Bounty hunting was a complex, competitive, dangerous game. Rising to the top was no accident of fate, nor was it a birthright. Every moment spent pursuing excellence in the field was another taunt hurled towards death. There were better, more comfortable things a man could do to make his way through the galaxy.
Boba Fett reasoned he could become a freelance blaster for hire and never be more than a common, however highly paid, mercenary. He could easily secure a cushy future: play it safe working security gigs, serving low level warrants and chasing down white collar criminals, the kind with soft hands and softer bodies and no real imagination.
He considered that nebulous, simple future as he slipped an armed explosive charge unit into a crack in the ancient mortar of a bearing wall in the Drutha City underground. His sensors were on full alert, scanning for any sign of the plague mutants, the Yij. All biologists that bothered to study the remote planet held the cursed race to be extinct, but Eris warned otherwise when she finally handed over the precious single set of existing maps to the great maze. She heard it from the current chief cook in service to Gorga the Hutt. The cook worked previously in the service of two renegade Black Sun members: a pair of Falleen brothers who ran a high stakes, high security, roving gaming hell called The Wheel. The same gaming hell that his current prey attended when it came to this remote section of space. At first Fett was dubious, but the cook and Eris proved right, and the finest scientific intelligentsia, wrong on all counts. He'd killed twelve Yij so far, the last one yesterday. Since that time, the heinous creatures gave him a wide berth.
He armed another charge, and tucked it behind a brackish bulge of questionable organic matter growing on a narrow ledge. Though the mutants avoided him now, he wasn't foolish enough to let up guard. His vidfeed gave him full view of all that surrounded him, and his senses and awareness operated on many levels. He was ever ready for the fight, particularly in such dubious holdings. The underground passages were damp, and all manner of darkloving life evolved and thrived there, sliming the walls and the floors, skittering in the shadows, lurking, watching, waiting for the time to strike and make a tasty meal of him.
Fett tapped in a code on his wristpad, consulted the layout of this sector, and moved to his next target. He located the ancient access panel buried beneath a gelid mass of something that resembled a sticky black pudding. Fett used a small torch to burn the creature. It bubbled and oozed and fell to the floor a solid, charred hunk. The stench was enough to put ten good men down. Yes. Jobs funded by soft, paranoid business men in synthsilk suits had their own allure. But it was nothing compared to the thrill of the hunt. Even now, in this odious hell hole, he could feel the charge, the spark in his blood, the anticipation that brought every single nerve in his young body alive. He could hear his future call as he patiently went about the business of answering.
The activation panel was of clever design, appearing no different than the moldering stone of the walls and floors and ceilings of the underground. Only a resident, or a man with a map, could find them, and more importantly, use them to survive. An alarm rang out in his helm. He opened the panel and punched the buttons marked with arcane glyphs, following the exact sequence specified in Eris's instructions. Then he stepped back and hoped she didn't play him false.
A horrific grinding sound echoed through out the dark. In unison, the walls, floors and ceilings began to move, reshaping the underground and bringing certain death to the unwary. Fett stood ready but his part of floor remained intact and unmolested. A new wall presented itself, with a new panel. He repeated his previous steps, and it slid open, revealing a long, upward sloping passage with narrow, carved stairs.
He'd been at this task for five standard days, and at last the time was ripe. The charges were all in place. The escape route secured. The merchandise waited above, engaged in a high stakes sabbac game, unaware that the next round was dealer's choice, and anyone who objected, would get a hand full of death.
The passage led into the upper level of the underground, named once the grand concourse of the ill fated city. His sensors picked up the thrum of deep base drums and the synthetic sounds of electronically produced music. He laid a gloved hand along one wall and felt the pulse of life from above. The lure of gaming drew his prey from his secure, entrenched, protected location on Nar Shadda. The players here were allowed a contingent of but five security personnel. Of those five, only two were permitted in the game room. The prey was a seasoned gambler, in the habit of winning, but tonight, the odds were in favor of the hunter.
He ascended the treacherous flight of stairs, each step bringing him closer to the noise of excess and vice. He'd spent enough time in the company of criminals and the idle rich to picture the scene of debauched abandon that surely took place on the ancient grand concourse. Drutha City, a small industrial metropolis on a backwater planet, lay abandoned for eons after a mysterious plague struck down its residents and turned them into psychotic mutants with a taste for each other's flesh. Such places had reputations that kept most away, but that reputation and the isolation attracted the current visitors.
