Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [10]
Whatever that sound meant for those it selected, she was apparently about to find out.
4
THE SOFT HEART CANTINA, SOUTHERN UNDERGROUND, GRID 19, IMPERIAL CITY, CORUSCANT SECTOR, CORE WORLDS
“Should I break their skulls?” Rodo asked.
Memah Roothes said, “No. Just throw ’em out.”
“You’re sure? I don’t mind.”
“Much as I admire a man who enjoys his work, I’m asking you to try to curb your enthusiasm.”
“You’re the boss.”
From behind the bar, where she occasionally took a turn mixing drinks, the owner of the Soft Heart Cantina watched as Rodo, the pub’s peacekeeper, went to attend to the off-duty and getting-progressively-louder customers. That there were two Imperial stormtroopers soused and gearing themselves up for a fight didn’t worry her. Rodo—if he had another name, nobody she knew had ever heard it—was one of the biggest humans she had ever seen. Born and raised on Ragith III, a descendant of human colonists who had been genetically bred and selected for generations to adapt to the one-and-a-half standard-g environment, Rodo, at over two meters and 110 kilos, was not a man you wanted to have mad at you. Somebody once parked a landspeeder in his spot on the street outside the cantina. Rodo had considered this an insult, and he had been direct in dealing with it.
Seeing a vehicle picked up and turned over without help makes an impression—people didn’t park in Rodo’s spot anymore. He was also extremely fast and very, very good at some weird kind of martial art, which he could use to tie a drunk and belligerent patron into a knot faster than you could call the Imperial cools to come and haul the problem away.
Rodo’s presence was why things tended to stay pretty quiet in the cantina, even on a payday like tonight. When somebody got too loud or combative, usually Rodo’s arrival at the table was enough to solve the problem.
Usually, but not always …
Memah turned to finish a drink order. She saw—out of the corner of her eye—a human male, a spacer by his garments, gazing dreamily at her, chin supported by one hand as he leaned over his drink. She gave no acknowledgment of his admiration. A Rutian Twi’lek from Ryloth, with teal skin that seemed to glow under the fullspec lights, she was used to such looks. Her skin, in both color and tone, was one of her best features, which she tended to showcase by wearing short and sleeveless dresses.
She knew that, to most humanoid races, she was startlingly beautiful; even her lekku, the two large, fleshy tendrils that hung about her shoulders instead of human hair, seemed to have an erotic attraction for humans. And she was fit enough, due to a daily swimming and zero-g workout regimen, although it always seemed to her that she could stand to lose a kilo from her hips.
Memah had managed this place for two years, and owned it for two more, before the galaxy had gone crazy. Of course, war was good for business in a cantina. Beings about to ship off to battle in the middle of nowhere on some backrocket planet knew they wouldn’t be relaxing in a place like hers the few times they weren’t blasting Rebels or droids. This tended to promote a certain to-vac-with-tomorrow attitude, which translated into considerable profits for her.
The Heart was crowded, and it took Rodo a minute to work his way to the would-be fighters, who were at a two-seat table near the east wall. One of them was on his feet and the other rising when the big bouncer arrived. He was a head taller and nearly as wide as both of them put together. He eclipsed the light, and both men looked up to see what was casting such a gigantic shadow.
Memah grinned again. There was no way she could hear what Rodo was saying to them. The place was noisy with conversation and laughter, the clink of glasses toasting, the scrape of chair legs on the hard floor. She had two more tenders working the bar, both busily mixing drinks and drawing down the taps. It wasn’t a quiet environment. But she knew essentially what the big man was telling the two troopers. They had disturbed the