[Boba Fett] - 3(22)

Boba took one last deep breath. He forced his legs through the trapdoor, then his chest and his shoulders. He slid down, his hands holding the wood panel above him. Beneath him he felt nothing, just raw empty space, black as the air above the Undercity. For an endless horrible moment he hung there, suspended between the floor above and nothing below. Then, with a gasp, he tugged the floor board back into place. It shut without a sound. His fingers slipped from the bare wood. His arms flailed at the air. And without a sound, Boba fell.





CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


It seemed he fell forever in that close, hot darkness. In reality, it was just seconds.

“Ow.” With a dull thud, he hit the ground. For a moment he lay there, catching his breath. He stared up. Perhaps three meters above him, he could just make out a black square bounded by four thin weakly shining lines.

The trapdoor.

Would Aurra notice it? Boba wasn’t going to wait and find out. Very carefully he stood, blinking as his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness. From overhead he could hear the sounds of the Hutts’ den, somewhat muffled now. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, he found that he could see a little bit. The faint light from around the trapdoor showed him that he was in a tunnel. It stretched before him and behind him. He turned and peered into the blackness.

Which way should he go?

Above him he heard the scrape of booted feet upon the floor.

Aurra.

Boba chose to go forward - and fast. As quickly and carefully as he dared, he walked, his hands held before him. Now and then he shuddered as something dank and stringy touched his face or hands.

Cobwebs - at least, he hoped they were just cobwebs. Sometimes he thought he heard something skittering underfoot, a dry, rasping sound as of many tiny legs. And after several minutes of feeling his way through the dark, he heard something else as well.

Voices.

They came from somewhere ahead of him. Boba noticed that the tunnel seemed to be growing lighter. Instead of blackness, he was now surrounded by dark gray, like smoke. And now he could see that there were other tunnels branching off from this one. All stretched off into utter blackness. From some of them faint scurrying and chittering sounds echoed.

Boba shivered. If he had taken one of those paths by mistake, he might have wandered down here forever. He didn’t want to think about what might live in them. And behind him he heard no footsteps following. There was no sign that Aurra Sing had come after him. He had managed to escape her again.

Maybe his luck was holding out, after all.

The light came from straight ahead, directly in front of him. Boba hurried toward it. He was so intent on getting there that he did not hear the soft clatter of many tiny feet in the tunnel behind him.

Just a few feet before him the passage abruptly ended. A pale square of light glowed on the floor. Boba looked down, and saw a small grille set into the ground at his feet. Through it he could make out dim shapes in a room below him.

“You are certain we are safe here?” a voice asked in the room below.

“Absolutely,” a very deep, slow voice responded. It laughed, a horrible, hollow sound. “Hoh, hoh! My uncle himself has seen that this place is secure. No one can get here without our knowledge.”

Boba’s eyes widened. He was gazing into a secret chamber! The grille must have been put there to aid in spying. Boba slowly lowered himself, until he was kneeling and peering over the very edge of the grille. He was careful to stay back, in case someone happened to look up at the ceiling.

“That is good,” the first voice said. Boba blinked. After the darkness of the long tunnel, it was hard to get used to the light again. But after a few seconds he could see more clearly.

And what he saw made his breath catch in surprise.

In the room below, a tall, skeletally thin figure sat in a large chair. To either side of him, armed guards stood. They were not clone guards, or droids, either. These were muscular humanoid figures, in drab gray uniforms with blasters slung at their sides. The figure they guarded was San Hill.

“It is in your uncle’s interest to support our cause,” said the head of the Banking Clan. “Count Dooku has assured me of that.”

Boba had to squint to get a good look at the other figure in the room. It was big - huge in fact. A vast, mounded, sluglike body, reclining upon an even vaster chair like a throne. It had tiny, weak-looking arms and a long, fat tail. Layers of fat cascaded beneath its wide, froglike mouth. It was surrounded by guards as well. Boba swallowed nervously.

Was this Jabba the Hutt? If so, he was even more disgusting than his father had described him as being.

The sluglike creature shook its head. “My uncle will make up his own mind,” he said in his booming voice. “He will not be hurried, even by Count Dooku.”