Shards of Alderaan

4

Space was vast, an infinite pool in all directions … whether up and out of the galactic plane, or deeper inward toward the Core Systems. The galaxy held countless hiding places: planets, asteroid fields, star clusters, gas clouds … even these empty wastelands without stars.

It would take the best of bounty hunters to find any quarry under such circumstances.

And Boba Fett was the best.

He cruised through the wilderness between star systems, all sensors alert, scanning for any sign of his prey. He had dropped out of hyperspace in his ship, the Slave IV, just long enough to take data. On this stop, his sensitive detectors picked up no energy readings, no sign of any ship’s passage within half a parsec. Nothing had crossed this empty no-man’s-land in the past decade.

Grim and persistent, Boba Fett studied readings through the narrow T-slit in his Mandalorian helmet. He nodded, but spoke no word into the flight recorder. Bornan Thul was not here. He would have to search elsewhere. The hunt might be long, but in the end no one could elude Boba Fett. No one.

He clutched the Slave IV’s modified controls—propulsion systems, navigational computers, and acceleration foils that were illegal in many systems. But Fett paid no attention to legalities. Mere laws did not apply to him. He obeyed his own code of ethics and morality: the Bounty Hunter’s Creed.

Launching his ship into hyperspace again, Fett replayed the holomessage Nolaa Tarkona had sent to him. His assignment for this hunt. Perhaps he might find other clues there. He already knew the message by heart, had listened to it eight times on his journey, but he studied it once more anyway.

Boba Fett carefully observed the female Twi’lek’s face: the folds around her pinkish eyes, the greenish cast of her skin, her pointed white teeth. Nolaa Tarkona’s one green-skinned head-tail dangled from the back of her skull and curled around her shoulders. Her voice was deep and melodious, not the dry, crisp hiss he might have expected from a surreptitious crime lord. Tarkona led a growing political movement known as the Diversity Alliance. Nothing overtly criminal … at least not yet.

Boba Fett did not care about his employer’s politics or her reasons. That was not a bounty hunter’s business. She had set the bounty, and Fett had a job to do.

The hologram spoke. “Boba Fett, your fame has spanned decades and crossed the galaxy—now I offer you the greatest assignment of your career.” The Twi’lek woman stroked her head-tail. Her eyes looked like disks of rose quartz glowing with internal fire.

“Find the man named Bornan Thul, an important trade commissioner from Coruscant. He was a member of the nobility on Alderaan before that planet was destroyed, and he has become a trade negotiator in the New Republic government. I sent him as my intermediary to procure a valuable cargo containing certain information crucial to the Diversity Alliance. He was to deliver that shipment to me at the Shumavar trade conference, where I was scheduled to give a speech. But his ship vanished en route—and my information disappeared with him. Find Bornan Thul. I must have that cargo.”

She leaned forward, her mouth opened in a smile that showed off her jagged teeth. “When Darth Vader hired you to find Han Solo, the bounty was quite substantial. I will pay you twice that if you find Bornan Thul and bring me my cargo. A few other bounty hunters will be searching as well—but you are the best, Boba Fett. I expect results from you.”

Inside his cramped cockpit, Boba Fett switched off the holoprojector and swept his gloved hands through the dissolving sparkles of color as the three-dimensional image faded. “You will have results,” he muttered, his voice loud and raspy in the oppressively silent ship….

Approaching another solar system in which there were no catalogued planets capable of supporting life, Fett dropped out of hyperspace to continue his search. His navicomputer had a map of all star systems in the sector where the trade negotiator had vanished. His data banks were crammed with unusual information and reports, any bit of which might give him a clue that would lead to the discovery of his prey.

Bornan Thul had flown alone in his ship, refusing the standard diplomatic escort to which he was entitled. Secretly checking through New Republic flight records, Fett saw that this was quite an unusual request for Thul. The former Alderaan noble, a fair pilot at best, preferred large escorts and excessive pomp and ceremony. Flying off alone in a supply cruiser seemed highly uncharacteristic for this man.

Fett wondered if Thul had discovered something unusual about the nature of his cargo, or its importance to the Twi’lek political leader’s movement. Boba Fett himself did not know what information the cargo contained. He had only to find it and return it to Nolaa Tarkona.

Fett approached the bleak, uninhabited system—a small double star with three frozen gas planets in distant orbits and two rocky inner planets. After a few moments of scanning, the Slave IV’s sophisticated sensors detected processed metal, faint lubricants, traces of stardrive fuel, and spin-sealed Tibanna gas—a strong enough reading to indicate a whole ship. The source seemed to be located inside the ragged strands of a rocky ring that surrounded the outermost gas planet.

Boba Fett nodded in respect. A good place to hide, and a good system in which to remain hidden. With a bright flare of its sublight engines, the Slave IV homed in on the sensor signal.

Fett had studied the history and family of Bornan Thul, hoping for clues. Understanding his prey was the best way to catch it. The Alderaan noble had a wife, Aryn, who remained under heavy security on her own fleet of trade ships … a brother, Tyko, who kept himself heavily guarded in his administration facilities on the droid-manufacturing world of Mechis III … and one heir, his son. The young man, Raynar, had attended the best schools, studied under the most efficient tutors, and was now enrolled in Skywalker’s Jedi academy. Obviously, Bornan Thul doted on his son and gave the boy everything he desired, with the result that he had worked for nothing in his life.

In fact, Raynar Thul might make a good hostage—if it came to that.

But perhaps it would all end here at this out-of-the-way planet.

