Tales From Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  existence whenever I choose.

  Bubo mentally snorted. But you've always been a bit · . .

  unorthodox, my teacher.

  Whatever do you mean, little one? came the laughing response of the

  monk's brain.

  The dramatic flair and aesthetics of the lights, for one. ?the fact

  that you still speak in sentences and whole thoughts rather than single

  words and images, Bubo responded earnestly.

  It is necessary when dealing with the rest of the world. I do not

  believe one should learn in a vacuum. And in this pursuit, I am much

  better served in my enlightenment by conversing with tangible creatures

  like yourself.

  So . . . the final question, my teacher, is what should I do?

  For all my knowledge, little one, I have absolutely no idea . . .

  When word of Jabba's "accident" at the Great Pit of Carkoon reached the

  palace, Bubo was somehow not surprised when the monks suddenly appeared

  from everywhere. Something in his reptilian brain had suspected they

  would move against the current inhabitants of the palace. He knew what

  was coming, but unlike Bib Fortuna, whom Bubo could hear mentally

  screaming from another part of the palace, Bubo didn't mind.

  He was delighted to know that Ree-Yees had been aboard the sail barge

  when it had exploded over the Sarlaac. Nevertheless, Bubo had seen

  Ree-Yees shamble aboard the craft, muttering something under his breath

  about "figuring out what to do" as he went along to witness the

  execution of the Rebels, irate beyond rationality for what he had done.

  Thinking about that, when the monks finally lifted his brain from his

  cranium, Bubo's last tangible act was to emit a croaking laugh from his

  body.

  What is so funny, little one? came the deep voice of Nailati in his

  mind.

  He hesitated, knowing most of the monks frowned upon the concept of

  revenge as a useless act, especially when one could spend eternity

  contemplating the secrets of the universe. He hoped his mentor would

  appreciate the joke.

  I ate the detonation link, my teacher. The crucial part in Ree-Yees's

  plan.

  Silence.

  Then, You what? Disbelief.

  Bubo related the tale of Ree-Yees's final hours in the palace.

  "You loathsome two-eyed toad!" Ree-Yees was losing it again.

  Bubo sat crouched in yet another ventilation shaft.

  In front of Bubo sat the detonation link, the missing piece of the bomb.

  Bubo had placed the object just out of reach of the drunken Ree-Yees's

  outstretched hand. "I'm going to feed your miserable hide to the

  rancor!"

  You and what army, you filthy idiot ?

  Bubo had drawn the Grannish operative slowly from his quarters, dragging

  the bit of electronic machinery quickly out of reach. After toying with

  the inebriated Ree-Yees for almost an hour, he had withdrawn to this

  secure location.

  As the Gran reached in with a long kitchen spoon, Bubo flicked his

  tongue out, picking up the little detonation link with his sticky

  fluids. Slowly and deliberately, he drew the part into his mouth and

  swallowed it with great relish.

  In the throne room upstairs, Jabba and his court paused in their revelry

  for just a moment as an anguished howling filled the hallways.

  Then laughter and music reigned again.

  As his own brain was placed in a nutrient-filled jar, Bubo mentally

  smiled as he heard the roaring laughter of his B'omarr mentor echoing

  off the cavern walls.

  Yes, eternity with this marvelous intellect as a companion should be

  fun. Out of the Closet: The Assassin's Tale

  by Jennifer Roberson

  Heat.

  And sun.

  And sand.

  And dead bodies. Or dying.

  Bodies with blood yet in them, with none spilled into Tatooine dust,

  onto sun-flayed Mos Eisley brick, nor staining sweat-wet clothing bought

  a thousand planets from here. Not so much as a drop glistening upon

  flaccid lips, pooling from fragile throats, nor even a delicate tracery

  fathered at their nostrils.

  For those of them who have such attributes as nostrils, or blood.

  They need not be humanoid, none of them, for me to drink their soup.

  They need only have the chemistry to manufacture the substance within

  the brain beneath the skull, inside the carapace, the gelid, mucoid

  mass.

  ---pain/pleasure---pleasure/pain-- His/hers/its.

  Mine also, always.

  I take them in the city, in what is Jabba's domain: this one, that one,

  another . . . and leave, as I always leave, no proof in the killing of

  them. No method, no means, no clues. Merely bodies, unmarked, empty of

  life, but worse: empty also of soul, of that which, when a brain is

  drained, leaves the body empty of its essence. Of the means to live.

  It isn't the essence I want, or blood, nor is it flesh, which is, after

  all, no more than cast-off casing. It is soup I want, I need; soup to

  save my spirit, to keep alive my casing.

  I take them as I choose, with manifest efficiency, commendable in

  expediency: this one, that one, another; will you dance with me, and

  die?

