Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Ree-Yees secured the skin flap and snuffled in relief. With this last shipment, the detonator, he would now be able to complete his end of the bargain. In return, the Empire would wipe that triple-blasted murder rap off Ree-Yees’s record and he could go home to Kinyen again—

  No! Too risky to think about that now! Better to keep playing Jabba’s fool, despised and mocked, until the deed was done. Better to stay safely drunk, cut off from the visions which hovered, like half-glimpsed memories, at the corners of his eyes … fields of goatgrass glistening in the sun, oh yes … and the rut-scent of females, their velvet flanks, their breasts like tripled jewels—

  No. Better to stay drunk. Better to wait.

  The frog-dog, having gulped down the last of the slops, turned one eye speculatively on Ree-Yees, as if wondering how he would taste. Ree-Yees stepped aside just in time to avoid another flick of the prehensile tongue.

  Ree-Yees slugged the creature on the side of the head. “Stupid two-eyed maggot fish! It’s a good thing I don’t need you anymore!”

  The bubo cowered, its expression one of reproachful innocence. Once he’d turned to head back toward the palace, it hissed something extremely rude-sounding and almost intelligible at him.

  Muttering under his breath, Ree-Yees shuffled down the hall toward Jabba’s audience chamber. The Gamorrean on guard rumbled forward, force pike raised and red-rimmed eyes glinting. His tusks gleamed wetly in the dim light. Ree-Yees had fleeced him easily at four-cubes last night and the Gamorrean hadn’t even realized he was being cheated.

  “Outta my way, pig-slime!”

  The Gamorrean poked Ree-Yees’s chest with the tip of his ax. “Where you go? What you do?”

  The slightest touch of the force pike stung, even through Ree-Yees’s leather jerkin. “Get that crotting thing away from me!”

  “Urghh!”

  “So you say, spawn of Nilgarian worm! But there’s gonna be some changes around here real soon. Jabba won’t always—”

  “Jabba-Jabba urghh-phth!”

  Just then, a tall figure separated itself from the shadowy interior and hurried toward them. It was that interfering Quarren, Tessek.

  Tessek’s mouth tentacles writhed in agitation. “What’sss going on?”

  “Jabba-no-jabba urk-urk!” squealed the guard, waving his force pike wildly.

  “A minor misssunderssstanding, sssoon remedied.” With one hand, Tessek herded Ree-Yees down the tunnel, with the other he gestured to the guard. “Remain here at your possst and sssay nothing of thisss to anyone!”

  Ree-Yees stumbled along, propelled by Tessek’s grip. By the time they were out of earshot of the guard, the Quarren had regained control of his speaking apparatus.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Do you want Jabba to suspect—You’re drunk again, aren’t you? Give me that tankard!”

  Ree-Yees jerked away. “None of your stinking business—and keep your hands off what’s mine. You aren’t the only one—” With an effort, he managed to shut himself up. Tessek had the right idea, keeping the Gamorrean from running to Jabba. Tessek, with all his schemes, was too wily, too close to guessing what Ree-Yees was really up to. With Doellin’s own luck, he wouldn’t need Tessek much longer, either.

  “Now hurry on back,” Tessek said smoothly. “Some new bounty hunter has come for the reward on the Wookiee and you won’t want to miss the fun.”

  Snuffling, Ree-Yees hurried off to the audience chamber.

  That night, Jabba ordered a hidden watch set on the audience hall and an alarm for his prized wall possession, the carbonite-frozen Corellian smuggler. What a bother, Ree-Yees thought, but something had aroused Jabba’s suspicions even more than usual. At last Ree-Yees was able to slip away, refill his gin tankard, and make his way along the darkened corridor to the kitchen.

  Ree-Yees paused beneath the ancient wooden beams of the doorway and peered in, but saw no sign that anyone was present.

