Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (29 page)

Then one morning, Fortuna woke suddenly, before all the others.

Something was not right in the palace: someone was in it who should not be, and he-was walking toward the throne room. Fortuna sat up and arranged his robes, and his intuition told him who was coming: Luke Skywalker. Fortuna moved quietly and quickly across the throne room and met Skywalker at the top of the steps.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You know Jabba has not accepted your offer, and he will not speak to you. You must wait for me.”

“You will take me toJabba now,” Skywalker said. No explanation.

Typical arrogance.

“I will take you to Jabba now,” he answered Skywalker.

For a brief moment, Fortuna paused to consider whether the Jedi’s tricks could have influenced his mind, but he quickly lost that thought. Surely it could not be so.

Fortuna started back down the stairs and looked at Jabba. Waking him in the morning was a task not lightly undertaken, but he would do it. The incompetent guards were at last stirring and looking in his direction.

The human followed Fortuna down the steps and mumbled some nonsense at his back about serving his master well and being rewarded.

Fortuna could not repress a smile. He spoke in Jabba’s ear: “Luke Skywalker, the Jedi, has come to speak to you.”

Jabba was angry at once, and Fortuna braced himself.

“I told you not to admit him,” Jabba grumbled.

“I must be allowed to speak,” Skywalker said. He tried to use his anything-but-subtle mind-manipulation trick on everyone in the room.

“He must be allowed to speak,” Fortuna said—but Jabba threw Fortuna against the wall. “You weak-minded fool!” he shouted at him.

Fortuna took his time getting up and straightening his robes. No one would look at him. Fortuna felt shamed in front of his supporters.

It was a precarious moment. Fortuna had planned to launch his coup within two days; he knew now that it would have to come within hours.

His plans would have to change, and change quickly. Once out of Jabba’s favor, he would not live long.

Fortuna quickly analyzed his situation. Perhaps Jabba had been correct about his being weak-minded: looking back, Fortuna could believe that Skywalker had influenced his mind—but this was no time for self-doubt, not if he were to survive. He wondered how much of his plansJabba guessed or knew. Much, probably: he would not have reacted violently if he still trusted Fortuna and his judgment. Fortuna let his intuition touch the minds of his supporters, and he was startled: it took no special training in intuition to sense the contempt some now felt for him. Three were even inclined to unmask Fortuna’s plot.

Fortuna realized that, under the circumstances, his plans might have to become even more abbreviated—before his support eroded further. The arrogant “Jedi” was thrown to the rancor, and in the commotion that followed, with everyone crowding around to watch the rancor eat Skywalker, no one noticed Fortuna steal away for a moment. He soon returned. If his plans had to change quickly—from days, to hours, to perhaps minutes—he could accommodate that. He now had the stolen thermal detonator in his pocket, and he kept a hand on it.

Things did change quickly: Skywalker managed to kill the rancor—to everyone’s surprise. Why couldn’t he have come earlier?

Fortuna wondered. Nat would still be in his body, and valuable slaves and others—including a talented dancing girl—would still be alive.

Jabba ordered Skywalker, the Wookiee, and Solo thrown to the Sarlacc and began making preparations for everyone of importance to fly out with him on his barge to witness the executions: and Fortuna and fourteen sets of plotters saw their best chance materialize.

Jabba would never return alive from that trip.

Fortuna decided he would set off the thermal detonator just after he escaped from the barge: killing Jabba and all thoseJabba had shamed him in front of.

He regretted the probable loss of Solo’s body, but would find another for Nat. Fortuna methodically completed preparations for his coup. He had his private skiff placed on the barge for his escape. He left orders for the monks to take over the palace when everyone left with Jabba. He sent out codes that froze all of Jabba’s accounts.

His plot was in motion.

All the plots were in motion. Fortuna sat back and, during the ride across the sand, contemplated the many ways Jabba could die on this trip. The situation was enormously amusing. R2-D2, one of the Rebellion’s droids, rolled up and offered him his choice of drinks, delicate little sandwiches, pickled effrikim worms (they had finally come in) sure to delightJabba - - and sure to kill him: the worms were all poisoned.