  But this time I do it for the death, for the cast-off casing; for more

  than soup this day, this place, this planet, even to save my spirit.

  They are beneath me, this dead and dying trio scattered across Mos

  Eisley spaceport--here, and there, and there--merely minions and not

  assassins, hollow, servile beings of weak and tasteless soup . . .

  but their deaths will serve a purpose if not my preferences. I want

  them dead of my hands with no mark at all upon them, for my kind leave

  no visible sign by which an entity might know.

  But one entity will know, this time he will know-because I take pains

  that he must.

  My employer, my betrayer.

  "Anzati," they will whisper. "Anzat, of the Anzati."

  --pain/pleasure----pleasure/pain-I take them and others, all of them in

  his service, and leave them, derelicta, to be found. Where they are

  found, and reported. To Talmont, the Prefect; to Lady Valarian, the

  queen who wants to be king; to Jabba himself.

  Talmont and Valarian rejoice: those I have killed were Jabba's.

  The Hutt himself will be irritated, is irritated--and is turning no

  doubt already to laying blame on the nearest of enemies; of impossibly

  innumerable enemies, conspiring against him more often and regularly

  than a humanoid draws breath.

  But no blame on Dannik Jerriko. Not yet. Until I choose.

  And I will choose. I must. So he will know.

  Jabba.

  Know, and be afraid.

  By the time the bodies are found, are reported; by the time they are, at

  last, scanned for the truth, and the truth made into rumor, and rumor

  into romance, I am inside the palace. Ask not how I arrived, nor how I

  managed entry; I am what I am, and we are selfish in our secrets.

  Comes a body now, though yet living for the moment, approaching from out

  of the pallor, the dank and splendid squalor of Jabba's infamous palace.

  It is a Weequay, he of pale, leathery flesh, reptilian features, and a

&nb
sp; warrior's single tail of hair bound back from shaven skull. I have met

  his like before in prior dealings with Jabba.

  A vicious, brutal race; their soup teems with cruel intent. It is thin,

  sour soup, too acid in its flavor, but his will do. Now. Here.

  This moment.

  It will do, indeed.

  --pain/pleasure---pleasure/pain-A macabre dance, when one is the victim:

  an embrace, wholly inescapable, with alien hands clamped to one's skull

  and the eyes fixed and bestial, dilated in the darkness.

  And then prehensile proboscii are extruded from fleshy cheek-pockets

  beside my nose, to linger coyly, languid and loverlike, at his

  nostrils--until, no longer patient, they thrust themselves within.

  Unloverlike.

  To punch through to the brain beyond, seeking the soup of his life.

  It is my dance, and so I lead. To me it is neither macabre nor lacking

  in grace, but is instead ineffably beautiful; the means by which I

  survive.

  He dances, does the Weequay, like all the others dance, attempting to

  escape as I give him leave to try, for the dance must be quickened so

  the soup is sweeter. But even dancing, he is trapped, wholly unable to

  break free. And he knows, is afraid; whimpers and hisses and rattles

  within his throat. Makes no further sound with his mouth, in his

  throat, but only with --and in--his eyes. Screaming. Knowing.

  Dying. And all of it done in silence.

  --heat-In Mos Eisley, incandescent, purely immolation. But not so hot

  to me as to scald my skin, or bake my bones; the heat is of the soup, of

  the essence, of the body, regardless of entity.

  He sags. Is done. Is discarded near the kitchens, where he is sure to

  be found.

  Proboscii quiver as, sated, they coil themselves, unbidden, back into

  cheek-pockets. Upon my lips is a trace of sugared sweetness. He has

  eaten before the dance, some folly of appetite, a childish desire for

  plundered food. But none made by another's hands can surpass the

  sweetest flavor of what the brain excretes.

  I shoot the cuffs beneath my sleeves, smooth my jacket into neatness.

  There will be, in Jabba's palace, a surfeit of soup. "A nzati" they

  will whisper. "Anzat, of the Anzati."

  It was a personal thing, this story, to begin, innocent of intent beyond

  a wholly discriminating appetite. A need for soup it was--without it I

  expire--but also a need for his soup, his soup specifically, the soup of

  all soups: the essence of a humanoid who knows fear but absolves himself

  of it; who faces it, defeats it, does not laugh in its face so much as

  prove himself fragile in flesh but strong in spirit. And who, by

  overcoming it, manufactures the soup of all soups, sweet and hot and

  pure.

  Han Solo's soup.

  A professional thing, this story, of betrayal and perfidy.

  Jabba wanted him caught. The Hutt cared little for soup; if he knew of

  it, he never said. Likely, with his sources, his resources, he did

  know; but it mattered not in the least. He knew I was inviolable,

  because I am I, and best. And for the best, the best.

