From the book Tales From Jabba's Palace

A Barve Like That: The Tale of Boba Fett

by J. D. Montgomery

With the passage of the years he had learned to recognize certain things.
When he first returned to awareness he knew that he was on the surface of a
planet. Artificial gravity shimmers at the boundaries of perception; on a
ship under thrust the engines, however well damped, vi- brate; and gravity
provided by angular momentum

causes a Coriolis effect that a human who has trained himself can
recognize. But that was all that he knew when the voice out of the darkness
said, You are Boba Fett. Fett's head jerked up and he stared into--
Nothing. He reached for his rifle--and did not move. His arms and legs were
firmly restrained. Fett hung in darkness, feet not touching the ground. He
heard a distant crack followed by the same noise again, rather more close.
His head was not restrained but the rest of his body felt as though it had
been wrapped in-- He stuck out his tongue and flipped the switch that
turned on his helmet's macrobinoculars. You are Boba Fett. Even with the
macrobinoculars, translating up out of the infrared and down from the
ultraviolet, there was not much to see. Fett hung against the wall of a
tunnel--a tunnel not of stone or any artificial mate- rial, but soft and
yielding, spongelike, ridged and corded as though the tunnel had grown into
its cur- rent shape. He could turn his head just enough to see that the
tunnel curved sharply out of sight a few me- ters to his left and right.
Screams in the distance. A whistling crack. The voice said after a long
pause, curiously, You are Boba Fett? It came back in a rush--Tatooine, the
sail barge, Skywalker and Solo, and with a rush of horror that stilled
every other thought fighting for his attention it came to him where he was,
in the belly of the Sarlacc-- Being digested.

Most of those who dealt with Fett over the course of the decades did not
consider him a man of much feel- ing. This was accurate. He was not.
Leaving Bespin, though, he was filled by a certain fondness for Han Solo.
Do not misunderstand--he did not approve of the man--but it was rare to
receive two bounties for the same acquisition. But Vader had paid well and
the Hutt would pay nearly as well again. The Hutt had promised a bounty of
a hundred thousand credits. A respectable amount, though not as good as
some Fett had earned. He had once re- ceived a bounty of a hundred and
fifty thousand cred- its for the pirate Feldrall Okor; and on a memorable
occasion, half a million credits for the delivery of Nivek'Yppiks, an
incautious Ffib heretic who had fled his homeworld of Lorahns, and the
religious oligarchy that controlled it. Fett did not imagine he would ever
come to like reli- gious autarchies; they reminded him of his youth. But he
had come to appreciate them. They paid exqui- sitely well and their
"criminals" were intellectuals who talked too much and rarely shot back.
Fett's fee for the Solo acquisition was, though the Hutt did not know it
yet, about to be increased. Fett did not imagine he would be able to push
Jabba to half a million credits--the Hutt was a business crea- ture, not a
religious fanatic--but the Hutt was among other things an art collector.
Han Solo, encased in carbonite, had to be worth more than Han Solo alive or
dead. By the time he got done, counting both his fee from the Empire and
his fee from the Hutt, Fett fully in- tended to better the half million he
had received on that Yppiks fool. Fett slept sitting up in the pilot's
chair, which made a more comfortable bed than some Fett had known, while
the Slave I made the last jump to Tatooine.

Hyperspace transit was as a rule the only place Fett felt safe enough to
sleep soundly. He did not dream, at least nothing he remembered; his sleep
was peace- ful and uninterrupted. One might have called it the sleep of a
just man. He awakened not long before hyperspace breakout. No device
awakened him; he had decided to awake at the correct time, and he did. He
awoke alert, scanning the control board. All seemed well. Minutes later the
hyperspace tunnel fragmented around him. Stars appeared in the
viewplate--and a klaxon shrilled through the ship. Bad news and Fett took
it calmly enough, under the circumstances: a beacon had activated itself
down in the hold, announcing Fett's arrival insystem to who- ever was
listening on that frequency. Fett's deduction was instantaneous and
correct; another hunter had planted the beacon during his stay on Cloud
City. Fett slapped the autopilot control and sprinted below deck. Another
hunter, looking for the Hutt's bounty on Solo. It was the only answer that
made sense, and Fett damned himself for a fool for not checking his ship
when he had the chance. Basics, basics, you ignore the basics and you
deserve what happens to you. Fett un- slung the flame-thrower as he ran,
rounded the last

corridor before the cargo bay, to the stretch of corri- dor where the
sensors showed the beacon originating, and let loose. He cooked the
bulkhead until the metal glowed and the air around him burned hot and stank
with ozone, brought the flame tracking upward-- The klaxon ceased and Fett
left the Slave I's mainte- nance droid to deal with the fire he'd started,
and ran back to control. He slid into his seat. The Slave I had continued
to head insystem at high speed, Tatooine growing large in the viewscreen.
The local shipping did not seem to

