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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