Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (39 page)

No. Wait. There is the task first.

- -Soup—No! The task.

Possess yourself of patience.

But it is difficult. Self-denial is a discipline I have never learned; nor ever had to learn.

Solo. The woman, royal-bred. And Lando Calrissian.

All it wants is the boy, so rich in Jedi promise. Han Solo’s soup-I fall back. Containment, control is difficult; proboscii rebel as I try to withdraw them, urge them to withdraw.

There is war within my skull.

Have I gone so far? Lost so much?

Never have I been so close to the edge.

There must be a death. Now. Soup must be drunk.

Now.

I turn. I scrape myself against the walls and retreat rapidly, hearing the echo of Jabba’s laughter. Are they caught, then? Has the Hutt captured them all?

- -soup-Solo. The woman. Calrissian.

All. I will have them all.

Or die in the trying.

It is not sleep, with us. It is stupor, near to coma. A withdrawal from that which is living, to those whose lives are slight; and to a deepness, a darkness, an otherness, where my body repairs itself in the ways both large and small, if necessary. But it has not been necessary for a long time, for I am cautious, and careful, and no one save my victims has ever seen me, except for when I choose to walk among entities without offering threat. It is a lonely life, else; and I choose not to be lonely.

But that bears its cost. The stupor is deeper than most.

The coma nearly complete. So that when roused out of it by something most unexpected, I am as close to walking the edge of madness is as possible, with us.

And so it is madness, and overwhelming, when I am roused abruptly, too abruptly, by the awareness, sharp and painful, exquisitely demanding, of power beyond reckoning. Like Yoda’s, like Kenobi’s. But young yet, still young, still learning its way.

And the way, the precipice of the power, is yet to be understood fully by the one who does and will wield it.

Thus roused, I am angry. And comprehending abruptly, so abruptly: he will be stronger than any in so many lives, this one. Of all of them, nearly extinct.

Now alive again, in him.

That boy. Kenobi’s boy, whom I first saw years ago in Chalmun’s cantina. Who did not then know what he is, but knows now, and plainly; knows enough how to use, how to shield.

Here, in Jabba’s palace.

Solo. The woman. Calrissian. The boy.

All of them here. Now.

Why has he unshielded? Why do I know him now? A Jedi excretes power when he chooses; to Anzati, it is obvious. But there is control in it regardless. This time there is none. He is wholly open, unshielded, yielding to some purpose I cannot conceive.

- -SOUp-Proboscii rake my nostrils. Roused, no longer stuporous, I walk out of the shadows of the labyrinth and make my way through, passing those who barely see me, but know enough to stop, to stare, to blink; to question what they have seen, albeit in silence, in the interior of their fear.

Let them see. It serves.

- -Anzat, of the Anzati— - - loose in Jabba’s palace-But that is of no moment. It is plain to me now, too plain; the boy, that boy, has come into the lair intent on his own purpose… it was planned, all of it planned: Calrissian, infiltrating; the princess, clad in costume; the Wookiee, beleaguered bait; and now the boy, Kenobi’s pupil, so rich—so rich! in power that was before only potential, barely promised-And Solo, always Solo… all of them now, together: Solo, the Wookiee, the woman, Kenobi’s boy, and Calrissian-And Jabba!

I have been careless. I! - - through the corridors, running-Running.

Running.

How could I have been so careless?

- -running-Closer now. Proboscii twitch, extrude.

- -soup”-All of them here, at once.

Somewhere.

- -soup-So many dead of my need. But none of them count, none—they are nothing, all of them—the only soup of the moment is here, now, but retreating–no-It cannot be; will not. I am I: Dannik Jerriko.

I have never failed.

I am here forJabba’s soup.

For all the soup, of all of them.

- -soup The massive gates stand open. There is no one to guard now, no Hutt to protect. He is gone, is gone; they are all of them gone, are gone-The dust from the sail barge, from the hovercraft playing remora, drifts slowly to the ground.

- -are gone, all of them gone–soup-Jabba has taken them away.

Jabba has taken himself.

Away. Not here. Apart from me.

