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Star Wars: THE HUNT Episode I: The Trap - by C. T.
THE HUNT
Episode I: The Trap
By C.T. Pierson
Korb Stavren didn't dare look back.
He was up to his knees in algae-ridden water. His lungs burned
as he tried to breathe the noxious air. Blood pounded in his ears, and
flashes of white light exploded in his head. Worst of all, he felt
like one of those Imperial torture droids he'd heard about had devoted
its existence to making his legs blaze with liquid fire.
It was the algae, he knew. The Grey Swamp of Wyorl was one of
the few places in the galaxy that lived up to every bit of dire
folklore ever told about it. Not only was it a habitat for over three
dozen known poisonous reptiles, and not only did its teeming insect
life carry Siluthan Fever, the Twitches, and untold other diseases,
but the algae itself was also deadly. It was burrowing into his
calves, Korb knew, slowly dissolving skin and flesh, drawing out blood
to sate itself. He'd seen a man fall into a sinkhole filled with the
stuff once: it still turned his stomach to think of the gelatinous
mess that had been pulled out again, hours later. Hell, even the
Wyorlan natives were afraid to go beyond the outer fringes of the Grey
Swamp.
Yet here he was, slogging through it, his teeth clenched
firmly together to keep from making a sound. And he didn't -- couldn't
-- even think of stopping.
After all, poison and diseases could be treated. The proper
cybernetic implants could even compensate for the irreparable damage
he was doing to his legs.
Death, however, was another matter.
He stumbled over something -- a submerged tree limb. At least
that's what he told himself it was. He immediately stifled the thought
that the thing had been _moving_. Slime splashed up over his thighs,
and he hissed, spit flying between his teeth, as prickling fire danced
up his legs. As he stopped to regain his balance, it suddenly occurred
to him how _tired_ he was. Suddenly he could barely lift his head, let
alone pull his feet free of the sucking mud beneath the Swamp's lethal
waters. How long had he been running?
Well, half his life, truth be told. But how long had he been
running _straight_? Twelve hours? Fifteen? He didn't know any more. It
had just been too long.
"I can rest ... for a moment," Korb wheezed, not entirely
certain whether he was speaking out loud or just thinking hard. "For a
moment ..."
A red cloud was beginning to form in the water around his
legs. He thought of the maybe-branch he'd tripped over, and the
stories the natives told of fish that could strip a well- fed nerf to
bare bones in seconds. They were drawn by blood, the Wyorlans
believed. They could smell it from miles away. Anywhere else in the
galaxy, Korb Stavren would have laughed such stories off as
superstition. But not in the Grey Swamp.
If he was going to rest, and _survive_, he had to get out of
the water.
With great effort, he dragged his gaze up from the darkening
blood amid the algae, and spotted a twisted, gnarled eshaiba tree. Its
roots clawed down into the water like a great, knotted fist, and he
spotted several nooks in its leathery bark where he could seek
shelter.
But not hide. Korb Stavren knew the tree would never hide him
from the one who followed.
With a heavy sigh, he gritted his teeth and trudged toward the
eshaiba tree.
***
Twelve hours wasn't anywhere near the truth. Korb Stavren had
been running for three days -- which, given Wyorl's quick rotation,
came to just over twenty-two hours.
Korb had used Wyorl as a hideout for years. All the good
freelance smugglers had one or two out-of-the-way, poorly- charted
planets they used as "safe-houses." He got on well with the natives --
a couple drums of Ruorr Winter Wine each season was enough to keep the
Wyorlans quiet -- and neither the Empire nor any of the major
crimelords had ever considered the world worth their while. It would
have made an excellent base for the Rebel Alliance, Korb often
thought, if its wilds weren't so insanely dangerous.
Korb had set his small, one-man freighter down nearly two
weeks ago, by Wyorlan reckoning. He needed a place to lie low for a
while. He'd just made a big score -- one that would set him up, if not
for life, then at least for a comfortable span. Pure Kessel spice,
seventy-two cases. He'd never even seen so much of the stuff in one
place at one time before.
Problem was, that much spice had to _belong_ to somebody. It
turned out that somebody was Orlugar Ghom.
If Korb had known the spice was Ghom's, he would have marveled
at it for a few minutes, maybe whistled in appreciation, and crept
carefully away. Ghom headed the local contraband syndicate, and his
wealth was exceeded only by his callousness toward anyone who wasn't
Ghom. Certainly he'd want the hide of anyone with the audacity to
steal seventy-two cases of spice from one of his way-stations.
Korb had been halfway to the black market at Fereesi Nor when
his ship's computer had matched up the symbols on the spice-cases with
a sign used by Ghom's operatives. He'd changed course so quickly, he'd
almost blown out his hyperdrive. He'd even considered dumping the
spice -- and possibly his ship -- but the price the stuff would bring
was too great a lure. He'd set course for Wyorl instead, with the
hopes of making contact with a tech who'd be able to alter the
spice-cases, and launder the stuff, so to speak.
He'd even begun to think he might get away with it. Then,
three Wyorl-days ago, it had all gone wrong.
He and Qui'il, a young Wyorlan native, had been away from the
tribal village. Qui'il had just passed his third birthday, and so had
reached adulthood -- while its day was surprisingly short, Wyorl had
an exceptionally long year, making Qui'il around seventeen by human
reckoning. Having come of age, Qui'il had earned the right to bear the
tenequa, the barbed spear wielded by Wyorlan hunters and
warriors. He'd promised, on Korb's last stopover, to demonstrate the
tenequa once he was allowed to use it. So Qui'il had taken Korb
hunting org, his tribe's totem animal.
They had been returning to the village, Qui'il's tenequa still
wet with brown org blood, and four of the vicious little creatures
slung over their backs. The hunt had been a welcome distraction for
Korb, and he'd forgotten all about his own troubles by the time it was
over.
Until they'd seen the smoke, at least.
There were no survivors. Qui'il's tribe had been slaughtered
-- even the young. The huts had been burned to the ground. The
village's totem staffs had been thrown down into the mud. At first,
Qui'il had thought the destruction had been wrought by a rival tribe,
one that had warred with his own for a long time -- nearly seven
Wyorl-years. Once he'd seen the first body, though, Korb had known
different. The wounds it had borne hadn't been inflicted by a tenequa,
or by any other weapon the Wyorlans used.
Someone had laid waste to the village with a heavy-duty
blaster.
Qui'il had fallen into an enraged, almost delirious state,
swearing vengeance on those who had eradicated his tribe, cursing
their ancestors and descendants both. Korb's mind hadn't been on
vengeance, though; it had concentrated on stark, maddening
terror. He'd left Qui'il behind and headed straight for the sheltered
valley where he'd hidden the Tepuri Starfire, his ship. His
livelihood.
His _spice_, damn it.
And while he'd been disappointed -- hell, a bit traumatized
was more like it -- to find the Tepuri Starfire had been destroyed
too, he admitted later, as he was wading into the outer fringes of the
Grey Swamp, feeling the maddening sting as the algae got their first
taste of living flesh, that he hadn't been the least bit surprised.
That it had been Ghom's men was beyond doubt. Given the
carnage at the village, he figured the crimelord had sent about six
armed thugs after him. Maybe eight. They'd come, wiped out the
village, set a few thermal detonators aboard his ship, cleaned out the
spice ...
At that thought, he'd stopped. There'd been a strange smell in
the air, one whose source he hadn't quite been able to place -- until
that point. And when he'd realized what it was, he'd nearly fainted
from fright.
It had been spice. _Burning_ spice.
A quick inspection of the wreckage confirmed it. The spice had
been destroyed -- all of it -- along with the Tepuri Starfire. Whoever
Ghom had sent, their mission hadn't been to recover the spice at
all. They'd been after _him_ -- and if he hadn't been org-hunting with
Qui'il, he'd have been just another smoldering corpse in the Wyorlan
village.
As soon as he'd realized that, Korb had begun running.
Almost immediately, he'd thought something was following
him. No, not thought -- _known_. Constantly, no matter how fast he
ran, no matter how hard he tried to lose it, it had kept pace. And,
after the second Wyorl-day, Korb had begun to realize his pursuer --
for some reason, he knew that instead of the six or eight, it was just
a ruthless, unbelievably deadly _one_ -- was toying with him. It
always stayed behind, just out of sight. Korb would think he'd lost
it, but then he'd hear a footstep scuff on gravel, or a telltale
rustle in the Grey Swamp's eshaiba trees. His pursuer wanted to catch
him, of that he was sure.
Just not yet.
Eventually, though, Korb Stavren knew the game would grow
old. His pursuer wouldn't remain behind him forever. And, as his
strength had begun to flag and the bloodthirsty algae had started
devouring his legs, he'd realized that that time would be soon.
***
A flash of movement in the moonlight jarred Korb out of his
reverie.
He tried to see what it was, but it was gone as quickly as it
had appeared. It was too hard to follow in the dark.
Korb caught his breath. _Dark?_ It had been midmorning when
he'd settled into the nook between the eshaiba tree's clawing
roots. That meant he'd been daydreaming -- _sleeping, more like,_ he
thought to himself -- for ... how long?
"Four hours," he whispered. His hand strayed to the small
light-duty blaster he wore at his hip. He'd reached for the gun more
and more over the past few days, but now, for the first time, he slid
the weapon free of its holster and flipped off the safety.
His pursuer had caught him, he knew. It was there, just beyond
sight, in the darkness of the swamp.
An enormous, ten-legged insect landed on his hand. He gasped,
watched it in horror for a second, then swatted it away. First,
though, it made sure to bury its long, barbed stinger in his wrist.
Agony blazed up his forearm, and the limb went numb almost
immediately. He nearly dropped the blaster, and quickly shifted the
weapon to his good hand. And, as he was doing this, his pursuer
suddenly appeared.
"Quorb," it said, in a thick, accented voice.
Korb spun, raising the blaster in his left hand. He never knew
what kept him from pulling the trigger, but he was immediately glad he
hadn't fired. Standing less than ten feet away, atop a rock that stuck
up out of the swamp, was Qui'il. The white-skinned alien regarded
Korb with dark, puzzled eyes. It had raised its tenequa reflexively,
poised to throw, but was now lowering it.
Korb let out a tense breath that sounded more like a sigh than
he cared to admit. "Blast it, Qui'il," he muttered. "Don't sneak up
on me like that."
"I am sorry, Quorb," Qui'il stated, its lips still unable,
even after a an entire Wyorl-year of knowing the smuggler, to form
Korb's name properly. "I did not mean --"
Then Qui'il's head exploded.
Korb could only watch in slack-jawed horror as his friend's
suddenly headless, smoking body toppled from the rock into the
algae-ridden water. A few moments later, an ominous brown-red stain
billowed where Qui'il had disappeared.
Parts of Korb's mind ran around madly, trying to get the other
parts to get back together and form a coherent thought. Without
realizing what he was doing, he shoved himself up awkwardly from his
nook and started toward the water, his finger dancing spasmodically,
just off the trigger of his blaster. He didn't make it three steps
before his legs, weakened from running and still bleeding from his
long slog through the Grey Swamp, gave out.
He slumped to his knees with a pained grunt, still not quite
believing what he'd seen. Finally, he managed to bring his mind into
some semblance of order. Something had blasted Qui'il, with cold,
efficient accuracy. It had dropped the Wyorlan with a single shot, and
now all that remained was the shaft of Qui'il's tenequa, sticking up
over the waterline in the midst of the growing red patch in the slime.
Something had shot Qui'il, which meant the presence he'd felt
had been his pursuer after all, and not the Wyorlan. And it wasn't
through playing with him.
