A low-pitched grinding noise came from the quay on the table. The two Weequays looked at each other, then back down at the white sphere. “It is certain,” said the tinny voice.
The secretary bent low over the device. “Will I die?” he asked quietly.
“Without a doubt,” the quay responded instantly.
“Weequay,” said the president, “you waste time. Of course you will die. All who live will die someday. Be silent, and I will gather the information. O Great God Quay, what weapon are we looking for? Is it a blaster?”
“Don’t count on it,” said the white ball.
“A rifle of some sort, then?”
“My reply is no.”
The Weequay president tossed his braided topknot over his left shoulder. “Is it any sort of projectile weapon?”
“My reply is no.”
“A knife, then? Is the murderer’s weapon a knife?”
The secretary pounded the table with a fist. “There were no knife wounds on Ak-Buz,” he said.
“A rope or silken cord?” asked the president.
The secretary looked even more impatient. “No signs of strangulation. We would have seen them.”
The mystery was too complex for the limited Weequay minds. “All these deaths,” said the president.
The secretary’s eyes opened wider. “Different methods. Why?”
“And who?” said the president. He rubbed his chin for a few seconds, then put his hands flat on the table, on either side of the sacred quay. “O Great God Quay, you have told us there will be at least another death. Will it too happen by a different method?”
“Outlook good” was all the device had to say.
“Not blaster,” said the secretary thoughtfully. “Not rifle. Not knife. Not rope. Is it a poison gas?”
“My reply is no,” said the Great God Quay.
“Is it an injection of deadly drugs?”
The quay made a sound like the grinding of teeth. “Very doubtful.”
“Is it tiny little off-world creatures that infest the body and kill the host horribly at a later date, giving the killer time to establish an alibi elsewhere?”
There was a long pause from the quay, as if it were digesting this strange possibility. “My sources say no.”
Outside, the hot sun of Tatooine climbed higher in the sky. It was approaching noon. Barada was at work in his shop, overseeing the construction and installation of six new rocker-panel cotter pins for the AE-35 unit. Word had come down from the Hutt himself that the sail barge would be setting forth later that day. With Ak-Buz now greeting his ancestors in his race’s version of heaven, Barada assumed he himself would have to captain the huge craft. He’d done it before, when Ak-Buz had shown up for duty less than sober.
• • •
Meanwhile, the Weequays labored mightily to get some useful information from the quay. It was simply a matter of asking the right questions. If the Weequays stumbled on the correct weapon and then the true identity of the murderer, the Great God Quay would let them know they’d succeeded at last. However, time slipped by as they guessed one thing after another, from every kind of blunt object to a pile of straw near the scrap heap. “Ak-Buz could have been smothered in the straw,” the president insisted. “It’s possible.”
“And you accuse me of wasting time,” said the secretary scornfully. “O Great God Quay, was the barge captain drowned in a bucket of water?”
“Don’t count on it.” If nothing else, Quay had more patience than the average primitive deity.
“Does the weapon begin with the letter A?” asked the president.
The other Weequay glared furiously. “Now we’ll be here all afternoon. What a foolish way to—”
“My reply is no,” said the god-ball.
“The letter B?” asked the president.
“You’re never going to learn anything that way,” said the secretary. “I call for new elections—”
“It is decidedly so.” Both Weequays stared at the white plastic sphere.
“The letter B?” said the secretary.
“B for … what?” said the president. “Blaster? No, we asked that. Bantha? Will the murderer kill the next victim with a bantha?”
There was tense silence in the barracks. Then the quay replied, “Cannot predict now.”
The president took a deep breath and let it out again. “Will the murderer kill the next victim with a bantha?”
This time the quay didn’t hesitate. “My reply is no.”
The Weequays went on through the alphabet, trying every object and technique they could think of. At last, as three more armed Weequays entered the barracks, the secretary asked, “Bomb? Is it a bomb? On the sail barge?”
“Signs point to yes,” said the mechanical voice.
