Star Wars - Jade Solitaire - Unpublished

by Timothy Zahn

  Still, that lightsaber had been Luke’s once, and he was going to kill her if she lost it. Hopefully, when this was all over, she’d be able to track H’sishi down and buy it back from her.

  They reached Praysh’s audience chamber at last, a large, high-ceilinged room that by its gloom, smells, and general repulsiveness brought back unpleasant memories of Jabba the Hutt’s throne room on Tatooine. His First Greatness obviously lacked Jabba’s egalitarian sensibilities, though; the only beings in the room were more of Praysh’s fellow Drach’nam.

  “Well, well,” Praysh called, swiveling his throne around to face the incoming group. “What have we here? A present from the Mrahash of Kvabja, is it?”

  “Yes, Your First Greatness,” Mara said, putting a nervous quaver into her tone as she glanced surreptitiously around. There was a pair of camouflaged blaster ports in the false wall behind Praysh’s throne, but other than that the only defenses were the handful of guards standing between her and the slaver chief. Unlike the door wardens, this group carried no blasters, but were armed only with the same type of long knives and neuronic whips. Probably the intent was to keep the more dangerous weapons away from rioting prisoners or slaves; still, it was an overconfidence she might well be able to exploit. “He sends you greetings and—”

  “Take that bauble, someone,” Praysh cut her off, waving a gem-encrusted scepter toward her. “You—human—step forward.”

  One of the guards took the floater globe and nudged her forward. Stretching out with all her senses, Mara walked toward the throne. Somewhere along here there would undoubtedly be a test to make sure she was nothing more than the useless slave she appeared…

  She’d gone no more than three steps when it came. Abruptly, one of the guards ahead pulled his whip from his side and with a casual flick of his wrist sent the lash snaking toward her.

  Mara gasped and threw her hands uselessly in front of her face, forcing back the reflex to dodge or duck or do something—anything—that would be more effective.

  To her relief, the lash cracked a few centimeters short of her face. “Your First Greatness,” she gasped, taking a quick and unsteady step backward. “Please, sir—what have I done?”

  The only answer was the sound of another whip from behind her. She half turned—

  And suddenly the lash curled itself around her knees and a wave of pain surged through her body.

  Mara screamed, an explosive sound that was only partially role-playing, as she toppled onto the floor, the whip’s current arcing agonizingly through her body. She clawed once at the lash, screaming again as the current burned at her fingertips. “Please—no—please—”

  “Here—defend yourself,” a voice called out; and she looked up as a small blaster landed on the floor beside her legs.

  She grabbed at the weapon, forcing her fingers to fumble as if dealing with a totally unfamiliar object, clenching her teeth against the waves of pain as every part of her being screamed at her to do something. The blaster was undoubtedly useless, just another part of Praysh’s sadistic test; but if she swiveled on one hip, swinging her legs hard around, she might at least be able to yank the whip out of her attacker’s hand.

  But if she did that—if she showed any sign of combat skill whatsoever—she would probably die.

  And then so would the Wild Karrde’s crew.

  She got a grip on the blaster at last, bending awkwardly around to try to bring the weapon to bear on her assailant. The muzzle wavered uncontrollably, and she tried to prop her elbow on the floor to steady it, sobbing now like a child. The blaster sagged and dropped from her paralyzed fingers—

  And abruptly, thankfully, the current shut off.

  Mara lay there, unmoving, still sobbing through clenched teeth as she worked out the sudden cramps in her leg muscles. If she’d misjudged Praysh’s Intentions—if he’d decided to kill her for sport instead of putting her down in the slime pits…

  “That was an object lesson,” Praysh said conversationally. There was a movement beside her, and rough fingers began unwrapping the lash from around her legs. “Now that you’ve seen what a neuronic whip feels like, I’m sure you won’t ever want to provoke its use again.”

