simple."
Mara glanced around again. One of the guards across the way was eyeing
her, and she dug her arms again into the slime. "What's so special about the
ship?"
"Oh, it's just about three levels past state-of-the-art, that's all,"
Sansia said bitterly. "It's got an incredible flight system, an unbelievable
weapons targeting array, and a crazy, one-of-a-kind defensive shoot-back
system I think Daddy must have stolen from somewhere."
Mara studied her face, stretching out with the Force to try to get a feel
for her mind. The same bitterness she could hear in Sansia's voice was indeed
roiling through her emotions. "So what are you saying?" she asked. "That you
don't want me to try to getyou out of here?"
Sansia's eyes slunk away from Mara's gaze. "I'm just telling you how it
is," she muttered. "Maybe warning you that somewhere along the line he's
probably going to try to force your hand. Try to get you to run without me. I
guess I thought you should be ready for that."
And was hoping against hope that, unlike her father, her rescuer had a
conscience? "Thanks for the warning," Mara said. Her fingers touched something
hard in the slime: one of the elusive krizar pupae. "It just means we'll need
to move up the timetable a little," she added, pulling the pupa to just above
the surface where she could examine it. The entire shell was solid; clearly,
this one wouldn't be poking its jaws out any time soon. Perfect. "Where will
they take us after we're finished here?"
"Across the hall to a really disgusting barracks-style sleeping room,"
Sansia said. For the first time since their conversation began Mara could
sense the faint whisperings of cautious hope in the other woman's voice and
emotions. "They'll let us wash up, then feed us."
"Showers or tubs?"
"More like animal watering troughs than real tubs," Sansia said
contemptuously. "Once they bring you down here, you're never clean again."
"Yes, I've heard that," Mara said. "All the more reason not to hang
around any longer than we have to. Are there surveillance cams in the room?"
"There are a couple of obvious ones near the door. Probably a whole bunch
of non-obvious ones hidden around, too."
"Okay," Mara said. "One more question: how long to the shift change?"
Sansia peered across the room at a set of glowing emblems embedded in the
wall. "Not long. Maybe ten minutes."
"Good," Mara said. "I have a couple of things to pick up first, so I'll
catch up with you in the sleeping room. Get washed up fast, and be ready to
move as soon as I get back."
Sansia was eyeing her suspiciously, but she nodded. "I'll be ready," she
said. "Good luck."
Mara nodded and moved on, holding the krizar shell she'd found beneath
the surface as she slogged along, wanting to put a little distance between her
and Sansia before she made her move. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one
of the Drach'nam walking purposefully down the walkway toward her, flicking
his whip into the air as he came, no doubt preparing a comment and ob - ject
lesson about idle chat while on duty. Mara let him get almost within whip
range...
And with the most spine-curling scream she could muster, she swung her
left arm up, clutching the forearm with her right hand. "It's got me!" she
yelped, flailing around and sending bits of slime flying through the air all
around her. "Get it off-get it off!"
The Drach'nam reached the edge of her trench in a single bound. "Get your
hand out of the way," he snapped, leaning precariously over her as he caught
her left wrist and hauled her bodily up out of the pit. The movement brought
her up against his belted knife, and she winced as the needle-sharp spikes of
the handguard dug briefly into her ribs. "I said move it," he repeated,
dropping her onto her feet on the walkway and prying her right hand away from
its grip.
To reveal the krizar shell hanging from the underside of her left arm.
Or at least, that was what Mara hoped it looked like. Her Force-
manipulating skills might not be as good as Luke Skywalker's, but it was no
big trick to use the Force to hold the shell pressed firmly against her arm as
if the creature inside were hanging on. The only danger was that the guard
might brush off the glob of slime strategically placed at the intersection
point and notice that there were no krizar palps linking the shell to the arm.
But after all the times this had undoubtedly happened, the guard was
clearly uninterested in the details. "Got one there, all right," he growled,
shifting his grip to her right hand and pulling her along the walkway toward
the door. "Hey! Your Seventh Greatness?"
"Yeah, go ahead," the slavekeeper told him, gesturing the guards flanking
the door to open it. "Tell Blath to be careful this time-His First Greatness
isn't going to like it if he loses another one."
The door opened. A second Drach'nam stepped to Mara's left side as they
headed out, taking her left arm and holding it in an iron grip at the level of
her waist- - probably, Mara decided, making sure she didn't knock the krizar
off against her side. The door slammed shut, and the three of them headed at a
fast walk down the corridor.