  Phlegmin, that odious little wart of a scullion, had been more than happy to take his winnings in exchange for setting aside the marked shipments of goatgrass, never dreaming what lay hidden within them. He probably thought Ree-Yees was indulging in nostalgic gluttony. It was just the sort of thing Phlegmin himself would do when he wasn’t complaining how badly treated he was or bragging how famous he’d be once he got off this dustball planet. Ree-Yees guessed that Phlegmin did more than divert a few crates of vegetables; once he’d spied the kitchen boy adding something to the tank of Jabba’s favorite live appetizers. Ree-Yees watched him even more closely when the box of goatgrass containing the bomb casing had gone missing. Luckily, no alarm followed, only a particularly successful casserole, which seemed to temporarily allay Jabba’s suspicions of the chef.

  “Phlegmin?” Ree-Yees called. “Old mucus-face?”

  The faint scuffle of footsteps answered him, then a muffled cry. Scorch the two-eyes then, he’d find the shipment on his own. He hurried into the receiving area. Here the walls were lined with boxes of pickled meats, crates of dried fruits and beetles, casks of wine, jars of preserved tortoise dung, honeyed oil, caviar, and radioactive potassium salts—all the delicacies the Hutt’s appetite required. He began looking around, lifting the lids of packing crates, peering down aisles of stacked cartons and around giant barrels.

  Ree-Yees called out once more, but once again there was no response.

  Suddenly he spotted a box of about the right size, lying on its side behind a vat of fermented sandmaggot eggs. On second glance, he saw that it was splintered open, its silvery green contents spilled across the stone floor. Phlegmin was sprawled on the floor beside the box. In his years at Jabba’s palace, Ree-Yees had seen enough dead bodies to know one instantly, even if it were human. No mere sleep could produce such a graceless tangle.

  Porcellus the cook was hunched over the body, wringing his hands. His head jerked up, his eyes bulged, and his hair—what there was of it—stood out in all directions.

  “I had nothing to do with it!” he yelped.

  Ignoring the hysterical screams of the cook, Ree-Yees threw himself down beside the box and raked his fingers through the silky goatgrass. He picked up the shattered box and shook it upside down, but it was no use.

  The vital detonation link, the last component, was not there.

  Ree-Yees bleated in terror. Whoever killed that pathetic excuse for a scullion must have taken the detonation link—knew what it was—

  But wait! He couldn’t know the target was Jabba’s sail barge—or who had the rest of the bomb—

  All was not lost, if he could act quickly. Once the body was discovered, Jabba would launch an investigation, no matter that this Phlegmin had been an insignificant and easily replaceable midge-brain. No one was allowed to die within the palace except those the Hutt himself ordered killed. But of late there had been strange goings-on in the back passageways—

  “Urghh!” came a bellow from the doorway, even less articulate than usual for a Gamorrean.

  “I didn’t do it!” the cook screamed again.

  Ree-Yees was so badly startled he would have fallen if he were not already on his knees. All three of his eyes froze on the stocky figure in the doorway—Gartogg.

  Doellin’s triple teats! What a stroke of luck! This particular Gamorrean was so stupid he couldn’t even learn to play Snot, let alone realize when he was being cheated.

  “Urggh-snuffle-snort?”

  Ree-Yees scrambled to his feet and shoved the cook aside. “You’re just in time! I found him—like this—down the hall—near the tunnel to Ephant Mon’s quarters! I brought him here to—to—to perform resus—suspiration!”

  “Hunh?”

  “You know—emergency culinary resuspiration! The smell of food so—so—so ripe it can bring the dead back to life! An ancient art, one I learned from my great-uncle, Swee-beeps. We call it—er—garbage inhalation of the last resort. But alas”—Ree-Yees’s eyestalks drooped mournfully—“I was too late.” He sighed loudly.

  G
artogg shuffled over to the body, attempted to squat, gave it up, tilted his body from the hips at an angle Ree-Yees would have sworn was anatomically impossible, and sniffed.

  “So you see,” Ree-Yees rushed on, “someone must take over now. Someone with authority. To investigate, put together clues, solve this crime. Jabba will be impressed—and grateful.”

  “Snort-snuffle-snuffle!” The Gamorrean picked up the scullion by one ankle and dangled the body in front of his snout. Ree-Yees glanced from Gartogg’s tusked face to Phlegmin’s, with its beaklike nose congested with blood. Once he was home on Kinyen, he’d never have to look at another two-eyes again.

  Gartogg slung the body over his massive shoulders and ambled away, snorting unintelligibly.

