[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(121)

The sequence of explosions was faster than the tumbling ship. Before the Hound’s Tooth struck the crane, the dizzying image through the viewport was blotted out by pure white light, as if Dengar had caught a glimpse into the searing heart of a nova star.

Metal ripped apart from metal as the crane dissolved in the blast, its massive struts flaring outward and then spiraling into the vacuum. Through the flames and smoke filling what had been the explosion’s center, the Hound’s Tooth spun into the clear.

Dengar gaped at the cold, bright stars filling his vision. Made it… I made it…

A few quick adjustments with the navigational jets steadied the ship to a level course. Panting, and with his pulse beginning to slow, Dengar let a fragile smile form across his face. He hadn’t been expecting to survive at all; his real intent, he realized now, had been only to keep his corpse from being crushed and incinerated in the wreckage of the Kuat Drive Yards’ construction docks.

Pulling his hands from the grooves on the control panel, he laughed in amazement. “After all that,” he said aloud. “And I’m the one who’s still alive-“

The words inside his head were wiped out by another blinding burst of light. Dengar shielded his eyes with a quickly raised forearm. As the glare faded, he lowered his arm and squinted through the forward viewport. In the distance, another, larger ship-one of the fleet that the Rebel Alliance pilots had been trying to rescue from the construction docks-had not been as lucky as he had been. The other ship’s stern had been engulfed by flames just as it lifted away; one main thruster engine had been destabilized in the blast, and had gone into core overload. The resulting explosion had blown a gaping hole in the ship’s hull, stranding the ship close to the Hound’s Tooth.

Dengar watched, then ducked reflexively as another one of the larger ship’s thruster engines went off. Weakened by the first engine’s explosion, the ship disintegrated, one fireball after another ripping the structural frame to pieces.

He watched, then froze in place, held by what he saw in the viewport. A massive section of the other ship’s hull, larger than the Hound itself, shot away from the fragmented wreckage, its jagged edges trailing white-hot streaks and quick sparks of debris. The hull section spun and swelled in the viewport, heading directly for the Hound’s Tooth.

I guess I spoke too soon …

There wasn’t time to either dodge or swing the ship about and try to outrun the doom heading for it. Dengar didn’t even bother to brace himself as the broken section of the larger ship raced toward him.

It hit, and he was thrown through sparks that stung his face and arms like a swarm of angry insects, into a darkness filled with the shrieks of alarm systems and the even louder clash of metal being ripped apart. For a moment, Dengar felt weightless; then he realized, as his arms flailed behind him, that he had been knocked through the cockpit hatchway and was falling to the cargo hold below. The impact of its grated floor against his spine and the back of his skull brought him right to the point of losing consciousness. He held on, dazed and unable to move, listening as the Hound’s Tooth’s deflector shields collapsed, and the ship began to come apart around him.

He had the cold but genuine comfort that he had at least gotten away from the exploding construction docks. That’s all I wanted, Dengar thought once more. Just so my body could be found… somewhere, by someone…

Another realization struck him. I must be already dead. It couldn’t have happened while he was still alive, that a hand was reaching for him and taking his arm, pulling him up as though from his own grave. And that there would be light, and a face looking down at him; the one face he wanted to see more than any other.

“Dengar!” The vision spoke his name. “It’s me-it’s Manaroo-“

“I know.” Drifting closer to unconsciousness, he smiled up at her. “I’m sorry, though … I’m sorry I’m dead…”

“You idiot.” A real hand, not a hallucination, slapped him across the jaw, jolting him fully aware. “I’ll let you know whether you’re dead or not.”

And then he knew he wasn’t.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Kuat of Kuat turned and regarded the figure that had entered the bridge of the moored Star Destroyer.

“Where else would you be?” Boba Fett’s battle armor was blackened with ash from the fires consuming the constructions docks’ wreckage. “It suits you; this is the biggest ship in the fleet. That makes for a suitably grandiose coffin. Plus-the construction shroud had been obviously torn away before the explosions started. So there wouldn’t be any risk of the Rebel Alliance pilots dropping in.”