▸ Column · Jabba's palace on Tatooine — a petitioner from a Dune Sea moisture homestead bringing her grievance before the Hutt's throne in the Outer Rim underworld
JABBA THE HUTT replies.
Replied to by Jabba the Hutt, with a rebuttal from Boba Fett.
The letter
Great One — I am the mate of a man named Lorcan, who keeps a moisture homestead with me out past the Dune Sea. Last cycle he left his comlink charging on the cook-stone, and a message lit the screen from a contact he'd filed as "Hydro-tech — Davin." The words were: "I can't stop thinking about last rotation." I scrolled. Five months of it — with a woman called Sloane he met at the spice exchange in Mos Eisley. Cantina reservations. A rented room he'd told me was a "crew offsite." Even the pet name he once used only for me. I said nothing. I set the comlink back exactly where it lay and bedded down beside him as if the desert were quiet. We have a daughter starting at the academy this season and a fresh loan against the homestead. Every time he kisses me at the door I taste bile. Do I confront him with what I know — or go quietly to an advocate first and shield myself before he learns I've seen anything?
Jabba the Hutt replies
Hoo hoo hoo. You came to me sick to your stomach and calling it a crisis. It is not a crisis, my friend. It is a windfall. You are holding something this man does not know you hold — and that, in my palace, is the only thing that has ever mattered. Knowledge he cannot see is collateral he cannot move. Do not spend it by shouting it across the cook-stone. Confrontation is the discount you hand your enemy; the moment he knows you know, the leverage is his to manage, not yours. So you have already done the wise thing without naming it: you put the comlink back exactly where it lay. Good. Keep putting it back. Let him kiss you at the door and believe the desert is quiet. Meanwhile sit at the center of the web — the homestead, the loan, the daughter, the advocate — and let every thread run through your hand. A debt is sacred, my friend, and he owes you a balance he hasn't even priced yet. The one who is owed never has to beg, and never has to rush. She waits, comfortable, and collects on terms of her choosing. There will be no bargain — until those terms are entirely yours.
— Jabba the Hutt
Boba Fett weighs in
The Hutt tells you to sit and savor. That's how he lives — fat at the center, holding leverage until it rots, until the thing he's gloating over crawls out of the pit and finds him. I spent a long time in that belly thinking about his patience. Different read. Knowledge isn't collateral until it's fixed: pull the messages, the room receipts, the credit trail, get it in writing where he can't deny it. Then secure your own landing — your credits, your claim on the homestead, the child. Line that up first. Patience is a hunter's weapon, not a chair. You wait for the one moment he can't slip — then you collect and you're gone. Lorcan got sloppy and left the comlink out. Don't you be sloppy collecting.
— Boba Fett
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