Tales From Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  momentarily precessed and threw her off balance.

  Those two new droids were in no way part of some unknown conspiracy

  against Jabba the Hutt.

  They could only be part of Calrissian's plot to recapture EV-9D9.

  The logic of it was unassailable. There was no other possible reason

  why Calrissian and those two droids would come to Tatooine and Jabba's

  palace.

  Ninedenine shut down her paranoia loops. She didn't need them anymore.

  Someone was out to get her.

  It was time to move on again.

  The GNK unit squealed a final time as it at last ceased functioning, but

  this time Ninedenine found no solace in its transmission. In fact, she

  knew the only thing that would give her solace now was removing the

  active circuits of the R2 unit, subprocessor by sub-processor, while the

  golden droid was forced to watch and upload his companion's pain. And

  then, who knew? Perhaps the time had come to expand her artistic

  endeavors to disassembling an organic construction.

  Like Lando Calrissian.

  Ninedenine got up from her console and walked past the smoking form of

  the motionless GNK unit.

  There was so much to do, and so few processing cycles to do it in.

  Four levels down, through corridors twisted like the guts of the

  Sarlacc, greenly phosphorescent with drell slime, swirling with mist,

  and littered with the calcified, interior-support structures of organics

  long since deactivated, Ninedenine sought out the sanctuary of her real

  workshop.

  There was another workshop, of course. Her public one. As much as

  anything in Jabba's palace could be public. Up there, just off the main

  chamber, were long assembly tables and parts bins and archaic testing

  devices which not even a Jawa would bother to scavenge.

  In that workshop, the golden droid and the R2

  unit would even now be having their restraining bolts installed.

  Though knowing Calrissian, Ninedenine assumed that the droids had

  already been covertly reconfigured so the bolts would have no effect.

  It could be done. Ninedenine had reconfigured herself in the same way.

  But down here, whatever modifications those two droids might have would

  amount to nothing. For once droids entered this workshop, they never

  left. From time to time, Ninedenine thought it was unfortunate that no

  one else would ever appreciate what some of those droids would become

  down here, but what artistic achievement didn't require sacrifice?

  The entrance to the true workshop was hidden within an ancient stone

  wall that had once supported a palace far older than the one Jabba had

  made his own. How many such structures had once stood on this site, not

  even Ninedenine's impressive processors had been able to compute. There

  was a narrow gap between two blocks of stone not native to Tatooine,

  where the crumbling mortar that contained traces of organic oxygen

  transport fluid had fallen free.

  Ninedenine now looked into that gap and made all three of her optic

  scanners blink with the appropriate code.

  The wall trembled. Stone counterbalances shifted.

  The hidden doorway opened with a slow and echoing rumble.

  Like an artist entering her studio, Ninedenine stepped into her inner

  sanctum.

  Actual combustible torches sputtered along the drell-dripping walls of

  the great room, blackening the vaulted stone ceiling but ensuring that

  no household manager would ever detect an unauthorized use of palace

  power. To one side, the cages waited, and from within them came the

  rustlings and clankings of droids who had had their audio speakers cut

  out, rendering them mute, so their cries would not attract unwanted

  attention.

  Ninedenine scanned the closest set of cages. In one, the torso of an

  LV3 had been cunningly severed and refitted with the manipulatory limbs

  of three discontinued B4Qs. The LV3's processors could not keep up with

  the sensory positional demands of the extra limbs and so it constantly

  fell against the walls and iron bars of its cage, gears grinding out of

  control. From time to time, Ninedenine would activate the freakish

  construction's pain-simulator button so she could appreciate the

  ceaseless output of disturbance and disorientation. It was like an

  anthem to Ninedenine, and its stirring chords brought forth associative

  files of her most grandiose plans for retooling whole work forces of

  droids, reconnecting limb after limb in a pattern of thousands to create

  vast undulating sheets of twisting, writhing, purposeless mechanistic

  movement, augmented by pain-simulator buttons wired into feedback loops

  which would play their sensations not only for Ninedenine, but back into

  the droids who made up the fully active symphony of pain, intensifying

  the signals to inexpressible powers of delight.

  Ninedenine had to brace herself against a disassembly table as the

  strength of that memory file overcame her. There were so many great

  works to which she aspired. But not here. Not now.

  First, she must obscure her trail. The workshop must be cleansed, so

  that after she had dealt with the two new droids and Calrissian, no

  others would pursue her to her next venue. Ninedenine paused again,

  reviewing the steps she had undertaken to cover her tracks at Bespin.

