Phoenix and Croissant

I'm back! Here is the new chapter from the Rising Suns.

Excerpt:

Around them, the main chamber of Jabba's palace was as chaotic as ever. Luke's senses were constantly under a combined assault from mingled species' stink and exotic spice smoke that Jabba apparently found pleasing. Musicians and dancers interrupted the crime lord's court proceedings at irregular intervals, while petitions and trials were shuffled through in a seemingly arbitrary order.

When Luke had entered the palace that morning with Ardon, they were told nine cases stood ahead of them in the queue. It was now past noon, and that number had somehow grown to fourteen.

Good thing Luke was not actually here about a water tax petition.

He let his gaze drift to his right, where Han hung at the far end of the hall. Han, who had returned for the trench run just in time at Yavin. Han, who alone had braved the Hoth night to pull Luke from a wampa and his own carelessness. Han, who had given everything for Luke and Leia ever since they first met, despite the abrasive mask of cynicism he wore.

Han, who was always so loud and expressive. So lively.

That same Han had hung frozen and lifeless in carbonite for almost a year.

The wrongness of it settled in Luke's chest. He looked away before his anger could draw attention. To Jabba, Han was a warning his court should glance at and look away from, not linger on.

His eyes moved through the palace, feigning the curiosity of a young moisture farmer who had never before been blessed enough to make the Hutt's guest list. Besides the stairs to the surface, with a wind chime hanging from the roof, there were four more exits: one heavy blast door to the dining hall, two stair tunnels leading to the dungeon and the barracks, and one inconspicuous trap gate in the floor.

Multiple exits, however, did not equal safety. Not when they all led downward into greater danger. The trap gate promised imminent death in the mouth of a rancor; the blast door led to more of Jabba's thugs across an open field with no cover; the stair tunnels were guarded by Gamorreans—clumsy and slow at first glance, but lethal in close quarters once they brought their heavy battle-axes and vibro-lances to bear.

Luke tugged at the hilt beneath his poncho. His lightsaber hilt.

Before Bespin, the coldness of a metal cylinder had always brought him a spike of confidence. His first saber had been an old Jedi relic, singing the promise of hope and restoration through its sky-blue plasma alone.

Now it felt like an open wound barely stopped from bleeding, held together by parts he'd salvaged from mechanics on Liberty after hours of studying the components of Mara's saber. One did not simply bring an open wound into combat: it invited enemies in and promised pain to oneself. He was not even sure it could withstand a dozen clashes with a vibro-lance.

Yet it was all Luke had. He knew every inch of it like the back of his hand—the control box plate he had carefully seated over the sensors and wires, the oiled magnetic ring he had wiped clean, the emitter shroud he had ground down to the right size.

So he could find no comforting myths within it. Only faith in his own engineering, and in their last-minute cleansing.

Ardon nudged him from the side, and Luke realized a Weequay guard near the throne had looked his way twice now. Not with recognition—his disguise had seen to that—but with the idle suspicion of someone with nothing better to do than stay suspicious.

He kept his posture loose, his eyes down, performing the particular Tatooine expression he had spent nineteen years perfecting: the patient endurance of something unpleasant, the specific resignation of having no better option but to wait.

The guard's gaze moved on.

Luke let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

I somehow found less time to write during summer than during the semester... And now even less now I'm working in a summer camp. But I'm still here!

Fortuna's hand moved to the blaster on his desk. The figure in the doorway was human—a young woman, her features half-hidden beneath a loose poncho and a travel shawl wrapped around her hair. She stepped inside with ease.

A bounty hunter? An assassin? One of the Crimson Dawn rats that had been wreaking havoc all week?

Where were his guards? Being interrupted unannounced ranked among the top twenty of the seven hundred and sixty-two things he hated.

Fortuna rose abruptly, then reconsidered.

Calling out to his guards suddenly seemed like a bad idea. It showed weakness. And what harm, really, could one human girl do to Bib Fortuna, majordomo of the most powerful Hutt in the galaxy?

"Whatever errand brought you to Jabba's majordomo's door, girl, I promise you it is not worth your time," Fortuna said, looking down at the intruder.

The girl, unnervingly, showed fear at neither his height nor his title. She stopped at his desk, her hands clasped neatly behind her back.

Fortuna briefly thought about calling his guards again.

"I've heard you are hiring muscle. I could use a credit or two protecting Jabba the Hutt," the girl said in perfect Huttese—not exactly the Tatooine local kind, but the galactic kind drilled into the entire underworld by necessity.

Who did she think he was, a common fixer? He hired fixers for a reason. Indignation rose in Fortuna, and for a second he almost found clarity in a world full of blurs and shadows.

"You?" He scanned her small frame and sneered. "You have no muscle, girl, but you would fit right in with Jabba's dancers. Now get lost before I call the guards."

"So we are doing this the hard way."

Something flashed in the woman's eyes as she held his gaze. Even now, Fortuna found it impossible to fix her features in his mind.

"Let's try this again. I am Arica," she said. He found himself enchanted by the name. "And I am here to be Jabba's palace guard."