"The hell it isn't," Korb grunted, forcing himself back to his
feet. He leaned heavily against an eshaiba-root, letting it take some
of the weight his legs could no longer support. He raised his blaster
quickly and fired a shot into the air. The sound of the discharge
roared through the swamp, and the flash half-blinded him.
"Enough of this!" he yelled, his voice cracking with an
emotion he didn't like at all. "Show yourself, and let's get this over
with!"
Half of him didn't really expect a reply, and for a moment,
that half was right. Then a strange sound reached his ears: a
high-pitched whine accompanied by a deep, thrumming drone. His gaze
flicked about the marsh quickly as he wondered where the noise was
coming from. Then, suddenly, he realized what it was: a small rocket
engine. And he realized the shot that had killed Qui'il had come from
above. He looked up.
There was nothing. And there was nothing. And there was
nothing.
Then, with a sudden, head-splitting roar, a metal figure
dropped out of the sky, its back spouting fire.
At first glance, it looked like some kind of demon from
Wyorlan shaman-stories, but then, as it landed on the root of another
eshaiba tree, Korb realized it was an armored man, and on the man's
back was a jetpack, the sort of thing certain warrior sects had used
for short-range personal flight back during the Clone Wars.
Part of Korb Stavren knew who he was looking at; but another
part wouldn't let him admit it. Instead, that part blinded him with
fear. The blaster dropped from a hand suddenly gone as nerveless as
the one the gigantic insect had stung. The gun disappeared into the
slime with a soft burble. Korb didn't even notice: he just stared at
the armored figure in growing horror, a thin stream of drool trickling
from the corner of his gaping mouth.
"You --" he wheezed, but it was barely audible.
The armored figure nodded. The gesture was sardonic and very
slight, but it also seemed -- to what little reason was left in Korb
Stavren's mind -- to be a bit respectful. _It's been a good game,_ the
armored figure seemed to say. _Too bad it ends here._
"Korb Stavren," the armored figure said. Its voice was soft
and menacing. It was not asking a question.
"I -- I --" Korb babbled.
"Korb Stavren," the armored figure repeated, its voice rising
very slightly, perhaps with irritation. "You stole seventy-two cases
of uncut Kessel spice from the storehouses of Orlugar Ghom."
"I didn't mean ... I didn't know ..." Korb was bleating,
although he no longer recognized his own voice.
The figure raised a hand. It was an inoffensive gesture,
despite the weapons bristling at its armored wrist. _Shut up and let
me get this part over with,_ the figure was saying.
Korb shut up, suddenly feeling very calm. A warm, wet patch
was spreading at the crotch of his trousers.
The figure lowered its hand -- slowly, deliberately, just like
it had raised it. "Ghom doesn't take well to having his best stock
stolen, Stavren," it said.
"Kill me quickly, then," Korb said, hardly believing he'd had
the _kilpaks_ to say it.
The figure inclined its helmeted head, almost quizzically,
then its shoulders shook slightly -- though whether with rage or
mirth, Korb couldn't tell. When it spoke, its voice was as flat and
emotionless as ever. "I'm afraid that's not what I've been paid to
do," it said.
Korb's eyes narrowed. Then, just as he was starting to pull
himself back from the brink of total gibbering panic, he heard a soft
puff. Something struck his neck.
He swatted at it irritably, thinking it was another one of
those stinging bugs, then his skin rose in chill-bumps as he touched
metal. He pulled a small object free from his flesh.
His vision was already beginning to dim as he regarded the
object. It was a tiny, envenomed dart. He felt like he was slipping
away from himself, and stumbled drunkenly away from the root.
"Wh -- ?" he asked, looking up at the armored figure. Though
his vision was too blurry to tell, he felt sure the man had never
moved.
Darkness smothered Korb Stavren, and he toppled face- first
into the murk of the Grey Swamp of Wyorl.
***
Orlugar Ghom fingered the communications console in his
personal chambers. Behind him, a lithe figure stirred listlessly in
his bed.
"This had better be good," he growled into the com panel.
"I apologize, sir, if I caught you at an ... _inopportune_
moment," the voice at the other end purred. As always, Ghom thought he
caught a slight mocking tone in that voice -- but not enough to be
sure.
"Eyrthen." Ghom scowled. His chief adviser never contacted him
after-hours for anything trifling. His hairless scalp prickled, and he
scratched at the ridge of spines that ran up the back of his
neck. "Trouble?"
"In a manner of speaking."
After a moment, Ghom realized Eyrthen wasn't going to add
anything more without some goading. Eyrthen was a fine mind at many
things -- finances, legal issues, battle strategy -- but tact wasn't
part of his repertoire. Ghom glanced regretfully back at the
half-asleep, half-drugged Twi'lek woman who lay sprawled among his
sheets, her eyes simultaneously glazed and twinkling from Kessel
spice. He knew that particular avenue of pleasure was closed off for
the night. By morning, he'd probably be tired of the woman and send
her away.
He shook his head irritably, scratched at his well- muscled
shoulder, and turned back to the com panel. "Well?" he snarled.
"Fett's returned," Eyrthen replied succinctly.
Ghom actually fell back a pace. His golden eyes widened, then
narrowed, and his lipless mouth turned downward in a scowl. "Don't
tell me he lost the trail already," he grumbled.
"Quite the contrary, sir," Eyrthen purred. "The matter has
been dealt with."
If his facial structure had allowed for it, Orlugar Ghom would
have whistled. "That was fast," he muttered. How long ago had he
dispatched the bounty hunter -- seven, eight days? _At the most,_ he
thought. Ghom had hired Boba Fett on one or two occasions before, and
had found him to be expensive but entirely reliable. But to have found
the spice-thief _this_ fast --
Eyrthen cleared his throat politely -- or at least with a veil
of politeness -- on the other end of the com channel. "Shall I send
him up to you, sir?" he inquired. Politely.
Ghom glowered at the panel. "Don't be an idiot, Eyrthen," he
snapped. He grabbed a pair of trousers from the floor, stopped the
amorous Twi'lek with a look as she crawled across the bed toward him,
and began to smooth his facial whiskers back into some sort of
order. "Stall the man a moment. I'll be right down."
"Yes, of course, sir," purred Eyrthen. Orlugar Ghom could have
sworn he'd heard the sarcasm that time.
***
"The bounty hunter, Boba Fett," proclaimed Ghom's furred,
feline adviser, stepping aside to clear the main entrance to the
crimelord's personal office.
With a soft, metallic jangle, a man clad in dented,
battle-worn Mandalorian armor walked -- almost _strolled_ -- into the
room. He didn't even glance at Eyrthen, nor at the blaster-armed
guards who stood behind Ghom. Though his face was obscured, as always,
by his helmet, Boba Fett was clearly staring at Ghom himself.
"You've outdone yourself this time, Fett," Ghom noted
casually. He stroked at his facial whiskers, still not happy with how
they were behaving. "Eight standard days to track, catch, and retrieve
a thief? I doubt even Bossk could have done that."
"He couldn't."
Ghom thought he could hear a slight sneer in Fett's voice, but
quickly thrust the thought aside. "How did you do it?" he asked.
Fett thought the question over. "You'll pardon me if I don't
reveal _all_ my secrets," he said. "The man was stupid. He left
certain traces."
"Where is he?"
The bounty hunter almost seemed reluctant to answer -- but
only momentarily. "Outside," he replied. "I didn't know whether you
wanted me to bring all the ... _apparatus_ in here."
There was something about the stress on the word -- and the
pause before it -- that made Orlugar Ghom's scalp prickle.
"Apparatus?" he prompted.
Again the slight reluctance. "There was an accident," Fett
responded. "He was damaged."
Ghom raised an eyebrow. "Damaged? How?"
"It seems the environment of the planet where I caught up with
him is somewhat hostile," Fett answered. "There was some kind of
flesh-eating algae in the water there. He fell in."
"How sloppy of you."
Fett drew himself up angrily. Ghom's guards leveled their
blasters, but Fett halted them with a baleful glare. Ghom himself
tensed, waiting for the invisible sign for the bounty hunter and his
men to start a firefight -- and wishing he were anywhere but smack in
the crossfire. Instead, though, Fett looked away from the guards and
back at him. "Shall I bring him in?" he asked.
Ghom looked to Eyrthen, who still stood by the door. The
feline shrugged fluidly, with the same almost-contemptuous air it
carried in its voice. Ghom recognized the gesture, turned back to
Fett, and nodded once.
The hunter motioned, and one of Ghom's personal servants
pushed in a medical stasis pod. The pod floated on repulsorlifts,
skimming smoothly to a stop between Fett and Ghom. Various devices
hummed and winked at its sides. The glass of the pod was fogged,
smeared with something red in one place. Ghom looked to Eyrthen again,
and was simultaneously alarmed and amused to see the horrified look on
his adviser's face. The servant who had pushed the pod in looked ready
to pass out.
Fett was unperturbed.
Morbidly curious, Ghom rose from his desk and walked around to
the pod. He found a clear spot in the glass and peered in. And
immediately wished he hadn't.
Something was inside the blood-smeared stasis pod. And,
judging from the shape and size, that something had once been
humanoid. That was about all Ghom could tell. He felt his gorge rise,
and turned away. What had Fett called it -- "damaged"?
"I managed to get him back to the Slave I and into the pod
before his condition could worsen," Fett remarked coolly.
Ghom turned back and looked at the bounty hunter
incredulously. Had he _carried_ that ... thing ... to his ship? Then,
suddenly, a different emotion swept over the crimelord. "I wanted him
_intact_," he growled.
"My contract states 'alive,'" Fett countered. "Nothing more."
Ghom glanced -- very briefly -- at the pod. "Yes, but I wanted
him as a person. Not as ... jelly."
The servant clapped a hand over his mouth and scurried out of
the room.
Fett regarded Ghom dispassionately. "If you had stated that in
the contract, you would have him intact," he explained slowly,
patiently. "I kept my end of the bargain. I hope you don't mean to
renege on yours."
Orlugar Ghom was used to being threatened. He was a hands-on
kind of master criminal, unlike some of his competitors, and had been
known to get into a fight or two. But most of the invective hurled
his way wasn't serious. He knew, though, that Fett's threat, though
veiled, was for real. And he had a feeling the hunter would be able
to carry through, if his bluff was called.
The thing in the pod twitched and moaned. Ghom's stomach
lurched.
"Eyrthen," he hissed. His adviser looked toward him
expectantly. "See that our guest is paid in full." He tried not to
look at the stasis pod. "Then have this ... this ..."
"I'll see it's destroyed, sir," Eyrthen replied swiftly. He
turned and left. Fett turned to follow, then paused at the door and
half-turned back. Although he'd never know for sure, Orlugar Ghom
always imagined there was a wry smile on Boba Fett's face, beneath the
helmet, as he looked at the befogged capsule hanging in the air in the
middle of the office.
"You can keep the pod," Fett said.
***
In the cockpit of the Slave I, with several parsecs between
himself and Orlugar Ghom's hideout, Boba Fett allowed himself a small
chuckle. Ghom, despite his outward fearsomeness and dire reputation,
was, when it came down to hard bargaining, a bit of a pushover. Many
other crimelords would have demanded Fett's fee be lowered for
bringing back quarry that, while nominally alive, was only so thanks
to a medical stasis pod. But not Ghom.
Fett shook his head slightly, examining his scopes, making
sure no one had decided to tag along in his hyperspatial wake. One of
the curses of being the best was that there was always some
blaster-happy idiot out to prove himself by picking a fight. Fett had
left at least seven such hotshots cooling on spaceport floors, or used
the Slave I's cannons to turn them into expanding clouds of
superheated gas. The latest one, three months ago, had actually
damaged one of the Slave I's shields in low orbit over Velaris Two.
