Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [10]
Above, in the towers of Jabba’s palace, emergency beacons flashed on. Malakili heard the distant, squeaking sounds of faraway guards shouting in alarm; but at the moment he didn’t care. He would come back with the rancor. He would show that everything was all right.
When he flew too close to the rancor in the droning sandskimmer, the monster reflexively lashed sideways with its bony claws, as if Malakili were a bothersome insect. But Malakili swung around and flitted in front of the monster so that the rancor could identify him. The monster backed away, hung its head as if abashed at what it had tried to do, then continued out into the open sands.
The rancor loped across the hot, cracked ground, leaping over outcroppings in ecstasy. It ran far from Jabba’s palace, but it was not fleeing—it just loved its freedom.
Malakili’s chest swelled with joy, though he was ashamed at his own emotional weakness. Tears traced cool patterns on his cheeks. This was probably one of the most remarkable days in his life.
The rancor sprinted for a line of red-tan crags striped with strata that showed the rugged geological past of Tatooine. The broken mountains fanned out, cracked with numerous canyons like razor-blade jaws, rocky narrows cut sharply by ancient torrents of forgotten water. Seeing the shade and the rugged stairlike rocks to climb, the rancor put on a burst of speed toward the shadowy canyons.
Malakili punched the accelerator of the sandskimmer—but instead of providing additional speed, the small vehicle popped and coughed like a sick man spitting up a bubble of blood. The sandskimmer dropped under Malakili’s weight. He clutched the handles, and his hands were suddenly greasy with sweat.
Jabba’s palace loomed behind him in the distance, a brooding citadel like a stern father watching over those who had disobeyed.
Oblivious, the rancor dashed into one of the near canyons and vanished into the shadows.
“Wait!” Malakili shouted, his voice sucked dry like moisture in the desert sun. He wrestled with the sandskimmer as it angled toward the powdery sands and sharp knuckles of rock. Somehow, the vehicle remained aloft, puttering and staggering through the air until it reached the rocky wall of the ridge. He concentrated so heavily on keeping the skimmer in the air that he had lost track of which of the numerous side canyons the rancor had entered.
Malakili moaned as the skimmer finally crashed to the ground, tumbling him into sharp broken scree. He picked himself up from the stinging rocks and gazed toward the welcoming shade of the side canyons. The desert heat from the double suns screamed down at him.
He staggered across the broken ground, leaving the sandskimmer behind. He finally made his way into the dusty alluvial fan at the canyon’s mouth, stepping over flattened clay and into the darker shade. Every step sent a crisp tinkling sound of broken rock as dry pebbles skittered against each other. Otherwise the world was incredibly silent.
He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t walk all the way back to Jabba’s palace, although he might try it in the dimness of the night. Despite his own peril, Malakili’s main concern now was for finding the rancor. If he had lost the monster, Jabba would find a long series of imaginative and unspeakably painful tortures for him. It would be better to just lie down and bake to death in the desert sun.
But he couldn’t believe that the rancor would abandon him so blithely. They had been through too much together.
He picked his way over the ancient riverbed for about an hour, looking for the rancor’s tracks, but he saw nothing, heard nothing, only a few pattering rocks from high above.
At last, up ahead, came a surprisingly soft skitter of stones underfoot. A large lumbering shadow disappeared into a small split in the wall, a miniature canyon with sharp overhangs and time-smoothed rock faces.
Malakili picked up speed, hoping to find the rancor so that