Star Wars - Tales Of The Bounty Hunters

by Tales of the Bounty Hunters (edited by Kevin J Anderson)

  Dowd handed his tablet over to the Devaronian. The Devaronian laid his hand flat against the tablet, and spoke several words in Devaronian. Dowd took the panel back, tapped two of the controls in succession, and turned to Fett.

  "You've been paid."

  It was not the sort of thing Fett took anyone's word for; he took several steps backward, rifle still pointed at the group, and glanced slightly to the side. In a holofield at the edge of the control panel, a live link to the Guild Bank showed the current balance in Fett's numbered account-

  C:4,507,303.

  Five million credits, less the Guild's handling fee of 10%, plus the seven thousand, three hundred and three credits Fett had had in the account-business had been bad, recent years.

  The relief that washed over Fett at the sight was the strongest emotion other than anger that he'd felt in at least a decade. He could afford to have a replacement clone for his lower right leg; he could afford the cancer treatments that had been bankrupting him. Fett barely heard himself say, "Take him. He's yours."

  They hauled the Butcher up out of the chair he was restrained in, being none too gentle with him. As they pulled him to his feet, he yelled at Fett, in Basic: "You do what you promised!" The glare in his eyes was per-fectly mad, as they dragged him toward the airlock. "You take care of my music!"

  After the Devaronians had gone, Dowd stood with his tablet, looking at Fett with plain curiosity. Fett sat in the pilot's seat, still holding his rifle, pointed rather gener-ally in Dowd's direction.

  Dowd said, "You'll be retiring, I presume."

  Fett shrugged. "I haven't thought about it."

  Dowd nodded. "What did he mean-about the mu-sic?"

  "He had a music collection. Music the Empire sup-pressed, apparently. He asked me to deliver it to a woman who would see that the music was published."

  Dowd lifted an eyebrow. "Are you going to?"

  "I said I would."

  Dowd nodded. "You're a strange one." The com-ment didn't offend Fett; Dowd had made the observa-tion before, and more than once, over the course of the decades they had known one another. Dowd reached into the pocket of his coat, and Fett stirred, bringing the rifle up slightly.

  Dowd's smile was thin. "I've a message chip for you. Message that arrived at Guild headquarters. Do you want it?"

  "Leave it on the deck," said Fett, "and leave. I'm very tired."

  The message was amazing.

  The encryption code was so old that Fett had to dig into his computer's archives to find the key for it. He'd made the practice, over the years, of giving his infor-mants encryption codes in a numbered sequence; the first five digits of this message were 00802, which made it at least twenty-five years old-Fett's current encryp-tion identification numbers started well upwards of 12,000.

  He unarchived the encryption key for the 802 proto-col, and decoded the message.

  It was short. It said:

  Han Solo is on Jubilar-Incavi Larado.

  In a lifetime of bounty hunting, Boba Fett had rarely, in conversation with others, said two words when one would do. He didn't talk to himself, not ever-

  Boba Fett said out loud, "One from the vaults."

  On his way to Jubilar, Boba Fett played the music that the Butcher of Montellian Serat had thought more im-portant than his own life.

  There were over five hundred infochips in the carry-ing case the Butcher had buried; each chip had the capacity to hold almost a day's worth of music. Fett opened the case, pulled one free at random, and plugged it in.

  The sounds that surrounded him were-different, he had to admit. Atonal, crashing, and thoroughly un-pleasant to the ear. He shook his head, pulled the chip free, and decided to try one more.

  A long silence after the chip was inserted. Fett waited, and finally, impatiently, reached for it-

  The sound tugged at the limits of audibility. Fett froze in the motion of reaching for the chip, straining to hear. The whisper grew into the faintest sound of a woodwind, and then a high horn joined it, playing counterpoint-

  Fett's hand dropped, and he leaned back in his chair, listening.

  A voice that sounded female to Fett, but might have been a human male or an alien of any of a dozen sexes, for all Fett would have sworn to, joined in, weaving in and among the instruments, singing beautifully in a language that meant nothing to Fett, a language he had never heard before.

  After a bit he reached up and pulled his helmet off.

  "Lights off," he said a while later.

  He sat there in the cool cabin, on his way to Jubilar to kill Han Solo, listening in the darkness to the only copy, anywhere in the galaxy, of the legendary Brullian Dyll's last concert.

  In the icy Devaronian northlands, beneath the dark blue skies that had haunted Kardue'sai'Malloc's dreams for over two decades, some ten thousand Devaronians had converged in the Judgment Field out-side the ruins of the ancient holy city of Montellian Serat, the city Malloc had shelled into its current state.

  It was a beautiful day late in the cold season, with a chill breeze out of the north, and high pale clouds skidding across the darkened skies. The suns hung low on the southern horizon; the Blue Mountains lifted away up to the north. Malloc barely noticed the Devaronians surrounding him, the members of his fam-ily dressed in their robes of mourning, as they pushed him through the crowds, to the pit where the quarra waited.

  He heard the quarra growl, heard the growl rising as he grew closer to the pit.

