Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 01_ Jedi Search - Kevin J. Anderson [22]
When the elevator doors opened, Skynxnex prodded the two prisoners forward. Han complied and walked easily ahead, trying to put a self-confident spring in his step. He’d had his troubles with Moruth Doole, and he did not trust the man a bit—but as far as he knew, there was no powerful grudge between them.
Skynxnex escorted them through administrative offices, many of which had been ransacked or burned. They went past a broad anteroom to a huge office faced by giant windows that looked out upon the barrens of Kessel. In the distance Han could see the crumbled salt flats. Great jets from the atmosphere factories sent gouts of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide into the pinkish sky, keeping the planet barely habitable. Powerful radiation shields in orbit filtered out a large percentage of the deadly X rays and gamma rays pouring from the nearby Maw. If not for the precious spice, no one would bother trying to live on Kessel.
The original sign on the desk-unit announced this to be the warden’s headquarters, but someone had crossed out the previous ID tag and mounted a hand-lettered sign in Basic: DOOLE’S PLACE. On the wall to the right of the desk-unit hung a man captured in final throes of agony, frozen in carbonite. Doole had taken a lesson from Jabba, displaying some old nemesis for all to see. Han shivered just to look at the trophy.
Next to the window a barrel-shaped form stood silhouetted by the garish light. Han recognized Moruth Doole immediately.
Doole was a Rybet, squat and soft-skinned. His bright-green coloring and tan highlights looked like worm stripes up and down his cheeks, arms, and shoulders. His skin was dry, but so smooth it looked slimy. As always Doole dressed in the skins of less-fortunate reptiles. His waistcoat looked like something from an ancient history vid. Doole sported a bright-yellow cravat, which meant he was in mating readiness, though Han couldn’t imagine where on the planet Doole would ever find a willing female of his own species.
Doole turned around, displaying a much-changed face, jittered with nervous tics and paranoia. His Rybet eyes were overlarge, lanternlike, with vertical slits—but one of his eyes was now milky white, like a half-cooked egg. He wore a mechanical focusing device over his other eye, strapped onto his smooth head with brown leather straps.
Doole fiddled with his mechanical eye, and the lenses clicked and whirred into place, like a camera unit. His Rybet fingers were long and wide at the end, showing signs of vestigial suction cups as he adjusted the focus and pressed his face close to Han’s. The blind eye stared milkily off in another direction. After a long inspection he finally hissed in recognition. “It is you, Han Solo!”
Han frowned. “Been hitting the spice too heavily, I see, Moruth. Always gets the eyesight first.”
“It wasn’t spice that did this,” Doole snapped, tapping the contraption on his eye. He drew in another long sputtering breath that sounded like a carbonated drink spilled on hot coals. “Why are you here, Solo? I want you to tell me, but maybe I want you to resist just a little bit so I can make this hurt.”
Chewbacca roared in anger. Han tried to spread out his hands, but the stun-cuffs zapped him. “Wait a minute, Moruth! You’d better explain a few things to me. I don’t quite know—”
Doole didn’t hear him, rubbing his splayed hands together and smiling with his squishy lips. “The hardest part is going to be restraining myself from having you dismembered right here where I can watch.”
Han felt his heart pound. “Can we be reasonable for just a minute? We were business partners, Moruth, and I never crossed you.” Han didn’t mention his suspicions that Doole had crossed him in that last spice run. “I apologize if I did something to upset you. Can we work it out?”
He remembered his conversation with the hit man Greedo in the