From the book Tales From Jabba's Palace
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.