Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Talk about your downward mobility …

  Six weeks later, three kilos lighter, and a whole lot meaner, he’d saved the life of a Kitonak merchant. To accomplish this, he’d had to go one-on-one with a Trandoshan antenna-breaker, who’d been sent to extort collection credits for a local gangster. In retrospect, this action turned out to be about as bright as a circus sword swallower upgrading his act to a lightsaber, but it had seemed to Nick a good idea at the time. The Trandoshan’s nickname was Crusher—or maybe Cruncher; his accent was too thick for Nick to tell for sure. Either way, it seemed to fit. The scaly thug, annoyed at Nick’s request that he leave the pudgy little humanoid merchant alone, had backhanded Nick across the narrow street and nearly through a break in the wall surrounding one of the gigantic, noisome garbage pits that dotted Coruscant’s slums and industrial areas.

  Crusher (or Cruncher) wasn’t tall, but he was massive—at least 150 kilos, maybe more. All of which was charging straight toward Nick, shouting a battle cry in a phlegm-choked voice. Nick had barely enough time and wits to dodge and let the big oaf blunder past him and fall, screaming, into the silage below. His long wail was abruptly cut short, and, judging by the moist chomp! that quickly followed, Nick assumed Crusher/Cruncher had made a tasty mouthful for a dianoga, one of the huge, constricting garbage worms that infested the pits. He was just as happy not to know for sure.

  The Kitonak turned out to be a member of a newly formed subversive movement called the Whiplash. She’d loudly sung his praises and made much of his bravery to her comrades in arms, and so he’d been asked to join them in their struggle against the new regime. No pay, little rest, and much danger—Nick couldn’t see a lot of difference between this and the resistance movement back on Haruun Kal.

  But he’d agreed. He was a military deserter and a killer, after all, subject to being shot on sight, and there was safety—or at least a spurious sense of it—in numbers. What other choice was there? He was a soldier; it was all he knew, all he had ever known. Call it the Upland Liberation Front or the Army of the Republic, it really made no difference. The uniforms were different, but the job was the same.

  It wasn’t that he enjoyed fighting this war, or any war—he hadn’t been shortchanged in the fear category, like all the clones had been. And thank whoever was ultimately in charge for that. Nick had once watched a phalanx of clones on Muunilinst fearlessly attack a hill against the blasterfire of three times as many droidekas. None of the clones so much as faltered, even though the droidekas’ lasers, plasma rays, and particle beams had torn through the majority of them as if they’d been flimsiplast cutout dolls. Three-quarters of the phalanx had been shredded in that charge. But they’d taken the hill.

  Yet, despite the dangers of war, there had been a certain odd security, almost comfort, in the rules and regs of the military life. Nick was by no means one of those snap-click officers with little to no field experience, just time in simulation holos and heads-up trainers. Even when commander of his own unit, he’d had to follow the asinine orders of a few desktop generals, and he’d nearly gotten his head shot off more than once as a result. A rather large proportion of those pressed-and-polished newbie warriors tended to not come back from their first or second campaign in top working order, if they came back at all.

  He’d looked forward, like many others, to a lasting peace after Dooku, Grievous, and the others had been disposed of properly. A time in which he could at last lay down his arms and relax a bit. A time to heal.

  Instead here he was, couched behind the rusting fender of an abandoned construction crawler, along with six others, waiting tensely as a quintet of stormtroopers hurried by. From the snatches of conversation Nick heard as they passed, it didn’t take a Tatooine brain spider to figure out that they were hot in pursuit of a Jedi. Whether it was a Padawan, Jedi Knight, or Master wasn’t clear.

  During his service, and because of his acquaintance with Mace Windu, Nick had come to know a number of Jedi quite well, including a few members of the Council—all of whom, as far as he knew, were now dead. Or, as the Jedi themselves often put it, “Returned to the Force.” Whatever. Nick had little patience with any and all theories and philosophies that included speculation on an afterlife. The life he was living now was more than enough work; the thought of doing it all over again just made him tired.

  He glanced back at his group, signaling with a head jerk that they were following the pack. There was no hesitation among his team as they fell in behind him.

