Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (26 page)

And Jabba still had the princess with him.

WhenJabba settled into his place in the observation cabin, Max nodded to Sy and let her call out the next number. As the sail barge turned and headed out into the Dune Sea, the party really got going.

An hour out, the sail barge drew to a stop. Everyone grew still, and Max let his song fade unfinished.

All the window shutters opened and Jabba’s dais floated forward.

“Victims of the almighty Sarlacc, His Excellency hopes that you will die honorably,” the gold translator droid said through the sail barge’s speaker system.

“But should any of you wish to beg for mercy, the great Jabba the Hutt will now listen to your pleas.”

Max strained to see what was going on outside, but there were too many people crowded around the windows and he couldn’t see. From the murmurs around him, though, he got the general idea of what was going on. It seemed the prisoners had refused to beg, insulting Jabba horribly in the process.

Jabba only laughed. After all, Max thought, it wasn’t as if the prisoners could do anything. And he knew from long experience that Jabba didn’t often give in to begging or pleading. He liked watching people die and never showed any mercy.

“Move him into position,” Jabba said.

Max hopped up, straining to see, but couldn’t get more than glimpses.

“Put him in!” Jabba commanded.

A murmur came from everyone at the viewports, then suddenly people cried out in alarm. Max heard blaster fire and a hum like nothing he’d ever heard before, an almost electric sound that seemed to grow louder and softer in time to the blaster shots.

Jabba howled in outrage. The window shutters closed and most of the Gamorrean guards on board headed for the top deck. Something had clearly gone wrong, Max thought. He looked at Sy.

“What should we do?” he asked.

“Nothing!” she said. “It’s not our problem. We’re just the band.”

“But—”

“Do you want to get in trouble with Jabba?” she demanded.

Max looked around and finally spotted Jabba at the other end of the observation cabin. “No, no, now Jabba was shouting, gesturing with his two tiny arms.

Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to him.

Suddenly Princess Leia leaped to action. She smashed the sail barge’s environment controls with her chains. The lights failed; a dusky near-darkness dropped over the passenger cabin. Max blinked and let his eyes adapt to the darkness. Princess Leia, he saw, had looped her chain around Jabba’s neck and was pulling with all her strength, bracing her legs against his huge back.

He looked around. She shouldn’t be doing that.

Where were the guards? He took a step toward Jabba, wondering if he should try to help, but Sy put a hand on his arm.

“She’s killing him!” he said.

“Let her,” Sy said softly. “Our contract’s with Jabba. We’ll be free once he’s dead.”

“But it’s murder!”

“He’s doomed anyway,” she said. “Too many people are out to get him.”

Max felt torn up inside. His first boss. His first contract.

All that food for life. How could he give up security so easily?

Jabba suddenly lolled forward, his tongue protruding.

His eyes were flat and glassy. Dead. So much for decisions, Max thought. He’d waited too long.

But perhaps they could get a gig with Princess Leia.

She was, after all, a princess. Even if she didn’t eat well, she must certainly pay well enough–his needs were modest. Just six or seven meals a day, and snacks to keep him happy.

“Princess,” he called. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

She was holding her chain out to one of the droids - - the little R2 unit who had been serving drinks earlier. The droid cut through the chains easily.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

“Probably not a bad idea,” Sy Snootles said in his ear.

Max hesitated. “What about our equipment?”

“We can always come back for it.” Sy ran to the opposite side of the observation cabin, the one facing away from the Sarlacc, and pushed open a shutter.

Outside, Max could see one of the sail barge’s huge steering vanes.

“Come on, Droopy,” Sy called. “Time to go!”

Droopy followed. Max hesitated a second, gazing back at his organ, then followed. Sounds of battle still came from outside. He didn’t want to get caught in any fighting, especially if someone tried to storm the observation cabin to get to Jabba.

A huge explosion suddenly rocked the barge. Sy almost fell out the window as the sail barge shifted.

More sounds of blaster fire came from the top deck.

“Quickly!” Sy called. “Jump!”

“Are you crazy?” Max demanded.

Droopy jumped without a second’s hesitation.

“Come on, Max,” Sy said. “It’s not that far, and you can slide down the steering vane most of the way.

There’s sand below. It’ll help break your fall.”

Turning, she jumped.

