[Boba Fett] - 1(9)

“Why are you asking so many questions?” That was Boba’s signal to shut up. His father had his reasons for everything, but he usually kept them to himself.

“You don’t want to know,” Jango Fett said as he hit the button marked HYPERSPACE.

If space was awesome, hyperspace was double awesome.

Double awesome strange.

As soon as Slave I shifted into lightspeed and slipped

into hyperspace, Boba’s head started to spin. The stars were flying past like raindrops. It was like a dream, with far and near twisted together, time and space mixed like oil and water, in swirls.

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.”





CHAPTER EIGHT


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!