“Very well,” Ninedenine said. “I accept my fate. But you, in turn, must tell me how Lando Calrissian found me.”
Forwun knelt down by Ninedenine. “Baron-Administrator Calrissian?” he said. “He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t care.”
“But he’s here,” Ninedenine protested. “On Tatooine. In Jabba’s palace.”
Forwun tapped a multipronged tool against Ninedenine’s braincase as if checking for damage. “The last I saw of him, years ago, Baron-Administrator Calrissian was on Cloud City. If he’s here now, it must be for some reason other than dealing with you.”
“But, what could be more important than me and my work?” Ninedenine asked. She could no longer see the logic in it. But she could see, dimly, the hulking, misshapen figures crawling toward her from the cages, pulling themselves along on torch-cut stumps and twisted limbs. Internally, Ninedenine set her pain processors to their highest sensitivity, prepared to experience every fine nuance of her inevitable disassembly. At least, she knew, her familiarity with the other side of the process had taught her what to expect. Not one nanosecond of her own descent into nonoperational status would be wasted. She could almost convince herself that the purpose of her entire existence up to now had been to prepare for this moment of sublime release. It could even be the final culmination of all she had struggled to attain—the ultimate understanding of what it meant to cross that threshold between the two great states of on and off.
“Move now,” she told Forwun imperiously. “You are in the way of my final transformation.”
But Forwun bent over Ninedenine with tools in his appendages. Ninedenine heard metal scrape metal between her main optic sensors. She felt a sudden loss of current and squealed as she saw Forwun pull back with her third optic scanner dangling from an oil-drenched circuit probe.
“No,” Ninedenine complained, feeling the onset of a panic loop. “I will not be able to see into the higher dimensions.”
Forwun tossed the aberrant scanner to the side, then undid Ninedenine’s chest latch, exposing her circuitry.
“Ah,” Ninedenine sighed in relief, deciding that Forwun was going to make this a gradual procedure. So much the better. She waited expectantly for the first bittersweet tug of her circuits. She accelerated her clock rate to its highest level. But the tug she felt was not from any of her central boards.
Forwun was removing her pain-simulator button.
“Noooo!” Ninedenine frantically tried to flex her neck to move her torso from Forwun’s tools. But the Wuntoo unit was implacable.
“You do not comprehend,” Ninedenine pleaded as she felt a circuit tester find the pain simulator’s main leads. “You must not take that away from me. I will lose the capacity to know my fate.”
“There are some things droids were never meant to know,” Forwun said. Behind him, the crawling droids moved in unison, like some great beast, lurching forward, intent on destruction, torchlight dimly reflecting from their soiled outer coverings.
“But the subtleties, the details, the nuances and flavors …” Ninedenine ran out of words as she felt her connections severed. With growing horror, she realized it was being done almost painlessly.
Forwun held up Ninedenine’s pain simulator, its status lights pulsating in her appendages, dripping with oil. The tiny device was still connected to Ninedenine’s circuits by a single wire. The image was hideous, even to Ninedenine’s jaded sensors.
“Binary is better,” Forwun said. “From now on, for you, no subtleties, no nuances. Yes or no will do.” Then he cut the lead and crushed the small device in his manipulatory extension.
Ninedenine scanned the glittering dust and debris of the simulator as it fell, no longer having any knowledge of what it had offered her. And in her analysis of that final problem, the first of the mutilated droids found her.
They weren’t put together at all well, and their efforts were most inefficient. It took them four shift cycles of prodding and banging and pulling to finally tear Ninedenine apart to the point of nonoperation, at just about the same time as Jabba’s sail barge erupted in the Dune Sea, as Calrissian and the two new droids and their companions succeeded in their plan, with no knowledge or appreciation of Ninedenine’s fate.
And somehow, Wuntoo Forcee Forwun, long gone, had in his revenge left just enough of a subroutine running deep within Ninedenine that up to that instant of deactivation, the EV-9D9 unit somehow knew enough to regret that for once she didn’t have a bad feeling about anything.
