by Star Wars
The Trandoshan who’d been hiding inside the crate had a WESTAR-M5 blaster rifle in both hands. By the time Warden Blirr dropped to the floor—her reflexes, Dawson realized, had just saved her life—the ’Shan was already firing point-blank into the group of guards directly in front of him. Blaster bolts streaked flickering ribbons of death into the unsuspecting front line of Cog Hive Seven’s COs, and everything around him started happening with dreamlike clarity. Dawson saw Greer, the guard two meters away from him, go rag-dolling backward across the floor of the hangar with a sizzling hole in his chest, leaving nothing more behind him than a stinking cloud of burned flesh and fabric.
Blinking, Dawson recoiled and hit the floor. He could hear the warden’s administrative droid clucking out panicked noises in the distance. Somewhere off to his right, Warden Blirr herself had disappeared completely from sight—hit or not, he couldn’t tell, nor at this moment did he particularly care. The thought that kept circling through his mind—This can’t be happening, whatever it is. I was supposed to be off the clock twenty fracking minutes ago—did nothing to help him get a grip on himself.
In front of him and all around, things were happening almost too quickly to track. The two guards who had carried the crate out of the Purge were running, actually flat-out sprinting, back up the gangway for cover, while the prisoners they’d brought down had already thrown off their manacles and leg restraints—which Dawson realized, with a dawning sense of horror, had never been fastened to begin with. Cold sweat broke out over his forehead, making his scalp feel too tight for his skull. The whole thing had been a setup, and they’d walked right into it.
Grinning wider than ever, the “prisoners” charged forward. The Trandoshan inside the crate was pulling out blasters, rifles, and sidearms and tossing them out to his confederates, who seized them eagerly and joined in the one-sided firefight.
Dawson turned to flee.
The hangar around him was already full of smoke and the sheared-metal stench of spent blaster rounds. The remaining guards and loading personnel were taking cover on both sides of him, but the hangar had been cleared to accommodate the incoming prisoners and supplies and there was nothing to hide behind. He thought if he could get to the turbolift, he might stand a chance of—
Bang!
An explosion from inside the Purge’s berthing port jerked his head around, and he looked back just in time to see the bodies of the two guards who’d just run in come flying back out, their corpses sprawling limply across the floor of the hangar.
There was something coming out of the smoke.
Something big.
Staring, Dawson realized that he was looking at some kind of giant floating holovid projector hauled forward by a pair of kell dragons, grayish black quadrupedal lizards, straining frenziedly at their leashes. The image on the holovid was a bloated, leering figure that he recognized only from secondhand footage and word of mouth, though he knew immediately who it was.
Jabba the Hutt.
All at once Dawson knew the rumors were true.
But at that point, of course, it was entirely too late.
56
12 × 18
Braced at the top of the turbolift, Maul used his free hand to jimmy the edge of the speaker’s faceplate into the locked ceiling hatch, prying it open. The edge was too big for the gap, and his hand kept slipping.
He closed his eyes, summoning the power of the dark side, searching the hatch, probing it for structural weakness. It didn’t budge. Blinking back sweat, he rededicated himself to the task at hand. It was growing feverishly hot inside the lift, where Warden Blirr had no doubt intended to roast him alive, or until she broke down whatever rebellious aspect she saw in him, and turned him into … what? Her mascot, her house pet, or something even more servile?
The notion revolted him, and he jammed the metal strip in deeper between the locked hatch and its housing, wiggling it back and forth. Boiling with impatience, he released a concentrated energy field against the hatch, battering it, but it still wouldn’t budge.
Maul cursed, the anger rising up inside him from wherever it lived and toiled endlessly. Tightening his grip on the makeshift tool, he started working again on the hatch, forcing himself to take his time, fighting to ignore the suffocating heat, the baked air that filled his lungs, as if he were drawing breath directly from a blast furnace.
