by James Kahn
Han stepped forward to give the bloated slime pot his last thoughts, in case all else failed. “You tell that slimy piece of worm-ridden filth—”
Unfortunately, Han was facing into the desert, away from the Sail Barge. Chewie reached over and turned Solo around, so he was now properly facing the piece of worm-ridden filth he was addressing.
Han nodded, without stopping. “—worm-ridden filth he’ll get no such pleasure from us.”
Chewie made a few growly noises of general agreement.
Luke was ready. “Jabba, this is your last chance,” he shouted. “Free us or die.” He shot a quick look to Lando, who moved unobtrusively toward the back of the skiff. This was it, Lando figured—they’d just toss the guards overboard and take off under everyone’s nose.
The monsters on the barge roared with laughter. Artoo, during this commotion, rolled silently up the ramp to the side of the upper deck.
Jabba raised his hand, and his minions were quiet. “I’m sure you’re right, my young Jedi friend,” he smiled. Then he turned his thumb down. “Put him in.”
The spectators cheered, as Luke was prodded to the edge of the plank by Weequay. Luke looked up at Artoo, standing alone by the rail, and flipped the little droid a jaunty salute. At that prearranged signal, a flap slid open in Artoo’s domed head, and a projectile shot high into the air and curved in a gentle arc over the desert.
Luke jumped off the plank; another bloodthirsty cheer went up. In less than a second, though, Luke had spun around in freefall, and caught the end of the plank with his fingertips. The thin metal bent wildly from his weight, paused near to snapping, then catapulted him up. In mid-air he did a complete flip and dropped down in the middle of the plank—the spot he’d just left, only now behind the confused guards. Casually, he extended his arm to his side, palm up—and suddenly, his lightsaber, which Artoo had shot sailing toward him, dropped neatly into his open hand.
With Jedi speed, Luke ignited his sword and attacked the guard at the skiff-edge of the plank, sending him, screaming, overboard into the twitching mouth of the Sarlacc.
The other guards swarmed toward Luke. Grimly he waded into them, lightsaber flashing.
His own lightsaber—not his father’s. He had lost his father’s in the duel with Darth Vader in which he’d lost his hand as well. Darth Vader, who had told Luke he was his father.
But this lightsaber Luke had fashioned himself, in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s abandoned hut on the other side of Tatooine—made with the old Master Jedi’s tools and parts, made with love and craft and dire need. He wielded it now as if it were fused to his hand; as if it were an extension of his own arm. This lightsaber, truly, was Luke’s.
He cut through the onslaught like a light dissolving shadows.
Lando grappled with the helmsman, trying to seize the controls of the skiff. The helmsman’s laser pistol fired, blasting the nearby panel; and the skiff lurched to the side, throwing another guard into the pit, knocking everyone else into a pile on the deck. Luke picked himself up and ran toward the helmsman, lightsaber raised. The creature retreated at the overpowering sight, stumbled... and he, too, went over the edge, into the maw.
The bewildered guard landed in the soft, sandy slope of the pit and began an inexorable slide down toward the toothy, viscous opening. He clawed desperately at the sand, screaming. Suddenly a muscled tentacle oozed out of the Sarlacc’s mouth, slithered up the caked sand, coiled tightly around the helmsman’s ankle, and pulled him into the hole with a grotesque slurp.
All this happened in a matter of seconds. When he saw what was happening, Jabba exploded in a rage, and yelled furious commands at those around him. In a moment, there was general uproar, with creatures running through every door. It was during this directionless confusion that Leia acted.
She jumped onto Jabba’s throne, grabbed the chain which enslaved her, and wrapped it around his bulbous throat. Then she dove off the other side of the support, pulling the chain violently in her grasp. The small metal rings buried themselves in the loose folds of the Hutt’s neck, like a garrote.
With a strength beyond her own strength, she pulled. He bucked with his huge torso, nearly breaking her fingers, nearly yanking her arms from their sockets. He could get no leverage, his bulk was too unwieldy. But just his sheer mass was almost enough to break any mere physical restraint.
Yet Leia’s hold was not merely physical. She closed her eyes, closed out the pain in her hands, focused all of her life-force—and all it was able to channel—into squeezing the breath from the horrid creature.
