Disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars, or any of its associated trademarks and copyrights. This story is written purely for enjoyment, and I will receive no form of compensation for its writing. Other than a few reviews hopefully.
So, this is my first Star Wars fic. Always thought of writing one, but didn't have any original ideas to set it apart. After the most recent Legacy novel, however, I realized that very little interaction has occured between two of the most popular characters outside the major players in the Original trilogy, even in the vast world of Fan-Fiction. Boba Fett and Mara Jade are both very interesting and dynamic characters, who are similar in many ways, and I think when pitched together, will result in an equally interesting story. Heres my attempt.
Hope you enjoy, and review if you do.
Prologue: Names and Faces
What makes a planet interesting isn't necessarily what scrolls by on-screen during a sensor sweep. In fact, hardly anyone would care that the most common naturally occurring element on Imperial Center was silicon monoxide, or that Corillia's oceans have an ambient temperature of 284 Kelvin. No one outside those dynamic fields of stellar geology and xeno-climatology, anyway. No, to most what makes a planet notable, even special, comes down to the sentient beings that inhabit it. The rise and fall of cultures, the ancient and current struggles for existence, from the mundane to the legendary; that is what made a planet stand out, gave it its name. The descendants of the men, women, and whatever other strange derivations of the standard sexes that originally christened it were entrusted with the mantel that that name not be forgotten.
Given that, there was nothing particularly notable about Beviran. It was just another backwater planet, an unremarkable member amongst the thousands of other two-bit worlds hardly worth naming in the Outer Rim. When it came to planets, it was no better that Tatooine once the members of a certain bloodline had vacated it, no worse than Hoth once its lone settlement was eliminated. It was a bland rock, granted only a mildly habitable environment. Beviran had one continent, covered by a singular biome of conifer-like plant-life. As it orbited its common yellow star, it underwent two seasons, a winter season and a rainy season. The atmosphere was an uninspiring mix of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and just enough vaporous sulphur to make you gag as you step outside for the first time. So devoid of vibrancy was this body that it had not produced more than the most simplistic forms of animal biomass. To be summed up in a sentence, Beviran was a place where the Force had hit writer's block, if you believed in such things. Even off-worlders seemed to acknowledge this fact. Over the history of the New Order, the planet had seen 2 Imperial patrols. One to transport the new governor planet-side, and the other a brief stop-off for emergency provisions after a Star Destroyer in the squadron had been struck by a rouge comet. Other than that the planet hadn't seen military action since the very earliest days of the Clone Wars. Day by day, Beviran would serve as port for a handful of small freighters and at most 6 bulk carriers, which comprised the transport fleet of a mining consortium that was really the only major employer in the system. True to lack-lustre form, the minerals of interest weren't even on Beviran, but one of its uninhabitable sister planets, denigrating it once again to little more than a mining camp. The population was largely the employee's of that firm, rotated out for 6 month periods. They did there hours, maybe frequented one of the quiet canteena's for a few hours a week, and slept. Aside for the once in a blue-quasar bar fight, life there was as interesting as the ever-present overcast in the sky. But, it is said that 'every Bantha has its day,' and for Beviran, that day was today.
Today, though most of its inhabitants would never know it, would see probably the most exciting chapter of the planet's history. And, ironically, this moment was made possible by Beviran's very inconspicuous nature. One man, Adeal Tam, who was just now putting down on the outskirts of Beviran's capital (and only) city, formed one part of a pair of individuals who would scribe these lines. Of the two, he was what Beviran was to Corasaunt. But he had a part to play.
Born on a Middle Rim industrial planet to a lower middle class family, he made his way through the menial education system, was awarded a scholarship to a business college in one of the Core systems, earned a degree in accounting, and promptly found employ in the criminal underworld. First amongst some of the small time pirate gangs around his home world, through several merc organizations, to finally find himself on the pay-role of the 'prestigious' Hutt crime syndicates. He learned the ropes quickly; which patrollers to pay off, which ones to threaten, what banks were suitable for his employer's tax 'breaks,' how to manage the convoluted series of fronts required for credit laundering, and, most importantly, how to skim a little off the top for himself. Unfortunately, one thing he did not learn was that an official education did not necessarily make him more intelligent than the men he was taking advantage of. Another was that stealing a Hutt's credits was, beyond having a run in with a Sith lord, the most sure-fire way to becoming one with the Force in the known galaxy. And also one of the most painful. Adeal had amassed a small fortune of credits by the time his master discovered the small blip in his account statements, but there wasn't enough currency in space to protect him once the enraged gangster decided to drop the hydro-spanner on him.
