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She smiled at him and moved away. So Boushh was indeed a man. Or at least, the real Boushh was.

So who was this woman? One of Skywalker’s allies? Or someone from the Fringe trying to make a name for herself, and the Wookiee had just gotten careless?

It almost didn’t matter. Mara was here to get Skywalker, and Skywalker alone. Anyone else was just clutter; and Jabba’s people ought to be capable of handling clutter. A quiet word about this Boushh impostor in the Hutt’s ear should do the trick.

Eventually, when he ran out of allies and droids, Skywalker would have to come himself.

He came a day later in the morning, at the break of dawn, as Jabba and his entourage were still snoring away the aftereffects of their late-night celebration over the unmasking and capture of Princess Leia Organa.

Mara’s danger sense gave her advance warning. To her surprise, it was all the warning anyone got. Without a whisper of noise or trouble from the supposedly alert guards outside, Skywalker was suddenly there in the throne room, Jabba’s Twi’lek majordomo docilely leading him in.

Skywalker’s holo had prepared Mara for an achievement of this caliber. Even so, she was impressed.

Some of the guards were beginning to move into positions around Skywalker as the Twi’lek stepped to his master’s side and murmured in his ear. Jabba came awake with a jerk, his huge bleary eyes blinking as he took stock of the situation. He looked at the Twi’lek and at Skywalker.

And then he laughed.

The deep rumbling echoed through the throne room, rousing the rest of the company into a sleep-fogged scramble for consciousness and their feet. A few blasters appeared, but most weapons stayed in their holsters as brain-fuzzed courtiers tried to figure out whether this silent figure in hooded cloak was a friend or some unlikely foe.

It was the moment Mara had been waiting for: quiet confusion, no one quite sure what was happening, no one quite sure where anyone else was. The moment to strike. Danger sense still tingling, she took a silent step to her right, to where one of Jabba’s younger human guards was gripping his force pike and trying mightily to make sense of the situation. His blaster rested ignored in its holster. Reaching smoothly around behind him, Mara got a grip on it—

And froze as a hard object jabbed firmly into the small of her back.

She’d been wrong. That tingle of danger hadn’t been coming from Skywalker.

“Nice and easy,” Melina Carniss murmured in her ear. “Let’s just ease our way back down the tunnel. Unless you’d rather die right here.”

Silently, furious with herself, Mara let Melina guide her backward out of the throne room. A quiet security guard. One of many, probably, forming an extra barrier between Jabba and his enemies. She should have known such a layer would exist in a place like this, and been watching for it. Concentrating exclusively on Skywalker and his friends instead, she’d been sloppy.

From the throne came a sudden commotion, and a single blaster shot. Mara craned her neck, but they were too far away for her to see what was happening. “Curious, huh?” Melina commented. “Was he one of yours? Turn here—very carefully.”

Mara did as ordered, studying Melina out of the corner of her eye as she turned and stared down the indicated tunnel. Melina had the blaster; but she, Mara, had the training, with the Emperor’s strength and will to drive it. If she reached out through the Force right now and snatched the blaster away …

She glanced down at Melina’s hand. No. Not from a grip that tight. Not without the other getting at least one shot off first.

Mind tricks, then? There were several ways to soothe or confuse or just plain incapacitate an enemy by jabbing with the Force directly into the victim’s mind. But all the techniques required at least a little time to take effect, and in Melina’s alert state of mind there was a good chance she’d again get off that one shot.

“You’re being awfully quiet,” Melina commented as they walked.

“That’s because I don’t have any idea what’s going on,” Mara told her. “I haven’t done anything.