He fixed his gaze straight up. The hatch itself, an unremarkable twelve-by-eighteen-centimeter rectangle, had become his entire world. Twelve by eighteen, and in the end it represented the difference between completing his mission and perishing in shame and obscurity.
Slipher—Radique—the khipus—
He clenched his teeth, the heat very close to him now, pressing in from all sides, clinging to him like a second skin. By now the walls had become scalding steel plates, burning the palm of his hand and the fingers holding him in place. The inside of his mouth felt cool by comparison. A drop of sweat hit the floor and he realized that he could actually hear it sizzle. If the temperature kept going up like this, he guessed that he might have another minute or two before he blacked out from heat prostration, and then—
He kept working. There was an odd, meaty smell rising up around him, and when his blistered palm shifted slightly on the wall, he realized that it was his own flesh beginning to roast.
Master. I will not fail.
He breathed in, breathed out. An odd, narcotic dizziness had started to take hold of him, and he reached down deep into whatever remained of his consciousness, forcing himself to focus. He needed to find Eogan Truax. If he could just—
All at once, the hatch popped open.
Cool air rushed down from above in a blessed, invigorating cloud, and Maul dropped the steel plate to the floor and scrambled up through the hatchway, into the near-darkness.
He was standing on top of the lift, gazing up the endless expanse of the shaft. The sweat had already dried on his skin. Giving himself a moment, he narrowed his eyes, stretching out with his feelings while his eyes acclimated to the lightless space. The details began to resolve themselves around him. In front of him was a series of steel rungs imbedded directly into the wall at half-meter intervals, an easy jump from here.
He sprang forward, caught the first rung, and began to climb.
Boy, I’m coming for you.
57
KILLING BOX
Everything was going fine until the kell dragons broke loose.
When the shooting had started, Sadiki hadn’t wasted any time on incredulity. In her experience, it was what she’d always thought of as the “idiot beat”—that shocked, stubborn moment when the human brain refused to accept the obvious, even when it was happening right in front of your face—that got you killed. Her instincts took over. Crawling across the floor on her knees and elbows, keeping her head down, she’d found immediate cover behind one of the unused load-lifter droids while the initial volley of blasterfire had overtaken the cargo hold. That had been the worst of it.
“Bo shuda, Warden Blirr,” Jabba’s voice called out through the holo-projector’s recessed speakers. “Ohta mi marvalec fiz plesodoro.”
Translating the words effortlessly, Sadiki understood the message perfectly in Basic. Hello, Warden Blirr. Let me see your beautiful face.
She’d peered out from behind the droid and seen his image hovering there, a full stereo projection, larger than life, borne forward on a repulsor platform drawn by the two enormous kell dragons. Of course Jabba would never risk coming down here himself. She could only assume that he was safely ensconced on his space yacht, far enough away to remain unharmed, not so distant that he’d miss out on any of the fun.
As imposing as he was, the arrival of the Hutt, in person or virtually, hadn’t really been much of a surprise. By this point Sadiki had already figured out most of what was happening and why, and when her ears stopped ringing from the firefight, she’d come around from behind the load-lifter, stepping fully into view.
“Jab
ba,” she said, hands up, stepping closer, picking her way among the bodies of fallen guards and deck crew members. The survivors, apparently, had already retreated from the hangar. “Welcome to the Hive. I take it that I’ve done something to provoke your ire?”
The Trandoshans and Gamorreans swung around to point their blasters at her, but Jabba’s holo gestured at them to lower their weapons. The platform where the image projector sat shuddered visibly, with the dragons yanking hungrily on their leashes.
“Warden Blirr,” Jabba answered, continuing in Huttese, “I thought we were friends.”
“Hmm.” Fearlessness, she realized, or at least the appearance of it, would be the key to surviving the next five minutes. She glanced at the smoking carcasses of her own people littered across the floor and shrugged. “Apparently not. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”
“You executed my foot soldiers.”
“Then I guess we’re even.”
“As if that weren’t bad enough,” Jabba continued on blithely, “you allowed them to be eaten by this inmate scum that you pit against one another for sport.”
