Beware the Power of the Dark Side!

by Tom Angleberger

  Well, it is rather foolish, but it’s not quite as bad as all that. It’s actually the two droids, three people, and one Wookiee against the castle full of evil thugs and a giant, even more evil space slug. (To be truthful, there’s also a monster in the basement, but more on that later.)

  But why do it this way? Why not swoop in with spaceships blasting, laser guns zapping, Wookiees bowcasting, proton torpedoes laying waste to everything in sight?

  No, no, no! Remember this is a rescue mission.

  The problem for Solo’s friends was how to get him out of Jabba’s lair alive.

  With the aid of the rebel fleet, they could have blown the place to bits…but that would have destroyed Han Solo as well. Carbonite is tough, but not that tough.

  The Rebellion’s ground troops could have attacked—but against Jabba’s defenses and weapons stockpiles, it would have been a bloody battle, if not a small war.

  Besides, the Rebellion’s army and fleet are desperately needed for the endless battle against the evil Empire, which even now is plotting anew to crush the Rebellion1 and bring a terrible new order to the galaxy.

  No…though Han Solo had risked his life for the Rebellion, the Rebellion could not risk its life for him.

  So it was up to his closest friends:

  the loyal and hairy Chewbacca,

  the not-always-so-loyal Lando Calrissian,

  the farm boy turned star pilot Luke Skywalker,

  and the rebel princess Leia Organa

  to come up with a better plan.

  A very risky, very dangerous, very easy-to-go-wrong, very unlikely-to-work sort of a plan.

  The sort of plan that was so unlikely to work, in fact, that C-3PO would never have agreed to be part of it.

  So he wasn’t told.

  And now, as the door slams shut behind him, it’s too late to turn back.

  AS THEIR ELECTRIC EYES instantly adjust to the darkness, what the droids see is so unsettling that even R2 gives a nervous whistle.

  Two Gamorreans—the piglike brutes that guard Jabba’s palace—lumber forward. A primitive race, the Gamorreans never would have found their way off their home planet by themselves. But once discovered, they flourished1 in any place on any planet where muscle is valued above brain and violence above wisdom.

  Even brutes such as these get bored and it has been days—a week even?—since they have been called upon to dismember one of Jabba’s guests. But now their tiny, tiny eyes glitter with excitement.

  These two droids might stir up some sort of trouble. Trouble often leads to dismemberments! So they are quite happy to welcome the droids into the palace, though of course they show their pleasure by growling and needlessly prodding the droids forward.

  “Oh, my! Oh! Oh, no!”

  C-3PO wants to stir up no trouble. He just wants to leave quickly.

  “Just you deliver Master Luke’s message and get us out of here!” he tells Artoo. But R2 knows the message isn’t for these foul brutes.

  Then something worse than a Gamorrean appears….

  It’s a Twi’lek2 named Bib Fortuna, a vile, snake-eyed busybody who believes himself to be Jabba’s second-in-command.

  “Die Wannga Wanga!” snarls Fortuna in Huttese.

  “Oh, my,” says C-3PO. “Die Wanna Wauaga! We—we bring a message to your master, Jabba the Hutt.”

  “Beep—re-de-click,” adds R2.

  “And a gift,” translates C-3PO automatically. Then he looks at R2. “A gift? What gift?”

  Fortuna also looks at R2 when the word gift is mentioned. Perhaps the gift could be for himself, he thinks.

  “Nee Jabba no badda. Me chaade su goodie…” he murmurs. The guards needn’t hear about this, he thinks. Keep it quiet and Jabba needn’t hear about it either….

  But then the small droid gets quite noisy, beeping and squawking.

  “He says that our instructions are to give it only to Jabba himself,” C-3PO explains. Fortuna is displeased to discover that this tall golden droid is not only obnoxious, but also far too loud. The Gamorreans have heard too much already and in fact are crowding in—maybe to make sure Jabba gets his gift or maybe to try to grab a piece of it for themselves. Fortuna doesn’t care to find out.

  “Nudd chaa,” he barks, waving a hand at the droids.

  He stomps off toward a low, dark archway, from which comes a noxious odor that the droids luckily cannot smell. But they have enough sensors and chem-receptors to know that they are entering a fetid hole of filth and stink.

