Chapter 1: The Bargain and the Blade
The air in the throne room was a thick, wet blanket, heavy with the smell of spiced wine, ozone from flickering holograms, and something underneath it all—a sweet, greasy decay. Rose Tico felt a bead of sweat trace the line of her spine from her neck to the small of her back. It itched. She couldn’t scratch it.
Grakkus’s fist, wrapped around the binders on her wrists, was an unyielding vice. He gave a sharp tug, and she stumbled forward onto the polished stone dais. The Gamorrean’s grunt was a promise of broken bones. Behind her, the massive, dripping vibro-axe he carried in his other hand hummed at a frequency that made her teeth ache.
Before her, the room yawned. It was less a room and more a gilded cavern. Gold-leafed pillars, chipped and stained, reached up to a ceiling lost in a haze of incense smoke. Holographic chandeliers pulsed with a sickly light, casting the faces of the audience in shifting hues of green and purple. Rotta the Hutt occupied the center of it all, a mountain of pallid, rubbery flesh slumped on a repulsor-lifted platform. His black eyes, like chips of obsidian, fixed on her with a slow, appraising blink. A pipe bubbled beside him.
To his right, lounging on piles of silk cushions, was his harem. Dozens of women, all achingly slender, with luminous skin and faces carved into masks of placid disinterest. They were draped in jewels and little else, their laughter a light, tinkling sound that felt sharper than a vibro-blade. Rose, in her stained resistance-issue trousers and fitted shirt, felt every single one of her curves—the swell of her hips, the softness of her belly under the fabric, the fullness of her chest—accentuated, vulgar, and utterly out of place.
A woman detached herself from the cushions and glided to stand beside Rotta’s massive head. She was older, maybe late thirties, with a fit, strong frame and intelligent, sultry dark eyes that missed nothing. Her voice, when she spoke to the Hutt, was a soft murmur. This was Melina Carniss.
Rotta’s rumbling answer was a series of wet gutturals, his gaze never leaving Rose.
Melina turned to her. Her expression was unreadable, professional. “The mighty Rotta welcomes the Resistance fighter to his palace. He notes your… distinctive form. It is a refreshing change from the willows in his garden.” A slight, almost imperceptible curl of her lip. “He asks what brings a decorated scavenger, a mechanic who has spit in the eye of the First Order, so low as to be dragged before him by her wrists.”
Rose lifted her chin. “I came willingly. I have a proposal.”
Another rumble from Rotta. A chuckle that shook his bulk.
“He says proposals are for merchants,” Melina translated, her tone losing none of its softness even as the words cut. “You are a curiosity. A captured bug. He is deciding whether to pin you to his wall with the others.” Melina’s eyes flicked towards a shadowy section of the wall. Rose followed her gaze. Her blood went cold. The wall wasn’t shadowy. It was alive with faint, ghostly holograms—faces, frozen in silent, endless screams. A gallery of victims.
Grakkus shoved her forward another step. The humming axe now hovered near her shoulder.
The humming axe now hovered near her shoulder. Rose could feel the minute vibration through the air, a whisper against her skin. She kept her eyes locked on Rotta’s, refusing to look at the wall of screams.
“I have the schematics for a First Order Tibanna gas refinement converter,” Rose said, her voice clearer than she felt. “It’s a new model.Streamlined. I pulled it from a wreck on Crait. Your… operation here runs on fuel. This would increase your yield by twenty percent. Minimum.”
A slow, bubbling exhalation escaped Rotta’s gargantuan nostrils. Interest. Melina leaned closer, listening to the wet susurrus of Huttese that followed.
“And what,” Melina asked, her head tilting, “does a little Resistance mechanic hope to gain by offering this to the mighty Rotta?”
“Information,” Rose said. “First Order patrol movements in this system. Their scan cycles, their blind spots. Specifically around the Demilitarized Zone of the Hydian Way.”
Melina’s laugh was a soft, breathy sound that held no warmth. She didn’t need to translate. Rotta’s deep, rolling chuckle echoed it, a sound like grinding stones. The women on the cushions tittered.
“You offer a single technical schematic,” Melina said, pacing a slow circle around Rose. “In return, you ask for tactical intelligence that could shift the balance of power in a sector. The risk to my lord’s interests would be immense. What you are offering is nowhere near equal to what you are asking for in return.”
“I can offer credits,” Rose stated, knowing it was weak even as she said it.
Melina stopped pacing. A genuine smile touched her lips, pitying and sharp. “Credits. From the Resistance. The same Resistance that, according to every whisper in the galaxy, is scraping its hulls on asteroid dust to afford blaster power packs.” She shook her head slowly.“No. Your credits are worthless here. My lord deals in substance.”
She moved back to Rotta’s side, her hand resting lightly on his mottled flesh. She murmured to him, her words too low for Rose to catch. Rotta’s black eyes gleamed. He gave a slow, deliberate nod, his massive jowls quivering.
Melina turned back. Her sultry eyes appraised Rose from head to toe again, this time with the clinical detachment of a butcher sizing up a side of meat.
