[Boba Fett] - 3(2)

“Ready,” said Boba, and he readied himself for their final descent to Aargau.





CHAPTER TWO


Aargau 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 InterGalactic Banking Clan. They’re sticklers for organization and control. So a large part of the habitable portion of the planet is one gigantic pyramid. It’s divided into seven levels. The upper level is the smallest, of course, so security can check all visitors coming and going. Then as you go down, you find administration, then the banks and vaults and treasuries. The merchant and living levels are below these.”

Boba peered down. He could see lines zigzagging across the stepped levels of the pyramid. There were blinking lights, glowing canyons, and brilliantly colored tunnels everywhere across the pyramid’s surface.

“Wow! It’s like a big maze,” he said admiringly.

“That’s right. Droids are programmed to find their way around all the levels, but people can spend years memorizing the access codes and charts, and still get lost. They say that if you get off on the wrong level, you can spend your entire life wandering around and never find your way back to where you started.”