Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Read Free Page B

pincushion of the arachnid’s carcass. Bright vermilion ooze spurted out of the rancor’s mouth from the ruptured, bloated abdomen—but it was mixed with another color of ichor as well, the blood of the rancor. Its mouth had been flayed, ripped to shreds by chomping down on the dead carcass of its last enemy.
    Malakili began to mumble in dismay. The rancor was hurt; it bled from many different wounds. As it continued to gnash reflexively on the brittle, spiked arachnid in its mouth, the rancor tore free the still-fastened head on its leg, yanking away a bloody gobbet of its own flesh as it did so.
    Malakili wanted to react, wanted to rush in and help the rancor in its pain—but he didn’t dare. The monster was in such a blind frenzy that it would not know the difference between friend and enemy. Malakili bit down on his knuckle, trying to decide what to do as the rancor stood bleeding and thrashing.
    Suddenly, with a hollow thumping sound, four grenade canisters dropped down into the pit, spewing heavily drugged gas into the chamber. Impenetrable metal sheets dropped over the windows, sealing the ventilation shafts to keep the knockout gas inside until the rancor could be sufficiently stunned.
    He heard a step behind him and turned to see Gonar, one of the other skulking humans who seemed at a loss whether to spend more time hanging around Malakili and watching the rancor or remaining upstairs in the throne room so he could earn points with Jabba.
    â€œJabba wants to get the shells of those combatarachnids,” Gonar said, nodding like a marionette. His nose was turned up and flat, like a Gamorrean’s, and his hair hung in greasy reddish curls as if he styled it with fresh blood.
    Dazed, Malakili held a hand to his paunch, about to be sick. “What?”
    â€œThe carapaces,” Gonar said. “Very hard and jewellike. Combat arachnids are raised for their chitin as well as their fighting abilities. Didn’t you know?”
    Finally, after the rancor had slumped into unconsciousness, the sleeping gas was pumped out and the large access doors raised up, their bottoms jagged like teeth, as Jabba’s crew of Gamorrean guards stumped in to haul away the broken remains of the arachnids.
    Malakili pushed past them and rushed forward to the grunting, snoring hulk of his pet monster. The Gamorrean guards used a hydraulic winch to open the rancor’s gigantic jaws, prying the fang-filled maw apart so they could remove the armored carcass of the combat arachnid.
    The guards were not terribly bright, in Malakili’s opinion, and they did not think before they acted. They exercised no care whatsoever as they tore free the dead insectlike creature, ripping the gashes in the rancor’s mouth even wider.
    Malakili shouted at them, charging forward and looking even more fearsome than his pet monster. The Gamorreans snorted in alarm, without a clue as to what they had done wrong; but Gamorrean guards were accustomed to not understanding, so they did not argue as they grabbed the jeweled carcasses and hauled them away.
    Malakili ordered Gonar to fetch several large drums of a medicated salve kept in the infirmary of Jabba’s palace, and soon the red-haired human came inside rolling one of the drums. Gonar popped it open, lettinga vile chemical smell rise into the confined chamber of the rancor pen.
    Malakili already felt dizzy, not just from the chemical smell, but from residual sleeping gas that clung to the dank air, as well as nausea from his disgust at seeing what had happened to the rancor. Taking handfuls of the wet, stringy goop, Malakili slathered the raw wounds in the rancor’s hide. He looked around and found the flat, gnawed scapula of one of the rancor’s previous meals and used the shoulder blade as a trowel to lay the disinfectant substance lovingly across the gashes.
    Gonar assisted him reluctantly, afraid to come too close to the monster and yet wanting to. With the