All five Weequays gasped. “O Great God Quay,” said the president hoarsely, “we, your true believers, thank you! We will use the gift of your prophecy to protect your servants, and we praise your wisdom and power.”
One of the newly arrived Weequays came to the table. “What does this mean?” he demanded.
“Ak-Buz dead,” said the secretary.
“Bomb aboard the sail barge,” said the president.
“We must find it,” said the third Weequay.
“We must disarm it,” said a fourth.
“We must punish … who?” asked the fifth.
The secretary looked at the president. “Does the murderer’s name begin with the letter A?” he said to the quay. The secretary didn’t say anything; he just squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his aching forehead. It was going to be a very long day.
Barada wouldn’t let his workmen quit for the midday meal until the AE-35 unit had been repaired and replaced in the sail barge. It wasn’t a difficult job, but Barada was an extremely exacting supervisor. He had to be. If there were the slightest malfunction, if any mechanical breakdown interrupted the Hutt’s pleasure cruise, Barada himself would be the next corpse to be found on the scrap heap. He didn’t intend for that to happen.
He checked the fittings and connections carefully, then slid the AE-35 hatch cover into place and slapped it closed. “Good,” he said. He wiped his perspiring brow with one hand. “Anything else?”
Mal Hyb, Barada’s capable human assistant, glanced at a datapad in her hand. “All the diagnostic tests turned up green,” she said.
The mechanic nodded. “Nothing more we can do now, I guess. All right, let’s take an hour for lunch. We’ll check out the barge again later, before the Hutt gets here.”
Mal Hyb frowned. She was recognized in the workshop for her skill with a welding torch. Although she was two feet shorter than Barada, and compactly built, she was also a good ally in a brawl. Her fighting ability always surprised her opponents—once. “More tests?” she asked.
Barada grunted. “You haven’t worked for the Hutt as long as I have. If I could make this crew do it, I’d be running diagnostics all day and all night. I’ve seen the Hutt execute a crewman because a shutter squeaked.”
Mal Hyb shook her head and walked away. Barada heard a sound, turned, and saw a party of five Weequays enter the barge’s hangar. He wasn’t pleased.
The Weequays approached him. One of them gestured toward the sail barge.
“You want to go aboard?” said Barada. “Why? You still trying to figure out who killed Ak-Buz?”
The Weequay spokesman nodded.
“Not a chance,” said Barada. “We’ve got the barge all tuned up and I don’t want you leather-faced bullies wrecking it.”
A second Weequay held out a paper sack. Barada took it, opened it, and looked inside. “Beignets,” he said, surprised. “Porcellus’s beignets?”
Another Weequay nod.
“All right, I guess,” said the mechanic. “You’ve got to do your job, too. Just don’t touch anything.”
The five Weequays formed up in single file and boarded the sail barge. Barada sat down stiffly on the concrete and took the first beignet from
the bag.
• • •
The Weequays poked around the sail barge, not entirely sure what they were looking for. A bomb, of course, but what kind of bomb was it? How big? And where? There were a million places to hide one.
The Weequay president carried the quay with him, and murmured, “Does the murderer’s name begin with the letter V? Vader? Valarian? Venti Paz?”
The quay began to stammer. “W—”
“Yes?” the Weequay prompted.
“W—”
“O Great God Quay, what are you trying to tell us?” The Weequay president rapped the oracle ball with an astonishing lack of piety. “ ‘W.’ Wookiee? Is that it? The Wookiee is the assassin?”
“I don’t think that’s possible,” said the secretary.
“W—” said the quay.
“Weequay?” asked the president. “It cannot be! A Weequay, guilty of murder?”
“W—”
A third Weequay listened to the exchange. “What is wrong here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said the president. “The Great God Quay is having some trouble communicating.”
“W—”
“Whiphid?” asked the secretary.
“Without a doubt,” said the plastic ball at last.
“Ah,” said the president. “The mystery is solved. The Whiphid planted the bomb on board.”