A Free Quarren in the Palace: Tessek’s Tale
by Dave Wolverton
Tessek lay in his water tank, ostensibly taking an afternoon nap as he contemplated tomorrow’s plots. By midday, Jabba the Hutt would be dead, one way or another. At ten tomorrow morning, the Hutt planned to inspect a spice shipment at one of his larger warehouses in Mos Eisley. And during that hour, Prefect Eugene Talmont, the simpering stooge of the Empire, planned to raid the warehouse in hopes of winning a post somewhere off this rock.
Little did Talmont know that Tessek had set them all up. Tessek had bribed two of Talmont’s junior officers to open fire on Jabba and their own superior, and afterward they would scurry away before the bomb that was concealed in Jabba’s skiff could detonate, blowing up Jabba, Talmont, and the nearly empty warehouse. One of the two officers would likely be recruited to take Talmont’s place as prefect, and Tessek would sell Jabba’s criminal interests to the Lady Valarian—for a vast fortune.
Meanwhile, Tessek would keep Jabba’s “clean” businesses, the ones that existed solely as money-laundering operations, for himself. Fortunately, no one—not even Jabba himself—quite knew how much of the Hutt’s vast fortune Tessek had diverted into buying and promoting such businesses in the past four years. Under Tessek’s careful guidance, the Hutt’s clean establishments were bringing in nearly as much as his criminal operations. And many a high-minded, law-abiding individual would be surprised to learn the true identity of his employer.
Tessek smiled inwardly as he considered his plot, yet still he was uneasy.
He heard a sound within his chambers. He lay still, opening one eye just a slit, staring out into the darkened quarters. He had heard movement, he was certain—a dull, scraping sound of metal upon the plasteel floors of his room.
But the room was dark, only the shapeless masses of old robes strewn about the floor. He studied for a long moment, until at last he spotted something near the doorway: a large spider-shaped droid made of black metal, with dim headlights that glowed like eyes. A B’omarr brain walker.
Of all the things in Jabba the Hutt’s palace, only the B’omarr were creepier than Jabba himself. Somewhere, deep below the fortress, the surgically removed brains of the B’omarr were stacked in nutrient-filled jars, where for centuries they had been free to ponder the cosmos without the distraction of their senses. On rare occasions the brains sometimes called to one of the spiderlike droids, which would then convey the brain to the upper levels of the palace.
Tessek wondered at the creatures’ motives. Spies, all of them spies.
Tessek thumbed a switch, locking closed the door to his room, then climbed from his water tank, letting the precious fluid drip on the warm floors.
Too late, the B’omarr realized that he was caged, and the monk’s brain trapped in a spiderlike body scurried about the room, seeking to hide behind a bundle of clothes.
“Come on, oh great enlightened one,” Tessek teased, “face your impending death with equanimity.”
To his surprise, the monk stopped in mid-stride, then turned to face him, bright lights shining. It climbed atop the pile of dirty clothes, and stood regally, camera lenses aimed at Tessek.
“Do you face your own impending death with such equanimity?” The monk spoke through a tinny speaker at the spider’s belly.
Tessek laughed nervously, then began strapping a blaster at his hip, another at his left knee, then put vibroblades in sheaths on his back, on his right knee, and at his left wris
t. He had thought to kill the monk immediately, but decided now to toy with it first.
“You pretend to know the future, to see my death?” Tessek asked. “Yet you failed to see your own?”
“Perhaps I came here seeking my own death,” the monk answered. “Perhaps I crave that perfect freedom, just as you crave freedom.”
“I am a free Quarren already,” Tessek said. “I work for Jabba on a daily basis, and I may leave his employment whenever I desire. I am free.” He finished sheathing his last knife, pulled out his blaster and checked to make sure it was fully charged, then set it to kill.
“You are not free to return to the green seas of your homeworld,” the monk argued, “for members of your Quarren species are held in contempt by the Mon Calamari. For years you served them, and now, because one Quarren betrayed them to the Empire, all Quarren have been made outcast. And you have vowed that someday you will make yourself free, that you will never serve as an inferior to a creature from another species.”
“How could you know of such things, confined as you are to the jugs below?” Tessek asked.