  “Artoo, I have a bad feeling about this,” says C-3PO as the piggish guards push them forward.

  AH, YES, now we come to the point where Jabba simply must be described. I tried to avoid this a few chapters ago, but I fear there’s just no other way forward.

  But we can delay a little bit by describing some of the other creatures found in his throne room.

  There are a couple dozen of them. It’s early yet and some are still sleeping off a night of grotesque excess.

  These are some of the worst creatures from across the galaxy. They’re unwelcome on their home planets. There is an ugliness here that goes far beyond the unusual features of the different species—the tentacles, horns, fangs, and claws of Jabba’s guests have been put to use and are stained with the blood of innocents.1

  I’m sorry to say that the cruel bounty hunter Boba Fett is here, too, and who is stained with more innocent blood than he? In truth, Boba grows bored here. Having captured Han Solo, he is Jabba’s favorite now and lives in a sort of luxury, with no pleasure denied to him.

  But Boba has never sought pleasure; he seeks only the pain of others. And payment, of course. Boba is always thinking about the payment.

  Not all here are evil and ugly, though. Jabba collects beautiful women of many races to keep as playthings—or sometimes as meals. There lies one now, dressed in an uncomfortable, revealing costume and chained to Jabba’s throne. She is one of the beautiful Twi’leks—different from Bib Fortuna both in appearance and soul. Betrayed by a jealous rival long ago, her life has slipped further and further down into shame and humiliation. And now she has fallen as far as one can. She is a slave, forced to dance for Jabba’s delight.

  And next to her is Jabba’s pet—a nasty monkey lizard named Salacious Crumb, who is actually quite happy to cavort and cuddle with his master, picking up crumbs and drippings and laughing at the terrible doings in the throne room. Some of those who have come here to seek the favor of the crime lord only pretend to laugh at Jabba’s jokes, but not Crumb. His laughter is real. It comes from the heart—a tiny, black, loveless heart.

  And now, we must—yes, I’m afraid we must—follow Bib Fortuna through this unwashed throng of villainy as he approaches the greenish-brownish-yellowish blob of bloated fat that is his master: Jabba the Hutt.

  I’ve described him before as a space slug, but even the brain slugs of Nusa Sept V are not quite so bad to look at, for their mouths don’t open quite so wide and their tongues don’t slither about their faces. And of course, they don’t have eyes.

  And it’s Jabba’s eyes that are the worst. The tons of fatty flesh, the mucus-dripping nostrils crawling with parasites, the yards of scabby, seeping skin—these are all things you might find on a monster or beast if you went looking in the worst places.

  But Jabba’s eyes are not the eyes of a monster or a beast. They are sharp and alert, alive with extraordinary intelligence. These are the eyes of a genius: a mind that is clever and cunning even for a Hutt. The eyes of a predator who will outthink, not just overpower, its prey.

  And now those eyes focus on C-3PO and R2…and they narrow menacingly when Fortuna mentions the name Skywalker. Jabba has heard of Luke Skywalker before: a moisture farmer from near Tosche Station who got mixed up with Han Solo. In fact, Jabba’s been waiting for Luke to show up to try to rescue his friend. This should be some good sport! This should relieve the boredom!

  Let the game begin, he thinks. As he leans forward, laughing and drooling, a
fresh wave of mucus streams from his nose in anticipation.

  AT THE FOOT OF THE THRONE, C-3PO bows. “Good morning!”

  “Bo SHUDA!” chortles Jabba, fat rippling in all directions.

  “The message, Artoo, the message,” says C-3PO, the hope of a hasty exit still flickering in his circuits.

  A beam of light pours from one of the many lenses on R2’s dome, splitting the darkness of the throne room and creating a hologram image of Luke Skywalker dressed in black.

  The hologram begins to play:

  “Greetings, Exalted One. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight and friend to Captain Solo.”

  Many of the half-slumbering creatures in the throne room stop their sordid doings to watch. This could get interesting.

  “I know that you are powerful, mighty Jabba, and that your anger with Solo must be equally powerful. I seek an audience with Your Greatness to bargain for Solo’s life.”

