[Han Solo] - 03(110)

“I appreciate your telling me, sir. Thank you.”

Torbul gave her a quick salute and broke the connection. Bria sat them in her office, wondering if she should go back to bed or just start the day early.

She heard Han’s voice, a little rough with sleep, from the other room.

“Bria? Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Han,” she called. “I’ll be there shortly.”

Rising, she paced slowly back and forth, remembering what he’d said to her earlier. They’d be together … always. Yes, we will, she thought. We’ll be together. We’ll guard each other’s backs, and together we’ll fight and we’ll prevail against the Empire. And if we have to sacrifice to achieve that ˇ . . we will.

She knew that Han would understand about the treasure and the credits.

He pretended to be such a mercenary, but at heart, he wasn’t, she knew that ….

Her mind once more at rest, her resolve firm, Bria went back to bed ….

Sunset at Ylesian Colony Fiveˇ The ruddy rays of the low sun, breaking through a hundred gaps in the massed clouds, were projected as pastel spikes across the sky. By the choppy waters of the Sea of Hope, the robeclad Pilgrims assembled on the beach cast long shadows across the sand.

Pohtarza, Head Sacredot of the colony, raised his ugly t’landa Til head and surveyed the crowd, his horn sweeping slowly back and forth as he did so. His bulbous eyes shone like blood as they bulged from his grayish, wrinkled flesh. After a moment, he brought up his diminutive arms, and the ceremony began.

“The One is All,” he intoned in the rumbling, nasal-heavy language of the t’landa Til.

Five hundred voices echoed the phrase back …. The One is All.

At that very moment, at Colony Four on the other side of the planet, it was just after midnight. Dark clouds drifted across the moonless night sky, extinguishing stars, making the night even blacker. On the wall of the Priests’ Quarters, there was a soft, chitinous scratching.

Ylesian vermin frantically darted away in all directions.

Noy Waglla, small and bug-like herself, scuttled up the smooth permacrete and, barely pausing to chew a hole in the grating, through the window. She crouched, poised, on the sill.

Below her, in the darkness, she could hear the sleeping noises of the Priests she had come to kill. Jabba would pay well for this, enough that she might someday be able to return to her own species. The great creatures in their sleeping harnesses filled the small room, made it stink of musk.

The Hyallp crawled up the nearest rough-textured harness, and paused below the enormous head. The t’landa Til shifted slightly, and she backed away, alarmed, but, after a moment, the Priest’s snoring resumed.

Waglla advanced even closer.

This is going to be easy…. Waglla seized the large vial strapped to her back in her formidable mandibles, pulled out the stopper with her palps.

Jabba had tested the substance himself. A drop of the poison called srej-ptan, placed on the Sacredot’s lower lip, would kill even the largest t’landa Til in seconds, silently and without struggle.

Retracting several of her legs, Waglla climbed toward the Priest’s mouth.

“The All is One,” intoned Pohtarza. The All is One.

Alaks Fwa, Whiphid assassin and bounty hunter, waited in the corridor leading to the underground mud baths of Colony Seven. It had been a tedious few weeks, living as Pilgrim, trying to blend in, when all his instincts called for getting it over with, hunting the ugly muphrida down and escaping. But the Bloated One had specified tonight as the time, and Fwa wanted to collect his full fee.

The sound of t’landa Til voices echoed up from the dimness below, and Fwa heard their characteristic shuffling gait. The assassin checked the two small hold-out blasters he had smuggled into the compound.

Fully charged, of course.

He tensed, thinking that the credits he was about to become entitled to were not so much the prize of a hunt, so much as a gift. Security here in Colony Seven was lax beyond belief.

Fwa could see them coming now, and he pressed himself into a hollow in the uneven wall. As he’d expected, it was his targets—the three male Sacredots. He could smell them, and his sensitive nostrils recognized the reek of the males.

They were close now, coming closer, closer ….

Fwa leaped out with a ferocious roar, blasters raised. Aim for their eyes!

he thought, as he fired his first salvo.

“In service to the All, every One is Exulted.” ˇ . . every One is Exulted.

Tuga SalPivo, down-on-his luck Corellian space-tramp and jack-of-all-trades, paused for a moment at the edge of the Ylesian jungle and looked back. Colony Eight was a gray smudge in the very first light of dawn. Sunrise was still an hour away. SalPivo grinned and wiped the sweat off his face with a back-and-forth motion, catching a whiff of the vinegary vomm powder residue on his hand. He couldn’t wait to see the explosion ….