The Fight to Survive (4 page)

Boba dozed off, because even strange becomes tiring when
everything
is strange.…

Boba dreamed he was meeting the mother he had never had. He was at a big reception in a palace, and he was alone. It was like a story in a book. There was someone coming toward him, making her
way through the crowd. She was beautiful, in a white dress. She was walking toward Boba, faster and faster, and her smile was as bright as…

“Boba?”

“Yes!?”

“Wake up, son.”

Boba opened his eyes and saw his father at the controls of
Slave I.
They were out of hyperspace, back in “normal,” three-dimensional space.

They were floating. Directly ahead of them was a huge red planet with orange rings.

It was beautiful, but not as beautiful as the vision Boba had seen in his dream, coming toward him across the ballroom floor. Not as beautiful as…Boba felt himself slipping back into his
dream.

“Geonosis,” said Jango Fett.

“What?” Boba sat up.

“Name of the planet. Geonosis.”

As
Slave I
approached Geonosis, it headed toward the rings. Only from a distance were they smooth and beautiful. Up close, Boba could see that the rings were made out
of asteroids and meteors, lumps of rock and ice—space rubble.

Up close they were dangerous and ugly.

Jango’s hands were dancing over the starship’s controls, switching them from autopilot to manual. Flying under the rings would be tricky. As he expertly eased the ship into approach
orbit, he said, “Next time, when we get to a planet that’s easier to land on, I’ll let you fly the approach on your own, son.”

“Really, Dad? Does that mean I’m old enough?”

Jango patted his son on the shoulder. “Just about, Boba. Just about.”

Boba leaned back, smiling. Life was better than dreams. Who needed a mom when you had a dad like Jango Fett?

Suddenly Boba caught a glimpse of something on the rear vid screen. A blip. “Dad, I think we’re being tracked!”

Jango’s smile disappeared. The blip was matching their every turn. A ship on their tail.

“Look at the sensor screen,” Boba said excitedly. “Isn’t that a cloaking shadow?”

Jango switched the sensor screen to higher res. It showed a tracker attached to the hull of
Slave I.

Boba couldn’t believe it. Hadn’t he watched the Jedi slide into the stormy sea of Kamino? How could the Jedi have survived to follow them?

“He must have put a tracking device on our hull during the fight,” said Jango, with the steel of determination in his voice. “We’ll fix that!”

Boba was just about to ask
how,
when his dad pushed him back into his seat.

“Hang on, son. We’ll move into the asteroid field. He won’t be able to follow us there. If he does, we’ll leave him a couple of surprises.”

Into the asteroid field! Boba felt a cold touch of fear as his father pulled back on the controls and
Slave I
slid upward, into the ring itself.

Jagged rocks zipped past, on either side. It was like flying through a forest of stone.

Boba couldn’t look. And he couldn’t not look, either. He knew that if they hit one, they were dead.

Obliterated.

Erased.

They wouldn’t even leave a ripple on the galaxy.

Then Boba told himself:
Stop worrying. Look who’s at the controls!

Boba kept his eyes on his father. The asteroids were still zipping past
Slave I
but they didn’t seem quite as scary.

Jango Fett was at the controls.

Boba relaxed and checked the rear viewscreen. “He’s gone,” he told his father.

“He must have gone on toward the surface,” Jango replied.

Suddenly the image on the viewscreen wavered with a rogue signal. In the static Boba saw a familiar outline.

The Delta-7.

“Look, Dad, he’s back!”

Jango calmly hit a button on the weaponry console marked
SONIC CHARGE: RELEASE
.

Boba looked back and saw a canister drifting toward the Jedi starfighter.

He grinned. So long! The Jedi was doomed….

And so was Boba. Because when he turned back around in his seat and looked forward, he saw nothing but stone.
Slave I
was heading straight for a huge, jagged asteroid!

“Dad! Watch out!”

Jango’s voice was quiet and cold as he pulled
Slave I
into a steep climb, barely missing the killer rock. “Stay calm, son. We’ll be fine. That Jedi won’t be able
to follow us through this.”