Oh, foul! That I should come so close. That I should let it be known an Anzat is among them. That I should reveal myself to no purpose at all, save to feed the nightmare.

Oh, foul.

I am undone.

Failure is intolerable.

Among my kind, impossible.

Oh, the horror. The horror.

In my body, need cries out. Comprehends. Acknowledges.

Distant now, so distant, carried across the dunes.

All of it my soup. And now denied to me.

Oh, most foul.

There is nothing to do but wait. Wait for the Hutt’s return.

They will none of the others be with him, for he will have disposed of them and wasted all the soup - - fool! fool! - - but there is still Jabba.

Jabba.

And Dannik Jerriko.

O fool. O corpulent, famous fool.

There is yet a chance for me to redeem myself, to permit me success, not failure. Jabba is my task. The others, merely spice.

Jabba will return. And I will drink his soup.

Jabba will return.

He must.

Or I am undone.

There are shadows here, always. It is a simple thing to walk into them and put on the raiment they offer.

I can wait. I have always waited, when necessary. It is a gift.

A power.

I am a thousand and ten years old, and I can wait forever.

Shaara and the Sarlacc: The Skiff Guard’s Tale

by Dan’l Danehy-Oakes

Yes, Mister Boba Fett, this is indeed a very serious matter.

There is no other subject of conversation heard anywhere else in Jabba the Hutt’s palace. But this does not surprise me at all, because I have never seen any party work their way beneath the skin of Jabba the Hutt in the way this self-proclaimed Jedi Knight and his friends have done. I mean, just to think of the very gall of their coming in the place and threatening Jabba the Hutt, damaging his rancor, even releasing that two-credit phony smuggler Solo ˇ.. Well, I certainly admire their courage, but their common sense is some other matter entirely. It is as one might say not entirely smart to annoy Jabba the Hutt in this manner.

Jabba the Hutt is extremely angry. I would also be angry if it was me in his position. The palace is not just a fortress, it is his home, and individuals take a certain particular kind of offense when they are annoyed in their own homes. So I am really not particularly surprised, you see, that he orders that they are to be given to the Sarlacc like this.

And I might add it is a great honor to be permitted to accompany you like this. I am sure that Jabba the Hutt intends it as an honor to give you a personal guard. And besides, I can show you the best place to see the Sarlacc. “

“Yes, Mister Boba Fett, we have always talked about it as “the” Sarlacc here on Tatooine. If there is another Sarlacc anywhere, I have certainly never heard about it. I like to think I would have done so, because I make the Sarlacc a sort of special interest of mine since I am only a child. You see, my sister Shaara is the only person I know of who has ever come out of the Great Pit of Carkoon alive. I once heard a story that Skywalker escaped the pit, but he is a notorious liar, as you can see for yourself. Jedi Knight? Why, he is not even carrying a lightsaber when Jabba the Hutt captures him.

Oh, that is a long story. You do not want— You do want to hear it?

Very well.

It begins with the Imps, as so many things do these days.

Imperial stormtroopers. Half a dozen of them decide to go for Shaara in a big way. She is three years older than I am, and I am twelve when all of this proceeds so she is fifteen. She is working in the floor show of a cantina out at the edge of Mos Eisley, doing a “droid” act whose redeeming social value is perhaps in question. But an act is all it is, my family being respectable moisture farmers who raised our girls properly and with none of this modern permissive stuff. She is an innocent in-every sense of the word, I can assure you of that.

The Imps on the other hand are not at all innocent.

They never are innocent. I am thinking that the Empire must test them for basic cruelty before they even issue them their first armor.

So these Imps come into the cantina one evening and they see Shaara doing her act, and they decide that they would like to see for themselves what she looks like under the metal, and perhaps a few other things above and beyond seeing.

So they convince the owner of this cantina, an unpleasant character who rejoices in the name of Dakkar the Distant, to let them go and visit her backstage after the show is over. I do not like to think about what might occur if she is actually in her dressing room when they arrive.

She is not there, however, being as she is chatting with the band leader about some changes in the musical arrangement for the next day.

So they make themselves at home to wait for her.

