Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [51]
By the time the protocol droid was brought back, the throne room had become crowded, thick with humans and aliens and smoke and noise. In the background a third-rate band was playing; in the center, in front of Jabba’s throne, a young Twi’lek woman was dancing.
Her name was Oola, and she was pretty good.
Standing by the archway leading back to the Dancers’ Pit, staying to the background, Mara kept half an eye on Oola’s performance as she studied the room and its occupants. A decidedly motley crowd, no doubt about it, ranging from obviously hungry nobodies trying to impress Jabba with their toughness right up to some of the nastiest names on the Imperial locate-and-detain list. If Skywalker got this far, he was going to have his hands full.
She stiffened. In the back of her mind, her danger sense had just gone off.
Deliberately, she took a slow breath, calming her mind and preparing her body for action. Her eyes and mind swept back across the room, seeking the source of the danger—
Just in time to see Jabba hit a button on his throne, opening a section of the floor directly beneath Oola.
The dancer’s scream was piercing, fading off into the distance. Jabba’s throne slid forward over the trapdoor toward a large grating that had opened up in the floor, a grating the rest of the company was already scrambling to get a place at. Mara spotted Melina Carniss crouching at one edge, peering eagerly at whatever was happening down there. There was another, more distant scream—
And then, suddenly, the show was forgotten. From the archway on the far side of the throne room came the sound of blaster fire. There was a brief commotion; and then, pushing haughtily past the guards, an armed and armored figure appeared, leading a Wookiee in chains.
Not just any Wookiee. Chewbacca, companion and co-pilot to Han Solo.
“Boushh,” someone beside her muttered. “Well, so much for the bounty on Chewbacca.”
Mara smiled tightly. So simple, so classic, so unimaginative. The best way to infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold, they always thought, was to come in disguise, bringing something or someone the enemy wanted.
But this time it wasn’t going to work. Frowning slightly with concentration, trying to ignore the noisy clutter of all the other minds in the room, she drew on the Emperor’s power within her and focused on the figure in the armored suit. She touched the mind …
And blinked in surprise. It wasn’t Skywalker at all. It was a woman.
A woman?
There was some byplay: Jabba offering too low a price, the figure arguing the point with a thermal detonator. Mara waited until it was over and the Wookiee had been dragged away. Then, she made her way through the reinvigorated party atmosphere to where the bounty hunter Boba Fett stood silent guard. “Excuse me, sir,” she said timidly, reaching a hand almost to his shoulder and then stopping, as if she’d been planning to tap him there and had suddenly thought better of it. “My name’s Arica—I just came in today. That thing with the bounty hunter—that was pretty scary. Does that sort of thing happen often?”
For a long moment he just stared at her, and for that same long moment Mara thought the game was up. Boba Fett had done a fair amount of quiet work for the Empire over the years, and it was entirely possible that he had spotted her at some point in the Emperor’s entourage. She reached out with the Force, trying to touch his mind. But his control was excellent, and nothing she could read gave her any clues.
“Nice to meet you, Arica,” he said at last, in that flat voice that so terrified his victims and impressed his employers. “Don’t worry about Boushh—he might have looked crazy right then, but he’s not. And don’t worry about anyone else. Jabba knows who can be trusted. No one else gets in.” He tapped the blaster rifle at his side. “And I stay around here a lot between jobs.”
“I’m glad,” Mara breathed. “Thank you—I feel much better.”
“My pleasure.