Star Wars_ Boba Fett 03_ Maze of Deception - Elizabeth Hand [1]
It was a good place to buy weapons - a good place to buy anything, now that he thought about it. Maybe a good place to outfit Slave I - once he got rid of Aurra Sing.
He didn't know the name of their actual destination, and he couldn't read the planet's coordinates, but he could see it on the monitor. A medium-sized planet, as gleaming and faceted as a green-and-gold jewel. He glanced at Aurra Sing, but she was busy with the landing program. He looked back at the planet on the screen. A string of unintelligible numbers and letters scrolled across it, and then a single phrase that he could understand.
AARGAU. LANDING ACCESS GRANTED.
Aargau. So that's where they were going.
Too bad I've never heard of it. Boba sighed. The landing restraints chafed his arms. When he tried to get more comfortable, Aurra Sing glared at him.
"You want to get out now?" she said, and gestured at the dumping bay. "It can be arranged!"
Boba gritted his teeth, forcing himself to smile apologetically.
"Sorry."
Don't trust her, his father had said. But Boba had struck a deal with her. He had agreed - reluctantly - to split the treasure with her, fifty- fifty.
He had no choice. He had no money, no credits, no possessions except for his flight bag, his father's Mandalorian helmet, and Slave I.
He had no friends out here, wherever here was. And he had no friends anywhere. Even when he had the chance of having a friend, he soon lost it.
He had only himself to rely on: an eleven-year-old with his father's training, his father's split-second reflexes, his father's fighting instincts - and his own talent for survival.
"Ready?" barked Aurra Sing. It was a command, not a question.
"Ready," said Boba, and he readied himself for their final descent to Aargau.
CHAPTER TWO
Aargau wasn't the first planet Boba Fett had ever visited, or even the second. For a kid, Boba had seen a lot of planets in a short time.
There was gray, cloud-swept Kamino, his homeworld, where months could pass and you'd never see anything but sheets of silvery rain, and hear nothing but the pounding of wind and water. There was Geonosis, a vast desert planet that glowed beneath its orange rings, where Boba had buried, his father; and Bogden, a small planet orbited by so many moons it looked like part of a gigantic game of Wuur-marbles.
And there was the Candaserri The Republic troopship Candaserri wasn't a planet, of course, but it had seemed almost as big as one to Boba. On Candaserri he'd run into the hated Jedi, though not Mace Windu, the Jedi Might who had killed Boba's father.
Still, except for the Jedi, Candaserri hadn't been so bad. It certainly wasn't as disgusting as Raxus Prime, the galaxy's toxic dumping ground, where Boba Fett had last encountered the Count. He always thought of him as "the Count," because the Count had two names - Tyranus and Dooku. Boba's father had always told his son, "If anything should happen to me, find the Count. He'll know how to help you."
As it turned out, the Count had found Boba first. The Count hired Aurra Sing to bring Jango Fett's son to him - for safekeeping, the Count assured Boba. Aurra Sing had kept Slave 1 as part of her payment, which Boba didn't think was fair - it had been his father's ship, and by rights it should be Boba's ship now.
But you didn't argue with the Count, any more than you argued with Aurra Sing.
Not if you expected to live, anyhow, Boba thought as he waited for Slave I to make its landing on Aargau. The Count was a tall, imperious man with icy eyes. Like Aurra Sing, he had been trained as a Jedi -
although unlike Aurra Sing, the Count had finished his training and had once been a Master - which made him even more dangerous. And like Aurra Sing, the Count