That night, the debris that had been Fett's opponent had made
the most spectacular meteor shower in Velarese memory.
Satisfied he wasn't being tracked, Fett double-checked his
nav-puter. There was a juicy contract waiting in the Lossamer system,
and Fett knew of at least five other hunters who would be interested
-- two of whom might actually provide some competition. The Slave I's
hyperdrive was going full throttle, but it would still be a day or two
before it reached Lossamer's outer markers. Fett had time.
Time to think.
He unstrapped himself and climbed down the ladder into the
main hold of his small vessel, his mind drifting back to Orlugar
Ghom. Thieves stole Ghom's spice shipments on a regular basis -- it
was mostly his fault, for skimping on credits when it came to hiring
guards. But this one particular thief, this Korb Stavren, had aroused
a particular brand of fury in the crimelord. Fett wondered why that
might have been. Seventy-two cases of Kessel spice was worth a lot,
but it didn't match up with what Ghom had paid Fett.
No, there was something more to it than stolen spice. Whether
Stavren had known it or not, Orlugar Ghom had had a vendetta against
him before that. The pirated contraband had only been an excuse. That
also explained why Ghom had wanted Stavren alive, when the standard
underworld punishment for spice-theft was disintegration.
What was it, Fett wondered, that made an otherwise cold,
rational -- if somewhat blustering -- crimelord go to such expense for
one petty thief? It shouldn't have mattered whom Ghom hired. A
freshman hunter could have tracked Stavren down, eventually. But Ghom
had insisted on hiring from the upper echelon, and had been nearly
ecstatic when Fett had answered the contract. Why, when he could have
had the same results for a fraction of the cost, had Ghom taken him
on?
"It doesn't matter," Fett told himself firmly. "Not as long as
there's another ten thousand credits under your name."
He walked across the hold, his gaze flicking over the many
trophies he'd mounted on the walls. Boba Fett wasn't a sentimental man
by any standard, but he still enjoyed collecting mementoes of the more
memorable hunts he'd undertaken in his long career. Korb Stavren was
nowhere near worthy of such an honor.
Having given his trophies the usual cursory glance -- a
Meerlock skull here, a Corporate Sector Authority uniform there --
Fett settled into a seat at his computer terminal and keyed up a
particular file. A list of names scrolled up the screen, and Fett
looked at them, one at a time. Each represented a contract, a quarry,
a few thousand more credits waiting to be collected. Most were minor
targets, to be left to the kids and the grunts, but occasionally Fett
stopped and brought up a file that caught his interest. Today, though,
the pickings were scarce, so Fett's mind began to drift.
What had Ghom had the gall to call him? Sloppy? Fett glowered
beneath his helmet, but not at the crimelord's arrogance. Ghom had
been _right_, and although he'd never show such weakness in anyone
else's presence, Fett knew he _had_ been sloppy. Flesh-eating algae or
no flesh-eating algae, he should have been able to bring Stavren back
in a condition that left him ready for whatever sadistic punishment
Ghom had devised.
Fett wondered whether, after so many years, he was starting to
slip. The Slave I's damaged shield -- although long repaired --
pointed to this possibility too. Maybe he _was_ getting sloppy,
careless ... soft. Of course, he was still the best: it would take
more than a partly-botched contract and a scratched deflector to bring
him down to the rest of the pack. But still, it bothered him to think
--
Fett stopped, his wandering mind jerking back to the screen
before him. He even gasped, very slightly. On the list of potential
employers, amid the usual sea of petty gangsters, minor nobles, and
puny legal syndicates, was a name that had no business being there. No
business at all.
DARTH VADER, it read.
Fett stared at those two words for the better part of a
minute, a slow, cold smile forming behind his mask. "Well well," he
told the screen. "It's been a long time, hasn't it, Your Lordship?"
He chuckled, punching the key that would bring up Vader's
file. It was encoded, of course -- well encoded, in fact -- but the
Slave I had all the standard Imperial encryption routines on file. The
computer ruminated a moment, then spat the file out on the monitor.
For the second time in as many minutes, Boba Fett gasped.
Unable to do anything but shake his head in wonder, he stared
at the file:
AUTH: Darth Vader, Imp. Code 001A
REQ: Seek/capture, SLF Millennium Falcon
RWD: Negot.
TIME: Immed.
LOC: SSD Executor, Anoat System
CLR: Blue
Fett's eyes kept flicking back to the name of the ship the
Impies wanted caught. The Millennium Falcon itself didn't concern him
much: it was just another junkheap freighter. Rather, it was what
might be -- no, _had_ to be -- aboard that junkheap freighter that
held his attention.
Fett's smile broadened.
"Solo," he said, savoring the name. "You _do_ enjoy making
powerful enemies, don't you?"
There was already a price on Han Solo's head. Jabba the Hutt
had put it there a year or so ago, on account of a skipped payment for
a load of spice Solo had dumped. Fett had even picked up Solo's trail
for a while. Then some clumsy fool had attacked Solo and his
companions on Ord Mantell, and the Corellian had dropped well out of
sight. By that point, Fett's expenses were threatening to nullify
Jabba's promised reward, and he'd given up the chase --
reluctantly. Since then, the Hutt had upped the bounty a couple times,
but never enough to pique Fett's interest. So Han Solo had stayed
missing.
Now, though, the Empire wanted Solo -- or his ship, at
least. And while Jabba the Hutt paid well, Fett knew from experience
that Darth Vader paid much better.
A distant memory pricked at Fett's mind. He'd tried to
sublimate it, but hadn't been entirely successful. There was a reason,
other than credits, for Fett to hunt Han Solo. A damn good reason, in
fact.
That, coupled with the promise of a double reward -- from the
Empire for the Falcon, from Jabba for Solo himself -- was more than
enough. Fett realized he'd known, all along, why Ghom had wanted
Stavren so badly: revenge. There was one man in the galaxy whom Boba
Fett hated that much.
He switched off the hold's computer terminal and started up
the ladder to the cockpit again. When the usual group of thugs and
professional hunters gathered at Lossamer to bid for the juicy
contract, Fett was not among them.
***
"New signal, Commander," stated one of the Executor's battery
of scan controllers. "I don't recognize the configuration, sir."
Commander Jhoff looked up from the scopes he'd been
monitoring. "Rebels?"
"Negative, sir," the controller replied. "Unless it's an
independent ship."
Jhoff knew all about independent ships working in concert with
the Alliance. He'd been watching the scopes for one such ship for days
now, and the last thing he wanted was another one on his hands. "Run
it through com-scan," he ordered. "Let me know when the computer finds
a match."
"Yes, sir," the controller responded, and turned back to his
scope.
Jhoff looked up out of the control pit to the catwalks that
overlooked the Executor's bridge. His eyes sought out the one figure
who wasn't wearing a standard-issue Imperial navy uniform. That figure
wasn't hard to find.
Darth Vader stood by the large windows at the head of the
bridge, glaring out at the vast array of stars. He'd spent most of the
recent chase in that position, even when the enormous Star Destroyer
had bulldozed its way through a remarkably dense asteroid field. He'd
been standing there for two hours straight, now.
Jhoff considered mentioning the new signal to Vader, then
thought better of it. Vader had spoken directly with the Emperor two
hours ago, and word among the men was that the Sith Lord's master had
not been pleased with his servant's seemingly obsessive pursuit of one
stock light freighter. Jhoff doubted the Emperor would chew Vader
out, but he'd served with the Dark Lord for quite some time now,
having worked up from controller aboard Vader's old Star Destroyer,
the Devastator, and he could read the fearsome man's body
language. Vader was quivering, almost imperceptibly, the folds of his
cloak rippling as if he stood in a very slight breeze.
_That_ certainly wasn't a good sign. Jhoff had seen a man
interrupt Vader when he was in such a mood, once. The man's face had
been blue when his corpse had been dragged off the bridge.
Not terribly eager to have his throat crushed, Jhoff turned
and looked for a more agreeable superior. Admiral Piett was on the far
side of the bridge, conferring with one of his lieutenants. Again, it
probably wasn't the best idea to interrupt him, if only because the
resulting disturbance might attract Lord Vader's attention.
"Anything yet?" Jhoff asked, deciding to find out what they
were dealing with before risking asphyxiation.
The controller looked up for a second. "Computer's still
working on it, sir. Wait -- here it comes now."
As Jhoff made his way to the controller's station, he saw the
man's eyes widen. "What is it?" he demanded.
The controller only pointed, not fully able to speak. Jhoff
studied the readouts for a second, then caught his breath. "Are you
sure that's a proper match?" he asked, his voice an odd mixture of
impatience and reluctance.
The controller tapped a few keys on his console. A line of
data appeared at the bottom of his screen. "Com-scan gives a
ninety-eight-point-two, sir," he said. "Not completely sure, I'm
afraid."
_But close enough_, Jhoff thought. He was willing to gamble
his life on ninety-eight-point-two per cent odds. "Track him," he
told the controller. "Let me know if he deviates from his current
course."
"Aye, sir," the controller answered. Jhoff turned to go, but
the controller's voice stopped him. "Sir?"
Jhoff half-turned, his gaze straying to the black-robed figure
at the head of the bridge. "What is it?"
"Should I alert armaments, sir?"
The commander thought about this for a moment, weighing the
possibilities. "No," he answered, at length. "I want to discuss this
with the admiral first." Without waiting for the controller to
respond, Jhoff started up a ladder to the catwalks where his
commanders stood.
Piett saw him coming, and raised a hand for his young
lieutenant to step aside. "Yes, Commander?" he asked as Jhoff
approached.
Jhoff stopped and half-bowed from the waist. Piett nodded his
head, still visibly uncomfortable with this show of respect. A few
days ago, he'd been a captain, and had bowed that same way to Admiral
Ozzel. Now, of course, Ozzel was dead, his body spaced, his records
erased from the ship's computer. Piett didn't want to think about
that.
"Com-scan has picked up a ship signal, sir," Jhoff
reported. "It just dropped out of hyperspace at system edge."
Piett's eyes widened. "A ship?"
"Not a capital ship, sir," Jhoff amended, mentally rapping his
knuckles for not being more specific. "A small vessel, one-man."
"Dispatch a squadron of TIEs," Piett commanded, his gaze
flicking nervously to the starfield outside the bridge. Jhoff thought
the admiral was unduly nervous about small, one-man ships. "I don't
want another vessel confusing the search, Commander."
"Aye, sir," Jhoff replied, turning toward the armament
station.
"Belay that order, Commander," boomed a low, menacing voice.
All activity on the bridge stopped, just for an instant, as
every pair of eyes flicked to the towering, armored figure. Darth
Vader didn't turn around. Piett looked like he was about to question
the figure's statement, but swallowed hard, his hand going reflexively
to his throat, and looked at the floor.
"Send a transmission," Vader intoned, still staring out at the
void. "Clear the ship to land in the main hangar, and tell the captain
he is to report to the bridge once he has docked. I don't want that
vessel interfered with. Is that understood?"
Jhoff's face turned a peculiar shade of grey. "Completely,
sir," he rasped, half-bowing to the robed figure. He changed
direction and headed back to the com-scan section, beads of sweat
forming on his brow.
When he glanced at Vader again, he was horrified to see the
rippling of the cloak had gotten faster.
***
Jhoff's life became much more interesting in the following
hours. Five more ships, all with signatures that had to be identified
using the computer, dropped out of hyperspace in the Anoat system. All
were underworld-type vessels, built for stealth, speed, and easy
modification. All were, technically, wanted ships. All were directed
to dock, their captains to report to the Executor's bridge.
Jhoff wasn't particularly looking forward to the resulting
meeting.
