Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [112]
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
One of Leia’s captors stalked closer, brandishing a creature with a tiny body and long, outward-curving claws. Did they mean to sacrifice her here and now? Leia backstepped.
“Wait,” she exclaimed. “I want to know more about these gods of yours.”
The warmaster’s laugh was a horrible bass rumble. “That is wisdom speaking. There will be time.”
The other alien seized her left arm. The creature he held took her wrist between one pair of claws, then grabbed her other arm, holding her as effectively as a pair of stun cuffs.
The warmaster said something in that other language, and one of her guards grasped her left elbow. The last she saw of the warmaster, he was delicately pulling the long worm back out of his ear.
Her guards took her to a storeroom, shoved her in, then spun her around. One took hold of the creature that held her hands together and plucked it off. Then he gave her another shove and shut her into darkness.
She let herself stand motionless, unthinking, for one moment. She couldn’t escape the sensation that she’d evaded death by micrometers.
Then something moved in the shadows to her left. Something huge.
She shrank away.
“It’s only myself,” a blubbering voice rumbled. “Your fellow prisoner.”
“Randa?” she demanded. “I suppose you went to them, offering to ship prisoners—and they threw you back.”
“No, no, I swear by my kajidic! I tried to reach your mining laser. I meant to sacrifice myself, and kill as many of these despicable creatures as I could.”
“Oh, certainly,” Leia said. She’d known too many Hutts to believe this. “You meant to sacrifice yourself.”
“But it is true,” he moaned. “I deserve nothing better. My repentance is sincere, my mortification utter and complete. I—”
“Mortification?” Leia tried giving the door a shove. Nothing happened. “Where’s Basbakhan?”
“They took him,” Randa moaned.
“He’s dead, then.”
“No, no.”
They took a Noghri alive? She’d thought that couldn’t be done. She wiped a sheen of sweat off her forehead.
“What were you doing with that villip? Answer me, answer honestly, and maybe I’ll believe you. Maybe.”
He gave a low moan. Then he mumbled, “I tried to bargain. I tried to get them to promise my people a safe world. Would you not try to do the same?”
Was there anything, she wondered, that might buy a world’s safety? “In exchange for what?” she asked curtly.
Her eyes were adjusting. Now she could see a long, bulbous tan-colored shape, pressing up against the storage closet’s other corner. She couldn’t tell if he’d been hurt, and she didn’t much care.
He licked his lips with his fat, pointed tongue. “They want Jedi,” he said. “They know nothing about the Force. They want to find out what makes you powerful.”
“So you tried to sell me to them? Is that what you’re telling me?” How utterly appropriate, then, that they’d locked him up with her.
He flattened himself on the floor. She’d never even imagined what a Hutt might look like in abject misery.
“No,” he said. “Not you. Jacen.”
Her son? This … Hutt … had offered her son to the enemy? Her hands flexed, her spine straightened. She would’ve crossed the closet and tried to take him with her bare hands, but it’d taken a chain to kill Jabba and a lightsaber to finish Beldorian.
Randa probably didn’t know about Beldorian, but it was common knowledge she’d killed Jabba. “How dare you,” she said through clenched teeth.
He pulled himself even farther away. “Now you understand,” he said, “why I tried to sacrifice myself. Not that you believe me.” His voice fell dismally into the bass range. “Not that you ever trusted me, or you will ever believe me again. I wish, oh, I wish I could convince you how sincere my repentance—”
“No,” she said, “I don’t, and I won’t, and you can’t.” On the other hand, she had seen tracks that looked as if Randa had been