Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [101]
There was nothing more to do here.
He felt his headache rise in strength. No, there was something more he could do here. His orders were to acquire information … and to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in general in any way he could that did not lead to his capture and exposure.
Danni Quee was here. Tam could overpower her while she slept. She was an enemy of the Yuuzhan Vong, and eliminating her as a New Republic resource would definitely help his masters.
There was no way he could smuggle her out of the biotics building, no way he could even smuggle her out of this hallway. No, to eliminate her as a threat, he’d have to kill her.
He could do it, too, in such a way that there would be no likelihood of blame falling on him. In one of his pockets was a gob of material restraining a razor bug. He could pull it out, free the creature, fling it at Danni. It would chew her to pieces.
And he’d go back to the shuttle and receive praise.
He stood in place and his headache mounted. He cursed himself. Just by thinking of a way to help the Yuuzhan Vong, he’d obligated himself to do it, or suffer the consequences. Danni Quee had to die now.
He stood behind her. He didn’t bother wondering what might have been, had they met in different circumstances. He was a big, clumsy, inarticulate thing and she was an intelligent, beautiful woman with the stamp of destiny on her. Had they been stranded together on an otherwise deserted planet, nothing would have happened between them. They would have ended up friends. Just good friends.
Tam reached out a hand to brush it, ever so carefully, against one of her blond curls, now colored scarlet by light from the screen before her. Then he reached into his pocket and found the razor bug.
He stood and did nothing. The pain increased until it affected his breathing, making it short and halting.
The problem was, no matter how much he wanted the pain to end, he knew it would keep coming. He knew that Danni Quee deserved to live. He knew that he deserved to die.
He turned away. Pain shot through him as though a metal spike had been hammered through both his temples with a single blow. He staggered and had to put a hand on the floor to keep from falling over.
But the pain didn’t kill him. He strained against it, rose, made it as far as the door. He had to lean for long moments against the doorjamb to give himself strength enough to continue. Then he could open the door and leave.
As he walked, his steps made unrhythmic by the hammering within his skull, he reminded himself that he was taking data to his controller. He was succeeding in his primary mission. And the pain diminished.
But only a little.
As soon as the door slid shut behind Tam, Danni raised her head to stare after him.
She typed a command into her keyboard. The screen before her changed views to follow Tam as he staggered away down the corridor.
When he was well out of earshot, she keyed her comlink. “He’s gone,” she whispered. “He was either memorizing or recording everything on our screens.”
Iella’s voice came back, not a whisper, but the comlink’s volume was dialed down low. “Did he leave anything?”
“I don’t know. I’ll begin analyzing the recordings now. Out.”
“Good work. Out.”
Danni brought up the first of the recordings made by the holocams positioned at hidden points around the room. She felt her shoulders twitch. She wasn’t sure what Tam had been up to in the long minutes he stood directly behind her, and was desperate to be sure that he hadn’t spread Yuuzhan Vong creatures throughout this office.
Yuuzhan Vong Warldship, Coruscant Orbit
In the operations chamber, surrounded by analysts and advisers, blaze bug displays and recording creatures, banks of villips and standing rows of guards, Tsavong Lah sat at the center of things and listened to reports.
Most of them came from Maal Lah and Viqi Shesh. As they spoke,