“Yes …” muttered Yarna, collecting her scattered wits. “This way …”
Within minutes they were in the Hutt’s personal chamber. There had already been looters there—the place was stripped, and someone had flung a shovelful of dried rancor dung into the middle of the sleeping dais.
A message had been scrawled in huge letters across the wall: “Freeze, Jabba, in the Ninth Circle of Damnation!” The words were already half covered by other, less creative admonitions and obscenities. Quickly, Yarna led the way to an intricately carved panel, and pressed the tail of a fanciful creature. A small door swung open. “How did you know about this panel?” Doallyn demanded as he began stuffing the cartridges into a bag, after sliding several into his pocket. Yarna methodically scooped up several credit disks that lay on the bottommost shelf.
“I was Jabba’s favorite dancer,” Yarna said. “He would send for me sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, and I would dance the sand-wave ballet for him. He said it helped him relax after a busy day. One time Jabba fell asleep, and I was dozing over there”—she pointed at the sleeping dais—“when Bib Fortuna entered. He didn’t know I was awake, and he opened the panel.”
“I’m surprised Jabba trusted him with the secret of his hiding place,” Doallyn said, as they cautiously left the chamber with the guard in the lead, blaster at the ready.
Yarna smiled mirthlessly. “Jabba didn’t trust anyone. He—”
She broke off in alarm as they rounded a corner and she recognized a familiar shape silhouetted in the dark corridor. Long, lean, shrouded in shadow … Dannik Jerriko! The dancer gasped and shrank back, as Doallyn, with commendable composure, raised his weapon. “Don’t move, Jerriko!”
The vampire turned his head, and his features came into view. Yarna whimpered with terror. No demon spewed up out of Askaj’s Nethermost Abyss could have looked more evil. Fury contorted Jerriko’s features, and the pouches on either side of his face writhed as if with a life of their own. His mouth opened in a soundless snarl of rage. The Askajian clapped both hands over her mouth to hold back a shriek. Doallyn’s finger must have tightened involuntarily on the trigger of his weapon, for an energy bolt suddenly erupted in a white flash.
The shadowy figure melted into a doorway up ahead.
Yarna had to admire Doallyn’s courage, even as she questioned his sanity. He charged after the alien, and the dancer, against her better judgment, followed.
But when they reached the doorway of the chamber, and Doallyn keyed the illumination on, the room was empty of life. No other doors, no windows … but still, it was empty. “He couldn’t just vanish,” the guard muttered, sounding shaken. “Is there a secret passage, or hidden door?”
Yarna shook her head. “Not that I know of. But the palace has many secrets. There are passages beneath it, you know. Part of this place is still a B’omarr monastery.”
Doallyn’s breath whistled exasperatedly, then he shut the door, and locked it behind him. Yarna heard him cursing softly in what sounded like his native tongue. “He saw me,” he said finally, reverting to universal Basic. “Now he’ll be looking for me, too. I’m going with you.”
“But—” Yarna hesitated. She couldn’t leave anyone to face the death that had so nearly claimed her. “All right,” she said.
Their next stop was the kitchen. “Porcellus is a friend of mine … he kept things here for me,” Yarna said, as she ventured into the pantry. “I hope he managed to get away safely …”
In the distant recesses of the pantry the Askajian had cached several blankets, some water flasks, and a couple of old, thick jackets she’d purloined from the guard barracks over the months. Hanging above them on a hook was a white bundle that could have been a voluminous apron—but was not. Yarna shook out the gauzy, faintly shining material, and it was revealed to be a long, loose robe with an attached, cowllike hood. “My desert robe,” she said, noting Doallyn’s glance. “We’ll have to find something for you.”
He nodded and held a bag as she briskly selected containers of preserved food from the shelves. “Now water,” she said, as he fastened the container and slung it over his shoulder. Going over to the sink, she indicated the desert flasks to Doallyn. “Fill these up, please.”
While he obeyed, Yarna herself filled a large container of water and drank it down without stopping, then filled and emptied a second.