  “No—please—no,” Mara managed, the words coming out mangled through her gasping sobs. A pair of hands grabbed her upper arms and hauled her up onto her feet. She took a second to confirm that her legs were recovered enough to hold her weight, then let her knees wobble and collapse again beneath her. The two Drach’nam pulled her up again and turned her to face Praysh. “Please—” she whispered.

  “You belong to me now,” Praysh said quietly, his colorless eyes staring at her. “Your safety—your well-being—your life—are all in my hand. If you serve well, you will survive. If not, there will be neuronic whips around you for the remainder of a short and excruciatingly painful life. Do I make myself clear?”

  Mara nodded quickly, dropping her gaze and hunching her shoulders, the helpless terror of a beaten animal. “Good,” Praysh said, waving offhandedly toward a different door leading out of the chamber. The show was over, and already he was bored with the performer. “Take her to the slavekeeper,” he ordered. “Enjoy your new life here, human.”

  Halfway down a long flight of stairs her escorting guards apparently decided they’d had enough of carrying her and cut her loose to walk on her own. Aside from a lingering tingle in her muscles Mara had completely recovered, but she was careful to maintain a weak-kneed stagger for their benefit the rest of the way down. Neuronic whips were the ultimate glorification of savagery and degradation, just the sort of thing Praysh’s thugs would use as their primary persuader, and she had no intention of letting them know how fast she could recover from their effects.

  The slime pits were in the lowest level of the fortress, composed of a series of interconnected trenches about two meters wide and a hundred meters long set into the floor. On the walkways between them strolled the Drach’nam guards, idly fingering their whips or playing with the hilts of their knives. Perhaps two hundred women, most of them young looking, slogged slowly through the waist-deep gray muck in the pits, bent over double with their arms dug into the slime, their faces bare centimeters above the surface. All those Mara could see wore identical expressions of blank hopelessness that sent a shiver through her.

  “I’ll explain it just once,” the slavekeeper said, gesturing almost genially toward the pits. “The nutrient slime in there is home to the pupal form of the krizar creatures His First Greatness uses to patrol the grounds. The pupae are hard-shelled and ellipsoid, about the size of one of your pathetic little thumbs. Your job is to find the ones that are starting to break out of their shells and put them up on the walkway where they’ll be retrieved and moved to the main hatchery.”

  “How do I know when they’re ready—?”

  “You’ll know when they’re ready when they start to wiggle and chew their way out,” the slavekeeper cut her off sharply. A couple of heads turned at the sudden harsh tone; most of the women didn’t even bother to lookup. “And don’t try just pulling out every one you find. If the pupae are out too long before they’re ready, they’ll die.”

  He waved his whip in front of her nose. “And dead pupae make us very unhappy. Understood?”

  Mara swallowed, forcing herself to shrink back from him. “Yes, sir,” she murmured.

  “Good,” the slavekeeper said, his tone back to genial again, a being who clearly enjoyed his work. “Your head fur is an interesting shade of color. It will be of no use to you in the pits; perhaps you would like to sell it to me.”

  “In exchange for what?” Mara asked cautiously.

  “Favors. More food, perhaps, or other kindnesses.”

  Mara fought back a grimace. The thought of her hair hanging from a slavekeeper’s trophy wall was utterly abhorrent. But on the other hand, he could probably take it without any payment at all if he chose. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be here long enough for him to get around to that. “Can I think about
it?” she asked timidly.

  He shrugged. Clearly, this was just a game to help him pass the time. “If you wish. Oh, one more thing. If you don’t get the pupae out fast enough, they’ll start digging through the shells on their own. No problem with that; except that their mouth palps are always the first things that come out. If they get those into your skin, you’ll need a trip to the med facility to get it taken off.”

  “Oh,” Mara said in a small voice. Now, that was very useful information. “Does it hurt?”

  He gave her one of those evil smiles that Drach’nam did so well. “No more than the whip. Now get in there.”

