Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin Anderson

  Manaroo was watching him, and she put one hand on each shoulder, kissed him, and he could feel her dry mouth, taste her hope and desire, and part of him was surprised at the intensity of her desire. Then he understood why she feared him. She was afraid he would reject her, turn her away. He could also feel her loneliness, an aching void within her. Each sensation from her came as if it were new, as if no one had ever discovered it before.

  She felt comforted by his presence, protected, which helped explain some of her strong feelings for him. Dengar tried to search her mind, see just how deep her feelings for him went, but the Attanni she’d fitted to his implant could only receive the emotions she sent. It didn’t allow him to probe her thoughts or memories.

  She kissed him tenderly on the forehead, and held him for a long time, and briefly she remembered her mother on Aruza, kissing her as a child, and there was such a pang of guilt and regret at having left her parents to die on Aruza, a pang so violent that Dengar gasped, and then Manaroo cried out, sorry to have caused him such pain, and she fumbled to remove the Attanni from his cranial jack.

  Dengar sat panting, breathing heavily, sweat pouring down his brow. He’d not felt guilt, good clean guilt, in many years. He’d slaughtered decent people for the Empire just as easily as he’d abandoned Manaroo’s parents and friends without a thought.

  Now he lay back panting and smiling at having felt remorse for the first time in decades.

  “I’m sorry,” Manaroo gasped, fumbling to put the Attanni in a pocket.

  “I know,” Dengar flashed her a small grin, and the words caught in his throat. He started to stand up, but found that these strong emotions had left him weak in the legs and left tears in his eyes. There was a time in his life when he’d have felt embarrassed to show such emotions. Now, he just sat back for a long time, relishing them.

  When he could speak at all again, he said, “We’ll have to go back to Aruza, get your parents off planet—along with as many of your people as we can.”

  “Why do you say that?” Manaroo blurted, for she’d not revealed her wish.

  “Your … conscience … told me,” Dengar whispered, and he sat, realizing perhaps for the first time what the Empire had taken from him. He knew that they’d taken the capacity to feel joy, to feel love, to feel concern and guilt.

  Over the past years, the desire to help another being had never entered him.

  This is what it is to be human, he realized. To sit and know that on the far side of the galaxy, someone is in pain, someone hurts, and so it is my duty to go to them, regardless of the cost or risk, in order to free them from pain.

  It was a way of knowing that Dengar had too long found—inaccessible, so much so that he’d forgotten that it existed.

  Over the past months, as he’d hunted for Han Solo, Dengar had often puzzled over the trail. His nemesis would sometimes turn from an obvious route, such as an easy escape from the Empire, to rush headlong into battle. Such puzzling actions made it almost impossible for Dengar to calculate Solo’s next move, for one never knew whether Solo would charge a battalion or strafe a Star Destroyer. It was rumored that on one occasion, Han Solo had had the audacity to call the Emperor, accusing him of dire crimes and challenging him to a boxing match! Dengar had doubted the rumor at the time, for it seemed so illogical, but now, he reconsidered.

  Finally Dengar saw why his race to capture Solo had been so fruitless: Han Solo had a conscience, and like a navicomputer it guided him on a certain course, a course that Dengar could not have hoped to understand—until now.

  “You and your Attanni could come in very handy,” Dengar said, and he explained what he had just learned. “With you, perhaps I’d have had a chance at catching Han Solo.”

  “And what would you do with him, then?” Manaroo whispered.

  Dengar considered. With a conscience, perhaps his work would also be hampered. Certainly, in his early years, he’d have spared some of the targets the Empire had him destroy. “I can’t be sure,” Dengar said.

  “When next you meet him,” Manaroo said, slipping the Attanni into his palm, “Let’s find out.”

  Dengar began punching in new instructions on his navicomputer. “First, we must go to Aruza, and get your parents.”

  • • •

  Dengar finally returned to Tatooine. In the meantime, with the aid of Manaroo he posed as an Imperial Intelligence officer who was arranging to remove a large number of Aruzan diplomats to a “more secure facility.”

