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You are Boba Fett.

Even with the macrobinoculars, translating up out of the infrared and down from the ultraviolet, there was not much to see. Fett hung against the wall of a tunnel—a tunnel not of stone or any artificial material, but soft and yielding, spongelike, ridged and corded as though the tunnel had grown into its current shape. He could turn his head just enough to see that the tunnel curved sharply out of sight a few meters to his left and right.

Screams in the distance.

A whistling crack.

The voice said after a long pause, curiously, You are Boba Fett?

It came back in a rush—Tatooine, the sail barge, Skywalker and Solo, and with a rush of horror that stilled every other thought fighting for his attention it came to him where he was, in the belly of the Sarlacc—

Being digested.

• • •

Most of those who dealt with Fett over the course of the decades did not consider him a man of much feeling. This was accurate. He was not.

Leaving Bespin, though, he was filled by a certain fondness for Han Solo. Do not misunderstand—he did not approve of the man—but it was rare to receive two bounties for the same acquisition. But Vader had paid well and the Hutt would pay nearly as well again.

The Hutt had promised a bounty of a hundred thousand credits. A respectable amount, though not as good as some Fett had earned. He had once received a bounty of a hundred and fifty thousand credits for the pirate Feldrall Okor; and on a memorable occasion, half a million credits for the delivery of Nivek’Yppiks, an incautious Ffib heretic who had fled his homeworld of Lorahns, and the religious oligarchy that controlled it.

Fett did not imagine he would ever come to like religious autarchies; they reminded him of his youth. But he had come to appreciate them. They paid exquisitely well and their “criminals” were intellectuals who talked too much and rarely shot back.

Fett’s fee for the Solo acquisition was, though the Hutt did not know it yet, about to be increased. Fett did not imagine he would be able to push Jabba to half a million credits—the Hutt was a business creature, not a religious fanatic—but the Hutt was among other things an art collector.

Han Solo, encased in carbonite, had to be worth more than Han Solo alive or dead.

By the time he got done, counting both his fee from the Empire and his fee from the Hutt, Fett fully intended to better the half million he had received on that Yppiks fool.

Fett slept sitting up in the pilot’s chair, which made a more comfortable bed than some Fett had known, while the Slave I made the last jump to Tatooine.

Hyperspace transit was as a rule the only place Fett felt safe enough to sleep soundly. He did not dream, at least nothing he remembered; his sleep was peaceful and uninterrupted. One might have called it the sleep of a just man.

He awakened not long before hyperspace breakout. No device awakened him; he had decided to awake at the correct time, and he did. He awoke alert, scanning the control board. All seemed well.

Minutes later the hyperspace tunnel fragmented around him. Stars appeared in the viewplate—and a klaxon shrilled through the ship.

Bad news and Fett took it calmly enough, under the circumstances: a beacon had activated itself down in the hold, announcing Fett’s arrival insystem to whoever was listening on that frequency. Fett’s deduction was instantaneous and correct; another hunter had planted the beacon during his stay on Cloud City. Fett slapped the autopilot control and sprinted below deck.

Another hunter, looking for the Hutt’s bounty on Solo. It was the only answer that made sense, and Fett damned himself for a fool for not checking his ship when he had the chance. Basics, basics, you ignore the basics and you deserve what happens to you. Fett unslung the flame-thrower as he ran, rounded the last corridor before the cargo bay, to the stretch of corridor where the sensors showed the beacon originating, and let loose. He cooked the bulkhead until the metal glowed and the air around him burned hot and stank with ozone,