Part 19 (1/2)

”All right, ” he said, following his instincts. Living right now was better than dying. That was the bottom line. And if he got even luckier, he might be able to do something to help Larin as well, a.s.suming she was still alive. ”I accept the offer. ”

The matriarch broke out into an enormous and unsavory smile. One chubby finger pointed at him. ”U wamma wonka”

”Ta.s.saa Bareesh says...”

”I know what she said. ” He swallowed another foul taste.

She clicked her fingers and the guards dropped their weapons. A Gamorrean scurried forward to return his comlink and lightsaber. He fixed them to his belt and bowed. The crowd watched him, silently now.

”Thank you, ” he said. ”It's been a pleasure doing business. ”

As the guards led him from the throne room-a guest now, rather than a prisoner-the sound of the Hutt's chuckling, low and lugubrious, echoed and re-echoed through the sybaritic halls behind him.

CHAPTER 21.

”Are you feeling all right?”

Larin turned to look at the smuggler. She had left herself for a moment, left the ruins of the security air lock and the blasted droid factory, left the clamor of palace security digging through the rubble, even left the occasional potshot in their direction from an ambitious Houk, currently stationed in the hole that shortsighted Yeama had blown through the wall. Now she was back, and the view wasn't pretty.

The answer came to her at last.

Are you feeling all right? ”Yes. ”

They were hunkered down out of sight in the entrance of the vault. She was squatting on her knees, still applying pressure to her injured hand under her right armpit. The suit had sealed the wound as best it could, leaving her nothing else she could do about it now. She knew that well enough, having been injured in combat before. Once, she had been caught in an intense urban guerilla exchange that Special Forces Blackstar Squad had been sent in to deal with. Intel had leaked, leading Larin and three squad members into a trap. She still dreamed sometimes of the way frag grenades had torn into the group, instantly reducing two of her friends to ribbons. She had been sheltered from the bulk of it, but even so the skin down her right leg and side had been flayed completely away, along with a fair chunk of muscle. It had taken an extended period in a bacta tank to regrow the tissue, and three months of rehabilitation to restore her to full flexibility.

This was different, though, and it wasn't just because fingers couldn't be regrown. In the Blackstars, she had had many clear-cut reasons to fight: among them strengthening the Republic cause, enforcing principles of liberty and equality among all beings in the galaxy, and furthering her own career. She had thought herself perfectly normal in that regard. Why else did one join special forces but to be a hero on the side of good?

She knew now that not everyone was like her. Every barrel contained a bad apple or two. She also knew just how important at least two of those principles were to her. More important, combined, than the last one. Sacrificing her career to uphold them had seemed the right thing to do, at the time.

Without her career, though, it was very hard to fight for any cause at all. And now her situation was totally muddied. Was invading a sovereign state-albeit one comprising criminals and murderers-the best way to go about enforcing freedom and equality? How did squabbling with Mandalorians and Sith over a battered navicomp help the Republic? To whom did she owe her allegiance now, if not herself or her former peers?

She didn't have good answers for any of these questions, yet she had lost the fingers of her left hand fighting for them. That made the pain worse, somehow.

”What happened to your droid?” she asked Jet in return.

”Clunker? He's somewhere under that lot, ” the smuggler said, indicating the pile of masonry left in the wake of the thermal detonation. He had armed himself with a blaster dropped by one of the dead soldiers outside. ”Don't worry. He'll be back when he's ready. ”

”I recognize his model, ” she said, clutching at the fact as though it would explain everything. ” J-Eight-O, soldier cla.s.s. That's why he talks in combat signs. But they were phased out, weren't they?”

”Perhaps, ” he said. ”I found him on a sc.r.a.p heap two years ago. His vocoder was dead, and when I tried to fix it, he just broke it again. That proves how smart he is. He's worked out that if you don't respond to orders, no one can prove you heard them. ”

”That's a pretty good survival tactic, ” she said, ”for anyone in the army. ”

They leaned out of the vault to see if anything had changed outside. The Houk kicked up some pebbles nearby, but missed by more than a meter. Potannin's last surviving escort returned fire from the other side of the antechamber. He missed, too. Larin could have aimed better, even with just one hand.

”What's your name, Private?” she called to him.

”Hetchkee, sir, ” he called back. He was a young Kel Dor, and his face was mostly hidden behind a face mask and goggles designed to protect him from a harsh oxygen atmosphere.

”Who told you to call me'sir'?”

”No one, sir. ”

He obviously didn't know anything about her past. She wasn't going to be the one to fill him in.

The sound of digging grew louder.

”Larin, ” said Jet, leaning in closer, ”do you think we've been left to hold the baby?”

”In what sense?”

”In the Someone's going to have to explain this mess to Ta.s.saa Bareesh and it might as well be you sense. ”

”Don't worry, ” she said. ”He'll be back. ”

”Who? Your Jedi friend or Envoy Vii?”

Larin looked around. She hadn't noticed that the envoy was gone-although now that she thought about it, she did remember Jet telling her something about Ula meeting them at the shuttle. It hadn't occurred to her to wonder when and how they would go about getting there. Ula had left before the security forces had sealed their only way out.

”I mean s.h.i.+gar, ” she said. ”Jedi Knights always keep their promises. ”

”And what exactly did he promise you?”

She suppressed a sharp reply. What was Jet getting at? Sure, s.h.i.+gar may not actually have promised to come back for her, but she knew he would if he could. And while Ta.s.saa Bareesh's security forces ama.s.sed outside, there was nothing else she could do but trust him. She had given up trying to hail him on the comlink long ago.

She stood up.

”I suggest...”

The sound of a distant explosion cut her off. The floor shook, and a rain of dust settled down on them from above.

There was no way to tell where this latest blast had come from, so she finished what she'd been about to say.

”I suggest we look at this thing while we still have the chance. ”

She crossed to the miniature droid factory and peered inside. The swirling silver cilia were still now, so she felt safe a.s.suming it was dead. She tried tipping it over to see the base, but it was firmly affixed by the wire-like threads that had eaten down into the vault floor like tree roots.

A piece of the silvery alloy had melted off during the firefight in the vault. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand. It was surprisingly heavy.

”Let me get this straight, ” she said. ”This thing was on the Cinzia. You found it in the wreckage and brought it to Hutta. Ta.s.saa Bareesh locked it in here. It looked inert, but it wasn't. It sent out those thread things into the floor and began scavenging metal. It infiltrated the security system. It started building the droids. ”

”Ula called them hexes. ”

That was as good a name as any, for now. ”Maybe just one or two hexes at first, to defend itself. It kept them hidden inside, like a nest or an egg. If you look into one of the hexes, you'll see they're not solid all the way through. They have a honeycomb structure. So two could easily fit in here, if they were collapsed down. ” She poked the cilia with the barrel of her rifle. ”Two would be enough to take over a s.h.i.+p. ”

Jet looked at her, not the droid-nest. ”You think it was waiting for someone to win the auction and take it away?”