Tales from Jabba's Palace: Star Wars Legends: Book 2 (Star Wars - Legends) by Kevin Anderson

Author:Kevin Anderson [Anderson, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780307796257
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2011-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

A Free Quarren in the Palace: Tessek’s Tale

by Dave Wolverton

Tessek lay in his water tank, ostensibly taking an afternoon nap as he contemplated tomorrow’s plots. By midday, Jabba the Hutt would be dead, one way or another. At ten tomorrow morning, the Hutt planned to inspect a spice shipment at one of his larger warehouses in Mos Eisley. And during that hour, Prefect Eugene Talmont, the simpering stooge of the Empire, planned to raid the warehouse in hopes of winning a post somewhere off this rock.

Little did Talmont know that Tessek had set them all up. Tessek had bribed two of Talmont’s junior officers to open fire on Jabba and their own superior, and afterward they would scurry away before the bomb that was concealed in Jabba’s skiff could detonate, blowing up Jabba, Talmont, and the nearly empty warehouse. One of the two officers would likely be recruited to take Talmont’s place as prefect, and Tessek would sell Jabba’s criminal interests to the Lady Valarian—for a vast fortune.

Meanwhile, Tessek would keep Jabba’s “clean” businesses, the ones that existed solely as money-laundering operations, for himself. Fortunately, no one—not even Jabba himself—quite knew how much of the Hutt’s vast fortune Tessek had diverted into buying and promoting such businesses in the past four years. Under Tessek’s careful guidance, the Hutt’s clean establishments were bringing in nearly as much as his criminal operations. And many a high-minded, law-abiding individual would be surprised to learn the true identity of his employer.

Tessek smiled inwardly as he considered his plot, yet still he was uneasy.

He heard a sound within his chambers. He lay still, opening one eye just a slit, staring out into the darkened quarters. He had heard movement, he was certain—a dull, scraping sound of metal upon the plasteel floors of his room.

But the room was dark, only the shapeless masses of old robes strewn about the floor. He studied for a long moment, until at last he spotted something near the doorway: a large spider-shaped droid made of black metal, with dim headlights that glowed like eyes. A B’omarr brain walker.

Of all the things in Jabba the Hutt’s palace, only the B’omarr were creepier than Jabba himself. Somewhere, deep below the fortress, the surgically removed brains of the B’omarr were stacked in nutrient-filled jars, where for centuries they had been free to ponder the cosmos without the distraction of their senses. On rare occasions the brains sometimes called to one of the spiderlike droids, which would then convey the brain to the upper levels of the palace.

Tessek wondered at the creatures’ motives. Spies, all of them spies.

Tessek thumbed a switch, locking closed the door to his room, then climbed from his water tank, letting the precious fluid drip on the warm floors.

Too late, the B’omarr realized that he was caged, and the monk’s brain trapped in a spiderlike body scurried about the room, seeking to hide behind a bundle of clothes.

“Come on, oh great enlightened one,” Tessek teased, “face your impending death with equanimity.

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