Zorba the Hutt's Revenge by Paul Davids, Hollace Davids Page A

life."
    Trioculus knitted his eyebrows and frowned. "No. You cannot have Princess Leia." Zorba pounded his right fist into his left palm. "Leia for Ken! One human traded for another! Fair is fair!"
    "No," said Trioculus.
    Zorba’s pale, wrinkled face became inflamed, turning a bright, fiery red. "Yes!" Zorba hissed.
    "No!" stormed Trioculus.
    "Yes, yes, yes!! I am a Hutt, and a Hutt does not allow the murder of his son to go unavenged!" Zorba snorted, snarled, sneered, and then asked, "What use is the Rebel Alliance princess to you?"
    "She will be my wife," Trioculus declared in a gruff, angry voice. "She will be Queen of the Empire!" Hearing those words, Zorba’s old heart nearly burst.
    "And when she’s my queen," Trioculus continued, "there will be new taxes on every casino in Cloud City, starting with your Holiday Towers. Taxes for Queen Leia. So she can have anything her heart desires!"
    Zorba’s yellow, reptilian eyes turned up in shock. He wheezed like a creature about to die.
    "I want Ken," Trioculus repeated. "And for Ken I will give you . . . a new spaceship. They say the old Zorba Express is ready to be made into scrap." Zorba spit on the ground near Trioculus’s feet.
    "Curse you, you three-eyed mutant!" he growled. "You will never get Ken!" Trioculus leaned forward, turning his hands into fists. "Give me Ken, now! Or I will destroy Cloud City!"
    Zorba’s eyes narrowed and glowed like yellow fire.
    "We met as friends today. We congratulated each other. But from now until the end of time, you and I are sworn enemies! And once a Hutt makes an enemy, there is no retreat until death!"
    "It is you who will die for this, Zorba," Trioculus threatened.
    "May I never look upon your ugly, scarred face again," Zorba replied. Trioculus pressed a button on the communication device on his belt. Seconds later, the door to the penthouse was smashed to pieces as Trioculus’s stormtroopers burst into the room, their blasters drawn.
    But Zorba was just as fast on the button. His signal summoned an attack team of Cloud Police, hiding just beneath the floor. As a trapdoor popped open, the room was suddenly swarming with Zorba’s henchmen.
    The sound of Zorba’s belly laugh echoed throughout the room. "A-HAW-HAW-HAW!!.."

CHAPTER 8
    Revenge at Last!
    Zorba’s penthouse was filled with blazing laserfire.
    In the fast fury of combat, Zorba was struck several times, leaving small, black scorch marks on his thick, wrinkled skin. But his skin was tough enough to protect him. And he didn’t stop laughing for even a second.
    Zorba’s twinkling yellow eyes watched with glee as his Cloud City Police devastated the stormtroopers using their new model laser pistols.
    A few stormtroopers escaped from the penthouse suite with their lives. They fled down the hall and were captured by a second group of Zorba’s Cloud Police, who were just arriving on the top floor to serve as reinforcements.
    The moment he realized that his defense forces were being defeated, Trioculus, half-crazed by the maddening sound of Zorba’s laughter, tried to escape too. But he ran smack into three approaching Cloud Police. They overpowered the three-eyed Imperial tyrant, shackled him, and took him directly back to the penthouse suite, to face Zorba the Hutt. Zorba pointed to the Cloud Police. "Take him away. Take him to the room where we encase victims in carbonite. I’ll deal with him as soon as I return from destroying the factory barge-and Princess Leia along with it!"
    While those momentous events were taking place in the penthouse suite, something almost as momentous was going on in the basement of the Holiday Towers Hotel and Casino. A human guard brought a meal to Ken in his cell. But Ken was no longer hungry. He was now feeling much more alert, less tired, and able to make a plan of action. Ken decided to try the Jedi mind trick he’d tried on Trioculus. But this time he would use it on the guard instead.
    He concentrated. Freeing his mind of all