Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (45 page)

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,” Yarna 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 lefrJabba’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 ˇ 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 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 thingsJabba 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.

“What did your contract with Jabba say? Are you free now?” she asked.

“Yes, I am free,” he said. “And you?”

“Free,” she said, hearing the satisfaction in her own voiceget to Mos Eisley, my children will be, too.”

“Do you”—he paused, as if choosing his words carefully—”have a mate?”

“I did,” she said, opening the water flask and carefully smoothing a scant palmful of the liquid over her face. Then she allowed herself one long swallow. “But Jabba sent him to the rancor.”

He picked up his helmet and, not looking at her, said, “I am sorry, Mistress Gargan.”

“Please,” she said, “formality between us is no longer needed. I am Yarna.”

“Very well. Call me Doallyn.” He glanced down at the water flask she was carefully stoppering. “Why do you not drink more? We have plenty.”

“I don’t need any more,” she said honestly. “My people are desert herders, on a planet every bit as hot as this one.”

“What kind of animals do you herd?”

“Tomuons. Large, woolly, with long horns.” Her hands moved with a dancer’s flowing gestures, describing the creatures. “They give us milk, meat, and wool.

This robe”—she held up a fold of her white desert robe—”was spun from their fleece.”

He touched the fold of cloth, and exclaimed over the finespun softness and beauty of the fabric. “It almost glistens,” he said.

“Yes, our fabric is highly prized. It is said that the Emperor’s ceremonial robes are made of Tomuon cloth.” She wrung a fold of the robe hard, then opened her hands and allowed it to fall into her lap, unmarred. “Our cloth is strong, and rarely wrinkles or stains.

Askajian weaving techniques are prized secrets of our people. Nautag… my mate… was one of my world’s finest weavers…”

“And you,” he said, selecting a fresh cartridge of hydron-three and slipping it into the container on his mask, “were you a dancer before you came to Jabba’s palace?”