Jas has no idea what any of that means. Mysteries persist. Why is Sloane in scavenger robes? Why did they capture her and Brentin as if they are enemies to the Empire? Why was Brentin here at all? Why did Niima go along with it—and why is the Hutt now dead?
“Nothing here,” Norra says. Two words she’s said already half a dozen times. Her raw, red eyes search the wreckage, looking for any answer to those questions Jas keeps in the back of her head.
“We should go,” Jas says.
“Yes,” Norra says, but she continues wandering. She kicks over the smoldering wreckage from a wheel-bike. She nudges the elbow of a dust-blown Hutt-slave corpse. Jas tries to summon her back again, warning her that those turbolasers are off, now—but no telling if they’ll remain so.
“Norra.”
“I know.”
“We have to go.”
“I know.”
“We can get him back. Him and Sloane.”
“How?” Norra asks, that one word spoken louder than all the others—the word rough-edged with sorrow, desperation, and anger. “We don’t know where they went. Or why. We don’t have anything, Jas. We were close. We were so close. And then just…” She holds up her hand and closes it on open air. Fresh tears threaten to leave new tracks down her dirt-stained cheeks.
Jas doesn’t know how to answer.
She wants to offer hope, but that’s not really her thing. Jas doesn’t want to lie. Losing Sloane and Brentin like that means hope is fading fast.
Then—
A gassy belch erupts as the Hutt carcass rolls over. Norra cries out. So does Jas, startled as she staggers backward, hissing an old Iridonian curse. She raises her rifle, pointing it at the slug.
Niima paws at the ground, struggling to get up. Dark blood oozes from holes in her body in gummy runnels and rivulets. She gurgles in some old form of Huttese—“Uba, Zabrak! Nolaya bayunko.” The body rights itself, then slithers over the carcasses of her slaves. Every movement draws a grunt of anguish from the slithering worm.
Norra throws Jas a panicked look. In it, the message: What do we do?
Jas gives an alarmed shrug. Let’s let this play out.
Finally, the Hutt seems to find what she’s looking for. She scoops up a black box off the ground. It looks to be a translator device. With a leathery mitt, Niima slaps the box against her chest—it sticks to the dry, slimy blood.
Again she bellows in Huttese, but this time the box offers a staticky, grinding translation: “YOU. THE ZABRAK. YOU WERE IN MY DUNGEON.”
Jas keeps the rifle pointed. “That’s right.”
“AND YET NOW YOU ARE HERE.”
“That’s…also true.”
“I SHOULD KILL AND EAT YOU.”
The Hutt’s black tongue slides along her slitted mouth. Her one eye winks reflexively as a little river of fresh blood trickles into it.
“I don’t think you’re in much of a position for that.”
The slug regards herself. Then she looks to the corpses around her. Her wormbody visibly slumps in a noncommittal shrug. “YES. YOU MAY BE RIGHT. YOU HELP ME AND I WILL HELP YOU.”
Jas and Norra consult in an unspoken look. Norra gives Jas a small nod. Okay, then. Jas injects a little deference into her voice when she says: “What do you need, O great-and-powerful Niima?”
“TAKE ME TO MY TEMPLE.”
“And what do we get out of the exchange?”
“I CAN GET YOU CLEARANCE CODES.”
“We have codes already.”
“NOT TO THE IMPERIAL BASE, YOU DON’T.”
Well. That answers that.
Jas nods. “Norra, go get the shuttle. Let’s take Niima home.”
“Conder!” Sinjir cries out, gasping as he lifts his face from the hard, cobbled stone of the alleyway. His chin peels away, sticky with blood. He gasps, tasting that wet copper tang. A hand waves in front of him.
His vision resolves and there stands Temmin.
He growls as he takes the hand. The young man helps him stand.
“What…” Sinjir coughs. “What happened?”
“I…don’t know,” Temmin says. “Grelka ducked away and I tried to follow. But something was blocking my comm.”
“The others,” Sinjir says. He looks up, sees that the sky is blushing lavender. It’s morning. How long was he out? “Where are they?”
“I don’t know that, either. I can’t get anybody on the comlink. I came around the side here and found you, facedown in the alley.”
Not the first time that’s happened, Sinjir thinks.
The memory of last night resolves: waiting around Izzik’s, losing sight of Ashmin Ek, seeing Ek and Nim Tar in the alleyway before someone clobbered him in the back of the old braincage, forcing him to stop and take a long dirt-nap. That proves something’s up. But what?
—
They find Solo in a trash bin behind the landing bay where Dor Wieedo’s ship was (but is no longer) parked. He is alive. It doesn’t take much to bring him back to consciousness—a few light slaps to the cheek does the trick. He clambers out, snarling.
“Why do I always end up in the trash?” he asks. When nobody says anything, he asks: “What? Nobody has anything funny to say about that?”