Jabba’s Bureaucracy

The clatter of boots echoed through the dim halls of Jabba’s palace as a fresh batch of bounty hunters trudged toward the training room. These recruits, toughened by experience but bewildered by the bureaucratic mess they’d just stepped into, glanced at each other with a mix of skepticism and annoyance. Most of them had signed on expecting high-stakes action and fat credits. Instead, they were met with days of lectures from the towering figure of The Gamorrean, who had an infuriating knack for making every process as painful as possible.

The Gamorrean’s legs were the first thing everyone noticed. Encased in tight pants that clung to her enormous, rippling calves, she strutted around the training chamber like some kind of self-appointed fitness model, pausing every so often to flex as if the mere sight of her strength could inspire competence. She jabbed a finger at the bounty hunters in a way that felt less instructional and more accusatory.

“You think you know how to bounty hunt!” she growled, as if they were responsible for the inefficiencies of the entire operation. “But until you’ve sat through my full week of onboarding, you don’t know squat.”

One of the bounty hunters, a grizzled Weequay named Brak, shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He had been in the business for decades, but this was his first contract with Jabba. He couldn’t figure out why they were being held back from real work. Jabba’s palace was full of opportunities for anyone with quick reflexes and a sharper moral ambiguity. Yet, here they were, sitting through day after day of the Gamorrean’s lectures on things like “Advanced Lockdown Protocols” and “Corporate Morale Enhancement Techniques.” It was maddening.

As The Gamorrean droned on, Brak leaned toward the hunter next to him, a Rodian named Zeet.

“Why are we sitting here listening to this garbage?” Brak muttered.

“Because,” Zeet whispered back, “they don’t trust us to do anything until we’ve been through ‘proper channels.’ Bureaucracy, man. It’s everywhere now.”

Brak snorted in disbelief. “I thought this place was run by criminals.”

“Yeah, but they still love their procedures. They even make us clock in.”

Brak shook his head. None of this made sense. Jabba was a notorious crime lord; shouldn’t there be less oversight here? Instead, Jabba had eyes everywhere—security cameras in every corner, and each bounty hunter issued a tracking badge, ensuring their movements were logged and monitored constantly. Every time Brak stepped out of his room, he knew his badge sent a signal directly to Jabba’s control room, where she monitored her employees obsessively.

“She calls us liars and thieves,” Zeet added, “but she can’t figure out why no one’s motivated.”

Brak leaned back in his chair, watching The Gamorrean as she pulled up a holo-slide on “Conflict De-escalation for Hostile Negotiations.” It was so basic it almost felt like a joke. He remembered hearing about how tight Jabba kept her grip on the operation—about how her paranoia had grown to the point where she suspected everyone of stealing from her. But no one had prepared him for this level of absurdity.

In her control room, Jabba lounged on her massive dais, her slug-like body half-draped in shadows as she flicked through her personal surveillance network. Rows of holoscreens showed the palace’s every corner. Jabba’s eyes narrowed as she watched the tracking dots of her employees blink on a holographic map of the compound.

“Liars. Thieves,” she muttered, her thick Huttese drawl dripping with disdain. “Every one of them.”

She checked each bounty hunter’s progress in real-time. They hadn’t left the training room all morning, but Jabba suspected something. They had to be scheming, plotting. The system, though, didn’t lie. The blinking dots showed no erratic movement, no suspicious activity, just slow compliance with The Gamorrean’s long-winded lectures.

She grumbled. They followed the rules, and yet they still didn’t show the kind of loyalty Jabba expected. Where was the gratitude for the opportunities she provided? The morale-boosting measures? She had installed luxury beds, increased the quality of the mess hall food, and instituted “Employee Acknowledgement Days,” where the most loyal workers got a pat on the back (figuratively, of course).

But none of it was working. The hunters still came and went with blank expressions, and her lieutenants were caught whispering in corridors. Why couldn’t they be like Salacious? Now he was a loyal employee. Jabba smirked at the monkey-lizard, who was perched on his usual spot by her side, cackling madly as he threw another underling under the bus.

“See, Salacious knows,” Jabba grunted approvingly. “He understands what it takes to survive here.”

Salacious didn’t really care if the morale was low, nor did he care if Jabba’s operation was running itself into the ground. He’d learned long ago that the key to success was keeping Jabba distracted—constantly stirring the pot, blaming failures on anyone who wasn’t in the room. It worked every time.

By the time The Gamorrean launched into her next lecture—something about “Advanced Debriefing Techniques”—Brak had all but checked out. His gaze wandered, settling on the large display at the front of the room where the blueprints of Jabba’s ship, the Star Jewel, were still illuminated.

“Why do they need to increase carrying capacity?” Brak murmured, half to himself.

Zeet overheard him and snorted. “You think any of that makes sense? They’re overhauling the thrust, even though the ship’s scheduled for a full remodel in a year. They’ll tear it all out again.”

Brak stared. “Why do the thrust overhaul at all, then?”

“Because the Republic mandated it,” Zeet said, shrugging. “And Jabba thinks throwing money at it will keep them off her back. No one’s going to tell her otherwise. It’s a pointless waste, but who’s going to tell Jabba she’s wrong?”

The Gamorrean interrupted their hushed conversation with a pointed glare. “Pay attention!” she barked. “This is important. Your jobs depend on it.”

Brak ground his teeth. If his job depended on sitting through another useless lesson on corporate structure and accountability, then maybe bounty hunting wasn’t what it used to be. All around him, the other hunters wore similarly vacant expressions, nodding along as The Gamorrean lectured on, while silently resigning themselves to the grind of working in a criminal empire that had become a bloated machine of inefficiency.

And all the while, Jabba’s eyes never left them