Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin J. Anderson

  No, thought Han. Not ‘one step.’ Someone would have caught me. Boba Fett, IG-88—someone—and I’d have had no friends to come and rescue me from Jabba.

  Twenty years.

  To this day Han could remember with perfect clarity … how close he had come to punching in that trajectory, and leaving Leia and Luke behind. He woke up at night, sometimes, in cold sweats, thinking about it.

  How very close.

  If his parents were still alive, Han thought, they’d be impressed by the man he’d grown into—and not the least bit surprised at how close it had come to not happening.

  Mari’ha Andona tapped a stud when the hail came.

  “This is Control.”

  “This is General Solo.” Mari’ha grimaced at the use of the title; Solo was certainly entitled to it, but Mari’ha had been running flight control over this sector of Coruscant long enough that she knew Solo only used it when he was going to be pushy about something.

  “I’m going to take the Falcon up for a bit. Any chance I could get you to pipe me a flight path?”

  “Yes, sir. What’s your destination?”

  “Haven’t got one.”

  Mari’ha said calmly, “Excuse me? Sir?”

  “I don’t have one. I don’t know where I’m going yet.”

  Mari’ha sighed, looking across the screens that showed all the flights in her sector. There were so many of them that it was hard for a human to pick out any single blip as belonging to an individual ship.

  She thought, The flight droid is going to pitch a fit. The flight droid always pitched a fit; it had acquired a dislike for General Solo many years ago now, when—

  “Which part of this are you having difficulty with, Control?”

  “I’m going to need a couple minutes,” she muttered into the comm unit. “The flight droid doesn’t like you.”

  “You need,” said Solo, “to clear a corridor and give me a flight path and do it right now before I have to go down to the tower personally and charm you to death. Do you copy that?”

  “I copy you, General.” She finished composing his request for clearance, punched it in, and then sat there punching Override, over and over again, at the flight droid’s objections. “And … here you go. Have a nice trip, General. Don’t hurry back.”

  “Try not to miss me too much, sweetheart. A pleasure as usual. Solo out.”

  Not long after that, her supervisor’s holo sprung into existence, one-sixth sized, in the viewing area off to her right.

  “This is most irregular,” he said severely. “Did General Solo give you a flight plan?”

  “Nope.”

  “Estimated time of return?”

  “Nope.”

  It was almost a shriek. “Destination?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. Nowhere in-system, though. He entered hyperspace about twenty minutes ago.”

  Strange things happen in the course of a lifetime:

  When he had started out in his career as a bounty hunter, Boba Fett had never even heard of the place—Tatooine. But that small and meaningless desert planet, as it turned out, became a part of Fett’s life, and over the course of the years kept intruding back into it. Jabba the Hutt had established headquarters there; Luke Skywalker, Fett learned many years later, had actually grown up on Tatooine.

  The worst disaster of his life had taken place there, his fall into the Great Pit of Carkoon, into the maw of the Sarlacc.

  Two years ago, Tatooine had intruded into Fett’s life again. Four mercs, two of them Devaronian, had walked into a bar in Mos Eisley. One of the Devaronian mercs recognized, or thought he had recognized, the Butcher of Montellian Serat. The identification might not have been accurate; the old Devaronian he pointed to had promptly killed all four of the mercs, and no one was able to question him about it.

  The old Devaronian had vanished, clean off Tatooine … and Fett had tracked him. Here, to Peppel, a world almost as far away from Coruscant as Tatooine.

  The target. Kardue’sai’Malloc, the Butcher of Montellian Serat. There was a five million credit bounty on the Butcher, five million credits of retirement money.

  Boba Fett was not the man he had once been. His right leg, from the knee down, was artificial. Only constant medical treatment kept him from developing a cancer; the days he’d spent in the belly of the Sarlacc had altered his metabolism permanently, had damaged him genetically to such a degree that he could not have had children had he wanted them; his cellular structures did not always regenerate the way they were meant to.

  To say nothing of the memories he had carried away from the Sarlacc and the Sarlacc’s genetic soup, memories that were not always his own.