“There is an alternative. A simple transaction of value. You will stay here, as a temporary member of my lord’s court, for one standard week. You will be fed, housed, and… attended to. Your compliance will be the price. In exchange, the information you seek will be compiled and transmitted directly to your fleet’s secure channel. They can collect you from the docks once your stay is concluded.”
The air left Rose’s lungs. The throne room seemed to tilt. The word “court” hung in the thick air, a pretty synonym for something ugly. The laughter from the cushions took on a new, hungry edge. Grakkus’s grip tightened, a reminder that “no” was not an option that ended with her walking away.
A week. Seven days in this gilded pit. The faces on the wall seemed to scream a little louder in the silence of her thoughts.
She thought of the fleet, hiding, starving. She thought of Finn, of Poe, of the General. Of the slim chance this intel could give them a clean shot through a First Order choke point. One week of her life. It wasn’t a choice. It was calculus.
Her shoulders slumped, not in defeat, but in grim acceptance. The fight drained from her posture, leaving only a weary resolve. She gave a single, sharp nod.
“I agree.”
The reaction was instantaneous. A wave of bright, chiming laughter and applause erupted from the harem. It wasn’t kind. It was the sound of predators welcoming prey into the pen. Rotta let out a satisfied grunt, a blob of saliva dripping onto his platform. Grakkus finally released her wrists, giving her a shove that sent her stumbling toward Melina.
Melina stepped forward, her gentle hand closing around Rose’s upper arm with surprising strength. Her smile was now one of professional satisfaction. “Wonderful,” she purred, her dark eyes holding Rose’s. “Let’s get you settled. The week begins now.”
Melina’s grip on her arm was firm, almost proprietary. With her other hand, she produced a small key from a fold in her silks. “These are no longer necessary,” she said, her voice still that soft, unsettling purr.
She unlocked the binders. The metal cuffs clattered to the dais, the sound shockingly loud. Rose flexed her wrists, the skin raw and marked. The brief illusion of freedom evaporated as Melina’s hand slid back to her elbow, holding her just as securely.
“But first,” Melina announced, not just to Rose but to the entire, watching room, “a visit to the dungeons.”
A ripple went through the harem. Sharp, tinkling laughter. Whispers that were anything but secret. One of the women, willowy with silver hair, called out, “Give her a tour of the south cells, Melina! The acoustics are divine!” Another mimed a shudder of delight. Rotta’s bulk quivered with a wet, approving chortle. The gallery of screaming faces on the wall seemed to pulse in time with the crude excitement.
Rose’s stomach turned to stone. Dungeons. The word was a cold slap after the gilded horror of the throne room. This was the real transaction, then. Not a stay in some perfumed chamber, but a deliberate descent.
Melina guided her, with Grakkus’s looming shadow following, away from the dais and through a concealed arch behind a waterfall of lurid magenta silk. The opulence faded with every step. The gold leaf gave way to rough-hewn stone, slick with damp. The scent of spice and perfume was utterly eaten by the reek of stagnant water, rust, and something else—a metallic tang that could have been old blood or bad wiring.
The throbbing music from the throne room became a dull, distant bass, replaced by the drip of water and the low groan of the palace’s infrastructure. The lighting was intermittent, flickering orange strips that cast long, jumping shadows.
“The ‘dungeons’ is a dramatic term,” Melina said conversationally, her boots clicking on the wet stone. “We prefer ‘conditioning suites.’ It is where new arrivals… adjust their perspectives.”
They passed heavy doors, some silent, some emitting sounds—a low moan, a repetitive scrape, a faint, hiccuping sob that was cut off by the slam of a door further down. Rose kept her eyes forward, her mechanic’s mind instinctively mapping vents, conduit lines, weak points in the stonework. Survival calculus.
“My role,” Melina continued, “is to ensure the environment serves my lord’s desires. Sometimes that requires… softening. A removal of hard edges.” She glanced at Rose, her dark eyes unreadable in the gloom. “You have many hard edges, little fighter.”
They stopped before a door indistinguishable from the others. Melina placed her palm on a scanner. It flashed green. The door slid open with a hiss of pressurized air.
The room inside was small, circular, and clinically clean. The walls were a smooth, matte grey alloy. In the center was a repulsor chair, its restraints dangling open. A tray of gleaming, purpose-built tools sat on a nearby table, under a stark white light.
It was the opposite of a filthy cell. That somehow made it worse.
“This is not for punishment,” Melina said, steering Rose inside. Grakkus remained at the door, blocking it, his axe now held crosswise. “Not unless you make it so. This is for clarity. My lord enjoys… participation. Willingness. Or a convincing facsimile thereof. The process here helps cultivate that.”
Rose’s mouth was dry. “What process?”
“A recalibration of nervous system responses,” Melina said, her fingers tracing the cool back of the chair. “Using certain frequencies, controlled stimuli. It takes the fight-or-flight impulse and… rewires it. Associates certain triggers with pleasure. With anticipation. It makes the subsequent week so much more enjoyable for everyone. Especially for you.”
The clinical explanation was more terrifying than any threat of torture. They weren’t just going to break her body; they were going to reprogram her reactions.
“I agreed to a week. I didn’t agree to this.”
“You agreed to the terms,” Melina corrected gently. “The terms are whatever my lord decides they are. The dungeons are part of the palace.