be taking notice of Fett, which was all to the good, but somebody out there
knew he'd arrived. Fett fed figures to the autopilot, had it calculate a
hyperspace jump back out of the system, started another thread, and set a
portion of the computer to performing diagnostic~ on ship functions. He did
not worry about his weapons systems, nor his deflectors; they were either
ready, or sabotaged-- probably ready. Planting a beacon was one thing, and
impressive enough; fooling the ship's on-board diag- nostics quite another.
So deep in a planet's gravity well, calculating a new hyperspace jump took
time, even for a computer as bright as the one Fett had running the Slave
I. Even so, it had nearly completed the calculations when the subject
became moot: A needle of a ship came up over Tatooine's horizon. The
IG-2000. It was instantly recognizable, and it told Fett just how very bad
the problem was. The ship belonged to the assassin droid IG-88, the
second-best bounty hunter in the galaxy, and studying hard to be number
one. Fett's fingers danced across the controls and the Slave Ibraked
savagely, dropping into a lower orbit. Fett focused and fired his fore
blasters as the two ships closed-- The IG-2000 exploded instantly, went up
in a burst of superheated metal and expanding plasma. Fett thought
instantly, Bad decoy. That assassin droid would never make a mistake like--
The Slave I's sensors went wild--a ship was leaving hyperspace only a few
klicks away--and then the Slave l shuddered all about Fett as blaster fire
struck it aft. The aft holocams showed it all clearly. The IG-2000, the
real one, no decoy, breaking out of hyperspace with blasters lit, coming up
above and behind Fett, pinning the Slave 1 between the IG-2000 and
Tatooine. It was a brilliant maneuver that only the assassin droid,

with its droid's reflexes, could have planned and car- ried out. The Slave
I dove for atmosphere, the IG-2000 follow- ing at high speed, as the comm
unit came alive. IG-88's voice lacked intonation: "Surrender your pris-
oner and you have a thirty-percent probability of sur- viving this
encounter." Fett ignored the droid, fingers flying across his con- trol
panel. The droid said something else then, that Boba Fett never heard. He
routed what power he could spare to the rear deflectors, sent another round
of blaster fire aft to keep IG-88 occupied, and then ruined his own ship--
He turned the inertial damper on. For most of a second the Slave I went
dark as the inertial damper drew current, shields dropping, weap- ons going
dead for that second, when a single blaster bolt would have destroyed the
entire ship--and then the inertial damper came online. Dual explosions came
from below deck, the inertial damper destroying itself as it did its job,
and probably taking the hyperdrive with it. Half the indicators on the main
board went red, the ship's superstructure screamed with the sound of
tearing metal, as the ship

lost ninety percent of its velocity in the quantum in- stant it took an
electron to descend from one atomic orbital shell to another. Power
returned to what was left of the Slave I as the IG-2000 hurtled past Fett
at high speed. Fett calmly did all the obvious things, using the ion cannon
to destroy the IG-2000's rear deflector array before IG-88 could bring it
online, followed by taking out the fore deflector array. He clamped a
tractor beam onto the IG-2000 long enough to keep it from fleeing, and sent
a missile down to finish the business off.

Inside the Sarlacc, Fett said aloud, "Shouldn't have named it that." The
voice said politely, Indeed ? "The Slave I. It was a mistake, that. It gave
away information, told people I owned more . . ." Fett's voice trailed off.
He hung against a wall, in darkness his extremities numbed. He could not
feel his hands or his feet, and his skin was burning, and worst of all he
was not aboard the Slave I, not at all-- He whispered, "How did you do that
to me?" He had the brief impression of amusement. It was easy. No--you were
easy. You live strongly. A chill descended upon Fett, and he shivered
fiercely, there in the darkness, with the near and dis- tant popping
sounds. "Who are you?" A fair enough question, it said, and the dark amuse-
ment was unmistakable this time. As you are my past Boba Fett . . . I am
your destiny.

"The grimace is quite wonderful," said the Hutt. "We are impressed with
your efforts, and we are pleased to pay seventy-five thousand credits for
the person of Han Solo." Fett shook his head. "Jabba"--and he heard the
stir that went through the room at the familiarity--"we're not dealing here
with the person of Captain Solo-- who I recall had a bounty on him of one
hundred thousand credits." Jabba's tail twitched and his voice deepened
into a dangerous neargrowl. "This is not Solo~" "This~" said Fett, as
courteously as he was able--it was not his strong suit. He had not been
raised speak- ing Basic, and his voice and diction tended toward a certaln
harshness when he used it. "This finely ren- dered carbonite sculpture, the
person of Han Solo? No. What I brought you today is art. Art created by the