Two weeks had passed since then, and Adeal had slept for perhaps 9 hours over that period, in snatches while in hyperspace when exhaustion overcame the stimulants. He was well beyond the edge of his physical and mental capacity, but even as he was in the process of complete collapse he knew that he could not afford to slow. He knew that by now he was surely being followed. Rationally, he recognized that the first and only avenue of his former boss could enact against him would be placing a bounty on his head. And, in keeping with the pattern of 'investment' he had been authorized to consign in the name of his employer when he yielded such authority, the price would be roughly twice that of what had been taken. Possibly even more, considering this was a direct act of betrayal. Knowing the sum of his self-appropriated 'bonus,' and the value of the ship he had commandeered for his escape, every bounty hunter in the galaxy would have been interested. Maybe even... No, if the particular hunter was on his trail, he would not be here right now. After all, the man was known from rim to rim for his swift, efficient tracking methods, and his especially violent apprehensions. Yes, he was being followed. But the pursuit was like being followed by a ghost. Sensor scans were clear, but it was like every time he glanced to the edge of the transparasteel view-port he would see the glint of a hull just off moving off from his position. Toying with him. The hunter he was thinking of didn't waste time with things like that... did he? Maybe it was nothing, just paranoia setting in, but it was because of those fraction-of-a-second motion blurs that he hadn't closed his eyes for longer than a few minutes at a time, that he had been dropping from hyper-jumps in the middle of deep space and re-computing destinations, and that he had come to Beviran. A hole-in-the-bulkhead planet whose co-ordinates most pilots deleted from their navicomputer, to refuel and resupply. He didn't plan to stay long. He didn't plan to... but the pilot of the ship hovering just out of sight in the soup above had other ideas. It began to rain as Tam made his way into the city.
When Adeal returned to his landing site after locating a source of fuel and preparing a selection of provisions, he found it a smoking crater. By now the light rain had developed into a raging thunderstorm, the crash of the thunder above overpowering the string of curses that broke free from the hunted man's lungs below. The nervous suspicion he had been harbouring exploded into a fully developed panic. He dropped to his knees, and began pounding the dirt at his feet, stopping every once in a while to grab a hold of his hair and ream on it in frustration as he glared at where his ship had once been, screaming inaudibly all the while.
The stress of running had pushed him to this point. The days without sleep, without reprieve, all because of his flight, until he was holding onto the edge of sanity with only his fingernails. He had hated the running. But now that the running was for all intents and purposes over, the last grips he had on reason were slackened. Running had become all he had.
Suddenly, Adeal halted his thrashing and quieted. There was a stillness in the air, even with the howling of the wind, that had a palpable predatorial air. That sense of being watched has a way of penetrating any emotional condition, an evolutionary capability from eons long past. However, even though he was able to realize the danger rationally, his reaction was still governed by his neurotic mindset. Adeal drew his blaster and, aiming at nothing in particular, began firing wildly into the surrounding gloom. Of course, he hit nothing. This was just another, more violent form of the relief he was getting from beating the ground with his fists. Directly, all it did in the end was expend his Tibanna cartridge. After the dull ping of an ignition charge being emitted into an empty energizing chamber was all he received from about 2 dozen depressions of the trigger, he jammed another clip into his sidearm, which was incidentally the only extra one he had that was not destroyed along with his ship. Then he took off towards the city. Or he began to.
"That's exactly where you want me to go, isn't it?" Adeal asked the darkness. "To the city. To get me trapped in a maze. Where you're waiting." He wagged his finger at his faceless adversary, a twisted smile coming to his face. "Nice try, hunter. But not today." Deciding that he would prefer to face his fate where at least the locational odds would be even, Tam turned around and headed into the open fields past the wreckage of his ship. After he was perhaps 50 meters distant, a shadow stepped out from behind a larger section of what was left of the ship, and continued following his quarry.
The storm only got worse as Adeal moved deeper into Beviran's boonies. The rain was coming down in sheets now, blinding him to anything more than a few meters ahead or behind him. With sight failing him, the other senses began to try and compensate, none more ferociously than the pseudo-telesense that he had experienced while in deep space. He knew he was being followed again. Snapping his head around to look back every once in a while, despite the futility of it, he scanned for his pursuer.
