Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Read online

  Malakili was muscular from a life of lifting heavy objects and wrestling strong creatures. His paunch had grown large from the good eating he enjoyed as the star of Circus Horrificus, his face was stretched and ugly, his eyes wide and round like full moons. But Malakili cared little for his personal appearance. He was out to impress no one. As long as the monsters held him in respect, he asked for nothing else.

  “We are Jabba’s lieutenants. We have summoned you,” Bib Fortuna said.

  “Why?” Malakili asked, his voice gruff, his fists planted squarely on his ample hips.

  “We have a gift for Jabba,” Fortuna continued. “A ship crashed in the desert carrying a special cargo, a creature that no one seems able to identify. Bidlo Kwerve here used eight gas grenades to stun the monster enough that we could transport it into one of the dungeons beneath the palace.” The Twi’lek rubbed his clawed hands together. “It is our master’s birthday tomorrow. He has been away on business, having recently purchased a cantina in Mos Eisley. But he will be back tomorrow, and we want to surprise him. Of course with a creature of this, er, bulk and temperament, we wanted it to come with its own keeper.”

  “But why me?” Malakili said. His words came out as displeased grunts. He was not accustomed to extended conversations. “I was happy with my old job.”

  “Yes,” Bib Fortuna said, flashing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. “You spent seven seasons with the Circus Horrificus, training their specimens without being eaten. That’s a record for them, you know.”

  “I know,” Malakili said. “I liked the monsters.”

  Bib Fortuna clacked his claws together. “Then you’ll love this one.”

  • • •

  Bib Fortuna and Bidlo Kwerve stepped back into the dripping shadows of the lower dungeons as Malakili stared through the barred peephole into the pit. He was enthralled, enraptured by the mammoth beast.

  It growled as it breathed. Its beady eyes flashed even in the darkness. It moved with a quick, liquid grace that many agile creatures half its size could not manage.

  “Magnificent,” Malakili said through puffy lips. He felt cool tears like lines of ice down his cheeks. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

  “Did I not tell you?” Bib Fortuna said.

  “I think—” Malakili drew a deep breath, still awed and afraid to voice his suspicions. “I think this is a rancor. I have heard of them, but never dreamed that I would be lucky enough to see one in my lifetime.”

  “You’re not just seeing this one,” Bib Fortuna said. “He is yours. You must take care of him.”

  Malakili felt his heart swell with pride, and he beamed at Jabba’s two lieutenants. “That I will do to the best of my ability,” he said.

  The bloated crimelord Jabba the Hutt knew everything, so it was impossible to keep a secret from him—even a supposedly secret birthday gift. Still, his two lieutenants—with Malakili standing behind them—acted as if they were presenting Jabba with a great honor as they congratulated him on his birthday.

  “As our gift to you, great Jabba,” Bib Fortuna said, “we have found a magnificent and exotic new pet for you—a vicious monster called a rancor. This is its keeper.” He gestured behind him, extending wicked-looking claws toward Malakili, who still wore only a loincloth and draped black headdress. He had washed his bare chest and polished his paunch to be presentable for the first time he met his new master.

  Jabba leaned forward, his large eyes blinking. A tongue as thick as a wet human thigh stroked a new layer of slime along his swollen lips. His dais slid forward, closer to the grilled opening.

  Below, the rancor paced in its dank confinement, making sounds like tearing wet paper. Jabba’s body rumbled with pleasure. Malakili saw both Bib Fortuna and Bidlo Kwerve visibly relax their tense shoulders as they saw that Jabba was pleased. Taking heart from this, Bidlo Kwerve stepped forward and spoke, the first time Malakili had heard words come from the scarred Corellian.

  “I performed the actual capture, Master Jabba.” His voice was high and raspy—rather whiny, Malakili thought. No wonder Bidlo Kwerve kept his mouth shut most of the time.

  Jabba sat up quickly, a startled reaction. Bib Fortuna waved his hands frantically to exercise damage control. “Yes, Master, what Bidlo Kwerve says is true, but I performed all of the … administrative details. You know how difficult these things can be.”

