Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  In the confusion that reigned following the disaster on the sail barge, Malakili the rancor keeper released Porcellus the chef from his cell, and the two of them managed to loot sufficient funds from the treasury to open the Crystal Moon restaurant, agreed by all to be the finest in Mos Eisley. The two still operate it in partnership, and its fame has spread through most of the Outer Rim.

  Gartogg the Gamorrean guard spent the rest of his life wishing he could have ridden on the sail barge’s last voyage. However, when Ortugg never came back to have him ground up for Jabba food, he tagged along with a small group leaving the palace for Mos Eisley. He still carried his new friends over his shoulders and found that as they journeyed through the desert, the kitchen boy and the monk dried out into firm, lightweight mummies with perpetual smiles. In Mos Eisley he found gainful employment as an enforcer for a smuggling operation and faithfully took his grinning friends everywhere he went.

  Ephant Mon chose to return to his home planet of Vinsioth. The touch of the young Jedi Knight had reawakened the spiritual side of him and he began a religious contemplation of nature, finally founding a new sect that worshiped the Force.

  He did, however, still keep just a bit of his snout immersed in the old life, running a “harmless” little scam now and again to finance his sect and build it a very fine temple, indeed.

  When J’Quille the Whiphid tried to return to his homeworld of Toola for a little R and R, though, he was informed that the Lady Valarian, inconsolable over his “rejection,” had placed a bounty on his head if he ever left Tatooine. Condemned to a life of sweltering misery, J’Quille returned to Jabba’s palace and joined the B’omarr monks. Exchanging his body for a jar seemed his only chance at surviving Tatooine’s insufferable heat.

  Meanwhile, Bib Fortuna found that he did have friends, even as a disembodied brain, next to Tessek and Bubo and several other new “initiates” following Jabba’s fall. Nat spoke to him and eased him through the shock of losing his body, helped him learn to guide a brain walker up and down the corridors, and he and Nat eventually looked like any other pair of disembodied brains held tight against the underbelly of a mechanical spider, taking a stroll together. Passing monks still in their bodies would bow to them as they would to any of the truly enlightened.

  But Fortuna still tried to learn what had happened to all the schemes he had put in place. The computers would not respond to the voice that came from his brain jar’s speakers, but he found that he could make his two mechanical forelegs grasp an eating implement, using its handle to enter his private access codes, slowly, punching in one number at a time.

  Not all of the codes had been erased, not the secret ones. If an embodied monk approached, Fortuna would drop the teaspoon and amble about the corridor till the monk had passed, then sweep the walker’s legs about the stone floor, listening for the teaspoon so he could find it and pick it up and start again. Of the day’s annoyances, these, he often thought. That I had to drop the teaspoon eighteen times. He checked his accounts and found that many secret ones, the ones under different names, were intact and growing in interest. He possessed a fortune. He sent replies to his former associates—and sentence by sentence, word by word, they learned what had happened. One said he would come to rescue him.

  Eventually the monks would let him and Nat walk outside the palace during the Tatooine evenings, and one day rescue would come, and they would leave Tessek and Bubo and all the others behind. He and Nat would find the cloners, obtain new bodies: young and strong and perfect. Fortuna hoped, if the monks knew what he and Nat planned, as seemed likely, that they would find it in their hearts to let them go.

  Deprived permanently of Jabba’s soup in the explosion of the sail barge, Dannik Jerriko responded by going on a killing rampage throughout the palace. An Anzat who had always prided himself on self-control and elegance, he now was stripped of both by his outrage at losing Jabba. Never before had Jerriko failed to drink an entity’s soup. His reputation forever tarnished, he became a wanted entity himself, and his name now tops the list of such bounty hunters as have worked for Jabba and others.

  The predator is now the prey.

  And, of course, both Boba Fett and Mara Jade kept themselves very, very busy … but those are other stories entirely.

  About the Author

  Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly 100 novels, 48 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 22 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award, and New York Times Notable Book.

  Anderson has coauthored eleven books in the Dune saga with Brian Herbert, as well as the new original novel, Hellhole. Anderson’s popular epic SF series, The Saga of Seven Suns, is his most ambitious work, and he has completed a sweeping fantasy trilogy, Terra Incognita, about sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. As an innovative companion project to Terra Incognita, Anderson cowrote (with wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for two ambitious rock CDs based on the novels. Performed by the supergroup Roswell Six for ProgRock Records, the two CDs feature performances by rock legends from Kansas, Dream Theater, Asia, Saga, Rocket Scientists, Shadow Gallery, and others.

  His novel Enemies & Allies chronicles the first meeting of Batman and Superman in the 1950s; Anderson also wrote The Last Days of Krypton. He has written numerous Star Wars projects, including the Jedi Academy trilogy, the Young Jedi Knights series (with Moesta), and Tales of the Jedi comics from Dark Horse. Fans might also know him from his X-Files novels or Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein: Prodigal Son.