"May the Force damn this place." He rasped between his ragged, heaving breaths as he looked back again. This time his glance coincided with a fork of lightning that hit the ground only a few clicks away. The blast of natural plasma illuminated the dark wall of water that surrounded Tam, and like a holo-flash, revealed a roughly humanoid shadow in the distance behind him. Adeal immediately un-holstered his blaster and brought it to bear, but by then the light had faded and he lost sight of the target. Figuring this might be his best chance to score a hit, he squeezed off a stream of energy bolts anyway. The red beams skirted off into the vastness, striking nothing before they disappeared from sight. In the brief moments they brightened the spot where the predator had been, Adeal once again saw only empty space. Growling something not even a protocol droid could have made sense of, the still running Tam turned his view back forward, just in time to see the pole he was irrevocably about to blunder into. He struck it with a muted thud, and stood motionless for a few seconds before falling backwards to the ground.
"Sithspawn!" he cursed, cupping the side of his cheek that had been driven into the unforgiving steel girder that seemed to simply sprout up from nowhere, his fury building as his luck once again betrayed him, as if things weren't arduous enough already. Now that he was looking, Adeal found that he had actually come across some sort of abandoned facility, an ore refinery by the looks of it. Though he had at first run away from such a place, the new factors coming against him in the extreme weather and the fact that he had not duped his opponent, changed his mind. This time Adeal welcomed the idea of enclosed spaces. While he was by no means a 'fighter,' Tam did understand odds quite well, and now that he knew a trap was not laid out before him, walls and a roof provided several advantages he did not have out in the elements. A; he would be out of the rain and thus able to see again. While whoever was following would have the same benefit, it occurred to Adeal that any bounty hunter worth his salt would likely be using some sort of thermal imaging system to trail him. And B; in hallways and narrow passageways, the far superior marksmanship of someone trained in the art of killing meant less than it would out in the open. It wasn't much, but Adeal would take it.
Springing to his feet, the fugitive dashed to the nearest entry way and into the building. He found himself in a long, dimly illuminated corridor, flanked on both sides with thick duraplast walls. Having only one direction to go, he fled deeper into the building, emerging on a catwalk that overhung a series of large holding tanks. The rusted metal groaning and screeching under his weight, he followed this to a stairwell that lead upwards out of the warehouse space into what looked like overhead office space. After climbing a single flight of stairs, Adeal entered a smaller hallway perpendicular to the catwalk. Directly across from where he stood was a staircase identical to the one he had just ascended. He could only assume it lead to a room just like the one behind him. Down the hall in each direction was a door leading into the observation decks. Tam quickly jogged to the door to the previous bay's operation room, having seen enough action holos to know that the high ground would give him possibly the only opportunity to have a true advantage over the hunter, rather than just slightly better chances of survival. But, as he tried the old fashioned knob, it turned out to be rusted closed. He tugged on it with all his might, but to no avail. After one final attempt to kick the door down ended with him feebly glancing off the surface of the doorframe, Adeal decided better of it. So he positioned himself at the top of the staircase, blaster drawn and trained at the stairwell's entryway. And he waited. Waited for the tell-tale shriek of footsteps on the ruinous catwalk.
But no such sound came. Only silence. It was chilling, even the thunder outside seemed to have stilled. Adeal held his position though. There was no other way for the bounty hunter to get to him. Or so he hoped... For what felt like forever there wasn't so much as a groan throughout the entire building. But then Adeal heard it. Not the racket he expected, but something much more subtle. If it wasn't for the very silence that permeated the building, he wouldn't have heard it at all. All that it was was a soft clink to his right. Followed by another. And one more, before it stopped. The sound came from behind the door he had just before tried to force open without success.
It was almost too late by the time Tam got wise to what the strange metallic click was, but when he did he threw himself down the staircase he had yet to navigate, seconds before the grenade that had been tossed against the inside of the office-room door exploded. The door was blown out of its frame and crashed into the wall across from it, cracking in half. The two pieces fell apart as the shadowy figure emerged from the room in an almost casual manner. Tam did not see this, however. He was already thundering down the other stairwell, and rushing out onto another dilapidated catwalk. This one was not up to supporting weight though, and the metal walkway sheared off the far side of the wall when Adeal was half way across, bucking him over the guardrail and sending him plummeting to the floor below. He landed hard and awkwardly on his left leg, which twisted and broke along the calf in a sickening crack.
