Star Wars - [Boba Fett 03] - Maze of Deception (by Elizabeth Hand)

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Star Wars

Boba Fett

Book 3

Maze Of Deception

by Elizabeth Hand

source: IRC

uploaded: 09.I.2006

PROLOGUE

The Dream is always the same. Boba Fett always thinks of it as The

Dream, because it's the only one he ever remembers. The only dream he ever

wants to remember.

In The Dream, his father, Jango Fett, is alive. He is showing Boba how

to handle a blaster. The dull gray weapon is much heavier than Boba thought

it would be.

"Like this," Jango Says. He is not wearing his Mandalorian helmet, so

Boba can see his father's brown eyes, coolly intelligent but not cold, not

when he is looking at his son. When his father holds the blaster it looks

weightless, a deadly extension of Jango's own hand. He hands the weapon to

Boba, who tries hard to keep his hand steady as he holsters it.

"Always make certain your grip is tight," Jango goes on, "or else an

enemy can knock it from you. Like this - "

A quick motion and the blaster falls from Boba's hand. Boba looks up

in dismay, expecting a reprimand, but his father is smiling. "Remember, son

- trust no one, but use everyone."

That's when Boba wakes up. Sometimes his father's message is

different, and sometimes the weapon is different. A dartshooter, say, or a

missile. But one thing never changes.

Boba always wakes from The Dream. And his father is still dead.

CHAPTER ONE

"Boba! Downtime's over! I need you - we're in final approach."

Boba looked up groggily from where he d been asleep in Slave I's

cockpit. Beside him, where once his father would have sat at the starship's

controls, the bounty hunter, Aurra Sing was hunched over the console. She

was staring at the Screen. It was filled with symbols that were meaningless

to Boba Fett - - the coordinates of their precise destination remained

scrambled.

"Yes!" Aurra! Sing murmured triumphantly. "We're almost there."

She looked aside at, Boba. Quickly he turned away. He wasn't supposed

to know where they were going.

That was part of the deal. Aurra Sing would bring the two of them

here, following the coordinates she had discovered in Slave l's databank.

The coordinates were part of a complex system - a treasure map, really -

that detailed where Boba's father had stored a vast fortune in credits and

precious metals, all across the galaxy.

Jango Fett had been a bounty hunter - an extremely successful bounty

hunter. He had been an extremely clever one, too. Trained as a great

Mandalorian warrior, Jango had learned the most important lesson of all:

Prepare for the worst. And so he had made certain that his young son, Boba,

would have access to his fortune after his death. The fortune could never

be obtained by anyone else, because the access code was programmed so that

only Boba's retinal scan and DNA could obtain it. Since Boba was the sole

unaltered clone of his father, he and he alone shared Jango's pure genetic

material.

But Boba did not know where the fortune was. Only Aurra Sing knew

that, because she had accessed the records on his father's ship. The ship

that should have been Boba Fett's now.

Boba looked warily at the person next to him. Her topknot of flaming

red hair brilliant against dead-white skin. Her eyes blazing as twin suns.

"She is one of the deadliest fighters I have ever known," Jango had

told Boba once, years before. "She was trained as a Jedi, but for some

reason she hates them more than she hates anyone in the galaxy - and that's

saying something! Don't ever cross her, son. And above all, don't ever

trust her."

Boba Fett certainly didn't trust her. Who would? Aurra Sing was as

thin and muscular and fine-boned as a Kuat aristocrat, but as deadly as a

Mentellian savrip. She was a solitary hunter and a lethal predator.

Like my father. Like I could be, Boba thought. His glance turned

admiring - though he was too smart to let Aurra Sing see that!

"Get ready for descent," she snapped as she punched in the final

landing codes. "Soon you'll start making yourself useful to me, kid!"

The coordinates were still scrambled. But earlier, while Aurra Sing

was momentarily distracted, Boba had peeked at the screen and stolen a

glimpse of the itinerary data. They were somewhere in the Core Worlds. A

long way from Bespin and Cloud City, where he'd met up with Aurra. Boba

knew about the Core Worlds from overhearing his father's conversations. It

was a good place to buy weapons - a good place to buy anything, now that he

thought about it. Maybe a good place to outfit Slave I - once he got rid of

Aurra Sing.

He didn't know the name of their actual destination, and he couldn't

read the planet's coordinates, but he could see it on the monitor. A

medium-sized planet, as gleaming and faceted as a green-and-gold jewel. He

glanced at Aurra Sing, but she was busy with the landing program. He looked

back at the planet on the screen. A string of unintelligible numbers and

letters scrolled across it, and then a single phrase that he could

understand.

AARGAU. LANDING ACCESS GRANTED.

Aargau. So that's where they were going.

Too bad I've never heard of it. Boba sighed. The landing restraints

chafed his arms. When he tried to get more comfortable, Aurra Sing glared

at him.

"You want to get out now?" she said, and gestured at the dumping bay.

"It can be arranged!"

Boba gritted his teeth, forcing himself to smile apologetically.

"Sorry."

Don't trust her, his father had said. But Boba had struck a deal with

her. He had agreed - reluctantly - to split the treasure with her, fifty-

fifty.

