Acrid smoke still bled from the wreckage as Dengar clambered near the pit of Carkoon. Picking his way among fragments, he could see just how bad it had gotten. Not the battle, though that was fierce enough - he'd seen plenty of battles. It was the aftermath that chilled him. Tatooine had legends of night creatures and what they did to the occasional lost soul. He'd never doubt such tales again. Not that he'd spend a day longer here than necessary anyway. If he hadn't been recovering from too much Zeltron spiced wine, he'd have left long ago.

     Still, things had a funny way of working out. Boba Fett never was much of a drinker, and he wanted a front row seat for the execution of Solo and Skywalker. By the time Dengar recovered, the big execution party had left for the only real tourist spot in the system. Word had it Jabba had go out at odd hours just to appreciate his own cruelty.

     Only things went very wrong on this particular trip. After that last garbled message, the castle had been in a panic. Half figured the Tusken's got lucky and were coming to finish the job; the rest bought that Gamorrean's drek about Vader in disguise.

     Any thought of a rescue party died as a timed computer virus crippled the dungeon computers and hundreds of Jabba's worst captives ran amok. Normally Jabba's goons could deal with this in their sleep, only most of them were Krayt dragon food right about then.

     Dengar supposed he could have helped out, but they weren't paying so he wasn't offering. He hid in the empty rancor pit for a few hours 'til the survivors escaped or wreaked what feeble vengeance they still could. Meanwhile, Dengar began scheming.

     It occurred to Dengar that a crimelord as powerful as Jabba would have a lot of wealth lying around. Hmmm...

     By the time Dengar got done sulking around the palace, he'd figured out that most of Jabba's wealth was hidden away on a dozen private residences across the galaxy. Even Jabba's private vaults in the palace were just that - private. Magnetically sealed doors to a vault built out of Dreadnaught hull plating. The only way inside was the ident chip.

     Of course, Jabba would never let something that valuable out of his sight. Dengar figured it was probably on his person when he got killed. There was only one way to find out.

     At first rise, he stole a skiff. Sure, stealing from a Hutt was a bad idea, but nearest he could guess someone had just done considerably worse and gotten away with it. So here he was, in the least pleasant spot in the universe...

     Dengar checked the macrobeast detector one more time, hoping the dust hadn't ruined it already. He was getting some screwy readings, something a hundred meters across and all he could see was sand and crater. Probably a rockmite nest or something. Or something...

     Off in the distance was the burning hulk of Jabba's sail barge. A Jawa sandcrawler had already rolled up to it and the hideous scavengers were already stripping hull plating and half-melted pieces of machinery from the wreck.

     Dengar laughed. Who would've figured Jabba, biggest gangster in the Outer Rim, would end up as one more grave decoration by a used droid sale? Dengar put the skiff in slow and began to close in on the sail barge, readying his blaster rifle. It was time to show the Jawas who was boss. Then he saw the flare. Who else could it be but...

     Revving engines, he skimmed over and saw... Boba Fett. Well, he guessed it was Boba, never seen him without armor or clothes. The way he looked now, that was a habit to keep.

     "Boba, what happened here?"

     "... never... call... me... enhhhh"

     That was Fett all right, near the lip of a crevasse. He looked awful, blistered and covered with some sort of knotted fibrous material, like the inside of a wyykmelon. As Dengar clambered on the ledge, for a second he thought he saw Fett's helmet disappear down a hole over the ledge.

     Fett was still clutching some kind of flare gun, nothing Dengar recognized though. Out just beyond the ledge and a few hundred meters down was a pile of metal shards. Must be a Jawa dumping ground, if there was such a thing. Fett was surrounded by dozens of metal fragments, corroded smooth and shiny.

     Hauling him aboard, he got his first whiff and nearly dumped Fett right there. That kind of smell made you want to burn your own nose off.

     Pretty soon, they were making good time back. He'd given Fett four stimshots to no noticeable effect, except making the twitching worse. Once he got to the castle, he tried washing him off, but no go. The fiber stuff, whatever it was, had to be cut off with a vibroblade.

     As the medical droids tended to Boba, Dengar could see his wounds more clearly. Those weren't battle wounds; they were sucker marks, like those of the ethersquids of Gyndine, dotting his body.

     According to the droid, they were attach to Fett's arteries and veins. Some sort of blood exchanging going on. No question, Boba had been swallows but the Sarlacc itself.

     Oddly, Fett's seizures were because of exposure of thirst. Fett was apparently well fed, since there were all sorts of food proteins in his blood. The trouble was an allergic reaction to the foreign blood types in his system combined with an industrial-grade neurotoxin. He asked the droid about the blood shifting. The only theory it had was the Sarlacc couldn't digest its own food without help, so it fed its blood into the victims, and the blood fed the victims enough nutrients to keep them alive, so the Sarlacc had a constant food source. Meanwhile, the poor victims rolled around and got slowly dissolved.

     Dengar shivered as the droid droned on, thinking about the genetic samples in Boba's blood. Some of it matched guys Jabba had iced years ago. All that "digested in the belly of the Sarlacc for a thousand years" yakkity yak was true, and Boba had been in the middle of it. It gave him the chills.

     A month later, Fett came out of his coma. Dengar didn't want to think about it when he could hear him discussing escape plans with guys ten years dead. Or ten years-should-be-dead. When Fett was on solid food again, they talked.

     "I thought nobody had ever gotten out of that thing..."

     "They all tried the obvious way out. I didn't. They all went for the opening; I *made* an exit."

     When he finally got his ship into the air, Dengar was relieved. Dengar had tried talking Boba out of going back, but it was no good. Cruising over the Dune Sea, they neared the clearing. A rusted shape was half covered by new sand. They hovered over the only grave Jabba would ever have. Three kilotons was excessive, even by Dengar's standards, but it was good to see Fett being vindictive; it showed he was getting back to normal.

     As Tatooine faded from the scopes, the nav computer flickered Nar Shaddaa's coordinates while calculating the jump to hyperspace. Dengar saw Fett relax for the first time in weeks. Now it was payback time.