Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin Anderson

  But Dengar had done nothing to earn such disrespect from these Sand People, and so he was not surprised when they simply sat next to him at his head, watching him die.

  For a long hour they sat as the winds blew steadily stronger. Dengar watched them, and after a while he renewed his struggle. The Sand People merely stared in morbid curiosity, as if this were their form of entertainment.

  But he knew that they were waiting for him to die so that they could harvest him.

  Dengar looked at their wrapped faces, at the spikes sewn into their clothing, and they reminded him of teeth. He wondered if the Sand People would kill him, if this was what Boba Fett had meant by “the Teeth of Tatooine.”

  But the morning grew hotter, and the winds grew dry and blew more fiercely, and heavy sands began to blow. And suddenly Dengar remembered something more about the Valley of the Winds. Something about “sand tides.” It was unusual for Dengar to forget anything. The mnemiotic drugs that the Empire had forced into him made certain of that. Dengar only had difficulty recalling what had been said because it was part of a conversation between two other people, and his attention had been directed elsewhere at the time, but now he remembered. The Valley of the Winds was located between two deserts, one high and cool, the other lower and hotter. Each day, the winds would blow up the slopes as the hot air rose from one desert, and at night the cool air would come blowing back with great force.

  In each desert there were dunes of sand deposits, which would blow, scouring the stone, only to be redeposited each morning and night.

  The wind picked up and blew more fiercely. Dengar was sweating, and his mouth had become dry. He could feel a burning fever coming on. The sand was blowing through the valley with such force that he could no longer keep his eyes open. To do so, even for a moment, left them searing and gritty.

  After one devastating gust of wind, where small rocks pelted the Sand People, the bantha roared out in pain and struggled back onto its feet, then turned away as if to leave the area, and the Sand People made to follow it hesitantly, as if it were their leader giving an undesirable command.

  One of the Sand People paused by Dengar, pulled out a long knife and sawed at one of the ropes that held Dengar to the ground. The other two had mounted up, and one of them growled at his companion, questioning him.

  The creature who was sawing the ropes stood and began hissing some reply, making stabbing motions at Dengar, as if to say, “Why should we wait for him to die? Let’s kill him now and be done with it.”

  But the mounted one pointed off in the distance beyond Dengar’s feet and jabbed a finger in the air, hissing something. Dengar understood only one word of his retort: Jabba. If you kill him now, Jabba will be angry.

  The Sand Person with the knife bristled at the words, stood over Dengar for a moment. The bantha roared again, and the Sand Person thrust the long knife in its sheath and leapt onto its back. Soon they were gone.

  The wind kept building. The blowing sand covered the world like a dirty gray shroud. It was whistling, keening, talking in its own voice.

  Dengar looked at the one cord that had been cut at. It was one of the cords tied to his right hand. Dengar wrapped his fingers around it and began pulling on that cord, hoping to snap it, but in a few moments, he fell back, exhausted.

  Then the wind gusted, churning over the land with a scream, and the sand cut him savagely. A small sharp flake of rock whistled through the air, slashing across the bridge of Dengar’s nose like a bit of glass. Another flake lodged in his boot. A third flake struck one of the cords on his right wrist so that it twanged, and then Dengar realized what was happening.

  The Teeth of Tatooine. Flakes of stone and pieces of sand began screaming through the air. Dengar struggled to turn his head away from the shrieking wind. The sky above him was going dark under the weight of the sand storm. The suns hung in the sky like two globes of light, piercing bright.

  And Dengar remembered something, a memory that seemed ages old, crusted over.

  He remembered the operating room where the Imperial surgeons had worked on him. His eyes had been covered with gauze, but there had been two bright lights shining in his face, and he remembered the doctors inserting probes into his brain.

  He remembered feeling pity, a profound sense of pity, and someone saying, “Pity? You want that?”

  “Of course not,” another doctor had replied. “We don’t want that. Burn it.”

