Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [78]
“It is.” Firwirrung turned his V-crest toward Bluescale, his right eye toward Dev, and his left toward the P’w’ecks and their prisoner. Then he pulled down the main switch.
Dev’s throat burned. This time the servopumps injected not simple magsol but a solution of magsol and other factors. It should orient the entire nervous system toward the bed’s in-built catchment circuit, drawing energy toward it. This eliminated the necessity of a catchment arc. First his neck, then his head, then his chest and his limbs felt the pull, rapidly becoming heavier as if gravity had shifted or the Shriwirr had reoriented. Abruptly he felt as if his upright bed had tipped. Firwirrung and the others looked for all the worlds as if they stood on the nearest bulkhead. The bio-gravity illusion virtually convinced his eyes. “I feel,” he said, “as if every nerve in my body were being tugged toward the focus point. It hurts a little,” he admitted.
“That should not affect the catchment function. Are you ready to try funneling this human’s energies into a battle droid?”
“I’ll try.” The next best thing to entechment might be granting that gift to someone else. Dev shut his eyes and reached down past the discomfort for his center of control. Deeply and humbly aware of his limitations, he flailed through the Force toward the other human presence. It seemed like forever before he touched and embraced it. Letting the catchment circuitry pull through him, he used the Force to suck its energy into himself. For an instant, he felt huge and heavy. Twice as much pain pulsated in his nerves. Then the extra weight vanished. Panting, he opened his eyes wide. The prisoner lay limp on the deck.
Admiral Ivpikkis stroked one foreclaw with the other. “Deck Sixteen?” he called.
From the bulkhead came the words Dev longed to hear. “It works.” Ssi-ruuk, P’w’ecks, and Dev cheered with equal enthusiasm.
“The next test,” Firwirrung sang softly, “is whether we can force Skywalker to do our will, not his own. He is a far stronger Force user than our Dev, if Dev is correct in his reckoning.”
“He’d better be.” Bluescale appeared to climb down the bulkhead/deck toward him. Dev’s right hand clenched involuntarily as the huge blue head bent close. The eye swirled. He fell in.
Then, to his surprise, Bluescale stepped back. “Try it,” he whistled.
Firwirrung climbed down the bulkhead and held out a three-pronged knife used to declaw the small meat lizards they called Fft. He pressed its handle into Dev’s free right hand.
“Yes?” Dev felt no fear, only curiosity.
“Stab it through your other palm.”
What could be more reasonable? He struggled to twist his body against the waist restraint, positioned the Fft knife, and drove it as deeply as he could. Bone crunched. Red human blood welled out along the blade. There was pain.
“Leave it there,” said Firwirrung.
Dev rolled back into the ready position and waited for his next command.
“Right arm.”
Dev snapped his free hand into place.
Firwirrung pulled the knife out of Dev’s palm, wiped it clean on Dev’s robe, then slapped a piece of synthflesh—probably from a captured Imperial medpack—against each side of Dev’s wounded hand. Then he swiveled his head back uphill to Admiral Ivpikkis. “Do you think it will work on Skywalker?” asked Ivpikkis.
“We have no reason to believe otherwise. The will for self-preservation is strong in all humans, and you saw how completely we overrode Dev’s. The final test and most vital, of course, is how long a subject can remain alive in this state. We have only time for a brief simulation, but several hours should be sufficient for any degradation of life signs to begin.”
Admiral Ivpikkis twitched his tail and peered across at the bulkhead panel, then down at Dev. Dev managed a smile. Bluescale followed the admiral out. Firwirrung ordered one P’w’eck to remove the human corpse and the other to remain with Dev. “Alert me if any numbers change.” He rapped the bulkhead panel with his curled foreclaw.
Then he swept out.