Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [71]
Shortly after, a holographic Jabba made an appearance on the dais above the main floor. That signaled the start of an elaborately scripted show that promised to involve not only “Bib Fortuna” and the dancers, but additional actors and the audience as well.
Luke took that as his cue to leave. His decision was affirmed when, climbing up the curving stairs to the street, he encountered the bounty hunter Boushh coming down them with an unconvincing Chewbacca in tow.
“Aren’t you a little short for a Wookiee?” he muttered under his breath as they passed.
When Luke reached the docking bay, the door was still locked, the skiff was still secure, and Akanah was still away. Nor was there any sign she had returned and left again. Checking the chronometers, he found that she had been gone more than sixteen hours.
Where are you? he thought. What are you doing so long out there? You have so little money, and asked me for none—and that’s all this place respects—
But Luke resisted the impulse to collect his lightsaber and head off in the direction of the Pemblehov District. Climbing up to the Mud Sloth’s flight deck, he settled in the flight couch with his reader and two expensive data cards. As the balance of the night slowly ground by, he diverted himself with absurdities about the Jedi and the troubling news about what sounded like a coming war—hoping that wherever they were at that moment, neither Akanah nor Leia needed his help more than she needed him to stay away.
Akanah stood before the housing block known as Atrium 41 and viewed it with dismay.
Even in the forgiving early-morning light, the fifteen-level tower looked like a home for people who had made a habit of leaving everything they had in the casinos. Every other letter was missing from the unlit sign, and the entry arch’s security doors were propped open with metal bars. There was an unpleasant smell in the air that seemed to arise from the sun shining on the stone.
Akanah’s journey to reach this point had taken her through dozens of shabby clubs, shops, and nightspots in the second-tier outer districts of Talos—the optimistically named New Marketplace, the tawdry flesh auction that was Pemblehov, the rough-tempered Demon’s Lair. She had bought and traded information as she could, walked long distances on now aching feet, fended off three attacks and at least twenty propositions without drawing blood, and been granted an unexpected measure of compassion by a street captain, who gave her a sheltered place to rest without expecting anything in return.
Now she stood before her objective brushing a streak of alley grime from the sleeve of her dar-cloak and trying to fight off disappointment. She found herself hoping that her last informant had lied to her—it would be better to be played for a fool than to have to accept this as the truth. It was that hope, as much as anything, that finally moved her forward through the entrance arch.
The tower’s atrium was barely deserving of the name. Just four meters across and ten meters long, it was more truly an open stairwell with a skylight at the top. Metal-grate balconies with bent and broken railings circled the atrium on each level, linked up and down with companionways at the narrow end. Triangular doors aping the gratings led to each level’s four apartments.
Akanah made her way to the third level unmolested, but there her way was blocked by a gray-furred Gotal wearing a black Imperial Navy officer’s tunic with a blaster hole scorched through it, and a vibroblade slung in a smuggler-style hip belt.
“Nice trophy,” Akanah said. “Vice admiral, isn’t it? Did you take him yourself?”
The Gotal answered with a wordless growl. “What’s your business?”
“Does Joreb Goss live here?”
“Who asks?”
“I am Akanah.”
“Who