Half the drinks were poisoned. The poison was a slow one—those who ingested it would not notice its effect for quite some time.

Fortuna could tell which glasses were safe, and he drank freely. He watched Jabba eat a handful of effrikim worms and start the process of his death. Fortuna quietly set the thermal detonator to make sure of it.

C-3PO approached Fortuna and bowed. “Master Fortuna,” he said.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Certainly.”

“Has anyone ever been rescued from the Sarlacc?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Fortuna said, and he turned away, not wanting to be bothered with a droid’s worries. Still, he wondered why the droid would ask about rescue from the Sarlacc. Fortuna’s intuition could not tell him—it was difficult to unravel the motives of mechanical beings.

But Fortuna guessed at devotion in the droid.

Perhaps another plot was being born here: one to come out to somehow rescue a former master. It touched Fortuna. He thought that, if such devotion could be turned to him, he would welcome it. He turned back to the droid.

“See-Threepio,” he said quietly. “My private skiff is hidden near the aft ventilation grate. Go and wait by it. When you see me running toward it, uncover the skiff and climb in.”

But the droid never had a chance to go to the skiff.

It lingered to witness the executions, and the unexpected took place.

The Rebels proved harder to execute than Jabba anticipated, and fighting broke out.

In the commotion, Fortuna lost sight of C-3PO. He never knew what became of the droid. But Fortuna stayed on the barge just long enough to learn what actually killed Jabba. It wasn’t the poison. It wasn’t any of the assassins after their various rewards. It wasn’t, in the end, the rigged thermal detonator: Leia, the former princess, strangled Jabba with her chains. Fortuna watched Jabba die, then hurried to his skiff.

He thought he should have expected the unexpected.

It was the way of the universe: always to surprise.

The trip back to the palace was a pleasure to Fortuna.

The light from the thermal detonation came exactly when he expected it, and the shock wave seemed a pleasant wind: a wind of change. He encountered no Sand People, no sandstorms, no Jawas, even.

It was as if, after the explosion, the desert were waiting for something more.

He arrived at the palace in the evening. The gates opened to him at once. Monks met him inside: they had taken the palace.

“Master Fortuna,” one of them said. “Did things go as planned on the barge?”

“Jabba is dead. I am in charge now. Call the high monks to the throne room: I must speak with them.”

He had been careful not to call it Jabba’s throne room. It was his now.

Fortuna hurried there and began keying important information into the palace security systems: code words had to be changed, security clearances upgraded or denied, the robotic defense systems put at full alert. Attacks could come from many quarters at a time like this.

But suddenly the main terminal went dead. Then all the terminals went dead. The lights overhead flickered and went out. Fortuna had light from only the candles and torches in their niches.

He hurried across the throne roommand found the main doorway closed and locked.

It had all happened so quietly.

And he knew at once what had happened.

The monks had betrayed him. Somehow, they had sensed his intentions toward them. He should have realized the monks would not want to replace one set of criminals with another—when they could have the whole palace to themselves. It took no special gift of intuition to realize that. He suddenly wondered what he had learned about intuition from the monks, after all—parlor games, children’s tricks?

There were depths here he had not guessed.

But there were many ways out of the throne room and the palace.

He could complete his coup from the town house in Mos Eisley—then come back to take the palace from the monks.

He rushed to the first secret exit, but it was blocked. Every exit was blocked. Fortuna ran to Jabba’s dais and hit the button that would drop the grille to the rancor’s pit—there were two secret ways out of the pit

- -but it would not drop open.

Fortuna was trapped.

The secret caches of arms were all emptied. Fortuna had his blaster, but one blaster could not hold off an army of monks.

A terminal flickered to life. A message was typed across its screen.

Fortuna hurried to it and read: You have progressed rapidly on your spiritual path, Brother Fortuna.

Your quest is at an end. Prepare yourself for enlightenment.

Fortuna gripped the terminal for a moment, trying to breathe, then he attempted to enter a reply. The terminal would not accept one. He would have liked to bargain with the high monks—honestly this time—but he doubted they would have listened. They were not coming to the throne room, in any case. He knew who would come. for him.