Max pushed open the shutter and looked down. It seemed like an awfully long way. He hesitated. Droopy helped Sy up. They both looked unhurt.

“Jump!” Sy Snoodles called. “Max—jump!”

Something exploded behind Max, and the force of the blast was like a shove in Max’s back. He flew out the viewport, over Sy and Droopy, and hit the sand flat on his back.

The fall stunned him. His’ hands and face stung, and a ringing sound filled his ears. He was distantly aware of someone picking him up and carrying him away from the sail barge, which seemed to be.burning.

He raised his head just in time to see the barge explode in a huge orange fireball.

So much for their first gig, he thought. So much for their instruments.

So much for his great contract.

“Where are we going?” he managed to ask. He looked over at Sy.

She had a little comlink out.

“We have a new gig,” she said. “Working for the Lady Valarian.”

“No,” Droopy said.

“What?” Sy demanded. “For what she’s paying, we can get new instruments.”

“I’m going into the desert,” Droopy said slowly.

“There are brothers out there.”

“You mean Kitonaks?” Max asked.

“Yes,” Droopy said. “They are near. I hear them.”

Max listened as hard as he could, and sure enough as the ringing in his ears and nose faded, he heard a distant wail like Kitonak pipes.

But how could there be Kitonaks on Tatooine?

“It’s probably just the wind,” he said. “That sound can’t be Kitonaks.

What would they be doing out here?”

“Living,” Droopy said. He set Max down, turned, and walked across the dunes without another word.

“Well,” Sy said. “I guess that makes us a duo.”

“The Max Rebo Duo,” Max said. He smiled. “It has a nice ring.”

“This time,” Sy said, “things are going to be different.

I’m going to negotiate the contracts.”

“Okay,” Max said. “As long as there’s plenty of food.”

“Or plenty of money to buy food,” she said.

“Agreed!” He stuck out his hand. “Partners?”

“Partners,” she agreed. Then she activated her comlink. “Lady Valarian wants us there,” she said.

“Send a landspeeder to pick us up. Who? Me and my partner, of course.” Then she laughed. “Tonight? It’s a little soon, but if you can get the instruments, we can be ready.”

“And food,” Max said. “Don’t forget the food.”

“And food,” she added. “We’ll need plenty of that.”

Of the Day’s Annoyances: Bib Fortuna’s Tale

by M. Shayne Bell

I will roll Jabba off his throne on the day of my coup, Bib Fortuna thought as he walked from Jabba’s throne room to plot with the B’omarr monks. My guards will pull him onto the grille over the rancor pit. I will let him lie therefor a moment to watch the rancor raging below him, to hear its roars, to know that when I open the trapdoor to let him fall, the rancor will eat him, and to know, finally, that I will inherit his fortune and criminal organization and he cannot stop me!

Fortuna walked quickly down the sandy stairs spiraling in shadow to the dungeons below. Behind the stones of this stairwell lies the chute Jabba will slide down to the rancor pit, Fortuna thought. Jabba will watch my hand hover over the button that opens the trapdoor and know he is about to die. Fortuna smiled. He touched the stones and imagined the steep chute behind them. He had calculated the dimensions of Jabba’s bloated body and concluded that, if doused in grease, Jabba could still slide down the chute. Jabba’s dousing in grease would be wonderfully ignominious: Fortuna imagined the kitchen staff rushing up from the kitchens with pots of hot grease, their joy as they threw it on Jabba, their pleasure at ultimate revenge for their sons and daughters Jabba had used as tasters and for their colleagues thrown to the rancor when a dish failed. Fortuna had ordered Porcellus, the chief cook, and his staff to save grease in old pots: they did not know why, but they would soon.

It would be a happy day.

Fortuna walked past the prisoners’ dark cells. Some cells were quiet.

Moans came from others. The sound of sobbing from one.

Fortuna took stock of them all and the prisoners in them: I will set this prisoner free, Fortuna thought. This one I will execute. These others I will sell into slavery. Fortuna intended his justice to be swift and final.

The passageway wound on and became quieter, and suddenly the floor was free of sand. It had been swept clean. The monks lived past that point. Fortuna stopped, took off his sandals, and beat them against the stone wall to knock the sand out of them: a sign of respect for the monks. He would not bring more of the filth of Jabba’s occupation of their palace into the places where they lived. How the filth of the parts of the palace out of their control must distress them!

