“—as fine as you think,” Annileen finished. She grinned at his unease. Breathe, Ben. She turned to the dealer. “But the landspeeder looks wonderful, Garn. What happens next?”
“Master Gault authorized the contract yesterday afternoon, ma’am. She’s all yours.” The seller passed her a pouch containing the vehicle’s maintenance codes. “Be sure to tell Orrin that Garn Delroix provided good service.”
“I will.” Annileen looked back to see that Kallie was already in the passenger seat, and that Jabe had started the engine. “I’d better go now, if I ever want to see it again. Come on, Ben!”
Ben followed her into the backseat. Annileen gasped as she sat down. “Have you ever ridden in anything as nice as this?”
“It is nice,” he said.
Jabe guided the vehicle out through the wide doorway and into the busy streets of Mos Eisley. The foot traffic was noisier than the landspeeder by far. “Take it easy, now,” Annileen warned her son, leaning forward to be heard.
“No problem.” Jabe smiled broadly and gripped the control stick—
—and the landspeeder rocketed ahead, accelerating at a sudden rate that pushed three Calwells and a Kenobi back into their luxuriously cushioned seats. Jabe guided the gleaming vehicle through the curved streets at a breakneck pace. The landspeeder drew close to one building and then another, before whipping under the neck of a surprised saurian ronto. By the time the giant bolted, the JG-8 was careening down another street.
“Stop! Stop!”
A second after Annileen yelled her command, Jabe punched the brake—and the world stopped moving outside. Driver and riders were tossed forward into the restraint webbing, which caught them like a mother catching a child.
Annileen was less gentle with her own child. “Jabe, what were you thinking?”
“Sorry! I just touched it,” Jabe said, stroking the steering yoke admiringly. “Not as good on the turns as I’d like. But I’d bet Gloamer could really soup it up.”
“Not going to happen!” Annileen said. Ben seemed amused.
She looked at her daughter. “Both of you, switch into the back. The grown-ups are taking over.”
Kallie opened her door and stepped out of the hovering vehicle, while Annileen stood in her seat, wondering where they’d wound up. They were in a bazaar in a part of Mos Eisley she’d never been to before. Standing by her mother’s side of the vehicle, Kallie pointed off to the left. “Hey, is that the Bezzards over there?”
Annileen turned to look. It was a young couple, yes—but they were older than her recent houseguests. “Not the Bezzards,” she said, squinting. “But I do know them.”
Reclining in his seat, Ben smiled mildly. “Annileen knows everyone.”
“Yeah, the man came through once looking for parts for something,” she said. “That’s Cliegg Lars’s son, Owen.”
Ben’s eyes widened—and locked on the couple emerging from behind the fruit stand, a basket of purchases in the man’s hands.
“Sad story, the Larses,” Annileen said, only half noticing Ben’s sudden move to adjust his boot. Across the road from the landspeeder, the brown-haired woman with Owen Lars turned, and Annileen saw what she was carrying. “Hey, they’ve had a baby!”
Kallie started to wave to the couple. “Let’s call them over!”
At once—and quite free from Jabe’s grasp—the landspeeder’s control stick slammed forward, causing the vehicle to hurtle ahead again. Kallie twirled and fell to the sandy street, buffeted by the jet wash from the twin engines. Aboard, the unrestrained Annileen fell backward into Ben’s arms.
The boy grabbed the steering yoke in panic. The vehicle skirted over the top of a wheeled cart and ripped through an intersection, even as its young driver fought the controls. “It’s stuck!” he yelled.
Annileen scrambled across the center console and helped him pull back on the stick. All at once it gave way, and the acceleration died. The vehicle floated to a stop in front of an illegally parked starship, whose owner, fearing the arrival of authorities, ran for his loading ramp.
She fell back into the backseat, out of breath. Ben seemed rattled and wary, but otherwise intact. She clutched at her son’s sleeve. “Jabe, I told you to knock it off!”
“I didn’t do it, Mom! It started on its own!”
“On its own?” Annileen felt as if an artery had ruptured in her head. “You nearly killed your sister!”
