Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (15 page)

The guard’s brow puckered. He shuffled, then grunted something that sounded like, “Can’t meditate here,” then bent down and hefted the body of the monk onto his other shoulder.

J’Quille watched the Gamorrean shamble oft; then heaved a sigh of relief. He touched the thermal detonator.

Slipping into the nearest guest room, he walked over to the window. He held up the earring and admired the sunlight shining through the clear stone, then set it on the windowsill. He opened his pouch.

J’Quille cradled the thermal detonator in his claws.

He knew just what to do with it. He’d been given a second chance to get rid of Jabba—this time he wouldn’t blow it.

Sleight of Hand: The Tale of Mara Jade

by Timothy Zahn

The dance ended, and the music was silenced. She stood as she had finished: on single tiptoe, her opposite arm upstretched, reaching with silent eloquence for the stars or the Empire or perhaps merely the approval of her master. For a pair of heartbeats she held the pose.

Then, with a dramatic flourish, she collapsed again to the floor, arms sweeping around and onto the floor in front of her like the wings of a downed bird, legs shifting to curl half around her, one in front and one behind, torso bent forward over her arms. Grace and beauty and style, transformed in an instant to unworthiness and submission and humility.

The precise combination, or so she’d been told, that Jabba the Hutt liked in his dancers.

As did, presumably, the fat, scar-headed man sprawled on the couch in front of her. But the seconds dragged on and he just sat there, not speaking, watching her. She held her pose, breathing quickly and shallowly into cramped lungs and wondering if she should go ahead and get tip without waiting for permission.

But the fat man had already demonstrated his enjoyment of giving orders, particularly to helpless underlings.

If she wanted to become one of those underlings, it would be best to allow him that extra little bit of egotism.

So she waited for his orders, and after a few seconds more he was ready to give them. “Rise,” he said, his tone as indulgent as the rest of him. “Come here.”

?????? lose he was even more repulsive, his vaguely greasy aroma approaching suffocation level.

But Jabba himself, she knew, would be worse. Maybe this was part of the test.

“You dance very well, Arica,” he said, looking her up and down.

“Very well, indeed. Tell me, what else do you do well?”

“Whatever my masterJabba the Hutt would require of me,” she said.

He smiled, his small eyes almost disappearing into folds of flesh.

“Very good,” he said. “Not what I would require, but what Jabba your master would require.

A wise answer; but perhaps not wise enough.

Tell me, would it surprise you to know that I once was Jabba the Hutt?”

She blinked, giving him her best stupid-helpless-lost look. “You were—? I don’t understand.”

“I was Jabba the Hutt,” he repeated smugly. “Not really, of course, but for a time many on Tatooine thought so. I was the one, you see, whom Jabba always sent outside the palace to meet with people.

Kept his anonymity that way. A good smuggler always keeps a few secrets.” His smug smile vanished. “You see now who exactly you’re dealing with here.”

“Yes, I see,” she said. She did, too. He was the expendable one, the man Jabba had sent out to take whatever blaster shots his many enemies might care to fire in his direction. The stupid one, moreover, too dazzled by the pseudoglamour and pseudopower of the role to realize he was little more than assassin bait.

But for all that, a man Jabba must have trusted at least enough to finalize his deals and not flop the charade in the process. And who thus had probably earned whatever microscopic gratitude the Hutt was capable of.

Someone not to be crossed. At least, not openly.

“Good,” the fat man said softly. “Well, then. You’re hired.

You’ll start on the midnight shift—you never know when Jabba might want some entertainment.”

He looked at the door and snapped his fingers. One of the Gamorrean guards detached himself from the door and lumbered over.

“The guard will show you the way. I’ll see you later, Arica.”

“I will be honored,” she said, bowing humbly as she backed away.

Groveling before him.

But that was all right. Let the petty man revel in his petty power over her. Trusted underling of one of the most powerful crimelords in the Empire, he was still nothing. She could crush him with a word; could bring down Jabba’s entire organization on a whim; could burn this backwater planet to a core of glazed sand with a single order. And if none of that happened, it was merely because she had more important matters to attend to.

For she was Mara Jade, the Emperor’s Hand. Here to await the arrival of Luke Skywalker. And to kill him.