The Fallen brothers were on the outs with Black Sun, but in deep with several other cartels. In enough they could operate without too much trouble, providing they did it far from the normal venues of the cartels and their associates, but still out enough that they couldn't set up a permanent operation. The Wheel specialized in providing a few select high stakes gambling and unrestrained partying, catering to the most base and vile of desires: so long as the participants had the credits. Invitations were near impossible to score, the locations more closely guarded than the Emperor's throne. Tonight, Boba Fett would crash this exclusive party. Getting in wasn't that big a challenge. Getting out with the merchandise intact, there was the trick.
The owners of the Wheel thought the cursed city an entertaining and safe place to set up shop. Those who even knew of the city and the passages knew of the threat of plague, and nothing was a more effective deterrent than the risk of infection. Few if any knew enough of the network of deadly passages that grew beneath the city after the main plague to consider entering them. Which was just fine with Fett. It left his target vulnerable. Security would be focused on entry from above, with only cursory attention paid to the threat from below.
After many minutes spent climbing the endless set of stairs, he reached a blank wall. Using his purchased knowledge, he located another access panel, and entered another code. The wall he faced moved up enough for him to slip beneath.
He rolled fast up onto one knee and brought his sawed off blast rifle into position, at the same time taking in the full readout of the room fed to him by the sensors and cameras of his helm. The most interesting thing he encountered in the tiny square room was an unusually large pile of bones. He stood, examined the pile, and determined from the skulls that the skeletal remains belonged to several humans and a Bith. Beyond the bones was a rusty ladder of simple rebar, leading to a hatch. He climbed them, then considered the hatch. There appeared no locking mechanism, so he pushed, and to his surprise, it gave way with unnerving speed and silence. The Yij most likely used this to go top side. Per Eris, they would steal into the party when most were worn and drugged or intoxicated, pick off the easy targets on the outskirts of the gathering, drag them to a secluded spot and eat them while they still breathed. Fett had to admit securing her services were more than worth the trouble. She seemed to have an endless store of valuable information, one he would continue to exploit to his advantage.
In moments he'd boosted into the ventways that ran above the concourse. When he examined the hatch from this side, it appeared like so many of the concealed doorways: expertly engineered to appear as part of a passage. He removed a small marking device and tagged it with an infrared sensor. The last thing he needed was a search for safe passage during his exit.
The vents were spacious enough for a tall human to pass and Fett had decent head clearance. The upper part of the city was devoted to industry, the concourse, devoted to interaction of the residents. The surrounding planet was inhospitable. The vents allowed not only for circuitry, but for the large amounts of air exchange required for a dense population living underground. In it's time Drutha City was an engineering marvel. Now, it was a decaying temple to industry and a soon to be graveyard.
The noise of celebration and excess was clearer now. Fett moved with care, scanning for the silent alarm devices and sentries that would be placed in the easily accessed vents. The sponsors of the Wheel were smart enough to go that far. Not smart enough to get the plans to the underground, however, or brave enough to enter and scout and secure.
Fett found several light sensors and easily redirected them into a continuous loop. He had only thirteen standard minutes to find the location of the Sabbac game, secure the merchandise, and return to the passages. He moved fast, but as he grew closer to the heart of the party, the alarms became more elaborate and deactivation ate away at precious seconds.
He peered through several vents that looked down into rooms, finding nothing more than the usual scenes experienced at a drunken orgy. Precious minutes had passed when he finally reached his destination. Two burly humans bearing the marks of cybernetic enhancement stood chatting, sharing a smoke. Fett, as much a ghost in this darkness as the ancient race that once haunted the halls, raised his arm and discharged two hot-loaded darts. They struck the targets, feeling much like the sting of a small insect. The poison was fast acting, and dropped the men before they had time to shoot, or scream.
Boba Fett raced to the large vent grate and peered into the room. This was the antechamber to the gaming site. Fifteen mercs of all shapes, sizes and races packed it full. This would be the remainder of the private security forces, the ones not permitted to enter the gaming room. Tempers ran hot, and nerves frayed fast in those kinds of games, and too many hot headed nerf-herding barves with blasters looming around the edgy players tended to create more trouble than was good for business. Lucky for him. They were in one spot, making them an excellent target, and relatively easy to neutralize. Fett planted a remote grenade launcher, then filled it with flash bangs and glop grenades.
He moved on to the neighboring vent and looked down at the inner gaming chamber. Five beings sat around a table, with a Twi'lek dealer. His target was among the five, a human male, 1.2 meters tall, non-descript, soft in build and demeanor, utterly unimportant except for one detail: the chip implant in his head held vital information which he used to extort Fett's current employer. Though there was artistry to a hunt, there was a level of sudden brutality required to pull off a successful extrication from a public and hostile location.