***
Fett looked out over the assemblage with a combination of
disdain and appreciation. If Darth Vader had wanted to collect the
meanest menagerie in the galaxy, he'd done a pretty good job. There
were one or two noteworthy faces missing -- probably already on hunts,
or too far away to be bothered -- but the group on the Executor's
bridge was probably the deadliest collection of hunters ever assembled
in one place.
They would have been a formidable fighting force, if they
hadn't hated one another so intensely.
Fett's eyes met those of Zuckuss. The insectoid alien fingered
its heavy rifle and flashed a glance at its companion, 4-LOM. Fett
tried to gauge the creatures' attitudes, but couldn't. They were just
too inhuman.
The next was equally inhuman, but easier to read. Bossk's lip
curled in a hateful snarl as his bloodshot eyes gave Fett the
once-over. Of all the lesser hunters in the cosmos, Fett imagined
Bossk was the closest thing he had to a rival. Of course, the
Trandoshan was Fett's inferior by anyone's guess -- except Bossk's
own, of course -- but Fett knew better than to underestimate him. The
two had had enough run-ins to figure out each deserved a wide berth,
whenever possible.
_Doesn't look like that's possible this time, though, Your
Ugliness,_ Fett thought with a sneer.
Beside Bossk stood IG-88. If Bossk was the only hunter on the
bridge whom Fett considered a rival, the towering chrome phlutedroid
was the only one he respected. Having been built as a war machine,
IG-88 was incredibly deadly, tough, and ruthless. In a straight-up
fight, the droid could probably kill any hunter on the bridge --
except, perhaps, Fett himself. Unfortunately for IG-88, no intelligent
hunter ever fought straight-up. And that, Fett knew, was where the
droid fell short: it lacked the creativity to be appropriately sneaky,
using brute force and blasters where secrecy and a quick knife in the
back might be more effective.
The thought of secrecy and a quick knife in the back caused
Fett's gaze to shift to Dengar. Although he was almost as well-armored
as Fett himself, and he carried a gun powerful enough to blast a
Gundark in half, Dengar wasn't a warrior. His creased face tightened
in a scowl as he eyed the other hunters, as if he was trying to think
of a way to cut everyone else's throat without being noticed. His gaze
met Fett's for an instant, and he nodded once.
Fett looked away.
Something stirred behind them, toward the front of the
bridge. Fett didn't have to look to know what it was. The rasp of
mechanically enhanced breathing drew nearer, and several of the
hunters tensed reflexively. Fett rolled his eyes behind his mask.
As Darth Vader neared, one of the Impies, a lean-faced man in
an officer's uniform, glared up at the hunters. Fett glanced at the
officer's rank insignia and chuckled inwardly. Even this man -- an
admiral, probably the commander of this monstrosity of a starship --
needed to have the Dark Lord close by before he could show his
disapproval.
"Bounty hunters," the admiral said to one of his toadies, some
sort of group commander who hadn't bothered to conceal his
apprehension since the first hunters had stepped onto the bridge. "We
don't need that scum."
Fett chuckled again, but he saw that some of the others
weren't so amused. Bossk, in particular, had a dangerous gleam in his
eyes.
"Yes, sir," the commander noted, glancing apprehensively at
the Trandoshan.
"Those Rebels won't escape us," the admiral pursued.
_Rebels?_ Fett wondered. Was this the same Millennium Falcon
he knew? Was it the same Han Solo?
"Murtsprek," Bossk hissed at the Impies. He bared needle- like
teeth at the admiral in particular.
Fett frowned. _That's why you're never going to one-up me,
Ugly,_ he told Bossk silently. _You've got too much of a temper._
The admiral looked up at Bossk and seemed to shudder.
"Sir?" asked a controller, staring at his console. "We have a
priority signal from the Star Destroyer Avenger."
"Right," the admiral answered, clearly overjoyed to have his
attention directed away from the ornery Trandoshan.
Darth Vader passed through the bounty hunters' midst and began
to pace. "There will be a substantial reward for the one who finds the
Millennium Falcon," he informed them. "You are free to use any methods
necessary, but I want them alive." He stopped in front of Fett and
shook a finger at him, warningly. "No disintegrations."
_Oh, not this again,_ Fett thought. But what he said was more
respectful. "As you wish," he murmured.
"Lord Vader!"
Vader turned, as did Dengar and several other hunters. The
admiral was heading toward the group with newfound vigor. Apparently
whatever the Avenger had told him had given the man a spine. He came
to a stop before Vader, ignoring the hunters entirely. "My lord," he
said breathlessly, "we have them."
Beside Fett, Dengar muttered an angry curse. Fett glanced at
him slowly, silencing him. Zuckuss was twitching, too, and Fett
thought Bossk might just turn around and blast a smoking hole in the
admiral's stomach. He could understand the others' agitation:
obviously he wasn't the only one who'd given up another tempting
contract to head to the Anoat system. If the Impies actually managed
to capture the Falcon ...
Oddly, Vader didn't seem to give this possibility much
credence. "Give me regular reports, Admiral," he told the officer,
then turned away to face Fett again.
The admiral gaped at his back. "But, milord," he began to
protest.
"You have your orders," Vader snapped, not looking at the
officer. "Perhaps you wish to question them?"
The admiral suddenly looked short of breath. His eyes bulged
in panic. "N-no, milord," he gasped. An instant later he drew in a
deep lungful of air and scurried off, his face white. "Give me regular
reports, Commander," he barked at his toady in the control pit.
Fett looked questioningly at Vader, who glared coldly back.
"We reasonably expect the ship's main hyperdrive is
inoperative," Vader continued, resuming his pacing. "Still, my crews
are ill-equipped for such operations. Her captain is quite cunning --
we've already lost one Star Destroyer in an asteroid belt, trying to
follow him."
"What's so important about this one ship?" Dengar asked, and
Fett groaned silently.
Vader whirled, and Dengar flinched visibly as the black-
armored giant stalked up to him. "That's none of your concern, _bounty
hunter_," he rumbled, the contempt with which he said the last words
almost overwhelming. Dengar looked like he wanted to disappear through
the floor. "You should only worry about finding it."
"Of-of course, Lord Vader," Dengar sputtered. "I-I only meant
--"
"Lord Vader!" shouted the admiral from the com-scan pit. "The
Avenger reports that the Rebels' aft shield is failing."
Vader whirled. "Tell Captain Needa the ship is not to be
destroyed," he commanded. "If it is, he will find the consequences
unpleasant."
The admiral gulped. "Y-yes, milord."
Vader resumed his pacing, apparently having forgotten about
Dengar. "When you have located the Millennium Falcon, inform me
personally. You will be supplied with the proper coding sequence for
your transmissions." He stopped, looking down into the com-scan
pit. There seemed to be some confusion from that direction. Fett knew
immediately what it meant. "What is the problem, Admiral?" Vader
demanded.
The officer looked up, his eyes full of dread. "The Avenger
has ... has lost them, milord."
"_Lost_ them?"
The admiral recoiled as if struck. "They -- they no longer
appear on their scopes, milord." He paused, drawing a shaky
breath. "It would appear they succeeded in making the jump to
hyperspace."
_Idiot,_ Fett thought.
"Cap-Captain Needa is on his way to convey his apologies,
milord," the admiral added.
"Of course he is," Vader replied. There was wry amusement in
his voice, although his demeanor didn't change in the slightest. "Have
him report to me when he arrives." He turned back to the hunters, all
of whom looked at him expectantly. "I want that ship," he said, and
nothing more.
As the hunters filed from the bridge, Fett's mind was working
quickly, discarding possibilities, considering others, guessing what
his competitors might do next. By the time he reached the doors
leading into the bowels of the Executor, he had a plan.
Fett turned to Dengar, and their gazes met again. This time,
it was Fett who nodded.
***
Bossk sat in the cockpit of the Teskrut, his modified fighter,
deep in thought. Only one of the hunters had left the Executor yet:
Boba Fett. Bossk had been worried when the Slave I had pulled out of
the docking bay, but his fears had been quickly allayed: Fett was
bound only for the Avenger, no doubt to question the bridge crew about
the Millennium Falcon's disappearance. Bossk had considered doing that
himself, but had realized the scan crews wouldn't have kept anything
from Darth Vader. They wouldn't have been able to.
Fett was just getting old, Bossk decided. Old and rusty.
He thought about the Millennium Falcon. He didn't know much
about Han Solo, but he was more than a bit familiar with Solo's first
mate. Bossk had been a Wookiee hunter most of his life, and had earned
a decent living recapturing escaped slaves for the Empire when he
wasn't doing more general bounty hunting. Chewbacca was one of a
handful of Wookiees that had eluded him. The possibility of finally
erasing one of his record's few black marks was too tempting to
ignore.
So where would Chewbacca have gone? Bossk had a few
ideas. He'd pulled the Falcon's last known trajectory out of the
Imperial com-scan network, and had pinpointed three potential
destinations. One of them was openly hostile to Wookiees, which left
the Trindh and Eshkibok systems. Neither had an Imperial garrison,
both had thriving underworlds, and both, though officially unaligned,
were moderately sympathetic to the Alliance. Either would make a
perfect hiding place for the Millennium Falcon.
Bossk ran a raspy tongue over his pointed teeth, and his
thick, webbed fingers twiddled with a gauge on the Teskrut's control
panel. Finally, he rejected both systems. They were too obvious, and
from what he'd gathered, Solo was too clever to settle for the
obvious. He checked the list of systems again, and suddenly another
option leaped out at him.
Ord Lethi.
He punched it into his nav-puter before he realized he'd
thought of it, and his engines were already starting to warm up as he
considered how _right_ Ord Lethi's profile was.
Virtually uninhabited. Rocky terrain with plenty of large
caves and canyons. Capable of supporting life, if only barely. No
Imperial presence. No known Rebel presence, either. Bossk considered
the possibility of using the system as a hideout himself, once this
business was dealt with.
As he rolled this idea around in his head and waited for his
engines to charge, a small warning light went off on his control
panel. Someone else was leaving the Executor.
He checked the scope. It was Dengar's motley, battered ship,
already on its way out of the docking bay. Bossk watched it nervously
as it soared free of the Star Destroyer. As he followed it out into
space, he noticed a third ship -- the vessel manned by Zuckuss and
4-LOM -- was already showing heat blooms around its engines. It would
be right on his tail.
He focused on Dengar's ship as he soared free of the hangar
bay. Not surprisingly, it was headed in the same direction he
was. That meant nothing, in and of itself: every one of the hunters
would almost certainly head out along the same trajectory, at least at
the start. But a growing suspicion was picking at Bossk's
brain. Checking his scope, he saw Zuckuss and 4-LOM were headed that
way, too.
Suddenly Dengar's ship flashed out of sight. It had made the
jump to hyperspace. Bossk furtively started feeding course information
into his nav-puter. At the same time, he told the main computer to
extrapolate a destination for Dengar's ship.
It returned only one possibility: Ord Lethi.
Muttering a string of Trandoshan curses, Bossk flipped a
lever, and starlines streaked around his ship as it lunged into
hyperspace. He was sure Zuckuss and 4-LOM would be following on the
same heading.
Fine, then, he decided. If this was how the game was going to
unfold, he'd just have to make sure he got to Ord Lethi ahead of the
others. He reached for another lever on the control panel, and opened
up his thrusters full throttle.
***
Behind, in the Anoat system, the fleet of Star Destroyers
started breaking up. Zuckuss and 4-LOM leapt into hyperspace, then the
enormous capital ships began to streak off in every direction, dumping
massive hunks of scrap metal -- many of which were larger than the
bounty hunters' ships themselves -- before vanishing into
infinity. Among the last to do so was the Avenger.