Rising cautiously, Ben raised his hand. “No, no. I saw it,” he said. “Jabe’s telling the truth. I saw the control stick. It slipped forward, on its own, while you weren’t looking.”
Both Calwells looked at Ben. Annileen looked incredulous. Jabe was absolutely stupefied. “Th-thanks,” he said.
“I don’t believe this,” Annileen railed. “Pricy landspeeders don’t just start driving!”
“Still, that’s what I saw,” Ben said. “Jabe saved us.” He bowed his head slightly to Jabe, who looked at him in wonder.
Aggravated, Annileen shook her head. “I’m gonna give that dealer a piece of my mind!”
Ben put up his hand. “I don’t think that’s necessary—”
Annileen glared at him. “What, you’ll save us from wild animals and Tuskens but not defective vehicles?”
Ben was speechless.
It was as harshly as Annileen had ever spoken to him, and she regretted it instantly. She sank back into the seat and tried to calm down.
She looked about. They were in a neighborhood she’d never seen before. “Where are we?”
Placing his hood back over his head, Ben scanned the area. “Nowhere near where we were,” he said, with what almost seemed like satisfaction. He was breathing easier now, Annileen saw, and it made her feel better. Until her comlink went off.
“Jabe tried to kill me!” the tinny voice shrieked.
“It’s all a dumb mistake,” Annileen told her daughter over the comm. “Stay where you are, Kallie. We’ll be back for you in—”
Ben grabbed at her sleeve. “Annileen,” he said, pointing out of his side of the vehicle. “There!”
She looked out to see a landspeeder that resembled Orrin’s, being driven by a Klatooinian. It parked near the Mos Eisley Inn, and Bojo Boopa emerged from the back. The other passenger door opened.
“Orrin!”
Annileen sank in her seat and watched, spellbound, as across the way two armed humans stepped up and frisked Orrin. His holster was empty, she saw, and the man made no move to oppose the search. He looked grim.
“That’s the Gossam from the store!” Annileen said.
Jabe reached for his blaster. “They’re mugging him!”
“No.” Ben reached forward and touched the boy’s shoulder firmly. “I don’t think that’s what’s happening.”
Then what is happening? Annileen wondered as the human and alien toughs conducted Orrin past the hotel and toward an alleyway. She looked at Ben. “Orrin’s not even supposed to be in town today!”
Jabe started to move again, only to be stopped this time by Annileen.
“Mom, they’re taking him away! We’ve got to help him!”
“We don’t know what’s happening,” Annileen said. “It could be business. It could be nothing,” she added. But she didn’t believe it.
She looked plaintively to Ben, who was already out of the vehicle. He walked to the driver’s side and spoke quickly. “You two get Kallie and return here. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“You?” Jabe objected. “You’re crazy. You don’t even carry a blaster!”
“And if one is necessary,” Ben said sternly, “that’s more reason you shouldn’t go.” His expression softened. “Orrin was one of the first people to welcome me here. If he needs help, I’ll get it for him.”
Reluctantly, Jabe agreed. Ben waved to
Annileen. “See you soon.”
Orrin marched toward the durasteel doors of the town house. It was an unassuming place—a pourstone blockhouse in the shadows of the Mos Eisley Inn, with a large dome to the left of the front entrance. It wasn’t what he’d expected at all. And while he had an escort, there were no guards outside the building. It didn’t make sense.
Or maybe it did. Who’d be crazy enough to attack here?
Boopa pointed him to the main entrance. Orrin walked up the steps, ready for anything. He nearly fell back down them again when a black sensor orb jabbed out from an iris near the doorway.
It spoke in Huttese, and then again in Basic. “Identification and purpose!”
Orrin took a deep breath. “Orrin Gault.” He looked at his hands and flexed his fingers. “I have important business to discuss—with Jabba the Hutt!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HUMAN SWEAT DRIPPED ONTO finely carved ceramic tiles. Jabba’s foyer was as richly appointed as the building’s exterior was modest. Orrin wasn’t surprised. He’d heard Jabba kept a presence in Mos Eisley, apart from his mountain palace; the Hutt seemed to want to convey a benevolent paternal presence to the locals.
