Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [79]
23
Though he marched at the head of the parade, Gavin Darklighter felt anything but happy. He’d been searched and deprived of his hold-out blaster. The Gotal walked behind him, occasionally poking him with a blaster, and Asyr Sei’lar walked on his right. She seldom looked over at him, but when she did he saw only venom in her violet eyes.
The other Rogues had been dragged along in his wake, with a thick knot of denizens from the cantina traveling behind them. The Rogues had been allowed to keep their weapons, but their power packs had been taken away, reducing the blasters to oddly shaped clubs. Shiel seemed the most angry, but Aril and Ooryl insulated him from the individuals on either side so no violence broke out.
Asyr led the way through a set of corridors and stairways that provided easy and instant access to the city’s lower reaches. Unlike the pathways Gavin and Shiel had located, this one appeared to have been built in place, not hacked out of what construction droids had created. It didn’t seem that new—and certainly not as new as Asyr had made the Alien Combine sound—so Gavin guessed it had been built after a Hutt or some other criminal bribed the city planners to program it into a construction droid.
The journey ended in a large rectangular warehouse area that they entered through double doors in one of the narrow walls. Scattered throughout the space were all sorts of makeshift hovels. They had been cobbled together from ferrocrete blocks, duraplast packaging, broken sheets of transparisteel, and ragged bits of cloth. Dwellings for larger creatures formed the foundation of the makeshift apartment blocks. Smaller creatures like Sullustans, Ugnaughts, and Jawas occupied the upper levels. Gavin felt pretty certain things actually roosted up in the shadows ten meters overhead, but the light was too dim for him to see more than silhouettes moving about.
The Bothan led them to a central clearing. Wide roll-up doors had been slid down in place where they bisected the longer walls. The one off to Gavin’s left had a hole cut in it large enough to permit transit by most humanoid creatures. A couple of Twi’leks and a Rodian bearing guns stood watch nearby. Since both of the roll-up doors were large enough to admit repulsorlift trucks, Gavin assumed they led out onto whatever passed for streets at this level of the city.
Asyr stopped Gavin at the center of the clearing. The rest of the aliens fanned out in a semicircle behind them to ring half the clearing. This left the rest of the Rogues halfway between Gavin and the circle. The Gotal came around from behind him and stalked forward to where a steel post had been set into the duracrete floor. He picked up the hammer that hung from a string and pounded it against the post’s flattened top.
A heavy mournful tone rang from the post and filled the room. Gavin could feel vibrations play through the floor. All around curious faces peered out through holes, windows, and doorways in the hovels. The Gotal hit the post again, summoning more people to come out of their homes. He hit it a third and final time, then let the hammer drop.
Gavin heard the whir of an engine and looked up as a box drifted forward and slowly down. Cables lowered it from the mobile winch moving along tracks out away from the far wall. Lights came on inside the box, revealing windows and a doorway. As the floating building came to rest against the floor, the doorway opened and a male Devaronian stepped forth. The black cloak he wore nearly shrouded all of him—what little of his rotund belly and chest it didn’t cover made a bright scarlet stripe down his middle that matched the tone of his flesh.
Asyr bowed her head in his direction. “Dmaynel, we have brought you one of the bigoted men who has traveled into Invisec to mock us. He is the one we should use as the message we wish to send to the Empire.