Dark Lord that happened to use Han Solo as material, like another artist
might shape clay." He shrugged. "I tell you what, I've gotten attached to
it during myjour- ney here. It has a presence to it, don't you think?" The
Hutt said slowly, "The grimace is . . . quite wonderful." "And the hands,"
said Fett, pushing it. "Let's us two admire the hands together. I like
them, they show the quality of the Dark Lord's work--" "Rather," the Hutt
murmured in a bass rumble, "rather. One sees Solo's final moments of fear
in them." He examined Boba Fett, standing beside the carbonite-encased Han
Solo; both Fett and the piece of art under discussion were well back from
the trap- door before Jabba's throne. "There is news," Jabba continued,
"that Vader failed to capture Skywalker, that Organa and Calrissian escaped
him as well . . . and that Chewbacca is likewise free. Their combined
bounties are . . . impressive." Heavy-lidded eyes ex- amined Fett.
"Impressive." And Chewbacca, at the very least, will be comingfor Solo.
Fett nodded. "We might discuss my staying," he con- ceded. "As to the art,
an original piece from the hand of the Dark Lord--" Fett could feel himself
warming to the subject; the faintest breath of disappointment

touched him when Jabba interrupted, with something so close to enthusiasm
that Fett found it notable. "There is further work here, for a brave bounty
hunter." The Hutt's tongue flicked out to lick his lips and he leaned
forward. "A hundred thousand credits for the capture and delivery of a
krayt dragon to do battle with my rancor." Fett said dryly, "That seems a
lot. As much for the delivery of a krayt dragon as for Solo?" The Hutt
waved a negligent hand in dismissal. "We will find a fair price for Solo.
For the art. But now-- Fett raised his head slightly. "A quarter million."

A hush fell over the watching crowd. Those nearest Fett edged slowly
backward. Jabba leaned forward. His voice emerged from his chest as a
rumbling threat. "So . . . that seems quite a lot. Even for Vader's art.
Fett shrugged. And waited. Jabba's lips twitched. Fett did not mistake it
for any- thing approaching amusement. "So, a quarter million credits for .
. . the art." His eyes narrowed to slits. "And we will enjoy your efforts
toward acquisition of a krayt, and we will enjoy your company among us. For
some time. "A quarter million." Boba Fett actually bowed slightly. "For
some time.

yes. Fett shook his head to clear it. Jabba's throne room faded into
nothingness; he hung on the wall himself deep inside the Sarlacc, the air
around him growing dank. A foul taste had begun to develop in his mouth; he
sipped at the water tube in his helmet before reply- ing. "Don't do that to
me again." There was a pause. I won't, the voice said finally, if you keep
me amused. "Who the blazes are you?" Iam the inferno, you are quite
accurate. I am the Sarlacc. I am the distilled essence of-- "You're not the
Sarlacc," Fett said grimly. "Sarlacc aren't intelligent, they don't have a
brain worthy of the name--" The voice chuckled and said softly, I am
Susejo. The wall Fett hung on shivered. An emotion that could have been
delight emanated from the creature. It's been a long time since I had one
like you, all bnght and sharp around the edges. You are nearly a work of
art, Fett; there is a

clarity to you that is--chuckle-quite wonderful. A purity to your intent.
Fett fought back the useless rage that threatened to overwhelm him; it was
something he'd had practice at. "I'm a hunter. I bring those who do evil to
justice, and there is little room to be unclear on the subject." You remind
me of someone--ah. I have it. You remind me of theJedi. Keeping his voice
expressionless was an accomplish- ment. "The Jedi." Yes. A Jedi we ate a
few thousand years ago. We've kept her; would you like to meet her? "No."
Fett closed his eyes and floated senselessly in the darkness. A Jedi we
ate, it had said. "No. Keep your Jedi to yourself." Impression of a shrug.
As you wish. You'U look forward to a break in the tedium . . . soon enough.
Fett opened his eyes and stared ahead into the emp- tiness, listening to
the silence. The screams he had heard at first, those of the men who had
fallen into the Great Pit with him, had ceased. He had not heard even one
in some time. The fury built in Fett, self- contained, black and bone-deep.
Another crack nearby, sounding very like a whip; Fett took a shud- dering
breath and when he spoke his voice shook slightly. "I don't understand
this. I don't understand

this at all. Why is this being prolonged? Is there a pur- pose? The Sarlacc
can eat me when I'm dead, can't it? I've killed, I've killed virtually
everything that moves, one time or another, a hundred different species,
sen- tient and dumb; if it breathes I've probably killed it or something
like it. But I've killed clean. I've killed with- out stretching it out.
Where's the grace in a death like this?" Fett had the impression that his
question was being considered. Fo you ~ Why, I suppose there is none. But
your life and death belong to me now, not you; and they serve my