She pulled, she sweated, she visualized the chain digging millimeter by millimeter deeper into Jabba’s windpipe—as Jabba wildly thrashed, frantically twisted from this least expected of foes.
With a last gasping effort, Jabba tensed every muscle and lurched forward. His reptilian eyes began to bulge from their sockets as the chain tightened; his oily tongue flopped from his mouth. His thick tail twitched in spasms of effort, until he finally lay still--deadweight.
Leia set about trying to free herself from the chain at her neck, while outside, the battle began to rage.
Boba Fett ignited his rocket pack, leaped into the air, and with a single effort flew down from the barge to the skiff just as Luke finished freeing Han and Chewie from their bonds. Boba aimed his laser gun at Luke, but before he could fire, the young Jedi spun around, sweeping his lightsword in an arc that sliced the bounty hunter’s gun in half.
A series of blasts suddenly erupted from the large cannon on the upper deck of the barge, hitting the skiff broadside, and rocking it forty degrees askew. Lando was tossed from the deck, but at the last moment he grabbed a broken strut and dangled desperately above the Sarlacc. This development was definitely not in his game plan, and he vowed to himself never again to get involved in a con that he didn’t run from start to finish.
The skiff took another direct hit from the barge’s deck gun, throwing Chewie and Han against the rail. Wounded, the Wookiee howled in pain. Luke looked over at his hairy friend; whereupon Boba Fett, taking advantage of that moment of distraction, fired a cable from out of his armored sleeve.
The cable wrapped itself several times around Luke, pinning his arms to his sides, his sword arm now free only from the wrist down. He bent his wrist, so the lightsaber pointed straight up... and then spun toward Boba along the cable. In a moment, the lightsaber touched the end of the wire lasso, cutting through it instantly. Luke shrugged the cable away, just as another blast hit the skiff, knocking Boba unconscious to the deck. Unfortunately this explosion also dislodged the strut from which Lando was hanging, sending him careening into the Sarlacc pit.
Luke was shaken by the explosion, but unhurt. Lando hit the sandy slope, shouted for help, and tried to scramble out. The loose sand only tumbled him deeper toward the gaping hole. Lando closed his eyes and tried to think of all the ways he might give the Sarlacc a thousand years of indigestion. He bet himself three to two he could outlast anybody else in the creature’s stomach. Maybe if he talked that last guard out of his uniform...
“Don’t move!” Luke screamed, but his attention was immediately diverted by the incoming second skiff, full of guards firing their weapons.
It was a Jedi rule-of-thumb, but it took the soldiers in the second skiff by surprise: when outnumbered, attack. This drives the force of the enemy in toward himself. Luke jumped directly into the center of the skiff and immediately began decimating them in their midst with lightning sweeps of his lightsaber.
Back in the other boat, Chewie tried to untangle himself from the wreckage, as Han struggled blindly to his feet. Chewie barked at him, trying to direct him toward a spear lying loose on the deck.
Lando screamed, starting to slide closer to the glistening jaws. He was a gambling man, but he wouldn’t have taken long odds on his chances of escape right now.
“Don’t move, Lando!” Han called out. “I’m coming!” Then, to Chewie: “Where is it, Chewie?” He swung his hands frantically ov
er the deck as Chewie growled directions, guiding Solo’s movements. At last, Han locked onto the spear.
Boba Fett stumbled up just then, still a little dizzy from the exploding shell. He looked over at the other skiff, where Luke was in a pitched battle with six guards. With one hand Boba steadied himself on the rail; with the other he aimed his weapon at Luke.
Chewie barked at Han.
“Which way?” shouted Solo. Chewie barked.
The blinded space pirate swung his long spear in Boba’s direction. Instinctively, Fett blocked the blow with his forearm; again, he aimed at Luke. “Get out of my way, you blind fool,” he cursed Solo.
Chewie barked frantically. Han swung his spear again, this time in the opposite direction, landing the hit squarely in the middle of Boba’s rocket pack.
The impact caused the rocket to ignite. Boba blasted off unexpectedly, shooting over the second skiff like a missile and ricocheting straight down into the pit. His armored body slid quickly past Lando and rolled without pause into the Sarlacc’s mouth.
