Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (23 page)

The edge of the inferno enveloped him. Pain seared his lungs.

The moment before everything went dark, he caught a scent, sweet and familiar, and the fading glimpse of fields silvery and shimmering, as nu-bile triple-breasted females came leaping to meet him.

And the Band Played On: The Band’s Tale

by John Gregory Betancourt

1. How the Band Came to Tatooine Evar Orbus set down his microphone case, stretched his eight tentacles to their utmost, and flapped dust from the air-gills beneath all four eyes in his egglike head.

Finally, he thought, I’ve reached the big time.

He turned slowly, drinking in the sights of the Mos Eisley spaceport.

Despite the late hour, the place bustled with activity as humans, Imperial stormtroopers, droids, and beings from a hundred different worlds moved among the landing pads. Overhead, the primary sun descended toward a hazy horizon, trailed by its smaller counterpart. He felt a rush of excitement starting to build inside.

This planet resembled his homeworld more than any other he had yet seen in his travels. He could do very well here indeed, he thought.

“Where do you want this stuff?.” a gruff voice called.

Evar turned. Captain Hoban of the Star Dream, a disreputable-looking human in a shiny metallic jumpsuit, had opened the ramp to the cargo compartment.

One of his battered old droids held a large crate with “Evar Orbus and His Galactic Jizz-wailers” stenciled on the side.

“Over there, please,” Evar said. He pointed to the cargo area behind the ship with a tentacle. “We have transport coming.”

The droid shifted the crate and almost dropped it.

“Watch it!” Evar screamed. He felt his sense organs lurch at the thought of having his livelihood destroyed by a roving scrap heap.

“Watch those instruments! If you break them, you’ll have to replace them! “

The droid bleeped angrily.

“Easy there,” Captain Hoban said to the droid. He smiled apologetically at Evar Orbus. “There’s nothing to worry about, sir.

We handle crates like this all the time.”

But do you break them? was Evar’s first thought. He knew better than to voice it, though. He contented himself with watching the droid carefully through three eyes while his fourth swiveled around to watch for their transport.

The ramp beneath his feet shook as someone started down behind him. He moved to the side, swiveling an eye to see.

It was, of course, Max Rebo, his Ortolan keyboard player. Max peered left, then right around the ship, his trunklike nose snuffing the air ever so slightly.

Probably looking for his next meal, Evar thought.

“Is that spiced Parwan nutricake I smell?” Max asked. “I think there must be a restaurant nearby.

How about I pop over and see? It’s well past dinnertime, you know.”

“We’ll eat when we get to the cantina,” Evar said evenly. It often seemed to him that Max’s brain was in his stomach.

“But—”

“You heard me.” He focused all four eyes on Max, who swallowed meekly.

“If you want to help, see what’s taking Sy and Snit so long.”

“Right!” Max brightened noticeably. “Then we can eat!” Turning, he waddled back up the ramp as fast as his chubby little legs could take him.

Evar turned three of his eyes back to the droids. Yes, he thought, things were definitely looking good. He had credits in his belt pouch, a six-month gig lined up, and finally an agreeable climate to live in.

Once they got to the cantina, everything would be perfect.

Now, what had happened to the transport they’d promised him…

Using his personal comlink, he called the cantina.

“Yes,” a Bith said, its mouth folds stretching back to reveal a surprisingly facile mouth. It was nodding its tall, hairless head to music from an unseen source.

“Greetings, gentle,” Evar said. “Is the Wookiee Chalmun there?”

“Not here. Called away on business.”

“Perhaps that explains it. Our transport was not waiting at the spaceportw”

“We’re not a travel service.” The creature reached out to disconnect.

“Wait!” Evar snapped. “I’m Evar Orbus!”

“So?”

“Of the Evar Orbus Galactic Jizz-wailers. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”

“Jizz-wailers? No.”

Was that disgust in its voice? Evar huffed a little, but restrained his anger. If he spoke his mind, the Bith would doubtless disconnect on him. He satisfied himself by mentally running through five generations of insults to the Bith’s materhals.

“Look, incompetent one,” Evar finally snarled, “tell your boss the new band is here. Get us transport - - now—or I’ll have your head on a platter when I get there.”

