Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (37 page)

But Boba Fett had been fooled by that trick before, once. By now he had been in his line of work longer than most, and there were few enough ploys he
hadn’t
seen, once or twice or a dozen times. There was only one place they could be going, one place close enough
for them to reach with their main hyperdrive disabled; Fett jumped for Cloud City, and there Lando Calrissian made the deal that delivered Solo to Fett.

With Han Solo as cargo, frozen in carbonite, Fett started for Tatooine. There, for the sculpture of Han Solo, and a few months of Fett’s time, not to mention a number of inconveniences on the way, Jabba the Hutt paid, not 100,000 credits, but a quarter of a million—

And not too long after that, the rescuers started arriving. Leia Organa, pretending to be a bounty hunter, arrived with Chewbacca in tow. She succeeded in releasing Solo from the carbonite. For the very death of him Fett could not imagine what she’d had in mind; whatever it was, it did not work. The Hutt put Solo down in the dungeon, with Chewbacca, and intended to execute them in the near future; and Leia Organa spent her days in chains at the foot of Jabba’s throne.

Fett lay on the bed in his darkened quarters deep inside Jabba’s Palace, wearing his armor, staring up into the darkness. His helmet was balanced on his stomach and cool air from the ventilators washed across him in rhythmic gusts.

A heavy pounding sounded at his door.

Fett sat up, donning his helmet and lifting his assault rifle; the movements were so automatic he did not even have to think about them. He threw the bolt on the door, took several steps backward and aimed the rifle. He did not turn on the room lights. “Come in.”

The door swung open with a reluctant creak. A pair of Gamorrean guards stood out in the passageway; Fett leveled his rifle at them. “What do you want?”

One of the guards stepped to the side, and a form—a human—was shoved into the room. Fett’s finger tightened reflexively on the trigger, but he held his fire.

“From Jabba,” the near guard grunted. “Enjoy her.”

Fett reached back with one hand and touched the control for the light fixtures; and under the cool white light that washed over the room, looked down on Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan.

She scrambled to her feet and backed up into a corner of the room, breathing heavily. Fett imagined she had fought with the guards as they brought her down to him. “You touch me—” Her voice failed her, and she stood there, shivering, and finally said, “Touch me and one of us is going to die.”

He lowered the rifle slowly, and looked around the room. He had few enough possessions here with him in the palace; everything he owned, which was little enough, was aboard the
Slave I
. Finally he pointed at the thin sheet that covered the bed. “Cover yourself. I’m not going to touch you.”

Organa moved slightly to the side, leaned over and grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around herself and the brief costume Jabba had allowed her, and backed up again into the corner of the room that left her farthest away from Fett. “You’re not?”

Fett shook his head. He sat down in the corner facing hers, moving carefully, and propped his rifle across his knees. He
had
to move carefully; his knees had been getting worse in recent years. “Sex between those not married,” said Fett, “is immoral.”

“Yeah,” said Organa. “So’s rape.”

Fett nodded. “So is rape.” He sat in what was, for him, a comfortable silence, watching her. She settled down in the opposite corner, being careful of her covering; Fett approved of her modesty, but it did not prevent him from continuing to look at her. He had never so much as held a woman in his arms, Boba Fett, and the desire for a woman came to him less frequently, with the passage of the years; but in Fett’s mind his chastity made him no less a man, and she was worth looking at, still flushed from her struggles, with her dark hair cascading down over the pale sheet.

She adjusted the sheet around herself, pushing herself back into the corner for warmth. “You’re not going to call the guards to take me back to Jabba?”

“And insult Jabba? I don’t think so. He’d feed you to the Rancor, and hold a grudge against me. You can go back in the morning.”

Her breathing was quieting. “So we just sit here. All night.”

“The stones are cold. If you want to use the bed, you’re welcome to it.”

Organa’s skepticism was obvious. “And
you’ll
just sit there. All night.”

“I won’t hurt you. I won’t touch you. Sleep if you will. Or not; I do not care.”

Silence descended. Fett watched the woman as she leaned back against the stone wall; watched her as she collected herself; watched her as she watched him.

Time passed. Both of his eyes were open, but he was only half awake when she burst out, “Why are you doing this? Why are you fighting for them?”