The remainder of the security forces seemed no more gainfully occupied than the first group. Most of them lounged at a makeshift bar, making time with the whores employed to keep the party-goers entertained. The few bodyguards worthy of the title, and Fett recognized each and every one, stayed near their employers and paid attention to the details as opposed to the near naked females. All occupants required immobilization. He would have but seconds to secure the merchandise before alarm would sound, chase ensued, and the charges fired. And he needed the merchandise alive.
Fett warmed to the challenge. He brought up dual timing readouts on his helm's display. The first for the exit, the second, timed to the shift of the newly activated underground.
T minus nine minutes and counting.
He pulled two Merr Sonn flash bangs grenades from his belt, armed them with a short fuse and tossed them through the wide vent. Two guards saw it coming, but by the time their blasters were clear to fire the grenades detonated. The grenades blew, blinding and stunning the occupants. At the same time, the remote launcher fired into the antechamber, further incapacitating response. Almost immediately, some of the preplanted charges resting deep below the rooms detonated. An ominous shudder worked through the ancient bones of the Drutha City concourse. Panic would follow, further aiding Fett's extrication.
With rapid precision he fed in the access code for the grate, opened the vent, and fired off a net canister. It was packed with a semi-permeable fabric net that would allow his merchandise to breath, but it was lined with a substance similar to the glop grenades, ensuring his prey had no chance of escape.
Fett used his grappling line to hook the net, braced his legs, and yanked his merchandise backwards and up through the grate. The man was starting to rouse, moaning in a mewling, annoying way. He tossed three short fused glops into the room, kicked the grate closed, shouldered the merchandise, and double timed it back the way he came.
He passed through a crossroads of vents, eluding the blaster fire that converged down upon him with his appearance. He didn't stop to count the security forces that charged his way. Once they were all in the same shaft he'd have a better ratio of kill to payload. Until then, any return fire was a waste of fuel cell energy and precious time. He did, however, pop several smoke grenades. Beneath him the passage shook as more of his preplanted charges went live, weakening the supporting infrastructure of the concourse.
T minus seven minutes and counting.
When blaster fire raced past him, he stopped, and shot back into the black smoky haze at his pursuers with several highly armed rockets. The explosions ripped the vents into torrents of rock shrapnel. The resulting screams of agony didn't confirm kills, but did speak of reduced numbers.
The merchandise was coming round. He began to fight his bonds. The glop and the fabric net made the attempts futile, but the wiggling was bothersome. Fett turned hard against a wall, giving the merchandise a solid connect with an immovable object. The load relaxed, movement stopped. Bringing a bounty in alive didn't necessarily mean bringing one in uninjured.
A small rocket raced ahead of Fett and careened off the wall. Fett threw down the prize, dove to the floor, and thanked the ghost of his father for leaving him the spare suit of armor. Rockets were tough, so was shrapnel and blaster bolts, but mandmetal – mandmetal was made of sterner stuff. The explosion was deafening, the glare blinding despite the safety of his visor, but the impact to him and his prize, minimal at best.
He stood, switched to infrared display, and picked up the mark of his tag. He heard the sounds of more in pursuit. Blasts of laser fire lit the darkness. Fett popped his last smoke grenade, raced to the panel, kicked it open, and jumped down into the small room. He hit the ground hard, and dropped the merchandise. Then he pushed it through the small gap between raised wall and floor, and followed himself, low-crawling on his belly.
He shouldered his prey once more, and took the stairs at a breakneck pace.
T minus five minutes and counting.
A loud explosion sounded from above and to the rear. Not one of his charges. A second explosion followed, and rock sprayed past him as he moved. His panoramic view confirmed what he suspected would happen. His pursuers had discovered the concealed room, and blown open the partially raised wall that hid the staircase. They were right on his six.
Adrenaline dumped like liquid rocket fuel into his bloodstream. He sprinted the distance to the end of the stairs, hit the access panel and broke out into the underground. He used an access panel code and moved as a wall shifted and opened into another tunnel. It didn't close, but he didn't worry.
T minus four minutes.
The alarm sounded in his helm, signaling the upcoming change in passageways.
Fett hurled the prey the last few feet and jumped to the safety of the stable slab of floor as the walls began their strange dance. The laser fire ceased and screams filled the dark followed by the crunch of bone mashed beneath stone. The walls kept grinding, oblivious to the fleshy obstacles. Fett's escape passage opened, and he moved out. Mixed now with the sound of dying men in unimaginable pain came the distinct howl of attacking Yij. Ever opportunists, they stayed clear of Fett and went for an easier target.
