CHAPTER 2

The Sand People roused themselves in the frigid darkness before the first of Tatooine’s twin suns crept over the horizon. Han shivered, finding no warmth in his bandage wrappings. Luke moved more sluggishly than ever.

Han was worried about his friend. In addition to exhaustion, Luke was suffering from deep frustration at his inability to help Callista—the Jedi woman he loved—regain her lost powers. And now, after days without sleep on the razor’s edge of peril, hiding among ferocious desert nomads, Luke’s stamina was wearing dangerously thin.

The Tusken Raiders saddled their banthas, and the shaggy beasts stomped impatiently, as if anxious to be off before the day’s heat caught up with them. Soundlessly, with gaffi sticks and scavenged blaster rifles ready, the Sand People rode out into the desert as the sky filled with purple, brightening to a lavender shot with molten gold.

When the first sun rose, Han felt the temperature sky-rocket after only a few moments. The air smelted flat and metallic through his mouthpiece, but Han endured in silence.

He thought of Leia and their three children back on Coruscant and fantasized about the peaceful life of a small yet successful trader. But Han grimaced behind the bandages: such a quiet life would be a greater torture than any vicious punishment the Sand People could devise.

By midmorning, the Tusken Raiders topped a rocky rise and looked across distended shadows and painted desert to the ruins of Jabba the Hutt’s palace. The citadel stood silent and monolithic in the crags. Han shivered at his first glance.

“I told you I’d get us here,” Luke said through the voice pickup.

“We’re not inside yet, kid,” Han answered.

“When I split off, follow me,” Luke said. “I’ll distract the Sand People so they won’t even notice us separating from them. Once we get out of sight, I can release my control—and I’ll be glad for the rest.”

Far across the rolling ocean of sand, the collected winds made a minor sandwhirl, such as often whipped up in the wastelands—but Luke used it to his advantage.

The lead Raider grunted something and pointed with his gaffi stick, wheeling his bantha about to watch the sandwhirl. The other Sand People turned, inordinately fascinated by the dust whirl. They chattered among themselves, grunting and hooting through their breathmasks.

Luke used the diversion to nudge his bantha to the right, splitting off from the line of Tusken Raiders. Han yanked on the rough curved horn of his mount. He couldn’t believe it was going to work, but he and Luke rode side by side, trotting down the sandy slope. Their footprints churning up dust, the banthas crossed the great empty bowl into the rocky canyon that led to Jabba’s palace.

Han looked back anxiously, but none of the Tusken Raiders turned in their direction. The Sand People continued to point their sticks and shout toward the sandwhirl as if it were an approaching army.

Luke urged his bantha between the narrow, rust-rock walls where the canyon shadows fell about them. Heat-broken boulders rose on either side, and the baked sulfurous sand and mud was like duracrete underfoot as the mounts trotted toward the lower entrance of Jabba’s palace.

Once they were out of sight, Luke let out a heavy sigh and slumped against his saddle. “We made it!” he said. “They shouldn’t remember us at all.”

“Yeah,” Han said, “and we got all the way from Anchorhead without anybody noticing us—no spies, no witnesses, no records. Now we can check out these rumors and get back home.”

A harsh wind whistled down the canyon, moaning through the minarets of Jabba’s palace. The high observation towers had open black windows, like gaps in a grinning skull. Han looked up and saw blaster scoring on the fused bricks. A few scuttling lizards ran from a pocket of shade to some other cool, dark crack.

Han could not see enough through the round eyetubes of the Tusken face wrapping. In disgust he peeled the bandages off and removed the metal eye coverings, tossing them to the ground. He drew a deep breath of the dusty air and coughed. “Boy, I’m glad to get rid of that.”

Luke’s face looked monstrous swathed in his Tusken disguise; but he carefully unwrapped himself, stuffing the rags inside his tattered desert robes.

Han shook his head as he looked at the ruins. Jabba had not been the first inhabitant of the huge palace. It had been built centuries before the Hutt crimelord was born, or hatched … or however it was that baby Hutts came to life.

Long ago, exiled monks of the B’omarr Order had found an isolated spot on the backwater world Tatooine and built their towering monastery, remaining mysterious and aloof from the planet’s other inhabitants. Sometime later the bandit Alkhara had broken into the monastery and used parts of it as his hideout as he preyed upon moisture farmers. The B’omarr monks didn’t seem to care about Alkhara’s presence, though—utterly ignoring him.

Since that time, a succession of undesirables had located their headquarters in portions of the B’omarr monastery, the latest of whom had been Jabba the Hutt. After Jabba’s death at the Great Pit of Carkoon, a civil war had broken out among Jabba’s minions as each scrambled to steal the Hutt crimelord’s possessions, ransacking the palace.

With Jabba’s crime empire in ruins, the silent and mysterious monks had taken the opportunity to reclaim what had been theirs, destroying those among Jabba’s followers who did not flee fast enough. The palace had since remained a haunted edifice, to be avoided by all but the most daring.