Fett stirred, stretching slightly. The rifle across his knees was steady as a rock. “Over half a million credits,” he informed her. “That’s what Vader and the Hutt have paid for my work.”

“Is it just money?
We’ll
pay you. Help us get out of here and we’ll pay you—”

“How much?”

“More than
you
can imagine.”

Fett was amused by the audacity she showed, trying to bribe him, here deep inside the Hutt’s castle. “I can imagine an awful lot.”

“You’ll get it.”

It was cruel to let the woman hope. “No. What you’re doing is morally wrong. The Rebels are in the wrong, and the Rebellion will fail—and it should.”

Leia Organa could not keep the outrage out of her voice. “Morally wrong?
Us?
We’re fighting for homes and our families and our loved ones, the ones who are
still alive and the ones we’ve lost. The Empire destroyed my
entire world
, virtually everyone I ever knew as a child—”

Fett actually leaned forward slightly. “Those worlds rose in rebellion against the authority legally in place over them. The Emperor was within his rights to destroy them; they threatened the system of social justice that permits civilization to exist.” He paused. “I am sorry for the deaths of the innocent. But that happens in war, Leia Organa. The innocent die in wars, and your side should not have started this one.”

He shut up abruptly; all the talking was making his throat sore.

His comments appeared to render Organa speechless anyway; she looked off to the side, away from Fett, staring at the blank stone wall, for several minutes. When she finally spoke her voice was quiet and she still did not look at him. “It’s hard for me to believe that you can really think like this. I’ve heard Luke—Luke Skywalker, I know you’ve heard of him—I’ve heard him talk about the dark side—”

Fett was amazed to hear himself laugh. “
That
Jedi superstition? Gentlelady Organa, if the Force exists I have seen no proof of it, and I doubt it does.”

Now she did look at him. “You remind me of Han Solo, a little. He didn’t believe—”

Fett heard his voice rise dangerously. “I am
nothing
like Solo and
don’t you compare me to him.
”

Leia took a slow, deep breath. “Okay.
Why
does that offend you so?”

Fett leaned forward again. “Do you know what that man has done in his life? Never mind the loyal citizens of the Empire that he, and you, have killed during your Rebellion; war is war and perhaps you, at least, think you are fighting for Justice. But
Solo? He’s
a brave man, yes; he’s also a mercenary who’s never done a decent thing in his life, who’s never done a
difficult
thing that
somebody wasn’t paying him for. He’s smuggled banned substances—”

“He ran spice!”

Fett found himself on his feet and yelling. “
Spice is illegal!
It’s a euphoric, it alters moods, and the use of it leads to the use of worse substances, and a man who will run spice,” he snarled, “will run
anything!
” He stood tense and motionless, holding his rifle in a quivering grip, staring down at Leia. “And if I had been using spice tonight, Leia Organa, perhaps you would
not
be safe with me in this room.”

“Han has smuggled spice,” Leia said steadily, “which is illegal and does not please me; and he’s smuggled alcohol too, which is legal but the tariffs are high enough to make it worth smuggling in various worlds. No, he’s not perfect and he’s broken laws you’ve never even
heard
of. But I know Han Solo, and I’ve seen him take risks for things he believes in, risks that I doubt
you
would have the courage to take—and what
are
you doing working for Jabba the Hutt anyway?”

Fett exhaled, loosened his grip on the rifle. He forced himself down to the ground once more, ignoring the spikes of pain that flared in his knees. “He’s paying me. A lot. Once Skywalker comes, I will take
him
to Vader, and then I will spend no more time here.”

“That’s not what I mean. Jabba the Hutt has sold
mountains
of spice, and of far worse than that—”

“Necessity makes allies. Once the Rebellion is over, I expect the Empire will deal with Jabba. But he is less a threat than the Rebels.” Fett reversed the assault rifle, touched the butt against the pad that controlled the lights. His macrobinoculars compensated almost immediately as darkness fell on them; she sprang into his vision by the light of her body heat. “I’m
going
to sleep. My throat is sore.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Luke Skywalker,” Leia said out of the darkness, “is going to come and kill you.”

“Everyone dies,” Fett agreed. “But since nobody’s paid me to kill you … sleep well.”