“New band?” The Bith paused, puckering its lip folds, then chittered to someone Evar couldn’t see.

The unseen one chittered back.

The first Bith then gazed back at Evar. “What landing pad?”

“Seven.”

“A transport will be there shortly.”

“Thank you,” Evar said with satisfaction. He disconnected.

Dinner, dinner, glorious dinner! Max thought as he waddled down the corridor. Every footfall was a dinner gong; every scent a call to eat.

It seemed like weeks since his last meal. If he.wasn’t careful, he’d waste away to nothing, like Snit. Not that Evar Orbus would have noticed—the only thing that Letaki cared about was money.

Now, though, dinner loomed near. Dinner, dinner, glorious dinner!

And all he had to do was get Sy Snootles and Snit outside.

Sy would be the biggest delay, he knew. She always took too long getting dressed. For that matter, she took too long with everything.

You couldn’t trust nibblers, he thought, just like his grands had always said.

He knocked on her cabin door, shifting impatiently from foot to foot.

“Yes?” a delicate reed-thin voice called from inside.

“It’s me,” Max called. “Evar says to hurry up. Transport’s ready and we need to eat.” If that didn’t get her out, nothing would.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Hurry!” he said. Turning, he continued up the corridor.

Dinner, dinner, glorious dinner! He could almost taste it now.

Bantha steaks, kiwip grass, and gannesa juice. Fire stew, lavender treebread, and succulent ploth. Roast yarnak, ginger noodles, and white seed-cake.

He would have some of everything. All he had to do was find Snit and he’d be done.

The Kitonak’s cabin door stood open, so Max went right in. After all, why waste time when food was waiting?

The sooner they got moving, the sooner they’d eat, he thought.

Snit huddled in the corner, his huge lumpy head buried in his huge lumpy hands. Sobs racked his body.

It was the most emotion Max had ever seen from him.

Poor primitive, Max thought. Evar had really been starving Snit.

In the six months he had been with the band, Snit had only eaten six times as far as Max knew - - a single huge slug each time. When Evar had bought Snit on Ovrax IV, Snit’s belly had hung so low you couldn’t see his legs. That had been one happy Kitonak, Max had thought a little enviously, imagining what fabulous meals must have gone into creating such a corpulent body. Since that time, though, Snit had lost half his body weight. Dressed only in bright red shorts, he looked positively svelte for a Kitonak-still like a lump of badly shaped yeast, but a svelte lump of yeast.

“We need you to come out now,” Max told him.

“It’s dinnertime,” he added happily. That should cheer him up, he thought.

To his relief, Snit stopped snuffling and rose on his three wide, circular feet. Tiny black eyes peered out at him from beneath a heavy, lumpy brow.

“Come on,” Max said, taking Snit’s hand and leading him toward the corridor. They could pick up Sy on their way out, he thought. Was nobody else hungry?

He felt gnawing pains in his belly. It was time for dinner, dinner, glorious dinner!

Evar Orbus stood by his eight crates of equipment and fumed silently.

Where in the seven hells was that transport?

Never trust a Bith, he thought angrily. He’d had run-ins with them before. Their hearing might be keener than his, but that didn’t make them his betters, not by a long shot. It had been half an hour since he’d called. He’d definitely talk to the Wookiee about that bartender.

Sy Snootles, her lips pursed angrily, continued to shift from one thin leg to the other. She’d been glaring at him since she’d gotten outside twenty minutes before.

“What are you looking at?” Evar finally demanded.

“Max hustled me out here,” she said inher high, thin voice, “by saying you had transport ready to take us to dinner. There’s no transport.

There’s no dinner.

I could have been resting in my cabin. You know how frail I am, Evar.

This desert air just isn’t good for my lips. Let alone my throat. Let alone my lungs.”

Evar sighed inwardly. He knew all about her lips and lungs. She certainly kept them running on hyperdrive.

If she wasn’t one of the best singers he’d ever seen, and if her contract didn’t have some very nasty early termination penalties, he would have replaced her in a millisecond with the first sandflea he came across.

Just as he was about to let loose a very cutting comment about those same lips and lungs, an airbus screamed down and landed in front of them. A Bith, possibly the same one he’d talked to earlier; he’d never been able to tell them apart—sat in the driver’s seat.