purpose. Recognize and understand your place in things, Boba Fett, for you
are not even a real thing- merely a colle~ tion of thoughts that has
deluded itself into a belief in its own existence. "You're saying that I'm
not real, that nothing's real?" Fett's lips twisted in a snarl. "The air
stinks too badly for me to believe that." You, and I, and everything
else--we are merely a process Boba Fett. A process that has named itself
"I." Surely the Real ex~sts, and we are an expression of it. But are you
and I real? No. We are processes that have grown arrogant and broken apart
from the Real. In time we shaU be rejoined to it. The voice paused. You
want to know why this is taking so long? You've barely been down here a
day, Boba Fett. 7'here are sentients who've been kept alive for hundreds of
years while the Sarlacc digested them. After a long pause it added, with a
sense of weariness so profound Fett be- lieved it would have killed him to
experience it, Thou- sands of years, ~n some cases. Fett did not know what
made him so certain, the weariness; he said, "You . . . you lie. You're not
the Sarlacc--you're down here, with me." I'm not the Sarlacc? Considering,
thinking: Don't be so sure of that. I am Susejo of Choi, or I was, and I
have been here for a very, very long time. Longer than you can imagine but
who knows? Perhaps you will not have to imagine it. Perhaps you will
survive. You entertain me, and that which entertains me entertains the
Sarlacc. When I am happy, it is happy. I expect you wiU be with us for some
time. Let me activate even one weapon system--Fett fought the thought down,
pushed it back hard, and said aloud "You are cruel." There's a joke, said
the voice, that my Jedi told me. A sentient visits a nearby farm and sees a
barve in the front yard. The barve is wandering around on five legs--one
leg has been amputated. The sentient in question, JoJo, asks the owner why
the barve has had a leg amputated. 'Well, " says

the owner, "let me tell you something about that barve. rrhat's the
smartest barve you've ever seen in your /ife, JoJo. That barve talks, he
can fly a speeder, and he's great with the kids, keeps an eye on 'em when
I'm out in the~eld--why, just a few weeks ago he r~.scued my youngest one
from drown- ing. " And JoJo says, "'rhat 's amazing! But what happened to
tlle amputated leg?" The owner stares at JoJo. "Well, man, you don't eat a
barve like that all at once!" Susejo laughed silently in the darkness, and
the wall behind Fett rippled again. Boba Fett thought to himself, I wish I
had a thermal detonator. I'd take you with me. You are eternally the Real,
Boba Fett . . . and there is nothing to desire.

The chrono that glowed in the lower right-hand cor- ner of Boba Fett's
helmet visor told him when dawn came. It had been dark already when he
awakened; when dawn arrived, the tunnel off to Fett's left light- ened
noticeably. At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, enough light
filtered down through the yawning mouth of the Sarlacc that Fett could see
his surroundings clearly. The walls of the small tunnel in which the
Sarlacc

had stored him were grayish-green; they looked damp, though Fett's gloves
prevented him from being cer- tain. Small tendrils grew along the edges of
the ridg- ing in the walls; along the floor the tendrils were larger,
proper tentacles, a mat of several hundred ten- tacles, four to six
centimeters wide, three and four me- ters long. They lay motionless most of
the time; when the tentacles did move they whipped around at such speed
that the tentacle tips broke the sound barrier, very like the tip of a
whip. lt was the source of the cracking noises Fett had been hearing since
he'd awakened . . . and once he knew what it was he shiv-

ered. The cracking was a steady background sound,yet the tentacles around
him did not move often. It made Fett wonder just how large the Sarlacc's
interior was and how far from the surface he might be--how many of those
tentacles he would have to fight his way through to get out again. Oh, but
you're not going to get out again, Boba Fett. No one ever has, and you won
't be the ~rst. Listen:

The Sarlacc ate my left leg first, love. I hadn't been able to move either
my arms or my legs for . . . months, I suppose, a very long time. They
didn't hurt anymore, though my skin burned, and never has stopped burning
the entire time I've been in this blasted pit. She has me hanging up in the
main chamber while she digests me. I suppose that's something; a thing to
be grateful for in the grand scheme of things. Mica and I came down
together when our speeder got shot down, and Mica got hustled back into one
of those little openings along the edge, down into the Sarlacc's guts. This
is a bad way to die, but that'd be worse that'd be a lot worse. I'm blind
in one of my eyes now but I can still see the sunlight striking down into
the main pit, through the other, and I tell you, it keeps me going. Never
thought I'd see the day when a brief glimpse of Tatooine's pale blue sky
would be a reason to keep living. I try not to look down. My left leg's
gone beneath the knee. I didn't even notice it going, tell you the truth.
One day I looked down and there it was, on the floor of the pit, down in
the acid, being dissolved down into nothing. That annoying Susejo leaves me
alone at times. I don't know what he does when he's not talking to me;
maybe he's off draining Mica the way he's draining

