Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [53]
No such care had been lavished on the Smoking Jets.
“And nobody tried to figure out what happened to Drub?” Leia signaled the barkeep to refill Oso Nim’s glass.
“Bzzz.” The Durosian made a dismissive noise and a gesture reminiscent of scaring flies. “A million things can happen to a man on the game, sweetie. Even in a backwater hole like this one. It’s sometimes six months before his friends figure out he hasn’t disappeared on purpose, ship or no ship.”
“And was it six months before his friends went looking?” asked Han.
Oso Nim cackled and gave him a sidelong glance from iridescent orange eyes. “In six months, you know where your friends are going to be? Drub’s mate and crew said he’d been on about crypts under the old ruin at the top of the town and went pokin’ themselves, but fester it, there’s no crypts! People been looking for them crypts for years, and all they found was solid rock. Smuggler tunnels, sure, there’s smuggler tunnels all over this damn town, but crypts? Solid rock is all Drub’s mate and crew found, same as others before ’em.”
“And what,” asked Han, taking the bottle from the barkeep and repairing the old Durosian’s depredations on her glass, “were others before ’em looking for?”
He spoke low, under the tinny audio of the holo box above the bar where the final game of the series between Lafra and Gathus was in process; she laughed heartily. “Oh, you’re a friend of his, after all these years, sweetie? His long-lost brother?” Durosians generally don’t laugh, and in the face of the wholesale horror of lines, teeth, halitosis, and flashing eyes, Leia could understand why other races might discourage them from doing so.
“Hey, Chatty!” she called to a human in a purple-splotched coverall with a packer’s stained and bandaged fingers. “Here’s old Drub McKumb’s long-lost brother, come searching for his bones at last!”
“What, you think there’s secret crypts down under Plett’s House, too?” Chatty was if anything more wrinkled and decrepit than Oso Nim, though, looking at him, Leia realized he wasn’t much older than Han. “Secret tunnels filled with jewels?”
Han made an I-didn’t-say-it gesture, and Chatty winked. One of his eyes was a replacement, the cheap kind manufactured on Sullust with a yellowing plastic cornea.
“If there’s jewels in them crypts, why ain’t Bran Kemple richer, hunh? Why’s he playin’ penny-ante stakes smuggling coffee and running card games over at the Jungle Lust?”
“Bran Kemple’s the town boss?” Han raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. “I thought it was Nubblyk the Slyte.”
“What hole you been hidin’ in for the past eight years, Sugardrawers?” laughed the Durosian, and Chatty took the bottle from Han’s hand and poured himself a glass, courteously offering Leia a refill as well. Leia, thoroughly amused, refrained from remarking that people who’d been living at the bottom of a volcanic vent for decades had no business accusing others of hiding in holes. “The Slyte pulled his stakes out seven years ago. Whole scene’s gone to pieces since then.”
“Gone to pieces,” Chatty agreed, nursing Han’s bottle mournfully. “Hot rockets, boy!” he yelled furiously, his attention suddenly riveted by the activities of twenty-five skaters on the planet Lafra, “you call that festering shooting? For a million credits a year I’ll festering join your festering team and lose your games for you, you stupid sons of slime devils!”
“You sure the Slyte actually pulled his own stakes?” Leia leaned her elbows on the bar and looked innocent and fascinated.
The Durosian grinned and pinched her cheek with fingers