  Jabba leaned forward again to stare at the rancor. He sighed with pleasure. Bib Fortuna explained the workings of the new trapdoor they had installed in front of the dais, anticipating how much amusement Jabba might get from dropping enemies into the rancor pit. Salacious Crumb, the loudmouth Kowakian lizard-monkey, laughed and jabbered at Jabba’s shoulder, sometimes repeating words, other times making his own nonsensical sentences.

  “I am most pleased,” Jabba said.

  Malakili pricked up his ears but kept his face impassive. He had learned how to speak the Hutt’s dialect many years before because the most bloodthirsty audiences to which the Circus Horrificus played consisted of coldhearted Hutts watching other creatures in pain.

  “I shall reward each of you greatly,” Jabba said. “One of you shall become my new majordomo, my right-hand man to assist me and to run the palace while I’m away. The other … shall have an even greater reward, one that history will remember.”

  Bib Fortuna bowed, and his head-tails lashed. He seemed tense, though Malakili could not understand why. Bidlo Kwerve looked satisfied and unconcerned. “Master,” Fortuna said, “I shall be satisfied with the majordomo position. As Bidlo Kwerve has pointed out, he performed the greatest service to you. Please allow him to have the greater honor.”

  Bidlo Kwerve shot a suspicious glance at him, blinking his ice-green eyes. Jabba nodded. “Good,” the Hutt said.

  Kwerve stepped forward. The Corellian looked again at Bib Fortuna. “What did he say?” Now Malakili understood the twitching expressions on the Corellian’s face. Bidlo Kwerve didn’t understand Huttese!

  Bib Fortuna gestured him forward as he himself stepped back. Kwerve raised his pocked chin in the air and stood in front of Jabba, awaiting his reward.

  “You shall be the first victim I feed to my rancor,” Jabba said. “I will watch your struggles and remember them for all time.”

  Salacious Crumb cackled maniacally. The group of Jabba’s followers in the throne room snickered and watched. Bidlo Kwerve looked to Bib Fortuna, and it was clear he did not know what Jabba had said.

  As the Corellian’s face was turned aside, Jabba punched the button that released the trapdoor. The floor fell out from beneath Bidlo Kwerve.

  In following years, everyone agreed that Bidlo Kwerve put up a spectacular fight. The Corellian had somehow managed to conceal a small holdout blaster in his body armor—which was strictly forbidden in Jabba’s presence. But the rancor’s sheer ferocity astonished the spectators even more as it devoured its first live meal since its capture on Tatooine.

  Malakili watched the monster’s victory and felt warm inside, like a proud father.

  General Dentistry

  Jabba took exceptional delight in his new pet over the next few months, devising various victims and combat situations for the monster.

  Bib Fortuna rose in prominence in the crimelord’s organization. Malakili, though, kept to the lower levels of the palace, talking with only the few denizens who also preferred the dank coolness and the anonymity of shadows to being in plain sight of Jabba or his minions.

  In his prowls scavenging extra food for his pet, Malakili got to know Jabba’s primary chef, Porcellus, rather well. The man was a talented food preparer who lived in constant fear that he would create something Jabba didn’t like, at which point his life and his culinary skills would be forfeit. Malakili would toss slabs of fresh, dripping meat into the openings for the rancor, and the monster seemed gradually to accept him as its caretaker.

  For those seeking Jabba’s approval, it soon became a game to find new combatants for the ra
ncor. At first Malakili took the challenges with pride and confidence, knowing that the coiled killing machine would snap up any prey—but gradually he became aware that Jabba did not esteem the rancor as Malakili did. The Hutt saw it as merely a diversion, and if some monster were found that could defeat the rancor, then Jabba would be just as pleased to have a new toy. The Hutt had no compassion for the beautiful beast. He wanted only to test it and test it until it failed.

  The rancor became injured for the first time when Jabba released three Caridan combat arachnids into the pit. The combat arachnids had twelve legs each and crimson body armor splotched with maroon, as tough as a thin layer of diamond sheeting. Their bodies were so covered with needle-sharp spines that it was difficult to tell where the spines ended and the sharp legs began. But the jaws were very obvious, jagged pistons three times the size of the bullet-shaped heads and driven with enough power to shear open the hull of an armored transport.

