Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(45)
“Lemme ask you a question,” Cobb says.
“I’ll allow it. Ask, though no promises you’ll enjoy my answer.”
“What do you want with this place anyway? Tatooine is a sandbox. Water’s scarce. It’s hot and dry as a dead man’s mouth. Why not leave it alone? Why not leave its people alone?”
Lorgan takes a long draw of air through his bent nose. The stink of the man—and really, of all these Freetowners—is nearly overpowering. Sweat-slick and oily. “If you must know, the Hutts consider this world vital for reasons I care not at all to comprehend. What I do know is that Tatooine has its resources. Dilarium oil. Silicax oxalate. But its so-called people are the most vital resource of them all. Some of the galaxy’s legacy breeding stock is here, and we wouldn’t want to diminish those slave bloodlines.” He says this last bit as a dig against Vanth. “Your failure here today will see all these people back in chains. You, too. Your time in the wilderness is over.”
“It’s not my time that’s ending,” Vanth says. “You’ll see.”
Lorgan considers rebutting the man yet again, but what is the point? It doesn’t matter. He’s taken the town. He’s got the man in the mask. Red Key is ascendant both here and across the galaxy.
Now only one more thing.
“I find it strange you thought your ploy could work,” Lorgan says. “I mean, really. Just because you have a Hutt-slug doesn’t mean you can install it on the dais and control Tatooine. That’s what this really is, isn’t it? You don’t want freedom for people. You see this place as a resource just as I do. Just as I see you as a resource. Now I’m going to take that Hutt-slug and I’m going to sell it back to the Hutts. You will be dead by then.”
He thrusts up a finger, and two more of his raiders come forward—the wattle-necked Ithorian Vommb, and that broad-shouldered brute woman, Trayness. They come dragging a ripped red tarp, a tarp that squirms and squeals as the slug inside it tries to escape. Behind them, on a chain, comes a fat-bellied man in a long leather hood, his shirtless skin grimy with some sort of foul grease. Slug slime, Movellan thinks.
Another twirl of the finger, and they unroll the tarp. The Hutt spawn slug—young, barely an adolescent—rolls out, small arms flailing, craterous mouth crying in fear and pain. The hooded man hurries to its side, cooing to it, shushing it, stroking its ooze-slick brow.
“Shh, shhh,” the Beastmaster says. In a singsongy voice he adds: “Everything will be okay. Everything will be fine, baby Borgo…”
Borgo. They’ve gone and named the thing.
He looks to Vanth one last time and says, “The Hutt is ours. These people will all be slaves. You picked the wrong hill of sand to die on.”
“So did you,” Cobb says through bloody teeth.
Then a moment passes between Cobb and the Beastmaster. Vanth gives a small nod and a wink. The Beastmaster returns the nod and begins stroking under the Hutt’s chin, whispering something—
Lorgan barks an order to Trayness, and she moves fast, clubbing the Beastmaster in the head with an open fist. The man bleats and falls, clutching his now bleeding head.
The Hutt spawn lifts its head to the sky. Its slit mouth opens, and its tongue wiggles out, tastes the air. And then it howls. What comes from its whole-bodied throat is a shrieking, ear-bleeding dirge.
There’s a stir at the margins. Movellan’s own people suddenly turning and pointing beyond the walls of the town—he cannot see what they see, but when they begin firing their blasters, he knows something’s gone wrong.
Then comes a sound—a terrible howl followed by a mad battle cry. Red Key raiders begin falling from the walls as blasts from outside take them out. Movellan turns, his finger in a wild lasso gesture—to Vommb and the others he says, “Go! Go find out what that is.”
They hurry off, but he doesn’t have to wait for their answer.
The front gates of the town bash open—
A massive bantha, bigger than anything Movellan’s ever seen, crashes through the opening. It has one eye scarred over, and its fur is matted with filth and wound with bones and rusted gears. Atop it is one of the Tuskens, those feral desert raiders who have given Red Key so many problems over the last year. This Tusken is, like the bantha, bigger than all his cohorts—huge, bristling shoulders hold up a head wrapped with ragged fabric and plastered with massive black goggles gleaming in the sun. Red Key raiders attack the bantha, but the Tusken maneuvers atop the beast like a circus performer—swooping down, breaking one Red Key neck with his crude stick weapon, then scrambling underneath the bantha and up on the other before unslinging a cycler rifle and firing a trio of shots, all of which find a home in the heads and chests of Movellan’s men. Then the Tusken is back in the shaggy beast’s saddle once again.
Other Tusken brutes begin clambering up over the walls, swarming the Red Key. And yet the Freetowners are untouched…
They knew. This isn’t a random attack.
Lorgan wheels on Vanth—
The sheriff is standing there. Behind him, the cuffs lie in the sand. The Beastmaster—looking gleeful, like a pleased baby—stands there with a magna-driver, having clearly helped remove the shackles.
Lorgan is fast, but not fast enough—even as he brings his blaster up, Vanth backhands him hard. He goes down. A boot finds his wrist, pressing down hard enough that his fingers uncoil from the pistol’s grip. The shadow of the lawman falls onto him, and he stares up at the suns-edged silhouette. All around him, the bark and gargle of Tusken battle cries.