Chapter 3

When Craddosk emerged from the tunnel, every last guard had been demolished by blaster fire. The once smooth landscape was cluttered by debris from rocks that had been blown open. However, the source of his coincidental rescuers was nowhere to be found.

They were edging their way along the perimeter of the compound, staying in the shadows.

"Are we there, Jango?" Zam asked, looking around, on the alert for attackers.

Jango said nothing, but motioned for her to be quiet. Kneeling close to the wall of the glass tube, they could see the silhouette of a bounty hunter coming towards them.

Zam backed away from the tube slowly. Silently, she motioned Jango back as well. Jango shook his head, signaling he wasn't moving. Zam grunted in frustration, and stood motionless as well.

Through the opaque glass, Zam could see the shadow playing with the locks on the heavily secured door. After a few minutes of Huttese profanity, the shape withdrew its blaster from a holster. The darkened figure aimed the blaster and pulled the trigger.

The tunnel instantly became a death row illuminated by crimson light, sending Zam spiraling towards the ground. Twisting, she landed hard on her shoulder and cried out in pain. Jango, although protected by his body armor, also went down hard on his ribcage.

The bolt of intense heat eventually broke through the tunnel 50 feet downwards, sending glass flying in all directions. The door hissed open.

The shape disappeared into the building escaping from the view of Jango and Zam. Jango raised a gloved hand and broke off a handful of sharp, protruding pieces of glass. Zam watched in curiosity as Jango placed a thermal grenade near the door, talking as he did.

"We have five standard minutes before this grenade implodes. We had better start moving."

Glass cracked under the force of Jango's boots as the fearless bounty hunter walked into the tunnel, clearing away small wreckage from the entrance.

Zam stepped in ahead of Jango as he rechecked his gear. Cautiously, she approached the door and drew her blaster, not quite knowing what to expect.

Broken glass and twisted durasteel littered the floor. Dim lights lit a narrow hallway stretching into murky darkness. There was no sign of the dark attacker, but Zam took a step forward with eyes still darting from side to side, checking all around her.

I know, she thought to herself, because it happened once. Smuggling goods across the Courascant slave mines, the changeling was once attacked by Gammorean pirates, pig-like raiders that often served huts. Little did she know their battle plans. Their plan of attack? Strike from above.

Instinctively, Zam tilted her head upward towards the high ceiling. Nothing, except dim lightbulbs.

She breathed a sigh of relief, but peering upwards had been the wrong move, for the hallway had come to an abrupt stop at a deep metal gorge. With a yelp, Zam came to the end of her walk and began plummeting downwards, her perilous path ended with a crimson reactor core beneath her! She grasped for a hold on anything, coming up short with nothing but cool air between her gloves.

Senses became lost as she found herself twisting in mid air, and she felt the hard heat of the reactor core rising menacingly close to her.

Zam closed her eyes for the melting impact against the power core, fighting her doom; just as Jango's whipcord wrapped around her forearm.

Her turbulent fall came to an abrupt end as the whipcord tightened. Her weight caused the rope to contract and release, bouncing her up some feet before the whipcord strengthened again. She felt her shoulder pop as she stopped bouncing.

Zam's head hanged down, trying to recover from the shock of her fall. The quiet hum of Jango's whipcord gave her something to focus on, a point for succeeding in regaining her senses.

By the time Jango's gloved hand wrapped around her thin wrist, she was back to reality. Jango looked quickly at her injured shoulder. Taking her shoulder in one hand and her forearm in the other, he gave an unusual twist of the arm, relocating the shoulder painlessly.

Zam brushed herself off, and the two stood still on the edge of the metal platform. She now saw that they were standing in a large, round room, a room resembling a hollowed out sphere. Around three- quarters of the edge of the room was a walkway. In the middle of the room rose a solid, tube-like platform, on which crates were piled. In the center of the platform was a sleek metal elevator. Metal beams supported the platform; below the metal beams lay a burning power core.

Zam's gaze was promptly drawn downward. She couldn't resist but eye the power core, a bursting ball of crimson flame, its innermost structure a blinding white light. A miniature sun of definite respect, specked with strips of deep, calm rows of gentler heat.

"If you keep staring at it," Jango Fett warned, "You will go blind within the hour."

