• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Together they carried the wounded man aboard the Punishing One, laid him on a bed, and Dengar got him some water while Manaroo began spraying his wounds with antibiotics.

When the fellow could speak again, he grasped Dengar’s wrist, and whispered, “Thank you. Thank you, my friend,” over and over.

“It was nothing,” Dengar replied.

“Nothing? You still … you still want to be partners, Dengar?” the man said. He reached out his hand to shake.

Dengar gaped at the man’s tortured and burned face, and realized that this was Boba Fett. Boba Fett without his armor and weapons. Boba Fett helpless in Dengar’s bed. Boba Fett who had stolen Han Solo from him, who had bombed Dengar’s ship, who had drugged Dengar and left him to die in the desert. The man who had betrayed him twice!

There was a rushing in Dengar’s ears, and the world seemed to turn sideways. There was a muddy smear on the man’s head, and Dengar imagined what Boba Fett might have looked like without his hair burned off. If he had brown hair, like Han Solo’s …

“Call me Payback,” Dengar muttered.

Terror filled Boba Fett’s eyes as he suddenly saw the danger.

“I … I was just following orders,” Boba Fett said, but in Dengar’s mind, it was Han Solo that Dengar heard. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, buddy, it was a fair race,” Han was saying, that cocky grin on his face. “It could just as easily have been the other way around. I’m the one who could have got burned.… Sorry.”

“But I’m the one who got burned!” Dengar shouted, grabbing Han by the throat.

There was a brief struggle, and Dengar felt a wave of dizziness. He was choking Boba Fett, and the man was looking up at him, pleading. “Sorry! I’m sorry!” he growled, and Manaroo was suddenly at Dengar’s back, pulling on him.

She was fumbling with something, twisting something metallic against his cranial jack. Her Attanni shot through Dengar, washing him with her waves of concern, her worry not just for Dengar, but for Boba Fett too. She shouted, “What’s going on here?”

She pulled them apart, and Dengar yelled, “He tried to kill me!” and suddenly he saw that during the struggle, Boba Fett had managed to pull Dengar’s blaster from his holster. He’d been holding the barrel to Dengar’s ribs and could have blown Dengar’s lunch against the far wall, but he hadn’t pulled the trigger.

Dengar began to calm. Manaroo’s own emotions suffused him. Her worry, her love. She looked at Boba Fett and didn’t see a monster. Instead she saw a man flayed and tortured, much as Dengar had been a few days ago.

In the moment of silence that followed, Boba Fett held the blaster at Dengar’s chest. Dengar almost spoke. He almost said, “Go ahead. I’ve got nothing to lose.” He’d spoken that line under similar circumstances a dozen times, but this time the words caught in his throat. This time, he realized, he finally had something to lose. He had Manaroo, and he had a man who wanted to be his partner.

Boba Fett flipped the blaster over, handed it to Dengar. “I owe you,” he said. “Do what you will.”

Dengar holstered the blaster and stood looking down at Boba Fett. “I’m getting married in a couple of weeks, and I’ll need a best man. You available?”

Boba Fett nodded, and they shook on it.

The Prize Pelt:

The Tale of Bossk

by Kathy Tyers

Chewbacca and Solo had bested Bossk once. Never again.

The lizard-like Trandoshan bounty hunter paused in his research to visualize bringing in Chewbacca’s pelt. The thought made him flick his tongue with pleasure. Like a trophy fighter in top condition, Bossk was massive enough to challenge a Wookiee, but he would win this game by guile … or trickery, if need be.

Bossk stood on an inner deck of the Imperial Star Destroyer Executor, hurrying to read an Imperial data screen. Squinting, he swung aside his blast rifle—an elaborate neck sling suspended it under his left arm—and pushed his face closer to the screen. Onboard lighting hurt his supersensitive eyes, and the screen was only marginally brighter than the corridors. He had trouble picking up any contrast.