  There had been a moment of silence, a hissing noise, and the smell of charred flesh as the doctors burned away that portion of his hypothalamus.

  Then came love, a swelling in his heart that made him want to rise up into the air. “Love?”

  “He won’t need it.” The hissing, the scent of charred flesh.

  Anger welled up in him. “Rage?”

  “Leave it.”

  Almost immediately, he’d felt a profound sense of relief. “Relief?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. What do you think?” Dengar had wanted to say something, he’d wanted to tell them to leave him alone, but his mouth was not working. He’d only been able to see the twin globes through the gauze.

  “Burn it,” both doctors said in unison, then laughed, as if it were a game.

  The memory faded, and Dengar lay alone on the sand. He recalled the promises that his Imperial Officers had given him. When he’d proven his value to the Empire, they said that they would restore him, give him back his ability to feel. It had been a promise that had never made sense, and yet Dengar had always hoped that they could do it, had always been held imprisoned by his hope.

  But now he realized that they’d left him with the ability to feel hope, only so that they could control him, keep him on his tether.

  Dengar struggled against the cords that held him bound. Some of the flaking rocks were hitting the ropes, causing them to twang, cutting into them, and Dengar hoped only that they might slice a cord or two before they slashed him to ribbons.

  A nasty pebble struck him above the left eye, and Dengar cried out in pain. But he was alone on the desert, his voice swallowed in the roaring wind.

  Then the roaring reverberated louder. There was a thundering overhead of subspace engines, and Dengar looked up in time to see two ships blasting off through the haze of dust and wind, heading out low over the valley.

  One of them was the Millennium Falcon.

  Dengar’s heart began beating harder. So you did it, Han, Dengar thought. You escaped again. Now I must follow.

  And Dengar had only three things to work with. His rage, his hope, and his loneliness. He flailed about, looking both ways across the desert for signs of help, but there was none, and the aching loneliness flayed him. He wondered how he would ever vent his rage and frustration, when the object of his wrath was flying away. Han, like the Empire, was untouchable, unbeatable, and Dengar cried out in anger against them.

  And as he did so, he imagined Manaroo, imagined huddling in her arms as the tech-empath shared her emotions, making him human once again.

  With a scream like one damned, Dengar jerked his right hand with all his might, not caring if he pulled it off at the wrist. The Empire had destroyed him, but in the process it had given him strength. Almost immediately one of the cords snapped with a twang, followed quickly by the snapping sound of another, while the bolt that held the third cord pulled from the rock.

  Dengar screamed again and began kicking with his left leg, till it also tore bolts free from the ground, then he pulled out the ropes that held his right leg and untied his left hand.

  The Teeth of Tatooine had him now as the storm built to its crescendo. The skies were going dark under whirling clouds of sand, and Dengar knew that there was no shelter. He’d seen nothing that could hide him for miles. Still, Jabba’s men had tied Dengar to the ground while Dengar wore his battle armor. Dengar’s legs and chest had ample protection, but at the moment, it was his head and hands that were being chewed away.

  Dengar turned his back to the wind and began stum
bling in the general direction of Jabba’s palace. Boba Fett had betrayed him twice. But he had left Dengar wearing his armor, and Dengar vowed silently that Boba Fett would pay for that mistake with his life.

  For long he walked, head hunched, hands curled up protectively against his chest. He was stumbling blindly, unable to see, suffering from fevered dreams. The dry wind was having its way with him, and still after two hours he had not begun to find his way off the pan, nor had he found so much as a single boulder in this sandblasted desert that he could hide behind.

  At last, when he could walk no farther and his rage and hope languished under the weight of fatigue, Dengar curled in a ball and lay down to die.

  It seemed he waited for an eternity, and he lay exhausted, empty, knowing that he could not make it out of the desert himself. Even if he’d broken his bonds immediately after wakening, he might not have made it out of this desert himself.

