THE HUTT GAMBI(64)

Aruk had developed quite a taste for them during his visit. Kibbick had introduced them to his uncle, insisting that Aruk had to try them.

Durga had sampled them also, and had pronounced himself unimpressed, but Aruk had loved the ugly amphibians, and had commanded Teroenza to make sure he received a supply of live ones on every ship shuttling between Ylesia and Nal Hutta.

Teroenza entered his office, trying not to let his nervousness show.

“I am here, Your Excellency,” he said to Aruk.

The Hutt Lord was accompanied only by his offspring, Durga. He looked up at Teroenza. “We need to have a talk, High Priest,” he said gruffly.

Oh, no. This is worse than I feared, Teroenza thought.

“Yes, Your Excellency?”

“I am canceling your vacation, High Priest,” Aruk said. “I want you to stay here and bring Kibbick up to speed on all Ylesian operations. His level of ignorance is shameful, and it is your fault! Teroenza, you have forgotten who are the true lords of Ylesia. You have grown arrogant, and think yourself in command. This is not permissible. You must learn your place, High Priest. When you have learned to serve, to take the subservient role in governing this world, you will be rewarded. Only then can you return to Nal Hutta.”

Teroenza remained silent during Aruk’s tirade. When the Hutt Lord finally ran down, he found himself wanting to quit, to just walk away from the entire ridiculous operation. Kibbick was an idiot, and no amount of

coaching from his overseer was going to make the young Hutt into anything but an idiot!

And he hadn’t seen his mate, Tilenna, in a year. What if she decided to mate with someone else because he had been gone so long? How could he expect her to remain faithful under these circumstances?

Resentment boiled up inside the t’landa Til, but with a great effort of will, he managed to conceal his reaction.

“It shall be as you say, Your Excellency,” he murmured. “I shall do my best.”

“See that you do,” Aruk rumbled, in his deepest, most threatening tone.

“You are dismissed, High Priest.”

Teroenza’s hot rage boiled and bubbled as he walked back to his quarters, but by the time he reached them, he was calm again.

Strangely, coldly calm. He lowered himself into his resting sling and dismissed his majordomo.

If his thoughts could have been expressed in one word, it would have been: Enough.

After a few more minutes of consideration, the High Priest reached for his comlink. The code he’d memorized all those months ago came readily to his fingers as he tapped it out. And then, he keyed in the following message: “I am willing to talk. What do you have to offer?”

With a triumphant, savage stab of his dainty finger, he keyed the message to SENti.

Teroenza leaned back in his resting sling and, for the first time in six months, felt at peace with the universe.





8


The Shadow of the Empire


The man in the Mandalorian armor walked steadily down the dark, cavernous entrance hall of Jabba the Hutt’s palace on Tatooine. Once, years ago, the man had been a Journeyman Protector named “Jaster Mereel.” That had been before he killed a man, and paid the price for his crime.

Now he had no name save the one he had adopted for himself—Boba Fett.

Over the past ten years, he’d become the best-known and most feared bounty hunter in the Empire. He was not an Imperial bounty hunter, though at times he worked for the Empire. He was not a Guild bounty hunter, though he regularly took Guild commissions and paid dues. No, Boba Fett was an independent bounty hunter. He set his own hours, selected his own commissions, and lived by his own rules.

He paused midway down the stairs leading to Jabba’s throne room to survey what lay before him. The huge chamber was dark, cavernous, filled with booming music. Everywhere bodies milled and swayed.

Fett’s gaze followed the movements of several of Jabba’s humanoid dancing girls, admiring their lithe suppleness. The bounty hunter was not one to indulge in sybaritic pleasures of the flesh, however. Boba Fett was far too selfdisciplined to seek carnal gratification. The joy of the hunt was his sole pleasure, what he lived for. The credits were an extra, a necessary bonus, a means to accomplish his ends, but it was the hunt that nurtured him, kept him strong and self-reliant and focused.

As Fett descended the steps that led into Jabba’s audience chamber, the Hutt Lord’s Twi’lek majordomo, Lobb Gerido, bustled toward the bounty hunter, bowing unctuously and babbling greetings in his fractured Basic.

Fett ignored him.

Realizing that he would never be allowed to approach Jabba carrying his BlasTech EE-3 rifle, Fett carefully laid it down on the bottom step.

He was still armed dangerously enough to have killed Jabba and completely destroyed the audience chamber, and Jabba probably knew that, but the Hutt Lord also knew Boba Fett’s reputation for honesty.