  By KEVIN J. ANDERSON

  Star Wars:

  The Jedi Academy Trilogy

  Darksaber

  Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina (editor)

  Tales from Jabba’s Palace (editor)

  Tales of the Bounty Hunters (editor)

  The Young Jedi Knights series (with Rebecca Moesta)

  Dune series (with Brian Herbert)

  The Prelude to Dune trilogy

  The Legends of Dune trilogy

  The Road to Dune

  Hunters of Dune

  Sandworms of Dune

  Paul of Dune

  The Winds of Dune

  The Sisterhood of Dune

  X-Files:

  Ground Zero

  Ruins

  Antibodies

  DC Universe:

  The Last Days of Krypton

  Enemies & Allies

  Original Novels:

  The Saga of Seven Suns series

  The Terra Incognita trilogy

  Hellhole (with Brian Herbert)

  The Star Challengers series (with Rebecca Moesta)

  The Crystal Doors trilogy (with Rebecca Moesta)

  Frankenstein: Prodigal Son (with Dean Koontz)

  Captain Nemo

  The Martian War

  Hopscotch

  Blindfold

  Resurrection, Inc.

  Climbing Olympus

  Ill Wind (with Doug Beason)

  Ignition (with Doug Beason)

  Assemblers of Infinity (with Doug Beason)

  The Trinity Paradox (with Doug Beason)

  Virtual Destruction (with Doug Beason)

  Fallout (with Doug Beason)

  Lethal Exposure (with Doug Beason)

  Landscapes (collection)

  Dogged Persistence (collection)

  Blood Lite (editor)

  Blood Lite II: Overbite (editor)

  Blood Lite III: Aftertaste (editor)

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Ken
obi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  1

  FLIGHT DECK, IMPERIAL-CLASS STAR DESTROYER STEEL TALON, POLAR ORBIT, PLANET DESPAYRE, HORUZ SYSTEM, ATRIVIS SECTOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES

  The alert siren screamed, a piercing wail that couldn’t be ignored by any being on board with ears and a pulse. It had one thing to say, and it said it loud and clear:

  Scramble!

  Lieutenant Commander Villian “Vil” Dance came out of a deep sleep at the blaring alarm, sat up, and leapt from his rack to the expanded metal deck of the Ready Room quarters. Save for the helmet, he already wore his space suit, one of the first things an on-call TIE pilot learned to do was sleep in full battle gear. He ran for the door, half a step ahead of the next pilot to awaken. He grabbed his headgear, darted into the hall and turned to the right, then sprinted for the launching bay.

  It could be a drill; there had been plenty of those lately to keep the pilots on their toes. But maybe this time it wasn’t. One could always hope.

  Vil ran into the assembly area. A-grav on the flight deck was kept at slightly below one g, so that the pilots, all of whom were human or humanoid, could move a little faster and get to their stations a little sooner. The smell of launch lube was acrid in the cold air, and the pulsing lights painted the area in bright, primary flashes. Techs scrambled, getting the TIE fighters to final-set for takeoff, while pilots ran toward the craft. Vil noticed that it was just his squad being scrambled. Must not be a big problem, whatever it was.

  Command always said it didn’t matter which unit you got. TIE fighters were all the same, down to the last nut and bolt, but even so, every pilot had his or her favorite ship. You weren’t supposed to personalize them, of course, but there were ways to tell—a scratch here, a scuff mark there … after a while, you got to where you knew which fighter was which. And no matter what Command said, some were better than others—a little faster, a little tighter in the turns, the laser cannons a hair quicker to fire when you touched the stud. Vil happened to know that his assigned ship this rotation was Black-11, one of his favorites. Maybe it was pure superstition, but he breathed just a little easier, knowing that particular craft had his name on it this time around.

  The command officer on deck, Captain Rax Exeter, waved Vil over.

  “Cap, what’s up? Another drill?”

  “Negative, Lieutenant. A group of prisoners somehow managed to take over one of the new Lambda-class shuttles. They’re trying to get far enough away to make the jump to hyperspace. That isn’t going to happen on my watch. The ID codes and tracking will be in your fighter’s computer. Don’t let ’em get away, son.”

  “No, sir. What about the crew?” Vil knew the new shuttles carried only a pilot and copilot.

  “Assumed dead. These are bad guys doing this, Dance—traitors and murderers. That’s reason enough to cook them, but we do not want them getting away to tell anybody what the Empire is doing out here, do we?”

  “No, sir!”

  “Go, Lieutenant, go!”

  Vil nodded, not bothering to salute, then turned and ran. As he did, he put his helmet on and locked it into place. The hiss of air into his face was metallic and cool as the suit’s system went online. It felt very comforting. The vac suit’s extreme-temp-resistant weave of durasteel and plastoid, along with the polarizing densecris helmet, were the only things that would protect him from hard vacuum. Suit failure could make a strong man lose consciousness in under ten seconds, and die in under a minute. He’d seen it happen.