me. I don't know exactly what Susejo's doing to us . . . but well, some
days I'm not even certain sure who I am anymore. There's been a lot of us
down here; I guess Susejo keeps the ones he and the Sarlacc enjoy, for a
while anyway. It's a sort of immortality, I suppose, but love, I could have
tolerated actually dy- ing a lot better. I always thought that's how I'd
go, you know; fleeing a blaster wedding at the age of ninety- three,
something with a little style. (I'm not even sure if you're the girl I
remember. Some days you have black hair and skin and you're studying to be
a minister, of all things, and other days it's blond hair and green eyes
and you pilot a starship, and darn if I can remember which of you I
actually fell in love with, or if it was both of you and you were different
people . . . (I did love you. I remember that.) A lot of memories floating
around in here with me. The Sarlacc is a soup, and the ingredients are all
the people she's taken, over the centuries, over the mil lennia. Susejo's
never admitted it, but I suspect that's all that he is; the oldest of the
soup's ingredients. Kess, Susejo said. I'U answer to that, I replied. Why
not? One name being as good as another. Your name is Kess, he said firmly.
You're a Corellian gambler . . . the Sarlacc's been eating you a little
faster than I'd like, and I'm sorry about that. You're good com- pany, but
the Sarlacc's been hungry recently, and I can't control her entirely. Tell
me another story ~ I thought about it, and I remembered the story you told
me, little one, not long after we met, back in the old days, that one of
you that wanted to be a minister, back when you thought there was nothing
in me worth saving--too obsessed with the dice and all, you kept saying,
too busy looking for the main chan~e. A man, I told Susejo, being chased by
a logra, comes to the

edge of a cliff: He sees there is nowhere to flee, but beholds then a root,
protrudingfrom the edge of the cliff: He grabs the root and scrambles over
the edge of the cliff~ hangzng high above the ground. He looks down, and
beholds then another logra, pacing below him. He hangs there, unable to go
down, unable to climb back up; and along come a pair of tiny banda, one
black and one white, and they begin nibbling at the root. rrhe root beg~ns
to come apart . . . and suddenly the man sees a berry growing at the edge
of the cliff, and he plucks it and pops it in his mouth. How sweet it
tasted. Silence. Finally Susejo said, I'm not sure I like that story. I
hung there on the wall, and with my good eye watched the dust motes dance
in the sunlight; and I thought to myself how beautiful it was. You'd be
proud of me, love, whichever one you were. Sometime later Susejo said, "The
Sarlacc is hungry. I think I'll have her eat your arm now."

Fett felt the horror that the Corellian gambler, dead these many centuries,
fought against as his limbs de- cayed, as the Sarlacc ate him from the
outsides in. Fett floated in a long dreamtime moment, tied to the gam-
bler's last moments of real awareness down in the slime on the floor of the
pit, blind, deaf, limbs dis- solved, rib cage cracked apart with the
tentacles mas- saging his organs, dreaming of a woman who loved him-- Boba
Fett had been born to anger, and rage was his life. He struggled up out of
the vision, fought it wildly carried himself up out of the nightmare on the
back of a wave of fury and abruptly was back, there in his body with the
pain of the burning acid all around him, suffused with a clear, lucid,
thinking hatred, an emotion so dark and deep and pure the Dark Lord himself
might never have felt its equal. He could hear his own heartbeat thudding
in his ears and he said, "I'm going to kill you very slowly," and he had
never meant anything more in his life. He hung in the darkness with his
hatred.

Sometime later Susejo said, "I suppose I'll let the Sarlacc start on your
leg."

Blaster rifle, wrist lasers, rocket dart launcher; grap- pling hook, flame
projector, concussion grenade launcher. Unfortunately almost all of them
required the use of his hands, and his arms and legs were spread-eagled
against the wall, held flat by an interwo- ven mesh of several hundred
tentacles. Straining did no good; the tentacles merely gripped more
tightly, and Fett barely moved. The tentacles probed against him, seeking a
way through his Mandalorian combat armor. A pair of large tentacles had
taken hold of Fett's right leg, and they tugged at it, pulling back and
forth at the knee joint. The armor had held, and would hold; that much did
not worry Fett. The digestive acid the Sarlacc used did worry him; it had
already made its way through to his skin. Most of his body bu~ned, chest
and back and arms and legs. So far the acid had not made it through his
helmet, and had not made it past

the blast armor that covered his genitals; thank Provi- dence for small
favors. He had access to the contents of his helmet. The comlink built into
it was silent; he had scanned through all frequencies, and all he got was
static, which might mean that there was nobody within range of the helmet's
comlink, about ninety klicks, or might

