The Devaronian nodded curtly. “You are sitting at our table.”
Seated with his back to the alcove’s wall, Corran had protected himself against ambush from behind, but it also allowed the two ruffians full view of the blaster he wore. No way I can draw it and shoot them before they get me. It seemed obvious to him that the simple way out of the situation was to graciously offer them the table and buy a round for them. “We were unaware of the situation here”
“And we couldn’t care less.” Mirax jutted her chin forward and poked her left index finger into the Rodian’s middle. “If a pair of gravel-maggots like you are sandsick enough to think we’re moving just because you mistake us for Jundland dew-pickers, you better get used to careers as Sarlacc bait.”
Corran’s jaw dropped. “Mirax?”
The Devaronian thumbed his own breastbone. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Do you have any idea how little we care?” Mirax jerked her head to the left. “Tell it to the Jawas so they get your name right when they bag your body.”
The Rodian began buzz-squawking, but the loud thwap of a street club being pounded on the bar stopped him.
The human bartender pointed a finger toward the alcove. “Hey!”
His horns gleaming in the half-light, the Devaronian waved his protest off. “We know, ‘No blasters.’”
Wuher’s face scrunched up in a sour expression. “Not that, sand-for-brains. Do you know who you’re talking to? That’s Mirax, Mirax Terrik.”
The Devaronian’s grayish skin lightened appreciably, and the Rodian paled to a new-shoot green. “Terrik? As in Booster Terrik?”
Mirax smiled.
The bartender nodded as he pulled their drinks from the bar. “Now you’re thinking. She’s his daughter. Now’s the part where you apologize to her or the Jawas continue measuring you for luggage for your final jump.” He glared at the little knot of Jawas jabbering to each other. “Dibs on the Rodian.”
The Devaronian bowed deeply to Mirax. “I, ah, we, beg your pardon for disturbing you. I am, well, that’s not important, but if I can be of service to you, please, don’t hesitate to ask.” His apology came accompanied by Rodian buzz-squeak, which Corran took to be a simultaneous translation.
Mirax raised her chin and gave them a chillingly Imperial stare. “You’re blocking our light.”
The two of them backed away bowing profusely. Laughter ran through the cantina, bold in some spots and hushed in others, but amusement at their predicament united the cantina for a moment or two.
Corran licked his lips and realized his throat was absolutely parched. “Ah, Mirax, what possessed you to do that?”
“As I said before, keeping up appearances.” She smiled broadly at him. “You’ve really only seen the kind, sensitive side of me.”
“I seem to recall you burning down a stormtrooper on a speeder bike on Coruscant.”
“Oh, yes, I guess there was that, wasn’t there?”
“Yeah, there was, but even so there’s no reason for provoking a fight like that.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t worried. You could have taken them.”
I could have taken them? Corran stared at her for a moment. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but”
Mirax reached across the table with her left hand and gave his right hand a squeeze. “I knew Wuher would intervene—this is an old game we’ve played from time to time.” Her right hand, the one that had been hidden from the open edge of the table, came up and she deposited a small hold-out blaster on the table. “I had things covered; but the moment Wuher mentioned who I was, I knew we’d not have any more trouble.”
Corran frowned. “Does everyone but me have relatives here? We land at Docking Bay Eighty-Six because some cousin or something of Gavin’s owns it, then he takes off to set up a meet with his uncle Huff. Your father’s got enough pull here so that two guys who’d suck the eyes out of a dead bantha’s head run like droids being pursued by Jawas.”
Mirax shrugged. “Tatooine is really a fairly small community. The Darklighters are a well-known and powerful family here. That estate we flew over on our way in here was Huff’s place. And as for my father, well, he had quite the reputation before your father tossed him into the mines on Kessel, and his surviving his time there didn’t hurt his rep at all. I’m sure that in some CorSec bar back on Corellia your name would be taken as being just as impressive.”
“Maybe, but let’s not test the reaction to it right now, okay?”
