Star Wars_ X-Wing 07_ Solo Command - Aaron Allston [99]
He scrambled to his feet. “I’m sorry. Are you hurt?”
She took the hand he offered and let him half haul her to her feet. She winced as she put her weight on her left leg. “A bruise, maybe. Not your fault. I think I had a cramp from all the time in the simulator.”
“Can you walk? I can summon a stretcher—”
“No, I’d better walk it off. Thank you.”
She maintained the pretense of her limp all the way to the door to her quarters, and inside as well—though she hadn’t spotted the holocam, she knew there had to be one. Or two, or three. She wasn’t trusted, and with Zsinj in charge, that meant there were holocams on her in her quarters.
She set her pack down inside the closet and took a look around. She’d been given sizable quarters, appropriate to a naval lieutenant on track to promotion. She actually had a decent-sized bedroom with a full terminal and a closet, a small office, and a separate refresher chamber. Much better accommodations than she’d enjoyed on Mon Remonda.
Tonin, her R2, sat in the middle of the bedroom. He came alive when she entered, offering up whistles and clicks that she interpreted as a polite interrogative. He was almost a stranger to her now, had been so since she’d wiped his memory on Aldivy.
But that would change soon.
“I’m fine, Tonin. Just tired.”
Once in bed, she deliberately changed position every two or three minutes, tossing and turning, a show of insomnia for whoever was monitoring her holocams. She did this for an hour. Then she sat up and ran a hand through her catastrophically tousled hair.
Tonin beeped another question.
“Sorry, but I’m going to need the patch of metal where you’re resting. Scoot into the closet, would you?”
With a series of musical tones suggesting that he was hurt by her suggestion, Tonin rolled into the closet. He turned his head around so his main holocam eye could still observe her.
Lara rose and pulled the mattress from her bed onto the floor, then redistributed pillows and sheets on it. She made sure that one of the sheets reached as far as Tonin’s wheels.
She reached into the bag in her closet and hunted around for something within it with her left hand. With her right, she extracted the monitoring goggles and scooted them under the edge of the sheet on the floor, then plugged the goggles’ cord into a jack in Tonin’s side, hoping—nearly certain—that her body shielded the action from the viewpoint of most of the places holocams might be situated in her room.
Finally she grasped the object that she’d pretended not to be able to find. She stood and stared at it, turning so the holocams could get a good look at it. A bottle of tuber liquor from Aldivy, nasty stuff the locals there adored.
She stared at it for long moments, as if contemplating its medicinal qualities, then shook her head and placed it on the top shelf of her closet. A moment later, she slipped under the sheets over her mattress, rolled around a moment to find the most comfortable spot, pulled the sheets up over her head, and lay still.
The very junior intelligence officer watching this display began typing, ever so tentatively, into his terminal. 24:00 hours, he typed. Subject situated herself on mattress on floor. Entered sleep state almost immediately. First considered alcohol as soporific, but decided against. Cause of sleeplessness unknown. Bed too soft? Guilt?
“Don’t forget simple stress.”
The voice sounded right in his ear and he jumped two handspans. He’d thought he was alone in the room. He looked up into the face of General Melvar. “Uhh, thank you, sir. We’d call that occupational anxiety or excitement from lifestyle transition.”
“Do you get paid more for using more words?”
“No, sir, but the medics like them.”
Melvar snorted. “Well, add it any way you want to.”
“Yes, sir.”
Melvar spared one last look at the overhead view of Lara’s still bed, then left as quietly as he’d arrived.
With movements almost imperceptibly slow, Lara drew the monitoring goggles onto her head and turned them on. The goggles, drawing power from the link with Tonin, activated with a faint