Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [116]
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