Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [108]
“Now right,” Dev whispered. “Drop shaft.”
Luke shook his head. “We’d be helpless inside. That big blue one’s probably still on board. Are the decks connected by stairs?”
“Ssi-ruuk can’t use stairs,” Dev murmured. “Neither can P’w’ecks, the smaller ones.”
“More slaves?” His voice caught, and he cleared his throat.
“Yes.”
The Ssi-ruuk would probably never accept other races as equals. “Any other links between decks?”
“I don’t know,” Dev admitted. “I’ve only used power lifts.”
Luke stretched out into the invisible world again. A web of weak living energy surrounded them, punctuated here and there by the brighter Force-gleams of sentient beings. He found a vertically sizeable empty area ahead. “Come on,” he murmured. Unable to find a hatchway, he cut a way in through the bulkhead. A spiral ramp, cramped for humans—obviously designed for P’w’eck or droid use—led up and down. It sounded and felt empty.
“Go ahead,” Luke whispered. Dev pushed one leg through, then his head, then he vanished into the rampway. Luke followed. Dev pointed downward, so Luke led down into the spiral ramp. His right leg didn’t bend easily. The muscles tightened and stayed tight. Behind him, Dev’s pain sense echoed: He’d injured his back and left hand.
Dozens, maybe hundreds, of souls must be slaved to the Shriwirr’s circuitry. He couldn’t bring even one back to life … but perhaps he could release a few of them to rest peacefully.
After a long hunched walk, Luke asked through gritted teeth, “How far down is Engineering?”
“Eighteenth deck.” Dev indicated a symbol on the bulkhead beside a narrow hatchway. “We’re at the seventeenth, now.”
Luke led around several more turns of the shaft, then paused at a hatchway. “Here?”
“This is it.”
Luke felt inside the circuits on the other side of the hatch. Again he found a center of life energy set to power nonliving circuitry. He sent a pulse of excitement into shreds of human will.
The hatch slid open.
He stumbled out, saber ready, into another empty corridor. As Dev sprinted past him, he spun around and sliced into the power center. The tortured sense of tethered presence winked out.
One more freed.
Dev examined writing on a bulkhead. “I think this is it,” he said softly.
“You haven’t been down here before?”
Dev shrugged. “No.”
“All right.” From behind another bulkhead, the half-dead Force stench wafted out. Luke was about to step under an illuminated arch when he caught a glimmer above it. He leaped backward.
“What is it?” Dev asked.
Luke traced power flow up a bulkhead, overhead, then down the other side. “I don’t know,” he answered, “but the life power is linked to a strong amplifier.” He sliced a flap off the breast of his tunic, dropped it onto the deck, then blew on it. It skittered forward.
Sizzling blue energy burned it to charcoal.
Sh’tk’ith’s blue foreclaws framed the security board. “There,” he exclaimed to the P’w’ecks behind him. “We’ve found them. Stun trap outside Engineering.”
He flipped a coil. “Progress?” he asked Firwirrung, who was working frantically in a second lab.
“Finished,” answered his colleague. “It won’t keep the Jedi alive as long as the original would have, but I’ll make another, better, before he deteriorates too far.”
Although wounded, Firwirrung seemed determined to atone for his disaster. He and his P’w’eck aides had completed a secondary table from one nearly finished chair and spare parts, a fresh means to start harvesting immediately—if Sh’tk’ith could subdue the Jedi. Victory still beckoned.
Sh’tk’ith called Admiral Ivpikkis’s lifeboat over an outside coil. “We’re about to close in on them. I left three gangs of P’w’ecks under full compulsion on Deck Sixteen. I predict we can start launching battle droids the moment we succeed.”
“Good,” came his answer. Ssi-ruuvi picket ships still surrounded the Shriwirr, protecting