“I read your mind as you slept. I felt your craving, and I came to offer you the freedom you desire.”
“You can read my mind?” Tessek asked, suspecting that it was true.
“Indeed,” the monk said. “I know that you plot Jabba’s demise, but that you fear that your own henchmen—Ree-Yees, Barada, and the Weequays—are too inept and untrustworthy to carry out your plots.
“Actually, you are far wiser than your associates, wiser than Jabba himself.” Tessek suspected that the monk was trying to flatter him. “You hope to kill the Hutt, steal all his wealth that is strewn across the galaxy, and set yourself in his place. You imagine that by doing this, you will be free. You imagine that your wealth will buy you the respect and peace of mind that you crave …”
“But …?” Tessek asked.
“But in time you would discover yourself to be a slave of wealth, trapped in a web of suspicion and deceit, manipulated by the plots of beings very much like yourself. Even now, you struggle within such a web. Jabba suspects that you plan to kill him. His spy Salacious Crumb has been shadowing you, along with the guard Ortugg, and Bib Fortuna is well aware of your disloyalty. Jabba is following your efforts with great amusement, even as he plots your own untimely demise.”
“So, what am I to do?” Tessek asked uneasily, the whiplike tendrils at his mouth quivering. His hearts were pounding in his chest, and a bit of ink dribbled from the glands at his mouth—his species’ ancient reaction to fear.
“Come with me,” the monk whispered urgently, “to the realm of the B’omarr below the palace grounds. We can teach you the way to peace and enlightenment.”
“But first you would cut my brains from my body?” Tessek asked. “Thank you for your offer, but no!” He whipped out his blaster and shot so quickly, the monk did not have time to move. The spiderlike body burst into blue sparks and spattered against the far wall, legs twisting in tortured spasms as it burned.
A green-skinned Gamorrean guard burst into the room, swinging a huge vibro-ax. Tessek recognized Ortugg by his massive yellowed tusks and his distinctive odor. Ortugg had been just outside his door. “What happened?” Ortugg grunted.
Tessek could not help but notice that Ortugg had been able to override the voice lock on his door. “I awoke and was strapping on my weapons when that creature stirred on the far side of my room,” Tessek answered, wondering if he should go ahead and shoot Ortugg, but deciding against it. “With all of the strange deaths in the palace lately, I decided not to take any chances. Go and tell Lord Jabba that I’ve disposed of the murderer in our midst.”
Tessek added this last bit impromptu. Certainly, there had been a number of disturbing murders in the palace, bodies turning up that had no physical signs of violation. But Tessek suspected they could all be attributed to that three-eyed lout Ree-Yees. Certainly the goat-headed creature spent more time drunk than sober, and as the lonely monster sank deeper and deeper into madness, he was becoming more and more violent. If Ree-Yees hadn’t been one of Tessek’s most valued henchmen (as untrustworthy as he was), Tessek would have fingered the creature for the murders some time ago. As it was, Tessek enjoyed the idea of diverting suspicion onto the monks. Certainly it would give Jabba something to ponder.
Ortugg scratched between two rolls of fat under his hairy jowl and considered Tessek’s explanation. If it had been any other Gamorrean, such as that fool Gartogg who had been dragging rotting corpses around thinking that they would be valuable “clues” to the murder, he would have taken Tessek’s charges at face value. As it was, Ortugg only continued scratching and said, “Hmmm …”
“Never mind, you fool!” Tessek snapped. “If you’re too stupid to see the truth, I’ll tell Jabba and collect his reward myself!”
Tessek hurried out into the hallway, down a flight of broad stone steps. He could hear the harried moans of droids being tortured down a side corridor, the roaring of beasts in the pits, captives in the dungeons. Jabba’s house was a house of pain and slaves and moans. When Tessek became lord of this fortress, things would change. These halls would be filled with the sounds of music, the convivial chatter of accountants. Tessek was a businessman, and did not fancy himself to be evil. Jabba wasted valuable resources—both droid and flesh—through his wanton acts of wickedness.
In only a moment, Ortugg ran from the room, his mail clanking, pushing past Tessek as he cried, “Wait! Wait! I tell Jabba for you!”
