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Star WarsBoba FettBook 3Maze Of Deceptionby Elizabeth HandPROLOGUEThe 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 messageis 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'sfighting 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 TWOAargau 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... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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