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The Last One Standing: The Tale of Boba Fett

by Daniel Keys Moran

The last statement of the Journeyman Protector Jas-ter Mereel, known later as the Hunter Boba Fett, before exile from the world of Concord Dawn:

Everyone dies.

It's the final and only lasting Justice. Evil exists; it is intelligence in the service of entropy. When the side of a mountain slides down to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and requires Justice as a consequence, so that civilization can exist.

There is no greater good than Justice; and only if law serves Justice is it good law. It is said correctly that law exists not for the Just but for the unjust, for the Just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar.

I bow to no one and I give service only for cause.

"Jaster Mereel."

Journeyman Mereel sat in his cell, in chains, with early morning sunshine streaking in through a tall and narrow barred window, high on the cell's wall.

His ankles were chained together so that he could not walk; another chain encircled his waist, and his wrists were linked to that. He was young, and he did not rise when the Pleader entered his cell; he could see that the discourtesy displeased the older man.

The Pleader Iving Creel seated himself on the bench facing Mereel. He wasted no time on courtesies, himself. "How will I plead you?"

Mereel had been stripped of the uniform of the Journeyman Protector. He was an ugly young man who wore his prison grays with dignity, as though they were themselves a uniform, and he took his time answering, looking the Pleader over, examining him?as though, the Pleader thought with a flash of annoyance, it was Iving Creel facing a trial today, and not this arrogant young murderer. "You're Iving Creel," he said finally. "I've heard of you. You're rather famous."

Creel said stiffly, "No one wants it said you were not treated fairly."

An unpleasant grin touched the young man's lips. "You'll plead me unrepentant."

Creel stared at him. "Do you understand the seriousness of this, boy? You killed a man."

"He had it coming."

"They'll exile you, Jaster Mereel. They'll exile you?''

"I could always go join the Imperial Academy," Mereel said, "if I got exiled. I expect I'd make a good storm?"

Creel overrode him: "?and they may execute you, if you anger them sufficiently. Is it such a hard thing to say you're sorry for having taken a life unjustly?"

"I am sorry," said Mereel. "Sorry I didn't kill him a year ago. The galaxy's a better place without him."

Pleader Creel studied the boy, and nodded slowly. "You've chosen your plea; well enough. You can change it any time before I make the plea, if you wish? think on it, I urge you. You'll face prison or exile for the murder of another Protector; for all the man was a disgrace to his uniform, you had no business killing him. But your arrogance is likely to see you executed yourself, Jaster Mereel, before this day is done."

"You can't love life too much, Pleader." The ugly young man smiled, an empty, meaningless movement of the lips, and the Pleader Iving Creel found himself remembering that smile, at odd moments, for the rest of his life. "Everyone dies."

Years passed.

The target was young?younger than the man who had taken the name of Fett had been led to believe; indeed, tonight's target was not long out of his teens. In itself that was not a problem; Fett had collected children many years younger than that. Among his earliest collections, not long after leaving the stormtroopers, had been a boy of barely fourteen Standard years; the boy had dishonored the daughter of a wealthy businessman who had, even in Fett's wide experience, a rather remarkable vindictive turn. Most fathers, Fett knew, on most planets, would not have killed a boy for such behavior; indeed, most bounty hunters would have turned down such a job.

Fett was not among them. Laws vary, planet to planet; but morality never changes. He had delivered the boy to his executioners and he had never regretted it.

Now, years later, he stood in the shadows at the back of the Victory Forum, in the town of Dying Slowly, on the planet Jubilar, and watched them set up for the main match in Regional Sector Number Four's All-Human Free-For-All extravaganza.

The Victory Forum was a huge place, poorly lit, named by the winning side for a recent battle in one of Jubilar's wars. The Forum had had another name, not too long ago; and would, in Fett's estimation, have another name again sometime soon. The current war was not going well. Jubilar was used as a penal colony by half a dozen worlds in the near stellar neighborhood; which army a convict ended up in depended upon which spaceport he was evicted at.

The Forum's seats sloped down toward the five-sided ring, two hundred rows of rising seats separating Fett from the ring itself, and the fighting. The audience was still arriving, only minutes before the main bout, and the Forum was only half full, an audience of some twenty thousand, mostly men, filling the seats.

Fett was in no hurry; he focused his helmet's macrobinoculars on the ring, and the area immediately about it, and prepared to wait through the fight.

Young Han Solo watched the ring attendant, a Bith, hosing the blood from the previous bout out of the ring, and wondered how he'd gotten himself into such a mess.

Well, not wondering, exactly, that wasn't accurate, since actually he remembered the events with a certain painful clarity. Wondering how he'd been stupid enough to get himself into the current mess was more like it. Han stood in the tunnel with the other three fighters, watching the blood get cleaned off the mat he would shortly be standing on?fighting on?and swore to himself that if he got out of the current mess with his skin still holding his insides inside, he'd learn to deal seconds so well that no one would ever catch him at it.

Anyway, how was a traveling man supposed to know that cheating at cards was a felony in some jerk backwaters? "A felony, "Han muttered aloud. He glanced over? and up? and up some more? at the fighter standing next to him. "What did you get sent to Jubilar for?"

The man looked down a considerable distance at Han and said slowly, "I killed some people."

Han looked away. "Right? me too," he lied after a moment. "I killed lots of people."

The heavily armed ring attendant, standing behind the four of them, growled, "Shut up."

A movement, out of the corner of his eye, caught Han's attention; he leaned forward slightly and looked off to the right. A fellow in? gray. Gray combat armor of some sort; he appeared to be watching the ring.

Boba Fett was not watching the ring. He was watching a young entrepreneur named Hallolar Voors, who sat ringside with a pair of beautiful, immaculately dressed women in the seats to each side of him; a young entrepreneur who was going to be dead before he had the opportunity to sample the charms of either of them.

Even at that early age, Han Solo had managed to get some experience on him: "That's Mandalorian combat armor. Who?"

The muted sounds of the crowd rose up in a roar and drowned him out.

The ring attendant yelled over it. "Time to fight, you low trash, you smelly sinful one-eyed egg-sucking sons of slime-devils! Time to fight!"

From where he stood, high above the ring, Boba Fett watched as the fighters came up, out of the tunnel, and into the five-sided ring. Four fighters, as Fett had been told was usual for a Free-For-All; the announcer stood in the fifth corner, waiting patiently as the fighters disrobed and took their positions, as the full-throated roar of twenty thousand men reverberated through the Forum.

Pickups, situated around the edge of the ring, would broadcast the fight around the planet.

Three of the fighters were what Fett would have expected, big bruisers for whom the Free-For-All ring had been the obvious alternative to conscription. The fourth surprised him; Fett zoomed in on the man?

The face jumped into focus. For a moment the image startled Fett; the fighter appeared to be staring straight up at Fett. He zoomed the macrobinoculars out to a wider viewing angle?and interestingly enough the impression was accurate; the fellow was staring at him. The young fighter disrobed slowly, staring up past the ring lights, into the gloom, at the spot where Fett stood, as the other fighters limbered up in their corners.

The man was young?no older, in all likelihood, than Fett's target tonight. Bad night, thought Fett, to be young and quick and full of promise.

The announcer moved out into the center of the ring, and raised his hands, palms out. His voice echoed out across the Forum and the watching audience: "This is the final elimination! These are the rules: no eye gouges. No blows to the throat or groin. No intentional deaths. There? are? no? other? rules." He paused, and the audience's cheers rose to a frenzied pitch as his voice boomed out: "The last one standing will be the victor!"