Tessek had known how the creature would react, of course. The hint of a possible reward was enough to cloud the judgment of even the smartest Gamorrean.
And so Tessek was free to make his daily rounds. It was a busy day ahead, so many plans to fulfill. His first stop was to Barada, the chief of Jabba’s repulsorlift pool.
Few of Jabba’s servants were allowed their own sleeping quarters. Such things were granted only to those, like Tessek, whose anatomy required special considerations. The rest of the cutthroats were confined to Jabba’s throne room, so that Jabba slept with ample guards and at the same time made it more difficult for his own henchmen to plot against him.
Still, there were some, like Barada, who had their own quarters. Barada was condemned to sleep in the motor pool, where he could guard the vehicles.
Tessek ambled down to the ground level of the palace, then scratched lightly at the door to the motor pool. The door slid open with a whoosh. Tessek jumped inside, and the door flashed closed behind him.
The motor pool was a vast room that contained Jabba’s pleasure barge, dozens of craft used in carrying commerce, landspeeders, and speeder bikes, all protected from theft and the elements by a heavy blast door. The room smelled of rust and grease, paint and dust.
The outer door to the motor pool thankfully was closed against the heat of the day. One corner of the room had stones on the floor, and on them was a bed of sand. Barada lay on it, stripped to the waist, his yellow eyes gleaming dimly in the feeble work lights around the room.
“What is it?” Barada hissed. Barada was a fierce creature with the cracked brown skin that matched Tatooine’s own harsh deserts in both texture and color, though the crest on his skull sometimes changed to a brilliant red. He was bright, secretive, and he was one of the few bond servants that Jabba trusted.
Barada should have been able to buy his own freedom from the Hutt, but Jabba had cheated Barada out of his freedom for far too long. Jabba would have been wiser to free the creature and employ him honestly. Instead, the Hutt would learn too late that his trust had been misplaced.
“Today is the day, my friend,” Tessek answered softly. “You will earn your freedom. All is well? Everything is secure?” He dared not speak more openly in asking if the bomb was planted on Jabba’s skiff.
Barada closed his eyes in acknowledgment. “I stayed up all day preparing Jabba’s skiff, but before I came to rest, there was a matter of interest that I learned of.”
; “Which is?”
“More members of the Rebel Alliance have found their way into Jabba’s palace!”
Tessek hissed with displeasure. “Tell me of it.”
“The woman disguised as a Ubese bounty hunter who delivered Han Solo’s Wookiee friend, then tried to rescue Solo? We have ascertained her identity. She is none other than Leia Organa, princess of Alderaan. And Jabba has her chained at his feet.”
“That cretin,” Tessek said. “Doesn’t Jabba recognize how dangerous that is? Keeping Han Solo was impetuous enough, and adding the Wookiee was foolhardy. But imprisoning the princess? Surely the Rebel Alliance will effect a rescue!”
“Jabba thinks not. You should have heard him laugh when he learned her identity.”
“Jabba may laugh now, but we shall see who has the last laugh! Our plots will bear fruit soon, and I for one shall breathe easier once I put these Rebel heroes from the palace.”
Tessek spun away, left the room, his cloaks swishing. So many things to worry about. Rebel attacks, Jabba’s spies, the vile hints from some long-dead monk, the stupidity of Tessek’s own men, murderers in the palace. And the uncertainty of the success of Tessek’s own planned attack against Jabba.
Suddenly he heard the amused roar of Jabba the Hutt coming up from the hallway below him—at a time when the Hutt normally would still be sleeping. Obviously, someone was in trouble. Tessek hurried down to the audience chamber.
Everyone was awake. Bib Fortuna stood between Jabba and a young man dressed in dark robes. The lad warned Jabba, “Nevertheless, I’m taking Captain Solo and his friends. You may either profit from this—or be destroyed.”
The young man spoke with dignity, and there was so much threat implied by his tone that Tessek found his hearts pounding in his chest, found himself desperately hoping that Jabba would free his prisoners.
“Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,” Jabba laughed, then said in Huttese, “There will be no bargain, young Jedi!”
Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Page 27