“A nice touch, don’t you think?”
“You know me well.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Under normal circumstances I would applaud such butchery, but you don’t seem to grasp the basic elements of respect.”
“Respect?” Sadiki cocked her eyebrow. “So you’re here to school me on the fine art of diplomacy?”
“Among other things.”
“Sorry, Jabba, but it won’t wash,” she said, taking another step forward, hands still up where he could see them. “And besides, you told me explicitly that those weren’t your men. I gave you every opportunity to take them back, and you denied knowing every one.”
“Sadiki, Sadiki …” The Hutt narrowed his eyes. “We’re both businesspeople. Let’s stop wasting each other’s time.”
“By all means.” She’d ventured close enough now that she could see into the crate where the Trandoshan was standing, a snarl twisted over his face, the WESTAR rifle still gripped in his claws. At her feet, the body of one of the guards was twitching, his static pike still clutched loosely in one hand, as the last of his life drained from him. “Just tell me what you want.”
Jabba peered at her from beneath wrinkled eyelids. “What I want?”
“This is how this works, isn’t it? You send in a handful of hired muscle and I get all intimidated and fork over whatever it takes to make them go away. So what do you want?”
“How about your pretty head?” Jabba told her. “Mounted on my palace wall, where I can admire it for all eternity.”
Sadiki smiled coldly. “I’m afraid that’s not on the table for negotiation.”
“How disappointing. Then how about a quick meal while I’m here?”
She glanced at the holovid, perplexed. “A meal?”
“Yes.” Jabba cast his eyes down at the creatures leashed to the front of his platform. “For my little pets.”
At once, both dragons sprang forward and came barreling toward her, lunging over the bodies of the fallen, while Jabba’s entourage stepped back to give them all the room they needed to finish her off.
Sadiki figured she was close enough by now, and she was right. In a quick jackknifing motion she grabbed the static pike from the limp grasp of the guard on the floor, turned, and thrust it into the neck of the Trandoshan, jamming the electrically charged tip into his reptilian skin and delivering a massive, heart-stopping shock. As the ’Shan jerked and shuddered with the current pulsing through him, she grabbed the WESTAR from his hands, wheeled around, and fired a series of blasts directly into the face of the first kell dragon.
The dragon caught the high-energy particle beam straight between the eyes at less than a meter away, the impact pulverizing its bony calvarium and frying its lizard brain in its skull, but not entirely stopping it. Skidding sideways on its claws, captive of its own momentum, the thing floundered headlong into the crate where the Trandoshan had collapsed and slammed into it, still twitching. Its scaly body landed in a bulky heap at Sadiki’s feet.
Don’t forget the other one.
She pivoted, finger on the trigger. The second dragon circled around behind her with a guttural hiss. Tensing, she pointed the WESTAR at it and squeezed off a round, but she was too late. In a flash the thing was on her, knocking her flat. Squirming beneath it, Sadiki drew up her legs, fought to pull herself away—
—and that was when she felt its jaws clamp down around her right calf, teeth ripping through her leather boot, deep into the flesh and muscle, grinding down toward bone.
She screamed. Agony like nothing she’d ever experienced came spilling out to engulf the entire lower half of her body, swelling in a bright balloon of pain that threatened to overtake reality itself. She arched her back, her fingers groping blindly for the WESTAR, drumming the floor of the hangar, but the blaster rifle was gone, lost where she could never find it.
Crack! Something in her lower leg came loose with a brittle snap, and her vision doubled, then tripled, as tears of pain spilled up from her eyes.
“Easy, sweet one,” Jabba’s voice growled at the dragon, “take your time.” Faintly, from somewhere far beyond the pain, Sadiki heard him laughing, that hollow, orotund ho ho ho that nearly everyone who heard it associated with impending death. “You see, Warden, I like to starve my precious dragons, to build their appetite.” Squirming on the holovid, tail twisting with delight, the Hutt sat back and splayed his fingers over the great sac of his bloated stomach. “But I also train them to eat slowly, to keep you alive as long as possible. So she works her way slowly upward, a little at a time.”