“I don’t think even invoking my father’s name would save you if you ran into an old enemy here.”
“And invoking my name would doom me if we ran into your father here.” Corran shot Mirax a sidelong glance. “Have you sent your father a message letting him know that you’ve developed an affection for the son of his nemesis.”
“‘Developed an affection,’ have I?” Mirax toyed with the hold-out blaster. “I thought we were a bit beyond that stage.”
“True, we are, but no fair dodging the question.”
She frowned. “No, I haven’t told him. While you were dead, there was no sense mentioning it—I didn’t want to be dealing with his anger while my heart still felt ripped out of me. And in the time since you came back from the dead, well, I’ve been busy; and ever since he retired, I’m never really sure where he is.”
“Most folks, when they retire, settle in one spot and relax.”
“Most folks aren’t my father.” Mirax smiled slightly. “For Booster, retirement means he still does deals, but he does them for friends, not for profit. Folks use him as a negotiator—he works out terms and the like. It keeps him getting the best of the business without the risk. He’s happy, which is better than the alternative.”
Which is why you’ve not mentioned us to him. Corran nodded. I fully understand. My father wouldn’t have, so not having to explain it to him is about the only good thing I can think of concerning his being dead.
Gavin came in through the doorway and paused in the foyer near the droid detection unit. He twisted left and right, shaking a cloud of Tatooine’s fine dust from his tan cloak. Beneath it he wore what was once a white shirt, a black vest, dark brown pants, and knee-high boots. Around his middle he had strapped on a blaster and had tied the lower end of the holster around his right thigh.
“Looks the fair pirate, our friend.” Mirax raised a hand. “Gavin, over here.”
Corran agreed with Mirax’s assessment, though Gavin’s sloppy grin kind of marred the image. “Everything set?”
Gavin nodded. “I have a landspeeder waiting out front. It’s not much, but it was the best I could do. I tried to borrow one off Uncle Huff, but he said the last time he loaned a landspeeder to someone from Rogue Squadron it wasn’t returned in the best of conditions.”
“We might as well head out, then.” Mirax stood and clipped the hold-out blaster to her belt. She dug around in a pouch for some credits as she headed toward the bar. “How much?”
Wuher shook his head. “Your friends got it.” He glanced toward the Rodian and Devaronian.
She smiled. “And they took care of you, too, yes?”
“The spirit of generosity, they were.”
“Good.”
Mirax followed Gavin from the cantina and Corran brought up the rear. He poked his head through the middle of his desert tabard and settled it down around his shoulders. The side flaps allowed for quick access to his blaster or the lightsaber, but he hoped he would not have need to resort to either.
He felt kind of awkward wearing the lightsaber. It had always seemed to him to be something of a genteel weapon of limited use. In his line of work, a Stokhli spray stick and a blaster were usually considered more than enough to handle any situation. Lightsabers had been all but unknown while the Empire considered them a sign of being a Jedi, but now that Luke Skywalker was a great hero, some folks had developed an affectation for them. It seemed to be the sort of weapon one carried if one was afraid to carry a blaster.
&nb
sp; That characterization of it made Corran uneasy to wear the weapon, but flipping the bit the other way, he felt proud to be heir to one. He felt as if he had the right to wear it. At first he thought doing so might show disrespect for his grandfather, but then he realized Rostek Horn had risked his own career and life to protect Nejaa Halcyon’s wife and child from Imperial Jedi hunters. Not only had he valued them for who they were, but he had valued them in memory of his fallen friend. I think grandfather would be happy to see me wearing this lightsaber and that’s all the reason I need to wear it.
Corran hooded his eyes with his hand as he emerged into the harsh twin-sun noon. Gavin waved him over to the landspeeder. To Corran it looked a lot like the old SoroSuub XP-38, but the normally compact, dart-shaped craft had been heavily modified. The passenger compartment had been boosted forward by the addition of more seating and cargo space between it and the engines. More disturbing than how the addition had destroyed the fine lines of the vehicle was the fact that beneath the dust Corran saw a pink and puce paint job.
