“You,” he says. “What did you say?”
“I said that’s my droid.” Her voice is raw, as if her vocal cords have been dragged behind a speeder over volcanic stone. She bares her teeth. “I want him back. Now.”
The trooper stands there, looking from her to the droid. The officer just laughs. Bones, for his part, seems to pay no attention to any of this. In the center of his narrow, rib-cage-like chest sits a black restraining bolt.
“You’re telling me you own this droid?” the officer asks.
“I am. You let him go. And me too. Or you’re in deep spit.”
“Hm.” The officer grabs the stormtrooper’s blaster rifle. “This droid?”
He points the blaster and fires. The droid’s arm spins away, detached from the body. The shoulder socket sparks as the arm hits the ground.
“No!” she cries out. “Wait. Please—”
“Are you sure you mean this droid?” Effney says through a venomous scowl and slams the droid up against the cage. Clang. She reaches for Bones through the metal, but suddenly the air lights up with blasterfire. She can’t see the officer, not at first, because Bones’s frame blocks her view—but as laserfire tears bits of the droid off, piece by piece, so does her view of that officer become more complete. His face is a mask of rage, and again she has that image of sanity being scrubbed away, revealing something altogether more monstrous underneath.
Bones stands there. And takes it. Parts of him, shot off by the blaster rifle, limbs and bits banging against the cage before hitting the ground.
Until he has been broken apart into a pile of constituent pieces.
Until Effney is standing there, sweating, panting, leering.
Until she, too, is broken, collapsing backward. She sobs, though again no tears come out. She turns and throws up, but it’s just dry-heaving. Norra curls up on her side and gazes into the eyes of her son’s droid—eyes that flicker before finally going dead and dark.
Effney offers a dismissive sniff. He tosses the blaster rifle back to the trooper, who barely manages to catch it. “Sorry, scum. It seems this droid is malfunctioning.” To the trooper, he says: “I suppose Borrum won’t get to see this curious antiquity after all.”
“Should I clean it up?” the trooper asks.
“No. Let her look upon the wreckage of this mutant machine.” He gasps, suddenly. “Gods, it’s hot. I need water, let’s go.”
They walk away. Bones remains in pieces. Norra curls up into herself.
A patch of blood decorates the stone wall of her cell.
It’s dry now. Dry for days, maybe. And once Mercurial catches sight of her, it’s easy enough to see what happened: She fought back, and Niima’s blank-eyed slave-boys roughed her up. The side of the Zabrak’s head is scuffed raw and scabbed over. Her hair—normally thrust up like the feathers of a proud bird—flops over that side of her head, matted there with blood. The blood’s dried in purple streaks down the deep-sea blue of her skin, forming new tattoos all the way to her jawline, framing that famously vicious grimace of hers.
Jas Emari. You are mine.
He doesn’t bother greeting her. No words. Just a smile, big and beaming. It’s enough to show her: I’m the one who caught you, little fish. She thought she outsmarted him back on Taris. And, he admits, she did. But it was only a temporary embarrassment—a failed move in a bigger game.
A game he just won.
He nods to Niima’s freaks. They murmur and mumble as three of them storm into her cell, looping rope—rope! Of all the primitive things—around her wrists and dragging her out.
Mercurial is glad to have Niima’s hospitality—and he’s just as glad the Hutt isn’t here. He doesn’t know Niima, but he knows Hutts. They’re given over equally to brutality and formality, and he has no time for either of those things. (Plus, they’re disgusting. Giant, slime-lubed parasites drinking from the blood flow of the universe. Mercurial has little issue with parasites, given that he is one himself. But the slime? That, he can do without.) Haughtily, Mercurial leads the way. The Hutt-slaves drag Jas behind them, and she struggles to keep up. The bounty hunter is buoyant with triumph. He feels a spring in his step. This is going to be a good day. Her capture was easy. He thought he’d have a long hunt ahead of him, so he hired a whole crew to help. And then the girl just drops into his lap?
An easy win. One that still required him to be in the right place at the right time, of course. He deserves it. He deserves the payment, too.
But does his crew?