T minus three minutes.
He hit the speeder bike at a full run, draped the prey across the back, secured it, and fired up the bike.
The timing was impeccable. He raced death. He raced the curse of the underground. He raced the legend of Jango. He never felt more alive.
T minus two minutes.
He gunned the engine and pushed the bike to the max. The walls shifted, he tilted enough to ease around a corner, then drove the bike up as another passage to the surface presented. The angle of ascent was far sharper than prudent for a speeder bike. Had he not modified the engines, stabilizers and thrusters, the thing would have stalled and given out. He coaxed the last vestiges of power out of the machine and the walls and darkness merged into a muted blur.
T minus one minute.
Boba Fett hit the surface. The final explosions began. One by one they ripped through the craggy bearing walls that lay beneath the topside landing pad. In his helm display he watched as the ground collapsed into itself, taking ship after ship down into hell. The secondary explosions were nothing short of spectacular. The Falleens made a critical tactical error by corralling their response teams and security ships in one spot. It provided him with an excellent opportunity to minimize any ability to mount chase beyond planetary surface. And it didn't cause damage to any of the guest's ships,. Many were even now taking to the air as the party going elite sought escape from what appeared no more than simple seismic activity. Only a select few would know the real truth. The proliferation of ships would make ground fire from laser cannons unsafe, and further protect him from trouble.
Fett brought the bike to a screeching halt and summoned Slave I. He'd enhanced the remote features prior to this mission. The ship could hide further out, come faster when called, maneuver more despite the lack of resident pilot. The old police craft favored by his father and now him rose like a bird of prey above the horizon. Some of the topside forces were massing. Cannon fire burst to his left, sending up clumps of stone and earth. Fett hit another sequence of numbers and the Slave returned fire. It was inaccurate, meant only to provide enough cover for him to board, but it did the job.
Precious seconds ticked by. His merchandise remained unconscious and subdued. Fett readied his blast rifle in case the opposition reached him before the Slave, but the ship arrived in time for him to board and secure the package before the retaliation force came close enough to do any real damage.
The Slave's hull took several hits. Fett returned fire this time, choosing shots with accuracy, dealing death by choice. Let the scum witness the power, let them all know what sentinel awaited to bring justice and damnation, let them all live in fear that they would be next on his list.
"I'm a rich man. I can pay you. Anything you want. Credits. Spice. Women. Girls.
Boys. Name it, they're yours. Just let me go."
They all tried to broker a deal, he'd learned. They all tried to work an angle. On another hunter it often worked, but he was a different breed. "I don't make deals with the merchandise. I collect from my client."
That brought the merchandise up short. He squinted his beady little eyes and gripped the bars of his cell tighter. "I can be your client."
"No. You can't." Even if this putrid waste of flesh could produce a second sensor jamming array, it wouldn't matter. Fett's deal was with his employer, a well paid, highly placed project engineer working on a secret Imperial contract in the Kuat Drive Yards. The payment of such a device as opposed to credits for this particular job would enable him to enter and exit planets unbeknownst to even the most sophisticated of sensors. Another tool in the arsenal. An excellent deal, one he brokered himself, without the aide of a middle man. He smiled at the memory of the negotiations. He suspected even the discerning Eris would be impressed.
"What do you want? Just tell me."
I want you to shut up. Fett crossed his arms and studied the prey for a long, silent moment.
"Please," it whispered, panic stealing power from the voice. "There must be something."
Fett shook his head. "I'm going to hand you over to Dieter. Dieter will pay me what I'm owed. Then I'll move on. That's what I want."
"Dieter?" The merchandise paled. He blinked hard, tears rolled down his death pale cheeks. Then it fell to its knees. "No. Please. Mercy. Not Dieter. Anyone but him. Who ever you are, I beg you…"
Despite his disgust, Fett came close to the cell and looked down upon the pathetic creature. "I am Boba Fett. I hunt prey. I do not dispense mercy."
Then he stalked away, leaving the hard merchandise to wallow in its own fear and misery while it contemplated the fate to come.
Back in the cockpit, Boba Fett removed his helm and drew in a deep breath of cool air. He sat down, leaned back in his chair, and stared out at the comforting darkness of deep space. The images of the vile pit of vice that was The Wheel were burned into his brain, and he doubted he'd forget them anytime soon. Nor would he forget the victory wrung from Eristriel, or the terms of their dangerous contract he would soon fulfill.
So many beings wanted for justice.
So many more wanted for vengeance.
He could profit from both.