When all the Star Destroyers were gone, leaving only long
trails of garbage behind, a small, battered freighter crept free of
one such stream. Firing its main thrusters, it headed off in a
direction entirely different from the way Dengar, Bossk, and Zuckuss
had gone.
Once he was satisfied it had gone far enough, Boba Fett turned
from his tracking scope and fired up his own engines. He'd gone to
the Avenger, true, but not for the reason Bossk had suspected. He'd
known, back on the Executor, exactly what Solo had meant to
do. Clinging to a larger vessel was an old smuggler's trick -- and an
old bounty hunter's trick, too. Fett had used it once or twice
himself.
He'd convinced the Avenger's dubious new captain that he
wanted his ship to be jettisoned with the garbage before the jump to
light speed. He'd considered telling the captain not to dump his
garbage at all -- he was curious about what Solo would do if the
Impies didn't follow standard procedure -- but he wanted the Falcon
all to himself, for now.
After a while, the Falcon jumped. It wasn't totally helpless
without its main hyperdrive: the backup systems were still good for
short hops. The problem was, they weren't very fast, and they were
easily tracked.
Fett examined a few readouts on his control panel, then smiled
behind his helmet.
Bespin, then.
***
Glowing clouds swirled around the Teskrut's cockpit windows as
Bossk settled into his seat. It had been three days since he'd left
the Anoat system: three days of tinkering with his engines and
checking the scopes for signs of the other hunters' ships.
He checked the scanner again, although he knew its readings
wouldn't have changed from an hour ago. Of Zuckuss' ship there was no
sign. Chances were, with two other vessels ahead of them, old Zuck and
LOM had decided to call off the search and find quarry with less
competition. Bossk didn't blame them: they were good, but up against
himself and Fett -- hell, even IG-88 -- Zuckuss and his droid were out
of their league.
Dengar was out of his league, too, Bossk knew, but to his
credit the human had stuck it out. A blip that had to be his ship was
still visible on the scope, as it had been from the start of the
chase.
The difference was, _Dengar_ was the one doing the chasing
now.
Bossk made a harsh coughing sound that could have been a
laugh. The Teskrut was built for speed before anything else. He'd
pulled even with Dengar at the end of the first day, and after a
couple hours of mucking with the hyperdrive motivator, he'd gone right
on by the other hunter. By the end of the second day, Bossk could have
left Dengar far enough behind to be out of sensor range, but he'd
decided it was too much fun to let the human see he was being
outstripped. He'd toyed with Dengar for the last twenty-four hours.
Now it was time to stop playing games. Ord Lethi was coming
up. Bossk figured he'd have six hours' lead time before Dengar reached
him. That, he decided, would be plenty. All he had to do was _find_
the Falcon, then contact Vader. Let the Impies clean up the mess.
A red warning light started flashing on the Teskrut's control
panel. Bossk gave it a passing glance, then slapped a scaly hand on
the hyperdrive control lever. His thick tongue flicked out of his
lipless mouth in anticipation, then he pulled the lever back.
Starlines tightened into distant points of light. Bossk's
bloodshot eyes widened.
Where was Ord Lethi?
According to the starchart in his ship's computer, there
should have been a large red sun blazing dead ahead. He should have
been able to see that star's outermost planet, an unremarkable
ringless gas giant, about sixty degrees to port.
Instead, nothing.
Bossk made a low gurgling sound. What the hell could cause a
whole star system to disappear? He'd heard the Alliance's propaganda
about an Imperial space station that had blasted Alderaan into rubble,
but he'd never given it any credence. Everyone knew the Alderaanians
had been conducting secret weapons research: the planet's destruction
had certainly been the result of an accident during one experiment or
another.
But even if the supposed "Death Star" had been more than a
Rebel fabrication, it wouldn't have been able to blow away an entire
_star system_. It was impossible.
Which left the problem of why there was no star system _here_,
where his starchart said one had to be.
Reflexively, Bossk raised his deflectors and switched power to
his forward gun array. Only after he was ready for whatever danger
might be out there did he check his scope to see if there _was_
anything out there.
Nothing. Not a blip.
Bossk clacked his pointed teeth together in frustration. What
the hell was going on? Was his nav-puter on the blink? No; he'd
checked it just a week before receiving the summons from Lord
Vader. It ought to have lasted for months' worth of jumps before it
started to drift -- and to have drifted so far as to miss a whole
_system_ was ridiculous. Besides, he reminded himself, Dengar was on
the same course --
Bossk suddenly went rigid, his jaw drooping open
slightly. Dengar!
His control console beeped: incoming message. He knew what it
said without having to open the channel. Still, he opened it anyway. A
one-way, text-only transmission began to scroll up the Teskrut's
computer screen:
UNCL HYPERTRANS XG17B38 Teskrut
SEND BW11N20 Sarnar's Luck
MSG COMM --
Good afternoon!
Thought you might be wondering by now where Ord Lethi
was. Maybe I can help: there is no Ord Lethi. I made it up.
You really should cross-check your starchart more often,
Bossk. It's amazing how few people go to the bother. But don't get too
mad with yourself: old Zuck didn't notice I'd tampered with his system
either. Of course, at least he had the good sense to quit before he
wasted too much time.
Anyway, in case you want to know, Fett should be well on his
way to the Millennium Falcon by now. You may as well kiss those reward
credits good-bye. Better luck next time.
D.
--MSG ENDS
XG17B38-BW11N20
Bossk stared at the readout for the better part of a minute,
his face expressionless. Then he balled his thick- fingered hand into
a fist and slammed it against the screen, cracking the glass. The
terminal sparked and went dark.
***
Darth Vader was at one with the dark side of the Force.
Sitting in his closed meditation chamber, deep in the heart of
the Executor, the Dark Lord of the Sith relished the chance to breathe
without his confining helmet. The chamber was filled with pure oxygen,
which allowed even his wasted lungs to respire without the aid of the
stifling mask. It seemed a strange thing to inhale and exhale without
the mechanical rasp that had accompanied his every breath for twenty
years.
He relished it.
_If he could be turned,_ Vader thought. He had focused on that
thought with each breath for the past hour. _If he could be turned._
Darth Vader had never seen his son. But soon, soon. He savored
the thought even more than the chance to breathe freely.
His thoughts turned to the Emperor. There had been something
in the message Vader had received from his master -- something more
than a warning about Skywalker. Palpatine had been probing Vader's
thoughts as they had spoken. Evidently he had been pleased with what
he had found.
It had been a test, then. An attempt to evoke some sort of
emotional response. The name alone -- _Skywalker_ -- had been
pronounced with such clarity, such precision ...
_We have a new enemy. Luke Skywalker._
And Vader had not flinched. Any ties he had with the past,
with the man he had once been, had burned away in the molten pit where
Obi-Wan Kenobi had left him to die. The name Skywalker no longer had
any meaning for him. But, he supposed, the Emperor may have worried
that, with age, Vader might seek to re-establish those ties, to atone
for whatever misdeeds had led him here, to this meditation chamber in
the heart of the most powerful star cruiser ever constructed.
_If he could be turned._
The ties remained broken.
"My Lord?"
Vader blinked once, irritably. "What is it, Admiral?" he
asked, drawing out the title into a thinly veiled threat.
Admiral Piett's voice crackled over the chamber's com
system. "We're receiving a hail signal, milord. It carries your
personal priority code."
Vader steepled his fingers, allowing himself a rare
smile. "What is the source?" he asked.
Piett's voice faltered, and Vader's smile melted into a
scowl. The Admiral was obviously still unnerved by the time he had
seen the Dark Lord unmasked. Ordinarily, Vader would have punished
such an affront by crushing the man's windpipe, but Piett was a
competent man -- moreso than most of the fools Vader had commanded --
and Vader had let him live.
He was beginning to regret it.
"What is the source?" he repeated, impatiently.
"M-my lord," Piett replied, "there appears to be some sort of
error. The signal carries no source code whatsoever. My men cannot
tell what its origin is."
Vader's smile returned. Only one man would contact the
Executor without identifying himself. "There is no mistake, Admiral,"
he said.
Piett stammered again, helplessly. Vader reached out with the
force and gave the admiral's throat the slightest pinch. When Piett
spoke again, his voice rose with panic. "Shall -- shall I patch it
through to you, milord?" he squeaked.
"Wait one minute, Admiral," Vader answered. "Then send the
signal to my chamber."
"Y-yes, milord," Piett replied, and the channel clicked off.
Vader lost himself in thought for another moment, piecing
together his plan once more, making sure there were no flaws. Finding
none, he reached to his side and pressed a button. Hydraulics hissed
as a manipulator arm descended from the ceiling, bearing his
helmet. Vader sat still as the black death-mask came down on over his
head, then felt a strange, momentary twinge of disappointment as he
drew his first breath through his mechanical lungs. He blinked it
away.
The viewscreen above him flickered to life. When the picture
-- distorted and blurred by the many light years of distance between
sender and receiver -- resolved itself, Vader noted with satisfaction
that his guess had been right.
Boba Fett had been the right one to call on.
The bounty hunter regarded the Dark Lord evenly. "I've found
them," he said, not even waiting for Vader to ask the question.
"Very good, bounty hunter," Vader replied. "You have done
well."
"I've done what I'm being paid to do," Fett stated
dismissively.
Vader bristled for an instant at the hunter's tone, then
calmed himself. There were few people in the galaxy whom Darth Vader
truly respected. Grand Moff Tarkin had been one, before his pride had
cost him his life. Boba Fett was another. "Tell me the system," he
commanded.
Fett actually had the audacity to pause, as if weighing his
options. Vader didn't react, though -- he knew the hunter, knew his
games. Fett was trying to get the Dark Lord to show some sort of
weakness. Vader afforded him none. At last, the bounty hunter broke
the silence. "Bespin," he stated.
Vader examined a computer screen nearby. "A Tibanna outpost,"
he noted. "With several private mining facilities."
Fett nodded. "Don't worry about where they'll dock," he
said. "There's a small settlement called Cloud City, run by an old
partner of Solo's. A man named Lando Calrissian."
"Has the Millennium Falcon arrived yet?" Vader asked.
"No," Fett replied. "They're running on backup drive only. It
will take them a week, maybe more. Plenty of time to set up a welcome
party."
Vader gave a curt nod. "We will set out for Bespin
immediately," he said. "Expect us in two days."
"You're coming here personally?" Fett asked. A rare note of
surprise crept into his voice.
"Expect us in two days," Vader repeated, and switched off the
comlink. The screen went dark before Fett could react.
Vader sat in silence for a moment, drumming his fingers on the
meditation chamber's control panel. Excellent. Everything was falling
into place. He reached for the comlink again, and opened a channel to
the bridge. "Admiral," he thundered, "set a course for the Bespin
system. I want us underway _now_."
He closed the channel before the astonished Piett could reply.
Vader sat in silence a moment longer, then reached to his side
and flipped a switch. The manipulator arm descended again, clamped
around his helmet, and pulled it free. Clean air flooded Vader's mouth
and nose once more, and he closed his eyes, focusing on one thought
only.
_If he could be turned._
***
As the Slave I dropped down through the white clouds of
Bespin, two twin-pod cloud cars rose to meet it.
"You are entering Cloud City airspace," stated an
official-sounding voice over a general-access frequency. "Please
submit your ship profile and state your business."
Boba Fett responded by increasing his speed. He glared at the
oncoming ships. After a moment, the official-sounding voice
returned. "Unidentified vessel," it declared, "you are entering
restricted airspace. Transmit your manifest or leave this area
_immediately_."
Fett gave the Slave I a bit more throttle. The cloud cars were
getting very close.
"Unidentified ship!" the voice repeated, sounding less
official and more frantic with each passing second. "Name yourself or
you will be fired upon!"