“Rrgrrowrrbroo fro bo,” Chewie growled.
“He did?” Solo smiled. “I wish I could have seen that—”
A major hit from the barge deck gun flipped the skiff on its side, sending Han and almost everything else overboard. His foot caught on the railing, though, leaving him swinging precariously above the Sarlacc. The wounded Wookiee tenaciously held on to the twisted debris astern.
Luke finished going through his adversaries on the second skiff, assessed the problem quickly, and leaped across the chasm of sand to the sheer metal side of the huge barge. Slowly, he began a handover-hand climb up the hull, toward the deck gun.
Meanwhile, on the observation deck, Leia had been intermittently struggling to break the chain which bound her to the dead gangster, and hiding behind his massive carcass whenever some guard ran by. She stretched her full length, now, trying to retrieve a discarded laser pistol—to no avail. Fortunately, Artoo at last came to her rescue, after having first lost his bearings and rolled down the wrong plank.
He zipped up to her finally, extended a cutting appendage from the side of his casing, and sliced through her bonds.
“Thanks, Artoo, good work. Now let’s get out of here.”
They raced for the door. On the way, they passed Threepio, lying on the floor, screaming, as a giant, tuberous hulk named Hermi Odle sat on him. Salacious Crumb, the reptilian monkey-monster, crouched by Threepio’s head, picking out the golden droid’s right eye.
“No! No! Not my eyes!” Threepio screamed.
Artoo sent a bolt of charge into Hermi Odle’s backside, sending him wailing through a window. A similar flash blasted Salacious to the ceiling, from which he didn’t come down. Threepio quickly rose, his eye dangling from a sheaf of wires; then he and Artoo hurriedly followed Leia out the back door.
The deck gun blasted the tilting skiff once more, shaking out virtually everything that remained inside except Chewbacca. Desperately holding on with his injured arm, he was stretching over the rail, grasping the ankle of the dangling Solo, who was, in turn, sightlessly reaching down for the terrified Calrissian. Lando had managed to stop his slippage by lying very still. Now, every time he reached up for Solo’s outstretched arm, the loose sand slid him a fraction closer to the hungry hole. He sure hoped Solo wasn’t still holding that silly business back on Bespin against him.
Chewie barked another direction at Han.
“Yeah, I know, I can see a lot better now—it must be all the blood rushing to my head.”
“Great,” Lando called up. “Now could you just grow a few inches taller?”
The deck gunners on the barge were lining up this human chain in their sights for the coup de grace, when Luke stepped in front of them, laughing like a pirate king. He lit his lightsaber before they could squeeze off a shot; a moment later they were smoking corpses.
A company of guards suddenly rushed up the steps from the lower decks, firing. One of the blasts shot Luke’s lightsaber from his hand. He ran down the deck, but was quickly surrounded. Two of the soldiers manned the deck gun again. Luke looked at his hand; the mechanism was exposed—the complex steel-and-circuit construction that replaced his real hand, which Vader had cut off in their last encounter.
He flexed the mechanism; it still worked.
The deck gunners fired at the skiff below. It hit to the side of the small boat. The shock wave almost knocked Chewie loose, but in tipping the boat further, Han was able to grab onto Lando’s wrist.
“Pull!” Solo yelled at the Wookiee.
“I’m caught!” screamed Calrissian. He looked down in panic to see one of the Sarlacc’s tentacles slowly wrap around his ankle. Talk about a wild card—they kept changing the rules every five minutes in this game. Tentacles! What kind of odds was anybody gonna give on tentacles? Very long, he decided with a fatalistic grunt; long, and sticky.
The deck gunners realigned their sights for the final kill, but it was all over for them before they could fire—Leia had commandeered the second deck gun, at the other end of the ship. With her first shot she blasted the rigging that stood between the two deck guns. With her second shot she wiped out the first deck gun.
The explosions rocked the great barge, momentarily distracting the five guards who surrounded Luke. In that moment he reached out his hand, and the lightsaber, lying on the deck ten feet away, flew into it. He leaped straight up as two guards fired at him—their laser bolts killed each other. He ignited his blade in the air and, swinging it as he came down, mortally wounded the others.
