Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [79]
Then Max saw she was awake and stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said. “Put me down.”
Max did so and looked plaintively at her. “What should we do?” he asked.
“Where’s Orbus?” she demanded.
“Dead,” Max said. “They shot him. We ran.”
“Good. That’s the first smart thing anyone’s done since getting here.” She folded her hands across her rounded middle and paced slowly, long nose swaying this way and that. Max looked like he was in shock, she thought. Snit looked as lost as he always did. “With Orbus gone,” she said slowly, “his contracts with us are void. That’s clear enough, even by Intergalactic Federation of Musicians rules.”
“Uh-huh,” Max said.
“That means we’re free, boys. Snit, you can do whatever you want now. Orbus no longer owns you. Max, you can buy your own meals now. And I can sing wherever I want.”
Snit sat and leaned back against a wall. “Don’t call me Snit,” he said.
“What?” Sy cried. This was the first time she’d ever heard him speak a whole sentence. Usually he just stood there blowing wind through flutes with those immense lungs of his.
“Don’t call me Snit,” he said again.
“What do you want to be called?” she asked.
He responded with a long series of whistly tones.
“I can’t say that,” she told him. “How about I pick a really great show name for you? Something special, something really fabulous, something you’ll be proud of?”
“Okay,” he said.
Sy stopped and thought for a moment. “Droopy,” she said. “Droopy McCool.”
“Okay,” Snit said.
“Anybody have any money?” Sy asked, and before anyone could answer she went on, “Of course not, Orbus had it all. So we’re going to need money, and the way to do that is to work. To work we need equipment, and our equipment is back in that airbus. So, gentles, let’s go.”
“Go?” Max said.
“Back to the airbus, of course. You don’t think we’re going to leave our gear there, do you?”
“They’ll shoot us!” Max wailed.
“We don’t have a gig,” she pointed out, “and we won’t have a gig if we don’t get our instruments. Which way is it?”
Max pointed.
She nodded. “Let’s go!”
“Jawas!” Max said.
They were swarming over the airbus as if they owned it. Several turned as they approached, their little yellow eyes glowing faintly beneath their brown hoods.
“Ours!” one of the Jawas called. He pulled a small blaster and gestured grandly with it. “Stay back!”
“Ours!” Sy Snootles told him. To Max’s amazement she strolled around him as if he weren’t there and pointed to a crate. “See? It has our name on it.”
The Jawa lowered his blaster. “You Evar Orbus?”
“He is.” She pointed to Max, who swallowed and tried to look authoritative. “We want our crates. You can have the airbus.”
“Buy crates?”
“Buy our own equipment? I don’t think so.”
“Is salvage!”
“How much?” she asked.
The Jawa hesitated. “Fifty credits!”
“Five!” she said. “Plus you’ll have to deliver it to our hotel.”
The Jawa raised his arms in dismay and suggested a slightly higher fee, and Sy countered with a slightly lower one. Max watched in growing amazement as they spent the next few minutes haggling, finally settling on twenty credits. Sy paid from a pouch she kept tucked in her skirt. “Tips,” she told Max when she noticed him staring.
Max shook his head. It figured she’d been holding out on them. They were supposed to split tips evenly among all the band members.
By then the Jawas had the crates loaded aboard a cargo sled.
“Come on!” Sy told him, hopping aboard. “Let’s get out of here! Those Biths are going to be back any minute now!”
2. How the Band Came to Jabba’s Palace
They ended up staying at the Mos Eisley Towers, which Sy found rather ridiculous since the entire complex—except for the restaurant and the lobby—lay completely under the desert sands. Still, the rooms were clean and cheap, and the manager put their crates of instruments into secure storage (she’d made sure of it) before they settled in.
As she sat on her bed looking at Max