Fett stared at the cloud cars in mild disbelief. The fools
were on a collision course. _Of course,_ he thought, _so am I._
An instant later, one of the cloud cars spat a brief barrage
of blaster fire at the Slave I. Flak erupted around Fett's
windscreen. It was a harmless shot, meant to frighten rather than
cause any damage.
It took a lot, however, to frighten Boba Fett.
With a calmness edging on boredom, He reached for his own
weapon control and fired. He let off one single blast, but it was
enough.
The blast struck the cloud car that had shot at him,
vaporizing the engine module between the ship's two pods. The
explosion sent both pods spinning sideways, in opposite directions,
and they hung in Bespin's rarefied upper atmosphere for a moment,
looking like they wanted to stay aloft despite gravity and their lack
of propulsion. Then, with an eerie, silent grace, both pods tumbled
downward, vanishing into a cloudbank. A terrified scream erupted over
the general- access frequency, then cut off into static.
The pilots of the other cloud car stared downward in utter
shock, then looked up at the onrushing Slave I. Fett could see the
looks of horror on their faces as the cloud car swerved out of his
way, narrowly avoiding a collision. Fett didn't twitch.
He checked his scope, and shook his head in disgust. The
second cloud car was coming around, its pilots apparently intent on
coming in on his aft quarter and avenging their comrades' demise. Fett
considered blasting it, too -- it wouldn't take much effort, he was
sure -- but set the idea aside. He'd made his point.
"Cloud City security," he said into his comlink, his voice
flat, "I am sending my ship's profile now."
He reached for his computer terminal and punched a few
keys. The Slave I had, on file, about two dozen false manifests, all
excellent forgeries and quite capable of winning him landing
privileges at Cloud City.
Fett didn't transmit any of them. Instead, he sent the ship's
_real_ profile.
Dead silence answered him on the com. He watched the cloud car
on the scope, his finger drifting back toward the firing switch. After
a moment, though, a voice crackled over the speakers. It sounded
terrified to the point of nausea.
"At-attention vessel S-Slave I," the voice stammered. "Y- you
have b-been cl-cleared for l-l-landing. Proceed t-to Platform --"
"I will land on the main east platform," Fett stated. The
voice on the other end fell silent. "As for my business, tell
Administrator Calrissian to cancel whatever affairs he's seeing to. I
want to speak with him."
***
"I'm sorry," Lando Calrissian said smoothly. "I don't think I
heard you right."
Under his helmet, Boba Fett scowled. Calrissian was an
inveterate con artist and gambler, always looking for the
angles. Under normal circumstances, Fett preferred blasting smoking
holes through such men's chests and going about his business. The
thing was, these weren't normal circumstances. Killing Calrissian
would cause a stir, and though Fett didn't doubt he'd be able to shoot
his way through Cloud City's less- than-crack security forces, it
wouldn't do to have the colony in chaos for Lord Vader's arrival.
Or Solo's, for that matter.
Fett eyed Calrissian warily, and couldn't help being a little
impressed. Other men would have smirked as they toyed with him -- if
they had the _kilpaks_ to toy with him at all - - but the
administrator of Cloud City had a real face for sabacc. He didn't even
bat an eye.
Fett decided to play along.
"If you're having so much trouble," he ventured, "then why
don't you tell me what you _think_ I said, and I can tell you where
you went wrong?"
Lando raised his eyebrows, spearing a piece of the Telusian
lake-crab he'd ordered for himself and his new guest. Fett hadn't
touched the meat, hadn't given it a second glance. "Well, from what I
gather," Lando answered, "my old buddy Han's due to show up in a week
or so, and you want me to just hand him over to you."
"Then you were mistaken: you heard me right after all."
Lando pursed his lips and glanced back at Lobot. The cyborg's
gaze flicked to meet his, and he shrugged slightly. There was a
message in the bald man's eyes, though, and Fett recognized it as a
warning. _Watch yourself,_ it seemed to say. _This one isn't much for
your games._
Lando looked back at Fett, his face as blank as ever. He
chewed on his lake-crab for a moment, then sat back in his
chair. "What's in it for me?" he asked. Still looking for the angles.
"Your business goes on," Fett replied. "Undisturbed."
Calrissian laughed. It was meant to be charming, but after a
moment he realized it wasn't doing him much good. "Look, friend," he
said, "I realize you could blow my head all over the walls before I
could blink, but understand this: you don't scare me. No one comes
into my place, kills two of my patrol pilots, and starts telling me
which way the wind blows. If I'm going to betray Han, there'd better
be compensation for my trouble. And it had better have one hell of a
lot of zeroes."
Fett fought the urge to grab Calrissian by the throat and
shake him till his eyes crossed. "You don't understand," he
hissed. "I'm not telling you which way the wind blows. I'm telling you
that, if you don't do as I say, the wind's going to _stop_ blowing. I
can spread word about you, Calrissian. You'll find your contracts dry
up, clients go elsewhere for Tibanna, maybe an accident or two
happens. This lovely city of yours will be just a weather balloon with
buildings. I can ruin you, Calrissian, without my finger ever going
near a trigger. How would you like to go back to scratching out a
living in the cheap tables at run-down, Outer Rim casinos? You're
getting a bit old for the ruffian's life, I think."
Lando stared at Fett for a moment, then shoved his chair back
from the table, rose to his feet, and turned to Lobot. "See our guest
gets back to his ship without any incidents," he told the
cyborg. "Once he's aboard, give him clearance for departure."
Fett watched as Lando stalked toward the door. It was a good
act, but that was all it was: a bluff. The set of Calrissian's
shoulders betrayed his apprehension, anxiety, fear. Still, Fett was
duly impressed. Lando was quite a scammer, a challenge indeed at the
sabacc table, no doubt.
But Fett was still holding an ace.
Lobot started toward him, but he stopped the cyborg with a
look. The aide wasn't afraid of Fett -- such feelings were alien to
his mechanical brain -- but he knew the bounty hunter wouldn't think
twice about killing him.
Fett stood as Lando reached the door. "What _I_ can do to you
is nothing," he murmured, "compared with what the Empire will do."
Calrissian froze, too abruptly. He tried to recover by turning
slowly, with a nonchalant sweep of his heavy cape, but his calm facade
had cracked. The corners of his mouth quivered nervously. "You don't
have _that_ much pull," he stated, his voice trembling very slightly.
Fett's shoulders shook with a silent chuckle. "Oh, I do," he
said. "What's more, they're already coming. Lord Vader should arrive
by tomorrow night."
Lando started, then swallowed, a single drop of sweat
glistening on his temple. "Vader's coming here?" he asked. "What the
hell does he want with Han?"
"Nothing," Fett amended. "_I'm_ the one who wants Solo. Lord
Vader only wants his ship."
_My ship,_ Lando thought. His lips tightened, but he remained
silent.
"I don't think I need to tell you what displeasing the Empire
might mean," Fett said, gazing idly out the window at the cityscape
and the vast expanse of clouds beyond. "They're always looking to
expand their industrial holdings, and this is quite a lucrative little
business you have here, Calrissian -- even if you do scramble your
ledgers."
Lando swallowed again, glanced helplessly at Lobot -- who
glanced helplessly back -- then took a hesitant step back toward the
table. Fett gestured casually at Lando's seat.
"All right," Lando said at last, having finally run out of
angles. "I guess I don't have any choice."
***
Dusk on Bespin was a wondrous sight. The endless ocean of
clouds, almost wholly white during the day, turned saffron, golden,
and finally blazing scarlet as the gas giant's sun vanished below what
was, in effect, the horizon. Even after the sun had set, though, an
occasional swirl in the nimbus allowed an errant beam of light to
shine through, as if the planet itself were ablaze.
Fett watched this with, if not wonder, at least healthy
appreciation. He was not a man of keen aesthetic sense -- except for
the art of the hunt, of course -- but he _was_ human, and beauty
affected him.
For a while.
Eventually, the wonder wore off. As night began to creep over
Cloud City, Boba Fett turned his mind elsewhere. To somewhere between
Bespin and the Anoat system, where a dented, ungainly freighter was
limping its way through hyperspace. It would be days before the
Millennium Falcon docked at the platform he and Calrissian had
designated, but Fett still stared hungrily into the blue-black sky as
the first stars began to appear. Although he wasn't sure which was
Anoat -- star-charts were for the Slave I's computer to keep track of
-- he felt he could sense the Falcon out in the void, like the scent
of blood on the planet's raging winds.
After a moment, he looked back down, at the city below him. A
sea of lights played around its many towers and causeways. Distant
sounds rose up to meet him. Here and there, cloud cars hissed through
the sky. It may have been any city on any of a thousand planets, and
so it didn't interest Fett much. Besides, even if it did, he couldn't
go down there.
Calrissian had allowed him to use guest quarters in one of
Cloud City's highest towers. The apartment was luxurious, too much so
for Fett's taste: because of the spectacular view, it was normally
reserved for ambassadors, nobility, and crime lords. More important
than its ostentatiousness, however, was its seclusion. Here Fett could
remain unperturbed by the bustle of the mining colony below, and
likewise he could avoid disturbing the city's populace. One of the
curses of being notorious was that he often caused a panic in public,
especially among semi-legal riffraff like the denizens of Cloud
City. Here, in his remote apartments, Fett could remain covert.
He turned away from the railing of his balcony. His ragged
cape snapping behind him in Bespin's rising night- gales, he started
back toward his apartment. He was tired, and although he disdained the
rooms' opulence, he was looking forward to the chance to sleep
somewhere other than the Slave I's cramped bunkspace.
As he stepped into the apartment, his thoughts wandered
onward, touching on the other hunters who had answered Vader's
call. Most of them were out of the race, now. Dengar had seen to that,
setting himself up as a decoy and leading a merry chase far, far out
of the way. Fett had arranged such partnerships with Dengar before,
and it had been good luck that the motley human had been on the bridge
of the Executor that day. By now, Dengar was probably sitting in some
cantina somewhere, enjoying whatever slosh the locals drank and
waiting for Fett to transmit his cut of the reward.
It wouldn't be a full cut this time, though: Dengar had only
been partially successful. Though he'd drawn off Zuckuss and,
thankfully, Bossk, the hunter hadn't managed to fool IG- 88. The
renegade droid was out there, somewhere, still on the hunt.
_Still,_ Fett thought, _the odds that he'd have picked up the
trail too --_
He stopped, freezing halfway across the room, and cocked his
head. His ears, aided by the sensors in his helmet, picked up a
strange sound. A dim humming, and the faint clank of metal.
Swallowing a curse, Fett ducked.
The reflex saved his life. A blaster bolt tore through the air
where his head had been an instant before, striking the room's far
wall. A small fire sizzled in the hole the bolt blew in the panelling,
then went out with a hiss of smoke.
In a single, fluid motion, Fett spun around, dropped to one
knee, and stretched his hand toward the apartment's entrance, where
the shots had come from. Without bothering to aim, he squeezed off
three quick blasts from the gun mounted on his wrist. The bolts
sprayed around IG-88, who stood in the open doorway, a blaster in each
hand. One glanced off the war droid's shoulder, throwing a shower of
sparks onto the room's lush carpeting, but the droid didn't react.
"Hello, IG," Fett muttered, then dropped and rolled behind a
sofa as a succession of blaster bolts scorched the floor around
him. The barrage stopped as soon as Fett reached cover, and he
listened to the faint _whir_ of the droid's sensor-studded head as it
swept over the room.
Fett gauged the situation. The droid wasn't here to talk, that
was for certain: it obviously meant to eliminate him and claim the
reward. It had no way of knowing Fett had already told Vader of his
success, or that the Executor would be in orbit in less than
twenty-four hours. And it probably wouldn't have cared at that.
