Star Wars: Scoundrels Read Online Free

end of it. Falsta should have conceded defeat, surrendered his blaster, and walked out of the cantina, a little humiliated but still alive.
    But Falsta had never been the type to concede anything. Even as he blinked furiously at the ale still running down into his eyes, his left hand jabbed like a knife inside his jacket and emerged with a small hold-out blaster.
    He was in the process of lining up the weapon when Han shot him under the table. Falsta fell forward, his right arm still raised in Chewbacca’s grip, his hold-out blaster clattering across the tabletop before it came to a halt. Chewbacca held that pose another moment, then lowered Falsta’s arm to the table, deftly removing the blaster from the dead man’s hand as he did so.
    For a half dozen seconds Han didn’t move, gripping his blaster under the table, his eyes darting around the cantina. The place had gone quiet, with practically every eye now focused on him. As far as he could tell no one had drawn a weapon, but most of the patrons at the nearest tables had their hands on or near their holsters.
    Chewbacca rumbled a warning. “You all saw it,” Han called, though he doubted more than a few of them actually had. “He shot first.”
    There was another moment of silence. Then, almost casually, hands lifted from blasters, heads turned away, and the low conversation resumed.
    Maybe this sort of thing happened all the time in Reggilio’s. Or maybe they all knew Falsta well enough that no one was going to miss him.
    Still, it was definitely time to move on. “Come on,” Han muttered, holstering his blaster and sliding around the side of the table. They would go back to the spaceport area, he decided, poke around the cantinas there, and see if they could snag a pickup cargo. It almost certainly wouldn’t net them enough to pay off Jabba, but it would at least get them off Wukkar. He stood up, giving the cantina one final check—
    “Excuse me?”
    Han spun around, reflexively dropping his hand back to the grip of his blaster. But it was just an ordinary human man hurrying toward him.
    Or rather, most of a man. Half of his face was covered in a flesh-colored medseal that had been stretched across the skin and hair, with a prosthetic eye bobbing along at the spot where his right eye would normally be.
    It wasn’t just any eye, either. It was something alien-designed, glittering like a smaller version of an Arconian multifaceted eye. Even in the cantina’s dim light the effect was striking, unsettling, and strangely hypnotic.
    With a jolt, Han realized he’d been staring and forced his gaze away. Not only was it rude, but a visual grab like that was exactly the sort of trick a clever assassin might use to draw his victim’s attention at a critical moment.
    But the man’s hands were empty, with no blaster or blade in sight. In fact, his right hand wouldn’t have been of any use anyway. Twisted and misshapen, it was wrapped tightly in the same medseal as his face. Either it had been seriously damaged or else there was a prosthetic under there that had come from the same aliens who’d supplied him with that eye. “You might want to see about getting a different eye,” Han suggested, relaxing a bit.
    “I need to see about a great many things,” the man said, stopping a couple of meters back. His remaining eye flicked to Han’s blaster, then rose with an effort back to his face. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he continued. “My name is Eanjer—well, my surname isn’t important. What is important is that I’ve been robbed of a great deal of money.”
    “Sorry to hear it,” Han said, backing toward the door. “You need to talk to the Iltarr City police.”
    “They can’t help me,” Eanjer said, taking one step forward with each backward one Han took. “I want my credits back, and I need someone who can handle himself and doesn’t mind working outside law or custom. That’s why I’m here. I was hoping I could find someone who fits both