mean that the bulk of the Sarlacc was blocking th( signal, and finally
might mean that the comlink itseif was broken. The Sarlacc wrenched
violently at Fett's left kne~ His armor held and Fett was yanked down the
w~l~ the tentacles holding his upper body losing their gri~ sllghtly. He
ended up hanging at an angle as the tenta- cles wrapped themselves about
him again . . . an(l there was a pressure against the sole of his right
f~ot He'd been dragged down far enough that his ri~h foot was now in
contact with the ground. What good that did him--if any--Fett did not know.
He flexed the foot to see if he could get a pur- chase; perhaps. He relaxed
and considered. The sensors and computer built into his combat suit had
continued to work, even after Fett had lost con- sciousness. The computer
responded to verbal com- mands; Fett had it play back the entire sequence
of events that had landed him in the Great Pit of Carkoon, using the
heads-up tac display in his helmet for video. The first time through the
playback he had to swltch it off after realizing that Solo had--acciden-
tally!--activated his jet pack. The holocam angle was terrible, but there
was no question about it; that ille- gitimate Solo had sent him flying into
the pit by chance. It took him several minutes before he was able to try
and watch it again. He lifted up from the sail barge, dropping down onto
the skiff, with theJedi and Solo and Chewbacca. And . . . yes. Right there;
the butt of Solo's spear had slammed into the emergency access panel,
activat- mg theJets. The on-board computer couldn't access the jet pack;
they were not linked together. Fett couldn't run diagnostics on the pack,
had no idea whether th.o

thing was working or not. The emergency access panel was behind him, to his
right; if he'd been able to get his left hand free, he might have been able
to reach il-- If I could get my left hand free, thought Fett dryly, I could
do a lot of things. Using radar and sonar, Fett had mapped out a rough
picture of the Sarlacc's interior. Leading away from the main chamber were
several dozen small tun- nels, heading almost straight down into the earth.
He was about ten meters away from the main chamber; and about forty meters
beneath the ground. Even if the jet could take him out again, if he could
move to activate it, even then he'd be stuck in the middle of ~owhere, in
the midst of a great desert-- The tentacles holding Fett's left leg
tightened pain- fully, just above the knee. Fett's lips twisted in a snarl.
"I swear by the soul I don't have, I am going to kill you." Kill who ?
Susejo laughed. rrhe one who s talking to you ? Or the one who s eating you
? "Either. Both." Ah. You have a very poor attitude, Boba Fett:

I almost made it out, early on my second day in the pit. I lay on my back
on the bottom of the pit, in the acid, through the long night. The Sarlacc
and I "talked" for a while; it's very young and not very bright, and I feel
sorry for it. It's rare for a Sarlacci spore to survive a landing in a
desert environment; they're best suited to wet environments, though they
can survive almost anywhere. I saw pictures once of a Sarlacc that had
managed to survive on the surface of an airless moon; it was quite small,
its aperture less than a meter in diameter, but the system it had ended

up m was young, and heavy in cometary materi~l Comets are principally made
up of carbon, hydrogen oxygen, and nitrogen; this poor little Sarlacc was
mak- ing do, out there in the vacuum. It had the most amaz- ing root
system; it was far more plant than animal. This Sarlacc doesn't have it
that bad, tucked away out here in the desert. It's not really aware that it
ex- ists; It has a neural system, but it's not very well devel- oped, and
not likely to become so in the desert. Sarlacci do interesting things with
messenger RNA: over the course of millennia, they can attain a sort of
group consciousness, built out of the remains of peo- ple they've digested.
I talked to such a Sarlacc, once a few decades ago. It was a thoroughly
asocial creature that wondered, quite wistfully, whether a Jedi would taste
better or worse than the other sentients it had eaten. I remember being
amused by it, for I knew that I was not such a fool as to come within reach
of its outer tentacles. I walked right over this baby Sarlacc. It lay
buried JUSt beneath the sand, tentacles hidden in the drifts. It got me by
the ankle and dragged me down into the pit, through a sand plug nearly a
meter thick. The sand plug came down right after me, right on top of me I
lay on the bottom of the pit, held in place by surprislngly strong
tentacles, with sand all around me, looking up into the night sky. The
Sarlacc's diges- tive acid is weak, and the sand that came down with me has
blotted up much of it. Nonetheless my cloth- ing is already dissolving; if
I do get out of here I'll be a sight, a naked sixty-year-old Jedi with a
rash trying to make it back to her survey ship. Even diluted, the acid
burns. I do not blame the Sarlacc; it is behaving as its na- ture dictates.
It's not very bright and it is very young-- only five meters wide, and
perhaps that deep- as well. Hard to say quite how deep underground I am,
look- ing up into the night sky through what used to be the sand plug. I
may only be the second or third sentient it's ever eaten. One of them is
hanging, totally cocooned, on a wall in the chamber here with me; a Choi
named Susejo who was mostly digested already when I fell into the pit. 1
can feel his thoughts; he's mildly tele- pathic. He's very young, for a
Choi, barely out of childhood, and very angry--he has not taken being eaten
very well, and I feel rather sorry for him, too. When morning came, the
light filtered down around me, and I saw my chance; my only chance. My
lightsaber had come down with me. I hadn't been able to tell, there in the
darkness; it no longer hung from my belt, and I hadn't known whether I'd
lost it up on the surface, or down here in the pit. It lay on its side in
the acid a few feet away from me, and I turned my head to look at it. It
leaped across the pit and into my hand. I lit it and bent my hand back at
the wrist, bringing the blade down as close to the tentacles holding my arm
as I could get it, straining; the Sarlacc made a sound, a high-pitched
squeal, and the tentacles holding that arm pulled free. I wrenched the arm
free and sliced away at the other tendrils still holding me, cutting for
just a few seconds until I was free, rolled off my back into a crouch, and
then--