Recently, though, some of what Leia called his “scruffy” old friends had passed along disturbing rumors that other Hutts were poking around in the abandoned palace, looking for something—something important enough for them to risk coming back.

Luke slid down from his bantha and patted its woolly side. The bantha snorted in confusion and stamped its feet. Han’s bantha snuffled.

The corroded door loomed in front of them, a durasteel barrier pitted with blaster scars, some bright and new, others decades old and worn away. Luke and Han approached together. Over the years, the control circuits had crossed or decayed, and the heavy barrier had raised—and stuck—half a meter from the ground. Drifts of sand had collected in the gap. A cool, musty-smelling breeze leaked out of the shadowy inner corridors.

“We could crawl under, I suppose,” Han said without much enthusiasm, running his fingers over the heavy durasteel door.

Luke went up to the lichen-covered external panel. “It might slip and squash us both like it did Jabba’s rancor. I think I’ll try these controls first.”

As soon as Luke touched one of the buttons, a panel creaked open in the center of the door, and a bobbing artificial eye extended, swaying on a rusted metal stalk—Jabba’s surveillance system. The machine’s words were garbled and slurred as if its programming had deteriorated.

The scolding tone in its vocal synthesizer was more than Han, weary as he was, could tolerate. He reached into the folds of his desert robe, pulled out his blaster pistol, and blew the thing into smoking shards and sparking wires. “Oh, shut up!” he said, then turned to Luke with a roguish grin. “Didn’t like the way it was looking at us.”

Luke set to work on the door controls, and finally, with a coughing sound, the door lurched up another meter and jammed in its tracks. “Think that’s good enough?” he said.

Before Han could reply, the whine of a blaster bolt spanged against the metal door, creating another bright silvery scar. “What?” he cried, whirling.

Their two banthas snorted in greeting. Another blaster bolt shot down the canyon and burned a hole through Han’s draped desert robe, barely missing his chest. Han held up the drab cloth in shock, looking at the smoldering hole.

The entire group of Sand People thundered down the canyon, whipping their banthas to a frenzy and waving gaffi sticks. They fired recklessly with their blasters. Han and Luke’s two banthas reared.

“Looks like you stopped distracting ’em too soon, kid,” Han said, diving toward the partially open door. “Must have seen our tracks.”

“I guess this door is open enough,” Luke said and scrambled into the shadows beside Han. “Now if only I can figure out how to close it …”

More blaster bolts struck the door, making the musty corridors echo and thrum. The Sand People jabbered with rage, and their banthas made loud sounds as they churned around the door.

Luke found the inner door controls and grabbed at a bunch of the twisted and corroded wires. A single hopeless spark flickered out, then the entire control panel went dead.

“Better do something quick, Luke!” Han said, crouching down with his blaster pistol.

One of the Sand People fired into the interior shadows; the energy bolt ricocheted on the flagstone floor, bouncing into the darkness behind Han and Luke. Han fired his own blaster at the bandaged feet he could see. One of the Tusken Raiders yowled and leaped backward.

Luke gave up on the control panel and stood with his hands hanging at his sides. His fists clenched, then relaxed as he concentrated on the Force.

The tracks groaned as he moved the mechanisms holding the heavy door in place. Suddenly, with a thunderous clang, it crashed down, belching up clouds of old dust and engulfing the hall in darkness.

“Well, that was fun,” Han said. “Don’t suppose you remembered to bring along a portable glowlamp?”

Luke reached into the folds of his robe. “A Jedi always comes prepared,” he said and removed his lightsaber, pushing the activation button. With a snap-hiss the vibrant green blade spilled out, a rod of incandescent light that made Han shield his eyes. “Not the most impressive use I’ve ever made of my lightsaber,” Luke commented, “but it’ll do.”

The two crept deeper into the winding catacombs of the palace toward Jabba’s throne room. They didn’t quite know what they were looking for, but both were confident they’d spot something amiss.

“It didn’t look that much better when Jabba lived here,” Luke said.

“Maybe all the housekeeping droids broke down,” Han said.

Inside the abandoned main throne room where the bloated Hutt had pronounced judgment on his helpless victims, Luke’s lightsaber illuminated the walls with a glare that made the shadows jump and ripple. Scavengers, small and large, made loud noises in the otherwise tomblike room. Pebbles trickled from a loose block in the wall.

“Those weird B’omarr monks are still here in this place,” Han said. “But they don’t look too anxious to reclaim the rooms Jabba used.”

“I’m not sure anyone pretends to understand the B’omarr Order,” Luke answered. “From what I’ve heard, when they reach their greatest state of enlightenment, each monk undergoes some kind of surgery that removes his brain and places it in a life-support jar. It keeps them from being distracted by physical diversions, leaving them to ponder the great mysteries.”

Han snorted and looked into Luke’s pale blue eyes. “Good thing Jedi don’t go for nonsense like that.”

Luke smiled at his friend. “I seem to remember you called the Force a ‘hokey religion’ when I first met you.”