  Fett waited, on his belly in the cold, in the mud, nude except for the shorts that kept his privates decently covered, with arrows in a quiver slung across his back, and a bow in one hand, and a crystal knife inside a leather sheath. Malloc—or Labria, the name he’d been going by for the last couple of decades now—was trickier and more dangerous than anyone had ever dreamed. He’d had a reputation in Mos Eisley, Fett had learned; Labria, the worst spy in the city. He was a drunk, and nobody had respected him, or feared him, until the day he had killed four mercs in the prime of their lives.

  Darkness gathered. Fett waited, shivering, worrying. Artificial light of some sort glimmered in the hut’s sole window. The metal content of his artificial leg was low, but Fett did not know how good the Butcher’s security system was; all he knew was that it was there. He’d slipped tripwires, light traps; had crawled, centimeter by centimeter, past blinking motion sensors.

  If there were not some sort of sensor sweeping the clearing, Fett would have been surprised. It was the reason he had not worn his armor, nor brought more modern weapons.

  The lights in the hut went out. The hut had no plumbing; the previous night at this time Malloc had waited for several minutes after the extinguishing of his light, letting his eyes acclimate to the darkness, Fett assumed, before coming outside.

  Fett reached over his back, pulled an arrow free, and strung the bow. It was a compound bow, that required the least exertion after it had been pulled back; Fett pulled it and waited.

  Last night at this time Malloc had come outside to relieve himself. Fett didn’t know as much about Devaronians as he might have (though he had studied an anatomy chart for Devaronians; he didn’t want to shoot the fellow in the wrong place). Conceivably they only relieved themselves once a week. If so, he was going to have to think of some other approach—

  The door swung open, and the bounty stood in the doorway, assault rifle cradled in both hands, took a quick step outside, onto the porch, and then stepped off the porch and walked around to the side of the house nearer Fett’s hiding place. Fett tracked Malloc as he moved over to the open-air toilet the Devaronian had dug for himself, ten meters outside the hut. He waited for Malloc to disrobe and relieve himself—and then waited until he was done, and pulling his clothing back together again.

  He needed to keep this one alive, and Fett had shot too many individuals, of all species, to shoot anyone before he, she, or it, had emptied itself. Someone always had to clean up after it, and usually that was the person who wasn’t in chains.

  Fett let the fellow stand up from his toilet, turning away from Fett, and shot Malloc high in the back. He was on his feet and running, in a half stagger himself, running on legs that shrieked with pain, as Malloc stumbled forward, giving voice to something that managed to mix a scream and roar. Fett closed on Malloc and Fett rolled to get down low, and with the knife slashed Malloc across the hamstring of his right leg. Malloc fell forward, to his knees, still reaching up to try to pull the arrow free from his shoulder.

  Fett pushed him forward, up against the hut’s wall, grabbed Malloc by one of his horns and pulled his head back, and got the knife against his throat. “Move and you die,” he whispered harshly.

  The hut reeked.

  The Butcher of Montellian Serat, Kardue’sai’Malloc, sat propped up agains
t the wall, the arrow pulled from his back, but the wound still bleeding, and strained against the bonds that kept his hands pulled behind his back.

  The hut was spacious; the hut’s size was one of the things that had given Fett pause. He’d wondered what the Butcher was hiding inside it—mostly, wondered what weapons might be tucked away inside there, waiting for the wrong person.

  There were no weapons, though, except for the rifle the Butcher had carried with him.

  Fett had known the Devaronians were carnivores; had he not known it, the contents of the hut would have confirmed it. The slaughtered carcasses of half a dozen animals hung along the far wall. A corner of the room had a pile of bones and shells in it, stripped almost clean of flesh. Dozens of empty bottles were scattered among them.

  In the opposite corner was the pit where Malloc had slept; and another several dozen bottles, still full of Merenzane Gold, lined up along the floorboards next to the pit.

  Fett had not bothered to look at anything yet except the controls for the security system. As far as he could tell it was all passive security, nothing that would shoot at the Slave IV if he brought it down to a landing in the clearing a few kilometers back along his trail. Finally satisfied, he turned back to the bounty.