But it's calm rolling entranced her eyes, drawing her undivided attention…

…And then the blaster bolt flew past her. Nearing her face, it circled back off a magnetically sealed wall somewhat to the left of her, incredibly bouncing off every surface of the compound it touched. Jango reached out with his right arm, knocking Zam out of the path of fire from another bolt aimed at her heart, then blew away the attacker: a squat, robotic guard droid on repulsorlifts, without arms but weapons replacing appendages.

Zam caught herself gymnastically on her left arm, at the same time drawing her blaster with her right and firing at another guard droid through and under Jango's left arm.

But the droids kept spilling out of narrow doors onto metal bridges, firing relentlessly at the two intruders.

"Zam," Jango said evenly, "activate the controls for the bridge."

She ducked under a blaster bolt, working her way over, around and between the raining laser fire. She dodged behind a box-like control panel, nearly avoiding a stray bolt reflected off a wall. When a string of assault came in the form of a C7 Kuat random repeating blaster, she jumped over it. Inky death reached out towards her, consuming sharp-angled corners, occasionally being lit by the glare of launched and reflected blaster bolts. Dots, hundreds of flaming hot dots, flew in her direction from lethal blasters locked and loaded for an untimely death.

"Zam, we only have 14.3 seconds before the bomb implodes." Jango had stood his ground without being hit, demolished a dozen guards, and retain an air of passive calm simultaneously.

She reached out and smacked the power button control with her palm. A warning signal, urging to leave space around the bridge, flashed on the screen, accompanied by beeping noises as the bridge slowly extended.

A roll, a dodge, a dive, and Zam was on the bridge. She blasted two guards and jumped to her feet, dodging as she went. A stray bolt struck two inches near her foot, and she cried out in pain while still moving forward. Blowing away her attacker, she jumped the last 5 feet onto the opposite side, hiding behind a small crate. She cautiously glanced at her wrist chronometer.

5 seconds to go before the explosion; she covered her eyes with her arm.

She never knew an explosion could hurt so much: she was thrown back at first, her spine smashed against the close lying crate, converting minute protection into lethal weapon. A second later, the heated crate exploded, and she was thrown to the edge of the bridge, barely retaining consciousness. The smoke from the blast seeped into the round room after the explosion, dimming the ceiling mounted lights and casting grainy shadows on the floor.

Zam wearily lifted her head and peered out under half-closed eyelids; Jango was nowhere to be found.

Every bone in her body ached, so lifting her body off the floor was slow and painful. One arm hanged over the edge of the platform; Zam suspected from the searing pain it was now broken.

No problem for the female changeling, though; now sitting upright, she focused her thoughts onto one thing only.

She withdrew inside her mind, concentrating on what to become. A Bothamirian, perhaps? No matter what creature, as long as it worked. A Wookie seemed right, for a long arm of a Wookie would help to straighten the damaged limb. Arranging the picture inside her mind, she imagined every atom of a Wookie; it was the only path to rearranging her personal molecular structure. Slowly, she pressed this picture into her brain, telling herself she was a strange, hairy animal. Her brain accepted this readily, and her body began to change. Slowly, at first, then more rapidly, the female body began to expand, starting with her injured arm, then moved to her chest. Her head took on a bear-like shape, fur grew out across her entire body. Her legs stretched farther, farther, her purple flight suit and battle armor tearing to reveal thick fur beneath and the thin, tall appearance of a Wookie. Her battle helmet, which had been tucked under her arm, could never fit the wide dimensions of her strange head now.

The previously stout changeling, now a tall, sinewy giant, slowly rose and stretched it's arms and back.

Zam, pleased with the efficiency of her change — for it took a mere five seconds for this change to occur — reverted back to her standard humanoid form, pleased further by her perfectly healed arm.

Zam Wesell directed her attention elsewhere, mostly on the lookout for her steely partner.

A gloved hand broke through a pile of rubble, setting a small cloud dust floating across the entrance, now reduced to a miserable pile of melting steel and rock. Jango Fett rose through the heap of junk with inhuman ease, stood up, and brushed pieces of metal off himself. After checking his blasters, he strolled over to his changeling partner.

"I've sealed off the entrance. Now, whomever wants to enter this compound will have to blow through seven layers of liquitane coated durasteel. Let us proceed."

"Sure," she said, examining her shredded jumpsuit. "Have an extra pair of armor?"

