When Kregg asked for a third glass of whiskey, the serving girl swore in Rodese and left him the bottle. He was pouring his fourth when Arvis Xiu came waddling over. The Pantoran's steps were heavy, and the stench of wine on his breath had grown more stout since Kregg saw him last. Arvis thrust himself down into a chair. When he leaned back, it let out a pitiful creak.
"The time is almost come, smuggler," Arvis said as he laid his hands atop his gut. "Are you prepared? Have you made your choice?"
"I told the slug what I chose already." The words came out slurred. Kregg was deep in his cups now. In years long gone, he would have asked himself if he was too deep. Being trapped changed his perspective. There is no such thing as too deep.
"Unless you don't have the stomach." Arvis Xiu laughed at himself. Then, he leaned in as close as his corpulent frame would allow. "Of all the nights to get lost in the bottle, my boy?"
Rich coming from you, my friend. It was easy enough to smell the Corellian red and Chandrilan white on Arvis' breath, but the other spirits stuck out to Kregg just the same: Black rum, citrus liqueurs, and Toydarian grog. "Advise me then," Kregg said as he folded his arms.
"Our Gracious Lord still wants you to pick a concubine. Emai would be as good a choice at any, but it might do you well to catch him off guard." The overhead lights glared against beading sweat on his cheeks. "My advice? Pick Shana. Catch him off guard."
"Shana ain't a fekkin' concubine." What is your angle here, Blue Moon?
"Which is why it will work. We just need to distract him long enough." Arvis bared his yellow teeth in a smile. "Then your little lady can do her needlework."
"There's more you're not telling me."
Arvis pressed a finger against the crook of his lip and sighed. "I thought our Twi'lek maiden fair would have divulged the more... pertinent information of our plan." He shook his head and laughed. "Of course not. The Nemura clan were always strange, despite their devotion. They are loyal to the Masidii to a fault. I fear one day that might be their undoing." His powder blue lips twisted into a conniving grin.
"Perhaps you ought fill in any holes she forgot." Kregg never cared one bit for Arvis Xiu, now least of all. The Masidii had promised him a barony on his homeworld of Pantora should he help in their scheme. It was a wondrous reward, albeit given to the wrong man. The imminent Baron Xiu had risen too high too quickly. Too much more ambition, and the blue moon would find himself cast down by the dawn of the golden Masidii sun. "Tell me, Arvis. Or are you too noble now to spill your secrets to the likes of me?"
"How unfortunate it is that at the moment I still remain a schemer just like you. This is quite the game we play. Too many pieces, smuggler." He clapped a meaty hand against the table and began to thrum his fingers across the faux-sandstone top. "It's well above my station, I assure you. I was roped into this just as you were."
"Aye, she did tell me that much." Kregg looked at him for a long while. Get Xira her knives back and she'll get it done before Urga even leaves Nal Hutta. That was what he wanted to say; instead, he burst into boyish laughter. Arvis followed suit.
"Lay claim to Shana," Arvis said. "He will cause a spectacle as he did earlier." He leaned forward to grab Kregg's bottle of whiskey. It was empty, save for a scant pool of liquid sloshing around the bottom. Arvis snatched up the bottle by the neck and took a swig. He gagged and send spittle flying everywhere. The bottle fell from his clumsy grasp and shattered on the floor. "How do you drink such filth?"
"The same way you slough down rotten Alderaanian grapes by the keg," Kregg said with a forced grin. I still had some left, you incompetent blob. "Continue, please."
Arvis feigned a cough in between griping about the taste for several more minutes. "He will take offense, yes. But in that moment, Ulag will strike. He has armed Bes' guards. Though I couldn't get poor Bes to play along." He shrugged. "A pity."
A plan you conceived while plastered on spritzers, no doubt. "You think this will work?"
"Kregg, you should trust me more. I led you back to Xira, did I not?"
Her name should be nowhere near your wormy lips. "Aye," Kregg said with a sigh.
"We each have our own parts to play, no matter how small. The Chevin will bar the doors, the other guards will turn on their liege. Turns out they like credits more than food." Arvis chortled. "Shana will free Xira and Twyla from their fetters, and then they will kill the Fat Minister."
"With what weapons?" Republic Hammerheads are smaller than the holes in this thing you call a plan.
"As I said, Lady Morr will get to do her needlework. Shana was given her knives way back when and she's held onto them ever since. She'll hand them off when it's time." Arvis breathed deep, then said, "What did Twyla tell you when you spoke with her?"
"Little and less." Kregg had learned more from Twyla than from Arvis, and even more still from Xira, but there was no sense in letting him know that. "All's I got from her was tumbled dice."