  “On your feet. We’re going to walk a bit I had to leave the callback outside range of your sensors.”

  Malloc grimaced, showing sharp teeth. He was large for a Devaronian, which made him very large for a human. He spoke in Basic with less accent than Fett’s own. “No. I don’t think I will.”

  Fett hefted the man’s own assault rifle. He shrugged. “Devaronians are tough; I know that about you. You do not go into shock and you do not die easily. You’ll walk—or I’ll burn off your arms and your legs to make you lighter, and then I’ll drag you where we are going.” Fett paused. “Your choice.”

  The bounty said wearily, “Kill me. I’m not walking.”

  “I’ll do worse than kill you,” said Fett patiently—his left knee was paining him, his entire right leg was on fire from the prosthesis upward, and he really didn’t want to drag this very large Devaronian two kilometers, not even after lightening him.

  Malloc let his head fall back, to the wall behind him. “Do you know what you’re doing, bounty hunter? Do you even know who I am?”

  Fett fired a quick burst into the wall near Malloc’s head, to get his attention; it did no more than singe the damp wooden wallboards. “Listen. I am Boba Fett.” It had been a generation since one of his bounties had failed to recognize the name; it brought this fellow’s eyes alive. Fear, Fett assumed. “And you are Kardue’sai’Malloc, the Butcher of Montellian Serat, and you’re worth five million credits. Alive. And nothing dead, so you will not annoy me into killing you.”

  “Boba Fett,” he whispered. He stared up into Fett’s face. “You’re an ugly piece of prey … I heard you were after me.”

  Fett couldn’t believe how much talking he was having to do to keep from dragging this fellow two klicks. “Yes. Now do I burn your—”

  “They say you’re honest.”

  That was an opening to a negotiation, if Fett had ever heard one. “What do you have? Something worth trading five million credits for?”

  Malloc stared at Fett, searching his features for—Fett could not imagine what. He took a breath, winced, and then nodded. “Yes. By the Cold, I do. Something worth five million credits easy. Maybe more. Something priceless, Fett—”

  Fett said impatiently, “What?”

  “Kang,” Malloc whispered. “Maxa Jandovar, Janet Lalasha. Miracle Meriko—”

  The last name Fett recognized, and knew the idiot was lying to him. “Meriko died in Imperial custody twenty-five years ago, you lying fool, and the bounty on him was twenty thousand credits, not any five mil—”

  “Music!” Malloc yelled. He glared at Fett. “You uncivilized barbarian! Music! I have the music of Maxa Jandovar, and Orin Mersai. M’lar’Nkai’kambric,” he took a deep breath, yelled again, “Lubrics, Aishara, Dyll—”

  Fett shook his head wearily. “No. No, I don’t care about your music. Now will you get up? Or must I carve you up and drag you?”

  The Butcher leaned his head back and stared up at the roof. The light caught his predator’s eyes and glimmered back out of them. “By the Cold,” he whispered, “but you’re ignorant. Even for a human you’re ignorant. There are people who will pay for that music, Fett. I have the only recordings left of half a dozen of the galaxy’s finest musicians. The Empire killed the musicians, destroyed their music—”

  “Five million credits?” said Fett politely.

  The Butcher hesitated a second too long. “More than that—”

  Fett pointed the rifle at the Butcher’s legs. “Negotiation is over. I will drag you if you make me,” and he was not joking.

  Malloc closed his eyes, and spoke a bare moment before Fett had decided to start cutting. “I’ll walk. But you have to make me three promises. You dig up my music chips, they’re buried in a holding case under a few centimeters of dirt, out back. After you deliver me to Devaron, you take those chips to the person I tell you to take them to, and you sell them to her for whatever she can offer. And finally—” He nodded toward the bottles of golden liquor. “We take six of those with us. I’m going to need them.” He saw Fett shaking his head, and said sharply, “This is not a negotiation, ignorant human. You start shooting if you think it is, but I warn you, I’ll do my level best to die on you between here and Devaron. I have a mean streak in me, bounty hunter.”

  Bounty hunting, thought Boba Fett wearily, is not what it used to be. He waved the rifle at Malloc. “Fine. Agreed. Get up … and show me where your blasted music is buried.”