Most of Fett’s detector readings were indistinct and scattered due to ionization and outgassing from the broken rocks and ice chunks in the planetary ring. Thul’s ship might have crashed into some ring debris, scattering wreckage in a broad swath. A low, growling sound came from deep within Boba Fett’s throat. The bounty would be cut in half if he found nothing but the wreckage of Thul’s ship. The Twi’lek woman cared only about recovering the information from its cargo.

Fett looked out the Slave IV’s cockpit windowport as he cruised into the swirling strip of rocky debris around the blue and white ice world. Following the sensor signal, he pulled up close to several long chunks of scattered metal: hull plating, blast shields from a space vessel—unmistakably, wreckage from a ship. Recent wreckage.

Fett ran a quick analysis and determined that the hull plating matched that of the type of vehicle Thul had been using. He allowed himself a grunt of disappointment. Perhaps everything had been destroyed, cargo and all, leaving only this debris.

But if that were true, Fett realized, there should have been more mass … much more. His sensors had picked up a signal strong enough to account for an entire ship, and this debris amounted to no more than a hundred kilograms or so. He wondered where the rest could have gone. Maybe the cargo and its “crucial” information remained intact after all—

He reacted with lightning speed as the attacking vessel came around a frozen methane asteroid. Another bounty hunter ship, shaped like a deadly pinwheel star, its laser cannons already taking aim!

Boba Fett sent Slave IV into a spin, twirling away from four rapid-fire laser bolts. The ambushing bounty hunter did not continue to shoot his lasers, powering up an ion cannon instead—which was exactly what Fett would have done. An ion cannon blast would neutralize all power systems on his ship, leaving him dead in space, where his enemy could dissect him at will and strip away his possessions and weapons.

A bounty hunter, a good bounty hunter, always attempted to make efficient use of resources.

Fett’s weapons systems were not engaged. He mentally cursed himself for not having considered the danger while he’d approached the suspicious debris. If he continued to be so foolish, he deserved to die!

This fighter had been lying in wait for him. Perhaps the other bounty hunter had found the debris himself, or perhaps he had actually placed it there as a lure. Or perhaps the enemy had destroyed Bornan Thul’s ship.

As Boba Fett zipped and dodged, the attacker came on, clearly holding the upper hand. Fett tried to accelerate, ducking in and around the rocks of the planetary ring, but he knew that was merely a delaying tactic. He had no chance of evading pursuit when his attacker was this close.

A message came over his comm system. “Boba Fett, I recognize your ship. This is Moorlu—the bounty hunter who’s going to destroy you.” The enemy chuckled, a low phlegmy laugh. “I will display your helmet as my trophy!”

“I’m not a trophy yet,” Fett muttered. Planning the best way to defeat his overconfident opponent, he took a desperate gamble.

Boba Fett allowed himself to be hit.

The ion blast rippled against the Slave IV’s hull, frying his electrical systems, leaving him dead in space, so that he drifted around the gaseous planet, apparently helpless.

Apparently.

“Got you, Boba Fett! Now I can take care of you, steal everything you own—and use it to chase down Bornan Thul.”

Moorlu, you talk too much, Fett thought, as the comm system shut down.

Dangling in the arms of zero gravity, without ship’s power, he waited as the other bounty hunter’s pinwheel ship approached like a spider-rat to disassemble its prey.

Moorlu didn’t notice the pneumatic launcher mounted at the rear weapons hatch of Slave IV.

Boba Fett cranked the launcher by hand, using mechanical systems only. He waited patiently to take his only chance. At least the comm system had shut down, so he didn’t have to listen to Moorlu’s obnoxious gloating.

When the ambushing bounty hunter’s ship came close enough for a ballistic launch, Fett aimed by sight and triggered the spring release. A torpedo dart filled with concussion explosives flew across space as if spat from a slingshot.

Boba Fett’s aim was true.

The high explosives penetrated Moorlu’s hull, ripping out the fuel pods beneath the pinwheel engines, setting up a detonation that left Moorlu dead in space. Literally dead in space.

Fett despised bounty hunters that were too easy to kill, but he supposed it cleared the playing field of amateurs….

It took Boba Fett four standard hours to realign his electrical systems, power them up again, and purge the bad signals from his memory banks. Moorlu’s ion cannon had done significant, but not irreparable damage.

Finally able to get down to the business of searching for his real quarry, Fett returned to the scraps of hull metal he had found earlier. He used a tractor beam to haul the shrapnel into his cargo bay, then carefully analyzed the burned edges and each outer surface. Surprisingly, the scrap hull plates contained a sequence of identifying serial numbers, enough to prove that this debris had unquestionably come from Bornan Thul’s ship.

But he still couldn’t find enough wreckage to account for the entire craft. If the vessel had exploded here, there should have been more debris.

No, the amount and the placement of the debris seemed too convenient, too calculated, too easy. He had found only one large piece of metal—and it just happened to contain a crucial serial number? Yes … convenient.

Fett analyzed again and found that all the scraps had been carefully removed. Nothing was vital. An engine cowling could easily be replaced, and the bits of exterior hull had no doubt been stripped away from a portion of the vessel that already had double plating, or from some area that could afford to be weakened.

Fett stood up from the pitted pieces of hull metal. Bornan Thul had planted this debris here on purpose, hoping to convince pursuers that his ship had been destroyed in the planetary rim…. If the ruse had been successful, Nolaa Tarkona would have had no choice but to believe her cargo lost and call off the entire bounty hunt.

Boba Fett crawled forward into the cockpit, quite pleased with himself for unraveling the ruse. This Bornan Thul was proving to be a much more challenging quarry than he had anticipated.

He would enjoy hunting the man down.