Fortuna swore he would let the monks clean the palace thoroughly, once, before he drove them out forever, before they could turn against him. He pulled on his sandals and walked on.

Fewer and fewer-candles, guttering in their niches, lighted the passageway. The shadows deepened. At times Fortuna walked in complete darkness, but he never hesitated. He walked straight ahead with confidence.

He knew this passageway. He had come here many times to learn the secrets of the monks and to plot with them. But the lower levels were cool, and Fortuna pulled his cloak tighter around him.

A shadow moved down the passageway ahead. Metal scraped against bare stone. Fortuna stopped and analyzed the darkness around him: his intuition sensed no danger. But he heard movement again, in the darkness, coming toward him. He drew his blaster and crouched back against the wall as the shadow of a giant spider as tall as Fortuna loomed up. The spider itself crawled out of the shadows and scrabbled past Fortuna. Fortuna relaxed, barely, but kept the blaster in his hand: just a brain walker, he told himself, a machine shaped like a spider that carried an enlightened monk’s disembodied brain in a jar attached to the underbelly. Harmless. But even so he hated it.

Brain walkers unsettled him. He watched lights at the base of the brain jar blink in calm greens and blues, as if part of a fluorescent bauble on a vain man-sized spider. Perhaps it meant to join Jabba at his dinner.

They would do that: the brains talked through speakers on the jar in foolish attempts to instruct Jabba about the nature of the universe and promote his enlightenment.

It always amused Jabba and his dinner guests.

Fortuna remembered the first time he had seen a brain walker. He had not thought it amusing then. As Jabba’s new majordomo, Fortuna had been hungry to learn everything about the palace—its main corridors, its secret corridors and rooms, its dungeons, its people and their routines.

One evening he accompanied the kitchen staff on their rounds feeding prisoners. Just as they reached the first cell, a monstrous spider stumbled into them, upsetting a soup pot and splashing hot soup on Fortuna’s robes. Fortuna fired his blaster and hit the brain jar and the spider’s Underbelly. The jar exploded, and the brain flopped onto the sandy passageway. The spider short-circuited with pops and shooting sparks.

Only then had Fortuna realized that the spider was a machine.

No one spoke, not the cooks or the guards or the prisoners standing in the open doorway of their cell.

The spider unnerved them, too. Monks rushed up to collect the brain, and one explained that when a monk became enlightened, other monks trained as surgeons cut out his brain and placed it in a maintenance jar filled with a nutrient-rich solution. From there, the brain contemplated the cosmos, freed from the body’s distractions.

Fortuna gagged at the thought. He hurried back toward Jabba’s throne room, stained robes and all, to advise Jabba to order the monks exterminated. Their ways were intolerable. It astonished him that two distinct cultures lived in the palace, anyway: Jabba’s criminal organization, and these monks. For generations, criminals had occupied parts of the monastery the monks had built, turning it into a palace, taking all the best rooms, using more and more of its space. It was time to take it all.

But suddenly Fortuna had stopped. He was angry that any monks were left here at all. How must they feel about the presence of Jabba and his minions in their palace? Surely they were discontented.

Fortuna believed he could turn their discontent to his advantage: side with them in their complaints, pretend to learn from them, guide them into open plotting to rid the palace of Jabba, mold them into an unsuspected force he could call on when the day came for him to seize control.

How well his plan had worked! The monks were now trained and equipped to take the palace. There were hundreds of monks still in bodies—and hundreds of others in brain jars and walkers: enough to quickly overpower unsuspecting guards. And Fortuna had learned from the monks.

He did not have to pretend that. They had much to teach.

He learned how to intuitively sense the plots swirling aroundJabba, the petty thieveries planned, the twisted physical cravings.

They taught him his life’s work had been fatedand he took their teachings even further: he believed the universe had made it possible for him to acquire the power and wealth necessary to conquer Ryloth, his homeworld, to mold his people, the Twi’leks, into the kinds of subjects the Empire valued: bounty hunters, mercenaries, spies—not merely exotic slaves—and save what he could of them. By “chance,” Fortuna controlled Nat Secura, the last descendant of a great Twi’lek house. Nat was vital to his plan: the people would rally to Nat (and Fortuna’s indirect leadership) when it came time to conquer Ryloth.