The announcer climbed out of the ring, and despite himself, watching the fighters, the youngster in particular, standing there alone and brave and scared, despite himself Fett found his pulse quickening as, with the rest of the crowd, he waited for the dropping flag that would signal the bout's beginning.

There were moments when Fett appreciated life?he was hardly an old man himself, and there were nights, nights like these, when it was good?and behind the helmet, Fett grinned at the thought as it came to him? when it was good to be young, and quick, and full of promise.

The dark blue match flag fluttered down from the rafters, and into the ring.

The three bruisers moved in on the young fighter?

Boba Fett said, "Spice."

The target, Hallolar Voors, said "Yes, Gentle Fett. Spice. Eighteen canisters. And if you can handle it, we can deliver the same amount again, twice a quarter."

Fett nodded as though he were paying attention. It was not long after the end of the fights, and he walked with Voors through a huge, dimly lit, apparently deserted warehouse at the edge of Executioners Row; Executioner's Row was a slum that was itself at the edge of Dying Slowly. Fett wasn't impressed with the imagination they showed on Jubilar, but he had to concede they displayed a certain consistency.

Voors had traded in the two women for a pair of conspicuously armed bodyguards. The bodyguards trailed behind them.

"The spice trade in this sector has been controlled by the Hutts for a long time," Fett observed. "Where did you find an independent source?"

Voors smiled at Fett; Fett, staring straight ahead, watched the smile in the heads-up tactical display in his helmet. The tac display gave him a 360-degree view of his surroundings; Fett wondered whether Voors knew that, or if he was just smiling for the practice of it. It was a handsome smile, Fett had to admit.

The Mandalorian armor itself bothered people, but Fett had found that it bothered people more when he did not look at them while speaking. And if they thought he could not see what was going on around him, so much the better.

Voors did not seem, to Fett, the sort who would know much about the capabilities of Mandalorian battle armor. In fact the man looked much like what he was: the son of a wealthy local businessman, a dark, charming, handsome young fellow wearing expensive clothes, with a good smile, who was fatally out of his league and did not know it.

"The source is? private," Voors said. "And desires to stay that way, I'm afraid."

Fett nodded, once; he hardly cared.

Moments later they came to a wide, relatively empty area, lit well enough that Fett's macrobinoculars, adjusted to the darkness they had been walking through, lowered the gain automatically; inside the helmet, the scene still appeared bright as day to Fett.

Three rows of plastic canisters, six to a row, sat out in the middle of the empty area. The canisters were fat, and half the height of a man. Fett pointed at random. "Open that one."

One of the bodyguards standing behind Fett glanced at Voors; Voors nodded quickly. The warehouse lights changed, went dark red; normal white light activated spice. The bodyguard moved forward, knelt, and touched the two clasps that kept the canister sealed; it left Fett with one bodyguard still behind him, slightly to his left.

Fett took a step forward and looked down. It looked like spice; he reached in and pulled out a handful. "Seal it and turn the white lights back on."

The lights came back up? and it was spice, all right. Fett scattered it across the top of the canister, and it lay there glowing in the light, twinkling and flickering as the spice was activated. Fett's left hand, hanging by his belt, touched a stud on the belt, releasing the neural toxin, and continued the motion, up to touch his right hand. He worked free the glove, stood there with his naked right hand held up in the air. "Do you mind if I smell it? Real spice has a sharp, pleasant odor?"

Voors glanced at his bodyguards. "If you insist."

Fett reached up, as though to take off his helmet? saw them watching him with plain anticipation. Another of the armor's benefits; taking the helmet off became an act of theater. He paused with his hand on the base of his helmet, and relaxed. "I wanted to ask you a question." The hand dropped slightly. "Does your conscience ever bother you?"

Voors stared at him. "Are you serious? Over spice?"

"Does it ever bother your conscience," Fett said again, in the voice that always sounded so harsh when he spoke Basic, "trafficking in spice?"

Voors said a little hesitantly, "It's not even addictive. And there are valid medical uses for it?"

The bodyguard nearest Fett blinked, shook his head and blinked again. "Substances that are not addictive," said Fett, "frequently lead to the misuse of substances that are. Doesn't that bother you?"

Voors took a deep breath and exploded. 'Wo, it doesn't bother me! My conscience is just?" His mouth shut? and then opened again, as though he intended to continue speaking.

The bodyguard behind Fett was farthest away from the neural toxin; Fett spun, pulling his blaster free left-handed, and shot the man as he went for his weapon. The jolt took the bodyguard in the stomach; he staggered backward, still clutching his blaster, and Fett moved forward as the guard backpedaled, took aim and shot him a second time in the throat for good measure.

He swung back to the spice, to Voors and die other bodyguard. They weren't dead just yet, of course. They fell and Fett stood watching them; the pickups buried in his helmet were busy recording their death throes. Jabba would want to see the recording?this was one of the first times Fett had taken the Hutt's commission, but Fett understood Hutts; Jabba would pay a bonus for the actual images of his enemies' deadis.

He worked die glove back over his right hand; it was numb already, to the wrist, from exposure to the nerve gas he'd released.

After their thrashing had ceased, Fett walked in closer, to get better pickups of them. He bent slighdy to give his pickups the best angle. The pale-skinned bodyguard had turned blue; Voors, darker-skinned, had turned purple. His swollen tongue stuck out between his teeth; Fett imagined Jabba would enjoy that touch.

After a bit Fett straightened and stepped backward, getting a good dozen paces between himself and the eighteen canisters of spice.

He unslung his flame thrower, lit the flame, and played it over the plastic drums for what seemed to him a long time.

The Hutt had not paid him to burn the spice; but Jabba had not paid him not to, either; and there were things wordi doing for free. When all that remained was a smoldering melted mess in the middle of the warehouse, Boba Fett, who thought himself a fair and a just man, slung the flamethrower back over his shoulder, turned about, and walked quietly out of the ware-house, into the dark, silent night, into a future filled with promise.

Fifteen years passed.

In the Slave I, with engines and shields powered down to almost nothing, only a trickle of power feeding the instruments and the lifeplant, Boba Fett hung up high-above Hoth System's ecliptic, high above the system's potentially lethal asteroid belt. He looked down on Hoth System and was gratified to see that he'd beaten the Imperials.

Somewhere down there, on Hoth itself, was, if Fett had guessed right, the current headquarters of the Rebellion. Fett didn't care about the Rebellion one way or another; the Rebels were plainly doomed, and the day and manner of their passing from the universe did not fill him with much interest. The Empire would take care of them; Fett had smaller and more profitable prey in mind.

Where the Rebels were, Han Solo could be found.

The hyperspace message from the Imperials had been short and to the point; it had announced a crushing assault on Rebel headquarters, and offered a bounty of fifteen thousand credits to any Hunters who helped chase down Rebels fleeing the site of the battle.

Fifteen thousand credits wouldn't have paid Fett's operating expenses for half a year. But where the Rebels were?

Not too long ago, Jabba the Hutt's standing bounty on Han Solo had reached one hundred thousand credits. It was one of the half dozen largest extant bounties Fett knew of; and if it didn't exactly put Solo into the company of the Butcher of Montellian Serat, and the Butcher's five million credit bounty, it was getting up there, getting up there.

He trained his sensors on Hoth at highest resolution, and keyed the computer to wake him if it saw the Millennium Falcon.

Sitting in the pilot's seat, in his armor, helmet in his lap, Fett closed his eyes and went to sleep.

The hyperwave warning awoke him.

Fett opened his eyes and scanned his instruments. Weak, flickering signals from Hoth, that might have been no more than background noise (except that they weren't); that wasn't what had set off his alarm, though.