Servos hummed as IG-88 crept into the room. Fett grabbed a
cushion from the sofa and tossed it in the air. Laser fire filled the
room, and when the cushion hit the ground again, it was riddled with
smoldering holes. _Looks like I'm not going anywhere,_ Fett thought
wryly, listening as the droid came closer. He glanced over at the low
table where he'd left his rifle, and wondered what his chances were of
making it to the blaster before IG-88 could obliterate him. Not good
was his best guess.
That didn't leave very much in the way of options.
Fett quickly ran over his armaments as the droid clumped
across the room. The envenomed darts he'd used to bring down Korb
Stavren on Wyorl were useless against a machine like IG- 88. The same
went for the lanyard concealed in his wrist- sheath: the droid's
strength would be too much for the cable to hold. His wrist laser had
a limited charge and was low on power now, with maybe enough kick for
one more good shot. The _maybe_ bothered him too much to trust it.
That left one option. Fett hoped it would work.
IG-88's spindly shadow fell over him, and he lunged out of the
way as the droid stalked around the sofa. He felt the heat of a blast
scorch past his right leg, adding another scar to his already battered
armor, then he twisted deftly to his feet and flicked his left arm out
at the war droid. As it spun toward him, guns leveled, Fett pressed a
hidden control stud on the heel of his gloved hand. With a roar, a
blast of flame erupted from his wrist, enveloping the droid.
The flame projector did the trick. Both IG-88's blasters
jammed as the fire roasted them. The charge-pack on one exploded with
a small bang, blowing off the droid's right forearm. It dropped the
other gun before the same could happen to its left. The droid's
metallic body slowly gained a faint red glow from the heat.
Then Fett's flamethrower sputtered and died. IG-88 was still
standing.
Fett backed quickly away. Half of his apartment was ablaze,
and the rest was rapidly filling with smoke. IG-88 lurched unsteadily
out of the flames, its severed arm sparking. The fire had damaged its
servos, but it was still moving. And, therefore, still dangerous.
Fett dived to his right, toward his rifle. IG-88 hobbled
after, still disturbingly silent. Wisps of smoke rose from its
surface, which was charred an ugly brown-white where it had once been
the color of tarnished silver. Fett landed on the floor beside the
table where his blaster lay, grabbed the gun, and whirled, pointing it
at IG-88.
He didn't get a single shot off before the droid's remaining
arm cracked against his face, knocking him back toward the balcony
door. White lights exploded in Fett's head, and a high-pitched whining
sounded in his ears. The blow had been harder than any human could
punch: only Fett's helmet had saved him from a crushed skull. Still,
he found himself gasping for breath and wanting to vomit.
IG-88 took a step toward him, and he shook his head to clear
it of the sticky glue that was gumming up his thoughts. His vision
still blurry -- a condition helped in no way by the thick waves of
smoke rising from his burning quarters -- he backed out the door onto
the balcony. The blast of Bespin's cold night wind nearly shoved him
back into the room.
Fett crept backward, away from the door, until he bumped
against the balcony railing. He glanced behind, just for a second, and
saw Cloud City's lights shimmering far below. Then IG-88 stepped out
of the conflagration inside his room. The hulking droid's cylindrical
head swiveled, and it spotted Fett. With an unnerving sureness, it
started to clump toward him.
Fett raised his gun and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
He realized he'd left the safety on just as IG-88 reached out
for him. With a curse, he fumbled for the switch that would unlock the
rifle's firing circuits, but knew it was too late. He looked up at the
war droid and felt a trickle of sweat run down his face.
Then, with another quick glance over his shoulder, Fett
vaulted over the railing and fell out of sight.
IG-88 stopped, its remaining arm outstretched toward where
Boba Fett had stood a moment before. Something was wrong, it knew, but
the fire had caused a short in its logic processor, and it was having
trouble figuring out why Fett had chosen to leap to his death rather
than fight.
It only had to puzzle this over for a moment, then Fett
reappeared, soaring up out of the light-dotted abyss, the rockets on
his jetpack spouting twin plumes of flame against the dark Bespin
sky. IG-88 stared at the armored figure, its head swiveling back and
forth, looking for cover. It found none.
Fett raised his rifle, took careful aim at the chrome droid,
and pulled the trigger. This time, the safety was off.
***
"I'll say it again: I have no idea where that _thing_ came
from," said Lando Calrissian as he surveyed the charred wreckage that
had been one of Cloud City's finest ambassadorial suites. A crew of
Ugnaughts was sifting through the ashes, looking for whatever valuable
items they might be able to scavenge.
Boba Fett glared at the administrator. "And _I'll_ say it
again: I don't believe you."
Lando spread his hands, flashing a disarming smile. "Believe
me or don't. You can check the spaceport logs. Hell, check the landing
pads themselves. There's no ship matching the description you gave
me. This IC-88 --"
"I_G_-88."
"Whatever," Lando continued. "It didn't land at Cloud City. A
droid flying a ship in here unaccompanied would have stuck in my
memory." He glanced at his cyborg aide, who stood by the room's
entrance, two security guards nearby. "Or Lobot's, at least."
Fett glanced at Lobot, scowling. "Have you checked the other
colonies?" he asked. "It's possible he landed at another mine, then
came in on a shuttle."
"It's possible," Lando conceded grudgingly. He decided to play
along with the bounty hunter, for the benefit of his own health. He
knew Fett was letting him live only because he was useful. He turned
to Lobot. "Start asking around. See if anyone saw something at one of
the other mines."
The cyborg nodded but said nothing. His electronic brain
enhancer was already linked with the city's central computer, relaying
Lando's request.
A couple of Ugnaughts let out squeals of pleasure, fishing a
long piece of metal out of the still-smoldering cinders. Fett glanced
over and recognized it immediately: IG- 88's arm, or what was left of
it. It was junk, but the little pig-creatures were treating it like it
was made of Namarran platinum. Cradling it in their arms, they took it
to a hovering waste bin and laid it inside. The rest of the war droid
was already inside the canister, bound for a trash heap deep inside
the city. Fett had made sure to remove IG-88's central processor and
incinerate it, despite the Ugnaughts' protests. It wouldn't do for
them to accidentally re-activate the droid during their
tinkering. Fett wasn't sure machines could hold grudges, but he wasn't
keen on taking chances.
"Look," Lando said, breaking the uncomfortable silence that
had settled over the room, "I'll set you up in another apartment. I'll
have to move some of my other guests around, but it's really no
trouble --"
Fett raised his hand, and Calrissian fell silent. "That won't
be necessary," he said, glancing out onto the blaster- scored
balcony. The sun had risen as the city's emergency crews had put out
the fire. It was midmorning now. "Lord Vader will be arriving in a few
hours. I'll stay aboard my ship until then."
Lando swallowed, still not believing the Empire's most feared
agent was coming _here_, to _his_ city. Of all the luck.
Fett turned and headed to the door. Lobot and the security
guards stepped aside to let him pass. "There won't be another incident
like this, Calrissian," he said without looking back.
"Of course not," Lando replied smoothly, then Fett was
gone. Lando put a hand to his forehead, not noticing that it was
shaking as he did so. He hoped like hell he was right.
***
The question of how IG-88 had managed to sneak into Cloud
City, find out which quarters had been assigned to Boba Fett, and
attempt to assassinate the bounty hunter without anyone stopping it,
was never satisfactorily answered. Lobot ran a cross-check with the
other Tibanna mines' spaceports, but not all of them were entirely
forthcoming. Lando wasn't the only shady operator on Bespin.
By nightfall, more important matters eclipsed IG-88's
subterfuge. The Imperials started arriving.
Lando had been worried that the Empire's presence would drive
much of his clientele away. He was, therefore, pleasantly surprised to
find that their arrival was quiet and unremarkable. Generally, he
knew, the Impies had all the subtlety of an enraged bantha. But this
obviously wasn't an ordinary case.
The first shuttle arrived in the late afternoon, when Bespin's
sun was beginning to streak the clouds with fire. It was an ordinary,
boxlike utility vehicle, rather than the three-winged deals the
Imperials normally used. It landed on a platform that Fett had told
Lando to seal off from the rest of the city, and began to disgorge
Stormtroopers. Several Imperial officers followed, sneering at Lando
and his entourage -- and, to the administrator's surprise, Fett. But
their glowers disappeared as soon as the first mechanical breath
issued from the top of the ramp.
Lando's sense of fear had been deadened over the years: a good
con man was never terrified, and such emotions had no place at the
sabacc table, either. Still, as the black-masked gargoyle that was
Darth Vader descended from the shuttle onto the landing platform,
Calrissian's stomach turned cold with dread. Several of his men
started to shift from one foot to the other, glancing at the deck, the
skyline, each other -- anywhere but at the towering nightmare that
strode toward them. Even Lobot looked edgy. Then Lando realized that
Boba Fett, who stood next to him, was laughing silently, his armor
rattling softly as his shoulders shook. Lando scowled, clenching and
unclenching his fists, and watched as the Dark Lord of the Sith
marched past his orderly rows of troops, his cape flapping in the
wind. Finally, Lando stepped forward. He bowed slightly, but did not
extend his hand.
"Lord Vader," he said, trying to sound delighted to be in the
man's presence. "Welcome to Cloud City. I'm Lando Calrissian, the
administrator of this facility."
Darth Vader didn't even glance at him, but kept walking.
Lando had to step nimbly aside, or he would have been trampled by the
Dark Lord's gleaming black boots. Boba Fett turned and walked beside
Vader.
"You have done well, bounty hunter," Vader boomed. "Have you
had any trouble making the arrangements I transmitted to you?"
"No," Fett replied. He didn't mention the altercation with
IG-88. It wasn't important.
Lando watched the two armored figures march along the catwalk
that led from the landing platform to the tower he had set aside as
temporary barracks for the Imperials. A Stormtrooper shoved him aside
as the troops fell in behind their leader. The Impie officers spared
him and his men one last dark glance before bringing up the rear.
Lando looked at Lobot, grimaced, and followed.
***
Shuttles continued to arrive all week, one every few hours,
each bearing another platoon of Stormtroopers. The Imperial tower
filled up quickly, and Lando had to clear another building to
supplement the barracks. He began to wonder if Vader had decided to
bring half the Imperial army with him -- and whether he intended to
leave any of the troops behind when he left. At least the Dark Lord
had had the sense to leave his pet Star Destroyer in the Eala system,
a short hyperspace jump away, where it wouldn't interfere with
traffic.
The Imperials were actually quite well-behaved, considering
their numbers and the fact that they could have gotten away with
anything and Lando wouldn't have said a thing, for fear of Vader. The
Dark Lord spoke maybe six words to Lando all week, which was how the
administrator wanted things: the less he was around Vader, the
better. Even better, the Dark Lord kept Boba Fett's attention, which
meant Lando didn't have to put up with the bounty hunter's abuse as
much as he had the first day.
The worst part of all this, though, wasn't the Stormtroopers
skulking around his city, or the fact that Fett or Vader could kill
him with barely a thought. No, the worst part was that Lando
Calrissian was beginning to have doubts.
Han Solo was his friend. _Had_ been his friend, anyway, before
Han had cut out on him at Delim Tar. Lando had been left behind, with
six cases of counterfeit Jelazian fire- spheres and a buyer who had a
tendency to dump people who upset him out airlocks. Lando had barely
managed to talk his way out of it, and had sent word to Han, in no
uncertain terms, that they were through working together. That had
been six years ago, and Lando hadn't seen Han since.
Now, Han was in trouble. From what Lando had gathered, the
Corellian had gotten mixed up in the Rebellion in some way: enough to
get Darth Vader to offer a bounty for the Falcon. And Han was on his
way here.
