All around were ruined walls and arches, like the remains of a great city that had been buried and forgotten, and was being dug up again.
Boba descended the ridge until he was at the edge of the enormous pit and looked down. Remote diggers and salvage droids rattled and bumped through the muck, far below. Well-armed “spider” droids stood watch at the perimeter of the pit, and Boba saw AAT tanks idling nearby, hovering off the ground. But none of them seemed interested in him.
A lot of firepower for a hole in the ground, especially on the galaxy’s garbage planet. Boba wondered again what could be so valuable, buried in the mire and muck of Raxus Prime?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, a gruff voice said, “Getting close to it, huh?”
Boba jumped. He hadn’t seen the Givin driver, who had stepped out of his drilling vehicle and walked up to stand beside him.
“Guess so,” Boba asked. He didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know what “it” was.
“About time.” The driver bit off a piece of radni root, and offered it to Boba. “Have a chaw?” Boba realized that in his helmet, he was being taken for an adult. Another advantage of his father’s legacy.
“No, thanks, I don’t chew,” he said. Then he ventured: “So that’s it - the treasure?”
“Treasure?” The Geonosian laughed and spat into the pit. “Not unless you call death a treasure. No one’s supposed to know, but the Count is after something called a Force Harvester.”
Boba had heard about the Force. The Jedi used it, his father had told him. But the Count wasn’t a Jedi.
“But don’t mind me,” he said, heading back to his mud-laden craft. “I just work here.”
“Security check!” said a gruff, familiar voice in the near distance. Boba ducked behind a rock just as Cydon Prax strode into view.
“All systems secure?” Prax asked. “No intruders?”
“Who’d intrude on this planet?” asked the driver, swinging up into his seat. “Not exactly a resort.”
“Keep an eye open,” growled Prax. “The Count does not want anyone nosing about his digs. Got it?”
“Got it, got it,” said the driver.
I’d better get out of here, fast! Boba thought. Prax might recognize him, even in his helmet, because of his size. He waited until Prax was out of sight, then started back down the road.
The problem was, the road was too exposed, too narrow. Prax could come along at any moment. Boba decided to take what he hoped was a shortcut. A path veered off through the wreckage, but Boba thought he saw it emerge back by the Count’s base.
After getting off the road and rounding a few bends, Boba realized he’d already gone far. Like most shortcuts, it turned out to be the long way.
CHAPTER SIX
It was hard going. Up one stinking slag heap, and down another.
Boba tried to keep the big tower straight behind him, and the distant light of the door ahead, That would be the shortest, fastest route back to Dooku’s underground lair.
The stinking ground sucked at his boots where it was wet, and crumbled into toxic dust where it was dry.
Raxus Prime was all ruins and debris. Boba passed through forests of broken machinery and shredded wire. He climbed cliffs of soggy, discarded fabric and slid down steep mountainsides of muck. Brown steam spewed from the steep piles, while foul smelling liquids oozed down their sides.
The helmet helped him breathe but it couldn’t mask the smell of the noxious atmosphere. Still, Boba pushed on. He had no choice; he had to beat Prax back to the Count’s lair., Otherwise, the Count might find out he had broken his rules and gone outside. Even though Boba wasn’t sure what he had discovered. The Force Harvester? What was that?
“Ugh!” Boba slipped on a particularly foul-smelling piece of refuse and slid to a stop. He was at the edge of a wide pond of bubbling, greenish-brown liquid. It looked very nasty. A mist rose from the surface that smelled like rotten rikknit eggs.
Unless Boba turned around, the only way through was by way of the pond. He walked straight into the liquid - first one step, then another. The nasty goop sloshed over the tops of his boots, but what did he care? Boba was not going to let anything get in his way. A bounty hunter was not delayed by revulsion.
Boba shook the slime off his boots and trudged up another steep ridge of dripping slag. Even through his helmet, the smell was terrible. But from the top, he could see that the brightly lighted doorway of the Count’s lair was only a few hundred meters away. He was almost there!
There was only another pond to cross, and this one was long and narrow - just a few meters across. Boba slid down another slope slick with oozing slime, to the edge.