Book 13 - Enemy Lines II - Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston

Author:Aaron Allston [Allston, Aaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345428684
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2002-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Borleias

Tam awoke in a hospital ward bed.

Again.

He didn’t like doing that. It was happening too often.

This time, his left shoulder ached, and he remembered how it got that way. The first time a member of the medical staff walked past the foot of his bed, he motioned the man over and said, “Can I get a message to someone?”

“Let me get someone for you first,” the man said.

Minutes later, visitors appeared from beyond the blue curtains to one side. Tarc barged right up to stand beside Tam. Wolam was content to stand at the foot of the bed, smiling. And Intelligence head Iella Wessiri positioned herself between them.

“Which arm hurts?” Tarc asked.

“No, no, no, Tarc. Protocol.” Tam gave him a little mock-glare. “The visitor who is most socially important, or who has the greatest demands on his time, gets to talk first. Which one is that?”

“Me,” Tarc said.

“Try again.”

“Well, her, I guess.”

“That’s better.”

Iella smiled at the boy. “I was available, so I thought I’d stop by in person to give you some news. You did a very important thing last night. You prevented a Yuuzhan Vong spy from getting away with some, well, very significant information.”

“Information you didn’t want them to have. Unlike the stuff I gave them.”

Iella nodded, not contrite.

“What information?”

“I shouldn’t say. You shouldn’t ask.”

“I think I can guess.” When still under Yuuzhan Vong control, he’d stolen records of a project being developed at this base, something about a superweapon involving laser weapons focused through a giant-sized lambent crystal, a living crystal normally bioengineered only by the Yuuzhan Vong. The spy’s torture of the Bothan, asking about such a crystal, suggested that the Bothan’s chamber was where it was being kept or monitored. But there had been no giant lambent crystal there—only the wreckage of some sort of mock-up.

There was no giant crystal. It was a fake. The whole Starlancer project had to be a fake. In a moment of clarity, he understood that the Starlancer project was nothing more than a ring in the nose of the Yuuzhan Vong commander, something to tug him in one direction or another.

“What’s your guess?” Iella asked.

“I shouldn’t say. You shouldn’t ask.”

“Good man.”

“How’s the Bothan?”

“Alive. Which he probably wouldn’t have been, without your intervention. He’s a few beds down; you can talk to him if the doctors say it’s all right. Anyway, I just wanted to stop by and say thanks.”

“Happy to help. Except for the pain part.”

When she’d gone, Tarc said, “They’re talking about you.”

“What are they saying?”

“That you’re crazy as a monkey-lizard, jumping a Vong warrior all by yourself.”

“What do you say?”

“Well … I’ve never seen a monkey-lizard.”

Tam nodded. “Good answer.”

“Come on, boy.” Wolam motioned Tarc over. “We need to give the monkey-lizard here some more time to rest. You can be my holocam operator until he drags himself out of bed.”

“Good,” Tarc said. “I’ll make the recordings he’s scared to.”

“Just don’t record me.” Tam pulled the sheet up over his head.

He heard Tarc snicker, and then he drifted away into sleep once more.

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