Mara didn't know where the med facility was, but odds were it wasn't very
far away, which meant she had to move fast. She continued to moan and cry like
a helpless and broken slave as the Drach'nam half dragged her along,
struggling ineffectually in her supposed pain against the casually unbreakable
grips other two escorts. Under cover of her attempted flailings, she glanced
down to her left. The second guard's knife was bouncing along only a few
centimeters from where he was holding her left arm pinioned.
And here was going to be the riskiest part other plan. With both of her
arms under their control, the two Drach'nam wouldn't be expecting any trouble
from her and should therefore be less watchful than they might be otherwise.
But if that assumption proved false, there was going to be some serious and
immediate trouble.
But there was nothing for it but to try. Stretching out to the Force, she
slid the knife partially out of its sheath, monitoring the alien's mind
closely to see if he would notice the sudden change in weight at his belt.
Carefully, trying not to jar the weapon, she eased the spiked hand guard up
against her left forearm near the spot where she was still holding the krizar
pupa in place. Two quick jabs-two stabs of genuine pain against the backdrop
of her agony act-and she eased the knife down into xs sheath again.
Just in time. The knife was barely back in place when the guard on her
right brought her to a halt at a side door, shoving the panel open with his
free hand. Shifting her attention to the krizar pupa riding her arm, Mara sent
it spinning away down the dingy corridor ahead of them.
After the darkness everywhere else inside the fortress, the medical
facility was something of a surprise: bright, clean, and reasonably well
equipped, with a tiled floor and even some sections of wood paneling. And the
&nbs
p; reason for the altered decor was immediately apparent: the medic wasn't a
Drach'nam.
"Sit down," a tired-looking Bith in a slightly shabby medic's tunic said,
coming around a desk and gesturing them to the room's lone treatment table.
His tone was brisk, but his face and hands betrayed the edge of nervousness
that Mara suspected was probably a common condition among non-Drach'nam in
Praysh's employ. "Where is the pupa?"
The guard on Mara's left lifted her arm. "It's right- - oh, pustina. It's
gone!"
"It must have fallen off," the Bith said, the tension in his voice
suddenly jumping sharply. His eyes flicked guiltily toward the wall to the
left-"ally two had better go see if you can find it."
The two guards didn't argue, but charged immediately back out into the
corridor. "Did you notice it fall off?" the Bith asked, turning Mara's arm
over and starting to clean the residual slime away.
"No, I didn't," Mara said, putting some whining fear into her voice as
she looked past the medic's large head. Through an open doorway in the back of
the treatment room she could see a large supply cabinet. Stretching out to the
Force, she eased the transparisteel cabinet doors open a few millimeters. The
labels on the vials were too far away to read, but if the colors and bottle
shapes followed conventional New Republic pharmaceutical standards, the three
she was looking for were there. Lifting one of the vials off its shelf, she
slid it quickly down along the wall to the floor. There was no way to know
where the surveillance cam back there was located, but there was nothing she
could do about it from out here anyway. She could only hope the bottle's
sudden movement wouldn't be noticed by whoever His First Greatness had
monitoring the spy displays. Getting a grip on the second bottle, she lowered
it to the floor beside the first...
"Odd," the Bith said. He had that section of her arm clean now and was
peering at the two puncture marks she'd made with the guard's knife. "These
don't look like krizar palpal indentations at all. Are you certain that was
what grabbed you?"
"I don't know," Mara moaned, moving the last of the three vials to the
floor and then snagging a couple of small squeeze bottles and adding them to
her collection. "All I know is that it hurt. It hurt a lot."
She could sense the sympathy and frustration in the Bith. "Yes, I know,"
he murmured. "It is not an easy life for you down here."
"No," she said, half sobbing as she moved her prizes across the floor to
the examination room doorway. Whoever was on surveillance duty might
reasonably be expected to ignore an empty supply room, but a room occupied by
a human slave and Bith medic was another matter entirely. She had to take out
the surveillance cam in here before she could bring the bottles the rest of
the way to her.
"Ow!" she gasped suddenly, half pulling her left arm out of the Bith's
grip as she quickly studied the wall he'd glanced at earlier. The cam, clearly
designed to be hidden, was fairly obvious to someone of Mara's training and
experience: a small lens masquerading as a knot hole in the wooden paneling.
"I am sorry," the Bith said, and she caught his mixture of concern and
puzzlement as he immediately eased his grip on her arm. "There should not be
anything where I was touching that should hurt."