  “Don’t forget!” Ree-Yees yelled after him. “I found him near Ephant Mon’s quarters!”

  Once the guard had gone, Ree-Yees gulped down the entire contents of his tankard, pausing only when forced to breathe. Burning spread from his first stomach along every fiber of his body. His eyestalks quivered, his knees threatened to collapse, and then a blessed numbness settled over him. A strange roaring sound filled his skull. In it, he could almost make out voices, one particular voice, the grating rumble that was Jabba’s. He had heard it before, a nightmarish memory, on the ragged edge of sleep.

  The cook had disappeared, the first sensible thing he’d done. As Ree-Yees stumbled from the kitchen, he hardly noticed which way he was headed through the grime-covered tunnels.

  But where was that cursed detonation link? The passageway wound downward, often turning, until Ree-Yees began to realize it was leading him not to his own chamber nor back to Jabba’s audience hall, but deeper and deeper into the labyrinth beneath the palace.

  Ree-Yees halted at an unfamiliar branching, his breath gurgling in his throat, his head spinning. His eyestalks swiveled frantically. Here, far from the inhabited upper regions, patches of luminescent slime dripped from the wet stone walls. The air smelled dank and faintly metallic.

  Which way? Cursing in two languages, Ree-Yees shambled off down the next passageway, which seemed to be headed in the right direction. Down he went, stumbling through pools of acrid-smelling water, grazing his elbows on the rough stone walls. Images flashed through his mind like drunken dreams. In his memory, he felt a pressure deep in his middle, hard like metal, caught a glimpse of sudden, engulfing flame. Suddenly a wall of fire exploded in front of him, flames leaped out at him, seized him …

  He shook his head. The visions kept coming, stronger and brighter with every step …

  The flames rose up, more vivid and terrifying than before. His skin crisped in their blazing heat, his eyeballs sizzled on their stalks and burst—

  He found himself looking down on a vast, whitened plain, blown with snow and glittering ice particles, saw crevasses of frozen blue and great war machines ponderously advancing …

  He blinked, and the picture shifted to the lush chaos of a swamp, a battered X-wing fighter sinking beneath the ooze, trees and vines a tangle of green, flowers like bits of brightness, winged lizards screeching …

  The image gave way suddenly to that of a vast chamber lined with shelves and strange machines, and on those shelves, glass domes where disembodied brains pulsated in an eerie pink light …

  Then his center eye cleared and Ree-Yees realized he was actually standing in the chamber of the brains. B’omarr monks. The room was quiet, dimly lit except for the display lights and the rosy glow from the containers. His heart, which had taken a sudden lurch with the vision of the flames, slowed once more. He ran his narrow tongue over his lips.

  The brains were nothing to fear, he told himself, relics of those degenerate two-eyed monks who’d hollowed out these tunnels centuries before Jabba discovered them. Their naked brains couldn’t do anything except sit there, each in its own glass prison, motionless except for their slow pulsation.

  A whisper, cloth over stone, made Ree-Yees spin around. A figure in a voluminous robe glided from the shadows and halted in the center of the room. Ree-Yees could make out nothing of its form, not even its species, nor whether it was male or female, so completely did the hood conceal its features. As he gaped at it, the figure raised one arm. The sleeve fell back, revealing a humanoid hand, skeletally thin, the pale skin stretched over grotesquely deformed knuckles.

  A voice issued from the secret darkness beneath the hood. “The fire is but a warning,” it rasped. “Take heed and tell your vile master to leave this place forever.”

  Then the figure disappeared.

  Ree-Yees’s eyestalks quivered. He bleated in surprise, but quickly recovered himself. A warning, was it? Or an omen? A promise of things to come?

  He didn’t understand the other images, but the firestorm—it had seemed so real. What did it mean?

  Elation surged through Ree-Yees’s belly. Doellin’s own luck was with him. He would succeed, it had been foreseen! The loss of the detonation link would prove but a minor setback. Jabba would perish in a blast of cleansing fire and his repulsive two-eyed crew with him. Imperial Prefect Talmont would clear Ree-Yees’s way to go home to Kinyen.

