Survivor's Quest

"Yeah, it's crazy out here," Huxley went on, taking a noisy swallow of the drink he'd left behind when he hurried off on the mysterious errand that had taken him away from their table. " 'Course, you know all that. Or at least you used to." He eyed her over the rim of his mug. "What's so fu

"Oh, nothing," Mara said, not bothering to erase the smile that had caught the other's attention. "I was just thinking about what a trusting person you are."

"What do you mean?" he asked, frowning.

"Your drink," Mara said, gesturing to his mug. "You go away and leave it alone with me, and then you just come back and toss it down without even wondering if I've put something in it."

Huxley's lips puckered, and through the Force Mara caught a hint of his chagrin. He hadn't worried about his drink, of course, because he'd had her under close surveillance the whole time he was gone. He also hadn't intended for her to know that. "All right, fine," he said, banging the mug back onto the table. "Enough with the games. Let's hear it. Why are you here?"

With a man like this, Mara knew, there was no point in glaze-coating it. "I'm here on behalf of Talon Karrde," she said. "He wanted me to thank you for your assistance and that of your organization over the past ten years, and to inform you that your services will no longer be required."

Huxley's face didn't even twitch. Clearly, he'd already suspected this was coming. "Starting when?" he asked.

"Starting now," Mara said. "Thanks for the drink, and I'll be on my way."

"Not so fast," Huxley said, lifting a hand.

Mara froze halfway to her feet. Behind Huxley, blasters had abruptly appeared in the hands of three of the men who had hitherto been minding their own business at the bar. Blasters that were, not surprisingly, pointed at her. "Sit down," he ordered.

Carefully, Mara eased back into her chair. "Was there something else?" she asked mildly.

Huxley gestured again, more emphatically this time, and the off-key background music shut off. As did all conversation. "So that's it, is it?" Huxley demanded quietly. In the sudden silence, even a soft voice seemed to ring against the battered walls. "Karrde's going to toss us aside, just like that?"

"I presume you read the news," Mara said, keeping her voice calm. All around her, she could sense the single-minded animosity of the crowd. Huxley had apparently stocked the place with his friends and associates. "Karrde's getting out of the smuggling business. Has been, for the past three years. He doesn't need your services anymore."

"Yeah, he doesn't need," Huxley said with a sniff. "What about what we need?"

"I don't know," Mara said. "What do you need?"

"Maybe you don't remember what it's like in the Outer Rim, Jade," Huxley said, leaning over the table toward her. "But out here, you don't split things three ways against the ends. You work for one group, period, or you don't work at all. We burned our skyarches behind us years ago when we started working for Karrde. If he pulls out, what are we supposed to do?"

"I expect you'll have to make new arrangements," Mara said. "Look, you had to have known this was coming. Karrde's made no secret of the direction he's been taking."

"Yeah, right," Huxley said contemptuously. "Like anyone believed he'd really go straight."

He drew himself up. "So you want to know what we need? Fine. What we need is something to tide us over until we can get back in the business with someone else."

So there it was: a simple and straightforward pocket-shake. Nothing subtle from this bunch. "How much?" she asked.

"Five hundred thousand." His lip twisted slightly. "In cash credits."

Mara kept her face expressionless. She'd come here prepared for something like this, but that number was way beyond reason. "And where exactly do you expect me to get this little tide-me-over?" she asked. "I don't carry that much spending money on me."

"Don't get cute," Huxley growled. "You know as well as I do that Karrde's got a sector clearinghouse over on Gonmore. They'll have all the credits there we need."

He dug into a pocket and produced a hold-out blaster. "You're going to call and tell them to bring it to us," he said, leveling the weapon at her face across the table. "Half a million. Now."

"Really." Casually, keeping her hands visible, Mara turned her head to look behind her. Most of the cantina's nonsmuggler patrons had already made a quiet exit, she noted, or else had gathered into groups on either side of the confrontation, staying well out of the potential lines of fire. Of more immediate concern was the group of about twenty humans and aliens who had spread themselves out in a semicircle directly behind her, all of them with weapons trained on her back.

All of them also showing varying degrees of wariness, she noted with a certain malicious amusement. Her reputation had apparently preceded her. "You throw an interesting party, Huxley," she said, turning back to face the smuggler chief. "But you don't really think you're equipped to deal with a Jedi, do you?"

Huxley smiled. A very evil smile. A surprisingly evil smile, actually, given the circumstances. "Matter of fact, yeah, I do." He raised his voice. "Bats?"

There was a brief pause. Mara reached out with the Force, but all she could sense was a sudden heightened anticipation from the crowd.

Then, from across the room ahead and to her right came the creak of machinery. A section of floor in a poorly lit area at the far end of the bar began to rise ponderously toward the ceiling, revealing an open-sided keg lift coming up from the storage cellar below. As it rose, something metallic came into view, its shine muted by the patina of age.

Mara frowned, trying to pierce the gloom. The thing was tall and slender, with a pair of arms jutting out from the sides that gave it a not-quite-humanoid silhouette for all its obvious mechanical origins. The design looked vaguely familiar, but for those first few seconds she couldn't place it. The lift continued to rise, revealing hip-bone-like protrusions at the base of the object's long torso and a trio of curved legs extending outward beneath them.

And then, suddenly, it clicked.

The thing was a pre-Clone Wars droideka—one of the destroyer droids that had once been the pride of the Trade Federation army.

She looked back at Huxley, to find that his smile had widened into a grin. "That's right, Jade," he gloated. "My very own combat droideka, guaranteed to blast the stuffing out of even a Jedi. Bet you never expected to see one of those here."

"Not really, no," Mara conceded, ru

Did that mean its guns wouldn't track, either? Experimentally, she leaned back in her seat.

For a moment nothing happened. Then the droideka's left arm twitched, its twin blasters shifting angle to match her movement.

So the weapons could indeed track, though they appeared to be under someone's manual control instead of a central computer's or anything on board the droideka itself. In the dim lighting, she couldn't tell whether or not its built-in deflector shield was functioning, but it almost didn't matter. The thing was armed, armored, and pointed straight at her.

Huxley was right. Even the Jedi of that era had gone out of their way to avoid fighting these things.

"But of course I should have," she continued, turning to face Huxley again. "This place is littered with old droid parts. Stands to reason someone would have scraped together enough pieces to make a reasonable copy of a droideka to scare people with."