  “Welcome to Death, Gentleman Morgavi. What do you have to declare?”

  As was so frequently the case anymore, at least when dealing with other humans, the customs agent standing before Han Solo, in the bright Jubilar sunshine, seemed … well, he struck Han as younger than Luke Skywalker had seemed the first time Han had seen him.

  A grin touched Han; he couldn’t help it. “No. Nothing to declare.”

  The boy looked at the Falcon, and then back at Han. Suspicion worked its way across his face like a baby negotiating its first steps. “Nothing?” he asked finally.

  Despite his best instincts Han’s grin grew larger. “Sorry, no. I just came to Jubilar for a visit.” The kid thought he was a smuggler. “I’ll just head on over to the port bar,” he said. “I expect you want to search the ship right about now.”

  The grin appeared to be offending the customs man. “Yes, sir. Why don’t you just … wait in the bar. While we search. Of course, if you’re in a hurry—” The man paused.

  Han Solo tried to remember the last time he had bribed a customs official, and couldn’t.

  “I haven’t smuggled anything since, well, practically before the Rebellion,” Han told the fellow. He headed off toward the main terminal, turned back for a moment. “There are cargo holds right underneath the main deck. I left them unlocked, though. Don’t break anything trying to get into them, okay?”

  The customs agent stared after him.

  • • •

  “I’ll have a beer,” said Han. “Corellian, if you’ve got it.”

  The port bar was nearly empty; only a few elderly Gamorreans sat together in a booth in back, playing some game that involved throwing bones; a creature of some race Han had never seen before sat at the far end of the bartop, inhaling something that, even from here, reeked of ammonia.

  The bartender looked Han over, nodded, and turned toward the bar. A long mirror hung on the wall behind the bar; Han stared at himself in it. He thought that the gray in his hair gave him a distinguished look.

  “I thought this city was called ‘Dying Slowly,’ ” Han said as a dark beer was laid down in front of him. “When did the name change?”

  The bartender shrugged. “It’s always been called just ‘Death,’ far as I know.”

  “How
long you been on-planet?”

  “Eight years.”

  “What for?”

  The bartender stared at him. “Take some advice—you don’t ask that sort of question around here.” He shook his head and turned away.

  Han nodded, and sat drinking his beer; he’d known that, once. A thought struck him. “Hey, buddy.”

  The bartender looked over at him.

  “Just out of curiosity,” said Han—

  He paused and looked around at the nearly empty mid-afternoon bar.

  He leaned back in toward the bartender. “Now that spice is legal … what sorts of things get smuggled around here, these days?”

  The trip to Devaron took long enough that Malloc’s shoulder wound was nearly healed by the time they neared hyperspace breakout, though the leg was starting to fester, and none of the drugs Fett had seemed to be helping—Fett hoped sincerely that the injury wouldn’t kill the fellow before they reached Devaron.

  Fett had sent a communication ahead to the Bounty Hunter’s Guild. Normally he would not have bothered to involve the Guild; but normally he did not have a five million credit bounty. A Guild representative should be waiting at Devaron when they reached it.

  Fett kept the Butcher down in the Slave IV’s holding room through most of the trip.

  In the remaining minutes left before their exit from hyperspace, Fett dressed himself. The Mandalorian combat armor he dressed in was not the armor he had worn in years past; that armor, burned and cracked, was still somewhere deep inside the Great Pit of Carkoon, back on Tatooine. But Mandalorian combat armor, though rare, could still be acquired if you went about it right. For years Fett had been hearing about another bounty hunter who wore Mandalorian combat armor, a fellow named Jodo Kast. It had annoyed him terribly. With some frequency, during those years, Fett had found himself being blamed for, and credited with, things Kast had done.

  Less than a year after his escape from the Sarlacc, Fett had hunted Jodo Kast down, via the Bounty Hunter’s Guild; he’d pretended to be a client, disguised in bandages; his own Guild had not known him. He’d requested the services of Kast, and Kast had come; by that time Fett had changed into his own spare armor, taken away the impostor’s armor, and also his life.