Star Wars_ The Han Solo Trilogy 02_ The Hutt Gambit - A. C. Crispin [31]
Aruk had heard that Jiliac’s nephew, Jabba, kept several female dancing humanoids—humanoids, of all things!—on leashes near him at all times. Aruk considered such indulgences distasteful and extravagant. The Desilijic clan had always had a weakness for fleshly pleasures. Jiliac’s taste was better than Jabba’s, but he enjoyed hedonistic excess just as much as his nephew.
And that is why we will prevail, Aruk thought. The Besadii clan is willing to endure a bit of privation, if necessary, to gain our ends …
Aruk knew it wouldn’t be easy, though. Jiliac and Jabba were clever and ruthless, and their clan was as wealthy as his own. For years the two richest and most powerful Hutt clans had contended with each other for the most lucrative ventures. Neither clan had eschewed methods such as assassination, kidnapping, and terrorism to gain their ends.
Aruk knew that Jabba and Jiliac would do almost anything to bring Besadii down. But the path to ultimate power was money, and Aruk was pleased with how many credits the Ylesian project was bringing Besadii every year.
Soon, Aruk thought, we will have so many credits that we will be able to wipe them off the face of Nal Hutta, eliminate them as we would any blight on crops or pestilence in our people. Soon, the Besadii will rule Nal Hutta unopposed …
Aruk, and his dead sibling, Zavval, had been the ones who’d thought of setting up colonies on Ylesia, and using religious pilgrims as slave labor to turn raw spice into the finished product. The only thing they’d feared was a slave uprising, and it had been Aruk who’d come up with the idea of the One, the All, and the Exultation to tie it all together.
Most Hutts knew of the t’landa Til ability to project warm, pleasurable emotions and sensations into the minds of most humanoid species. But it had taken Aruk’s quick thinking, his cleverness, to come up with the idea of the Exultation as a mind-numbing “reward” for a day’s hard labor in the spice factories.
Once he’d realized how the t’landa Til ability could be utilized, it had been a simple matter for Aruk to make up some doctrine, compose a few hymns, and write several chants and litanies. And that was all it took to produce a “religion” that credulous fools belonging to inferior species could embrace.
Production in the factories was excellent—had been excellent all along. Only once, five years ago, had the Ylesian enterprise not turned a tidy profit. That was the year that wretched Corellian, Han Solo, had destroyed the glitterstim factory. And destroyed Zavval, too, though the financial loss was the one Aruk regretted the most. He did not think himself unduly harsh or unsympathetic for caring so little that his sibling had died. No, he was reacting as any true Hutt would.
Aruk studied one item on the Ylesian colony’s project budget. The sum of seventy-five hundred credits to be handed over to the person or persons responsible for Han’s live capture. “No disintegrations” was the primary guideline. “Live capture and delivery.”
Seventy-five hundred credits. A twenty-five-hundred-credit raise since the bounty was first posted. Apparently Solo was proving … difficult. Well, this new bounty was certainly large enough to tempt many hunters, though Aruk had seen larger ones. Still, for a man so young, it was a large bounty.
Was it really necessary to pay extra for the “live capture” option? Aruk had supervised many torture sessions, coolly and efficiently, but unlike many of his people, he took no pleasure in tormenting sentients to gain his own ends. If the Corellian Solo were to be brought before him, Aruk would not bother to torture him before ordering his death.
But Teroenza was a different story. The t’landa Til were vengeful people, and it was obvious to Aruk that the High Priest of Ylesia would not rest until he could personally supervise the long and exceedingly painful