Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [125]
Jabba didn’t want to hear about it. He wasn’t willing to share the bounty; he wasn’t willing to take the bounty himself, and pay Fett as go-between with Vader. His pet Rancor had died; and Skywalker was going to die for it.
Some days Fett was convinced he was the only sane businessperson left in the entire galaxy.
It galled him. He planned out scenario after scenario; none of them tempted him. He thought about kidnapping Skywalker out of Jabba’s hands, but time was short and Jabba’s security was good; even for millions of credits the risk was too high.
And so he walked around on the sail barge’s upper deck, with uncharacteristic nervous energy, the morning after Skywalker’s arrival, the morning that Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca were to be executed, trying to decide what he was going to do next, as the sail barge headed out to the Great Pit of Carkoon, taking the condemned to their deaths.
It came to him as something of a surprise that he hoped Solo died well. Years previously Fett had seen Jabba drop half a dozen of his own guards into the Great Pit of Carkoon, allegedly for conspiring against him; he’d offered them all a chance to grovel for their lives. Two of them had, and Jabba, of course, had fed them to the Sarlacc anyway.
He knew Chewbacca wouldn’t beg; he hoped Solo wouldn’t.
Maybe Skywalker would beg for his life. That wouldn’t be so bad.
Fett stood in the bow and watched the sand disappear beneath them. This far out into the desert, there was nothing but desert, all around them. Sand, drifts and dunes as far as the eye could see.
Fett wondered, in passing, who had killed more people, himself or the Hutt. Probably the Hutt, if you counted his spice trade; probably himself, Fett thought, if you only counted deaths by your own hand.
Eventually the Great Pit of Carkoon came into view. Boba Fett, his mood improved not in the slightest, abandoned the upper deck and went down to the viewing area, to watch with the others as Justice was rendered—
—and who knew how many millions of credits were wasted.
The day had started badly; it got worse. Before it was over the sail barge was a flaming wreck, Jabba the Hutt was dead, and Boba Fett was down in the Great Pit of Carkoon, being digested by the Sarlacc.
Oh, he got out; as far as Fett knew he was the only person who ever had escaped the Sarlacc.
But by the time he got out and was healed again, or as healed of that experience as he ever did get, great events had transpired; and the galaxy had become something Fett would never have believed possible.
Fifteen years passed.
Or, to put it another way:
Darth Vader died; so did the Emperor. The Empire fell and was succeeded by the New Republic. On the human scale fifteen years is long enough for babies to be born and grow into teenagers; human children across the galaxy became adults and bore children of their own. For some long-lived species the period passed without significant change; for others, shorter-lived than humans, entire generations were born, grew old, and died.
In a sector of the galaxy Boba Fett had never heard of, a star went nova; it murdered a world and an entire sentient species. It aroused less comment than had the destruction of Alderaan, only a decade prior; the galaxy at large barely noticed the tragedy, and Fett never heard about it. In a galaxy with over four hundred billion stars, over twenty million intelligent species, such things are bound to happen.
The remnant of the Empire rose up against the New Republic, and was defeated; Luke Skywalker fell to the dark side of the Force—and returned, as few Jedi ever had in all the thousands of generations preceding him.
Leia Organa married Han Solo; and together they had three children.
On Tatooine, a drunk Devaronian named Labria killed four