  Han Solo's soup-Mine, when captured. Mine to take, to drink.

  Mine to sip, to savor: hot, and sweet, and pure.

  Until Jabba stole it from me. Until I was betrayed.

  By Fett. By Calrissian. By Jabba the Hutt himself, goading all of

  them. Buying all of them.

  Buying me, as well. Promising singularity to the best of the' best,

  forever and ever, amen: Dannik Jerriko, assassin's assassin.

  For this, Jabba will die. And the others as well: three in Mos Eisley;

  more yet, like the Weequay, in Jabba's palace.

  Han Solo, also. And his woman, royal-bred. And the boy of worthless

  pedigree, yet who promises, unaccountably, to be strong in what was

  Kenobi's power.

  It is a power I have known as long as I have lived, and that longer than

  most; we Anzati know many of the secrets of the multiplicity of

  universes, of galaxies, of worlds. Such power as the boy's will be, of

  Kenobi's, is Vader's power also, and the Emperor's.

  But twisted in the latter, by them, none of it now of Kenobi, of those

  who wereJedi Knights. Will they twist the boy's as well?

  Perhaps. No one alive has withstood the Emperor, or Darth Vader.

  Or Jabba the Hutt.

  But none of them know me, save Jabba. They only know of me, of my kind,

  the lurid tales told. And it is this I will use: ignorance, and rumor.

  Let them say what they will. This time, I will use it. Its power is

  pervasive.

  In the palace, which once was a monastery--pure in its existence until

  polluted first by raiders and later by Jabba himself--there are many for

  me to peruse, consider, pursue--even to stalk as the stories claim, a

  manner heretofore disdained but now apropos--and a plethora of races, of

  species, of soup. From myriad nations, a plenitude of planets. But

  here nothing matters save the master all of them serve; they are as

  nothing to him, to me, and as nothing they shall die.

  Except to make a point.

  Jabba, be afraid. Even you may die.

  And the essence of your soup, one may hope, may pray, shall be as rich

  in its substance as is your flesh in corpulence.

  I have been what I am: perfectionist in my work. All have died.

  All. None left to tell the tale.

  But now the tale is necessary, and the telling of it. The Weequay, dead

  of unknown means, will cause consternation, but no certainty. There is a

  need now for "error"; for what they will take as error. A being left

  alive. To describe, in infinite horror, of inescapable terror, what

  monster it was who nearly took its life.

  Thus it is time for me to depart the closet of rumor we Anzati too often

  inhabit.

  There are levels of fear as there is a pecking order of entities within

  Jabba's palace. To strike at the Hutt I must strike first at the

  others, beings whose presence serves much, or very little, but

  nonetheless the absence thereof makes itself felt in all the small and

  large ways, the mild annoyances or the doubt, the anger, the abrupt

  concern for one's safety. I know all of the levels, as I know how to

  use them.

  First, those in Mos Eisley, already reported as dead; but Jabba will

  assume it is of no consequence---or small consequence--until convinced

  otherwise.

  Next, the Weequay. Jabba will not miss him. But others will.

  And once enough of them die, enough of the small people, even the elect

  might be led into true fear.

  A female, now. The dancing girl with head-tails, the Twi'lek, is

  already dead, thrown down as appetizer to Jabba's hungry rancor, but

  there are other females.

  And so I seek one out.

  She is what many entities, Jabba among them, consider beautiful: lush,

  plump in flesh, a bounty of breasts, the ponderous movements of a body

  in motion.

  Hands waving, six breasts swinging, buttocks never still. But she is

  stilled, at last, when the revels, ended, devolve into stupor. The

  woman, an Askajian rothey who bear multiple young at one whelping leaves

  the audience cha
mber to seek her rest through the remains of the night

  until the unyielding sun of Tatooine stands high overhead once again.

  But rest she will not have. Sleep she will not know.

  And it is in the servants' quarter, where one assumes one is safe, that

  I pursue the assignation.

  As she walks from the audience chamber, the high, proud step fades into

  weariness, into scuffing and graceless relief that she may at last seek

  her bed. She is dulled by the hour, and careless; that she should take

  care never suggests itself to her, for this is Jabba's palace, protected

  by all the dregs of the uncounted universes.

  And so it is nothing to me to allow her to walk past me, unseeing, and

  into the antechamber, unknowing, intent upon release; and so it is as

  nothing that I follow, step behind her, whisper an endearment in her

  native tongue.

  She whirls, multiple breasts wobbling. There is delight at first in her

  eyes; was she then expecting someone?.

  But it is I, not he, not she, not it; delight shapechanges to fear.