Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Rebel Dreams_ Enemy Lines I - Aaron Allston [81]
Luke shook his head. “I have to say, this sounds like the worst idea in a thousand generations of bad ideas.”
“You haven’t heard all our ideas,” Bhindi said.
“Next,” Face interrupted, and nodded at Baljos.
The scientist rooted around in a bag of his own. From it he drew something that he threw atop the atmospheric intrusion unit. It looked like what would result if someone carefully removed all the skin from the head of a Yuuzhan Vong and meticulously reattached it into the shape of a head. It twitched when it hit the pod, then settled into stillness.
“An ooglith masquer,” Luke said.
“Right the first time,” Baljos said. “I’m the inventor. Well, the developer. I was working from captured ooglith masquers.”
“But this one looks like a Yuuzhan Vong face.”
Baljos nodded. “Each one is unique. I give them all names. That’s Brand. So called because most of the mutilation decorations come from a technique that resembles branding. They hurt like anything to remove … but you can wear them for hours or days, unlike holoshrouds, where your batteries give out after a few minutes.”
“This, I like,” Luke said. “It’ll help us move among them without being detected.”
“Next,” Face said.
Bhindi rooted around in her own pack. From it she extracted a brown object made up of a thick, curved disk at the top, bent down into the approximate shape of a canopy, mounted atop a thick stem that grew thicker at the other end. It was approximately the size of a human head.
Luke gave it a close look. “It’s some sort of fungus.”
“We’ll all be carrying them,” she said.
“In case we get hungry?”
“It’s not a fungus,” Bhindi assured him. “It’s a droid.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It looks like a type of fungus found in dank places in Coruscant’s undercity,” Bhindi said. “We’re hoping that the Yuuzhan Vong won’t destroy them, precisely because they look like something organic. In fact, their covering is organic, a type of mold. Their circuitry is heavily shielded. They have an epoxy reservoir so they can cling to whatever surface they’re on if they get grabbed, and an epoxy solvent so they can detach themselves later. They’re mobile and have very advanced sensor arrays and tactical programming.”
“Meaning,” Elassar said, “that they’re going to sneak around, find Yuuzhan Vong installations, try to get inside, and relay information to one another. They’ll establish a relay chain up to the surface, and the one on the surface will transmit to surviving comm stations there.”
“It’s a long shot,” Bhindi said, “but any piece of information we get could prove vital at some point. And we have four different shape and coloration schemes on these, including two that look like Yuuzhan Vong worldshaping plants. If the Yuuzhan Vong discover that one is a droid and destroy everything that looks like it, the others could survive undetected.”
“Fungus droids. I always thought that Intelligence work was supposed to be, I don’t know, sophisticated and charming.”
Face snickered. “That’s what you told me the first time we met.”
Luke frowned. “When did we ever meet before?”
“It was …” Face reconsidered. “Oh, that’s right. I was in disguise. You wouldn’t recognize me now.”
“But when was it? Now I’m curious.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“We have a few sets of vonduun crab armor,” Bhindi interrupted, “and a few more sets of armor faked up to look like the real thing. If they get close enough to touch it, they’ll know the fakes are made of manufactured materials, of course. And we have lots of tizowyrms—their translator worms.”
“And we have explosives,” Kell said. “Lots and lots of explosives.”
“And a Jedi,” Piggy said, his voice a mechanical rasp.
“Three Jedi,” Luke corrected. “Mara and Tahiri are going with us. All right. Let’s figure out exactly how we’re going to get into Coruscant orbit, where we want to land, and what our priorities are. If we’re crazy enough to do this, we need to be sane enough to do it well.