  As the gates in the secondary cells were opened and the three angry combat arachnids rushed out with a thunder caused by three dozen legs, Malakili and the rancor—as if psychically connected—both reared back in surprise. Up above, Jabba’s booming laugh, “Hoo-hoo-hoo,” reverberated through the observation grille along with the cheers and catcalls from the simpering minions who crowded around to show their loyalty.

  The rancor bent over and splayed its hands, blinked its small dark eyes, and let out a bellow of challenge. It waited for the attack.

  The three combat arachnids surged forward seemingly in silence, but Malakili’s ears hurt from a painful high-pitched throbbing, as if the arachnids communicated on some hypersonic level.

  One arachnid ran directly beneath the rancor’s legs. Moving too slowly to react to this unexpected tactic, the rancor swept the ground with its fistful of claws, but the combat arachnid escaped to the other side.

  While the rancor was distracted, the other two arachnids lunged at its leathery legs, slashing with spines. The rancor batted one creature away, knocking it against the wall with a crunch that split its armor plating open and speared the soft inner organs with broken shards.

  But the rancor howled in pain and held up its hand. Malakili could see dark dribbling spots where two of the arachnid’s long spines had thrust all the way through.

  The second combat arachnid latched onto the back of the rancor’s leg, where the taut muscles pulled like durasteel cables. The huge mandibles clamped down and ground together, chewing with all the mindless mechanical force the combat arachnid could apply.

  Snarling, the rancor bent over and tried to use its shovellike hands to rip the mandibles free; when it could not break their grip, it pried at the head of the arachnid instead.

  Finally, the third combat arachnid leaped onto the rancor’s lumpy back from behind as the monster bent over. The third creature slashed with its sharp legs, stabbing with spines, tearing open a butcher’s pattern in the rancor’s hide.

  With a squeal of confusion and betrayed pain, the rancor reared up, stumbled backward, and slammed itself into the stone blocks of the wall. The rancor rammed backward again and again, shattering the hard plating of the arachnid clinging to its back until the thing lay in a jumble of twitching sharp legs on the debris-strewn flagstone floor.

  The last surviving arachnid continued to chew on the sinewy leg. Finally, as if numb with pain and unable to think clearly, the rancor grabbed the powerful mandibles and tore the monster’s head completely off, ripping the body away and lifting it up so that it dangled a few strings of bright red ganglia out of its neck socket. The head remained clamped to the rancor’s leg, still chewing in a reflex action.

  With no other outlet for his rage, the rancor hefted the spiny, armored body of the combat arachnid into his sword-filled mouth and bit down, crushing through the spiny pincushion of the arachnid’s carcass. Bright vermilion ooze spurted out of the rancor’s mouth from the ruptured, bloated abdomen—but it was mixed with another color of ichor as well, the blood of the rancor. Its mouth had been flayed, ripped to shreds by chomping down on the dead carcass of its last enemy.

  Malakili began to mumble in dismay. The rancor was hurt; it bled from many different wounds. As it continued to gnash reflexively on the brittle, spiked arachnid in its mouth, the rancor tore free the still-fastened head on its leg, yanking away a bloody gobbet of its own flesh as it did so.

  Malakili wanted to react, wanted to rush in and help the rancor in its pain—but he didn’t dare. The monster was in such a blind frenzy that it would not know the difference between friend and enemy. Malakili bit down on his knuckle, trying to decide what to do as the rancor stood bleeding and thrashing.

  Suddenly, with a hollow thumping sound, four grenade canisters dropped down into the pit, spewing heavily drugged gas into the chamber. Impenetrable metal sheets dropped over the windows, sealing the ventilation shafts to keep the knockout gas inside until the rancor could be sufficiently stunned.

  He heard a step behind him and turned to see Gonar, one of the other skulking humans who seemed at a loss whether to spend more time hanging around Malakili and watching the rancor or remaining upstairs in the throne room so he could earn points with Jabba.

  “Jabba wants to get the shells of those combat arachnids,” Gonar said, nodding like a marionette. His nose was turned up and flat, like a Gamorrean’s, and his hair hung in greasy reddish curls as if he styled it with fresh blood.

