were that the Yuuzhan Vong grew on their slaves, these growths were killing them.
By the same token, he’d also fought against the little reptoid slaves on Dantooine, but he hadn’t sensed them dying. It was as if their implants entered into a symbiotic relationship with them. There had been ample evidence that the Yuuzhan Vong were able to exert some remote-control capabilities over the slaves, since their discipline remained terribly strong despite a slaughter, until Luke had destroyed what passed for a Yuuzhan Vong command vehicle.
What Jacen found disturbing, as he waited in the darkness at the base of an access tunnel, was that the modified humans in the streets above felt less like the Belkadan slaves than they did the reptoids. Both had diminished senses through the Force—he felt as if he was sensing them at great distances even though he knew they walked not five meters above him. From the humans he could sense muted emotions, including fear, but also a lot of pride and determination. Some even exuded confidence, and those around them seemed calmer.
He adjusted the holovision goggles he was wearing, and his gloved fingers brushed the tiny scar under his right eye. When he’d been captured by the Yuuzhan Vong they had tried to implant something beneath his flesh. They’d even succeeded, but his uncle had it out of him in minutes, so it had not begun to grow. If it had . . . He shuddered.
The feed into the goggles came from a holocam secreted in a second-story window, looking down to the access hatch cover beneath which he waited. The cam itself was immobile, but by switching to other cams, he could expand the view of the plaza above him. The expanse of ferrocrete was dotted with fountains and benches. Planters divided it, making it into a simple maze that showed burn marks and bloodstains from previous battles. According to the fighting they’d watched, things usually funneled into this place toward the end of the exercises, with chaos reigning. At the appointed moment, the resistance forces would move in, eliminate as much as they could of the Yuuzhan Vong force, and hustle a sample or two out.
The virtue of a simple plan was that there was very little that could