by K. W. Jeter
thrusting with his bent legs, keeping the stone rolling.
Neelah scrambled out of its way as the debris of the
subchamber's shattered doorway came tumbling after it.
"You are wasting time," announced SHSl-B from within
the suddenly revealed space beyond the rocks and settling
dust. The medical droid had busied itself by
disconnecting the various tubes and monitoring wires that
had been hooked up to Boba Fett. "Therapeutic protocols
render it imperative that the patient be removed from
these unsafe premises at once."
Lying on the pallet, Boba Fett had lapsed back into
unconsciousness, either from the crashing impact of the
bombing raid or from an anesthetic dose administered by
the medical droid. Dengar and Neelah scrambled over the
rocks; each took one end of the pallet and lifted,
hoisting Fett high enough to carry out into the hiding
place's main chamber.
"Wait a second." After they were clear, Neelah set
down her end of the pallet and climbed back into what
remained of the subchamber space. Cracks spidered across
its ceiling, showering down more dust and loose stones as
the sharp, percussive hammer strokes from above grew
louder. Neelah emerged a second later with Boba Fett's
scoured and dented helmet and combat gear; she piled it
on top of the unconscious bounty hunter, then grabbed
hold of the pallet again. "Okay, let's go."
They both collapsed in exhaustion when they had
reached the safety of the lower, Sarlacc-dug tunnels. The
two medical droids fretted over their patient as Dengar
and Neelah sprawled back against the fused-smooth walls
curving around them. From here, the bombing raid sounded
as though it were happening on some other, unluckier
world.
"What's that smell?" Neelah wrinkled her nose as she
turned her gaze toward the darkness and the stench of the
tunnel's lower reaches.
Dengar lifted the lantern he had managed to scavenge
hastily from the hiding place's equipment. Its feeble
glow extended a few meters into the dark before being
swallowed up. "Probably the Sarlacc," he said. "Or what's
left of it. The part that could be seen in the Great Pit
of Carkoon was just its head and mouth; it had tentacles
extending all through the rock. Some say as far as the
edges of the Dune Sea. When our friend here blew out the
Sarlacc's gut"- Dengar pointed with his thumb to Boba
Fett on the pallet-"there was a lot of dead beast left
rotting down here. You can't expect something like that
to smell too good, you know."
The stench of decay grew worse, as though the
vibration of the surface bombing had shaken open a buried
pustule. Neelah's face paled, then she quickly scrambled
to her knees and hurried to a farther bend of the tunnel.
The sounds of gagging and retching traveled back to
Dengar.
She's not used to this sort of thing, mused Dengar.
Or some part of her wasn't; something held in the
darkness and hidden memory inside her. That intrigued
him. A mere dancing girl, a pretty servant in the court
of Jabba the Hutt, would have gotten accustomed to the
smell of death quickly enough; it had pervaded the walls
of Jabba's palace, seeping up from the rancor pit beneath
the throne room. Hutts in general liked that smell; it
was one of the more loathsome characteristics of their
species to revel in a constant olfactory reminder that
they were alive and their enemies, and the objects of
their lethal amusements, were dead and rotting beneath
them. That, among other things, was why Dengar had
considered employment with the late Jabba or any of the
other members of his clan as a choice of last resort.
Especially so after Dengar had found Manaroo-and his love
for her. How could one return to that being who
represented one's essence, an almost forgotten purity and
grace, with the stink of dead, defeated flesh wrapped
around oneself? It was impossible.
It seemed impossible for this Neelah to endure as
well. She had the temperament of one born to the galaxy's
nobility, a bloodline accustomed to command and the
obedience of others. Dengar had noted that, just from the
way she had faced him down in their first encounter.
Anyone else who had gone through the unsavory rigors of
Jabba's court, followed by unprotected exposure to the
Dune Sea, would have quailed before the obvious
superiority of Dengar's strength and weaponry. But some
spark of courage inside Neelah had burned even brighter
under those conditions, fierce enough to have burned his
outstretched hand, if he had dared to touch her.
That aristocratic strain was apparent in the female's
face as well, even darkened and toughened as it was by
the lash of the double suns and the scouring of the Dune
Sea's hot, razorlike winds. She'll be trouble, Dengar
already knew. He'd had enough on his hands before she had
come along, but with her presence added to the equation,
the result was increased exponentially.
Neelah returned, face even paler in the glow from the
single lantern. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be." Dengar gave a shrug. "I'll be the first
to admit that this isn't the most pleasant neighborhood."
He got to his feet. "We might as well see what kind of
shape we're in."
The two medical droids were stationed on either side
of Boba Fett's pallet.
"How's the patient?"
