Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
A Boy and His Monster: The Rancor Keeper’s Tale
by Kevin J. Anderson
Special Cargo
The unidentified ship tore through the brittle atmosphere of Tatooine with a finger of fire, trailing greasy black smoke. Waves of sound, sonic booms from the crashing ship, made an avalanche through the air.
Below, the Jawa sandcrawler continued its endless path across the Dune Sea looking for forgotten scraps of abandoned metal, delicious salvage. By sheer luck the crawler stood only two dunes away when the plummeting ship struck the ocean of blind sand and spewed a funnel of dust that glittered like mica chips under the blazing twin suns.
The pilot of the corroded sandcrawler, Tteel Kkak, stared out the narrow window high up on the bridge deck, unable to believe the incredible fortune the luck of his ancestors had dropped in his lap. His crawler’s year-long trek across the wastelands had been practically fruitless, and he would have been ashamed to return to his clan’s hidden fortress bearing so little—but now a virgin ship lay within reach, unclaimed by other scavenging clans and unsullied by time.
The ancient reactor engines shoved the immense sandcrawler into motion. It ground over the shifting sands seeking purchase with wide treads in a straight line for the smoldering wreckage.
The ship lay in a crater of loose, blasted sands that might have cushioned the impact; some of the cargo should still be intact. The armored chambers and parts of the computer core might be salvageable. Or so Tteel Kkak hoped.
Jawas swarmed out of the sandcrawler toward the wreckage: the entire scavenging arm of the Kkak clan, little hooded creatures surrounded by a rank musty scent, chattering as they claimed their prize.
The front group of Jawas carried chemical fire-suppressant packs, which they sprayed on the hissing hot metal to minimize further damage. They did not look to see if anyone had survived the crash, because that was not their primary concern. In fact, living passengers or crew would only complicate the Kkak salvage claim. Those injured in such wrecks rarely survived Jawa first aid.
The Jawas used up two battery packs in the sputtering old laser cutters to cut their way through the hull into the armored bridge compartment. Dim light from emergency systems and the still-flickering glow from internally burning electronics components lit the abandoned stations.
Harsh chemical fumes and curling gray-blue smoke struck Tteel Kkak’s sensitive nostrils—but underneath he could detect an undertone of metallic fear, the copper smells of blood splashed and burned. He knew he would find no one alive in the captain’s chair. What he was not prepared for, though, was to find no bodies at all—just dark, wet arcs of sprayed blood, melted starbursts from blaster fire on the walls.
The other Jawas opened the main bulkhead doors and flowed in, chittering. Scout teams poured into the remains of the ship, spraying down smoldering sections and squirming through collapsed walls to find other treasures in the cargo hold.
Tteel Kkak directed one of the younger clan members to demonstrate his prowess by slicing into the main bridge computer to download the registry number and owner of the vessel, just in case there might be some large bounty, a reward for simply reporting the whereabouts of the hulk—after they had stripped it of all valuables, of course.
The young clan member—Tteel Kkak’s third sister’s fifth son by her primary mate—pulled out a scuffed, flatscreen reader with stripped raw wires dangling from the end. He used his rodentlike claws to peel back the access plate of the bridge panel and squealed as sparks flew when he connected the wires. He jammed the leads into other pickups, tapped into the dying energy in the ship’s backup batteries, and called up the information in flickering green phosphor letters across the screen.
The captain of the ship had been a humanoid named Grizzid, and Tteel Kkak’s fantasies diminished. He had hoped for some well-known dignitary or VIP passenger.
This Grizzid person had departed from the Tarsunt system, another place Tteel Kkak had never heard of. Dismissing that, he directed his young assistant to find more important information—the cargo manifest.
When new letters scrolled up on the screen, the device flickered, and his young assistant had to slap it several times before it functioned again. The flatscreen scrolled up a dismayingly short list of contents. Tteel Kkak’s thumping heart sank. One item, marked only as “special cargo,” had been placed aboard by a Bothan trader named Grendu, a dealer in “rare antiquities,” who requested that extreme precautions be taken. A heavily reinforced duranium cage filled most of the ship’s cargo hold.
Tteel Kkak let pheromones of disappointment waft into the air, strong enough to overcome even the acrid burning smells. Unless that cage had been immensely strong indeed, this precious special cargo, whatever it was, had certainly been killed in the crash.
Just as that thought crossed his mind, though, he heard squeals of terror and pain—and a rumbling growl from within the wreck, basso and bone-jarring, deep enough to make the remnants of the ship vibrate.
Over half the Jawas wisely bolted through the opening in the hull, fleeing back to the safety of the sandcrawler; but Tteel Kkak was pilot and clan representative, and he was responsible for salvage. Though it seemed the smartest thing to do, he could not simply run from a loud, scary sound. He wanted to find out what this thing was. The “special cargo” might be valuable, after all.
He grabbed the arm of his young assistant, who sent up an unpleasant aroma of dark, ice-metal terror. As they charged down the sloping corridors, they were nearly bowled over by seven shrieking, retreating Jawas who squealed an incomprehensible mixture of words and an impossible-to-read scent that conveyed nothing more than nauseating fear.
Tteel Kkak saw long streaks of blood along the corridor, huge red-smeared footprints. The lights had burned out farther down the corridor, and the ship still clicked and settled as the fires cooled and the desert sun baked the outside. The loud, reverberating growl came again.
Tteel Kkak’s young assistant tore away from his grip and joined the others running out of the ship. Alone now, Tteel Kkak proceeded slowly, cautiously. Chewed bones lay on the floor, as if something had stripped the flesh with scimitar fangs and discarded the leftovers like white sticks.
Ahead, a doorway to the lower cargo hold gaped like a skull’s empty eyesocket. Outwardly bent bars crisscrossed the opening. The door had been ripped from its hinges—but not in the last few moments and not in the crash, as far as he could tell. This had happened some time earlier.
Within the shadows, something enormous moved, growled, lashed out. As far as Tteel Kkak could tell, the thing had broken out of its cage as the ship approached Tatooine and had gone back to its lair to finish devouring the rest of the crew. But when the unmanned ship had crashed, the thick walls had crumpled inward, trapping the thing in the same cage that had protected it from death in the impact.
Drawn by a deadly curiosity even greater than his fear, Tteel Kkak crept closer. He could smell the thing now: a thick, moist scent of violence and rotting meat. He saw the torn shreds of several Jawa cloaks. He sniffed the air, smelled sour Jawa blood.
He hesitated one step away from the opening—when suddenly a wide, many-clawed hand larger than Tteel Kkak’s entire body swept out in a rapid arc like a branched fork of lightning during sandwhirl season. Tteel Kkak stumbled backward and fell flat on his back. The monstrous clawed hand, the only part of the creature that could reach through the opening, swept across the air, seeming to tear space itself. Claws struck the corridor walls, skreeking along the wall plates and leaving parallel white gashes.
Before the monster could slash again, Tteel Kkak leaped to his feet and scuttled up the sloping corridor to the opening in the bridge compartment. Before he had gotten halfway there, though, his mind began to reassess the situation, wondering how he could still get any profit from this wreck.
He knew only one being who might appropriately enjoy this hideous, dangerous creature: one who lived on the other side of the Dune Sea, in an ancient, brooding citadel that had stood for centuries.
Tteel Kkak would have to forfeit most of the salvage materials, but he did not want to deal with this monster. He hoped he could talk Jabba the Hutt into paying him a large finder’s fee, at least.