He had no choice. He had no money, no credits, no possessions except

for his flight bag, his father's Mandalorian helmet, and Slave I. He had no

friends out here, wherever here was. And he had no friends anywhere. Even

when he had the chance of having a friend, he soon lost it.

He had only himself to rely on: an eleven-year-old with his father's

training, his father's split-second reflexes, his father's fighting

instincts - and his own talent for survival.

"Ready?" barked Aurra Sing. It was a command, not a question.

"Ready," said Boba, and he readied himself for their final descent to

Aargau.

CHAPTER TWO

Aargau wasn't the first planet Boba Fett had ever visited, or even the

second. For a kid, Boba had seen a lot of planets in a short time. There

was gray, cloud-swept Kamino, his homeworld, where months could pass and

you'd never see anything but sheets of silvery rain, and hear nothing but

the pounding of wind and water. There was Geonosis, a vast desert planet

that glowed beneath its orange rings, where Boba had buried, his father;

and Bogden, a small planet orbited by so many moons it looked like part of

a gigantic game of Wuur-marbles.

And there was the Candaserri The Republic troopship Candaserri wasn't

a planet, of course, but it had seemed almost as big as one to Boba. On

Candaserri he'd run into the hated Jedi, though not Mace Windu, the Jedi

Might who had killed Boba's father.

Still, except for the Jedi, Candaserri hadn't been so bad. It

certainly wasn't as disgusting as Raxus Prime, the galaxy's toxic dumping

ground, where Boba Fett had last encountered the Count. He always thought

of him as "the Count," because the Count had two names - Tyranus and Dooku.

Boba's father had always told his son, "If anything should happen to me,

find the Count. He'll know how to help you."

As it turned out, the Count had found Boba first. The Count hired

Aurra Sing to bring Jango Fett's son to him - for safekeeping, the Count

assured Boba. Aurra Sing had kept Slave 1 as part of her payment, which

Boba didn't think was fair - it had been his father's ship, and by rights

it should be Boba's ship now.

But you didn't argue with the Count, any more than you argued with

Aurra Sing.

Not if you expected to live, anyhow, Boba thought as he waited for

Slave I to make its landing on Aargau. The Count was a tall, imperious man

with icy eyes. Like Aurra Sing, he had been trained as a Jedi - although

unlike Aurra Sing, the Count had finished his training and had once been a

Master - which made him even more dangerous. And like Aurra Sing, the Count

now hated the Jedi.

When Boba first heard his father talk about the Count, Jango referred

to him as Tyranus. It was Tyranus who had recruited Jango Fett as the

source for the great clone army created on Kamino. In appearance, every

clone trooper resembled Jango Fett as an adult.

But only Boba Fett resembled his father as a real boy. Unlike the

clone troopers, Boba's DNA had not been genetically enhanced. He grew at a

normal rate, not at the accelerated rate that the clones did. Boba thought

the clones were sort of creepy. They were cool, because they could fight

better than any droid army, but they were strange, too, because they looked

so much like his father.

The Count was even creepier. Especially since Boba knew the Count had

two identities.

Tyranus had created the clone troopers now used by the Republic, while

Dooku was on the side of the Republic's enemies: the Separatists. Two men

on opposing sides - but they were both the same person!

And only Boba Fett knew that. He smiled now, thinking of it. Knowing a

secret is power, his father had always told him. But only if it remains

your secret.

"Ready," muttered Aurra Sing. Around them the starship shuddered with

the force of reentry. "And - now!"

Through the screen in front of them he had his first glimpse of

Aargau. The planet's surface was invisible. All he could see was one

single, impossibly huge pyramid, rising like an enormous shining steel

spike from the mists of cloud far, far below.

"What's that?" asked Boba in awe. He had never seen an artifact that

vast. "Is it - is that where people live?"

Aurra nodded. "Yes. Aargau is run by the Inter-Galactic Banking Clan.

They're sticklers for organization and control. So a large part of the

habitable portion of the planet is one gigantic pyramid. It's divided into

seven levels. The upper level is the smallest, of course, so security can

check all visitors coming and going. Then as you go down, you find

administration, then the banks and vaults and treasuries. The merchant and

living levels are below these."

Boba peered down. He could see lines zigzagging across the stepped

levels of the pyramid. There were blinking lights, glowing canyons, and

brilliantly colored tunnels everywhere across the pyramid's surface.

"Wow! It's like a big maze," he said admiringly.

"That's right. Droids are programmed to find their way around all the

levels, but people can spend years memorizing the access codes and charts,

and still get lost. They say that if you get off on the wrong level, you

can spend your entire life wandering around and never find your way back to

where you started."

Cool! thought Boba. He glanced furtively at Aurra Sing. Once he had

his share of his father's fortune, maybe he could lose Aurra in this

planetary labyrinth, regain control of Slave I - and regain his freedom,

too. He felt in his pocket for the book his father had left him. It was the

possession that Boba treasured above all else, except for his father's

Mandalorian helmet.

The helmet was safe in Boba's sleeping area. But the book he had

recently decided to keep with him always. It contained information and

advice that his father had recorded for him. In a way, it was like having a

link to his father, even though Jango Fett was dead.

But Boba didn't want to think about that. Once he had made certain the

book was where it should be, he turned his attention back to the screen.

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