Stripping off her elaborate dancer’s headdress, she ran her fingers through her long hair with a sigh of pleasure. She’d never realized how heavy the thing was until she knew she wouldn’t have to put it on again. Splashing water onto her face, she removed most of the large, warty “beauty patches” that Jabba had thought attractive.
“I didn’t realize those were makeup,” Doallyn commented, as she did so.
“Jabba liked them. He told me they reminded him of his mother.”
Doallyn’s helmeted head moved in a slow shake. “Jabba had a mother?”
Yarna smiled at him. “My reaction exactly.”
Filling the water container again, the dancer slowly poured the cool liquid over her head and body, letting the fluid trickle over her skin.
When she finished, she found Doallyn watching her intently. His mechanical tones sounded surprised. “You’re … bigger,” he said, his helmeted head moving as he surveyed her from head to toe. “Your skin … it’s so tight.”
“Askaj is a desert world.” Yarna answered his unspoken question matter-of-factly. “My people’s bodies absorb and hoard water most efficiently.”
He nodded. “Can you live on a nondesert world?”
“Certainly,” she replied. “But when we don’t need to hoard the water, we don’t.”
“How would you look on a nondesert world?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“Thinner,” Yarna said briskly, shaking out the folds of her desert robe. She pulled it over her head, then snatched up the blankets, the old jackets, and one of the water flasks. Doallyn caught up the food and the rest of the water.
When they reached the motor pool, they saw that the supply of suitable landspeeders and shuttles was sadly decimated. Only one vehicle was left, and it was in the repair section. The mechanics who were supposed to keep the machinery running in good order were nowhere to be seen.
Another wavering shriek rose in the distance, only to be brutally cut off in mid-ululation. Yarna and Doallyn looked at each other. “Can you pilot that thing?” she asked.
He nodded.
Within moments they had loaded up the landspeeder with their provisions. Doallyn located a length of sun-shield material in a locker, and they were able to improvise a burnoose for him. They stowed the rest of the material in the baggage compartment of the vehicle.
At Doallyn’s signal, Yarna hoisted her bulk into the passenger’s seat of the speeder. It was a tight squeeze, but she made it. The guard opened the outer door to the motor pool, then, feeling the cold night air, both hastily donned the jackets.
“Let’s go,” the Askajian dancer said impatiently, when her companion remained standing beside the landspeeder.
“I should have gone back to the barracks,” Doallyn said, regarding the entrance into the palace.
“Why?”
“All I have as a weapon is my blaster, and no extra charges,” he said. “There are wild banthas out there, and krayt dragons. It’s a long way across the Jundland Wastes to Mos Eisley …”
“How far?”
“Twenty-five hundred klicks … as the shell-bat flies.”
“A what?”
“Flying reptile from my world.”
Yarna felt a flicker of curiosity. “Which planet is that?”
“Geran, Mneon System.”
Yarna glanced over her shoulder at the entrance to the palace. “Do you really want to go back in there?”
Doallyn shook his head. “No. I want to get out of here. I feel …” He glanced nervously behind him into the shadows. “I feel as though I’m being watched.”
“So do I,” Y
arna said. “Let’s just go.”
Doallyn nodded, then clambered into the pilot’s seat. “I only hope that this thing was repaired before they abandoned the motor pool,” he said, and manipulated the controls. “It’s not really one of the fast, long-range models.”
The speeder eased forward, and the darkness closed in around them. Within seconds they had left Jabba’s palace behind. The vehicle picked up speed, until they were skimming the ground faster than any bird could fly.
The cold wind of their passage struck Yarna like a blow, but she was so exhilarated she scarcely felt it. Free at last! After a miserable year of insults and servitude, she was free and on her way! Soon … soon she would see her cublings … would hold their little bodies close, smell their warm, baby flesh. They would probably be starting to walk by now … Her eyes filled with moisture, but she sternly held back her tears. She must hoard her body’s fluid … she’d need it for the journey.
Tilting her head back, she saw the stars streaming by so rapidly it was almost like a jump into hyperspace. At this rate, even in the short-range speeder, they’d reach Mos Eisley within a couple of days, even assuming they had to take shelter during the worst of the day heat.