  Keeping the troopers in sight, Nick moved stealthily through the deserted streets. There was never much foot traffic down here at this time, and what little there was had prudently relocated when the armed stormtroopers had come marching down the thoroughfare. Before too long they stopped before a half-open panel in a long-abandoned building. Nick could barely hear them discussing whether their quarry had gone to ground there. The decision to investigate was quickly reached when one of the troopers pointed out that the panel had been opened quite recently, judging by the disturbed dust and grime. A single kick from another trooper was enough to open it the rest of the way. The stormtroopers disappeared inside, weapons ready.

  “Let’s go,” Nick whispered. “Could be they’ve got a Jedi trapped in there.”

  “Could be we’ll be in the same fix, if we don’t do some recon before we rush in,” Kars Korthos pointed out. He was a small, compact man, full of nervous energy that always seemed on the verge of bursting like a solar flare, and his instincts were seldom wrong.

  Nick considered. Kars had a point; they should at least scope the building for other possible ways in or out before they—

  From deep within the forbidding interior came the sound of a blaster being fired.

  “We’re going in,” Nick said, pulling his blaster and stepping quickly through.

  “Looks like,” Kars agreed as he and the rest followed.

  REBELLION

  (0–5 YEARS AFTER STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

  This is the period of the classic Star Wars movie trilogy—A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi—in which a ragtag band of Rebels battles the Empire, and Luke Skywalker learns the ways of the Force and must avoid his father’s fate.

  During this time, the Empire controls nearly the entire settled galaxy. Out in the Rim worlds, Imperial stormtroopers suppress uprisings with brutal efficiency, many alien species have been enslaved, and entire star systems are brutally exploited by the Empire’s war machine. In the central systems, however, most citizens support the Empire, weighing misgivings about its harsh methods against the memories of the horror and chaos of the Clone Wars. Few dare to openly oppose Emperor Palpatine’s rule.

  But the Rebel Alliance is growing. Rebel cells strike in secret from hidden bases scattered among the stars, encouraging some of the braver Senators to speak out against the Empire. When the Rebels learn that the Empire is building the Death Star, a space station with enough firepower to destroy entire planets, Princess Leia Organa, who represents her homeworld, Alderaan, in the Senate and is secretly a high-ranking member of the Rebel Alliance, receives the plans for the battle station and flees in search of the exiled Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.

  Thus begin the events that lead her to meet the smuggler and soon-to-be hero Han Solo, to discover her long-lost brother, Luke Skywalker, and to help the Rebellion take down the Emperor and restore democracy to the galaxy: the events of the three films A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi.

  If you’re a reader looking for places to jump in and explore the Rebellion-era novels, here are five great places to start:

  • Death Star, by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry: The story of the construction of the massive battle station, touching on the lives of the builders, planners, soldiers, and support staff who populate the monstrous vessel, as well as the masterminds behind the design and those who intend to make use of it: the Emperor and Darth Vader.

  • The Mandalorian Armor, by K. W. Jeter: The fam
ous bounty hunter Boba Fett stars in a twisty tale of betrayal within the galactic underworld, highlighted by a riveting confrontation between bounty hunters and a band of Hutts.

  • Shadows of the Empire, by Steve Perry: A tale of the shadowy parts of the Empire and an underworld criminal mastermind who is out to kill Luke Skywalker, while our other heroes try to figure out how to rescue Han Solo, who has been frozen in carbonite for delivery to Jabba the Hutt.

  • Tales of the Bounty Hunters, edited by Kevin J. Anderson: The bounty hunters summoned by Darth Vader to capture the Millennium Falcon tell their stories in this anthology of short tales, culminating with Daniel Keys Moran’s elegiac “The Last One Standing.”

  • Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, by Matthew Stover: A tale set shortly after the events of Return of the Jedi, in which Luke must defeat the flamboyant dark sider known as Lord Shadowspawn while the pilots of Rogue Squadron duel his servants amid tumbling asteroids.

  Read on for an excerpt from a Star Wars novel set in the Rebellion era.

