streaked through it like a distress flare.
"You are Malakili," the Twi'lek said. It was not a question. "I am Bib
Fortuna, and this is my associate, Bidlo KwerVe."
Kwerve nodded his head, but his emerald eyes remained fixed on Malakili
as if nailed in place. Malakili flinched under his stare.
Given other training, he thought, this Corellian could have become a
good beast handler.
Malakili was muscular from a life of lifting heavy objects and wrestling
strong creatures. His paunch had grown large from the good eating he
enjoyed as the star of Circus Horrificus, his face was stretched and
ugly, his eyes wide and round like full moons. But Malakili cared
little for his personal appearance. He was out to impress no one. As
long as the monsters held him in respect, he asked for nothing else.
"We are Jabba's lieutenants. We have summoned you," Bib Fortuna said.
"Why?" Malakili asked, his voice gruff, his fists planted squarely on
his ample hips.
"We have a gift for Jabba," Fortuna continued. "A ship crashed in the
desert carrying a special cargo, a creature that no one seems able to
identify. Bidlo Kwerve here used eight gas grenades to stun the monster
enough that we could transport it into one of the dungeons beneath the
palace." The Twi'lek rubbed his clawed hands together.
"It is our master's birthday tomorrow. He has been away on business,
having recently purchased a cantina in Mos Eisley. But he will be back
tomorrow, and we want to surprise him. Of course with a creature of
this, er, bulk and temperament, we wanted it to come with its own
keeper."
"But why me?" Malakili said. His words came out as displeased grunts.
He was not accustomed to extended conversations. "I was happy with my
old job."
"Yes," Bib Fortuna said, flashing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. "You
spent seven seasons with the Circus Horrificus, training their specimens
without being eaten. That's a record for them, you know."
"I know," Malakili said. "I liked the monsters."
Bib Fortuna clacked his claws together. "Then you'll love this one."
Bib Fortuna and Bidlo Kwerve stepped back into the dripping shadows of
the lower dungeons as Malakili stared through the barred peephole into
the pit. He was enthralled, enraptured by the mammoth beast.
It growled as it breathed. Its beady eyes flashed even in the darkness.
It moved with a quick, liquid grace that many agile creatures half its
size could not manage.
"Magnificent," Malakili said through puffy lips. He felt cool tears
like lines of ice down his cheeks. He had never seen anything so
beautiful in his life.
"Did I not tell you?" Bib Fortuna said.
"I think---" Malakili drew a deep breath, still awed and afraid to voice
his suspicions. "I think this is a rancor. I have heard of them, but
never dreamed that I would be lucky enough to see one in my lifetime."
"You're not just seeing this one," Bib Fortuna said.
"He is yours. You must take care of him."
Malakili felt his heart swell with pride, and he beamed at Jabba's two
lieutenants. "That I will do to the best of my ability," he said.
The bloated crimelord Jabba the Hutt knew everything, so it was
impossible to keep a secret from him--even a supposedly secret birthday
gift. Still, his two lieutenants--with Malakili standing behind
them--acted as if they' were presenting Jabba with a great honor as they
congratulated him on his birthday.
"As our gift to you, great Jabba," Bib Fortuna said, "we have found a
magnificent and exotic new pet for you--a vicious monster called a
rancor. This is its keeper." He gestured behind him, extending
wicked-looking claws toward Malakili, who still wore only a loincloth
and draped black headdress. He had washed his bare chest and polished
his paunch to be presentable for the first time he met his new master.
Jabba leaned forward, his large eyes blinking. A tongue as thick as a
wet human thigh stroked a new layer of slime along his swollen lips. His
dais slid forward, closer to the grilled opening.
Below, the rancor paced in its dank confinement, making sounds like
tearing wet paper. Jabba's body rumbled with pleasure. Malakili saw
both Bib Fortuna and Bidlo Kwerve visibly relax their tense shoulders as
they saw that Jabba was pleased. Taking heart from this, Bidlo Kwerve
stepped forward and spoke, the first time Malakili had heard words come
from the scarred Corellian.
"I performed the actual capture, Master Jabba."
His voice was high and raspy--rather whiny, Malakili thought. No wonder
Bidlo Kwerve kept his mouth shut most of the time.
Jabba sat up quickly, a startled reaction. Bib Fortuna waved his hands
frantically to exercise damage control.
"Yes, Master, what Bidlo Kwerve says is true, but I performed all of the
. . . administrative details. You know how difficult these things can
be."
Jabba leaned forward again to stare at the rancor.
He sighed with pleasure. Bib Fortuna explained the workings of the new
trapdoor they had installed in front of the dais, anticipating how much
amusement Jabba might get from dropping enemies into the rancor pit.
Salacious Crumb, the loudmouth Kowakian lizard-monkey, laughed
andjabbered atJabba's shoulder, sometimes repeating words, other times
making his own nonsensical sentences.
"I am most pleased," Jabba said.
Malakili pricked up his ears but kept his face impassive.
He had learned how to speak the Hutt's dialect many years before because
the most bloodthirsty audiences to which the Circus Horrificus played
consisted of coldhearted Hutts watching other creatures in pain.
"I shall reward each of you greatly," Jabba said.
"One of you shall become my new majordomo, my right-hand man to assist
me and to run the palace while I'm away. The other . . . shall have an
even greater reward, one that history will remember."
Bib Fortuna bowed, and his head-tails lashed. He seemed tense, though
Malakili could not understand why. Bidlo Kwerve looked satisfied and
unconcerned.
"Master," Fortuna said, "I shall be satisfied with the majordomo
position. As Bidlo Kwerve has pointed out, he performed the greatest
service to you. Please allow him to have the greater honor."