Arvis puffed out his lips like a fat blue fish. "Good -" He paused and reconsidered his words. "Erm, not the pain, of course. She has set us up, my friend." He leaned around the table and whispered into Kregg's ear. "They are in orbit. All the kajidics. Shana told me while you were imbibing on hydraulic fluid."
In orbit? "Wait a minute. 'They'?" Kregg had expected Urga Masidii to pursue his revenge alone.
Arvis chortled and his pout turned to a smile. "All of the Hutts! Kajidics Masidii, Je'saari, Umazi, and Kar'kai. Each bringing the full strength of their clan, six hundred thousand Evocii strong and an equal retinue of starships to cover from above."
Kregg shook his head. All the Hutts in one place? To get rid of this one? It was so extravagant he would have figured it one of Durgulla's own plans. And yet, it made perfect sense. Durgulla had renounced his kajidic and abandoned the Hutt Cartel to create his own realm of debauchery. If there was one thing the Hutts valued above their version of justice, it was an equally queer sense of family. Then, it clicked.
We are all going to die.
"Arvis, you fat fekking fool." Kregg jumped to his feet. The whiskey had sent all the blood to his head, and it trickled slowly to his feet. He wobbled slipshod towards Arvis, who only raised his hands in confusion. "Your cavorting has-" Kregg stumbled but caught himself on the table. "You have doomed us all."
"Speak sense, smuggler." Arvis pouted again, unmoved.
Kregg snatched the ruffled velvets of Arvis's shirt.His clumsy hands sometimes groped rolls of flab instead, and the Pantoran yelped in pain. "They will kill us all."
"Let go of me, let go of me, let go of me you wretch!" Arvis rose to his feet and pushed Kregg away, sending him careening back against the table. A burr in the side caught him in the side just to sting him. "I am a baron!" Kregg sprawled on his back, his ears ringing. "Respect your betters, spacer."
People were beginning to stare. "You will be baron of worms if you go through with this folly." Kregg tried to get to his feet but his legs felt like jelly. He remained on his back, propping himself just above the floor on his hands.
"No, no, no! You will see, you fool. You will-"
Suddenly, Arvis stopped shouting. The rest of the palace went silent as well. There was only the echo of the doors slamming shut.
They're here already.
The man who was yelling at him seconds before was now helping Kregg to his feet, and the two of them walked together to the alcove's edge, seizing an empty spot amidst the throng. Kregg stood on the tips of his toes to see over a Talz towering in front of him. He expected to see a ceaseless tide of Evocii, and then maybe after an hour or so their liege lord brought in on a hoverthrone behind them. Instead it was her.
Lysara. He swore his heart skipped a beat.
She was dressed the same as she had been when he saw her last, all browns and beiges, her wheat-gold hair clasped messily in a bun. Occasionally, her lightsaber would show itself. No shoddy workmanship there. The lights would hit it just right when it peeked out from her brown robe, glaring off the chrome rings that banded each end. The rest of it was a solid black that ate the light. The hilt was long enough to be a decent cudgel on its own. He knew he would rue the day he ever saw the blade.
Beside her was the boy. He wore a brown robe that matched the color of his skin almost note for note, with the only contrast to be found in the form of his sand tunic. Slumped over his shoulder was a body clad in armor, a tattered cape of burgundy covering it like a mortuary drape. As the boy and Lysara moved past, Kregg saw there was only a blackened stump instead of a head.
But where is the helmet?
Just behind Lysara and the boy was another girl, bound at the wrists and ankles by cuffs of laserwire. She was Mirialan, her green skin the color of a peat bog in the bright lights of the Fat Minister's halls. No more than twenty. An old, orange rustbucket of a droid walked behind her with the barrel of an ugly, long-nosed carbine thrust into the small of her back. It was a model that Kregg had never seen before, segmented at every joint with red slits for eyes and a metal grate for a mouth. Its rotors hissed and whined at every step. Whatever it was, it was old, that much he could tell.
The ensemble made their way over to the Fat Minister's dais. Kregg felt Arvis tugging at his arm to keep him here beside him, but pulled away and moved out into the crowd. He shoved his way through the horde of people. Smallfolk skinny as sticks, guardsmen armed to the teeth, and upjumped nobles rendered obese in their pursuit of pleasure, it made no matter. He pushed through them all the same and none paid him any mind. Not even Ak-Gar, who just scowled as Kregg passed him by. Soon enough he was at the front of the mass, and the only thing before him was the Hutt's court and their new audience.
As Durgulla parted his lips—for once to speak, not to eat—the boy threw the body onto the floor before the Hutt could say a word. The initial thump of flesh on stone was followed by the ear-splitting screeching of solid metal scratching polished rock.
