Star Wars_ Tales From Jabba's Palace - Kevin J. Anderson [141]
He had access to the contents of his helmet. The comlink built into it was silent; he had scanned through all frequencies, and all he got was static, which might mean that there was nobody within range of the helmet’s comlink, about ninety klicks, or might mean that the bulk of the Sarlacc was blocking the signal, and finally might mean that the comlink itself was broken.
The Sarlacc wrenched violently at Fett’s left knee. His armor held and Fett was yanked down the wall, the tentacles holding his upper body losing their grip slightly. He ended up hanging at an angle as the tentacles wrapped themselves about him again … and there was a pressure against the sole of his right foot. He’d been dragged down far enough that his right foot was now in contact with the ground.
What good that did him—if any—Fett did not know. He flexed the foot to see if he could get a purchase; perhaps.
He relaxed and considered.
The sensors and computer built into his combat suit had continued to work, even after Fett had lost consciousness. The computer responded to verbal commands; Fett had it play back the entire sequence of events that had landed him in the Great Pit of Carkoon, using the heads-up tac display in his helmet for video. The first time through the playback he had to switch it off after realizing that Solo had—accidentally!—activated his jet pack. The holocam angle was terrible, but there was no question about it; that illegitimate Solo had sent him flying into the pit by chance.
It took him several minutes before he was able to try and watch it again.
He lifted up from the sail barge, dropping down onto the skiff, with the Jedi and Solo and Chewbacca. And … yes. Right there; the butt of Solo’s spear had slammed into the emergency access panel, activating the jets.
The on-board computer couldn’t access the jet pack; they were not linked together. Fett couldn’t run diagnostics on the pack, had no idea whether the thing was working or not. The emergency access panel was behind him, to his right; if he’d been able to get his left hand free, he might have been able to reach it—
If I could get my left hand free, thought Fett dryly, I could do a lot of things.
Using radar and sonar, Fett had mapped out a rough picture of the Sarlacc’s interior. Leading away from the main chamber were several dozen small tunnels, heading almost straight down into the earth. He was about ten meters away from the main chamber; and about forty meters beneath the ground. Even if the jet could take him out again, if he could move to activate it, even then he’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere, in the midst of a great desert—
The tentacles holding Fett’s left leg tightened painfully, just above the knee.
Fett’s lips twisted in a snarl. “I swear by the soul I don’t have, I am going to kill you.”
Kill who? Susejo laughed. The one who’s talking to you? Or the one who’s eating you?
“Either. Both.”
Ah. You have a very poor attitude, Boba Fett:
I almost made it out, early on my second day in the pit.
I lay on my back on the bottom of the pit, in the acid, through the long night. The Sarlacc and I “talked” for a while; it’s very young and not very bright, and I feel sorry for it. It’s rare for a Sarlacci spore to survive a landing in a desert environment; they’re best suited to wet environments, though they can survive almost anywhere. I saw pictures once of a Sarlacc that had managed to survive on the surface of an airless moon; it was quite small, its aperture less than a meter in diameter, but the system it had ended up in was young, and heavy in cometary material. Comets are principally made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen; this poor little Sarlacc was making do, out there in the vacuum.