  And then it came to him, distantly at first. His eyes were closed, but he saw light. He felt as if he were flying, almost as if he were bouncing over the ground in a speeder, and something propelled him forward, dimly recalled memories. He felt an overwhelming sense of love and hope, tinged with a sense of urgency.

  I am dying, he thought. My life force is flying. But where am I going? He watched for a moment, and the lights and feelings became more clear. He felt younger and stronger and more passionate than he had in years, and he stopped and called out in hope, “Payback?”

  Then Dengar realized the truth. This was not a vision of dying, this was Manaroo. Dengar was still wearing his Attanni, and Manaroo was somewhere nearby in a speeder, searching for him.

  Dengar shouted, stood in the clouds of dust. He looked about and could not see her, and she could not hear him. He felt her frustration as she powered up the speeder, prepared to move on.

  Dengar shouted again, and again, and stood with his eyes closed and his hands raised to the sky, and suddenly she turned.

  Through Manaroo’s eyes he could see himself vaguely through the haze—a dim mass in the dark swirling sands, something that might be human, or might only be an illusion, or might only be a stone.

  Manaroo turned the speeder, and the image was lost for a moment in a driving gust of sand, but she plunged ahead, until she saw Dengar standing with his fists raised to the sky, his face cut with a hundred cuts, eyes squinted closed.

  Manaroo leapt from the speeder. Dengar opened his eyes. She wore a helmet and thick protective clothes, and Dengar would never have recognized her on the streets, but they stood for a long time holding one another as Manaroo cried, and he felt her burning love for him, and her sense of relief, two people sharing one heart.

  “How? How did you escape?” Dengar managed to ask. “I thought they would kill you last night?”

  “I danced for you,” she whispered. “I danced my best, and they let me live for another day.

  “Jabba and his men are dead,” Manaroo said. “The palace is in chaos—looting, celebrations. A guard set us free.”

  “Oh,” Dengar said dumbly.

  “Will you marry me?” Manaroo asked.

  “Yes. Of course,” Dengar muttered, and he wanted to ask if she would save him, but instead he collapsed from fatigue.

  Dengar spent the following weeks recovering in a medic chamber in Mos Eisley, and on the day he was released, he set about preparing for his marriage to Manaroo. Among her people, making the formal covenants of marriage was considered a small thing, something two people might do in private. But the more important part of the ceremony, the “melding,” which occurred when two people exchanged Attannis and officially began sharing the same mind would have to be witnessed and celebrated by her friends and parents. Which meant that Dengar and Manaroo would have to go find them on whichever world the Rebel Alliance had secreted them.

  During those weeks of recovery, Dengar wore the Attanni that Manaroo had given him, and for the first time in decades he felt free of the creature he had become, free of the creature that the Empire had made him, until he found that he wanted to be that creature no more. The cage of anger and hope and loneliness that they had made for him was smashed.

  The two of them were broke but not broken, and with looming medical bills Dengar had to find some way to make money. Dengar considered going back to loot Jabba’s Palace, but dark rumors were circulating in Mos Eisley. Several people had gone to loot the palace already, and they found the palace doors bolted from inside. Strange spiderlike creatures were seen on the walls. Only two or three palace residents had escaped alive after Jabba’s demise, and most of those got off Tatooine quickly.

  So it wasn’t until a few days after Dengar got out of the medic chambers that he realized that, apparently, no one knew that Jabba had died at the Great Pit of Carkoon. Dengar decided he might be able to make a few credits in the desert, salvaging any weapons lost during Jabba’s final battle, scavenging the bodies of Jabba’s henchmen.

  So it was that he took Manaroo and flew the Punishing One out over the desert, until he found the wreckage of Jabba’s ships, unmolested.

  The bodies of Jabba’s henchmen littered the ground, their corpses desiccated, almost mummified by the heat, among scattered debris—a few broken weapons, the odd credit chip, parts to droids.

  When Dengar reached the Great Pit of Carkoon itself, there was a terrible stench of burned flesh and rotting meat. It looked as if the “All-powerful Sarlacc” would have to be renamed the “All-dead Sarlacc.” Someone had dropped a bomb down its gullet.

