Tales From Jabba's Palace Read online

  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.

  Malakili stood there for a long, long time before he finally, quietly

  left.

  A Game of Fetch

  Malakili didn't' bother to ask if he could take the rancor outside of

  the palace, where the monster could romp in the desert vastness, stretch

  its sinewy legs, and enjoy the freedom of open air. He figured no one

  would argue with him if he was accompanied by multiple tons of fangs and

  claws.

  Malakili had been around vicious animals enough to know that the thing

  they wanted most in life, the thing simmering behind their small,

  ultrafocused minds as they paced in the pens they had grown to hate was

  the simple wish to get out, get out, Get Out.

  Malakili waited until the hottest part of a Tatooine afternoon, after

  both suns had reached their peaks. At this time Jabba and his pandering

  minions took a siesta as their only defense against the smothering heat.

  From the main garage levels, he took a one-person sandskimmer and parked

  it outside one of the huge weighted doors at the base of the citadel.

  This door had been opened exactly once, when Bidlo Kwerve and Bib

  Fortuna had hauled the stunned rancor into its pen and then sealed the

  door again with locks from the inside and outside. But Malakili used

  small explosive charges to blow the locks off the outside. The metal

  locks vaporized into silver steam. The echoing thump of the charges

  sent small scuttling things dashing to hide in shadowy cracks.

  Malakili stood listening as a drowsy hot silence fell back over the

  palace, then he slipped inside to the dungeon levels. He stood outside

  the rancor cage, holding a small but powerful vibroblade specifically

  tuned to metal frequencies. The blade could chop through the thick

  locks inside the external door; it would take longer than small charges,

  but he didn't want the explosions to upset the rancor.

  Gonar, the scrawny, high-strung human clinger, appeared out of the

  shadows. Malakili didn't like the way the young man always pestered

  him, watched him, followed him. "What are you going to do?" Gonar

  said.

  His greasy curls of red hair looked as if they had been anointed with

  fresh oil and his sallow face looked like spoiled milk.

  "We're going to go out for a jaunt," Malakili said.

  "A game of fetch."

  Gonar's eyes ratcheted open like huge cargo doors.

  "You're crazy. You're letting the rancor loose?"

  Malakili chuckled. He was feeling very good about this entire

  excursion. He patted his rounded paunch.

  "I think we could both use the exercise, him and me."

  He opened the cage door and ducked inside, clattering it shut behind

  him. Gonar gripped the bars and stared, but the young man would never

  dream of following Malakili into the monster's den while the rancor

  remained awake.

  With the disturbance of its new visitor, the rancor rose to its feet and

  rumbled a low, liquid growl but Malakili paid no attention.

  The rancor continued to look at him with cold and glittering eyes that

  showed an icy intelligence. But the monster had grown to tolerater />
  Malakili's presence. In fact, the rancor seemed to enjoy the keeper's

  visits. Malakili had come to count on that.

  In a blatant show of trust, Malakili waddled across the bone-littered

  floor of the den and walked directly between the rancor's knobby legs to

  get to the opposite wall where the slime-encrusted door had been sealed.

  He bent down with his vibroblade and tuned the frequency and energy

  density higher as he chopped at the metal locks. Sparks and droplets of

  molten dura-steel flew, but Malakili kept battering away until the locks

  lay severed.

  The controls had been disconnected, but Malakili attached a new battery

  pack and hot-wired the circuit.

  With a screeching, ponderous sound, the heavy metal door labored upward,

  splitting open at the bottom and spilling a knifeblade of buttery

  sunlight into the dank pen. Hot breezes whipped in, stealing the cool

  dampness, until the door had groaned completely to the top, an open

  window to the freedom of the desert.

  The rancor stood up, blinking its impenetrable eyes. It opened its

  arms, stretching out its heavily clawed hands as if worshiping the suns

  and the fresh air. The monster stood in amazement and confusion,

  glancing down at Malakili, not certain what was going on. Malakili

  motioned for it to go through the opening.

  "It's okay," Malakili said in a soothing voice. "Go on, it's all right

  We'll come back in a little while."

  The rancor stepped out into the sunlight, flinched from the glare.

  Its shoulders hunched. Its shovel hands swung from side to side,

  scraping the floor of the pit--and then it stood up, strode out into the

  full light and heat, and bellowed a cry of sheer joy. Its fangs

  glittered in the double sunlight.

  As if suddenly released from chains, the rancor broke into a loping run,

  stretching its legs, flailing its heavy hands from side to side to keep

  balance. The mottled green-tan hide seemed to vanish into the desert

  rocks.

  Malakili watched the creature romp for several seconds, feeling his own

  delight, then he hopped onto the sandskimmer, fired up the popping,

  stuttering engine, and drifted after his pet monster.

  The rancor sprang to the top of an outcropping of blistered lava rock.

  It tilted its head up and roared at the sky, raising huge claws, and

  then it jumped down again, picking its way along the rough, sloping

  cliff face.

  Above, in the towers of Jabba's palace, emergency beacons flashed on.

  Malakili heard the distant, squeaking sounds of faraway guards shouting

  in alarm; but at the moment he didn't care. He would come back with the

  rancor. He would show that everything was all right.