That was the plan, anyway. But the Jedi had other ideas. As his father deftly guided
Slave I
through the asteroid field, Boba kept his eyes on the rear screen.

“There he is!” he cried.

The Jedi starfighter was still there, right on their tail. It was as if it were tied to
Slave I
.

Jango shook his head grimly. “He doesn’t seem to be able to take a hint. Well, if we can’t lose him, we’ll have to finish him.”

Hitting a button, he turned the starship and headed straight toward another asteroid, even bigger than the last one.

Only this time, he didn’t pull up. Instead, he flew straight toward the jagged surface.

Boba couldn’t believe it. Was his own father trying to kill them both? “Watch out!” he cried.

He closed his eyes, waiting for the explosion.
So this is what it’s like to die
, he thought. He felt amazingly calm. He wondered how badly it would hurt when they hit. Or would it
just be like a flash of light? Or…

Or nothing.

With Jango Fett at the controls,
Slave I
never slowed, never hesitated.

It looked like certain death.

The ship dove straight down into a narrow canyon on the asteroid’s surface.

At the bottom was a cave, with an opening just big enough for a small starship turned on its side.

Just barely big enough…

Something was wrong.

Nothing had happened. Boba was still alive.

He opened his eyes.

He saw rock everywhere. His dad had flown full speed into a hole in the asteroid, and now
Slave I
was speeding through a narrow, winding tunnel.

But going slower and slower.

At least we’re still alive,
thought Boba
. But if the Jedi is chasing us, why are we slowing down?

He soon found out. The tunnel went all the way through the asteroid. When
Slave I
emerged from the stone passage, it was right behind the Jedi starfighter.

The hunted had become the hunter.
Slave I
was on the Jedi’s tail.

It was the coolest maneuver Boba had ever imagined. He could hardly control his excitement.

“Get him, Dad! Get him! Fire!”

Boba didn’t have to tell his father. Jango Fett was already blasting away. On every side of the Jedi starfighter deadly lasers were stitching streaks of light through the blackness of
space.

“You got him!” Boba cried, when he saw the Jedi starfighter rocked by an explosion.

A near-miss, but not a kill.

Not yet.

“We’ll just have to finish him!” said Jango. He reached up to the weaponry console and, with two quick flicks of his wrist, hit two switches:

TORPEDO: ARM

and then

TORPEDO: RELEASE

It was
Slave I
’s turn to rock as the torpedo kicked out of the hull and locked onto the Jedi starfighter.

Boba watched, fascinated. The Jedi was good, he had to admit. He zigged, he zagged, he tried every kind of evasive maneuver.

But the torpedo was locked on, and closing.

Then the Jedi starfighter flew straight into the path of a huge, tumbling asteroid—

And it was all over.

There was no way to avoid the collision. Caught between the torpedo’s blast and the unforgiving stone, the Jedi starfighter disappeared. Only a trail of debris remained.

“Got him…” Boba breathed. “Yeaaaah!”

Jango’s reaction was more subdued. “We won’t see him again,” he said quietly as he guided the ship out of the asteroids and put it into a descent pattern, down toward the
giant red planet.

Boba had thought Geonosis might be different from Kamino, with schools, other kids, and lots to do.

It was different, all right, but that was all.

On Kamino it rained all the time; on Geonosis it hardly ever rained. Kamino was all sea; Geonosis was a sea of red sand, with big rock towers called stalagmites sticking up like spikes, here and
there, from the sandy desert.

In fact, the planet looked deserted. At least that’s what Boba thought when he first arrived.

Jango Fett landed
Slave I
on a ledge on the side of one of the stalagmites, or rock towers.

Are we going to camp here on this rock?
wondered Boba as the ship settled on its landing struts and the engines died.

Then a door in the stone slid open, and Maintenance Droids appeared to service the ship.

Boba was wide-eyed as he followed his father through the doorway, which turned out to be the entrance to a vast underground city, with long corridors and huge rooms, all connected and lighted
with glow tubes, echoing with footsteps and shouts.