After stepping off the elevator, Djas Phur had found himself in a long tunnel spaciously yet uncomfortably lined on either side by small holding cells. Instantly, his mind told him this was not the right area in which such "hard merchandise" as Dexter Jettster was being held. He knew such a hefty prisoner would be kept in a smaller, darker prison, or even solitary confinement. He had to keep moving.

But to where? He thought. Any step he took could result in dozens, or possibly thousands of guards spilling into the tunnel; maybe on both sides of him. Djas knew he couldn't risk his neck so easily: he had to wait.

Dexter Jettster had sat motionless on the hard bench for hours now. In his hands was clutched a long, metal pipe that he had pried off the sink on the opposite side of his cage. When he heard someone advancing down the dark corridor towards his holding cell, his mind automatically reviewed his carefully organized plan of motion.

The unwittingly unfortunate guard, that now stood outside Dexter's cell door, peered into the dark room and barked a gruff, simple command, exploiting his apparent lack of intelligence. "Food's here slave. Eat."

Dexter Jettster's heart raced as his plan fell into motion. Now sunk back into the pitch-black corner of his holding cell, he faked a sickly tone of voice. "I can't… eat right now…. I feel sick…"

The guard pulled his digi-keys from the leather belt surrounding his girth. "Alright," he said with a broken sigh, further information for Jettster that the guard was a death stick addict. "What are your sym—"

A large shape sprang from his makeshift hiding place and smashed the pipe across the guard's back with a hollow thump, cutting the heavy man's words off. Moving unusually fast for his regular speed, Dexter Jettster removed the keys from the unconscience man's belt and with great agility darted swiftly out the door. He concealed the digi-keys in the pocket of his orange jumpsuit as he started down yet another dark passage, one hand on the rocky wall for guidance.

"If I'm gonna get outta this dump, I'm gonna need a weapon of some kind." Dexter mumbled to himself, fearing he would alert someone or something. "But where'm I gonna find a decent blaster around here?"

Dexter Jettster analyzed the problem with interest and fear, both colliding in a whirlwind of unease. He wasn't worried about the limp guard lying in the middle of his cell floor; his comrades would think he had died on the job of presumed death stick cancer. Dexter was instead fretting over the odds that he would be able to escape from the clutches of one of the most feared prison complexes in the galaxy, not to mention one of the most feared planets in the universe.

What were the odds of his escape?

He clutched the long rod tighter as the tunnel went pitch dark, and everything was indiscernible. He couldn't even detect the ceiling, as far as his eyes were concerned.

His black work boots ceased crunching on dry rocks as Dexter stepped into a long, metal hallway. He now saw that the further down he advanced, dim lights inset in the metal walls would illuminate brighter. The light was bright enough now that he could see where he was going: coming upon a metal door, now shielded by blast doors and a laser generator-detector.

Dexter felt his heart sink slowly down into his stomach: this route was hopelessly too heavily guarded to pass through, and to retrace his progress back the way he came, through the miserable lane of hopeless prisoners and vengeful murderers, weighed heavily on his mind.

Then another thought came to him, one that was too farfetched to be believable; then again, he thought, so is my odd of escape off this rock.

Dexter Jettster strolled back to the rock tunnel, and, remembering the dry, crunchy rocks littering the ground, scooped up a handful and stepped cautiously to the door. He emptied his load of porous rocks and lined them up roughly fifteen feet from the barricaded, wall-like door. He sighed — a grainy, load-barren sigh — and kicked them all, two at a time, towards the door.

The door's laser field grew from intense blue to blood red, perhaps in murderous reference to himself. Guards started pounding on the door, and security cameras swiveled in his direction. Laser guns protruded from the sleek walls and started blindly firing roughly in his direction.

The impetuous alien didn't rethink what he had just done; he just ran. Maybe, if he had the time, he would against his nature feel compelled to reflect, but right now he certainly did not have the time.
His heart skipped a beat as he saw a durasteel security door slowly lower towards the floor to block his path. He dove, and landed right past the piece of metal and landing on his chest on the rocky floor.

He sat up, and saw that his shirt was torn, and a bloody gash was staining the ripped fibers of his shredded jumpsuit. But he didn't let that stop him. In accordance to his plan, Dexter found the cell next to him empty, and he quickly scrambled into it as the blast door behind him opened.