“I am sorry we took so long, gentles,” the Bith called, climbing down.

He opened the passenger compartment and three more Biths stepped out. “I asked some friends to help. You have baggage?”

Evar nodded smugly. This Bith certainly seemed to know his place.

“Our equipment’s over here,” he said, gesturing with two tentacles.

Max bounced happily on his seat in the airbus, thinking of the meal ahead. He hadn’t been this hungry in hours. He turned to the Bith next to him, intending to ask about the cantina’s kitchen facilities, when the Bith abruptly pulled a blaster from under its robes.

“What’s that for?” Max asked. He turned. “Evar, he has a—” Max broke off. All the other Biths had drawn blasters too, he saw suddenly. Something had definitely gone wrong. He swallowed and felt his ears starting to stand up in fear. What was going on? It was almost enough to make him forget about dinner.

“Hands up!” one of the Biths said. “Now! We would hate to make a mess inside the airbus!”

Max complied instantly. Sy and Snit did the same, he was relieved to see. Only Orbus hesitated.

“! don’t understand,” Orbus said. “We’re under contract!”

“The cantina already has a band,” the Bith driver said. “We don’t need another one.”

“I have a contract—”

“So do we,” said another Bith.

“One we need to keep,” said a third.

“I begin to see,” said Orbus slowly.

Max said, “I don’t see,” hoping someone would explain.

“Be quiet, Max,” Sy Snootles told him.

Max glared at her. What right did she have to tell him to be quiet?

Orbus was the band’s leader, after all, not her.

“So,” continued the Bith driver, “we’d like you to audition for someone else. Someone very special out on the Dune Sea. A certain Sarlacc in the Great Pit of Carkoon.”

They all laughed as if that were funny. Max looked from one Bith to another. Somehow, he thought this meant trouble. At the very least it would certainly delay dinner.

Evidently Orbus felt the same way; he suddenly lowered one tentacle.

Flames blasted from its tip, spraying across the airbus’s cabin toward the driver and the controls. The tentacle must have been a fake, Max realized.

He never would have guessed it hid a weapon.

Orbus had so many tentacles, who would notice an extra one?

With an unhappy whine, the airbus swung wildly out of control.

Several of the Biths cried out in panic. Sy screamed and Snit grunted.

Evar was shouting orders.

Max pressed his eyes closed and tried not to be sick.

With a sudden bone-jarring crunch, the airbus hit something. Max felt the universe swinging wildly around him. He opened one eye and saw the ground - - still movingindirectly over his head. No, no, no, he thought.

This couldn’t be happening.

The airbus hit again, flipped twice more, then skidded to a stop upside down. Everyone lay in a heap on what had been the ceiling. Max swallowed, then tried to rise. His balance seemed to be off. The cabin still felt as if it were moving even though he could see it wasn’t.

A tentacle suddenly whipped around his arm.

“Come on, Max!” Evar said, pulling at him.

Max focused on his boss a little blearily. “Wha—?”

“We have to get out of here! They’re going to kill us!”

Max suddenly snapped back to attention. Yes, they had to get away. Sy Snootles was lying on top of Snit.

He picked up her limp form a little hesitantly. Her proboscis drooped across his arm like a limp snake.

Luckily she was still breathing.

One of the Biths had climbed to his feet and was staring numbly at them.

“Do you realize what you’ve done?” he cried softly. “We borrowed this airbus!”

“Not my problem,” Evar said. He now held two of the Biths’ blasters in his tentacle, Max saw. “Stay where you are!”

Then a blaster shot from one of the Biths on the floor caught Orbus in the side. The force threw him across the airbus. He hit the wall with a wet thump and slid to the floor, leaving a pale green stain behind.

The smell of roasting meat filled the air.

Max turned and fled, for once not the least bit hungry.

Sy Snootles opened her eyes and saw a blur of duracrete. She raised her head. She was in Max’s arms, she realized, and he was running down a long deserted street with Snit in tow. She gazed up into the velvety blue fur of his face, saw tears in his eyes, and realized things had gone horribly wrong. The last thing she remembered, Orbus had lowered his fake tentacle in the airbus and started shooting. What had happened?

Then Max saw she was awake and stopped. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said. “Put me down.”