Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (27 page)

"Tassaa
Bareesh is considering your offer, " said the droid, glancing
back and forth between them.

"I
worked that out. "

She
rumbled something, and the translator said, "Tassaa Bareesh
wonders how you intend to follow the Mandalorian when you don't have
a ship, let alone directions. "

"I'm
a Jedi. " He tapped his forehead, hoping to hide the fact that
he hadn't the faintest idea on either point. "We have our ways.
"

A
new wave of whispering spread through the crowd.

"Tassaa
Bareesh says that your ways are insufficient. The investment is too
risky. "

"But..."

The
translator raised a metal hand. "She says that in order to
protect her stake in this venture, she must be allowed to provide you
with assistance. "

"
'Must be'?" The choice of words gave him pause. What was being
forced on him, exactly? "Tell me more. "

The
matriarch settled back on her throne. Her eyes narrowed to slits.

"Tassaa
Bareesh will provide you with transport. Her nephew will make the
necessary arrangements. If you accept the offer, you may leave
immediately. "

Shigar
wondered what would happen if he rejected her offer. He mistrusted
the matriarch's sudden satisfaction. Just moments ago she had been
seething with rage at the way her plans had been ruined. Had that
been an act, or was this the act?

"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,
assuming 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"

"Tassaa
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 class. That's
why he talks in combat signs. But they were phased out, weren't
they?"

"Perhaps,
" he said. "I found him on a scrap 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 Tassaa 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 Shigar, " 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, Shigar may
not actually have promised to come back for her, but she knew he
would if he could. And while Tassaa Bareesh's security forces amassed
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 assuming 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. Tassaa
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 ship. "

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

"I
do. The hexes would've emerged, overpowered the crew, and gone safely
home. "

He
nodded slowly, thinking through her proposition.

"I
think you're partly there, " he said. " Given enough time,
I reckon the hexes could've escaped from here on their own steam.
Note how they emerged from the vault the moment everyone started
fighting over it. The door melted like butter, probably thanks to
wires like these. If everyone had waited just one more day, I think
our nest here would have turned up empty. "

"You
might be right, " she said.

"It's
just a guess, " he said self-deprecatingly.

"Here's
another one, " she said, edging back to the door. "If the
homing instinct theory is right, then the hexes must know the way
home. "

Jet's
face brightened. "So if we can get out of here with one of their
brains, we won't need the navicomp after all!"

They
peered out at the body of the double-hex lying on the floor of the
vault. The laser cannon had blasted a hole right through both
conjoined abdomens. The innards were blackened and melted, totally
un- salvageable.

Jet's
face fell. "Worth a thought, anyway. "

Larin
leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. Shigar sure was
taking his time. Her blood sugar was low, and the endless pain was
making her dizzy.

The
sliver of metal from the factory was still in her one good hand. She
slipped it into one of her suit's many sealed compartments. At least
they wouldn't return empty-handed.

A
disturbance outside distracted her. "Someone's coming!"
called Hetchkee.

Larin
propped the barrel of her rifle on the back of her left hand and
trained it through the door. The mound of rubble at the far end of
the security air lock was moving. Someone was clearly coming up
through it-but was it Stryver, the Sith, or Jet's loyal droid?

A
scuffed orange hand, reaching out of the gravel to find purchase on a
fallen beam, soon answered the question.

"Told
you, " said Jet with a satisfied expression. "Over here,
mate!" he yelled to the droid.

Clunker
extricated himself from the rubble and limped over to join them,
utterly unmolested. The Houk had stopped firing. Instead of
reassuring Larin, that worried her. There was no way to know what was
going on outside their impromptu redoubt. She presumed the Hutts
wouldn't leave them alone for long.