Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(41)

Jas Emari. You are mine.

He doesn’t bother greeting her. No words. Just a smile, big and beaming. It’s enough to show her: I’m the one who caught you, little fish. She thought she outsmarted him back on Taris. And, he admits, she did. But it was only a temporary embarrassment—a failed move in a bigger game.

A game he just won.

He nods to Niima’s freaks. They murmur and mumble as three of them storm into her cell, looping rope—rope! Of all the primitive things—around her wrists and dragging her out.

Mercurial is glad to have Niima’s hospitality—and he’s just as glad the Hutt isn’t here. He doesn’t know Niima, but he knows Hutts. They’re given over equally to brutality and formality, and he has no time for either of those things. (Plus, they’re disgusting. Giant, slime-lubed parasites drinking from the blood flow of the universe. Mercurial has little issue with parasites, given that he is one himself. But the slime? That, he can do without.) Haughtily, Mercurial leads the way. The Hutt-slaves drag Jas behind them, and she struggles to keep up. The bounty hunter is buoyant with triumph. He feels a spring in his step. This is going to be a good day. Her capture was easy. He thought he’d have a long hunt ahead of him, so he hired a whole crew to help. And then the girl just drops into his lap?

An easy win. One that still required him to be in the right place at the right time, of course. He deserves it. He deserves the payment, too.

But does his crew?

Maybe he won’t pay the crew, after all. A few credits to get them on their way. Or maybe no credits at all…after all, what work did they do? It darkens his feeling of victory, a little. Having to share the cut with those old knobs? It would be much better to keep it all—especially since they did literally nothing except come along for the ride.

He ponders this as they walk down the smooth stone passageways of Niima’s cavernous temple. In this, she’s quite unlike the other Hutts he’s known. They favor opulence and amusement. Jabba’s palace on Tatooine was positively baroque. This, though, is about as spare as they come: It’s just boreholes and tunnels sculpted out of the fire-red stone. The tunnels are smooth in some places, scalloped in others, and he doesn’t know if they’re natural to the landscape or if the Hutt chewed or somehow secreted her way through the rock. Stranger still, there’s almost nothing powered here. Minimal electricity. No droids that he’s seen. Even Emari is bound with rope—not chain, not shackles, not cuffs. Common rope.

They pass by more cells. In one of them, the Hutt-slaves hold a man down, carving off hanks of the old spacer’s hair. The man screams as they shear him down to the skin. The freaks stuff something in his mouth—a dirty rag. One of them sticks a needle in the corner of his eye. His screams dissolve into mushy murmurs behind the gag. A puff of coppery dust and they begin to paint the man’s face red…

They’re making more of themselves, Swift thinks. Niima enslaves her acolytes, and in turn they make more acolytes. Like a spreading disease.

He keeps moving, putting forth a brisker pace. The sooner he can be done with this, the better. His ship, a Corellian shuttle, awaits.

Still. Something nags at him. His good feeling is eroding, fast.

He also doesn’t like that Emari hasn’t said a word. She’s keeping her mouth shut, and while that should please him, it doesn’t. Because it means she’s not giving him any satisfaction at all.

And Mercurial demands satisfaction.

The bounty hunter tells himself he’s not going to say a word, either, and next thing he knows he just can’t help himself. He keeps walking, facing forward as the words tumble out of him: “I don’t think you appreciate the trouble you’re in, Emari. And I don’t think you get that I’m the one thing standing between you and Boss Gyuti taking your head as a trophy. So now’s the time.” He grins, flippant. He makes a lasso gesture with his finger above his head. “You want to beg, beg. Plead if you can. Cut me a deal. C’mon, Emari. You’re a bounty hunter. You know the art of the swindle. Unless you just want me and my crew to bring you in…”

And yet, nothing.

So disappointing.

He stops suddenly and rounds on her. “The bounty is for you alive or dead, Emari, and I’m happy to take your head—wait, what are you doing?”

Her hands, bound in front of her, hang in front of her mouth. Her cheeks bulge until they don’t. A slick string of saliva connects her lower lip to her knuckles. Her eyes flash with mischief.

Mercurial only realizes what’s happening when it’s far too late.

Jas tilts her head—and the hair upon her scalp flips from one side to the other. When it does, it reveals the topography of her skull, and gone from that side of her head are her spikes.

Three of them. Broken off. The nubs puckered with dry blood.

Where the…?

Oh. Oh, no.

The spikes are in her hand.

Swift staggers backward, heels scuffing stone as he reaches for the batons that hang at his side— Emari’s hand forms a fist around the spikes as she moves forward fast, too fast, and already those bony thorns are thrust up through the gaps in that fist, sandwiched between squeezed fingers— His fingers find one of his batons—

Slow, too slow, the Hutt-slaves don’t even know what’s happening— Her fist flashes in front of his face. Three spikes slash—drawing sharp lines from his chin all the way up to his brow. Pain throbs. All he sees is red. He whips out the baton but his fingers fumble, and it drops.