SHS1-B glanced back at Dengar. "As well as can be
expected," the droid said irritably. "Given the dis
turbance he's been put through."
"Hey-" Dengar poked himself in the chest. "Did I
order a bombing raid to start up? Don't blame everything
on me."
"That's not a bad question." Standing beside him,
Neelah glanced over the unconscious form of the bounty
hunter. "Who did order it?"
"Who knows?" Dengar set the lamp on a shoulder-high
outcropping. "This guy's got major enemies. It was
probably one of them."
"Then that would mean somebody knows that he's alive.
Somebody besides us."
That realization snapped together in Dengar's brain,
like a pair of wires that had become disconnected during
the tumult. She's right-somehow the word must've gotten
out, to somebody for whom it was an important piece of
information, that Boba
Fett hadn't died; that breath, however shallow, was
still going in and out of his body. Someone wasn't happy
about that. Someone who would send out sufficient
explosive force to pulverize an army, just to make sure
that there wouldn't be enough left of Boba Fett to take a
breath.
"Somebody was spying on us," said Dengar. He had
already eliminated himself as the source of the leak, and
he had sworn Manaroo to secrecy. Neelah wasn't a likely
suspect; there had been no place
for her to go, no one
for her to talk to while she'd been out in the Dune Sea.
And she hadn't left the hiding place since Dengar had
taken her in. Maybe somebody from Jabba's palace, he
thought. There had been plenty of scoundrels there, even
after Jabba's death, with the necessary skills for
staying unseen while watching the comings and goings out
in the wastelands. Especially after losing a lucrative
gig with the Hutt, any one of them would be motivated to
sell valuable info to the highest bidder. To some agent
of the Empire or anybody else who had a big enough grudge
against Boba Fett. "That must have been what happened."
Dengar nodded slowly. "Somebody saw me taking Fett down
into my hiding place."
"Don't be stupid." Neelah shook her head. "If
somebody knew exactly where Fett had been taken, they
wouldn't bother blowing up everything within sight of the
Great Pit of Carkoon. One missile, straight down the
tunnel entrance, would've done the job. Simple and
clean." She pointed toward the silent form on the pallet.
"If that's all it took to kill him off, they would have
done it the easy way. And the quiet way."
She had a point, Dengar admitted to himself. Boba
Fett wasn't the only one who lived by secrets; the kind
of clients he'd had, and enemies he'd made, were the same
way. A surgical strike would have eliminated Fett without
the risk of drawing attention that a bombing raid
entailed. Dengar had heard nothing the last time he'd
been talking to his own information sources in Mos Eisley
about a contract being put out on Boba Fett. So if
anybody was actively gunning for him, they were
definitely keeping it quiet.
"Unless," said Dengar, "there's some other reason for
the raid. . . ."
Neelah gave him a withering look. "Do you think
there's some other reason?"
He didn't bother to answer. Silence filled the tunnel
as he looked upward, listening and waiting. "I think
we're all clear now."
"We can go back up?"
"Are you kidding?" Dengar shook his head, then picked
up the lantern and directed its light toward the tunnel
they had come down. The light picked up the jumbled
shapes of the rubble filling the passageway. "We're
blocked off. Even if there's anything left of my hiding
place-which is a big if, given the pounding that was
going on up there-we couldn't get to it now. We'll have
to push on, and see if there's some other way of getting
out to the surface."
A shiver of disgust ran across Neelah's shoulders.
The smell of rot was noticeably stronger toward the
tunnel's unlit end.
"Can he travel?" Dengar pointed toward Boba Fett.
"It would be better," said SHSl-B, "from a ther
apeutic standpoint, if he were left undisturbed."
"That's not what I asked."
"I don't know why you bothered to inquire at all."
SHSl-B's tone was distinctly haughty. "I imagine you'll
do whatever you're planning on, no matter what le-XE and
I tell you."
"Come on." Dengar motioned Neelah over toward the
pallet. "These droids don't know how tough this barve
really is."
They managed to lift the pallet, with Dengar taking
most of the unconscious figure's weight into his arms,
until the loose gravel shifted under his feet and he saw
how strong Neelah actually was; she braced herself and
caught the load from toppling to one side. Dengar
instructed one of the medical droids to loop the carrying
strap of the pallet around his neck. With the lantern's
beam wavering ahead of them, they started downward into
the murk and stomach-churning smell.
"How do you know . . ." At the pallet's back end,
Neelah gasped for breath. "How do you know we can get out
this way?"