He almost passed out from the pain, but somehow managed to stave off the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision, and bit down on his lower lip, tears flowing freely from his eyes. Feebly, he continued his futile and quickly ending escape, pulling himself along the ground till he reached the far corner of the warehouse where a ladder beckoned. He pulled himself up on his one good leg, the other hanging uselessly beside. Mounting the ladder, he struggled up one rung at a time, until he was halfway up. But, the mental and physical exhaustion and the pain allowed him to go only so far, and his hand slipped as he grasped the next cross member. He flailed wildly on his single foot for a moment, and fell back to the ground. He again landed on his bad leg, and this time the fractured bone was forced through the skin. Adeal wasn't able to contain the scream this time, but even then he was so weak that all that escaped was a dry, pain-filled croak. He just lay where he fell, hope finally snuffed out completely.
He couldn't tell how long he rested there, time became impossible to keep track of with the pain wracking his body. All he was consciously aware of was the sound of footsteps approaching from his side. He fixated on it, each soft click of the sole one more step closer to his fate. He panned his eyes up in his skull, trying to get a look at his tormentor, but it was no use. The hunter was out of his field of vision, and he didn't want to shift to bring him into it. It would be a pointless gesture. But, he did notice one thing. His blaster, sitting within arm's reach of his body. Seeing the glistening gunmetal, calling out to him, drew up a last vestige of strength that even Tam didn't know he had, and somehow he reached out with his previously dead limbs and grabbed the weapon. He felt detached from his body as he rolled, over the exposed bone and all, and filled the space where he knew the hunter was with red plasma. Again the blaze of high intensity light filled his vision. Again, it stuck nothing. Sometime during his second trigger happy madness, Adeal re-entered his head, and stopped shooting before he was empty again.
This time he did not scream in frustration, but he wept. The hunter was a wraith. A wraith sent from the dark side of the force to punish him. Resistance was no use. Tam could simply not kill his pursuer. No more than he could escape the passage of time.
After chewing on him for the better part of his entire flight, the abyss of madness finally swallowed Tam. Having absolutely no control over what was happening to you, no matter what you did, no matter how hard you fought against it, has that effect on some beings. And in the insanity he realized something. The instrument of his punishment might well be invincible, but he, Adeal Tam, certainly was not. The sobbing turned to mirthless, insane laughter.
There was only one thing left for him to do. Only one escape. He knew why he had held back his last few blaster bolts now. Slowly, almost reverently, Tam turned the energy aperture toward himself. He might not live, but he would rob the hunter of the kill none the less.
"You lose, bounty hunter!" He cackled, before squeezing the trigger. A blast of light enveloped Adeal's face, and Tam let himself fall into the embrace of death.
As Adeal's vision cleared, he realized he wasn't sure what he expected of the afterlife, and found himself staring at own palms. But what he experienced certainly wasn't something he would have imagined even if he had thought about it before. Looking around, the surroundings had not changed. And, in shifting, the white hot pain of his broken tibia still filled his leg. Then he saw his blaster, a smoking hole in the middle of it, lying on the ground to his left. And looking up, he found an all-too-alive partner. Then the weeping returned. The other half of Beviran's finest hour had finally revealed himself.
The darkened T visor of Boba Fett's blast helmet betrayed no sign of satisfaction in another successful hunt, no hint of concern that he might have missed the critical shot to prevent the 'Alive' price from escaping him. It showed no indication of any feelings whatsoever. Just the cold reflection of Tam's own psychotically distorted features. His metallic, soulless voice enhanced his absolute detachment from the world around him.
"Adeal Tam, a bounty has been placed on your head for the embezzlement of the personal funds of Kavak the Hutt and the theft of one of his personal pleasure craft. You will be returned to him to make reparations."
Then, Fett brought his EE-3 carbine up and Tam's last moment of consciousness saw him engulfed in the blue rings of a stun blast. With a tick of his head, Fett signalled Slave 1, and directed its droid brain to pilot the ship to his location. Then the Mandalorian bound the bounty's wounded leg and prepared his limp body for transport out of the building. The roar of Slave 1's engines indicated its arrival, and Fett hoisted Adeal over his shoulder.
"Unfortunately Tam, I never lose." The bounty hunter said to his cataleptic quarry before he engaged his jetpack. It wasn't arrogance, it was just a fact. No one ever beat Boba Fett.
Just a little teaser/test to see how my style is perceived, and lay a little foreshadowing (look one line up). The plot will begin in earnest in the next chapter.