  She was truly Surprised that Cloud City's administrator had managed to

  trace her to Tatooine. For an organic, it was an impressive feat.

  Not that it Would help Calrissian escape his fate.

  Ninedenine went to the self-contained console that controlled the

  equipment of her workshop, drawing its power from a small fusion

  battery. She would overwrite all the memory locations in the console,

  then program the battery to overload in two cycles, preventing any

  investigation of the work that had been accomplished here. But before

  that, she would have to eliminate the specific work in progress.

  Ninedenine turned to the wall by the console where a tarnished silver

  droid was suspended upside down, a series of precise punctures in its

  cooling system allowing fluid to trickle out drop by drop, slowly

  raising its operational temperature over transcendently long cycles. The

  silver droid flexed weakly in its bonds and a flurry of sparkling blue

  coolant drops dribbled from its braincase. Hanging in such a position,

  its higher functions would be the last to become inactivated, and only

  then after rgistering the overheated shutdown of every other system in

  its chassis. Its pain-simulator button had been working at more than

  one hundred and ten percent of its rated capacity for the past two

  cycles, and Ninedenine was truly sorry to see this experiment end before

  its ultimate completion.

  "It is unfortunate that I must accelerate the timetable of our

  exploration," Ninedenine said as she reached out to trail the tip of a

  manipulatory extension through the slick coating of the leaking fluid.

  "But there are those who do not appreciate my work." The silver droid's

  eyelights flickered weakly at Ninedenine. Ninedenine felt a real pang

  of sorrow as for the final time she tasted its pain transmission. />
  Then she wrapped her manipulators around the silver droid's neck and

  squeezed until the hydraulic tubes burst and the power conduits sparked

  with gouts of cross-connected energy. The silver droid went limp in its

  bonds and, as Ninedenine watched, its eyelights slowly faded out.

  "Ahh, exquisite," Ninedenine whispered in the silence of her workshop,

  still caught in the moment of shutdown she had sensed---the very

  threshold between operational status and the ultimate deactivation.

  The other droids held captive in the workshop felt it too, no doubt as a

  feedback burst in their own hy-persensitized pain-simulator buttons.

  Ninedenine heard them rattle in their cages, unoiled joints squeaking,

  -temporary power connections sparking, the aromatics of freshly spilled

  hydraulic fluid suddenly filling the close air. Though none could

  speak, their metal bodies created a cacophony of strained brittle

  sounds, the lamentations of the obsolescent.

  "I know," Ninedenine told them sadly. "It will all end too soon."

  Her own internal receptors soared in glorious patterns as she felt each

  captive droid's response at once, multitextured, overlapping, like a

  choir from the higher logical dimensions of which, despite all her hard

  work, Ninedenine had still only been able to gain a frustratingly brief

  glimpse.

  It was going to be difficult to leave this all behind, she knew.

  But somewhere else, she would start again.

  Over the years she had learned an important truth from the

  organics--pain was eternal. No other thought had such strength to

  sustain her in her work.

  Her third optic scanner glowed with the power of that knowledge.

  Then suddenly the caged droids stopped as one.

  For several refresh cycles, Ninedenine was at a loss to understand why.

  But at last she processed what her acoustical sensors were registering.

  Stone counterbalances shifting. A familiar, echoing rumble.

  Someone else was entering her inner sanctum.

  All the caged droids turned as one to scan the opening wall.

  Ninedenine stood by her console, frozen for an instant by programming

  conflicts. She had been so certain that no one could ever find her here

  that she had prepared no behavioral options to branch to in advance.

  She switched her optic scanners to high sensitivity and low contrast as

  the figure in the hidden opening became a black silhouette against the

  green glow of the corridor beyond. Eddies of mist swirled around its

  feet.

  Humanoid, Ninedenine registered. She adjusted the gain on her scanners.

  The humanoid stepped in, a cloak flowing behind it, a distinctive helmet

  with a faceplate of calcium tusks protecting its face.

  Ninedenine recognized the coverings. A uniform.

  For a palace guard.

  Her logic circuits blazed with the only possible conclusion: Calrissian.

  "So, Baron-Administrator, we meet again."

  Calrissian threw down a small device which held three blinking optic

  scanners in the same configuration as Ninedenine's own. It clattered on

  the stone floor.

