He wore a long vest-like coat, open in the front, but cut in the fashion of Mander’s own formal robes. The Hutt’s light yellow-green flesh glowed with the warmth of a hearth in the red light, highlighted by blue holoscreens. The screens showed scenes in and around the factory-ship. There was the main floor, littered with wrecked droids and burst vats. There was another display, showing a near-identical picture, unscathed. Another manufacturing bay, perhaps to the aft. Hallways throughout the plant flickered in turn, and several holocams showed the Barabi Run on its landing pad, the spice unloaded, the headless body of the H-3PO unit still discarded by the entrance. There was no sign of Reen or Angela Krin, though a large number of the screens were beset by gray-blue static, and Mander remembered that their passage into the ship had knocked out a number of cams. But Mika had known they were coming from the onset. “When did the wupiupi finally drop?” asked Mika, his face wide and open, his tone as congenial as when they had first met him.