Ships, the instruments said, were coming out of hy-perspace. Big ships, which meant Star Destroyers, which meant the Empire. Fett triangulated?and swore in his native language. Hoth was between him and the ships leaving hyperspace. Oh, you fools, you fools, Fett thought. If they'd set off his instruments, as far away as the Slave I was from their breakout point, then the Rebels, down on Hoth, must have been jolted out of their beds by the shrill of alarms going off.

Somebody had fouled up bad; and knowing Vader, Fett imagined that that particular somebody was not long for the galaxy.

The Slave I sat up above the ecliptic, and Fett did what he could while the inevitable battle played itself out. He lit the engines and moved in closer to Hoth; when the Falcon left the planet, if it did, it would be moving fast; Fett would have time for only a single run at it.

He took up position, still well above the ecliptic, floating above Hoth, above the battle; and prepared to wait. There was nothing else for it; if Fett had learned anything in his time as a Hunter, it was that patience paid. Certainly there was no profit to involving himself in the fighting. Ion cannon blasted up off the surface of Hoth; beneath their cover, Rebel transport ships lifted off, accelerated away from Hoth, and made the jump to hyperspace. At this distance, even with image enhancement, Fett's sensors could do no more than eke out the barest details of ship size and shape; but that little was enough. None of the ships leaving Hoth were the Millennium Falcon; the shape of that ship was burned into Fett's brain.

A wave of transport ships. A wave of fighters. Another wave of transport ships? another. Another.

The ion cannon on the planet's surface were firing more infrequently now; the Imperials must be having some success at taking the emplacements out. Fett waited, fighting back his impatience. The transports were away, occasional fighters still slipping the Imperial line and jumping to hyperspace. But still, no Falcon?

There.

That was the Falcon, or it was an hallucination. Fett's fingers danced across the controls and the Slave /lit its engines to give chase. The computer calculated trajectories, and Fett did half a dozen things at once, readied the tractor beam, fed power to the fore deflectors, threw up the Falcon's projected trajectory and ran an intersect for the Slave I; he needed to grapple them just before they hit hyperspace, ideally while avoiding death at the hands of trigger-happy Imperials?

Fett swore aloud for the second time in a single day. He wasn't going to catch them.

The Slave /streaked through space, high above Hoth System, at the ship's greatest acceleration, but there was no time, and the trajectories showed it plainly. Hoth was a cold world, far from its sun; the gravity gradient this far out was smaller than usual for a world habitable by humans?the Falcon was going to jump to hyperspace practically any moment.

Any moment, now; she was being chased by a Star Destroyer and what looked like its entire complement of TIE fighters. And?remember the basics, and Basic Number One was: no bounty is worth dying for. The Star

Destroyer and the TIE fighters were directing a withering fire upon the Millennium Falcon, laser light washing over the ship again and again; and if Fett got close enough to grapple, he would be close enough to take the brunt of that fire.

Any moment now?

And something was wrong. The Falcon wasn't jumping.

Fett doubled-checked the trajectory his computer had run for the Falcon, and the trajectory was correct; the gravimetrics were correct, the vectors were correct, the Falcon should have jumped by now.

Something wrong with their hyperdrive, Fett thought, and a moment later knew himself correct; the Falcon veered off?

?heading straight into the Hoth System asteroid belt.

Fett cut his engines, and simply watched as the Millennium Falcon dove into the belt. Solo was desperate; Fett wasn't, not nearly desperate enough to take the Slave I in among those tumbling mountains of stone and iron.

The hundred thousand credits could wait for another day; you can't spend money when you're dead?

Fett leaned forward slightly in his seat, thinking to himself that it had, really, been quite a remarkable day for Imperial stupidity:

The TIE fighters were going in after them.

Fett sat back in his seat, shaking his head. Plainly none of those people knew the first thing about cost analysis.

After a long blank moment he turned his sensors back in-system, and picked out the unmistakable shape of Darth Vader's Super Star Destroyer Executor.

He hailed it, received confirmation, and charted a course.

? ? ?

They took him to see Lord Vader.

Vader stood on the bridge, watching the remnants of the battle. Stars glittered and asteroids tumbled across the black sky beyond him. Vader did not look at Fett and wasted no words in greeting, and as always the deep voice seemed more the work of a machine than a man. "How did you know?"

Fett glanced around before replying; the bridge crew was so busy at its duties, or busy appearing to be busy at its duties, that none?c>f them had even looked at him as he was brought in; and as usual Fett found himself touched by a certain grudging admiration for Vader's leadership.

"Your people told me," Fett said after a moment. "In essence. They gave us a meeting point in interstellar space. I knew you wouldn't be jumping the fleet far, from that point; I ran the coordinates against my charts for this area." He shrugged. "One planet too hot, another too cold, a third just right, but already inhabited by Lando Calrissian's mining colony. That left Hoth."

"You know the area well, then." Fett did not think Vader expected a response; he offered none. Vader, still without looking at him, nodded as though he had. "The other Hunters will be here shortly. I'll brief you all when they arrive."

Fett took a step forward. "How much?"

Vader was silent a long moment. "I don't care about the others who escaped. For Solo? one hundred and fifty thousand credits. The same again for Leia Organa. She will be with him." He turned his head slightly. "No disintegrations."

Fett's escort gestured; Fett shrugged and turned and followed the escort from the bridge. Vader was a difficult client; he wanted living captives, not corpses or pictures of corpses. No disintegrations; he'd said that every time he'd hired Fett, after that first incident.

? ? ?

After the briefing, Fett and his competition were separated, and escorted back to their ships.

Fett's escort was visibly uncomfortable in his presence; that suited him. Vader's ship was the largest vessel Fett had ever seen, never mind actually been inside; it took almost five minutes for them to be shuttled from the bridge to the docking bay where the Slave /waited for him, and Fett was, by general policy, in no mood to talk. Particularly not to an Imperial officer of low rank.

They walked from the shuttle station to Fett's ship. Halfway there, the Imperial said, "They say you're Lord Vader's favorite bounty hunter."

Fett stopped in his tracks, stood still, and stared at the man long enough to intensify the fellow's discomfort. "Yes." He turned and continued walking, and the Imperial had to hurry after him.

But the man was stupid even for an officer of the Imperial Navy, or his curiosity surpassed his temerity; he didn't take the hint. "They say you know the target. This fellow Solo, the one who helped Skywalker blow up the Death Star. They say that you know him."

Fett walked along without replying for a good bit. Finally he said, reluctantly enough, "I saw him fight once."

"Fight where?"

For some reason Fett answered him. "A long time ago. He got into the All-Human Free-For-All competition, out on Jubilar." With real surprise Fett heard himself adding, "He was young, and he was outmatched. He made the finals round, though. Have you ever seen the Jubilar Free-For-All?"

The escort shook his head. "I've never even heard of the planet it takes place on."

It was like listening to someone else talk; the words simply flowed out of Fett. "They put four fighters together in a ring, usually of the same species. To make it fairer." A quick smile touched Fett's features, as he thought about those fights; it was the first time Boba

Fett had smiled in years, and he did not notice it happening. "Fairer," he repeated. "Usually three of them start by ganging up on the one they think weakest, which in this case would have been Solo. He was young, I told you that. They beat the weakest fighter into unconsciousness before turning on each other; and the last one standing is the victor."

"They beat him unconscious? Han Solo?"

Fett stopped walking?and looked sideways at the man. A small motion, but?the Imperial found himself staring into the bounty hunter's darkened visor.

Fett's harsh voice sounded like an attack. "He won. It was one of the bravest things I ever saw." He paused. "I'll enjoy collecting him."