He yelled to Leia across the deck. “Point it down!”
She tilted the second deck gun into the deck and nodded to Threepio at the rail.
Artoo, beside him, beeped wildly.
“I can’t, Artoo!” Threepio cried. “It’s too far to jump... aaahhh!”
Artoo butted the golden droid over the edge, and then stepped off himself, tumbling head over wheels toward the sand.
Meanwhile, the tug-of-war was continuing between the Sarlacc and Solo, with Baron Calrissian as the rope and the prize. Chewbacca held Han’s leg, braced himself on the rail, and succeeded in pulling a laser pistol out of the wreckage with his other hand. He aimed the gun toward Lando, then lowered it, barking his concern.
“He’s right!” Lando called out. “It’s too far!”
Solo looked up. “Chewie, give me the gun.”
Chewbacca gave it to him. He took it with one hand, still holding on to Lando with the other.
“Now, wait a second, pal,” Lando protested, “I thought you were blind.”
“I’m better, trust me,” Solo assured him.
“Do I have a choice? Hey! A little higher, please.” He lowered his head.
Han squinted... pulled the trigger... and scored a direct hit on the tentacle. The wormy thing instantly released its grip, slithering back into its own mouth.
Chewbacca pulled mightily, drawing first Solo back into the boat—and then Lando.
Luke, meantime, gathered Leia up in his left arm; with his right he grabbed a hold of a rope from the rigging of the half blown-down mast, and with his foot kicked the trigger of the second deck gun--and jumped into the air as the cannon exploded into the deck.
The two of them swung on the swaying rope, all the way down to the empty, hovering escort skiff. Once there, Luke steered it over to the still-listing prison skiff, where he helped Chewbacca, Han, and Lando on board.
The Sail Barge continued exploding behind them. Half of it was now on fire.
Luke guided the skiff around beside the barge, where See Threepio’s legs could be seen sticking straight up out of the sand. Beside them, Artoo Detoo’s periscope was the only part of his anatomy visible above the dune. The skiff stopped just above them and lowered a large electromagnet from its compartment in the boat’s helm. With a loud clang, the two droids shot out of the sand and locked to the magnet’s plate.
“Ow,” groaned Threepio.
“b
eeeDOO dwEET!” Artoo agreed.
In a few minutes, they were all in the skiff together, more or less in one piece; and for the first time, they looked at one another and realized they were all in the skiff together, more or less in one piece. There was a great, long moment of hugging, laughing, crying, and beeping. Then someone accidentally squeezed Chewbacca’s wounded arm, and he bellowed; and then they all ran about, securing the boat, checking the perimeters, looking for supplies -and sailing away.
The great Sail Barge settled slowly in a chain of explosions and violent fires, and—as the little skiff flew quietly off across the desert—disappeared finally in a brilliant conflagration that was only partially diminished by the scorching afternoon light of Tatooine’s twin suns.
= III =
THE sandstorm obscured everything—sight, breath, thought, motion. The roar of it alone was disorienting, sounding like it came from everywhere at once, as if the universe were composed of noise, and this was its chaotic center.
The seven heroes walked step by step through the murky gale, holding on to one another so as not to get lost. Artoo was first, following the signal of the homing device which sang to him in a language not garbled by the wind. Threepio came next, then Leia guiding Han, and finally Luke and Lando, supporting the hobbling Wookiee.
Artoo beeped loudly, and they all looked up: vague, dark shapes could be seen through the typhoon.
“I don’t know,” shouted Han. “All I can see is a lot of blowing sand.”
“That’s all any of us can see,” Leia shouted back.
“Then I guess I’m getting better.”
For a few steps, the dark shapes grew darker; and then out of the darkness, the Millennium Falcon appeared, flanked by Luke’s X-wing and a two-seater Y-wing. As soon as the group huddled under the bulk of the Falcon, the wind died down to something more describable as a severe weather condition. Threepio hit a switch, and the gangplank lowered with a hum.
Solo turned to Skywalker. “I’ve got to hand it to you, kid, you were pretty good out there.”