Fortuna sat on one end of Jabba’s throne and put his hands in his lap.

He knew it would be one of the last times he would feel his hands, and they were suddenly very dear to him. He looked down at his body, and it was very dear to him.

For a time, he wondered about little things he might never have answers to: how many of Jabba’s staff had the cook managed to poison on the barge before he poisoned Jabba himself? How long would it take the monks to sweep up the sand that generations of criminals had tracked into the palace? What would the cooks do with the grease he had had them save?

He heard a sound in the main passageway beyond the throne room.

It was unmistakable. He drew his blaster and considered using it against himself, but did not. He set it aside, on the empty throne, and listened to the squeaks of the approaching surgeons’ cart.

The Great God Quay: The Tale of Barada and the Weequays

by George Alec Effinger

Barada came from Klatooine originally, and at night he dreamed that he was still there, feeling the fresh wind of his homeworld on his face. Of course, in his dreams, his face wasn’t yet deformed and scarred, and in his dreams he wasn’t the virtual prisoner and slave of the Hutt. At night, as he slept on his bunk, Barada was still young and hopeful and filled with plans to leave Klatooine behind and find adventure on some more exciting planet in the vast Empire.

Then morning would come, and Barada would awaken. He would blink a few times, the dream memories of his family and childhood home fading slowly from his thoughts. Klatooine, he’d think grimly. Adventure.

He’d sit up and rub his face with his large, strong hands. He’d never see his homeworld again, he knew. He’d spend the rest of his life on this desert planet, caring for the Hutt’s repulsor fleet.

Barada shrugged. It was as good a life as any, and better than some.

All he really lacked was liberty, and in the Empire that was a fairly common situation. His needs were met, and as for his wants, he was free to dream about them as much as he liked.

This morning, Barada’s only concern was finding six rocker-panel cotter pins for the AE-35 unit that helped keep the Hutt’s sail barge aloft.

The shipment of parts that Barada had ordered weeks ago had never arrived; if he couldn’t find the pins in the scrap heap, he’d have to make replacements the hard way, in his shop.

It was a bright, clear day on the Dune Sea, the kind of weather that the Hutt preferred. Barada squinted in the fierce sunshine as he left the barracks building.

He’d walked only a few yards before two armed Weequay guards joined him, one on either side.

“I do something?” Barada asked, “What’d I do?”

The gray-skinned Weequays didn’t answer. Barada had never heard them speak. They just walked beside him, carrying their force pikes.

He wasn’t happy about their company.

“The Hutt send you to get me?” he asked. There was only silence from the Weequays. He turned in the direction of the scrap heap behind the Hutt’s palace, and the Weequays followed. They were among the most merciless fighters in the Hutt’s retinue, but if they’d wanted Barada dead, injured, or in irons, it would already have happened. The Weequays were as inscrutable as any species in the Empire, so for the time being there was nothing for Barada to do but ignore them.

Finally, he decided to pretend they weren’t even there, and to go on with what he’d planned for the morning.

The blazing summer sun and desert climate made the scrap heap an unpleasant destination. Barada could smell the stench long before he could see his goal. Garbage and trash of every kind had been piled up in a gigantic mound. The Klatooinan shook his head and frowned. He really didn’t want to do it, but he waded hip-deep into the rotting food and discarded machinery, searching for a half-dozen small metal parts.

“You guys want to help me out here?” he said, shading his eyes with one hand. The Weequays only stared at him. Barada muttered a curse in his native language and went back to work.

Five minutes later, the mechanic made his discovery.

It wasn’t the rocker-panel cotter pins he had been looking for, or any kind of useful machinery. It was just a dead body. “Ak-Buz,” Barada murmured, recognizing the corpse. Ak-Buz, the captain of the Hutt’s sail barge.

The Weequays glanced at each other and stepped closer. They still didn’t say anything, but at least they had shown some interest.

Together, they hauled Ak-Buz’s body out of the garbage and laid it on the ground.