"I don't," said Dengar simply. "But there's an air
current coming in from somewhere. You can feel it on your
face." He glanced over his shoulder at her. The nauseated
pallor had diminished slightly; she had gone numb to the
smell of the decaying Sarlacc's carcass, buried beneath
whatever was left of its nest under the Great Pit of
Carkoon. Neelah took a deep breath, nostrils flared, and
only gagged slightly. "Even with the stink," continued
Dengar, "I can tell it's coming from somewhere outside of
these tunnels. If we follow it to its source, we might
find someplace where we can either crawl out or dig our
way to the surface. Or . . ." He gave a shrug. "We won't.
The bombing raid might have collapsed the rest of the
tunnels with too much rubble for us to get through. In
which case, it's pretty much over for all of us."
"You sound pretty calm about that possibility."
"What's my choices? I volunteered for this gig." One
corner of Dengar's mouth lifted in a grim smile. "Later
on, when I'm actually dying, I might let myself get a
little more emotional about it. In the meantime we might
as well save our strength for whatever digging we're
going to have to do." He lifted his end of the pallet
higher. "Come on. We might as well find out what it's
going to be."
The two medical droids followed behind. "This goes
against all sound therapeutic protocols." SHS1-B voiced
its concern again. "We're not taking responsibility for
whatever happens to our patient."
"Absolution." The shorter one trundled with dif
ficulty over the tunnel's rough terrain. "Lack of blame."
"Yeah, right. Whatever." Dengar didn't look back at
the complaining droids. "You're off the hook." The
lantern's beam faded away into the darkness ahead of him.
"Just don't tell me about it."
"Do you think he'll be okay?" The worry in Neelah's
voice was audible. "He's been jostled around quite a bit.
Maybe we should let the droids take a look at him-"
"That's a good idea." Dengar kept on walking down the
tunnel's slope, his hands gripping the corner of the
pallet at his back. "That'll give whoever it is topside
lots of time to take another pass at us."
"Oh." Neelah sounded abashed. "I guess you're right."
"About this one, I am. We'll all be better off the
sooner we get out of here." He was already thinking about
the next time he would see Manaroo. And if he would ever
see her again. A lot of his recent decisions, his plans
and schemes, were swiftly metamorphosing to regrets. And
this could be the last one, he thought as the pallet's
weight combined with that of its unconscious passenger to
dig into Dengar's hands. Even his sensory perceptions-the
tantalizing hint of fresh air against his sweating
face-could have been lies and wishes, rather than the
simple truth that he was walking through his own tomb.
His doubts faded a bit when the tunnel's floor
leveled beneath his feet; the slope he and Neelah had
carried Boba Fett down had extended, through it
s various
twists and turns, at least a hundred yards. That wasn't
enough, Dengar knew, to take them out of the territory of
another bombing raid. But he was familiar with the rocky
outcroppings of the Dune Sea's surface all around what
had been his hiding place's entrance; there was a good
chance that they had reached a point where the ground's
bones hadn't been completely atomized. The bombs' impact
might even have created new passages to the oxygen above,
untainted by the stench of the rotting Sarlacc. By now,
the smell had gotten bad enough that Dengar could taste
it, a nauseating film that had crept down the back of his
tongue. . . .
"Look!" Neelah called out from behind him.
Dengar glanced over his shoulder, then in the di
rection in which her upraised hand pointed, as she
balanced the corner of the pallet against her thigh. The
lantern's beam swept across a slanting heap of broken
stone. "I don't see anything. . . ."
"Turn off the lantern," ordered Neelah.
He thumbed off the power switch. The light had been
dim enough that his eyes only took a few seconds to
adjust to the darkness. Which wasn't complete a thread
of daylight, clouded with dust motes, drew a jag-edged
spot only a few inches from the toes of his boots. Dengar
tilted his head back and spotted the cleft in the rocks
overhead. The hole looked hardly bigger than the width of
his hand.
"This'll take a little work." Dengar mulled over the
situation. He and Neelah had lowered the pallet between
themselves. With the lantern switched back on, he studied
the wall of crumbled stone nearest the hole. "I can get
up there, all right. And so can you; it doesn't look like
that bad a climb." He pointed to Fett. "He's going to be
the problem, though."
"You've got a line coil, don't you?" With a nod of
her head, Neelah indicated one of the equipment pouches
at Dengar's waist. "If you could get up there and pry the
gap open wider-or if you could get out to the
surface-then I could tie a loop around his chest and
under his arms, and you could haul him up."
Nothing had been heard from the medical droids for a
while as they had straggled along behind Den-gar and
Neelah. But now SHSl-B spoke up. "The patient," it
protested loudly, "is not in any kind of condition for a
maneuver as you've described. Very simply, you'll kill
him if you try that."
"Yeah, and if we leave him down here, he'll be just