  Dazed, Malakili held a hand to his paunch, about to be sick. “What?”

  “The carapaces,” Gonar said. “Very hard and jewellike. Combat arachnids are raised for their chitin as well as their fighting abilities. Didn’t you know?”

  Finally, after the rancor had slumped into unconsciousness, the sleeping gas was pumped out and the large access doors raised up, their bottoms jagged like teeth, as Jabba’s crew of Gamorrean guards stumped in to haul away the broken remains of the arachnids.

  Malakili pushed past them and rushed forward to the grunting, snoring hulk of his pet monster. The Gamorrean guards used a hydraulic winch to open the rancor’s gigantic jaws, prying the fang-filled maw apart so they could remove the armored carcass of the combat arachnid.

  The guards were not terribly bright, in Malakili’s opinion, and they did not think before they acted. They exercised no care whatsoever as they tore free the dead insectlike creature, ripping the gashes in the rancor’s mouth even wider.

  Malakili shouted at them, charging forward and looking even more fearsome than his pet monster. The Gamorreans snorted in alarm, without a clue as to what they had done wrong; but Gamorrean guards were accustomed to not understanding, so they did not argue as they grabbed the jeweled carcasses and hauled them away.

  Malakili ordered Gonar to fetch several large drums of a medicated salve kept in the infirmary of Jabba’s palace, and soon the red-haired human came inside rolling one of the drums. Gonar popped it open, letting a vile chemical smell rise into the confined chamber of the rancor pen.

  Malakili already felt dizzy, not just from the chemical smell, but from residual sleeping gas that clung to the dank air, as well as nausea from his disgust at seeing what had happened to the rancor. Taking handfuls of the wet, stringy goop, Malakili slathered the raw wounds in the rancor’s hide. He looked around and found the flat, gnawed scapula of one of the rancor’s previous meals and used the shoulder blade as a trowel to lay the disinfectant substance lovingly across the gashes.

  Gonar assisted him reluctantly, afraid to come too close to the monster and yet wanting to. With the major exterior injuries tended to, Malakili turned to the ruined mess of the monster’s mouth. He sent Gonar running for a pair of tongs, which he used to grasp the shards of diamond-hard chitin still wedged like broken glass between the rancor’s fangs. He stood directly inside the rancor’s mouth, yanking and tugging as he extricated the jammed pieces.

  Gonar trembled watching him, but Malakili had no time to worry about such things. The rancor was in pain. If these shards remained stuck in its
jaws, the wounds would become infected, and the monster would be even more ornery.

  A foul stench rose from the rancor’s throat as its stuttering snores grew quieter. Malakili found the shattered stumps of two rotten teeth that must have snapped off in some other battle. Malakili grasped these too and tugged them out. The stumps came loose more easily than he expected, but the rancor’s mouth was so full of fangs that it seemed to grow two for every one it lost.

  The monster stirred, and its beady black eyes blinked. Its nostrils flared as it heaved in a deep breath. Malakili leaped out of the way just as the jaws snapped shut.

  “It’s awake!” Gonar shrieked, and fled through the low door. The dose of the sleeping gas had worn off with alarming swiftness.

  Malakili fell backward as the rancor lurched to its feet. It swayed unsteadily for a moment. Malakili considered that this might be his last chance to bolt for the door.

  The rancor reared up and spread its claw-laden hands. It snorted and glared down at him, still in obvious agony.

  Malakili froze, looking up at the monster. If he ran, that would draw its attention, and he would instantly be eaten. A part of him prayed that the rancor would recognize him and not kill him.

  The rancor grunted again, then bent low to sniff the medicinal salve on its torn legs. It raised its humongous hand to its flattened nostrils and sniffed again, looking at where the wounds from the combat arachnid’s spines had been salved and bandaged. The rancor grunted at Malakili, then looked around the floor of its den as if searching for something.

  Malakili continued to stare, frozen in awe and terror. Sweat poured off his grimy skin. His heart hammered like colliding starships in his chest.

  But then the rancor found what it was looking for: the long femur from a food beast. Still looking sidelong at the human in its pen, the rancor picked up the bloody bone and squatted down in its cage, gnawing nonchalantly, though his mouth must still have been in great pain.