Corran hooked an arm over Gavin’s shoulders. “You know, the womp rats you bull’s-eye in a thing like this might be color-blind, so they don’t care what your speeder looks like, but, really, look at this thing.”
Gavin smiled wryly and spun out from beneath Corran’s arm. “It beats walking, which was the other alternative given our operational budget. Get in. This baby will still hit three hundred klicks per, despite the modifications, and the krayt dragons don’t see the color scheme as edible. We’ll be there in no time.”
The trip actually took half a standard hour, which wasn’t “no time,” and speeding through trackless wastes actually seemed close to forever. If it weren’t for the cloud of dust billowing out from behind them, Corran would have been hard pressed to cite evidence that they were going anywhere at all. The Jundland Wastes mountains became a heat-warped stain on the horizon, and nothing else came even close to serving as a landmark.
Despite the lack of signposts or other waymarkers, Gavin got them to his uncle’s estate without incident. The brief glimpse of it Corran had gotten from the Pulsar Skate as they came in had not prepared him for what it really looked like. From above it looked fairly normal—a compound surrounding a number of buildings including a tall tower. From the ground what became apparent was that, aside from the entryway and the tower itself, the buildings he’d seen were all constructed below the planet’s surface. Gavin slid the landspeeder to a stop near the entryway beside several other land-speeders and then led Mirax and Corran down through the stairs to the compound’s main courtyard. The stark white color of everything aided the suns in producing glare, but Corran realized that white absorbed far less solar energy—too much of which already made Tatooine unbearable as far as he was concerned.
A slender, gray-haired woman emerged through one of the arched doorways and immediately smiled. “Gavin Darklighter, how you have grown!” Boiling out around from behind her came a number of small children, ranging from toddlers to curious preadolescents.
“Aunt Lanal!” Gavin trapped the woman in a hug, then freed her and performed introductions that included her and the half-dozen cousins. Corran shook hands all around, but immediately lost track of names.
Lanal explained that she was Huff Darklighter’s third wife and all of the children were hers. “Biggs’s death shook Huff. He decided he wanted more heirs. His second wife decided she wasn’t interested in having any more than the one she’d already borne. She left, and Huff married me.”
“Biggs’s mother died before I was born. Aunt Lanal is actually my mother’s sister, so she’s my aunt on both sides.” Gavin gave her a kiss on the forehead. “Is Uncle Huff available?”
Lanal nodded. “He asked me to put you in the library. He’s meeting with someone else right now, but he should be free shortly.”
“Great.”
The Darklighter estate struck Corran as an expensive compromise between the practicalities demanded by Tatooine and the essence of elegance as defined in other places within the galaxy. Fountains and pools would have been a foolish waste, but Huff succeeded in providing water features by encasing them entirely in transparisteel. Whereas a simple decorative column in any other home might have been painted brightly, Huff filled it with water and bubbled air up through it. Tiles on the thick walls were decorated and colored in such a way that they created optical illusions meant to diminish the blockiness of the house’s design. Liberal use of transparisteel gave the dwelling an openness that it would not have otherwise had, yet elsewhere in the house more traditional design and decoration made Corran feel as if he’d never left Coruscant.
The library into which Lanal guided them was just one such room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined all the walls except where the doorways split them in two places. They entered through the south wall, and a closed double doorway bifurcated the east wall. The shelves and the doors were probably of duraplast, but Corran couldn’t rule out actual wood having been used. If that’s true, it had to be imported from many light-years away and probably cost as much as a squadron of X-wings.
Corran felt a chill run through him as he entered the library. Box after box of datacards filled the shelves, though trinkets and other odds and ends spaced them out a bit. What made Corran feel odd about the room was that it reminded him very much of the library in the Lusankya annex facility through which he had escaped from Isard. Though no trace of it was found after the Lusankya blasted its way free of Coruscant, the setup had been almost identical to the Imperial library in the private floor of Imperial Palace. At least it seemed so to Corran when he viewed a broadcast hologram about the palace.