  Here Jabba laughs. Yes, yes! This is exactly the sort of thing he was hoping for.

  The various thugs, smugglers, slavers, and general scum in the room laugh, too, mostly because Jabba laughed and it’s best to please him. Salacious Crumb, however, laughs with anticipation. He knows that some fun is coming.

  Meanwhile, the holo-recording of Luke continues, unaware of this reaction:

  “With your wisdom, I’m sure that we can work out an arrangement which will be mutually beneficial and enable us to avoid any unpleasant confrontation.”

  Alas! Unpleasant confrontations are Jabba’s favorite kind!

  “As a token of my goodwill, I present to you a gift: these two droids. Both are hardworking and will serve you well.”

  “What did he say?” says C-3PO with all of his alarm circuits lighting up. “That can’t be! Artoo you’re playing the wrong message!”

  But it’s far too late for anything like that. The message has been delivered and Jabba spews forth his answer in Huttese.

  “Bah! Onowanjee Huuu!”

  Even if C-3PO hadn’t known the language of the Hutts, Jabba’s meaning would have been unmistakable: “There will be no bargain!”

  “We’re doomed,” croaks C-3PO.

  “Peecha wanjee kopa. Bah noni ettraki droi SOLO incapitta,” continues Jabba merrily, meaning: “I like Captain Solo where he is. I will not give up my favorite decoration.”

  Jabba waves his arm toward a small alcove and for the first time C-3PO sees what is hanging there.

  “Artoo, look! Captain Solo! And he’s still frozen in carbonite.”

  Jabba laughs.

  A GAMORREAN GUARD pushes R2 and C-3PO out of the throne room and into the conveniently located dungeons.

  “What could possibly have come over Master Luke?” chatters C-3PO. “Is it something I did? He never expressed any unhappiness with my work. Oh! How horrid! Ohh!”

  A tentacle has reached out from a filthy cell they are passing and wrapped itself around C-3PO’s neck.

  The Gamorrean pounds it with a big fist. The tentacle jerks back into the cell, releasing C-3PO, who spins and totters awkwardly down the stone corridor after R2-D2. Normally he would have complained at length about this treatment, but a door grinds open and he is faced with fresh horrors.

  This is the palace’s boiler room where huge, ancient furnaces produce enormous heat, billows of steam, and surprisingly little power.

  Over the years this has become the center of operations for Jabba’s robotic servants—a combination charging center, workshop, junkyard, and torture chamber.

  Even as C-3PO and R2-D2 enter, a machine is slowly ripping the arms and legs off one old cyborg while a hapless gonk droid lies upside down as a torture-bot applies white hot brands to its feet. What could a droid do to deserve such treatment? Falling into Jabba’s hands is all it takes, I fear. Nothing more than what C-3PO and R2 have already done.

  “Ah, good! New acquisitions,” says a voice somehow both mechanical and cruel. It is EV-9D9,1 a tall, thin robot missing various parts that might have made her look less like a skeleton.

  “You are a protocol droid, are you not?” she asks C-3PO.

  “I am See-Threepio, human-cyborg relations and—”

  “Yes or no will do,” snaps 9D9.

  “Oh. Well…yes. I am fluent in over six million forms of communication and can readily—”

  “Splendid! We have been without an interpreter since our master got angry with our last protocol droid and disintegrated him.”

  “Disintegrated?” groans C-3PO.

  EV-9D9 waves a hand at a pile of scrap dumped near the door of a furnace.

  “Guard! This protocol droid might be useful. Fit him with a restraining bolt and take him back to His Excellency’s main audience chamber.”

  The only part of this the guard understands is “guard” and “take him back,” so he pushes C-3PO back through the gloom to the exit.

  “Artoo! Don’t leave me! Ohhh!”

  “Whurrrrr,” calls R2. Then he turns back to 9D9 and lets loose an angry barrage of beeps.

  “Blee-dee-bleep-blipp-o-bleep-whrrrrr!”

  Luckily for R2, 9D9 doesn’t understand some of the more insulting parts of this speech, but she does get the point.

  “You’re a feisty little one, but you’ll soon learn some respect. I have need for you on the master’s sail barge and I think you’ll fill in nicely.”

