Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [9]
Malakili stood listening as a drowsy hot silence fell back over the palace, then he slipped inside to the dungeon levels. He stood outside the rancor cage, holding a small but powerful vibroblade specifically tuned to metal frequencies. The blade could chop through the thick locks inside the external door; it would take longer than small charges, but he didn’t want the explosions to upset the rancor.
Gonar, the scrawny, high-strung human clinger, appeared out of the shadows. Malakili didn’t like the way the young man always pestered him, watched him, followed him. “What are you going to do?” Gonar said. His greasy curls of red hair looked as if they had been anointed with fresh oil and his sallow face looked like spoiled milk.
“We’re going to go out for a jaunt,” Malakili said. “A game of fetch.”
Gonar’s eyes ratcheted open like huge cargo doors. “You’re crazy. You’re letting the rancor loose?”
Malakili chuckled. He was feeling very good about this entire excursion. He patted his rounded paunch. “I think we could both use the exercise, him and me.”
He opened the cage door and ducked inside, clattering it shut behind him. Gonar gripped the bars and stared, but the young man would never dream of following Malakili into the monster’s den while the rancor remained awake.
With the disturbance of its new visitor, the rancor rose to its feet and rumbled a low, liquid growl—but Malakili paid no attention. The rancor continued to look at him with cold and glittering eyes that showed an icy intelligence. But the monster had grown to tolerate Malakili’s presence. In fact, the rancor seemed to enjoy the keeper’s visits. Malakili had come to count on that.
In a blatant show of trust, Malakili waddled across the bone-littered floor of the den and walked directly between the rancor’s knobby legs to get to the opposite wall where the slime-encrusted door had been sealed.
He bent down with his vibroblade and tuned the frequency and energy density higher as he chopped at the metal locks. Sparks and droplets of molten durasteel flew, but Malakili kept battering away until the locks lay severed.
The controls had been disconnected, but Malakili attached a new battery pack and hot-wired the circuit. With a screeching, ponderous sound, the heavy metal door labored upward, splitting open at the bottom and spilling a knifeblade of buttery sunlight into the dank pen. Hot breezes whipped in, stealing the cool dampness, until the door had groaned completely to the top, an open window to the freedom of the desert.
The rancor stood up, blinking its impenetrable eyes. It opened its arms, stretching out its heavily clawed hands as if worshiping the suns and the fresh air. The monster stood in amazement and confusion, glancing down at Malakili, not certain what was going on. Malakili motioned for it to go through the opening.
“It’s okay,” Malakili said in a soothing voice. “Go on, it’s all right. We’ll come back in a little while.”
The rancor stepped out into the sunlight, flinched from the glare. Its shoulders hunched. Its shovel hands swung from side to side, scraping the floor of the pit—and then it stood up, strode out into the full light and heat, and bellowed a cry of sheer joy. Its fangs glittered in the double sunlight.
As if suddenly released from chains, the rancor broke into a loping run, stretching its legs, flailing its heavy hands from side to side to keep balance. The mottled green-tan hide seemed to vanish into the desert rocks.
Malakili watched the creature romp for several seconds, feeling his own delight, then he hopped onto the sandskimmer, fired up the popping, stuttering engine, and drifted after his pet monster.
The rancor sprang to the top of an outcropping of blistered lava rock. It tilted