Yarna hugged her jacket around her and thought of her children, remembering the day they had been born, and Nautag’s pride in such a handsome brood. The babies had been barely a cold season old when the slavers had come … and thus they had not been given names. On Askaj, cublings were not named until after their first birthday.
Yarna mentally calculated the time since their capture, comparing the Askajian year to the year on Tatooine. Her children were late in receiving their names … but she’d rectify that lack as soon as they were reunited. The wind of their passage rushed through her short hair as Yarna, for the first time, considered what to name her cublings.
Nautag, of course, for the boy … the dancer felt a moment’s pang for her other male infant, who’d been snatched out of her arms by one of the slavers and carelessly dropped. His skull had been crushed by the fall. Yarna forced herself to look ahead. What should she name her two daughters?
The names came to her in a flash of inspiration: Leia and Luka. Leia … she hadn’t known the Alderaanian girl well, but if she had indeed killed Jabba, then Yarna owed her a debt she could never repay. And the name of the young Jedi who’d killed the rancor had been Luke Skywalker. Between the two of them, the dancing girl and the young Jedi had avenged Nautag. It was fitting that his children be named for them.
She turned her head to watch Doallyn as he piloted the speeder. The guard was a mystery to her … what did he look like under that mask? Was he human-seeming? His hands, in their black gloves, had the same number of digits as her own …
“Is the speeder running well?” she asked, having to raise her voice to be heard over the wind.
His mechanically enhanced voice reached her ears without difficulty. “The steering balance is out of adjustment. It keeps pulling to the right. I have to keep it on manual.”
“Then this one wasn’t repaired, was it?”
“I doubt it.”
“Will it get us to Mos Eisley?”
“If the problem doesn’t worsen, it will.”
Yarna said a silent invocation to the Moon Lady as they sped along.
They had been traveling for hours when they swooped over the crest of a high dune and Yarna, squinting, saw a faint glow in the east. As she watched, it brightened, outlining distant hills. The desert beneath them was still in shadow, but there was no mistaking those faraway hills. Yarna tapped Doallyn’s arm to gain his attention, and pointed. “The Jundland Wastes?”
He nodded. “The edge of them. We’re only three hundred kilometers from the Stone Needle now.”
Within minutes, Tatooine’s twin suns rose into view, and the rolling sand dunes of the desert around them glowed pink and gold. Yarna had never seen the Dune Sea from a vehicle before—when she’d been brought to Jabba’s palace, she’d been inside a shuttle, and there had been no portholes.
The rays of the suns struck her, and the chill of the night quickly vanished. She was wedged too tightly into the seat to take off her jacket, so she simply waited, sweating, wondering if Doallyn was determined to reach the Jundland Wastes before halting.
But after another hour, as the suns grew hotter and hotter, the pilot throttled back the speeder’s headlong rush. The little vehicle slowed, then came to a halt and hovered above a fairly level stretch of white sand.
“I think we ought to take shelter until late afternoon,” the guard said, unsealing the fastenings of the jacket and tugging it off. “Traveling in midday is dangerous.”
“I agree,” Yarna said. “Especially for you; you aren’t used to the heat. And if you get sunsick, where would we be? I can’t pilot the speeder.”
His helmeted head nodded. “Help me rig a shelter, then.”
Doallyn and Yarna used the rest of the sun-shield material to make a lean-to, employing the hovering landspeeder to anchor the material. They crawled into the resulting shadow, and half reclined there; both were too tall to be able to sit up straight. Yarna handed Doallyn the water flask. Gallantly, he handed it back to her.
“You first, Mistress.”
The Askajian shook her head. “No. I drank before we left. I need far less liquid than you to survive. Drink your fill, Sergeant … do not ration yourself, or you will become ill.”
He hesitated, then his helmeted head nodded. Slowly, carefully, he released the catches on his helmet and breathing mask, and took them off. Yarna didn’t want to stare openly, but she discovered she was intensely curious about her companion. Busying herself with opening food packets, she cast a sidelong glance at his profile.
