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“I believe you’d find the effort required to take down two Jedi, even though unarmed, to be considerably more than you think.”

Rokko waved one small and flabby arm in careless dismissal. “Eniki, eniki. No need to take that attitude. We are business associates, for the time being, at least.” He made another gesture, and a Kubaz emerged from one of the curtained archways. “Bring drinks,” Rokko ordered. “My usual, and that watered-down ronto sweat they call Corellian ale.” The Kubaz nodded and scurried away.

Rokko grinned at the two Jedi. It was an unnerving sight. Hutts didn’t have teeth, but their cartilaginous gums were serrated, and, given the elasticity of their skin, the result was a rictus that for a moment made it look as if the top of Rokko’s head were being sawed off.

“Sit,” the Hutt said, in a voice probably intended to be friendly. “Time is of the essence.”

Jax glanced at Laranth, and knew she was thinking the same thing he was: that Rokko would use their backs for vibroblade sheaths as soon as feasible. Still, a rogues’ alliance was better than none, at least in terms of finding Bug-Eyes. How he would get the droid out of the Hutt’s clutches and to safety was something he’d worry about later.

If, as the saying went, there was a later …

seventeen

Nick woke up. This surprised him, since he didn’t know he’d been asleep.

And in fact, he realized a few seconds later, he hadn’t been, save in the most liberal definition of the word, judging by the very large and very painful bruise on the back of his head. He moved gingerly, setting off celestial fireworks that ricocheted and reverberated within his skull. Purple nebulae, orange-white supernovae, silver comets—it was a whole galaxy of pain inside his head. He groaned and made a mental note never to play shronker again with any member of any sentient species other than his own—and he was going to be very particular about them as well.

All right, then. On to the second order of business—where was he?

The immediate answer was that he was lying on the floor, mostly on his stomach, a little on one side. Make that a deck; wherever this was, it certainly wasn’t the floor of the shronker hall he’d been in. That one had been synthwood, covered with treedust and a lot more unwholesome things. This one was cold metal, and it vibrated ever so slightly. An all-but-subsonic thrum with which Nick was quite familiar.

He was on a ship. And the ship was going someplace. Fast.

He tried reconstructing the last few moments of consciousness he remembered. He recalled the barrel of a slugthrower pressed against his spine. He even remembered his unknown assailant’s remark about keeping one’s back against the wall, and thanks very much for that piece of useless advice … and then he’d been hit, no doubt by the butt of the slugthrower pistol, although it had felt more like a falling cloudcutter.

Fall down there; wake up here. Okay—where was “here”?

Still on Coruscant, that much seemed certain. Nothing was more stable than an artificial gravity field; looking out a port in space, you felt like the universe was moving past you rather than you moving through it. But ships seldom kept their antigrav fields on while in atmosphere; too expensive, for one thing, and the planet’s mass played hob with the inertial dampeners. Nick could feel shifts in velocity and momentum, which meant he was still planetside. It wasn’t a terribly big ship, either, judging by the way his stomach occasionally jumped.

He decided it was time to reconnoiter a little. His wits were about as unscrambled as they were going to get, and he was as ready as he could be for whatever awaited his return to consciousness. Nick opened his eyes.

He was lying on the deck of the ship’s bridge. He readjusted his position slowly and cautiously to gain a greater range of vision.

There didn’t seem to be anyone nearby. Nick shifted a bit more, and that was when he realized that he was wearing forcecuffs on his wrists and ankles. The movement sent prickling sensations racing through his limbs.