The Emperor’s face seemed to hover in the air in front of Mara, his yellow eyes glittering with satisfaction. So you are inside, his thoughts said. Skywalker has not yet appeared?

Not yet, she thought back at him. But Solo is still here.

When Skywalker comes, I’ll be ready.

The eyes glittered again, and Mara felt the warmth of his approval fill her mind. Excellent, his thoughts said. Such a threat must be eliminated.

Mara permitted herself a small smile. He will be, she assured her master. Jabba may even get to him first.

Abruptly, the warmth withdrew, leaving an icy chill behind. Do not underestimate this opponent, the Emperor warned, his thoughts dark.

Remember Bespin.

Mara grimaced. Yes. Cloud City on Bespin, and the duel between Skywalker and Darth Vader. Skywalker had acquitted himself well in that battle—far better than either Vader or the Emperor had expected him to.

And in the midst of that battle, Vader had proposed that the two of them form an alliance against the Emperor.

Vader had later denied it, of course, claiming that the offer had merely been part of his lure to confuse Skywalker and entrap him to the dark side. But the Emperor knew Vader’s thoughts and feelings, and he knew that was not the entire truth.

Which was why Mara was here, and why she had come alone. She was the Emperor’s Hand, with powers in the Force that had been trained, nurtured, and strengthened by the Emperor himself… and one of those powers was the ability to cloak her feelings from even so powerful a Dark Jedi as Lord Darth Vader.

He might wonder afterward if the Emperor had had a role in Skywalker’s death, but he would never know for certain. And with Skywalker gone, the matter would be over. Vader would never defy the Emperor alone.

I remember Bespin, Mara promised. Skywalker will die here.

The Emperor smiled… and then another face was there, superimposed on Mara’s vision. A young woman with dark hair, wearing a dark red jumpsuit.

“Are you Arica?”

Mara blinked and the Emperor’s face vanished, only the lingering sense of his distant presence remaining.

“Yes,” she said. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

The other woman gave her a knowing smile. “Sure you were.” She waved a hand around her. “I’ll bet your first week’s pay that you were thinking you’d made a big mistake coming here.”

Mara looked around. The Dancers’ Pit, they called the prep room, and it was fully deserving of the name.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said diplomatically. “I’ve been in worse places.”

“Better than the rancor pit, anyway.” The other shrugged. “Don’t worry, the money’s a lot better than the facilities.”

“I hope so,” Mara said, wondering what a rancor pit was. “The implied fringe benefits weren’t all that enticing.”

The woman laughed. “Ah, yes—the Fat Man. He gave you his Important Person routine, did he?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, don’t worry, he’s mostly harmless. I’ll tell you later what buttons to push to keep him off you.

I’m Melina Carniss, by the way. Former dancer, current dance designer, sort of general runaround person.

Come on—let’s go to the throne room and I’ll present you to His Exaltedness.”

They headed down one of the dark tunnels that seemed to make up the bulk of this place. Mara crinkled her nose at the odors, wishing the quick briefing she’d had on Jabba and his palace had been more comprehensive.

Perhaps she should consider wangling herself a trip over to Bestine, see if she could get some up-to-date information on Jabba and his entourage from Governor Aryon’s office.

Still, that might prove dangerous in the long run.

To access Imperial data files, she would have to identify herself as a high Imperial agent… and truly capable governors were not assigned to dustballs like Tatooine. Governor Aryon could be too lazy or incompetent to keep Jabba’s spies off her paylist, or could be on Jabba’s paylist herself. Worse, even the slightest exposure here could eventually find its way back to Lord Vader.

Besides, this was just a simple assassination: quick in, quick kill, quick out. No, she would handle this one on her own.

“There’s the throne room,” Melina said, pointing ahead toward an archway that opened into a well-furnished chamber. “Oh, and look we seem to have a show going.”

Mara caught her breath. The show was Luke Skywalker.

Or rather, a holo of him. A prerecorded message, projected by a squat R2-D2 astromech droid with a C-3PO protocol droid hovering nervously beside him.

Skywalker’s droids, all right. The ones who’d played key roles in the destruction of the Emperor’s prized.

Death Star.