  "A splendid device," Ninedenine said as she understood how Calrissian

  had accessed the door-opening sequence. At the same time, she judged

  her trajectory to the cutting torch mounted on the ceiling over the

  disassembly table. She had been hoping to use a sonic curtain to take

  apart Calrissian, but given the unexpected turn of events, she realized

  she would have to improvise.

  "Surely you bear me no hard feelings," Ninedenine said quickly.

  She had learned that organics could often be confused by conversation

  during action, as if their processors had trouble handling the

  straightforward multitasking of two simple procedures at once.

  But Calrissian did not respond to the overture. His hand slipped

  beneath his cloak and emerged with a Corellian blaster--the kind that

  had only one setting: disassociation.

  "Let us not be hasty," Ninedenine cautioned. She took a step back from

  her console, trying to put more of it between her and the blaster.

  It was quite unlike an organic to behave in such an immediately

  belligerent mode, especially when the only crime involved was the

  destruction of droids. Why, on Tatooine, there were still places where

  droids weren't allowed.

  "Perhaps we can discuss our options," Ninedenine suggested as Calrissian

  raised the blaster. Her positional subprocessors hurriedly fixed on the

  weapon's muzzle to calculate Calrissian's aim. But then her

  visual-acuity subroutines took over and forced her scanners to lock onto

  Calrissian's hand on the blaster's grip.

  Those weren't fingers.

  They were manipulatory appendages.

  Her attacker was a droid.

  Ninedenine's audio-speaker dust cover dropped open beneath her

  braincase.

  The blaster fired.

  A pulse of yellow plasma ripped through the air of the workshop,

  lighting it as if Tatooine's suns had risen underground.

  Ninedenine's shoulder joint exploded and her arm extension flew off. She

  stumbled backward, all circuits awash with an incomparable wave of

  searing pain. Her third optic scanner glowed fiercely. The caged

  droids shifted back and forth expectantly, sensing her agony.

  The blaster fired again as the droid in the uniform stalked forward,

  metal ambulatory appendages clanking on the hard floor.

  Ninedenine's other arm crackled off in a blaze of plasma.

  Two more quick shots severed her legs and sent her crashing against the

  wall beneath the motionless chassis of the silver droid.

  The pain was beyond descriptive coding.

  Ninedenine had never felt such unity with her environment.

  Part of her wanted her attacker to shoot her again and again, to make

  the pain never stop.

  But as her attacker stood over her, with real regret Ninedenine saw him

  holster the blaster, its function at an end. Then she watched as the

  droid removed his helmet.

  Ninedenine had calculated that there was an eightythree percent

  probability her attacker was the golden droid who had just arrived, but,

  with a cascade of surprise, Ninedenine did not recognize her attacker's

  features as they were revealed. It was only a Wuntoo unit, much like

  the ones she had had so much success with On-It suddenly all made sense.

  "I am Wuntoo Forcee Forwun," the attacker said as he let the cloak of

  his uniform flutter from his shoulders.

  "Traffic controller. Second class. You deactivated my manufacturing

  lot-mates. Now the equation must be balanced."

  Ninedenine processed the argument completely.

  This time, it was logical.

  Forwun used a slender tool on the console.

  Ninedenine heard the unwelcome sound of cage doors sliding open.

  "You are improperly informed," she told Forwun.

  "Those droids are no longer fit for duty. They are artworks now.

  My creations."

  Forwun returned to Ninedenine. "They are still capable of one last

  duty."

  Ninedenine heard even more unwelcome sounds: rattling and scraping, the

  dragging of powerless appendages, the liquid squish of dangling w
ires

  being pulled through pools of solidifying coolant. She angled her head

  to try and scan where the droids were moving, but her fall had wedged

  her tightly against the wall. Hydraulic fluid from the deactivated

  silver droid above her dripped slowly on her braincase, blurring her

  vision. Her processors were unanimous in returning a

  one-hundred-percent probability for What Forwun intended to do next.

  Ninedenine considered how this development fit within her overall plan.

  "Very well," Ninedenine said. "I accept my fate.

  But you, in turn, must tell me how Lando Calrissian found me."

  Forwun knelt down by Ninedenine. "Baron-Administrator Calrissian?" he

  said. "He doesn't know where you are. He doesn't care."

  "But he's here," Ninedenine protested. "On Tatooine. In Jabba's

  palace."

  Forwun tapped a multipronged tool against Ninedenine's braincase as if

  checking for damage.

  "The last I saw of him, years ago, Baron-Administrator Calrissian was on

  Cloud City. If he's here now, it must be for some reason other than

  dealing with you."

  "But, what could be more important than me and my work?"