There was nothing benevolent about the place, though. This was where the guards were, Orrin realized. Four more Gamorreans stood here, two at either side of the door, large poleaxes at their sides. They looked bored.
Bojo Boopa and Jorrk followed Orrin in, blasters at their sides. As they marched Orrin left down a wide hallway, he again felt the empty space in his holster. Boopa had even taken his comlinks; Mullen and Veeka had no idea where he was.
The audience chamber loomed ahead, behind a roll-away blast door. A silvery bipedal droid emerged and scanned Orrin’s body, confirming that he was unarmed. Orrin felt like everyone was watching. Why did they put people through this? Was this really necessary?
The droid said in guttural tones, “Jabba will see you now.”
Great suns, Orrin thought, pulse racing as he urged his feet to move. How did it come to this?
He inhaled deeply and walked through the doors. In the center of the rotunda, atop the long wooden platform built for a Hutt’s power sled, Orrin beheld …
… something else. In place of a sled, a small figure in a light green business suit huddled over a desk. The pink-and-brown creature punched numbers into a datapad. Credits of all colors sat stacked in orderly piles on the desktop. A squat safedroid wobbled on its wheels nearby, its maw open and ready to accept currency.
Orrin didn’t recognize the desk worker’s species. He had an almost simian face, his cheeks accented by two straight, finely coiffed tufts of quill-like whiskers. Large, studious black eyes remained fixed on the calculations before him as he entered each new figure with zeal. And like the Gamorreans at the gate, he paid no mind to the new arrival.
Jorrk shoved Orrin toward the center of the room. Behind, Orrin saw three more Gamorreans along the room’s perimeter—and Boopa, who placed Orrin’s comlinks and blaster on a small table.
Orrin looked up into the dome above the room. Slivers of light from vents cut high in the bowl filtered down through heavy wire mesh netting, suspended meters above the floor. The metal web made no sense architecturally; the only break in the pattern was at the focal point of the dome, where a square mass sat over the center of the room. Orrin squinted. Was something up there?
With a cautious last look at the guards, Orrin removed his hat and spoke. “I’m here.”
“Indeed you are!” The being at the desk looked up and smiled toothily. “I like this human. Observant.”
“They told me Jabba was here,” Orrin said, feeling some blood reentering his limbs. “Either they were wrong, or you’ve lost weight.”
“Ha!” The suited alien slapped the desk for emphasis. “Observant, and with a sense of humor.” He set down his datapad and stood. “Yes, I like this! I want to be in business with such a person, I do!”
“But who are you?”
“Ah. Mosep Binneed, your humble servant,” the creature said, bowing. He was a full head shorter than Orrin. “I manage Jabba’s portfolio when he’s not here.”
Clutching at the brim of his hat, Orrin shifted uncomfortably. “Boopa said this was Jabba’s place, so I assumed—”
“His Immensity is a busy creature,” Mosep said, lifting a small tray of money. Like cleaning crumbs from a plate, he slid the credits into the safedroid’s innards. “But Jabba knows the people of Mos Eisley feel better when he’s around. So at this office, Jabba is always in. My cousin Lhojugg and I are the joint caretakers.”
“Is that so,” Orrin said, not caring. No Jabba? He was thrilled!
Mosep looked up, a sparkle in his eye. “I also travel under Jabba’s name from time to time, representing his interests. It doesn’t hurt to confuse the competition. So, yes, for today’s purposes—with our master’s kind permission—you could say I am Jabba.”
Jorrk chortled. “Monkey Jabba, Monkey Jabba!”
“That’s unkind, Jorrk,” Mosep said, casting a sidelong glance at the tough. “You’ll have to excuse my associate. He saw a Geniserian sand monkey once, and hasn’t failed to find his joke funny since. I am, of course, a Nimbanel.” He looked back at Orrin. “A good tactic for Jabba, though, don’t you think?”