  TIE fighters, in order to save mass, had no defensive shield generators, no hyperdrive capability, and no emergency life-support systems. They were thus fragile, but fast, and that was fine with Vil. He’d rather dodge enemy fire than hope it would bounce off. There was no skill in piloting some lumbering chunk of durasteel; might as well be sitting with your feet up at a turbolaser console back on the ship. Where was the fun in that?

  The TIE tech had the hatch up on Black-11 as Vil arrived at the gantry above the ship. It was the work of an instant to clamber down and into the fighter’s snug cockpit.

  The hatch came down and hissed shut. Vil touched the power-up stud, and the inside of the TIE—named for the twin ion engines that drove it—lit up. He scanned the controls with a quick and experienced eye. All systems were green.

  The tech raised his hand in question. Vil waved back. “Go!”

  “Copy that, ST-One-One. Prepare for insertion.”

  Vil felt his lips twitch in annoyance. The Empire was determined to erase all signs of individuality in its pilots, on the absurd theory that nameless, faceless operators were somehow more effective. Thus the classification numbers, the anonymous flight suits and helmets, and the random rotation of spacecraft. The standardizing approach had worked reasonably well in the Clone Wars, but there was one important difference here: neither Vil nor any other TIE pilot that he knew of was a clone. None of the members of Alpha Squad had any intention of being reduced to automata. If that was what the Empire really wanted, let them use droid pilots and see how well that worked.

  His musing was interrupted by the small jolt of the cycling rack below the gantry kicking on. Vil’s ship began to move toward the launching bay door. He saw the tech slip his own helmet on and lock it down.

  Already the bay pumps were working full blast, depressurizing the area. By the time the launch doors were open, the air would be cycled. Vil took a deep breath, readying himself for the heavy hand of g-force that would push him back into the seat when the engines hurled him forward.

  Launch Control’s voice crackled in his headphones. “Alpha Squad Leader, stand by for launch.”

  “Copy,” Vil said. The launch doors pulled back with tantalizing slowness, the hydraulic thrum of their movement made audible by conduction through the floor and Black-11’s frame.

  “You are go for launch in five, four, three, two … go!”

  Outside the confines of the Star Destroyer, the vastness of space enveloped Lieutenant Vil Dance as the ion engines pushed the TIE past the last stray wisps of frozen air and into the infinite dark. He grinned. He always did. He couldn’t help it.

  Back where I belong …

  The flat blackness of space surrounded him. Behind him, he knew, the Steel Talon was seemingly shrinking as they pulled away from it. “Down” and to port was the curvature of the prison planet. Though they were in polar orbit, Despayre’s axial tilt showed more of the night side than day. The dark hemisphere was mostly unrelieved blackness, with a few lonely lights here and there.

  Vil flicked his comm—though it came on automatically at launch, a good pilot always toggled it, just to be sure. “Alpha Squad, pyramid formation on me as soon as you are clear,” he said. “Go to tactical channel five, that’s tac-fiver, and log in.”

  Vil switched his own comm channel to five. It was a lower-powered band with a shorter range, but that was the point—you didn’t want the enemy overhearing you. And
in some cases, it wasn’t a good idea for the comm officer monitoring you back on the base ship to be privy to conversations, either. They tended to be a bit more informal than the Empire liked.

  There came a chorus of “Copy, Alpha Leader!” from the other eleven pilots in his squad as they switched over to the new channel.

  It took only a few seconds for the last fighter to launch, and only a few more for the squad to form behind Vil.

  “What’s the drill, Vil?” That from Benjo, aka ST-1-2, his second in command and right panelman.

  “Alpha Squadron, we have a Lambda-class shuttle captured by prisoners. They are running for hyper. Either they give up and come back, or we dust ’em.”

  “Lambda-class? That’s one of the new ones, right? They have any guns?”

  Vil sighed. That was Raar Anyell, a Corellian like Vil himself, but not somebody you’d want to hold up as a prime example of the human species. “Don’t you bother to read the boards at all, Anyell?”

  “I was just about to do that, sir, when the alarm went off. Was looking right at ’em. Had the latest notices right in my hand. Sir.”

  The other pilots laughed, and even Vil had to grin. Anyell was a foul-up everywhere except in the cockpit, but he was a good enough pilot that Vil was willing to give him some slice.

  His sensor screen pinged, giving him an image of their quarry. He altered course to intercept.

  “Anybody else behind on his homework, listen up,” he said. “The Lambda-class shuttle is twenty meters long, has a top speed of fourteen hundred g, a Class-One hyperdrive, and can carry twenty troops in full battle gear—probably a couple more convicts in civvies.

  “The ship carries three double-blaster cannons and two double-laser cannons. It can’t accelerate worth a wheep and it turns slower than a comet, but if you get in its sights, it can blow you to itty-bitty pieces. It would be embarrassing to have to inform your family you got shot apart by a shuttle, so stay alert.”