Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [29]
I elbowed her gently in the ribs. “You ever figure we’d end up on Coruscant back when we were partners?”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment, then she shrugged. “Maybe on vacation, though I can think of hundreds of worlds where I’d rather go. Diric always wanted to come here, to see the hub of the galaxy. Back then I thought of it as too urban.”
“And now?”
“Once you get here you find out that it’s not all one big city, but it has neighborhoods and little city-states. It’s not just one big uniform block of grey.” She shot me a sly grin. “I’d still like to head out to some place like Alakatha.”
I stopped abruptly as two small Rodian children went racing past me, and leaned heavily on Iella for support. “You might ask General Cracken to send you there to check out how Riizolo picked his target.”
“Thought of that, but I’d have to haul that piece of pirate Huttpuss along with me, so I don’t think it’s an assignment I want.”
I smiled. “Talk to Wedge. He could use a vacation.”
“There’s an idea.” Iella slipped ahead of me as the walkway we were on became more crowded. She slipped past a knot of Whiphids, then pointed at a small ball of lurid red light a couple of levels down. “That’s the place.”
We hurried on over and down. Car’ulorn’s Kavsrach had quite a crowd in it already, and most of them Twi’leks. We took this as a good sign, even though we found it somewhat unsettling as we were led on a twisting path to a small table back near the kitchen. Because Twi’leks use the twitches and shakes of their braintails—more properly, lekku—the way humans use their hands to emphasize things they say, the whole room was alive with serpentine writhings.
I looked over at Iella through the holographic projection of the menu. “Remind me, I don’t want anything with noodles.”
She laughed and pointed to an item three down from the top. “Mynock Coronet City. A spicy combination of marinated mynock strips with vweilu nuts and Ithorian chale, in a lum sauce.”
“Sounds good, but the roast gornt sounds better to me.” I smiled at her. “Reminds me of a joke I heard from Wedge the other day.”
“Not the Bothan and a gornt in a cantina?”
“You’ve heard it? You talked to Wedge?”
“There are about a billion Bothan and gornt jokes, Corran, and I’ve probably heard them all. Tend to be rather popular in Intel.” Iella glanced down at the table. “But, no, I’ve not spoken to Wedge.”
Our server came and took our order. She told us we’d made good choices, but the quick shiver running down one of her lekku suggested to me she’d rather drink rancor spit than have the roast gornt. I refused to let that intimidate me. “And a little extra of the gravy on that, please.”
As she whirled away, I fixed Iella with a stare. “What’s going on between you two? You both seem to like each other and get along well.”
Iella frowned and picked at a thumbnail, which I recognized as a sign of her not being certain how to answer me. “I wish I knew. We definitely hit it off and he was very understanding when Diric returned and very supportive after Diric died. You know what our duties have been like, so there hasn’t been that much time to get together. And now he has new responsibilities that take up even more of his time.”
“Yeah, but you could convince him to make time.”
“I’d like to think so. I don’t know.” She sat back and shrugged. “You remember back when Inspector Sassich made CorSec chief? She was all of forty at the time, a great accomplishment.”
I thought back. “She ditched her husband, bought that chirq red ZRX-29 airspeeder and started taking personal training lessons from those twins about half her age. I remember that.”
“You just wish you were one of the twins.”
“No, at that point I just wished I could borrow the airspeeder.” I laughed. “I seem to recall my mother had a few choice things to say about her.”
Iella frowned. “Your mother actually said something critical of someone?”
“I didn’t say that. As I recall my mother commented that the Incom ZX-26 would have been a more practical vehicle.” I shrugged. “That’s about as critical as she got. She