Orrin felt impatient. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you’re part of the family, Orrin, my boy. No secrets among us, are there?”
“I’m not part of your family!”
Jorrk giggled again.
Mosep bristled his whiskers and reached for his datapad. “If you insist on getting to business—let’s see. Yes, here’s your record.” He read quietly, his hairless lips every so often smacking. “My, this is disturbing.”
While Mosep continued the routine, his tongue occasionally clicking, Orrin fought the urge to move, to say something. This is torture!
At the thought, Orrin glanced up and saw movement above the netting. A dark, lithe figure moved past the lights, glancing against the mesh and raising a racket. “Something … something’s up there.”
Mosep didn’t look up from the datapad. “That would be the Kayven whistlers,” he said. “Carnivorous fliers. They live in the rafters—but occasionally we hoist a treat up to them.”
Orrin looked up with alarm. The square shape nearly above him, he now saw, was a cage, attached to a pulley system reaching into unseen heights above. “A treat?”
Mosep looked at Boopa. “Yes, who was the treat today?”
Boopa lifted a human leg bone from the floor beside him. “Problem gambler, I think.”
Mosep smiled at Orrin. “They’ve had their fill. You can relax.”
Orrin could do no such thing. There were more sounds above—and more shadows. For a moment, he almost thought he saw a bipedal figure in motion, soaring from one of the ventilation slits to the cable. Another clatter followed, with more wings slamming the nets.
“I’ve read enough.” The Nimbanel accountant set down the datapad. “You owe us quite a bit of money, my boy.”
“I’m not your boy, Binneed!”
“All I know is certain obligations have not been met,” Mosep said, smiling. “But I’m getting ahead of myself. You called this meeting.” Mosep sat down in his chair and cracked his hairy knuckles. “I suspect it’s not because you’re ready to repay in full.”
“I’m working on that,” Orrin said, reaching for his courage. “No. I want you out,” he said, firmly.
“Out?” Mosep smiled mildly. His long whiskers bristled. “How so?”
“Out of my hair. Your punks have been coming around my ranch, my store—”
“Your store?” Suddenly interested, Mosep looked again at the datapad. “No, no. My records show your holdings only include the ranch, the vehicles in
the garages, and the barracks for your muscle.”
“They’re called farmhands!” Orrin raged. “Not that you people would know. You haven’t done a day’s honest work in your lives.”
“Oh, they work,” Mosep said, idly sorting credits. “It may not be poking around in the sand or sweating the air for water, but it’s work. Investments are made. Capital is expended. And a return is expected.”
“Yeah, or you sweat us!”
“You’re the one making this unpleasant, Orrin. Or Master Gault, if you prefer. The fact you’re dealing with me ought to be a sign of respect, I should think. My superior knows there are different kinds of business, and that they must be conducted in different ways.” He turned his black eyes on Orrin. “Believe me, if Jabba wanted to deal unpleasantly, you’d have known it by now. Still, we must check on our investments—and that means going to the site. Including this store, which you seem to keep offices in.”
Another clatter from above. The hoodlums paid it no mind.
“My business depends on my reputation,” Orrin said, chastened. “Part of the value in my operation is goodwill. I’ve worked twenty-odd years to build it. If your thugs start showing up, I lose that.”
“Indeed?”
“You bet,” Orrin said. “People will start to measure the water coming out of Gault drums, to see if I’m shorting them.”
Mosep rose from the desk and began pacing. “It’s too late for such concerns. You comprehend that, Orrin—you’re a good businessman. Or you were one. You know we can’t let this continue.”
Orrin looked around, wary of any movement. “Look, this year’s harvest is going to be big. Real big. It’s taken a while to get the new vaporators set up right, but it’s about to turn around—”
“I don’t understand much about agriculture, I’m afraid,” the accountant said. “But I know arithmetic. Even if we kept to the payment plan you were on, I don’t see any way you could make poor Jabba whole again. Not even,” he added, “if you tap your other resources.”
The comment threw Orrin. “Other resources? What are you talking about?”
Kenobi: Star Wars Page 24