Writhing upward, blinking back tears, Sadiki stared down with a mixture of horror and disbelief at the stump where her right foot had been. It was gone—torn off completely. The splintered nubs of tibia and fibula protruded visibly from the tattered pantleg. From directly above it, the kell dragon leered up at her, face and teeth smeared bright red, its eyes alive with unslaked appetite. As the lizard nudged its way closer, snuffling eagerly, Sadiki could smell the thing’s breath seething from its nostrils, a noxious jungle stench of stomach bile and rancid meat mixed with the fresher coppery smell of her own blood.
Anger cut a white streak across the cloud of impending shock, and she knew what she had to do.
“ThreeDee?” She twisted backward, her eyes flicked across the hangar until she found what she was looking for: the administrative droid, standing along the far wall. “ThreeDee?”
“Yes, Warden?” The administrative droid looked back at her from the wall of the hangar.
“Initiate reconfiguration series 121, immediately.”
“Yes, Warden.”
“Jabba,” Sadiki shouted, forcing her voice to remain steady. From where she lay with the kell dragon standing over her, she was unable to make eye contact with the Hutt, but she knew he was there. “Jabba, can you hear me?”
“Of course I can,” he said. “Do you think I would miss the sound of you begging for your life?”
Sadiki managed to shake her head. “Call it off,” she said, through gritted teeth. “This is your only chance. The rest of your men, now, tell them to stand down.”
“Or?”
“Your people will all die here. I swear it.”
“You swear it?” Jabba sat back and roared with laughter, his massive bulk shaking with the force of it. “You are in no position—”
She closed her eyes as the entire hangar began to shudder around her with a deep metallic tremor, the clockwork of Cog Hive Seven going through what would be its final reconfiguration. To Sadiki, the tremor was reassuringly familiar, the stirring of a great hydraulic giant whose sole purpose now was to save her life. Dismissing the sight of the dragon, pushing past the shock of blood loss and the trauma, she reached back with both hands as far as she could. There was a long metal tube welded to the wall at her back, and she seized hold of it as the floor panels below dropped suddenly open bel
ow her.
With a shriek, the dragon plunged into the shaft, gone.
Jabba’s yellow eyes widened. In front of him, the Trandoshans and Gamorreans backed away while the great walls began collapsing around them, the ceiling buckling, the entire hangar folding up from the top down while newly revealed gaps and shafts yawned open on either side of the Purge’s docking port. On his hovering repulsor platform, the Hutt’s expression had already changed from shock to startled outrage.
“Presumptuous wench!” Spittle flew from Jabba’s lips, and his entire face seemed to swell and bulge with contempt. “I will have you brought before me. I will devour your flesh! I will wallow in your blood!” His slitted yellow eyes gleamed and rolled back at the Gamorrean nearest the Purge’s port. “Signal Scuppa! Turn them loose! Turn them all loose!”
The holovid disappeared.
All around them, indifferent to events within it, the cargo bay continued to reconfigure. The shaft that had opened up to swallow the kell dragon now stood five meters wide, too far for any of Jabba’s henchmen to jump across, but Sadiki had a feeling that it wouldn’t stop them for long.
“Warden,” a voice said behind her, and she glanced up to see ThreeDee standing over her, gripping her arm. “I’ve got you. Let me help.” Leaning forward, the droid’s breastplate opened to extrude a slender manipulation tool with a hypodermic gripped in its articulated pincers.
“Where … did that come from?”
“You had it installed in me personally during the initial upgrade. Three years ago.”
“I don’t remember that at all.”
“It doesn’t matter.” The needle slid into her arm, and an instant later, Sadiki felt the pain beginning to ebb. It was still there, but whatever the droid had injected into her had created a feeling of welcome detachment, as if she were observing it from a great distance. “We need to get you out of here right away.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Eventually, yes. Right now you need immediate treatment.”