  His daughter and brother walked a bare few steps behind him. Malloc recalled he had once had a wife; he wondered why she was not there.

  Perhaps she had died.

  A dozen quarra in the pit, lean and hungry, leaping up toward the spot where Malloc's guards brought him to a halt.

  Devaronians are not creatures of ceremony; a herald cried out, "The Butcher of Montellian Serat!"-and the screams of the crowd raised up and surrounded Malloc, an immense roar that drowned out the noise of the snarling quarra; the bonds that held him were re-leased and strong young hands shoved him forward, and into the pit where the starving quarra waited.

  The quarra leapt, and had their teeth in him before he reached the ground.

  He could see the Blue Mountains from where he fell.

  He had almost forgotten the mountains, the forests, all those years on that desert world.

  Oh, but the trees were beautiful.

  Arch your head back.

  They made Han buy the speeder-Jubilar wasn't big on rentals. Too frequently the rentals, and/or the renters, didn't come back.

  In early twilight Han pulled the speeder to a stop at the address they'd given him, and got out to look around.

  Almost thirty years.

  He felt so odd: everything had changed. Places that he remembered as well-kept buildings had grown run-down, places that used to be run-down had been torn down and new buildings built in their steads. Slums had spread everywhere-the planet's never-ending bat-tles had razed entire neighborhoods.

  The neighborhood surrounding the Victory Forum, where Han had fought in Regional Sector Number Four's All-Human Free-For-All extravaganza, was a blasted ruin. It looked like the remains of some ancient civilization, worn down by the eons. The small build-ings surrounding the Forum had their windows broken out and boarded up; flame and shells and blaster fire had scored them.

  All that remained of the Forum itself was broken rubble strewn across a huge empty lot. Han stepped off the sidewalk, into the lot. Glass and gravel crunched beneath his feet as he walked across it, toward the main entrance.

  He stood in the empty lot, staring at the desolation, with a cool wind tugging at him-and suddenly it struck him as though he were there, that moment, all those years ago:

  . standing in the ring. Facing the opponents, with the screams and cheers and taunts of the crowd in his ears. His heart pounding and his breath coming short, as the match flag fluttered down toward the ground, and the other three fighters came at him.

  Han took a running leap
at the nearest. He got up two meters off the ground and landed a flying kick into the face of the onrushing first fighter. The man's nose broke, his head snapped back-

  To this day Han had no clear memory of the next several minutes. They'd recorded the fights, and he'd seen the recording; but the knowledge of what had happened did not connect to his blurred memories of the events themselves. The boy had been hurt, and hurt badly, walking off the mat with a broken arm and a broken jaw, two broken ribs and a concussion and bruises across half his body; the bruises turned purple the next day. The woman who'd cared for Han the next several days, he couldn't even remember what she'd looked like, she was a strange one and he did remember her running her fingers over the bruises, plainly fascinated-

  Here. Here. Right about. here.

  Han stood on the spot. This empty place. this was the spot. The ring. And when all was done, he'd been the last one left on his feet-

  Thirty years. Over half his life had passed since that day.

  Han took a slow step. stopped and took one last look around at the devastation, a ruin stretching to the horizon; and turned away and walked back to the speeder, and sat motionlessly in the speeder, leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head, staring up at the sky as darkness fell around him, remembering.

  "Mayor Baker," Han said. "A real pleasure."

  He'd met her in a brightly lit hydroponics ware-house, in a complex of warehouses at the edge of Death, in the part of Death they had used to call Execu-tioner's Row. He'd come prepared; he was visibly armed with a blaster, had a couple of holdout blasters tucked inside his coat, and a third down in his boot.

  Not that he expected any trouble; this was business, a business he'd been in for a long time before the Rebel-lion, and he knew what he was doing. But no point in taking chances, on a planet like Jubilar, in a city like Death.

  They wanted him to smuggle Jandarra, to Shalam- Han had almost laughed aloud when the Mayor's rep-resentative had approached him; Jandarra was one of Leia's favorite treats. He expected that even she would be amused when he showed up on Shalam with a cargo hold full of it; and certainly the Shalamites wouldn't dare prosecute him over it.

  The Mayor smiled at Solo. She was a tall, obese woman with features that did not take to a smile very easily. Four bodyguards were present; two at the en-trance to the warehouse, two a few steps behind the Mayor, all armed with assault rifles. "Gentleman Mor-gavi-Luke, isn't it?"

  Han smiled at her. "That's right. Luke Morgavi. As I told your aide, ma'am, I'm an independent trader out of Boranda."

  She nodded. "A pleasure, Luke. Please, follow me." She led him down through rows of hydroponics tanks, to a row toward the back where the growing lights were both brighter and of a different wavelength. Inside the tanks, small purple and green tubular vegetables grew. "Jandarra," she said. "They're native to Jubilar; they're a great delicacy, and they usually only grow in the des-ert after relatively rare rainstorms. After almost two years of work we managed to cultivate them-"

  Han nodded. "And the Shalamite slapped a 100% tariff on you."