And Lando was going to turn on him.
_It's exactly what he did to you,_ he told himself. _Serves
him right, too, for messing with politics instead of running spice._
But, for some reason, the thought did nothing to comfort Lando. He'd
double-crossed people before, more times than he cared to remember,
but con games were one thing. Giving someone to Darth Vader was
something else.
The problem was, no matter how badly the situation stank,
there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it that wouldn't cost him
everything he'd worked so hard to build on Bespin, and maybe his life
on top of that.
At last, as what may have been the most nerve-wracking week in
Lando Calrissian's life drew to a close, the matter was taken out of
his hands. He was relaxing between games of sabacc in Rantal's, one of
Cloud City's finer casinos, when a man walked up to him.
Lando watched the man approach, a sinking feeling in his
stomach. It was one of Vader's Impie lickspittles, out of uniform but
easily recognizable by the sneer on his lips. Lando toyed briefly
with the idea of putting a few of the man's polished teeth down his
throat, then quickly put the thought out of his head. He took a long
drink of Rantal's house spice-wine, then folded his hands on the table
and gave the officer his most winning smile.
"Good evening, friend," he said, motioning to an empty
chair. "Care to join me for a hand or two? The deck's running fast
tonight."
To Lando's surprise, the Impie actually looked tempted by the
offer -- but just for a second. Then his back stiffened and his glare
turned cold. "Your guest wishes to see you immediately," he said.
The sinking feeling in Lando's gut got worse. He pushed the
sabacc deck back to the waiting dealer, motioning for his winnings to
be put on his drink tab, then downed the last of his
spice-wine. Steeling himself, he rose from his chair and followed the
officer out of the casino.
_Sorry, Han old buddy,_ he thought wistfully. _I'm gonna have
to let you down this time._
***
Darth Vader stared out the huge windows of Cloud City's
control tower. Unlike Boba Fett, he felt no stirring inside as the
colors of dusk rioted across the cloud-ridden sky. His mind was
elsewhere, somewhere far from this minor Tibanna colony. He could
sense Skywalker out there, far away. And the boy was growing
stronger. The gradually increasing ripples in the normally
glass-smooth surface of the Force attested to that.
But how could that be? Vader was certain only one Jedi had
survived the great purge he had led at the fall of the Republic -- and
now Obi-Wan Kenobi was gone, too, and of no help to the boy. No one
remained to teach the ways of the Force, save the Emperor and Vader
himself. Still, there was no doubt in Vader's mind that Luke
Skywalker's power was building: still not strong enough to be
dangerous, but the potential was there. Darth Vader began to
understand his master's worries about the boy.
Behind him, a door hissed open. Calrissian. Vader could tell
from the sound of the man's breathing, the tread of his step, the
faint ripple of unease that accompanied him. The Dark Lord did not
turn.
Awkwardly, Lando cleared his throat. "I take it the Falcon's
arrived," he said.
"It came out of hyperspace at system edge a short time ago,"
Vader answered, still staring out at the clouds. "It will arrive here
soon."
"All right," Lando pressed, the confidence of his voice
betrayed by a slight tremor. "Isn't it time someone told me what's
going on?"
"You don't need to know anything, Calrissian." This from Boba
Fett, standing by a control panel, watching Cloud City's orbital
tracking systems monitor the Falcon's approach.
"No, bounty hunter," Vader amended. "It would be best if our
host learned our plans." He turned, slowly, and glared at
Calrissian. "I want that ship."
"I gathered," Lando replied, and laughed weakly. His chuckle
died quickly under Vader's baleful stare. "But -- it's just a hunk of
junk. A _fast_ hunk of junk, but --"
"My reasons are not your concern, Calrissian," Vader
hissed. "That ship will be mine. You will go out to greet its captain
personally. Make everyone aboard that vessel feel comfortable. I will
tell you when the trap is to be sprung."
"You said you wanted the ship," Lando countered, "not the
people aboard her."
Vader angled his head slightly. If such were possible in the
Dark Lord's countenance, Lando would have thought he was
amused. "Indeed," he said. "I have no interest in her crew, save what
use they can be to me in the short term. When I am through with them,
they may all go free."
Boba Fett stirred, his armor rattling, and looked sharply at
Vader. The Dark Lord glanced at him once, warningly, and the bounty
hunter sat back and glanced doubtfully at the tracking screens again.
Lando's brow furrowed. "You're just going to let them go? I
don't get it."
"It is not yours to know my purposes, Calrissian," Vader
growled. "But know this: I am not interested in the Millennium Falcon
and her crew. They are simply a means to an end. I am only interested
in Skywalker."
"Who?"
Vader ignored the question. "If I hear you have told anyone of
my designs -- or even of my presence here -- the outcome will not be
enjoyable," he stated.
Lando scowled, then opened his mouth to speak. For a moment,
he couldn't find any breath to voice the question -- it was as if
someone were squeezing his trachea, very slightly. Then his eyes met
Vader's, and he paled visibly. Vader nodded once, and air rushed into
Lando's lungs. Reflexively touching his throat, he snapped his mouth
shut again.
"Lord Vader," announced an officer seated at the control panel
next to Fett. "The freighter is entering the planet's atmosphere."
"Very good, Commander Jhoff," Vader told the officer. He
glanced briefly at Lando. "Calrissian?"
Lando didn't need to be told twice. He hurried to Jhoff's side
and picked up a slender microphone from the control panel. "Patrol
vessels," he stated, "we've picked up a new signal on its way to the
city." He glanced at the readout screen that showed the Falcon's
position. "Four-seven-mark- two-five. Send two cars to intercept. Give
him a hard time, but let him land at Platform 327. Use your blasters
for incentive, but don't damage him."
"Copy, Cloud City control," crackled the response over the
control tower's speakers. "We're on our way. Patrol out."
Lando set the mic back in its holding bracket and looked up at
Vader. "That should take care of things," he said. "I'd better go meet
them now." He reached for a control device strapped to his wrist and
punched a few buttons, informing Lobot to meet him at Platform 327.
Vader responded with an indulgent wave, and Lando was out of
the room faster than a mynock from an ion storm.
Boba Fett waited for the door to hiss shut behind Calrissian,
but not a moment longer. He marched toward the Dark Lord, all but
scowling visibly. "I thought we had a deal," he snarled. "Solo's
mine."
"Calm yourself, bounty hunter," Vader replied. "He will be
handed over to you in due time."
"But you said he was to be set free!"
Vader angled his head in that gesture of amusement again.
"Surely one of your profession must understand the value of
... _withholding_ the full truth from time to time," he said.
"Calrissian will be of more use to us if he believes Solo will not be
mistreated."
Fett relaxed slightly. "All right," he conceded. "But you'd
better be right. There's a lot of money on Solo's head."
"I am aware of your concerns," Vader stated coldly, and turned
away from the bounty hunter to stare out the window again. It had
taken considerably longer than he'd anticipated, but the ship that had
knocked him out of the battle over the Death Star was finally in his
grasp. And then ...
_Soon, my son,_ he thought. _Very soon._
***
Boba Fett sat at the dining table, checking his rifle for the
twentieth time. This time, he swore, he wouldn't make any stupid
mistakes like leaving the safety on. If things came to a firefight,
he'd see that it was over quickly.
Of course, he didn't want it to come to a firefight, or any
other circumstance that would see Solo dead. As much as he wanted to
burn a hole through the smug Corellian's heart, the fact remained that
Jabba's bounty promised double if Solo was delivered to Tatooine
alive. That was enough.
He started to check his rifle again.
"Be still," barked Darth Vader, seated at the head of the
table. The Dark Lord had been irritable since the Falcon had
landed. It seemed one of the ship's passengers, an interfering
busybody of a protocol droid, had somehow managed to stumble on a
group of Stormtroopers, within minutes of the ship's docking. The
Impies had done a decent job of covering their tracks, blasting the
droid and sending its remains to the same Ugnaught-manned dump site
where IG-88's broken shell had been shipped. Still, its disappearance
had aroused suspicions on the part of at least one other person from
the Falcon: a woman named Leia.
The woman's presence in the city had riled Vader even more. It
appeared to Fett that there was some sort of score between them that
remained unsettled. Still, the bounty hunter knew better than to
pry. He'd gotten used to breathing.
Fett eyed the door at the other end of the room. Any minute
now, Calrissian would arrive, with Solo and Leia and the Wookiee in
tow. The door would open, and Fett would watch Solo's face fall as he
realized that, after all these years, bad luck had finally caught up
with him. Fett shifted his rifle, inspecting it once more.
Vader turned toward him, his cloak rippling softly around his
shoulders. "Leave," he said simply.
Fett stared incredulously at the Dark Lord. "Now?" he asked.
"I will not abide your constant fidgeting," Vader declared,
"and I don't want you shooting anyone."
The hunter stared at Vader a moment longer, saw the deadly
seriousness in the Dark Lord's blank eyes. He pushed himself up,
stifling the urge to rail against his employer for robbing him of the
opportunity to be present at Solo's downfall. "I'll be in the next
room," he said, stalking behind Vader toward an alcove in the rear of
the dining hall.
"You may return when the danger has passed," Vader
stated. "Not until."
Daringly, Fett snuck a glare at the Dark Lord's back, then
stalked around the corner into the alcove. Almost as soon as he'd left
the room, he heard the great doors at the other end of the dining room
slide open, and he tensed. For an instant, the mechanical rasp of
Vader's breathing was the only sound, then the din of blaster fire
filled the air.
Fett could hardly believe his ears. Was Solo _shooting_ at
Darth Vader? He marveled at the Corellian's _kilpaks_: he had much
more of those than brains, from the sounds of things. And he
understood, too, why Vader had dismissed him. When Solo had drawn his
blaster, Fett would have fired back, instinctively, and one -- or both
-- of them would have been killed. Solo probably would have fallen
first, but it sounded like the smuggler's draw had gotten quicker over
the years, and Fett was no longer quite so sure he'd have gotten off
the first blast.
The shooting stopped as quickly as it had begun: still, Solo
got off four or five bolts. Fett half-expected to walk back into the
room and see Vader lying crumpled on the ground, his armored body
blasted halfway to hell. But he knew instinctively that not even the
fastest gun in the galaxy would be able to defeat the Dark Lord of the
Sith, and the continuing hiss of Vader's breathing confirmed his
suspicions. He just hoped Solo was still alive.
For a heartbeat, all was quiet, and Fett knew the danger was
over. Nestling his rifle in the crook of his arm, he took a deep
breath to calm himself and, feeling serene with triumph, stalked back
into the dining hall, his armor jingling softly with each measured
step. As he entered the room, he saw Darth Vader, standing now, set
Han Solo's blaster on the table before him: somehow, it had gotten all
the way across the room by itself.
He saw Lando Calrissian, looking vaguely like someone had just
punched him in the stomach. He saw Lobot standing out in the hall with
a platoon of battle-ready Stormtroopers. He saw the Wookiee,
Chewbacca, and the woman, Leia. Both were plainly distressed. But his
eyes finally settled on Han Solo, and under his helmet, Boba Fett
smiled.
"We would be honored if you would join us," Darth Vader
declared as Fett stopped, beside and slightly behind the hulking black
figure.
Solo looked at Vader, looked at Fett, then glared at
Calrissian.
"I had no choice," Lando said, looking like he wanted to be
anywhere in the galaxy but in this room. "They arrived right before
you did. I'm sorry."
Solo seemed to sigh with resignation. "I'm sorry, too," he
replied.
The great doors slid closed like the doors of a prison
cell. Solo looked at his companions, then at Vader and Fett. His eyes
were full of despair. Although he appeared as calm as he ever did,
inside Boba Fett rejoiced.
At last.
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