  When he flew too close to the rancor in the droning sandskimmer, the

  monster reflexively lashed sideways with its bony claws, as if Malakili

  were a bothersome insect. But Malakili swung around and flitted in

  front of the monster so that the rancor could identify him.

  The monster backed away, hung its head as if abashed at what it had

  tried to do, then continued out into the open sands.

  The rancor loped across the hot, cracked ground, leaping over

  outcroppings in ecstasy. It ran far from Jabba's palace, but it was not

  fleeing--it just loved its freedom.

  Malakili's chest swelled with joy, though he was ashamed at his own

  emotional weakness. Tears traced cool patterns on his cheeks.

  This was probably one of the most remarkable days in his life.

  The rancor sprinted for a line of red-tan crags striped with strata that

  showed the rugged geological past of Tatooine. The broken mountains

  fanned out, cracked with numerous canyons like razor-blade jaws, rocky

  narrows cut sharply by ancient torrents of forgotten water.

  Seeing the shade and the rugged stair-like rocks to climb, the rancor

  put on a burst of speed toward the shadowy canyons.

  Malakili punched the accelerator of the sandskim-merwbut instead of

  providing additional speed, the small vehicle popped and coughed like a

  sick man spitting up a bubble of blood. The sandskimmer dropped under

  Malakili's weight. He clutched the handles, and his hands were suddenly

  greasy with sweat.

  Jabba's palace loomed behind him in the distance, a brooding citadel

  like a stern father watching over those who had disobeyed.

  Oblivious, the rancor dashed into one of the near canyons and vanished

  into the shadows.

  "Wait!" Malakili shouted, his voice sucked dry like moisture in the

  desert sun. He wrestled with the sand-skimmer as it angled toward the

  powdery sands and sharp knuckles of rock. Somehow, the vehicle remained

  aloft, puttering and staggering through the air until it reached the

  rocky wall of the ridge. He concentrated so heavily on keeping the

  skimmer in the air that he had lost track of which of the numerous side

  canyons the rancor had entered.

  Malakili moaned as the skimmer finally crashed to the ground, tumbling

  him into sharp broken scree.

  He picked himself up from the stinging rocks and gazed toward the

  welcoming shade of the side canyons.

  The desert heat from the double suns screamed down at him.

  He staggered across the broken ground, leaving the sandskimmer behind.

  He finally made his way into the dusty alluvial fan at the canyon's

  mouth, stepping over flattened clay and into the darker shade.

  Every step sent a crisp tinkling sound of broken rock as dry pebbles

  kittered against each other. Otherwise the world was incredibly silent.

  He didn't know what to do. He couldn't walk all the way back to Jabba's

  palace, although he might try it in the dimness of the night.

  Despite his own peril, Malakili's main concern now was for finding the

  rancor.

  If he had lost the monster, Jabba would find a long series of

  imaginative and unspeakably painful tortures for him. It would be

  better to just lie down and bake to death in the desert sun.

  But he couldn't believe that the rancor would abandon him so blithely.

  They had been through too much together.

  He picked his way over the ancient riverbed for about an hour, looking

  for the rancor's tracks, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, only a few

  pattering rocks from high above.

  At last, up ahead, came a surprisingly soft skitter of stones underfoot.

  A large lumbering shadow disappeared into a small split in the wall, a

  miniature canyon with sharp overhangs and time-smmoothed rock faces.

  Malakili picked up speed, hoping to find the rancor so that at least

  they could face the future together.

  "Hello!" he said. His feet crunched on the dry pebbles as he waddled

  forward. "Here, boy!"

  But as he rounded the corner, a screaming demon leaped out in front of

  him--man-sized, but with a face wrapped in bandages, mouth covered by

  sand filter, and eyes peering through a pair of gleaming metal tubes.

  Sand People! Tusken Raiders.

  The demon held a long, sharp gaffing stick in his hands like a quarter

  staff. Its hooked end bounced up and down as the Raider bellowed a

  challenge.

  Malakili staggered back and
then recognized two other Sand People

  astride enormous woolly banthas, mammoth-sized beasts with curved tusks

  around their ears. The two mounted Tuskens squawked, and the banthas

  responded as if telepathically, charging toward him.

  The unmounted Tusken leaped down from the rock and swung at Malakili

  with his hooked gaffing stick.

  Malakili was unarmed. He lumbered backward, but knew he could not

  escape. He reached down, grabbed a rock, and threw it at his attacker,

  but the projectile went wide.

  Huffing and snorting, the banthas stampeded toward him. Malakili fell

  onto the sharp rocks, and he knew the monsters were going to trample

  him. He would be crushed to a pulp within seconds.

  Then, with an echoing roar that split loose rocks from the cliff face,

  the rancor leaped down from an overhang high above. Reaching out with

  its claws, the monster crashed into the lead bantha, tackling it to the

  ground.

  The bantha snorted and reared, but it didn't understand what had just

  happened. The rancor used his powerful claws and durasteel-strong

  muscles to grab the tusks on both sides of the bantha's head, twisting

  it as if turning a wheel on a bulkhead door. The bantha's head wrenched

  sideways, and its spine gave a hollow, wet crack as its neck snapped.