"Well, it did," Mara said petulantly. With the fingers of her right hand,
she surreptitiously dug a wad of slime from the hardening mass caking her
legs. "They were whipping me earlier up in that big open place-ow!" She
snatched her left arm away from him again, flailing this time with her right
as well. The motion sent a half-dozen small globs of slime spinning across the
room-
Andwitha little help from her Force abilities, the largest of the globs
splattered into the wall squarely over the hidden surveillance cam.
"Again, I am sorry," the Bith said, glancing over at the wall. He took a
second look, his whole body stiffening suddenly as he realized what had
happened. "Excuse me," he said, grabbing up a towel and hurrying over to the
wall.
And with the cam still covered, and the medic's attention elsewhere, Mara
brought her vials and squeeze bottles flying across from the doorway and
dropped them smoothly down the front of her jumpsuit. By the time the Bith
finished his cleanup job, they were safely nestled in the folds of material at
her waist.
"My apologies," he said as he put the towel in the disposal and returned
to her. "The nutrient can damage the wall material, you see, which His First
Greatness was kind enough to allow me." And he would be in serious trouble if
he allowed the cam to stay covered too long? Probably. "It's okay," Mara
muttered.
Once again, she was just in time. The Bith had just taken her arm again
them snarled, glaring suspiciously at Mara. "What did you do with it? Well?"
Mara shrank away from him. "Nothing," she said, her voice frightened and
pleading. "Please-I didn't do anything."
"Then where is it?" the Drach'nam demanded, taking a threatening step
toward her, neuronic whip in hand.
"Perhaps it was a krizar which was still immature," the Bith spoke up,
holding a hand up protectively between Mara and the guard. "Its grip was weak
and not completely firm."
"Then where is it now?" the second guard put in. "It was attached to her-
I saw it."
"If it's not in the corridor, it must still be in the growth room," the
Bith said reasonably. "Perhaps it fell off again into the nutrient pits."
The guards continued to glare, and Mara held her breath. If either of
them had actually looked at the pupa after they left the room...
But apparently neither of them had. "Yeah," the guard said with ill
grace. "Maybe."
The Bith glanced at a wall chrono. "At any rate, the work shift is over,"
he said. "Why not escort her back to the communal, and then you can search the
walkways in the growth room."
"Don't tell us our job, Bith," the other guard growled, baring his teeth
as he grabbed Mara's arm in a none-too - gentle grip. "Come on, human. Time
for your slops."
The mass sleeping-eating-cleanup room Sansia had spoken about was
directly across the corridor from the slime pits. It was also fully as
disgusting as her tone had led Mara to expect. comAbout half of the woman had
finished their cleaning by the time Mara arrived, leaving the liquid in the
long troughs looking more like a runnier version of the slime than anything
resembling water. Mara joined the crowd of women waiting their turn, and under
cover of the bodies pressing around her, she worked the vials out of her
jumpsuit and confirmed that they did indeed contain the chemicals she wanted.
Once again, the comprehensive saboteur training the Emperor had given her so
long ago was going to come in handy.
"I thought you were kidding about going to pick up some things." Sansia's
voice came softly from behind her shoulder, too low for any of the othe
r women
around them to hear. "Where did you get those?"
"Medic supply cabinet," Mara told her, concentrating on the task of
pouring the first vial into one of the squeeze bottles, keeping them both at
waist height where the activity would be shielded from prying eyes.
Sansia made a sound in the back of her throat. "I suppose it's too late
to mention this, but the med facility probably has surveillance cams, too."
"I know," Mara said. "Don't worry, I took care of it. Here, hold these."
She passed over the empty vial and full squeeze bottle, giving Sansia a
quick once-over as she did. Despite the other woman's efforts to clean up, her
hair and clothing were still badly streaked and stained with the slime she'd
spent the day in. Whatever Praysh's reasons for hating human females, Mara
decided darkly, he'd honed his campaign of degradation to a fine edge.
"I didn't think you were going to come back," Sansia said, her voice
sounding a little odd as Mara began filling the second squeeze bottle from one
of her other vials. "I'm glad I was wrong."
"I'm used to being underestimated," Mara assured her. "You think you can
find your way to where your ship's being kept?"
"As I would the road back home from an execution ground," Sansia said
feelingly.
"Good. Describe the route for me."
Even without looking she could sense the sudden tension in Sansia's mind
and body. "Why do you need to know?" the other woman asked cautiously. "We're