The Imperial made a visible effort to collect himself. "Yes? I expect you will."

Fett shook his head as though to clear it, turned and headed down the corridor once again, perhaps at a slighdy quicker pace.

It was the longest conversation he'd had in years about anything except business.

The months passed in a rush; and when it was over Boba Fett found himself perhaps the best known bounty hunter in the galaxy.

It was a crowded time, and in Fett's memory the events blurred into one another. Solo had hidden the Falcon among the Imperials' garbage, released immediately before the jump into hyperspace, and so escaped from the Imperials at Hoth. A good trick, and one that might have worked against most Hunters; it had worked against Fett's competition.

But Boba Fett had been fooled by that trick before, once. By now he had been in his line of work longer than most, and there were few enough ploys he hadn't seen, once or twice or a dozen times. There was only one place they could be going, one place close enough for them to reach with their main hyperdrive disabled; Fett jumped for Cloud City, and there Lando Calrissian made the deal that delivered Solo to Fett.

With Han Solo as cargo, frozen in carbonite, Fett started for Tatooine. There, for the sculpture of Han Solo, and a few months of Fett's time, not to mention a number of inconveniences on the way, Jabba the Hutt paid, not 100,000 credits, but a quarter of a million?

And not too long after that, the rescuers started arriving. Leia Organa, pretending to be a bounty hunter, arrived with Chewbacca in tow. She succeeded in releasing Solo from the carbonite. For the very death of him Fett could not imagine what she'd had in mind; whatever it was, it did not work. The Hutt put Solo down in the dungeon, with Chewbacca, and intended to execute them in the near future; and Leia Organa spent her days in chains at the foot of Jabba's throne.

Fett lay on the bed in his darkened quarters deep inside Jabba's Palace, wearing his armor, staring up into the darkness. His helmet was balanced on his stomach and cool air from the ventilators washed across him in rhythmic gusts.

A heavy pounding sounded at his door. . Fett sat up, donning his helmet and lifting his assault rifle; the movements were so automatic he did not even have to think about them. He threw the bolt on the door, took several steps backward and aimed the rifle. He did not turn on the room lights. "Come in."

The door swung open with a reluctant creak. A pair of Gamorrean guards stood out in the passageway; Fett leveled his rifle at them. "What do you want?"

One of the guards stepped to the side, and a form?a human?was shoved into the room. Fett's finger tightened reflexively on the trigger, but he held his fire.

"From Jabba," the near guard grunted. "Enjoy her."

Fett reached back with one hand and touched the control for the light fixtures; and under the cool white light that washed over the room, looked down on Leia Organa, Princess of Alderaan.

She scrambled to her feet and backed up into a corner of the room, breathing heavily. Fett imagined she had fought with the guards as they brought her down to him. "You touch me?>!vHer voice failed her, and she stood there, shivering, and finally said, "Touch me and one of us is going to die."

He lowered the rifle slowly, and looked around the room. He had few enough possessions here with him in the palace; everything he owned, which was little enough, was aboard the Slave I. Finally he pointed at the thin sheet that covered the bed. "Cover yourself. I'm not going to touch you."

Organa moved slightly to the side, leaned over and grabbed the sheet and wrapped it around herself and the brief costume Jabba had allowed her, and backed up again into the corner of the room that left her farthest away from Fett. "You're not?"

Fett shook his head. He sat down in the corner facing hers, moving carefully, and propped his rifle across his knees. He had to move carefully; his knees had been getting worse in recent years. "Sex between those not married," said Fett, "is immoral."

"Yeah," said Organa. "So's rape."

Fett nodded. "So is rape." He sat in what was, for him, a comfortable silence, watching her. She settled down in the opposite corner, being careful of her covering; Fett approved of her modesty, but it did not prevent him from continuing to look at her. He had never so much as held a woman in his arms, Boba Fett, and the desire for a woman came to him less frequently, with the passage of the years; but in Fett's mind his chastity made him no less a man, and she was worth looking at, still flushed from her struggles, with her dark hair cascading down over the pale sheet.

She adjusted the sheet around herself, pushing herself back into the corner for warmth. "You're not going to call the guards to take me back to Jabba?"

"And insult Jabba? I don't think so. He'd feed you to the Rancor, and hold a grudge against me. You can go back in the morning."

Her breathing was quieting. "So we just sit here. All night."

"The stones are cold. If you want to use the bed, you're welcome to it."

Organa's skepticism was obvious. "And you'll just sit there. All night."

"I won't hurt you. I won't touch you. Sleep if you will. Or not; I do not care."

Silence descended. Fett watched the woman as she leaned back against the stone wall; watched her as she collected herself; watched her as she watched him.

Time passed. Both of his eyes were open, but he was only half awake when she burst out, ' 'Why are you doing this? Why are you fighting for them?"

Fett stirred, stretching slightly. The rifle across his knees was steady as a rock. "Over half a million credits," he informed her. "That's what Vader and the Hutt have paid for my work."

"Is it just money? We'll pay you. Help us get out of here and we'll pay you?"

"How much?"

"More than you can imagine."

Fett was amused by the audacity she showed, trying to bribe him, here deep inside the Hutt's castle. "I can imagine an awful lot."

"You'll get it."

It was cruel to let the woman hope. "No. What you're doing is morally wrong. The Rebels are in the wrong, and the Rebellion will fail?and it should."

Leia Organa could not keep the outrage out of her voice. "Morally wrong? Us? We're fighting for homes and our families and our loved ones, the ones who are still alive and the ones we've lost. The Empire destroyed my entire world, virtually everyone I ever knew as a child?"

Fett actually leaned forward slightly. "Those worlds rose in rebellion against the author^y legally in place over them. The Emperor was within his rights to destroy them; they threatened the system of social justice that permits civilization to exist." He paused. "I am sorry for the deaths of the innocent. But that happens in war, Leia Organa. The innocent die in wars, and your side should not have started this one."

He shut up abruptly; all the talking was making his throat sore.

His comments appeared to render Organa speechless anyway; she looked off to the side, away from Fett, staring at the blank stone wall, for several minutes. When she finally spoke her voice was quiet and she still did not look at him. "It's hard for me to believe that you can really think like this. I've heard Luke?Luke Skywalker, I know you've heard of him?I've heard him talk about the dark side?"

Fett was amazed to hear himself laugh. "That Jedi superstition? Gentlelady Organa, if the Force exists I have seen no proof of it, and I doubt it does."

Now she did look at him. "You remind me of Han Solo, a little. He didn't believe?"

Fett heard his voice rise dangerously. "I am nothing like Solo and don't you compare me to him."

Leia took a slow, deep breath. "Okay. Why does that offend you so?"

Fett leaned forward again. "Do you know what that man has done in his life? Never mind the loyal citizens of the Empire that he, and you, have killed during your Rebellion; war is war and perhaps you, at least, think you are fighting for Justice. But Sob? He's a brave man, yes; he's also a mercenary who's never done a decent thing in his life, who's never done a difficult thing that somebody wasn't paying him for. He's smuggled banned substances?"

"He ran spice!"

Fett found himself on his feet and yelling. "Spice is illegal! It's a euphoric, it alters moods, and the use of it leads to the use of worse substances, and a man who will run spice," he snarled, "will run anything!" He stood tense and motionless, holding his rifle in a quivering grip, staring down at Leia. ' 'And if I had been using spice tonight, Leia Organa, perhaps you would not be safe with me in this room."