The five Weequays nodded, satisfied at last to know the truth. They stood in Jabba’s privacy lounge, shifting their force pikes from one hand to the other. The president held the now-silent quay.
“Of course,” said the secretary slowly, “there is a bomb. And we will also be on board when it detonates. We still must search for it.”
“Search for it!” cried one of the others.
“Yes,” said the president. “You four search the barge. I will consult the Great God Quay.”
Four of the Weequays began a frantic hunt for the hidden explosive. They threw open cabinets, upset furniture, damaged the bulkheads looking for secret panels and compartments. Meanwhile, the president sat at a table with the prophecy sphere and said, “Is the bomb under the purple cushion?”
“Very doubtful.”
“Is the bomb under the gold cushion?”
“Don’t count on it.”
“Is the bomb hidden in the pile of silks?” The president realized that he wasn’t making very good progress, but he didn’t know what else to do. He was a good, honest, forthright Weequay, but he had Weequay limitations, after all.
An hour later, the Hutt’s guests and servants began to arrive, to prepare the sail barge for the day’s excursion. Some of them gave the Weequays suspicious glances, but as the Weequays served as security guards on the barge, they were allowed to continue their search unhindered.
“Try to blend in,” the president whispered to his fellows. They were still tearing the barge apart from stern to bow, but now they tried to seem casual and unworried. The truth was that as the minutes passed, it became ever more likely that the bomb would go off and blow them all into constituent atoms. Even the Weequays understood that.
The order was given to cast off, and there had not yet been any evidence of the hidden threat. The party guests were enjoying themselves, eating the Hutt’s food and drinking the Hutt’s liquor, and generally making the search even more difficult. The Weequay president found himself staring into the malevolent three eyes of Ree-Yees, the Gran. The president turned back to the quay and asked, “Is the bomb in the control cockpit?”
Maddeningly, the white ball said, “Reply hazy. Try again.”
The Weequay wanted to throw the device against the wall in frustration, but it would have attracted unwanted attention, and the Great God Quay would probably have exacted some horrible punishment as well. The president watched a gold-colored protocol droid in conversation with an R2 model that was serving drinks.
“Mr. President,” a low voice murmured.
The Weequay turned. His four fellows stood nearby. One held something covered with a square of green satin.
“The … item?” whispered the president.
The other four Weequays nodded. The president lifted a corner of the satin material and saw a thermal detonator. “We must disarm it. Secretly. Silently.”
The band tootled its horrible music. The guests milled about, unaware of the danger in their midst. Meanwhile, the five Weequays formed a tight huddle and worked feverishly to dismantle the detonator. The proper tools were available on the sail barge, of course, but the problem was that two of the Weequays disagreed on the disarming technique.
“Pull that circuit patch now,” said the secretary.
“You’ll kill us all,” said the president. “Break the green and yellow connections. Then pull the circuit patch.”
“There is no green connection,” insisted the secretary. “There’s a yellow one and a gray one.”
“The problem is with your eyes,” said the president.
“Hurry!” said one of the others.
“It is my responsibility,” said the president. He took the detonator and the tools. He broke first the green connector, then the yellow connector, and then yanked out the circuit patch.
The Weequays said nothing. They hadn’t realized that none of them had even breathed for nearly a minute.
“You could have blown us to bits,” the secretary accused. “You should have consulted the Great God Quay before you acted.”
“I forgot,” said the president.
“Yet the bomb is dead!” said one of the others.
“We are victorious!” said another.
A loud, clear voice came from beyond the bulkhead. “Jabba, this is your last chance! Free us or die!”
The Hutt responded with something in its own language.
“What is happening?” asked a Weequay.
The president turned around quickly. Panic and confusion were taking over the sail barge. A human slave girl was strangling the great Jabba with her own chains. There was the sound of shots being fired from outside. One of the Weequays opened a shutter to peer out, and was grabbed and pulled from the vessel, thrown down to the desert floor below.
