Free Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace by Kevin J. Anderson

and fragments of sandmaggot kidney. “You are to be taken to the Dune Sea, and cast into the Pit of Carkoon, the abode of the Sarlacc. In his belly you will find new definitions of pain and suffering as you are digested over the course of a thousand years.”
    â€œYou should have bargained, Jabba,” said Skywalker quietly. The guards shoved him, Solo, and the Wookiee toward the door; Leia, on the dais, half started up with anguish in her face, but the Huttdragged her back by her chain. “That’s the last mistake you’ll ever make …”
    Porcellus leaned against the archway in which he stood, knees trembling with reaction and relief. Whatever else happened, the rancor was dead. The threat which had hovered over him for all those years …
    â€œAnd you!” Jabba turned suddenly on his dais, his copper-red eyes seeming to skewer Porcellus where he stood. Drool dripped from his enormous mouth and he pointed one finger. “You also are to die …”
    â€œWhat?” screamed Porcellus.
    â€œYou cannot now deny putting
fierfek
into my food. Take him away!” Jabba beckoned to the few guards remaining in the room. “Take him to the deepest dungeon. When my sail barge returns from carrying me to watch the deaths of Skywalker and Solo, then I shall have the leisure to deal with you!”
    â€œBut nobody who ate your food died of poison!” wailed Porcellus, as the guards closed in around him. “Jubnuk … and Oola … You can’t—”
    â€œOh,
fierfek
doesn’t mean ‘poison.’ ” C-3PO bustled officiously down from the dais. “It’s extremely difficult to poison a Hutt, of course. But all Huttese words derive from food imagery, you see.
Fierfek
simply means a hex, a death curse … and you can’t deny that Jubnuk, and the unfortunate Oola, both succumbed quite soon after sampling your meals. It’s a natural misunderstanding.”
    And so it was, but Porcellus derived little comfort from the fact as he was dragged away screaming to a cell to await his doom.

That’s Entertainment: The Tale of Salacious Crumb
by Esther M. Friesner

    M elvosh Bloor had no spectacles to adjust, so he contented himself with polishing the screen of his datapad whenever he felt flustered. Like all good academics, one of his primary reactions to prolonged contact with the real world was to fidget. However, as with all things in his life (so he told himself), it must be fidgeting with a purpose. Melvosh Bloor did nothing without a purpose.
    On the face of things, one would imagine that his purpose in infiltrating the lair of the notorious crimelord Jabba the Hutt was a simple one: he wanted to die but lacked the strength of will to kill himself. This, of course, would be dead wrong. Then again, dead wrong might be a pretty good prediction for the fate of Melvosh Bloor.
    Oh dear, oh dear
, the Kalkal thought as he blundered through the honeycombed underbelly of Jabba’s lair.
Where
is
that fellow? You would think that at the price I paid him—in advance, sight unseen, solely on the recommendation of my colleagues—he would at least manage to be at the rendezvous point on time
.
    His cumbersome boots stepped into something thick and sticky on the corridor floor. There was very little light in this part of Jabba’s palace but Melvosh Bloor had the excellent vision common to all Kalkals, day or night. Therefore he could not avoid noticing that part of the large and gooey mass he had just stepped in had eyes.
    â€œMercy,” said Melvosh Bloor, placing a trembling hand to his lips as the acidic tide of queasiness surged up his wattled throat. His most recent meal had not been of the finest, to say the least—in fact, it made the refectory fare at dear old Beshka University seem attractive by comparison—so he had no desire to experience it a second time. (Although Kalkals were