Five meters is a long way up, even for a youngJedi. I raised the Force and
leaped. The tentacle caught my ankle in mid-leap. The Sarlacc broke my leg
and two of my ribs pulling me back down. I lost the lightsaber again on the
way down and by the time I had the presence of mind to look for it, it was
gone for good. I don't know what the Sarlacc did with it, but I never saw
it again. For the rest of the day the Sarlacc remained restless, tentacles
waving aimlessly, twitching ceaselessly. It

held me so tightly that the blood flow to my extremi- ties was impaired. It
was very upset by the whole thi~ I tried to tell it that I was sorry, that
I would not have hurt her had I been able to avoid it. That got a rise out
of the Choi, hanging on the wall facing me--If you must chatter, it
snapped, at least do it for the bene~t of the one who can listen to you. A
slow death has a few things to recommend it; time to get your thoughts in
order, at any rate. I blocked the pain radiating from my body, and frankly,
after a few days I was bored, too. Susejo, I said, why don't we pass the
time by telling each other stories?

Sweat trickled down Fett's form, pooled beneath his armor, mixed with the
burning acid that covered him. An impossible kaleidoscope of lights danced
in front of him, and for a moment he thought he might vomit into his
helmet; that old Jedi woman had been real. Her thoughts still echoed away
within him, mixed in with the thoughts of the Corellian gambler, and the
quick bright flashes of a dozen other minds, the thoughts and hopes and
desires of men and women dead years and centuries and millennia. Theytd all
died, every one of them, sunk down into the acid and let go of life. I miss
the Jedi, Susejo said. She was very kind to me. Susejo obviously had some
level of contact with the Sarlacc; the Sarlacc had shivered, earlier, when
Susejo felt happiness. Fett made a conscious decision, and let loose the
anger that was never very far beneath the surface. He snarled, "Then you
shouldn't have eaten her, you miserable wretch." The hatred in his voice
and in his thoughts brought a response from Susejo, a flare of startled
anger. The

tentacles holding Fett tightened convulsively and Susejo snapped, I didn't,
the Sarlacc ate her. Fett wished that the wall behind him were not quite so
soft. "And you couldn't have stopped it, you couldn't have tried to help
her, or anyone else, in four thousand years? You're an ingrate, you
pathetic excuse for a sentient being. You got taken down here as a child
and everything that you know and everything that you are you owe to the
people you let get eaten" --and the Sarlacc's tentacles spasmed around
Fett, digging into him, hauling him back into the wall be- hind him--"and
your feelings are hurt because I've told you so? You could have helped
thatJedi, she'd have come back for you. Instead you spent the next four
thousand years playing at philosophy, abusing the people who taught you to
be what you are, never even dreaming that you had options, and why?" he
screamed at Susejo, building up to it, blasting him with the rage and
hatred he had spent a lifetime grow- ing, the Sarlacc's straining tentacles
shaking against his body. "Because you're stupid, a miserable mean wretch
of an excuse for a sentient being without the imagination or the
courage--'' The tentacles slashed around him, a sound like a thousand whips
cracking, drowning out Fett's voice.

He shoved, got his right foot solidly against the ground and pushed upward.
The switch in the jet pack's emergency access panel, digging into the soft
wall behind him, was pushed down as Boba Fett pushed up. Flame erupted in
the enclosed space around them. The Sarlacc itself shrieked in pain, a
sound that ech- oed away down the tunnels, the hundreds of tentacles around
Fett whipping themselves into a frenzy, those that held Fett constricting
so tightly that for an instant he could not breathe--

The jet pack had never been intended to be run in such tight quarters for
any length of time. It exploded.