  Chapter One

  The Imperial Star Destroyer Reprisal slipped silently through the blackness of space, preparing itself for action against the Rebel forces threatening to tear the galaxy apart.

  Standing on the command walkway, his hands clasped behind him, Captain Kendal Ozzel gazed out at the planet Teardrop directly ahead, a mixture of anticipation and dark brooding swirling through him. As far as he was concerned the entire planet was a snake pit, crawling with smugglers, third-rate pirate gangs, and other dregs of society. If he’d been in command of the Death Star instead of that idiot Tarkin, he mused, he would have picked someplace like Teardrop instead of Alderaan for the weapon’s first serious field test.

  But he hadn’t been in charge; and now both Tarkin and the Death Star were gone, blown to shrapnel off Yavin 4. In a single, awful moment the Rebel Alliance had morphed from a minor nuisance to a bitter enemy.

  And Imperial Center had responded. Less than three days ago the word had come down to show no mercy to either the Rebels or their sympathizers.

  Not that Ozzel would have shown any mercy at any rate. Eliminating Rebels, and Rebel sympathizers, had become the best and fastest way to success in the Imperial fleet. Perhaps all the way to an admiral’s rank bars. “Status?” he called behind him.

  “Forty-seven standard minutes to orbit, sir,” the navigation officer called from the crew pits.

  Ozzel nodded. “Keep a sharp watch,” he ordered. “No one gets off that planet.”

  He glowered at the faintly lit disk ahead of them. “No one,” he added softly.

  “Luke?” Han Solo called from the Millennium Falcon’s cockpit. “Come on, kid—move it. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

  “They’re in!” Luke Skywalker’s voice came back. “Ramp’s sealed.”

  Han already knew that from his control board readouts, of course. If the kid stuck around, he’d have to learn not to clutter the ship’s atmosphere with unnecessary chatter. “Okay, Chewie, hit it,” he said.

  Beside him Chewbacca gave a rolling trill of acknowledgment, and the Falcon lifted smoothly off the hard-packed Teardrop ground.

  Apparently not smoothly enough. From behind, Han heard a couple of muffled and rather indignant exclamations. “Hey!” someone shouted.

  Han rolled his eyes as he fed power to the sublight engines. “This is absolutely the last time we take on passengers,” he told his partner firmly.

  Chewbacca’s reply was squarely to the point and a shade on the disrespectful side.

  “No, I mean it,” Han insisted. “From now on, if they don’t pay, they don’t fly.”

  From behind him came footsteps, and he glanced back as Luke dropped into the seat behind Chewbacca. “They’re all settled,” he announced.

  “Great,” Han said sarcastically. “Once we make hyperspace, I’ll take their drink orders.”

  “Oh, come on,” Luke chided him. “Anyway, you think this bunch is stiff, you should have seen the ones who got out on the earlier transports. These are just the techs who were in charge of packing up the last few crates of equipment.”

  Han grimaced. Crates which were currently filling the Falcon’s holds, leaving no room for paying cargo even if he managed to find some on the way to the rendezvous. This was going to be a complete, 100 percent charity run, like everything else he and Chewbacca had done for Luke and his new friends in the Rebel Alliance. “Yeah, well, I’ve seen plenty of useless techs before,” he muttered.

  He was waiting for Luke to come to the techs’ defense when a splatter of laserfire ricocheted off the rear deflector. “What the—” he snarled, throwing the Falcon into a tight drop loop.

  The instinctive maneuver probably saved their skins. Another burst shot through the space they’d just left, this one coming from a different direction. Han twisted the ship back around, hoping fleetingly that their passengers were still strapped in, then took a second to check the aft display.

  One glance at the half dozen mismatched ships rising behind them was all he needed. “Pirates,” he snapped to the others, throwing power to the engines and angling the ship upward. Facing pirates deep inside a planet’s gravity well, with no cover and no chance of quick escape to hyperspace, was about the worst situation a pilot could encounter.

  And even the Falcon couldn’t outmaneuver this many ships forever. “Chewie, get us up and out,” he said, throwing off his straps. “Come on, Luke.”

