Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [50]
I remember Bespin, Mara promised. Skywalker will die here.
The Emperor smiled … and then another face was there, superimposed on Mara’s vision. A young woman with dark hair, wearing a dark red jumpsuit. “Are you Arica?”
Mara blinked and the Emperor’s face vanished, only the lingering sense of his distant presence remaining. “Yes,” she said. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
The other woman gave her a knowing smile. “Sure you were.” She waved a hand around her. “I’ll bet your first week’s pay that you were thinking you’d made a big mistake coming here.”
Mara looked around. The Dancers’ Pit, they called the prep room, and it was fully deserving of the name. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said diplomatically. “I’ve been in worse places.”
“Better than the rancor pit, anyway.” The other shrugged. “Don’t worry, the money’s a lot better than the facilities.”
“I hope so,” Mara said, wondering what a rancor pit was. “The implied fringe benefits weren’t all that enticing.”
The woman laughed. “Ah, yes—the Fat Man. He gave you his Important Person routine, did he?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, don’t worry, he’s mostly harmless. I’ll tell you later what buttons to push to keep him off you. I’m Melina Carniss, by the way. Former dancer, current dance designer, sort of general runaround person. Come on—let’s go to the throne room and I’ll present you to His Exaltedness.”
They headed down one of the dark tunnels that seemed to make up the bulk of this place. Mara crinkled her nose at the odors, wishing the quick briefing she’d had on Jabba and his palace had been more comprehensive. Perhaps she should consider wangling herself a trip over to Bestine, see if she could get some up-to-date information on Jabba and his entourage from Governor Aryon’s office.
Still, that might prove dangerous in the long run. To access Imperial data files, she would have to identify herself as a high Imperial agent … and truly capable governors were not assigned to dustballs like Tatooine. Governor Aryon could be too lazy or incompetent to keep Jabba’s spies off her paylist, or could be on Jabba’s paylist herself. Worse, even the slightest exposure here could eventually find its way back to Lord Vader.
Besides, this was just a simple assassination: quick in, quick kill, quick out. No, she would handle this one on her own.
“There’s the throne room,” Melina said, pointing ahead toward an archway that opened into a well-furnished chamber. “Oh, and look—we seem to have a show going.”
Mara caught her breath. The show was Luke Skywalker.
Or rather, a holo of him. A prerecorded message, projected by a squat R2-D2 astromech droid with a C-3PO protocol droid hovering nervously beside him. Skywalker’s droids, all right. The ones who’d played key roles in the destruction of the Emperor’s prized Death Star.
“—I present to you a gift: these two droids.”
The protocol droid squawked. “I wonder who that is,” Melina murmured.
“I don’t know,” Mara said, frowning at the image. She’d read all that the Emperor had on Skywalker: his background, his upbringing right here on Tatooine, his brief training under Obi-Wan Kenobi, the immense trouble he’d been so far to the Empire. But this was not the tentative, callow kid she’d seen in those records. The Luke Skywalker she was seeing and hearing now was poised, self-assured, confident of his power.
And with a lightsaber prominently displayed at his belt too. A replacement, probably constructed himself, for the one he’d lost at Bespin.
The Emperor had been right. Skywalker was indeed more dangerous than Mara had given him credit for.
The message finished,