"Han has smuggled spice," Leia said steadily, "which is illegal and does not please me; and he's smuggled alcohol too, which is legal but the tariffs are high enough to make it worth smuggling in various worlds. No, he's not perfect and he's broken laws you've never even heard of. But I know Han Solo, and I've seen him take risks for things he believes in, risks that I doubt you would have the courage to take?and what are you doing working for Jabba the Hutt anyway?"

Fett exhaled, loosened his grip on the rifle. He forced himself down to the ground once more, ignoring the spikes of pain that flared in his knees. "He's paying me. A lot. Once Skywalker comes, I will take him to Vader, and then I will spend no more time here."

"That's not what I mean. Jabba the Hutt has sold mountains of spice, and of far worse than that?"

"Necessity makes allies. Once the Rebellion is over, I expect the Empire will deal with Jabba. But he is less a threat than the Rebels." Fett reversed the assault rifle, touched the butt against the pad that controlled the lights. His macrobinoculars compensated almost immediately as darkness fell on them; she sprang into his vision by the light of her body heat. "I'm going to sleep. My throat is sore."

There was a moment of silence.

"Luke Skywalker," Leia said out of the darkness, "is going to come and kill you."

"Everyone dies," Fett agreed. "But since nobody's paid me to kill you? sleep well."

He slept with his eyes open, inside tjie helmet.

The Jedi, if he was one, came a day later. Luke Skywalker was his name, and he killed Jabba's Rancor; and Jabba put him down in the dungeon, in a cell near Solo and Chewbacca.

The following morning dawned bright and clear and hot, and Boba Fett was in a vile mood.

It was Tatooine, of course. All the mornings were bright and clear and hot.

But the Hutt was going to kill Skywalker. And Solo, and Chewbacca, though that was hardly the point.

Skywalker. That was the source of Fett's vile mood. He'd tried to talk Jabba out of killing Skywalker?not that he cared whether Skywalker lived or died; Fett expected the galaxy would be a better place with that fool subtracted from it. He'd seen a lot of remarkably stupid things in his day, but the spectacle of a beardless young man trying to face down Jabba the Hutt in his own throne room was near the top of the list.

But, though Fett had argued with him more than was perhaps wise, Jabba was not behaving like the Jabba whom Fett had known all these years. The point was that Darth Vader would pay for the fool?the Emperor would pay for him. The largest posted bounty Fett knew of in the galaxy was five million credits; but Fett was certain that Luke Skywalker would bring more.

Jabba didn't want to hear about it. He wasn't willing to share the bounty; he wasn't willing to take the bounty himself, and pay Fett as go-between with Vader.

His pet Rancor had died; and Skywalker was going to die for it.

Some days Fett was convinced he was the only sane businessperson left in the entire galaxy.

It galled him. He planned out scenario after scenario; none of them tempted him. He thought about kidnapping Skywalker out of Jabba's hands, but time was short and Jabba's security was good; even for millions of credits the risk was too high.

And so he walked around on the sail barge's upper deck, with uncharacteristic nervous energy, the morning after Skywalker's arrival, the morning that Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca were to be executed, trying to decide what he was going to do next, as the sail barge headed out to the Great Pit of Carkoon, taking the condemned to their deaths.

It came to him as something of a surprise that he hoped Solo died well. Years previously Fett had seen Jabba drop half a dozen of his own guards into the Great Pit of Carkoon, allegedly for conspiring against him; he'd offered them all a chance to grovel for their lives. Two of them had, and Jabba, of course, had fed them to the Sarlacc anyway.

He knew Chewbacca wouldn't beg; he hoped Solo wouldn't.

Maybe Skywalker would beg for his life. That wouldn't be so bad.

Fett stood in the bow and watched the sand disappear beneath them. This far out into the desert, there was nothing but desert, all around them. Sand, drifts and dunes as far as the eye could see.

Fett wondered, in passing, who had killed more people, himself or the Hutt. Probably the Hutt, if you counted his spice trade; probably himself, Fett thought, if you only counted deaths by your own hand.

Eventually the Great Pit of Carkoon came into view. Boba Fett, his mood improved not in the slightest, abandoned the upper deck and went down to the view-ing area, to watch with the others as Justice was rendered?

?and who knew how many millions of credits were wasted. /

The day had started badly; it got worse. Before it was over the sail barge was a flaming wreck, Jabba the Hutt was dead, and Boba Fett was down in the Great Pit of Carkoon, being digested by the Sarlacc.

Oh, he got out; as far as Fett knew he was the only person who ever had escaped the Sarlacc.

But by the time he got out and was healed again, or as healed of that experience as he ever did get, great events had transpired; and the galaxy had become something Fett would never have believed possible.

Fifteen years passed.

Or, to put it another way:

Darth Vader died; so did the Emperor. The Empire fell and was succeeded by the New Republic. On the human scale fifteen years is long enough for babies to be born and grow into teenagers; human children across the galaxy became adults and bore children of their own. For some long-lived species the period passed without significant change; for others, shorter-lived than humans, entire generations were born, grew old, and died.

In a sector of the galaxy Boba Fett had never heard of, a star went nova; it murdered a world and an entire sentient species. It aroused less comment than had the destruction of Alderaan, only a decade prior; the galaxy at large barely noticed the tragedy, and Fett never heard about it. In a galaxy with over four hundred billion stars, over twenty million intelligent species, such things are bound to happen.

The remnant of the Empire rose up against the New

Republic, and was defeated; Luke Skywalker fell to the dark side of the Force?and returned, as few Jedi ever had in all the thousands of generations preceding him.

Leia Organa married Han Solo; and together they had three children.

On Tatooine, a drunk Devaronian named Labria killed four mercenaries, and vanished.

Boba Fett grew older.

On the planet of Coruscant, the world that had been the capitol of the Old Republic, the capitol of the Empire, and was now the capitol of the New Republic, in the Imperial Palace, in the quarters he shared with his wife, Han Solo sat on the edge of their bed with his mouth set in an obstinate line.

"No. I won't go. Treaty signings bore me, and besides that worthless son of a slorth Gareth tried to cheat me at Laro last time we were there."

Leia stood with her arms folded, her exasperation showing plainly. "You cheated him back!"

"I cheated him better. Anyway that fool should feel lucky all he had to deal with was me," Han pointed out. ' 'When I was a kid, getting caught dealing seconds was a felony and they hung you for it."

"That's not true," Leia said?but a touch doubtfully, Han thought; he had known her long enough to know that cheating at cards, and the consequences of it, wasn't among the things they taught princesses.

"It is too true," said Han righteously. "Anyway King Gareth was lucky nothing worse happened to him than losing to me, that's the point here. So I don't know what you expect me to do, go up to the fellow and say, 'I'm sorry, your scummy Royal Highlessness, that I cheat better than you do'?"

Leia sighed. "I wish you wouldn't use the word 'royal' as though it were an insult. I'm?"

"You're adopted, "Han said quickly.

It brought a reluctant smile to her. "You're not going to come, are you?"

"You'd wish two weeks of diplomatic boredori on me?"

"You're sure you'd be bored?"

"I was bored last time, except that one night."

"I don't think Gareth will play cards with you again."

"So I'll be bored every night."

Leia sighed. "You're not coming."

"I'm not going."

"I was thinking of taking the children with me. They're old enough and it would give them some useful experience in dealing with?"

"It's certainly safe enough," Han conceded. "If they don't die of boredom."

"I could leave Threepio with you to keep?"

"You'd leave me here with Threepio? What did I do to deserve that?"

Leia Organa worked hard at keeping the smile off her face. "All right, I'll take him with me, too."

Han Solo looked up at her and grinned. "Deal."

She leaned in on him and whispered, "You better not be in jail when I come back."

"Hey, hey," he objected. "This is me."