  With the help of the Rebel Alliance, he managed to steal a huge Imperial prison barge, large enough to remove a hundred thousand people from the planet, and he’d manned the ship with the appropriate Corrections officers, torturers, and other staff.

  It took little effort for the Rebel Alliance to send false orders for the new COMPNOR base commander to begin extracting prisoners and shuttling them up to the barge.

  The Imperial officers were well-trained, and brought up prisoners as fast as they were called for.

  Only once did anyone question Dengar—who had remained aloof from the dirty work and had stayed aboard his barge during the whole mission, personally “managing the incarceration.”

  When the new COMPNOR base commander called on holovid just before Dengar’s departure, asking Dengar where the prisoners were being taken, Dengar just fixed the man with an icy glare and said, “You don’t really want to know, do you?”

  There were rampant rumors of soft politicians, technological geniuses, and pacifist industrialists who had disappeared from across the galaxy. It was said that prudent men didn’t delve into such matters. The COMPNOR base commander fumbled for a quick apology.

  Dengar flipped off the holovid with feigned disdain.

  When Dengar’s ship reached Tatooine, it landed in a dusty port called Mos Eisley, a city at the edge of a desert where twin suns burned vehemently.

  They landed at midday, when the city was perhaps its quietest, and Dengar led Manaroo to a small cantina where moisture farmers and criminals seemed to have gathered in equal numbers.

  Dengar went to speak privately with some old acquaintances, and in a matter of minutes he confirmed that Han Solo was still alive, kept prisoner at Jabba’s palace. He left Manaroo with a few credit chips and said, “I’ll be back when I’m back,” then he took a rented swoop to Jabba’s palace.

  That night, Manaroo returned to the cantina while it was busy and made a few credits dancing. Dengar had exhausted his wealth over the past few weeks, and Manaroo hoped at the very least to pay her own way. After her first dance, she went to a private booth to catch her breath.

  An alien came up to the booth, and stood, looking at her. The creature had dark brown fur, an enormously broad mouth that was wider than her shoulders, short legs, and long arms with claws that scraped the floor. The short horns on its head nearly scraped the ceiling. It stood looking at her for a moment from deep red eyes, then growled. “Your dance—good! Strong! Jabba will like! If he likes dance, you live. Come!”

  He grabbed her arm, and Manaroo looked at the creature uncomprehendingly. “I won’t dance for Jabba!” she said.

  The creature glanced furtively both ways, then pulled at a flap of skin beneath its throat and lurched at her. For one moment she screamed as the beast grabbed her. Then she found herself sliding down into the creature’s belly pouch.

  There was little to breathe in there, and the air smelled of hair and putrid flesh. She struggled and kicked, but the creature’s hide was very thick—if anyone noticed the odd-shaped bulge kicking at the creature’s stomach, they must have assumed the worst and did not want to become involved.

  Manaroo held her breath for a long time, as the creature casually sauntered out of the cantina. Too soon the pouch began to feel hot, and the air failed her. With burning lungs she kicked and pummeled at the beast, but could not break free.

  Dengar entered the Hutt’s palace at night, when the inhabitants were most active, and knelt on one knee. Jabba was surrounded by his lackeys
—nearly all of whom were required to sleep in his chamber, for the Hutt feared assassination and knew that the best way to thwart it was to keep all of the would-be assassins within sight. Dengar looked up, saw Boba Fett in the shadows off to Jabba’s right, nodded at the man.

  “Why do you come before me?” Jabba grumbled in Huttese. “You did not bring me Han Solo. You can expect no reward!”

  “I have heard that you have Han Solo captive,” Dengar said. “I came to see if it was true.”

  “Ho, ho, ho,” Jabba laughed. “Behold for yourself!” A light switched on behind Dengar, and he turned. On the wall, in what Dengar had believed to be a decorative frieze, he could see the face and features of Han Solo, frozen in gray carbonite.

  Dengar laughed, walked over to Solo, and grasped each side of the frame that held his frozen body. “Gotcha,” Dengar said. “At last.”

  “Ho, ho,” Jabba laughed from deep in his belly, and his menagerie of murderers laughed with him. “You mean I have him.”