  Anger touched her voice. "We have eighty thousand credits' worth of Jandarra here that are only worth forty thousand after the Shalamite tariff."

  "Those Shalamite," Han commiserated. "Can't trust 'em. They cheat at cards, too-did you know that?"

  She stopped and studied Han. "No. Gentleman Morgavi. I did not." You cheat at cards, she thought, and kept the pleasant smile on her face-it was hard work. He really didn't recognize her-well, thirty years was a long time, after all, and she'd put on sixty kilos; and her last name, back then, before her marriage to the unfor-tunate Miagi Baker, had been Incavi Larado.

  He'd said he'd come back, and here he was, the New Republic's infamous General Solo-and only thirty years late.

  "Eighty thousand credits' worth," she said again. "Delivered to Shalamite. That's a forty thousand up-side, and we'd be willing to go-"

  "Fifty percent," said Han politely. "Which would be twenty thousand credits, and I'd be happy to make the run for that amount."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You think you can get past the Shalamite Navy?"

  Han said, "Lady, I used to run the Imperial lines. I'm talking about the old Star Destroyers-let me tell you a story-"

  Out in the darkness, Boba Fett lay on his stomach, care-fully adjusting his aim-he had to shoot in through the main entrance to the hydroponics warehouse, which wouldn't have been difficult except that some of the tanks were in his way-he was going to have to wait for

  Solo to come back out toward the warehouse's en-trance.

  Fett waited patiently. He was surprised by his good fortune; who would have thought that a trap he had set three decades ago would come to fruition now?

  Good fortune indeed-even today, with the Empire fallen, Han Solo had lots of enemies: Jabba's relatives, loyal officers of the Empire who had managed to main-tain small fiefdoms on a thousand planets across the galaxy; and the various bounties on Solo, Dead or Alive, were still impressive, even with Vader and Jabba and the Empire long gone; still worth making an effort for, even with four and half million credits in the bank.

  Oddly enough, the sight of Solo-looking at him through the rifle scope-filled Fett with a nostalgia that surprised him. There was no question in Fett's mind that Solo was a bad man, worse in every way that counted than the Butcher of Montellian Serat; and if that bounty had brought Fett no joy, he had handed the Butcher over to his executioners with little enough in the way of regret.

  Solo, though-it came to Fett as a revelation that Solo's presence, over the course of the decades, had in a way been oddly comforting. He had been a part, how-ever peripherally, of Fett's life for so long that Fett had difficulty picturing a world without him. The world had changed, and changed, and only Solo had remained a constant.

  He'd Hunted Solo for various clients, various boun-ties. Fett had difficulty picturing a world without Solo-

  -he leaned in and touched the scope's focusing ring. Solo's image, and that of the woman Fett assumed was Incavi Larado, though he did not recognize her, leapt into sharp relief; and Fett's finger tightened on the trigger.

  He wouldn't make the mistake of trying to take Solo alive, not again.

  And he would learn to picture a world without him.

  They headed toward the entrance together, Mayor In-cavi Baker smiling patiently, and with a certain effort that Han did not miss. He stayed a half step behind her as she walked, keeping part of her bulk between him and the loading docks outside, where the lights had gone out not long after they had all entered the ware-house together. The loading docks outside were pitch black; they might have assembled an army for all Han knew-

  "-so this kid," said Han, "his name was-uh, Maris, and this old guy with delusions--Jocko, yeah, anyway this guy Jocko, he thinks he's z.Jedi Knight-and let me tell you, that old guy with his delusions, he was a pain in the butt-anyway they tell me they have to get past the Imperial lines-"

  What did they have waiting for him out there?

  What had he walked into?

  He knows something is wrong, Fett thought. He's-

  The main power line entered the warehouse at the northeast, and split, one bundle running up to the ceil-ing and the overhead lights, and another bundle run-ning back toward the hydroponics tanks.

  Han cocked his wrist a certain way, and the holdout blaster in his left sleeve dropped down into his hand.

  Boba Fett had the crosshairs hovering just to the left of Incavi Baker's approaching form; the cross-hair found Solo's breast, lost it, found it again.

  Fett squeezed the trigger-

  -the warehouse lights died-

  The blaster bolt tore through the darkness like a flash of lightning.

  Han hit the ground rolling, sparks still trailing away from the spot where his first shot had struck the power cable, rolled away firing left-handed at the lo-cations where he remembered the two closer body-guards standing, pulling his blaster free right-handed. Screams, the wom
an was screaming, and he got off four shots with the holdout before it malfunctioned, burn-ing out, the power supply flashing hot and terribly bright as it went, lighting Han as a target to the world, and Han came up out of his roll and made it to his feet and ran backward through the darkness, through the rows of hydroponics tanks, spots dancing in his eyes, using his scalded left hand on the sides of the tanks, to guide himself, as blaster bolts rained around him.

  In that single flash as the holdout blaster had arced out, he had seen a shape running toward the ware-house entrance, a shape out of Han Solo's nightmares, a shape out of the galaxy's darkest history-a man in Mandalorian combat armor.