He called Luke.

When Luke's image appeared in the hologram, Han said, "Hey, buddy. You busy tonight?"

A smile lit Luke's features. "Han! How are you?"

"Fine. Look, Chewie's gone home and won't be back for another few weeks, my wife and kids are off?"

"?the Shalamite trip," Luke nodded. "Right. Why didn't you go?"

"?and I was thinking," said Han doggedly, refusing to get sidetracked, "we might go and see if we could dig up some trouble tonight."

Luke shook his head. "I can't, Han. I've invited a group of the Senators to dinner? you are welcome to join us, though."

"Trouble sounds more attractive," Han growled.

Luke grinned. "C'mon, Han. You know I can't cancel my own dinner. Besides, this is Coruscant. We're two of the best known people on the whole planet. Where are we going to find trouble?"

"I've managed it before."

"And you sat in jail for two days before you convinced them you were really you. Leia was worried sick."

"Yeah," Han pointed out, "but Leia's off-planet right now. By the time she gets back, this stay in jail will be nothing but a pleasant memory."

Luke laughed. "Han, come to dinner with me. You'll enjoy yourself."

"With half a dozen Senators? I'd rather have a tooth pulled."

"You know," said Luke quietly, "you might think about joining the Senate."

"Without anesthetic Vd rather?"

"They'd elect you in a heartbeat."

"And impeach me in a month."

"Why?"

Han thought about it. "Bribe taking," he said finally.

"You wouldn't take bribes," said Luke calmly.

"Well, I admit it would depend on the bribe."

"Han, what's bothering you?"

The question startled Han. "Nothing."

The steadiness of Luke's gaze was unsettling. "You're not telling me the truth, Han. Or you're not telling yourself the truth, I'm not sure which?"

That look was making Han uncomfortable. "I don't know. Maybe it's just Chewie being gone?"

"That's not it."

Han stared at Luke. "No? not really. You know? I don't know where I'm going anymore, kid. I have a wife and children who love me, and who I love. But that's the problem. I'm Daddy. I'm Leia's consort, ftell amusing stories at state dinners?"

"You're very good at it," Luke said gently. "There's a place for those sorts of?"

''?and somebody asked me at one of those blasted dinners a while back what it was like, smuggling I mean, back in the old days. I started to answer and suddenly I couldn't remember. I couldn't remember the last time I'd run an Imperial barricade, or what the cargo was, or how it felt."

Luke grinned at him. "It was me and Ben and the droids."

Han looked startled. "You're right?it was, wasn't it?" He smiled almost unwillingly. "Yeah. All right, let's say I couldn't remember the last time I made any money at it?"

Luke turned his head, looked off-pickup, and turned back. "Han, my guests are arriving. Are you sure you won't join us?"

Despite himself Han felt tempted. "? nah. Not tonight."

Luke nodded. "I'll come by tomorrow. All right?"

"All right. I'll talk to you later, kid."

Luke's lips quirked in a small smile. "Han?"

"Yeah?"

"Han, I'm older than you were when we met." The smile did not fade, but it changed quality subtly, in a way Han Solo did not quite understand. "The world changes, Han. You can't stop it and you can't fight it, and you can't ever, ever turn it back." Han had the oddest impression Luke was studying him; and then Luke nodded and said, "I'll talk to you tomorrow. Hang in there."

His image vanished.

Han Solo thought, The kid's turning into Obi-Wan right in front of my eyes.

? ? ?

He got a recording when he tried to reach Calrissian.

"I'm sorry, but I can't be reached right now. Business has taken me on an extended trip; I'll respond to any messages if I return.

"If this is Han, buddy, you owe me four hundred credits if I get back."

Well, blast it, Han thought. Lando had found some trouble.

Late that evening he found himself down at the launching bay where he kept the Falcon.

It was dark, except for the bay lights high above him, and quiet except for the distant sounds of cargo being unloaded, in the commercial bays a good ways down.

Nobody questioned Han when he arrived; nobody asked him what he was doing there; he walked through the darkened bay as though he owned the place.

He very nearly did.

Han Solo stood at the edge of the bay, and laid one hand against the control for the overheads; and four banks of floods came to life.

Beneath the wash of light, the Millennium Falcon glowed white. She had never been so clean, in all the years Han had owned her; she had never been so carefully painted and beautifully detailed. Her engines had been rebuilt?the new hyperdrive engines never so much as blinked. The weapons emplacements were almost all new equipment.

There were even spare parts for everything.

Han had ceased to wonder about how much it had all cost; the New Republic had paid for it all. He'd never even seen a bill.

Sitting in the pilot's seat, in the cockpit, he initiated a launch sequence. He didn't really intend to take the ship up; he just wanted to look at the sky.

The dome above the Falcon split in two, slid slowly apart as the platform the Falcon rested on raised itself up, and the sky came out.

Han Solo stared out at the world.

It was amazing how much better it made him feel, just to be sitting here, in the closest thing to a home that he'd ever had. The seat next to him was empty, and that wasn't right?but it wasn't entirely wrong, either. He hadn't met Chewbacca until well into his adult years; and there'd been a time, before that?before Chewie, after the death of his parents?when there had been nobody.

No one except himself.

Han wondered sometimes?rarely, to be sure?what his family would have thought about him, if they could have seen what he had grown into. He'd never had to wonder about it, when he was younger; his family had loved him, but he knew he had been a disappointment to them, and they had not lived to see him grow into anything better.

You can pinpoint moments when change occurs. Not always; some changes are like the tide, slow and barely perceptible until they have come, or gone.

Sometimes, though?

Han did think about this, and with, oddly, increasing frequency, as the event itself grew more distant in time: the Death Star was coming; and it was going to destroy the Rebel base, the Rebels themselves, and their plainly doomed Rebellion. Han had taken Chewie and the Falcon, and had gotten out with time to spare?

Chewie was furious; Han could tell. Chewie wanted to fight. They'd sat here, together, in the Falcons control room, with Chewie not talking to him. Han had made not one, but two errors, calculating the jump to hyperspace. Finally he had his trajectory?and he hadn't been able to run it.

"All right, all right, let's go fight," he'd yelled at

Chewie finally, almost twenty years ago, convinced they were both heading to their deaths?

He sat in the cockpit of the Falcon, almost twenty years later, and wondered what might have been: Leia would have been dead; and so would Luke. His children would never have been born. The Empire would still rule the galaxy, and he and Chewie would be traveling from world to world, one step ahead of the Imperials, one step ahead of the bounty hunters.

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 die 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 entided to it, but Mari'ha had been running flight control over this sector of Co-ruscant 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?"

"/ 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 meres, two of them Devaronian, had walked into a bar in Mos Eisley. One of the Devaronian meres 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 meres, 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 Pep-pel, 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 meres 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 against 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 TVif 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 dragyou 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?"

"Rang," 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 willyou 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 TV'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.

Before the ship left hyperspace Fett brought the Butcher up to the control room and put him in the chair nearest the airlock. Malloc was sweating heavily, fighting with his fear. He'd drunk his first five bottles early in the trip; Fett had held back the sixth botde for this moment. Fett restrained Malloc at the ankles, and by his right hand; he left the Devorian's left hand unchained, so that Malloc might drink. Once he was satisfied with Malloc's bonds Fett unsealed and handed Malloc the last bottle of Merenzane Gold. It wasn't a matter of kindness on Fett's part; if it kept Malloc from struggling during the transfer to the Devaronian authorities, better to let him drink.

They'd barely spoken to one another the entire trip. Malloc lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed three, four times, before speaking. "How much longer?"