  Dengar turned to look over his shoulder. “No,” Dengar said, staring into the Hutt’s eyes. “You only think you have him.” The Hutt frowned at this. “You cannot keep him in … this!” Dengar waved at the carbonite containment device. “Surely, he will escape.”

  “Ho, ho, oh, hooo!” Jabba roared. “You think he can escape from there! You amuse me, assassin.”

  Dengar turned to Jabba, folded his hands before him. “Hear me, oh great Jabba,” Dengar warned. “I do indeed believe he will escape from you. And when he does, you will be the laughingstock of the underworld. But I can spare you from this fate. For I propose to remain here, to catch him once again. And when I do, I expect you to pay me twice what you have paid Boba Fett!”

  “Do you intend to free him yourself?” Jabba roared, so that part of his retinue fell back, fearing his wrath.

  “He will never be freed by my hand,” Dengar whispered.

  “Do you suspect a plot?” Jabba asked, eyeing the cutthroats and hoodlums in his employment.

  “His friends in the Rebellion will seek to free him,” Dengar answered earnestly.

  “The Rebellion?” Jabba laughed. “I do not fear them. So it is agreed. You may stay and join my retainers. And if the Rebellion frees him and you manage to bring him back, I will pay you twice what I paid Boba Fett!”

  Boba Fett stepped forward, brandishing his blaster rifle menacingly, and Jabba silenced him with a glare. He spoke with a low voice, “But if the Rebellion fails in its attempt to free Han Solo, then you will work for me for one year—scrubbing the royal toilets in company with the cleaning droids!” The Hutt broke into laughter.

  Dengar returned to Mos Eisley at sunrise, planning to move his ship to Jabba’s palace where it would be handy in case of a Rebel attack.

  But he was confused when he entered the ship and found Manaroo gone. He made a perfunctory search, found that she’d never returned from the cantina. At the cantina, the bartender said that she’d danced for a few credits, then “disappeared.”

  Dengar considered the news, then remembered the Attanni that Manaroo had given him. He went back to the ship, inserted the device into his cranial jack, then closed his eyes, trying to see what she saw, hear what she heard. But the Attanni gave off only a whisper of static.

  Dengar left the device in, flew a quick grid low over the city, but never received her signal, so he headed back to Jabba’s palace, landed the Punishing One in Jabba’s secure hangars.

  All through the trip back to the palace, he thought about Manaroo and wondered what had become of her. He found that he had become accustomed to her presence, even imagined that he felt comforted by it. Once, just a few nights before, she had demanded to know what other emotion the Empire had left him with besides his rage and his hope, and he had refused to tell her. Loneliness.

  His loneliness served no purpose in the Empire’s designs, at least not that he could fathom. Dengar was not even certain that they had left him with that ability on purpose. Perhaps when they’d cut away the rest of his hypothalamus, they’d not even been aware of what they’d left him with.

  But over the years, Dengar felt that it was not the rage or hope that had come to define him, but his loneliness, his knowledge that nowhere in the galaxy would he find someone who would love him, or approve of him.

  It wasn’t until he was on his way back to Jabba’s throne room that Dengar suddenly felt a staggering wave of fear. He closed his eyes, listened with other ears.

  “You got to dance your best for Jabba,” a fat woman was saying. “He gets his entertainment one way or another. If he don’t like how you dance, he’ll take great pleasure in watching you die.”

  Dengar watched the fat woman through Manaroo’s eyes, saw three other dancers from various worlds all lounging about on dark benches. They were in a damp-smelling cell, with thick steel bars. The air felt fetid, and one of Jabba’s guards was pacing outside the window to the door, occasionally poking his snout through the bars to leer at the dancers.

  “What if he likes how I dance?” Manaroo asked.

  “Then he’ll keep you longer. Maybe even set you free.”

  “Ah, don’t try to give her hope,” another woman said from a far bench. “That only happened once.”

  The fat dancer turned. “But it happened!”

  “Look, girl—” the other dancer said from the far end of the room. “You either dance good, or you die.”

  “But I already danced for Jabba,” Manaroo said, “when the slaver brought me in.”

  “So you passed the audition,” the fat woman said. “That’s something.”