  The kid was already on it, heading down the cockpit tunnel at a dead run. Han followed, rounding the corner in time to see Luke duck past the passengers crammed into the wraparound seat and head up the ladder to the upper quad laser station. “Captain?” one of the passengers called.

  “Save it,” Han shot back, grabbing the ladder and sliding down toward the lower quads. He caught himself as the gravity around him did its ninety-degree shift, then dropped into the seat.

  It looked even worse from down here than it had from the cockpit. A second wave of pirate ships had joined the first, this group pumping laserfire all around the edges of the first group, forming a deadly cylinder of death around the Falcon’s flight vector. They were trying to force their prey to stay on that line so that the first group could chase them down.

  Well, they were in for a surprise. Keying the quads with one hand, he snagged his headset with the other and jammed it on. “Luke?”

  “I’m here. Any particular strategy, or do we just start with the biggest and see how fast we can blow them apart?”

  Han frowned as he got a grip on the control yoke, an odd idea whispering at him. The way that second wave was positioned … “You go for that big lead ship,” he said. “I’m going to try something cute.”

  Luke’s reply was a blast of laserfire squarely into the lead pirate’s bow.

  The other ship swerved violently in reaction—clearly, they hadn’t expected this kind of firepower from a simple light freighter. The pilot recovered quickly, though, settling the ship back into its position in the battle array. The entire lead wave moved closer together, closing ranks to get maximum protection from their overlapping shields. Han watched closely, waiting for the obvious next move, and heard the twitter from his display board as the lead ships all shifted shield power to doublefront.

  Which meant they’d just unavoidably lowered the strength of their aft shields. Perfect. “Chewie—dip and waffle,” he ordered into his comm. The Falcon dropped suddenly in response, and for a second the rear wave of ships was visible past the edges of the first wave’s shields. Han was ready, firing a double burst past the lead wave into the flank of the biggest second-wave ship, sending it into a violent swerve as its primary maneuvering system was blown to bits.

  And as it did, the laserfire that had been forming that part of the Falcon’s entrapment ring sprayed with shattering force across the sterns of the lead-wave ships.

  It was everything Han could have hoped for. Two of the smaller ships veered instantly and violently out of f
ormation as their engine sections blew up. The first ricocheted a glancing blow off one of the other pirates on its way to oblivion, while the second slammed full-tilt into another. They fell away together, with Luke taking advantage of the distraction to blow one of the other lead ships into fiery dust.

  Then, to Han’s shock and disbelief, the Falcon dropped and turned into a curving arc back toward the planet’s surface. “Chewie?” he snarled. “What in—”

  The Wookiee growled a warning. Frowning, Han craned his neck to look in the direction Chewie was facing as the familiar shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer swung into view around the dark edge of the planetary disk.

  “Han!” Luke gasped.

  “I see it, I see it,” Han said, his mind racing. Clearly, the Rebel cell on Teardrop had gotten out just in time.

  Except that the last half a dozen members of that cell were currently sitting a couple of meters directly above him in the Falcon’s lounge. If the Imperials caught them here …

  Then his brain caught up to him, and he understood what Chewbacca had been doing with that last maneuver. “Luke, shut down,” he ordered, slapping the switches on his own quads. The last thing he wanted was for the Imperials to do a power scan and see that the Falcon had this kind of weaponry. “Chewie, give me comm.”

  There was a click—“Emergency!” he called, putting desperation into his voice. “Incoming freighter Argos requesting assistance from Teardrop planetary defenses.”

  There was no answer from the ground, of course. Given the shady character of most of the planet’s residents and visitors, Han wasn’t even sure they had a real defense force down there. But then, he didn’t especially care if anyone on Teardrop heard him or not. All he cared about was—

  “Freighter Argos, state your intention and emergency,” a clipped military voice responded.

  “Medical mercy team from Briston, responding to the recent groundquake on Por’ste Island,” Han called back. Behind the Falcon, he saw, the remaining pirate ships were re-forming to continue the attack. Apparently they hadn’t noticed Teardrop’s newest visitor. “We’re under attack—I think they’re pirates.”