Tales from Jabba's Palace by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

underground warrens where eight hundred people acknowledged her father as clan chief, she’d been known as an exquisite dancer. The height of her kicks and the sensuous swing of her lekku had won dozens of admirers.
    Four months ago, Bib Fortuna had coaxed her aboveground. He’d abducted her, instead of paying her father as custom dictated. He’d enslaved her—and another Twi’lek girl, even younger and more petite—ata complex on Ryloth where he’d once conducted a lucrative smuggling business. He’d bought them the most expensive training on six worlds: four months with Ryloth’s most elegant, experienced court dancers.
    The older dancers disdained her clan’s quaint, primitive ways. To Oola’s way of thinking, her clan preserved faith and dignity that the rest of the world had lost in its rush to accommodate slavers and smugglers. Expediency was a deadly god to serve.
    Still, Oola rose to her training. She couldn’t escape, and she did love to dance. The twin temptations of power and fame set hooks in her soul. Fortuna’s performers selected the girls’ dancing personae: Sienn would appear slightly younger, naïve, and guileless; Oola would seem knowing, worldly-wise, and callous. Sienn sat stoically as Fortuna’s grim groomers tattooed delicate floral chains up and down her nerve-laden lekku. Oola held Sienn’s hand and wiped her silent tears of pain.
    Sienn was too young and vulnerable for work that made her beauty a commodity. Twi’leks called her kind a “morsel”—one gulp and a client could eat her. Their aging head trainer, who still boasted some beauty, tried hardening Sienn. “Don’t play with that kind of appetite,” she’d warned. “Make them drool, but don’t let them bite.”
    Oola sleeked her lekku and shimmied her shoulders infinitesimally. She and Sienn had been trained by the best. Groomed for the best.
    Sienn sat in another deceleration chair, wearing a simple hooded coverall—like Oola’s, but pale yellow instead of dark blue—and stroked her freshly tattooed lekku. “Do they still hurt?” Oola murmured.
    “They’re fine,” insisted Sienn. “They—”
    The cabin door slid aside. Jerris Rudd stepped through, one point seven meters of scum. Rudd wasthe first human she’d met. Perhaps all humans dressed in baggy, torn clothing. Perhaps they all smelled this foul, with matted fur covering their heads (the worst of Rudd’s stench came from that fur). If so, humans were scum. In keeping with her worldly-wise role, Rudd had given her a tiny dagger. “Help Sienn,” he’d taunted, “if you can.” She’d bristled, but she’d made sure the dagger was sharp, then tucked it into her belt.
    “Nice fly, girls?” Rudd rubbed his stained hands. “Pretty good landing, I think. No boom. ” He clapped his hands at Sienn’s face.
    Sienn shrank into her chair. Evidently Rudd had tried to evaluate Sienn’s training during their hyperspace hop.
    Oola could speak only a few hundred words of Basic, but her ear knew the way pidgin limped. It offended her. She could guess-translate most words in context. “It was a good landing,” she said firmly.
    “Time to unbuckle”—he pantomimed releasing their harnesses—“and hit dirt. You’ll love Tatooine.”
    Sienn touched a control on her seat. Her flight harness withdrew into its side. “What’s it like?” she asked.
    “A little like Ryloth. You’ll see. Come on.”
    They’d barely climbed down into the docking bay’s heat—and the sandy back lot was like Ryloth’s hot, perpetually uninhabitable bright side—when a metallic voice announced, “Hold it right there. Nobody moves.”
    That voice had no music left in it. It grated in her ears like metal on slate. Oola did as it ordered.
    The voice came from a human wearing white metal. Oola stared. She’d seen tri-D images of Imperial stormtroopers. Three of them stood between the battered fore pod of Rudd’s small transport and the only gate in the docking bay’s