Clutching his force pike, the president led the remaining Weequays toward what was now clearly a battle. He jabbed upward with the pike, leading the others on deck. The president arrived to see the black-clad human prisoner using a lightsaber to clear the deck of Weequay guards and other defenders. “Get the gun!” the human cried to the slave girl. “Point it at the deck!”
“For the Great God Quay,” murmured the president softly. Then he advanced. At least they had disarmed the bomb, so the sail barge would be safe.
Before he could attack, the human with the lightsaber put an arm around the slave girl, clutched a heavy rope, and kicked the firing mechanism of the deck gun. Then he and the girl swung from the sail barge to a small repulsor skiff hovering over the dreadful Great Pit of Carkoon, where the Sarlacc dwelt.
The president watched them escape. Around him the sail barge was burning and bursting into ruins, but unfortunately Weequays do not have enough imagination to fear death, either. The president calmly clung to a railing as another tremendous explosion ripped the sail barge to pieces.
The last thing he saw was the glorious sight of the white ball of the quay hurled into the air—the Great God Quay ascending to heaven.
A Bad Feeling: The Tale of EV-9D9
Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens
Like some great beast lurching toward destruction, Cloud City shuddered, tilted, and began to fall.
Lando Calrissian heard the rising wail of the Ugnaughts and the others of his domain who looked to him for safety and stability, and his heart fell with his dying city. His blaster twisted from his hand as he leaped for a pillar, as if a good grip might save him from that final descent through Bespin’s clouds. The weapon skittered along the wildly angled decking, hit the rimguard, then bounced over its curving lip and vanished into the rush of Tibanna-laden clouds tha
t swirled by. Alarms shrieked. The city pitched again, metal groaning. Calrissian felt his grip weaken. The clouds reached out for him with sinuous, fluttering tendrils. He closed his eyes in the force of the driving wind. And he fell, too.
Lobot caught him.
Calrissian felt sudden, welcome pain as enhanced fingers dug into his shoulder beneath his cloak, holding him in place as securely as if he had been welded to the deck. He turned to see Lobot’s cranial attachments flickering as they probed all the communications channels now in use. The city lurched again, but this time the angle of its fall decreased. The cloud streamers slowed as the howl of the wind diminished.
“Backups online, sir!” The reedy voice was Sarl Random’s—the cheeks of her ghost-white face splotched by red patches of fear, her ill-fitting uniform bunched up and twisted from the struggle she had just been through, stained with hydraulic fluid, reeking of scorched circuitry. She stumbled over to Calrissian under Lobot’s watchful eyes. She held a security display pad in her trembling hands. “She must have planted charges by the main repulsorlift generators.”
Even now, Calrissian still couldn’t believe the nature of the intellect they faced. It was bad enough that the prisoner had circumvented all the failsafes of the Security Tower, but the generators that kept this facility aloft were supposed to be inviolable. Too many lives depended upon them. “She wanted to destroy the entire city?”
Lobot angled his head at Random. She read the data he generated on her pad. “Not all the generators were targeted, sir.” Her voice could not hide her puzzlement. “A diversion?”
Calrissian tugged his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. A diversion he could understand. Misdirection. Like noisily knocking over a pile of betting chits to disguise the skillful pass that brought a winning gambling tab to the top of the deck.
“Where’s she headed?” Calrissian asked. The decking beneath him was almost at a normal angle now, thrumming at the edge of perception with the regular hum of the generators and the constant shifting of the control surfaces that kept the floating city in trim.
But Sarl Random had no answer for him. She had only been acting security chief for a single shift—ever since she had brought him the evidence that revealed what his real security chief actually was. In another mining colony, she might have been tossed over the rimguard herself. But she was too inexperienced to know how dangerous it could be to expose corruption in a facility so small it was a law unto itself. And she had taken her discovery to Baron-Administrator Calrissian himself—in spite of all the stories told of him on a dozen worlds—a man to whom the word “honor” still had meaning.
Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Page 24