When she opens the door, still wrapped up neatly in bronze-colored kelsh metal, she sees them removing their armor and going through her things, so she wisely makes like the Kandos shuttle and departs ahead of schedule. They follow her. Why should they not follow her? They are after all the law, and nobody is going to interfere with them.

So a few minutes later, Shaara comes running into the dome of our parents’ farm, still dressed in her droid costume. She barely has time to blurt out what has happened before they land on our puk garden.

They have picked up their transport, but as they have not bothered to replace the various pieces of armor they had removed, they are an interesting sight. The front door does not slow them down even a little.

My older brother Kamma tries to stop them. I no longer have a brother Kamma. I am watching this, a frightened twelve-year-old, from behind a partition. I think that this is when I first begin to not like the Imps so much, as a result of which I am now gainfully employed in the service of Jabba the Hutt. Kamma does not stop them any better than the door does, but he does succeed in slowing them down a little, during which delay my sister jumps into the family landspeeder and vacates the premises..

As you may have seen when you arrived on Tatooine, Mos Eisley is near the edge of the Dune Sea, and Shaara heads for the sands. She is not really paying a great deal of attention to where she is going, and before long she is very near to the Great Pit of Carkoon.

The Imps are right behind her. Their transport is more powerful than the landspeeder, but it is laden down with six of them while Shaara is alone and quite light, so they gain very slowly. They are still a few seconds behind Shaara as she flashes toward the pit. She tells me later that she is crying at this point, and I think she is telling me the truth about this.

She is now desperate. She pulls the family punch gun out of its rack where it is kept in case of trouble and she points it at the hull of the Imps’ transport.

Shaara has been a good shot from childhood, and I think the Force must guide her hand on this particular day, because she puts a hole right through to the transport’s engine. The resulting explosion should kill the Imps right then, but they all have been pulling their armor back on.

None of them is fully dressed, and the driver is still down to his bodyglove, but they also seem to have an unusual amount of luck at that moment.

I say seem because although the explosion does not kill them it pitches them into the air just in time for all of them to land in the Pit of Carkoon, which I would consider to be a good thing indeed if it were not that the blast also sends the landspeeder tumbling, and Shaara is also dumped into the pit.

For a moment the seven of them lie there stunned.

Then, and this is the part I always have trouble believing, two of the Imps begin crawling around the pit toward her.

They must surely know where they are. Even the Imperial Army must tell their troopers the basic hazards of the land before sending them out.

Yet there they are right on the Sarlacc’s doorstep and they are more intent on finishing what they have planned for my poor sister than they are in saving their own miserable lives.

Well, of course all this movement gets the Sarlacc good and active, and its tongue-tentacles begin to poke around. It grabs one unconscious Imp and drags him in without a sound. Shaara sees this and lets out a screaming noise, but I guess the two Imps following her think that she is screaming at them.

Then a tentacle gets hold of the foot of another Imp who is awake, and now he begins to scream. This causes the others to sit up and take notice, all but one who never wakes up at all but falls into the mouth of the Sarlacc because of the shifting sands caused by those questing tongues. I do not know whether you have been keeping count, Mister Boba Fett, but this leaves only three Imps in the Great Pit of Carkoon but outside of the Sarlacc, along with my sister.

The two who have been creeping’ around the pit now cease creeping around it and begin frantically crawling in a direction away from the mouth of the Sarlacc, which of course does them no good whatsoever and only makes the sand under them shift downward faster than they can climb up it.

This shifting attracts the attention of the Sarlacc, who immediately grabs them both and drags them screaming to their doom. I do not know whether the storyJabba the Hutt likes to tell is true, that you spend a thousand years being slowly digested in the Sarlacc’s belly, but I am frankly all in favor of the idea in the case of these two, though Shaara says she hopes they died quickly. Perhaps it is that she is of a more delicate nature, or maybe she just wishes that they are dead.

This leaves just Shaara and one stormtrooper staring across the Great Pit of Carkoon at each other and down at the tongue-tentacles of the Sarlacc. This Imp seems to be more sensible than the others, and he holds very still and does not send sand down the pit to let the Sarlacc know where he is, Neither does Shaara.