Bidlo Kwerve shot a suspicious glance at him, blinking his ice-green
eyes. Jabba nodded. "Good," the Hutt said.
Kwerve stepped forward. The Corellian looked again at Bib Fortuna.
"What did he say?" Now Malakili understood the twitching expressions on
the Corellian's face. Bidlo Kwerve didn't understand Huttese !
Bib Fortuna gestured him forward as he himself stepped back.
Kwerve raised his pocked chin in the air and stood in front of Jabba,
awaiting his reward.
"You shall be the first victim I feed to my rancor," Jabba said.
"I will watch your struggles and remember them for all time."
Salacious Crumb cackled maniacally. The group of Jabba's followers in
the throne room snickered and watched. Bidlo Kwerve looked to Bib
Fortuna, and it was clear he did not know what Jabba had said.
As the Corellian's face was turned aside, Jabba punched the button that
released the trapdoor. The floor fell out from beneath Bidlo Kwerve.
In following years, everyone agreed that Bidlo Kwerve put up a
spectacular fight. The Corellian had somehow managed to conceal a small
holdout blaster in his body armor-which was strictly forbidden in
Jabba's presence. But the rancor's sheer ferocity astonished the
spectators even more as it devoured its first live meal since its
capture on Tatooine.
Malakili watched the monster's victory and felt warm inside, like a
proud father.
General Dentistry
Jabba tOOk exceptional delight in his new pet over the next few months,
devising various victims and combat situations for the monster.
Bib Fortuna rose in prominence in the crimelord's organization.
Malakili, though, kept to the lower levels of the palace, talking with
only the few denizens who also preferred the dank coolness and the
anonymity of shadows to being in plain sight of Jabba or his minions.
In his prowls scavenging extra food for his pet, Malakili got to know
Jabba's primary chef, Porcellus, rather well. The man was a talented
food preparer who lived in constant fear that he would create something
Jabba didn't like, at which point his life and his culinary skills would
be forfeit. Malakili would toss slabs of fresh, dripping meat into the
openings for the rancor, and the monster seemed gradually to accept him
as its caretaker.
For those seeking Jabba's approval, it soon became a game to find new
combatants for the rancor. At first Malakili took the challenges with
pride and confidence, knowing that the coiled killing machine would snap
up any prey--but gradually he became aware that Jabba did not esteem the
rancor as Malakili did.
The Hutt saw it as merely a diversion, and if some monster were found
that could defeat the rancor, then Jabba would be just as pleased to
have a new toy.
The Hutt had no compassion for the beautiful beast.
He wanted only to test it and test it until it failed.
The rancor became injured for the first time when Jabba released three
Caridan combat arachnids into the pit. The combat arachnids had twelve
legs each and crimson body armor splotched with maroon, as tough as a
thin layer of diamond sheeting. Their bodies were so covered with
needle-sharp spines that it was difficult to tell where the spines ended
and the sharp legs began. But the jaws were very obvious, jagged
pistons three times the size of the bullet-shaped heads and driven with
enough power to shear open the hull of an armored transport.
As the gates in the secondary cells were opened and the three angry
combat arachnids rushed out with a thunder caused by three dozen legs,
Malakili and the rancor--as if psychically connected--both reared back
in surprise. Up above, Jabba's booming laugh, "Hoo-hoo-hoo,"
reverberated through the observation grille along with the cheers and
catcalls from the simpering minions who crowded around to show their
loyalty.
The rancor bent over and splayed its hands, blinked its small dark eyes,
and let out a bellow of challenge. It waited for the attack.
The three combat arachnids surged forward seemingly in silence, but
Malakili's ears hurt from a painful high-pitched throbbing, as if the
arachnids communicated on some hypersonic level.
One arachnid ran directly beneath the rancor's legs. Moving too slowly
to react to this unexpected tactic, the rancor swept the ground with its
fistful of claws, but the combat arachnid escaped to the other side.
While the rancor was distracted, the other two arachnids lunged at its
leathery legs, slashing with spines. The rancor batted one creature
away, knocking it against the wall with a crunch that split its armor
plating open and speared the soft inner organs with broken shards.
But the rancor howled in pain and held up its hand.
Malakili could see dark dribbling spots where two of the arachnid's long
spines had thrust all the way through.
The second combat arachnid latched onto the back of the rancor's leg,
where the taut muscles pulled like durasteel cables. The huge mandibles
clamped down and ground together, chewing with all the mindless
mechanical force the combat arachnid could apply.
Snarling, the rancor bent over and tried to use its shovellike hands to
rip the mandibles free; when it could not break their grip, it pried at
Finally, the third combat arachnid leaped onto the rancor's lumpy back
from behind as the monster bent over. The third creature slashed with
its sharp legs, stabbing with spines, tearing open a butcher's pattern
in the rancor's hide.
With a squeal of confusion and betrayed pain, the rancor reared up,
stumbled backward, and slammed itself into the stone blocks of the wall.
The rancor rammed backward again and again, shattering the hard plating
of the arachnid clinging to its back until the thing lay in a jumble of
twitching sharp legs on the debris-strewn flagstone floor.
The last surviving arachnid continued to chew on the sinewy leg.
Finally, as if numb with pain and unable to think clearly, the rancor
grabbed the powerful mandibles and tore the monster's head completely
off, ripping the body away and lifting it up so that it dangled a few
strings of bright red ganglia out of its neck socket. The head remained
clamped to the rancor's leg, still chewing in a reflex action.
With no other outlet for his rage, the rancor hefted the spiny, armored
body of the combat arachnid into his sword-filled mouth and bit down,
crushing through the spiny 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, tipped 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 wh
o 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.
"Jabba wants to get the shells of those combat arachnids," 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?"
"The carapaces," Gonar said. "Very hard and jewel-like.
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