I suppose a businessman like Huff Darklighter would want a decor that made Imperial officials feel at home. The briefing files Winter had given Corran about Huff Darklighter left no doubt that Huff had worked out an accommodation with the local Imperial officials that had given him free rein to operate on Tatooine. Those same arrangements also got his son Biggs his appointment to the Imperial Military Academy and, in the end, led to Biggs’s death. Since Darklighter isn’t prone to accepting blame for anything himself, the favor Imps had done for him was seen as the cause of his son’s death. Conversely, because Biggs is a hero of the Rebellion, Darklighter is willing to deal with the New Republic.
Gavin looked around at the shelves, then smiled. “Huff’s working office is up in the tower. His negotiating office is next door. Once he ushers out whoever is in there, we’ll get to go in. Once he learns you’re from Corellia I bet he finds you some Whyren’s Reserve whisky.”
Mirax smiled. “I’ll take that and maybe make a side deal for any extra he has stashed away.”
“Sure, but remember our main mission.” Corran held up a finger. “We’re looking for weapons, munitions, and spare parts. Anything else we get is extra.”
The two of them nodded, then turned toward the eastern doors. One-half of them slid into the wall and Huff Darklighter entered the library. His belly preceded him by a second or two, but therein the resemblance to a Hutt ended. A coronet of white hair surrounded a pate the color of tanned leather. Darklighter’s arms and shoulders looked powerful and were somehow complemented by the luxuriously full moustache he wore. His dark eyes glittered coldly as he instantly assessed his visitors, but then the corners of his mouth rose.
“Gavin, it is a pleasure.” The tone of voice didn’t seem to quite match the smile as far as Corran was concerned, but the elder Darklighter pulled Gavin into a polite hug, so he assumed there was no problem between them. Huff fingered his moustache. “Darken your hair and grow one of these, and you’d be the spitting image of my Biggs.”
Mirax shot Corran a hooded glance. Corran didn’t think Gavin and Biggs looked anything alike, but he realized Huff Darklighter wasn’t viewing Gavin through the same frame of reference. Huff made Biggs into a hero long before the Rebellion ever did.
Huff drew back from his nephew and smiled toward Mirax and Corran. “I just stepped in here to
let you know I’d be a bit yet. Negotiations are delicate.”
“I understand, sir.” Corran started forward and extended his hand toward Huff, but the larger man made no move to match his gesture. “I’m Corran”
Huff held his hands up. “Time for introductions later, I’m sure. Really, I hate to be rude, but”
Corran’s emerald eyes shrank into crescents. “Just as I would hate to report to the New Republic that one in ten of the freighters bearing Darklighter products from here burns seven percent more fuel than is necessary—if they’re actually carrying the cargo on the manifest. Suspicious minds might think that means they’re carrying seven percent of their weight in illegal or exotic items, and the trouble you’d have to go to to straighten that mess out would be more than rude.”
What little was left of Huff’s smile melted clean away. “Nasty friends you’ve got here, Gavin.”
“Corran used to be with CorSec, Uncle.”
“Out of your jurisdiction, Corran.”
“True, but I can still be trouble.” Corran turned toward Mirax. “This is Mirax Terrik.”
“Terrik?” Huff’s smile struggled to return to his face. “Related to Booster Terrik?”
“He’s my father.”
“I see.”
“I’m sure you do, sir. Something else you should see is that we’re here to negotiate with you for weapons, munitions, and spare parts you have left over from the looting of an Imperial weapons cache several years ago.”
The smile blossomed in full on Huff’s face. “Imagine that. My current visitor was inquiring about the very same things. This could be amusing.”
Corran saw Huff’s eyes glaze over just imagining the profit potential. “Hey, no one is going to make you a better deal for that stuff than we are. No one.”
“Oh, how interesting.” Huff walked back toward the doorway and rested his left hand on the door that remained closed. “I have some people here who want what you want. They say no one can make me a better deal. Fascinating, no?”