  On the edge of the pit was a dead man, naked, his flesh burned and bruised, as if he’d been placed alive in acid. Dengar turned the corpse over with a foot, to have a look at its face.

  The man was burned, covered with boils. Dengar had never seen the pitiful fellow before.

  “Help,” the man whispered. Dengar was astonished to find him alive.

  “What happened?” Dengar asked.

  “Sarlacc … swallowed me. I killed it. Blew it up,” the man said. Dengar wondered. It was said that the mighty Sarlacc took a thousand years to digest someone. Dengar had supposed that it was only exaggeration, but obviously this man could not have been lying here for more than a day or two. Which meant that he’d been in Sarlacc’s belly for some weeks.

  Manaroo had been only a dozen meters away, and she rushed over to them. “Oh, here,” she said. “Help me get him inside!”

  Together they carried the wounded man aboard the Punishing One, laid him on a bed, and Dengar got him some water while Manaroo began spraying his wounds with antibiotics.

  When the fellow could speak again, he grasped Dengar’s wrist, and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, my friend,” over and over.

  “It was nothing,” Dengar replied.

  “Nothing? You still … you still want to be partners, Dengar?” the man said. He reached out his hand to shake.

  Dengar gaped at the man’s tortured and burned face, and realized that this was Boba Fett. Boba Fett without his armor and weapons. Boba Fett helpless in Dengar’s bed. Boba Fett who had stolen Han Solo from him, who had bombed Dengar’s ship, who had drugged Dengar and left him to die in the desert. The man who had betrayed him twice!

  There was a rushing in Dengar’s ears, and the world seemed to turn sideways. There was a muddy smear on the man’s head, and Dengar imagined what Boba Fett might have looked like without his hair burned off. If he had brown hair, like Han Solo’s …

  “Call me Payback,” Dengar muttered.

  Terror filled Boba Fett’s eyes as he suddenly saw the danger.

  “I … I was just following orders,” Boba Fett said, but in Dengar’s mind, it was Han Solo that Dengar heard. “I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, buddy, it was a fair race,” Han was saying, that cocky grin on his face. “It could just as easily have been the other way around. I’m the one who could have got burned.… Sorry.”

  “But I’m the one who got burned!” Dengar shouted, grabbing Han by the throat.

  There wa
s a brief struggle, and Dengar felt a wave of dizziness. He was choking Boba Fett, and the man was looking up at him, pleading. “Sorry! I’m sorry!” he growled, and Manaroo was suddenly at Dengar’s back, pulling on him.

  She was fumbling with something, twisting something metallic against his cranial jack. Her Attanni shot through Dengar, washing him with her waves of concern, her worry not just for Dengar, but for Boba Fett too. She shouted, “What’s going on here?”

  She pulled them apart, and Dengar yelled, “He tried to kill me!” and suddenly he saw that during the struggle, Boba Fett had managed to pull Dengar’s blaster from his holster. He’d been holding the barrel to Dengar’s ribs and could have blown Dengar’s lunch against the far wall, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  Dengar began to calm. Manaroo’s own emotions suffused him. Her worry, her love. She looked at Boba Fett and didn’t see a monster. Instead she saw a man flayed and tortured, much as Dengar had been a few days ago.

  In the moment of silence that followed, Boba Fett held the blaster at Dengar’s chest. Dengar almost spoke. He almost said, “Go ahead. I’ve got nothing to lose.” He’d spoken that line under similar circumstances a dozen times, but this time the words caught in his throat. This time, he realized, he finally had something to lose. He had Manaroo, and he had a man who wanted to be his partner.

  Boba Fett flipped the blaster over, handed it to Dengar. “I owe you,” he said. “Do what you will.”

  Dengar holstered the blaster and stood looking down at Boba Fett. “I’m getting married in a couple of weeks, and I’ll need a best man. You available?”

  Boba Fett nodded, and they shook on it.