Fett glanced at his controls. "Six minutes until breakout. At least twenty before we dock with the shuttle that'll take you downside." He paused. "Time enough for you to finish the bottle, if you work at it."

"Do you know what they're going to do to me?"

"They will feed you, still alive, to a pack of starved quarra." Fett paused. "Domesticated hunting animals?this practice is one of the things that's kept Devaron out of the New Republic, I've heard."

Malloc nodded a little convulsively and took another drink. "It's a bad way to die. I saw it done once, when I was a boy. You were right, Fett, we Devaronians don't die easy. The quarra go at the belly first, the soft flesh. But the condemned doesn't die of that. They may nibble on your ears, or your eyes or horns, but that won't kill you, either. If you're lucky the quarra tear your throat out quickly. You arch your head back and expose your throat, and if you're lucky?"

"The time you saw it done," said Fett curiously, "What had the condemned done?"

Malloc stared at the golden liquid in his free hand, and took another quick drink. "I don't think there's a word for it, exactly, in Basic. He went hunting, during famine, and caught his prey?and fed himself, and his quarra. He didn't bring it back to the tribe." He looked up at Fett. "Do you know what I did?"

Fett glanced over at his instruments. Several minutes left until breakout; best let him talk. He looked back at Malloc. "Yes."

"I was a good servant to the Empire," the Butcher said. "My own people rose in rebellion. They sent my command out to Hunt them down. And I did it, Fett. I Hunted them across the northlands, and I caught them in the city of Montellian Serat. We shelled them until they surrendered?"

Fett nodded. "And after taking their surrender, you executed them. Seven hundred of them."

"The Empire ordered us to move on. To reinforce loyal troops, fighting just south of us. We were not to leave any troops behind as guards for the prisoners? and certainly we were not to leave any of them living."

"They didn't tell you to execute the prisoners."

"They didn't have to." Malloc drank again, a huge belt, lowering the level of the bottle noticeably. "It took almost five minutes, Fett. We put them in a holding pen and started shooting at them. They screamed and screamed and screamed. We just kept shooting until the screaming had stopped." He said almost pleadingly, "I was following orders."

"I know."

"They say you were Darth Vader's favorite bounty hunter."

"Yes."

"Don't you have any loyalty to what you were?" A touch of real anger glittered through Malloc's despair. "I did the Empire's work, man! Doesn't that count for anything?"

Fett thought about it. "I wish," he said finally, "that the Empire had not fallen." He nodded, remembering, and then said softly, "Yes. I used to enjoy my work more."

Hopelessness settled on the Butcher?he sagged, looking as though someone had just doubled the artificial gravity in the Slave IV. They always thought they could bargain, or plead, right up to the last moment. Malloc hadn't had a chance to ask the next question; he asked it now. Virtually all of Fett's bounties, given the chance, did?

"How did you catch me?"

A minute left to breakout. Fett nodded toward the bottle Malloc held. "I traced sales of Merenzane Gold across the entire sector Tatooine is in. They said, at the bar you frequented on Tatooine, that it was your favorite drink."

Malloc stared at him. "That crap I drank on Tatooine? That wasn't Merenzane Gold, you idiot, they don't serve Merenzane Gold in bars like that, they just pour it out of bottles that once, eons ago, were looked at hard by a man who heard of Merenzane! Don't you know anything about liquor?" he asked in despair. "Haven't you a single civilized vice?"

Fett shook his head. "No. I do not drink, nor indulge in other drugs. They are an insult to the flesh."

"So you Hunted me down because you thought I was drinking Merenzane Gold, all those years on Tatooine. Fett, I had one glass of real Gold the entire time I was on that miserable excuse for a world." Malloc shook his head in disbelief, took another swig from the bottle. "By the Cold. I can't believe I got caught by a nerf herder like you."

The hyperspace tunnel fragmented around them; Fett turned away from Malloc, to his controls.

"Reality," said Fett, "doesn't care if you believe it."

Malloc threw the bottle, of course. The security system shot it out of the air with a single blaster bolt. The bottle blew apart into shards that rattled against the back of Fett's helmet; the liquid splashed against Fett's armor.

"You should have drunk it," Fett said. He did not have to look at Malloc to know the gray despair that crossed his features. He'd seen it before, a thousand times.

? ? ?

Fett docked with the shuttle, in orbit about Devaron.

The Guild representative came across first. Fett stood in the main entryway, rifle in hand, pointing it at the representative as he entered.

The representative was Bilman Dowd, a human, tall and thin and elderly, with a severe bearing and no discernible sense of humor; he had been in the Guild even longer than Fett, which was a remarkable accomplishment in this day and age. "Hunter Fett," he said, courteously enough.

"Dowd."

Dowd looked the Butcher over. Kardue'sai'Malloc sat motionlessly, staring straight ahead. He did not seem to be aware of Dowd's presence. "This is the Butcher, is it?"

"I believe so."

Dowd nodded. He carried with him a small slate, with various controls on it; he touched one now, and spoke. "Come across."

The Slave IV's lock cycled again; four Devaronians entered, two of them in military dress, bearing rifles that they carried pointed at the Slave TV's deck. The third was a female Devaronian, young, in gold robes and a gold headdress; the fourth, wearing robes of a cut similar to the woman's, except in black, was an older Devaronian, perhaps the Butcher's age.

All four hesitated at the sight of Fett, aiming his rifle at them?

Dowd gestured to the woman and said something in Devaronian. Fett had never actually heard the language spoken before; it was low and guttural and full of snarling consonants. It sounded like an invitation to a fight. '

The woman's expression did not change. She crossed to the spot where Malloc sat?Fett had restrained his left hand prior to allowing anyone else on board. She kneeled in front of Malloc, looking the shivering prisoner over as though she were inspecting a carcass in the marketplace. Malloc's skin had acquired a blue tinge; Fett supposed it was something that happened to Devaronians when they were deathly afraid.

The woman stood up and nodded abruptly. She spoke in Devaronian?

Dowd said, "She says it's her father."

Fett nodded; it was the reason the bounty had been "Alive," rather than "Dead or Alive." It had only changed a few years back; the Devaronians had no longer been certain that the Butcher would be recognizable, dead.

The older Devaronian said grimly, in rather poor Basic, "We pay him now."

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 perfectly 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 generally 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 music?"

"He had a music collection. Music the Empire suppressed, 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 comment didn't offend Fett; Dowd had made the observation 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 encryption identification numbers started well upwards of 12,000.

He unarchived the encryption key for the 802 protocol, 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 important than his own life.

There were over five hundred infochips in the carrying 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 unpleasant 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 outside 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 family 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 released 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 rundown, 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 battles 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 buildings 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 warehouse, in a complex of warehouses at the edge of Death, in the part of Death they had used to call Executioner'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 Rebellion, 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 representative 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 entrance 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 desert 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 unfortunate 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 upside, 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, carefully 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 entrance.

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 maintain 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, however 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 bounties. 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 warehouse 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 ceiling and the overhead lights, and another bundle running 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 locations where he remembered the two closer bodyguards standing, pulling his blaster free right-handed. Screams, the woman was screaming, and he got off four shots with the holdout before it malfunctioned, burning 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 warehouse entrance, a shape out of Han Solo's nightmares, a shape out of the galaxy's darkest history?a man in Mandalorian combat armor.

Incavi Baker lay on her back, staring up into infinity. There was a terrible pain in her side, and she knew she was dying.

She wished it weren't so dark. Bright lights flashed around her, blaster bolts that lit the world up briefly, but even the blaster bolts were fading now.

A figure loomed up out of the darkness, knelt beside her. A man in gray armor. Incavi opened her mouth? but nothing came, and the man reached for her.