"Sorry, m'lord, it was getting too heavy," the boy quipped. The crowd behind him laughed. Even the Hutt's court were smirking, all except Ooba Vyr who was as loyal as he was oblivious.
"No good deed goes unpunished," Durgulla said in a low grumble. He waved his hand and Ulag Shmardl and Ooba Vyr started prepping that wretched old translator droid for the guests.
"There's no need," Lysara said, raising her own hand. "We've our own this time." She beckoned to the orange bucket of bolts, who wasted no time in leading the prisoner in between Lysara and the boy, and then took his own place in front of her.
"Bah!" The Fat Minister loosed spittle and slime to his left. Instead of landing in the chuba bucket, it coated Ooba Vyr head to toe. The Sullustan did not care; if he did, he dared not show it. "What is this thing?"
"Answer: I am HK-47, a protocol unit ready-made for the aggressive termination of hostilities." The droid's speech pattern was lifeless, dour, and monotone. The faint white noise of static could be heard just for the briefest of moments after every word. "I am well-versed in over six thousand languages, including those considered by Galactic scholars to be extinct. Continuation: I will provide translation services on my master's behalf. Jape: I am afraid they did not teach her Huttese on Coruscant, you see." The droid's speech seemed to brighten it a bit with the jest. Nonetheless, the peculiar syntax made Kregg's head brim with worries.
The Fat Minister muttered something under his breath and waved a flabby arm to have his own droid taken away. He rattled the slave chain with the other and Twyla stepped closer. He grabbed a chuba from his bowl so hard it crunched and squealed in his fist, then all but slammed it into her mouth.
"Very well," Durgulla said. He continued to feed his slave, and she feigned mirth all the while. Occasionally, Kregg saw her eyes twitch. That one's going to lose it at any moment. She had easily enough with him, anyway. "Present what I asked for." He switched to High Huttese, but that did not deter HK-47. The droid repeated the command in Basic for Lysara and her ward.
"At your throne lies the body of Mandalore the Unassailable," Lysara said. She raised a finger towards the boy before he could make another quip. "His helmet—with his head—was destroyed when his flagship Invictus burned and crashed on Malastare."
Durgulla's nostrils flared. "I asked for a head!"
"Pray forgive us, Exalted One. We offer you this gift along with the Mandalorian armor." She waved towards the Mirialan girl, who stepped sheepishly out from behind the droid at her words. "A Sith girl, young, untrained, and untarnished by the Dark Side of the Force. We found her in Mandalore's possession. We offer her to you, as a concubine."
That made Durgulla pause. The Fat Minister would have rubbed his chin, if only he knew which one to rub. Kregg could tell he was thinking all the same, by the way he hummed and hawed. Every now and then he would snort, as if the effort of thought was all too much for him. He let Twyla nibble from his hand all the while. He had never thought Twi'leks could change colors, but he swore he could see her face go from red to green.
The Hutt let out a low laugh. It would have been a giggle from a smaller creature, but from this behemoth it was boisterous. "Bring her to me." He beckoned her forward, his fat fingers wrinkling as he curled them into the meat of his slimy palm. "Just before the throne, so I may look."
Lysara gave the Mirialan girl a look and she did as she was told, standing meek just before the edge of the first of the Hutt's twin daises.
"And this, Exalted One." Lysara approached beside the girl, a small gleaming rod of metal in hand. It was another lightsaber, though this one was stumpy in comparison, as if it had been sawed in half. Kregg couldn't make out the finer details from his position. He watched Twyla, still wearing her nausea on her face, take the saber hilt and present it to Durgulla. "Her lightsaber, to fulfill the second half of the bargain." At that, she stepped back towards the boy and the droid.
Durgulla held the stubby lightsaber in his hand. It was little more than a pathetic toy in his massive grasp, barely a sliver of metal. He let out that laugh of his again.
I've seen this game before. Kregg recalled when Xira had threatened the Fat Minister, standing in that very same spot. The Klatooinian at his right wore a blaster at his hip. Here's my shot.
"Lya Moonsunder, I am gracious for your gift," he began. But that was as far as the Fat Minister got. There was a yell from the door and then a large crash. Kregg saw the Hutt's eyes go wide, giant blood oranges that somehow grew even bigger. Then, they narrowed as much as they could muster and his tongue traced his mouth corner to corner. Kregg knew well enough what Durgulla had seen, but the Fat Minister was never one to be upstaged.
Just before the crowd could turns towards the source of the noise, Durgulla spoke once more. HK-47 did not have time to translate for Lysara and her companions, but Kregg understood loud and clear. "Let's see how she gets along with my new pet." And the Mirialan girl went tumbling down, her legs twisting like broken twigs as the floors slipped out beneath her.