Han looked away, embarrassed. “Well, I’ve gotten smarter since then.”

Sudden mechanical sounds were as loud as distant explosions in the echoing room. The two whirled: Luke with his lightsaber ready, Han pointing his blaster pistol. The whirring servomotors and articulated legs came closer, many feet clicking like ice picks on the flagstone floors. Han felt his skin crawl with remembered revulsion as he thought of the crystalline energy spiders that lived in the black spice mines of Kessel.

But the thing that emerged was neither entirely a droid nor entirely alive—a set of sharp mechanical legs moving, staggering, as if with poor muscular control … an automated steel insect that stumbled into the throne room. And slung under the legs, where the bloated body of a spider would have been, hung a spherical jar filled with clear fluid that bubbled and gurgled, pulsing life-support into the convoluted and spongy form of a human brain.

“Uh-oh!” Han said. “It’s one of the monks. Who knows what they’re after?” He pointed the blaster directly at the brain jar.

No, came a flat, processed voice—a synthesized word through a tiny speaker mounted on the set of mechanical legs.

Luke held up his other hand. “Wait, Han … I’m sensing only confusion. There’s no threat.”

Are you … friends of Jabba’s? the spider legs asked.

“I’ve got better taste in my friends,” Han said. “Who’re you?”

The spider legs skittered from side to side as if the brain had stopped concentrating and lost control. I am Maizor. I was once a rival of Jabba’s. We had a … confrontation, and I lost.

The synthesized voice paused, as if processing. Jabba ordered the monks to perform their surgery on me and place my brain in this jar.

More thinking, more flat and mechanical words. I use these legs when I wish to move about. It took me a year to stop screaming in silence and become adjusted to my new circumstances. Jabba kept me around his palace as a joke, so he could laugh at how pathetic I had become.

The spider legs skittered, though the voice grew louder, tinged with defiance. But now Jabba is dead. The palace is empty. And I am the last one laughing.

Han and Luke looked at each other. Han gradually lowered his blaster. “Well, any enemy of Jabba’s is a friend of mine,” he said. “In fact, we were there at the Great Pit of Carkoon when Jabba was killed.”

I am greatly in your debt, Maizor said. Blinking lights flashed around the brain jar’s life-support systems.

“Then perhaps you can help us,” Luke said. His voice was calm, filled with Jedi power. “We’re seeking information. We’ve heard rumors. If you have been here in the palace, you might have seen what we need to know.”

Yes, Maizor said. Many strangers have come here recently. Much activity. Very mysterious.

“Can you tell us who they were, what they were looking for?” Han said, amazed at how easy the answer had come. “We need to know what the Hutts are up to.”

Hutts, the mechanical voice said. I despise Hutts. Many Hutts have intruded here. Searching.

“And what were they looking for?” Han persisted.

Information. Jabba’s information. Jabba had much knowledge stored here in secret databanks. He had his spies everywhere, collecting data to use or to sell. Not only was Jabba a crime kingpin, he also knew much about the Rebel Alliance—though the Empire refused to pay him enough to make it worthwhile. Jabba also had many Imperial secrets.

The spider legs bobbed up and down. Imperial secrets. That is what the Hutts were looking for.

“Imperial secrets?” Luke said. “But the Empire has fallen. We haven’t heard anything from them in years. What could the Hutts possibly want with Imperial information?”

Imperial information, Maizor repeated. Imperial Information Center, the great database on Coruscant. Jabba knew secret passwords. He could access the Emperor’s most heavily protected information.

Han was startled. “You mean the Hutts can break into our computers? Impossible! We’ve locked down all of those files.”

Jabba had ways of accessing them, Maizor replied.

“Tell me,” Luke said, “did the Hutts find what they were looking for when they came here?”

Yes, the spider legs said. They intend to create their own bargaining force, an invincible weapon. The Hutt crime syndicate will be more powerful than the Rebels or what’s left of the Empire. Maizor flinched. I hate the Hutts.

Han groaned. “Oh no, not another superweapon!”

“Do you know any details of their plans?” Luke asked, bending closer to the brain in the jar. “Any specifics?”

No, Maizor said. They have the key they sought, and now they will move on to their next step.

Han nodded grimly, looking to Luke. “We have to get back to Coruscant and report to Leia. The New Republic needs to be on their guard.”

Luke switched off his lightsaber, plunging the room into thick, oily shadows, but he reached forward to rub his fingers on the edges of Maizor’s brain jar. Fizzing bubbles continued to curl through the nutrient fluids, but the brain hung motionless. “Is there anything we can do for you?” Luke asked. “I might be able to help you find peace in your existence.”

A harsh, hiccoughing sound came from the voice synthesizer. No, Jedi. The B’omarr monks have already given as much solace as they could. What you must do for me is stop the Hutts’ plan. Humiliate them. The spider legs rocked back and forth. I will remain here alone—and continue to laugh at Jabba. That is my reward.