• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Well, it was still a lot of work, and not paying off—bad publicity after the Sluis Van attack, you know. And Nkllon is a hellish place—you were there. I just needed a change.”

Leia crossed her arms and looked at him skeptically. “All right, Lando. The appropriate excuses are logged and recorded. Now, what really happened to Nkllon?”

He squirmed. “Well, I lost it in a sabacc game.”

She couldn’t keep herself from laughing. “So you’re out of work?” His expression of wounded pride was obviously faked. Leia considered for a moment. “We could always reactivate your commission as a general in the New Republic. You and Wedge were a great team on Calamari.”

His eyes widened. “Are you offering me a job? I can’t imagine what you would want me to do.”

“Formal receptions, state dinners … plenty of wealthy backers wandering around,” Leia said. “The possibilities are endless.”

Just then the old protocol droid shuffled through the arch again, but before he could announce his business, See-Threepio and Artoo-Detoo bustled around him, making a direct path to Leia. “Princess Leia!” Threepio could not contain his excitement. “We’ve found one. Artoo, tell the princess. Oh, General Calrissian! What are you doing here?”

Artoo launched into a series of electronic sounds, which Threepio dutifully translated. “Artoo was checking the records of various winners in different gambling establishments throughout the galaxy. We seem to have encountered a man who has extraordinary luck at the Umgullian blob races.”

Threepio handed a hardcopy printout of the winning statistics to Leia, but she passed it on to Lando. “You’re better trained to understand this than I am.” Lando took the page of figures and stared at them. He didn’t appear to know what he was looking for.

Threepio added his own commentary. “If it is displayed only as wins and losses, Mr. Tymmo’s record shows nothing out of the ordinary. But when I had Artoo plot the magnitude of wins, you will note that while Mr. Tymmo loses quite often in minor races, in every instance when he bets more than a hundred credits on a particular blob, that blob wins the race!”

Lando tapped the sheet of numbers. “He’s right. This is pretty unusual. I’ve never seen the Umgullian blob races myself, and I’m no expert in the nuances, but I’m inclined to say that these odds are next to impossible.”

“This is exactly the sort of thing Master Luke asked us to look for.” Threepio moved his arms up and down, whirring the servomotors until they whined in protest. “Do you think Mr. Tymmo could be a potential Jedi for Master Luke’s academy?”

Lando looked at Leia with questions in his eyes. He had obviously not heard of Luke’s recent speech. But Leia’s eyes sparkled. “Someone needs to check this out. If it’s just a scam, we need a person who knows his way around gambling establishments, Lando, isn’t that a job you could do?”

She knew his answer before she even asked the question.

7

The cracked and gasping wastelands of Kessel always made Moruth Doole hungry. Staring out the landscape window, Doole’s mechanical eye focused to the far distance.

Kessel’s surface was whitish and powdery, with a few hardy transplanted weeds trying to survive in the crevices. Great plumes from the atmosphere factories gushed into the pinkish sky in a losing battle against the weak gravity. Unseen radiation from the Maw crackled against the atmospheric shields. The garrison moon housing Kessel’s defense fleet was just setting on the horizon.

Doole turned from the window and went to an alcove in the former warden’s office. Time for a snack.

He withdrew a cage of fat and juicy flying insects, pressing his face close to the mesh so he could see better with his dim eyesight. The insects had ten legs, iridescent body cases, and succulent abdomens. They panicked the moment he moved the cage.

Doole rapped spongy fingers on the mesh, stirring them up. The insects flew around the confined space in a frenzy. Somehow terror released a hormone that made their meat sweeter. He licked his swollen Rybet lips.