  Mara looked down at her jumpsuit. “But—”

  She didn’t even get a chance to finish her protest. Putting a massive arm around the back of her waist, the slavekeeper swept her off the walkway into the nearest of the trenches.

  She managed to hang onto her balance as she landed, keeping her head and most of her torso up out of the slime. But the impact sent a wave of thick muck splashing outward at the nearest workers. “Sorry,” she apologized.

  One of the women looked up at her, a dab of the slime oozing slowly down her cheek. “Don’t worry about it,” she said in a voice that sounded more dead than alive. “Don’t worry about getting dirty, either. You’ll never be clean again.”

  A neuronic whip cracked warningly overhead. Mara shied back, but the other woman didn’t seem to notice or care as she dug into the slime again. Stomach twisting with revulsion, Mara eased her arms into the muck and got to work.

  It took her three hours of nauseating, back-breaking sifting before her search pattern finally paid off. “Your name Sansia?” she asked quietly as she came up beside the woman whose holo Bardrin had showed her earlier.

  The other woman looked up at her, eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Yes,” she acknowledged warily. “What about it?”

  Mara glanced casually around. None of the Drach’nam were in earshot at the moment. “A close relative of yours asked me to get you out of here.”

  She’d expected elation, or barely-contained joy, or at least a

  certain amount of surprise. But Sansia’s reaction wasn’t any of those. “Did he really,” she said, her voice dark and scornful. “How very kind of him.”

  Mara frowned. “You don’t seem very pleased.”

  “Oh, I’m overjoyed,” Sansia said sarcastically. “The joy is merely tempered by a somewhat cynical disbelief. You’re what, some kind of mercenary?”

  “Not exactly,” Mara said. “Disbelief in what?”

  “In Daddy dear’s motivations,” Sansia said, digging down into the slime. “Let me guess. He told you about my terrible plight, and how important I am to him and the business, and that he would do anything and give anything to get me back. Once you were properly teary-eyed, he turned up the heat and either talked, maneuvered, or bribed you into charging here to my rescue. Right so far?”

  “Close enough,” Mara said cautiously.

  Sansia’s hand came out of the slime holding one of the krizar pupae. She glanced at both the long ends, then tossed it back in behind her. “But though he desperately wanted his darling daughter back, he also made it clear—subtly, of course—that he wanted the ship back even more. In fact, he probably gave you all the access and command codes you’d need to get it flying whether I was with you or not. Am I still right?”

  Mara felt her throat tighten. “He said I needed to be able to fly the ship if you were incapacitated during the escape.”

  Sansia snorted. “That sounds like him. Plausible straight to the top, but phony as Imperial confidence. The fact is, merc, that he doesn’t care about me one single bit. If he did, he wouldn’t have sent me to Makksre on that half-daft run in the first place. He wants the Winning Gamble back, pure and simple.”

  Mara glanced around again. One of the guards across the way was eyeing her, and she dug her arms again into the slime. “What’s so special about the ship?”

  “Oh, it’s just about three levels past state-of-the-art, that’s all,” Sansia said bitterly. “It’s got an incredible flight system, an unbelievable weapons targeting array, and a crazy, one-of-a-kind defensive shoot-back system I think Daddy must have stolen from somewhere.”

  Mara studied her face, stretching out with the Force to try to get a feel for her mind. The same bitterness she could hear in Sansia’s voice was indeed roiling through her emotions. “So what are you saying?” she asked. “That you don’t want me to try to get you out of here?”

  Sansia’s eyes slunk away from Mara’s gaze. “I’m just telling you how it is,” she muttered. “Maybe warning you that somewhere along the line he’s probably going to try to force your hand. Try to get you to run without me. I guess I thought you should be ready for that.”

  And was hoping against hope that, unlike her father, her rescuer had a conscience? “Thanks for the warning,” Mara said. Her fingers touched something hard in the slime: one of the elusive krizar pupae. “It just means we’ll need to move up the timetable a little,” she added, pulling the pupa to just above the surface where she could examine It. The entire shell was solid; clearly, this one wouldn’t be poking its jaws out any time soon. Perfect. “Where will they take us after we’re finished here?”

