• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Voors said a little hesitantly, “It’s not even addictive. And there are valid medical uses for it—”

The bodyguard nearest Fett blinked, shook his head and blinked again. “Substances that are not addictive,” said Fett, “frequently lead to the misuse of substances that are. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Voors took a deep breath and exploded. “No, it doesn’t bother me! My conscience is just—” His mouth shut … and then opened again, as though he intended to continue speaking.

The bodyguard behind Fett was farthest away from the neural toxin; Fett spun, pulling his blaster free left-handed, and shot the man as he went for his weapon. The jolt took the bodyguard in the stomach; he staggered backward, still clutching his blaster, and Fett moved forward as the guard backpedaled, took aim and shot him a second time in the throat for good measure.

He swung back to the spice, to Voors and the other bodyguard. They weren’t dead just yet, of course. They fell and Fett stood watching them; the pickups buried in his helmet were busy recording their death throes. Jabba would want to see the recording—this was one of the first times Fett had taken the Hutt’s commission, but Fett understood Hutts; Jabba would pay a bonus for the actual images of his enemies’ deaths.

He worked the glove back over his right hand; it was numb already, to the wrist, from exposure to the nerve gas he’d released.

After their thrashing had ceased, Fett walked in closer, to get better pickups of them. He bent slightly to give his pickups the best angle. The pale-skinned bodyguard had turned blue; Voors, darker-skinned, had turned purple. His swollen tongue stuck out between his teeth; Fett imagined Jabba would enjoy that touch.

After a bit Fett straightened and stepped backward, getting a good dozen paces between himself and the eighteen canisters of spice.

He unslung his flame thrower, lit the flame, and played it over the plastic drums for what seemed to him a long time.

The Hutt had not paid him to burn the spice; but Jabba had not paid him not to, either; and there were things worth doing for free. When all that remained was a smoldering melted mess in the middle of the warehouse, Boba Fett, who thought himself a fair and a just man, slung the flamethrower back over his shoulder, turned about, and walked quietly out of the warehouse, into the dark, silent night, into a future filled with promise.

Fifteen years passed.

In the Slave I, with engines and shields powered down to almost nothing, only a trickle of power feeding the instruments and the lifeplant, Boba Fett hung up high above Hoth System’s ecliptic, high above the system’s potentially lethal asteroid belt. He looked down on Hoth System and was gratified to see that he’d beaten the Imperials.

Somewhere down there, on Hoth itself, was, if Fett had guessed right, the current headquarters of the Rebellion. Fett didn’t care about the Rebellion one way or another; the Rebels were plainly doomed, and the day and manner of their passing from the universe did not fill him with much interest. The Empire would take care of them; Fett had smaller and more profitable prey in mind.

Where the Rebels were, Han Solo could be found.

The hyperspace message from the Imperials had been short and to the point; it had announced a crushing assault on Rebel headquarters, and offered a bounty of fifteen thousand credits to any Hunters who helped chase down Rebels fleeing the site of the battle.

Fifteen thousand credits wouldn’t have paid Fett’s operating expenses for half a year. But where the Rebels were …

Not too long ago, Jabba the Hutt’s standing bounty on Han Solo had reached one hundred thousand credits. It was one of the half dozen largest extant bounties Fett knew of; and if it didn’t exactly put Solo into the company of the Butcher of Montellian Serat, and the Butcher’s five million credit bounty, it was getting up there, getting up there.

He trained his sensors on Hoth at highest resolution, and keyed the computer to wake him if it saw