Yet it still seemed empty. The only inhabitants were hurrying, distant shadows. No one greeted them; no one even noticed a ten-year-old tagging along after his father.

As they climbed the stairs toward the apartment they had been temporarily assigned, Jango explained to his son that the Geonosians themselves were drones who worked all the time. Their planet
was a manufacturing center for Battle Droids. “And the people who make the droids aren’t much smarter or more interesting than the droids themselves,” Jango said.

“So why are we here?” Boba asked.

“Business,” said Jango Fett. “
He who hires my hand...
”

“...
hires my whole self
,” finished Boba, grinning up at his dad.

“Right,” said Jango. He rumpled his son’s hair and smiled down at him. “I’m very proud of you, son. You’re growing up to be a bounty hunter, just like your
old man.”

The apartment was high in the stone tower, overlooking the desert. Jango went off to meet with his employer, leaving Boba with a stern warning: “Be here when I get
back.”

After a couple of hours alone in the apartment, Boba knew that his first impressions had been right. Geonosis was boring. Even more boring than Kamino.

Boredom is kind of like a microscope. It can make little things look big. Boba counted all the stones in the walls of the apartment. He counted all the cracks in the floor.

Bored with cracks and stones, he stared out the narrow window, watching the dust storms roll across the plains and watching the rings wheel across the sky above.

Boba wished he had brought some books. The only one he had was the black book his father had given him, the one he couldn’t open. It was in a box with his clothes and old toys, not even
worth looking for.

He’d have to make his own excitement. But how?

Be here when I get back
. That didn’t mean he couldn’t leave the apartment. Just that he couldn’t go very far.

Boba stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him. The stone corridor was dim and quiet. In the distance Boba could hear a booming noise. It sounded almost like the sea on stormy
Kamino.

Could there be an ocean here, on this desert planet?

Boba walked to the end of the corridor and stuck his head around the corner. The booming was louder. Now it sounded like a distant drum.

Around the corner there was a stone stairway, leading down. At the bottom the stairs, another hall. At the end of the hall, another stairway.

Stone steps, leading down, into the darkness. Boba followed them, feeling his way, one step at a time. The farther he went, the darker it got.

The darker it got, the louder the booming. It sounded like a giant beating a drum.

Boba had the feeling he had gone too far, but he didn’t want to turn back. Not yet. Not until he had discovered what was making the booming noise.

Then a last, long spiral staircase ended in a narrow hallway. The hallway ended at a heavy door. The booming was so loud that the door itself was shaking.

Boba was almost afraid to look. He was about to turn back. Then, in his mind, he heard his father’s voice:
Do that which you fear most, and you will find the courage you seek.

Boba pulled the door open.

BOOM

BOOM

BOOM

There was no wild ocean storm, no giant beating a drum. But Boba was not disappointed. What he saw was even more amazing.

He was looking into a vast underground room, lighted by glowing lamps, and filled with moving shapes. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see a long assembly line, where huge metal
machines were stamping out arms and legs, wheels and blades, heads and torsos. The noise was thunderous. The heavy, rust-colored parts, once stamped, were carried on clattering belts to a central
area, where they were assembled by grim-faced Geonosians into warlike Battle Droids, which snapped to attention as soon as their heads were screwed on.

The assembled droids then marched in long lines out of the cavern, through a high, arched doorway, into the darkness.

Boba watched, fascinated. What was the purpose of all these weapons of war? It was hard to believe that there was room in the galaxy for so many Battle Droids and droidekas bristling with blades
and blasters.

He imagined them all in action, fighting one another. It was exciting to think about—and a little scary, too.

“Hey, you there!”

Boba looked up. A Security Droid was hurrying his way, across a cartwalk toward the open door. Rather than explain who he was and what he was doing, Boba decided to do the sensible thing.

He slammed the door and ran.

Be here when I get back
, Jango had said. Boba was just shutting the apartment door behind him when he heard footsteps in the hall outside.

Barely made it!
thought Boba as his father opened the door.