At first glance, he appeared as human as any Corellian, but his skin bore a faint bluish tinge, beneath a close-cropped shock of jet-black hair. It was too shadowy beneath the landspeeder to be sure of the color of his eyes, but Yarna thought they were light, rather than dark. His features were regular, and rather attractive. He was not as handsome as that Corellian smuggler, Solo, but he was pleasant to look upon, Yarna decided, as she held out a packet of food to him.
Slowly, almost deliberately, he turned his head toward her as he reached out to take it, until she was looking at him full-on.
Yarna stifled a gasp and forced herself not to recoil.
Noting her reaction, half of Doallyn’s mouth stretched in a grin that told her he’d expected as much. The smile seemed more like a rictus of agony than any expression of good humor.
By the Moon Lady’s mercy, what happened to him?
One side of Doallyn’s face was horribly scarred. A broad band of roughened flesh pulled his mouth upward, and twisted and pitted the skin over his cheek. The slash narrowly missed his left eye, then ended at his hairline. Yarna forced herself to look away, unwilling to stare.
As though he could read her thoughts, Doallyn said suddenly, “It’s a claw mark. From a Corellian sand panther. Their claws are poisoned, and the wound festered.”
“It attacked you?” She struggled to keep her voice matter-of-fact. Instinctively, she knew that any expression of sympathy would be scornfully rejected.
“I was hunting it, and I wounded it. It turned on me.” Methodically, Doallyn took a bite of the food and chewed determinedly.
“You’re fortunate you weren’t killed,” she said after a moment.
“I was careless,” he said bluntly. “For an instant, I was careless. It does not pay to do that when you’re a hunter.”
“I thought you were a soldier.”
He shook his head. It was odd to see him without his helm, even though his features were nearly as expressionless exposed as they had been masked. “I was a hunter. That’s why I came to Tatooine. Jabba advertised for a hunter to get him a krayt dragon.”
“A krayt dragon?” Yarna stared at him incredulously. She’d heard the beasts described before—the young ones were as large as a rancor, and they reportedly grew
even bigger as they aged. “What did he want with one?”
“He wanted to match one against his rancor, and charge admission. Jabba thought it would be the sporting event of the century. He offered a huge bounty for a live krayt dragon.”
“And you actually thought you could capture one?”
“I have been a hunter for many years. There are not many beasts I cannot outwit,” he said, with a quiet confidence that was far more convincing than any amount of boasting. “I studied everything that is in the databanks about krayt dragons. I came well prepared to hunt one.”
Yarna took a bite of dried fruit and chewed thoughtfully. “If you came to Tatooine to hunt a dragon, then how did you end up guarding Jabba’s palace?”
For the first time an expression flickered across his face in the dimness of the tiny makeshift shelter. He appeared chagrined and embarrassed, as he looked down at his food packet. “When I first arrived, I decided to sample the … sights … of Mos Eisley. Chalmun’s liquor proved more … potent … than I was accustomed to drinking. I was never good at games of chance, and … I don’t remember clearly how I got into that high-stakes game of wild-star, but I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache, owing Jabba a year’s service.”
“So you never got to hunt a dragon?”
“That was one of the things Jabba wanted me to do. I have been out on many expeditions, hunting one ever since I came to the palace—but they are rare. I never even sighted one in all these months. Jabba …”—he shook his head slightly, ruefully—“was growing … impatient. It is well for me that he is no more.”
“So even if you had caught the dragon you would not have collected the bounty?”
“Correct,” he said. “But there were … other … reasons to hunt a dragon. Even if I had to kill it, I would have profited, I believe.”
Yarna’s curiosity was piqued. “How?”
“Krayt dragons reportedly have … intrinsic value,” he replied evasively.
Yarna had heard some of the bounty hunters and mercenaries talking about that. Some said that krayt dragons contained treasure, others that they, like dragons in ancient legend, guarded treasure. But most people dismissed that notion as being mere sensational rumor, if not outright folklore.
Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Page 35