  A prolonged electric scream from the overturned gonk droid provides R2 with a needed reminder that for now it is indeed his mission to obey.

  SOON C-3PO FINDS himself back in the throne room, perched on the rear edge of Jabba’s great slab of a throne, where he can translate for the globular crime lord as needed. At the moment, however, all he can do is stare in disgust at the scene before him.

  Jabba, it seems, is in the mood for a party.

  Max Rebo—a pudgy blue blob who plays a keyboard with his feet—and his band are blasting out a raucous rhythmic tune.

  Meanwhile Sy Snootles—a blue-spotted, bloated amphibian with big red lips on the end of a worm-like proboscis—sings lyrics that are almost as disgusting as she is. A chorus of fallen alien angels screeches alongside her, while a short, furry beast, Joh Yowza, cavorts about the room repeating some of the worst of the lyrics at the top of his lungs.1

  All this, while offensive to good or even medium-good taste, is hardly the worst of it.

  The music is a cue to the dancers that it is time to shimmy and squirm around in a way that will be pleasing to Jabba.

  Oola, the Twi’lek slave girl, knows how drastic the punishment will be if she fails to please him. Though chained to the throne, she dances and whirls and, alas, pleases Jabba too much.

  The great slug pulls the chain with his tiny arms, desirous of dragging her into his greedy, slimy embrace.

  “Da Eitha!”

  This is too much. Her revulsion at Jabba’s bloated body is greater even than her fear. She flings herself backward.

  “Na Chuba negatorie Na!” she begs.

  Jabba growls. Pulls harder.

  “Na!” she cries. Desperate now she grabs the chain and pulls against him. “Natoota!”

  “Boscka!” roars Jabba, and now his anger is greater than his desire. This is beneath him! Playing tug-of-war with a Twi’lek dancer! How dare she!

  Jabba lets go of the chain to slam his fist down on a button on his armrest.

  There is a moment now—a split second—for Oola to realize how dearly she will pay for her refusal to cuddle with the monster.

  She hears a clank under her feet and looks down, though she knows what she will see. The floor is falling away underneath her. The button has released a trapdoor.

  And now she falls, hitting a rocky floor hard and then tumbling down a short ramp to land in a pit strewn with bones.

  She looks up…willing to do anything Jabba asks now…willing to beg for mercy….

  But there is no mercy up there. There is only the crowd of creatures, who have rushed forward to gather ar
ound a grating in the floor and peer down into the gloom to watch her fate. They are laughing, cheering, wagering.

  Gamorreans rush to push Jabba’s throne closer to the grating. And he leans forward to enjoy the show. This is much better, he thinks, much better.

  Oola hears another clank.

  At the side of the pit a door is opening. But it is not a way out.

  It is a way in. An entrance for another sort of monster.

  Where Jabba was weak and bulbous, this one is strong and sharp. All claws and teeth.

  What they have in common is greed.

  Jabba wants everything, but this monster only wants one thing. Food.

  This monster is called a rancor and it is huge and hungry and Oola looks somewhat tastier than whatever it ate the day before and that’s about all that’s in its tiny brain.

  Hungry now! Food here! Eat!

  And it does.

  In a moment, the party is swinging again. Oola’s dying screams haven’t dampened the mood at all. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Max Rebo tells the band to kick up the tempo. The remaining dancers shimmy and squirm faster. Salacious Crumb shrieks and cackles.

  Yes, everyone is much merrier….Or perhaps they’ve just been reminded of the penalty for failing to please Jabba.

  THE PARTY DRAGS ON. C-3PO wishes he could leave. More than that he wishes he’d never come.

  And then…a shot rings out!

  Sounds of a struggle!

  A familiar roar! The roar of a Wookiee!

  Could Chewbacca be here to save him, wonders C-3PO, his hope circuits flickering on.

  Oh, no! What’s this?

  Chewbacca in chains?

  Yes…it is Chewbacca: hero of the Rebellion, champion of Kashyyyk. A hairy giant, taller than a man and stronger than ten men. Loyal and true. Fearless.

  He stumbles into the throne room with a bowed head and matted fur, led by a miniscule figure clad entirely in armor. It is Boushh, the famed bounty hunter, known for his lack of height and heart.