Something sharp and cold touched her neck.

Gradually, the pain went away.

? ? ?

A ringing in his ears.

The four bodyguards were dead; Solo must have killed the one off to the side, Fett thought, curled up around whatever wound Solo had left in him?Fett knew he had only killed the three who were still standing when he entered the warehouse, and that had been as much reflex as anything.

But?

He knelt beside the woman, holding her hand, until her thrashing stopped.

In all his years as a bounty hunter he had never killed the wrong target before, and there was a tightness in his throat he hadn't felt since the day of his exile from Concord Dawn. He felt an absurd desire to apologize to the woman, which was ridiculous, she was as guilty of sin as any human being had ever been in the history of time, Fett had known her in her earlier days and there was nothing worthwhile in her or in her life, and certainly the galaxy would not miss her presence?

But he had not meant to kill her.

She shuddered slightly and her hand, holding his, went limp.

The macrobinoculars buried in his helmet didn't help much, not in this darkness; they showed the still-warm forms of four bodyguards, and the bulk of this dead old woman; they showed the heat still emanating from the lamp fixtures that were now without power.

Toward the back of the warehouse, a heat source moved.

Fett came to his feet, rifle in hand, and went Hunting.

Mandalorian combat armor.

I didn't come prepared for this, Han thought. He had an assault rifle, taken from the bodyguard he'd kicked in the groin, but that wasn't going to help so much, unless he got in close to Fett, and that was going to be hard, with the macrobinoculars in Fett's helmet.

He had to get out of this darkened warehouse, out into the night, where there were places to run, and places to hide, and try to reach the speeder he'd come here in.

Han couldn't believe this was happening to him.

He gathered his legs up beneath him, checked the safety on the assault rifle?he heard movement, out toward the front of the warehouse. Careful and quick? he kept his head down and ran in a crouch toward the warehouse's rear entrance.

Lando would be jealous, if Han made it back to tell him about it, and Lando made it back to be told.

Leia was going to be furious.

Fett ducked down behind one of the growing tanks, unlimbered his flare gun and fired a shot toward the warehouse's roof.

Actinic orange light flared; it would give Solo some light to work with. The interior of the warehouse became bright as day, and huge wavering shadows struck away from the warehouse's supporting beams, as the flare hit the ceiling, crawled along it for several seconds, and started to descend.

Something rattled, off at the eastern end of the warehouse; Fett held his position, held his fire. Solo had thrown something?the sound came again. Patience, patience?

A single shot, the sound of broken glass, that was Solo making an exit for himself through one of the windows, before the flare faded, while he could still see to run, and Fett surged to his feet to shoot Solo down as he made for the broken window.

He had time to see Han Solo, standing fifty meters away, pointing one of the bodyguards' assault rifles at him. The shot took Fett in his breastplate and blew him off his feet.

Han Solo turned and ran, hit the shattered window and dove through it like a young man in his prime.

Boba Fett rolled over, staggered back to his feet only a second later, the breastplate of his combat armor so hot it burned everywhere it touched him, and in a murderous rage charged after Solo, as unaware of the pain that throbbed in his legs and chest as if it belonged to someone else.

Han ran toward his speeder under the dim light from the planet's only moon. He was slightly disoriented; he couldn't remember whether the downlot where he'd left the speeder was south and west, or south and east; he ran south down one of the long alleyways between the warehouses, breath coming short, and came up to the last building, the last cover before the downlot, and hesitated before rounding the corner, the downlot was either immediately to his left or immediately to his right. He tried to envision the layout of the warehouse park in his mind?he thought he'd come the quick way around, but maybe not, and if he hadn't, then Fett might have reached the downlot before him.

A scraping sound, metal on stone?

Before he even realized what he was doing Han found himself rounding the corner, rifle up and finger tightening on the trigger as Boba Fett was turning toward him, bringing up his own rifle?

They stood there in the middle of nowhere, on a planet the rest of the galaxy had more than half forgotten, pointing assault rifles at one another, from a distance of less than a meter.

Han didn't fire.

Fett didn't fire.

Bizarre details piled in on Han. The aperture of Fett's assault rifle was huge, as big as the Death Star had seemed at first sight. The barrel wasn't perfectly steady, it wavered slightly, moving around in almost invisibly tiny circles. The moonlight glinted off Fett's scarred armor; Han could see the moon, reflected darkly on the black visor.

He was still out of breath from the running. His voice caught when he spoke. "I guess we're going to? die together."

Fett's voice?as harsh and raw as ever. "Evidently."

Han stared over the sight at him. "Your armor won't save you. Not at this range."

"No."

"I doubt you can kill me quick enough to keep me from firing."

Fett's helmet moved, slightly?a nod. "I doubt it too."

Han did not dare take his eye away from his rifle's sight, aiming at the base of Fett's throat. "You killed those people back there. The woman."

Han could have sworn he saw a shiver run up the bounty hunter's frame. "I'm sorry about that. They? she?was not the target."

Han almost pulled the trigger on him. He could hear the rage in his own voice. "You're going to die and I'm going to die and maybe we both of us deserve it. That woman didn't do any?"

"She's the one who called me!"

Han took a step forward and screamed, "Idon't care!" He found to his amazement that he was standing with the barrel of his rifle jammed up against Fett's armor, that the barrel of Fett's rifle was digging into his own breastbone. "I don't know what made you like you are, you think you get to decide who lives and dies, I don't care, come on, pull the trigger and we'll die together!" He stared into the black visor. "Last decision you'll ever get to make."

Boba Fett said in a voice so soft Han would have sworn it could not have been Fett's, "You first." His voice got even softer, amazingly. "You're married, aren't you? You have children who need you. What were you doing out here, Solo, pretending to be young? This is no place for a man like you."

The fury that touched Han was bone deep. "Don't you talk about my children, I'll kill you so fast?"

"Do you want to die?"

Han took a deep breath. "Do you?"

Fett shook his head, the tiniest possible movement of the visor. "No. But I do not see a way out."

The faintest breath of hope touched Han. "All right. You put down your rifle. I won't kill you if you put down your rifle."

Fett whispered it. "No. You put down yours. I won't kill you if you put down yours. I'll let you go back to your family, unharmed. Put down your weapons?"

"I don't trust you."

"Nor I," said Fett, "you."

A cool wind blew across the downlot; Han felt it drying his sweat, chilling him. "We take five steps back," Han said finally. ' 'You drop your rifle and you run like a gundark on fire. Even if I do shoot at you that armor would protect you."

"I have bad legs. I don't think I can outrun you."

Han could not stop thinking of his children, of Leia. "Just walk away, put the rifle down and walk away. I'm an honest man. I won't kill you."

"You're a liar," said Fett, "by all the evidence. I think you would." Fett paused. "When I was a young man," he said finally, "I think I would have pulled the trigger by now. But I find that I do not hate you, and I am not ready to die to remove you from the world."

"I made a mistake, coming here to Jubilar. I do hate you, I hate everything you've done?but my wife and children need me."

"I don't see a way out of this," said Fett, "that does not involve trying to trust one another."

"This rifle is getting heavy," said Han, which it was; he watched Fett over the sight. "What are we going to do?"

"Everyone dies," said Fett.

"Yeah. Eventually. But it doesn't have to be today, not for either of us."

Fett shook his head; the helmet barely moved, and Han did not imagine that Fett's attention had shifted even slightly. "I do not know," Fett said softly. "Trust is hard, among enemies. Perhaps we should return to the battle; perhaps, Han Solo, we should let fly, and once more let fate decide who will survive, as we did when we were young."