  Dengar took off the Attanni, placed it in the bottom of his holster, beneath his blaster.

  Jabba was a demanding creature. Once he’d paid money for anything—whether it be a slave or a drug shipment—he deeply resented losing that thing. And the Hutt took great pleasure in tormenting others. While Dengar could not sense a difference between good and evil, the Hutt took pleasure in evil.

  Dengar knew that he wouldn’t get Manaroo back without a fight.

  He squinted and considered the Hutt, tried to picture Jabba with dark brown hair and a lanky frame. But even with the greatest stretch of imagination, he couldn’t find much in the way of similarities between Jabba the Hutt and Han Solo.

  “Ah, well,” Dengar groaned. “I’ll just have to kill him anyway.”

  Fortunately, Dengar soon found that many of Jabba’s henchmen had reason to plot against their master. Within three days Dengar was able to provide one of Jabba’s henchmen—the Quarren Tessek—with a bomb. Dengar made it from weapons stored in his ship, and he made it big enough to blow Jabba’s bloated corpse into orbit. Delivering the bomb was simple, since he only had to hand it over to one of Jabba’s most trusted servants, the head of the motor pool, Barada.

  Unfortunately for Dengar, Jabba learned about the plot before the bomb was ever completed. Upon the rather prescient advice of Bib Fortuna, who assured Jabba that Dengar was making a bomb, Jabba assigned Boba Fett to watch Dengar.

  Boba Fett was easily up to the task. A microtransmitter dropped into one of Dengar’s holsters performed the trick. When Dengar delivered the bomb to Barada, their words gave proof of the conspiracy.

  When Boba Fett informed the Hutt that he had uncovered the plot, Boba Fett asked, “Do you want me to remove the bomb?”

  The Hutt laughed, a deep and throaty laugh that shook his great belly. “You would deprive me of my amusement? No, I will have the bomb dismantled, and I will make certain that Tessek is with me when it is set to explode. I will enjoy watching him squirm. As for Barada—I will make him wait for a few weeks for his punishment.”

  “What of Dengar?” Boba Fett asked. “You can’t toy with him. He’s too dangerous.”

  Jabba squinted his huge dark eyes and looked narrowly at Boba Fett. “I will leave it to you to punish him, but do not give him an easy death.” Jabba brightened, and his eyes opened wide. “It has been a long time since I let one of
my enemies feel the bite of the Teeth of Tatooine!”

  Boba Fett nodded curtly. “As you will, my lord.”

  • • •

  That day was busy for Dengar. The surgeons who had operated on him so long ago had cut away his ability to feel fear, but at certain odd times he found that he moved with a new bit of energy, found his heart beating irregularly. It was, he knew, just a ghost of what others felt when they feared, but he found it invigorating. The bomb on Jabba’s skiff was set to go off early the next day, so Dengar became concerned that night when plans suddenly changed.

  Dengar had been resting in his quarters when Luke Skywalker suddenly appeared at Jabba’s palace and attempted to rescue Han Solo. Jabba foiled the young Jedi’s attempt and threw Skywalker into a pit with Jabba’s pet monster, the Rancor. Skywalker surprised everyone by killing the beast.

  The sound of the rancor’s death cry rattled the palace, waking Dengar, who hurried to Jabba’s throne room and reached the top of a small staircase in time to hear the sentence pronounced upon Han Solo and his friends. They were to die in the Great Pit of Carkoon.

  The palace became a madhouse. Jabba’s henchmen ran about arming themselves, preparing vehicles. Two Gamorrean guards scrambled up the stairs past Dengar, and one grumbled, “Why we need hurry?”

  The other guard backhanded him, sent him staggering against a wall. “Idiot! We no want Rebels come. If they learn Jabba wants to kill Skywalker and Leia, we in for big fight!”

  Dengar looked for Tessek in the crowd below, trying to spot the gray-skinned Quarren’s mouth tentacles, wondering if this would change their plans.

  But some of Jabba’s men already seemed to have the Quarren under guard. They were standing close at his back, and Dengar could only hear snatches of conversation. Tessek was begging Jabba for his life.