It was his oldest possession; the Mandalorian combat armor that was almost
as famous as he was, famous the galaxy wide. It had protected him, down the
decades, from blaster fire and slugthrowers, explosions and knives, from
all the various insults the universe was apt to throw at a man in his line
of work. But not even Mandalorian combat armor, designed by the warriors
who had fought, and sometimes defeated, Jedi Knights, had been intended to
withstand an exploding jet pack in close quarters. Fett could not have been
unconscious for more than a few seconds; he came back to awareness unable
to breathe. The jet pack's fuel had splatte~ed down the length of the
corridor, and the corridor was burn- ing, and so was Fett. The flame
touched his skin in exposed places, on his arms and legs and stomach, and
flames danced on the surface of his combat ar- mor, the armor itself
cracked, broken open by the force of the explosion, and everywhere the
armor touched him the metal was scaldingly hot-- Boba Fett surged to his
feet. The ground beneath him shook, rolling as the Sarlacc's flesh burned,
and the Sarlacc fought against it. Fett reached back over his shoulder,
unslung the deadliest weapon he car- ried. Standing in the fire, burning
alive, Boba Fett fired a concussion grenade into the ceiling thirty
centimeters above his head, and threw himself down to the surface of the
tunnel, into the flaming mixture of acid and f'uel-- The explosion tore
apart the world. The concussion slammed Fett down into the flames, and his
left arm,

Tales from Jabba's Palace O 369

trapped beneath him at the wrong angle, snapped as he was smashed down atop
it. A pain so great it was like a white light surrounded Boba Fett, and he
knew that he was dying, that he had failed, like all the oth- ers before
him, that he had traded a slow death by acid for a fast death by fire--
Sand rained down upon him. A long time later, Boba Fett became aware that
he was still alive. He forced himself up into a sitting posi- tion, looking
around him. Fires still burned, along the length of the corridor, and in
the distance the sound of cracking tentacles was very loud. It was quiet
where he sat. Fett's left arm hung useless at his side, and he looked away
down the tunnel; it was night, but he knew which direction he needed to go,
to get back to the main pit, to the shaft that led back to the surface . .
. to the main pit, where Susejo hung, where the enraged Sarlacc awaited
him, tentacles lashing back and forth in anticipation. Sand trickled down
onto Fett's helmet. He looked up. Darkness. Without moving from where he
sat, Boba Fett made a long arm, and retrieved the grenade launcher. It

carried three grenades; and he'd already fired one of them. He raised the
launcher and fired it a second time, into the darkness above him, and then
had to dig his way out of the avalanche of sand that came down upon him. He
stood at the edge of a small hill of sand, looking upward into the darkness
. . . and started to undress. The armor was useless at this
point--acid-covered and cracked in places, which was an improvement on Fett
having cracked in those same places and his clothing disintegrated as he
moved. He almost fainted while removing the upper

body armor; his left arm was broken- in at least two places, and he was
covered with burns that were al- ready starting to form blisters. It took
several minutes, but finally he had worked his way out of the armor, and he
fought against his diziness and weakness and started climbing, halfway up
the small hill of sand, and fired his final grenade into the darkness above
him. The wave of sand that collapsed on him this time was unbelievable;
Fett struggled up through it as it came down upon him, almost swimming
upward through the falling sand. The sand covered him, his nude body and
the helmet that still protected his head, and he clawed at it franti-
cally, with no air but that trapped in his helmet with him, using both
hands, both the broken arm and the good, possessed by a mortal terror that
gave him the access to the final strength he would ever be able to call
upon-- A hand broke free, he felt it, felt it thrust up into emptiness, and
seconds later, Boba Fett dug his way up out of the sand and into the cool
nighttime air, in the middle of the Dune Sea, at the edge of the Great Pit
of Carkoon, hundreds of kilometers away *om any- one or anything. Alive.

A year later: Boba Fett returned to Tatooine in the Slave II. He came down
out of orbit and hovered above the Great Pit of Carkoon, in the midst of
the Dune Sea. On the night desert, the glow of his thrusters burned like
the daytime sun, lit the sand for kilometers in all directions. The Slave
II descended until the flame of its drive played directly down onto the Pit
of Carkoon. The wash of pain that rose to greet Boba Fett tasted like wine
of an ancient vintage. If he closed his eyes he could see it, the main
chamber where Susejo hung, shimmering beneath the superheated air. You.
"Yes, indeed." Inside the creature's pain, Boba Fett could feel something
like relief. You liberate me from the long Cycle. The Slave II hovered
above the pit . . . and then drifted off to the side, and came to a landing
fifty meters from the edge, well away from the reach of even the longest of
the burnt, writhing tentacles. Susejo's pain and confusion touched Fett.
What strange mercy is this? Sitting in the Slave II, a faint smile hidden
beneath a Mandalorian helmet, Boba Fett said, You don't eat a barve like
that all at once. I see . . . I suppose I shall see you again, then. You
can count on it, said Boba Fett. His hands danced across the instrument
panels. The thrusters caught fire; light washed once more over the Great
Pit of Carkoon-- A dark spirit arose into the night.