  “Across the hall to a really disgusting barracks-style sleeping room,” Sansia said. For the first time since their conversation began Mara could sense the faint whisperings of cautious hope in the other woman’s voice and emotions. “They’ll let us wash up, then feed us.”

  “Showers or tubs?”

  “More like animal watering troughs than real tubs,” Sansia said contemptuously. “Once they bring you down here, you’re never clean again.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that,” Mara said. “All the more reason not to hang around any longer than we have to. Are there surveillance cams in the room?”

  “There are a couple of obvious ones near the door. Probably a whole bunch of non-obvious ones hidden around, too.”

  “Okay,” Mara said. “One more question: how long to the shift change?”

  Sansia peered across the room at a set of glowing emblems embedded in the wall. “Not long. Maybe ten minutes.”

  “Good,” Mara said. “I have a couple of things to pick up first, so I’ll catch up with you in the sleeping room. Get washed up fast, and be ready to move as soon as I get back.”

  Sansia was eyeing her suspiciously, but she nodded. “I’ll be ready,” she said. “Good luck.”

  Mara nodded and moved on, holding the krizar shell she’d found beneath the surface as she slogged along, wanting to put a little distance between her and Sansia before she made her move. Out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the Drach’nam walking purposefully down the walkway toward her, flicking his whip into the air as he came, no doubt preparing a comment and object lesson about idle chat while on duty. Mara let him get almost within whip range…

  And with the most spine-curling scream she could muster, she swung her left arm up, clutching the forearm with her right hand. “It’s got me!” she yelped, flailing around and sending bits of slime flying through the air all around her. “Get it off—get it off!”

  The Drach’nam reached the edge of her trench in a single bound. “Get your hand out of the way,” he snapped, leaning precariously over her as he caught her left wrist and hauled her bodily up out of the pit. The movement brought her up against his belted knife, and she winced as the needle-sharp spikes of the handguard dug briefly into her ribs. “I said move it,” he repeated, dropping her onto her feet on the walkway and prying her right hand away from its grip.

  To reveal the krizar shell hanging from the underside of her left arm.

  Or at least, that was what Mara hoped it looked like. Her Force-manipulating skills might not be as good as Luke Skywalker’s, but it was no big trick to use the Force to hold the shell pressed firmly against her arm as if the creature inside were hanging on. The only danger was that the guard might brush off the glob of slime
strategically placed at the intersection point and notice that there were no krizar palps linking the shell to the arm.

  But after all the times this had undoubtedly happened, the guard was clearly uninterested in the details. “Got one there, all right,” he growled, shifting his grip to her right hand and pulling her along the walkway toward the door. “Hey! Your Seventh Greatness?”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” the slavekeeper told him, gesturing the guards flanking the door to open it. “Tell Blath to be careful this time—His First Greatness isn’t going to like it if he loses another one.”

  The door opened. A second Drach’nam stepped to Mara’s left side as they headed out, taking her left arm and holding it in an iron grip at the level of her waist—probably, Mara decided, making sure she didn’t knock the krizar off against her side. The door slammed shut, and the three of them headed at a fast walk down the corridor.

  Mara didn’t know where the med facility was, but odds were it wasn’t very far away, which meant she had to move fast. She continued to moan and cry like a helpless and broken slave as the Drach’nam half dragged her along, struggling ineffectually in her supposed pain against the casually unbreakable grips of her two escorts. Under cover of her attempted flailings, she glanced down to her left. The second guard’s knife was bouncing along only a few centimeters from where he was holding her left arm pinioned.

  And here was going to be the riskiest part of her plan. With both of her arms under their control, the two Drach’nam shouldn’t be expecting any trouble from her and should therefore be less watchful than they might otherwise be. But if that assumption proved false, there was going to be some serious and immediate trouble.