Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [57]
“Payback!” Manaroo shouted from the dance floor. Dengar was sure that he heard her cry so loud only because he wore the Attanni.
He saw through her eyes as she tried to rush to him through the crowd, but one of Jabba’s Gamorrean guards grabbed her arms and shoved her back down to the dance floor with a growl. Manaroo’s heart hammered in panic.
Then Dengar’s eyes closed of their own accord, and everything went black.
Four: The Teeth of Tatooine
Dengar woke under Tatooine’s blistering suns just past dawn. The ground was heating. Dengar could feel that some small desert creature with a hard shell had crawled under his body, seeking refuge from the coming day there among the shadows and the rocks.
Dengar opened his eyes, looked around, still dazed. He was in a wide canyon, lying on the desert pan, a sterile plain of greenish-white rock, eroded—perhaps even polished—by the wind. Each of his hands and feet was bound by three cords, all pulled tight and bolted into the rock, so that he could not move. The leathery cords were slightly moist, designed to shrink in the heat of the sun, pulling him tighter.
There was no sign of a craft nearby, no guards or even a droid to record Dengar’s death. There was no singing of insects or call of wild animals, only the steady soughing of the wind over rock.
Dengar licked his lips. It seemed that Jabba intended to let him die of dehydration, a death that was neither particularly appealing nor particularly unpleasant—as far as deaths go. Painful, but not extraordinary.
Dengar wondered at that. He recalled Boba Fett’s pronouncement—the Teeth of Tatooine. But what were a planet’s teeth? Its mountain peaks? That would seem logical, but Dengar was far from the mountains.
So it had to be an animal. There were tales of dragons in the desert, creatures large and vicious. Dengar watched the horizon, both on land and air, for sign of such beasts, and he slowly tested his bonds. Dengar was stronger than most people gave him credit for. But the straps that held him were more than adequate. He inhaled deeply, tasting mineral salts in the air, and began working vigorously to free himself.
Dengar closed his eyes after thoroughly testing each bond, and considered. It was just past dawn, and if Jabba had kept his promise, then Han Solo and his companions were already gone, dying interminably as they were ingested by the mighty Sarlacc at the Pit of Carkoon. Dengar felt hollow at the thought. The Empire had cut away most of Dengar’s feelings. They’d left him with few companions—his rage, his hope, his loneliness.
At the thought of Han dying, Dengar felt somehow cast adrift, more alone than ever in the great void. For ages now, catching Han had been his only goal, his only purpose for being. Without Han, there seemed to be no reason left to exist. Except Manaroo. And he was no longer sure that she was alive. He remembered her terror, in that last moment before he’d lost consciousness. She had been sure that Jabba intended to kill her.
Dengar mourned her. In the moments when he had touched Manaroo’s mind, Dengar had almost known what it was to be human again. He’d almost known what it was to be whole. Someday, he imagined, that with her help, he might have learned to love and laugh again.
But if she was not dead already, she was languishing in one of Jabba’s cells, doomed to an early death.
Dengar began working harder.
In moments he had built up a fine sweat, and he managed to rub the skin off his left wrist so that blood began to flow from it. Still, the ropes had not begun to weaken.
Dengar stopped worrying the wrist, began working on his left foot. The ropes there were tied over his armored boots, providing some protection for his legs. The Imperial surgeons had boosted Dengar’s reflexes, given him greater strength. But he couldn’t pull his leg back to kick much, and even after an hour he had not succeeded