  Belching in happiness, Ree-Yees hurried from the chamber of brains and somehow found his way back, ascending to the familiar levels. He was en route to his own quarters to savor his success when another Gamorrean guard bustled past him, weapons drawn.

  “Hoy!” said Ree-Yees. “How about a nice game of Rumble-pins?”

  “Someone try steal Jabba pretty-thing!” the guard bellowed. He was more articulate than the hapless Gartogg. “You come!”

  Ree-Yees hurried after the Gamorrean. With his mission assured, he could relax and enjoy himself. Perhaps Jabba would feed the thief to the rancor—that was always good for a few bets on the side.

  Over the next day a heady certainty stayed with Ree-Yees through the discovery of the bounty hunter’s true identity. The girl who took Oola’s place was as repellent a two-eyes as he’d ever seen, but what did that matter? He wouldn’t have to look at her for too much longer. Not even Ephant Mon’s blustering could rouse Ree-Yees, and Tessek was looking worried about something.

  From his accustomed place in the audience hall, Ree-Yees watched the antics of the young Jedi. The tussle with the rancor was particularly amusing, although Ree-Yees had to pay out a pocketful of credits in lost wagers. No matter, he’d win it back, for Malakili, the rancor keeper, would be distraught over the loss of his pet for months to come and would make an easy mark.

  “You should have bargained, Jabba,” the young Jedi said as he was being led away. What kind, of maggot-brained threat was that? Not even a curse, “May a thousand Tusken sand-grubs gnaw your entrails from within!” Or an excuse, “Sorry, I’m allergic to rancor dander.” Or something innovative like, “Congratulations, for that correct answer, you have won a complete set of Imperial Encyclopedias!” Not that it would do much good in this case, although Jabba had been known to pardon those who particularly amused him, as Ree-Yees well knew.

  Besides, Jabba was destined to die at Ree-Yees’s hand. That was the promise of the monks’ weird visions. And since the secret bomb was not yet complete, it was perfectly safe to go out on the sail barge to enjoy the spectacle of the executions. Ree-Yees particularly liked hearing the screams which issued from the Great Pit of Carkoon as the Sarlacc’s victims felt the first excruciating effects of its digestive juices. Sometimes Ree-Yees and Barada wagered on how long it would take for the screaming to stop—either because the victim’s vocal cords were eroded away or the Sarlacc had stung him insensible, no one could be sure.

  The day was oven-hot and dry, like all days on Tatooine. Ree-Yees took his station beside Jabba, not so near as to arouse Tessek, but near enough to appear devoted. He let his attention wander, for one execution was much like another. One side eye rested on the loathsome yellow sands, the other on the equally loathsome dancing girl, now crumpled in a heap at the foot of Jabba’s sled. When the new R2 droid wheeled about, serving drinks, Ree-Y
ees accepted a pink and green Bantha Blaster. It fizzed all the way down. An instant later, his teeth rattled and his eyestalks felt as if they were on fire. He followed it up with a Wookiee-Wango, made with Sullustan gin and stirred, not shaken.

  By Doellin’s triple teats, that R2 unit could mix drinks! Ree-Yees wondered if there were some way to take the droid with him back to Kinyen.

  A ruckus from the prison barge jarred him alert. Ree-Yees stumbled to the railing and peered out. Someone was laying about with a lightsaber and everyone was shouting at once. The two new droids scrambled out of their programmed patterns. Ree-Yees grabbed a Rummy Tonic from the R2 before it rolled out of sight.

  The deck boiled with frantic action. Blast pistols and lasers went off in all directions. Gamorrean guards ran about, squealing, while Jabba bellowed out orders. A Weequay pushed past Ree-Yees, spilling his drink, and rushed to the side of the barge.

  Ree-Yees glanced around, searching for the safest hiding place. He decided, after a moment’s hesitation and the sight of several of Jabba’s defenders tumbling into the Sarlacc’s maw, to remain right where he was, safe behind Jabba’s repulsor sled. Tessek, he noticed, had already disappeared, abandoning Jabba to save his own hide. That bantha-brain—did he think Jabba wouldn’t notice?

  Ree-Yees tossed his empty glass aside, then tried to think how a loyal retainer, defending his master, might act. Here his imagination failed him.