“—I present to you a gift: these two droids.”

The protocol droid squawked. “I wonder who that is,” Melina murmured.

“I don’t know,” Mara said, frowning at the image.

She’d read all that the Emperor had on Skywalker: his background, his upbringing right here on Tatooine, his brief training under Obi-Wan Kenobi, the immense trouble he’d been so far to the Empire. But this was not the tentative, callow kid she’d seen in those records. The Luke Skywalker she was seeing and hearing now was poised, self-assured, confident of his power.

And with a lightsaber prominently displayed at his belt too. A replacement, probably constructed himself, for the one he’d lost at Bespin.

The Emperor had been right. Skywalker was indeed more dangerous than Mara had given him credit for.

The message finished, and the droids were hustled away, the 3PO wailing the whole way. “Okay,” Melina said, taking Mara’s arm. “Chin up, Arica. Let’s go meet the Hutt.”

By the time the protocol droid was brought back, the throne room had become crowded, thick with humans and aliens and smoke and noise.

In the background a third-rate band was playing; in the center, in front of Jabba’s throne, a young Twi’lek woman was dancing.

Her name was Oola, and she was pretty good.

Standing by the archway leading back to the Dancers’ Pit, staying to the background, Mara kept half an eye on Oola’s performance as she studied the room and its occupants. A decidedly motley crowd, no doubt about it, ranging from obviously hungry nobodies trying to impress Jabba with their toughness right up to some of the nastiest names on the Imperial locate-and-detain list. If Skywalker got this far, he was going to have his hands full.

She stiffened. In the back of her mind, her danger sense had just gone off.

Deliberately, she took a slow breath, calming her mind and preparing her body for action. Her eyes and mind swept back across the room, seeking the source of the danger-Just in time to see Jabba hit a button on his throne, opening a section of the floor directly beneath Oola.

The dancer’s scream was piercing, fading off into the distance.

Jabba’s throne slid forward over the trapdoor toward a large grating that had opened up in the floor, a grating the rest of the company was already scrambling to get a place at. Mara spotted Melina Carniss crouching at one edge, peering eagerly at whatever was happening down there. There was another, more distant scream And then, suddenly, the show was forgotten. From the archway on the far side of the throne room came the sound of blaster fire. There was a brief commotion; and then, pushing haughtily past the guards, an armed and armored figure appeared, leading a Wookiee in chains.

Not just any Wookiee. Chewbacca, companion and copilot to Han Solo.

“Boushh,” someone beside her muttered. “Well, so much for the bounty on Chewbacca.”

Mara smiled tightly. So simple, so classic, so unimaginative.

The best way to infiltrate an enemy’s stronghold, they always thought, was to come in disguise, bringing something or someone the enemy wanted.

But this time it wasn’t going to work. Frowning slightly with concentration, trying to ignore the noisy clutter of all the other minds in the room, she drew on the Emperor’s power within her and focused on the figure in the armored suit. She touched the mind…

And blinked in surprise. It wasn’t Skywalker at all. It was a woman.

A woman?

There was some byplay: Jabba offering too low a price, the figure arguing the point with a thermal detonator.

Mara waited until it was over and the Wookiee had been dragged away.

Then, she made her way through the reinvigorated party atmosphere to where the bounty hunter Boba Fett stood silent guard.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said timidly, reaching a hand almost to his shoulder and then stopping, as if she’d been planning to tap him there and had suddenly thought better of it. “My name’s Arica. I just came in today.

That thing with the bounty hunters that was pretty scary. Does that sort of thing happen often?”

For a long moment he just stared at her, and for that same long moment Mara thought the game was up. Boba Fett had done a fair amount of quiet work for the Empire over the years, and it was entirely possible that he had spotted her at some point in the Emperor’s entourage. She reached out with the Force, trying to touch his mind.

But his control was excellent, and nothing she could read gave her any clues.

“Nice to meet you, Arica,” he said at last, in that flat voice that so terrified his victims and impressed his employers. “Don’t worry about Boushh— he might have looked crazy right then, but he’s not. And don’t worry about anyone else. Jabba knows who can be trusted. No one else gets in.” He tapped the blaster rifle at his side. “And I stay around here a lot between jobs.”