He slept with his eyes open, inside the helmet.

The Jedi, if he was one, came a day later. Luke Skywalker was his name, and he killed Jabba’s Rancor; and Jabba put him down in the dungeon, in a cell near Solo and Chewbacca.

The following morning dawned bright and clear and hot, and Boba Fett was in a vile mood.

It was Tatooine, of course.
All
the mornings were bright and clear and hot.

But the Hutt was going to kill Skywalker. And Solo, and Chewbacca, though that was hardly the point.

Skywalker.
That
was the source of Fett’s vile mood. He’d tried to talk Jabba out of killing Skywalker—not that he cared whether Skywalker lived or died; Fett expected the galaxy would be a better place with that fool subtracted from it. He’d seen a lot of remarkably stupid things in his day, but the spectacle of a beardless young man trying to face down Jabba the Hutt in his own throne room was near the top of the list.

But, though Fett had argued with him more than was perhaps wise, Jabba was not behaving like the Jabba whom Fett had known all these years. The point was that Darth Vader would
pay
for the fool—the
Emperor
would pay for him. The largest posted bounty Fett knew of in the galaxy was five million credits; but Fett was certain that Luke Skywalker would bring more.

Jabba didn’t want to hear about it. He wasn’t willing to share the bounty; he wasn’t willing to take the bounty himself, and pay Fett as go-between with Vader.
His pet Rancor had died; and Skywalker was going to die for it.

Some days Fett was convinced he was the only sane businessperson left in the entire galaxy.

It galled him. He planned out scenario after scenario; none of them tempted him. He thought about kidnapping Skywalker out of Jabba’s hands, but time was short and Jabba’s security was good; even for millions of credits the risk was too high.

And so he walked around on the sail barge’s upper deck, with uncharacteristic nervous energy, the morning after Skywalker’s arrival, the morning that Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca were to be executed, trying to decide what he was going to do next, as the sail barge headed out to the Great Pit of Carkoon, taking the condemned to their deaths.

It came to him as something of a surprise that he hoped Solo died well. Years previously Fett had seen Jabba drop half a dozen of his own guards into the Great Pit of Carkoon, allegedly for conspiring against him; he’d offered them all a chance to grovel for their lives. Two of them had, and Jabba, of course, had fed them to the Sarlacc anyway.

He knew Chewbacca wouldn’t beg; he hoped Solo wouldn’t.

Maybe Skywalker would beg for his life. That wouldn’t be so bad.

Fett stood in the bow and watched the sand disappear beneath them. This far out into the desert, there was nothing
but
desert, all around them. Sand, drifts and dunes as far as the eye could see.

Fett wondered, in passing, who had killed more people, himself or the Hutt. Probably the Hutt, if you counted his spice trade; probably himself, Fett thought, if you only counted deaths by your own hand.

Eventually the Great Pit of Carkoon came into view. Boba Fett, his mood improved not in the slightest, abandoned the upper deck and went down to the viewing
area, to watch with the others as Justice was rendered—

—and who knew how many millions of credits were wasted.

The day had started badly; it got worse. Before it was over the sail barge was a flaming wreck, Jabba the Hutt was dead, and Boba Fett was down in the Great Pit of Carkoon, being digested by the Sarlacc.

Oh, he got out; as far as Fett knew he was the only person who ever
had
escaped the Sarlacc.

But by the time he got out and was healed again, or as healed of that experience as he ever did get, great events had transpired; and the galaxy had become something Fett would never have believed possible.

Fifteen years passed.

Or, to put it another way:

Darth Vader died; so did the Emperor. The Empire fell and was succeeded by the New Republic. On the human scale fifteen years is long enough for babies to be born and grow into teenagers; human children across the galaxy became adults and bore children of their own. For some long-lived species the period passed without significant change; for others, shorter-lived than humans, entire generations were born, grew old, and died.

In a sector of the galaxy Boba Fett had never heard of, a star went nova; it murdered a world and an entire sentient species. It aroused less comment than had the destruction of Alderaan, only a decade prior; the galaxy at large barely noticed the tragedy, and Fett never heard about it. In a galaxy with over four hundred billion stars, over twenty million intelligent species, such things are bound to happen.