[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(36)

Fett saw that the stormtrooper still had enough of his wits about him, despite the battering he had taken in the explosions that had ripped through the cargo hold, to clamp his mouth shut and hold in the life-restoring breath he had been given. Bearing Voss’on’t up, with one arm wrapped around him, Boba Fett dragged the unresisting figure through the smoke and toward the ladder leading up to the cockpit area.

The ladder still stood upright, though it swayed when Boba Fett put a hand upon one of the metal treads. Looking past the threads of smoke sifting toward the hull’s air leaks, he could see that one of the upper attachment points had been ripped loose by the laser-cannon bolt’s impact; the entire bulkhead behind the ladder had buckled nearly in two, as though crumpled in a giant fist.

A screech of tormented metal sounded, barely audible through the dinning layers of system alarms, as Boba Fett mounted the ladder and began the laborious process of carrying the barely conscious stormtrooper toward the cockpit. With Voss’on’t’s weight balanced precariously against himself, each higher tread he stepped upon threatened to break the ladder’s single remaining weld with the bulkhead above. If the ladder was to come crashing down, once he and his awkward burden were at the halfway point, the fall would be enough to send both of them plummeting through the broken grating below and into the smoldering pit of the main engine compartments. Boba Fett knew he wouldn’t be climbing out from there. With that much lethal hard radiation going unshielded, no one could.

The weld point broke just as Boba Fett reached for the top rung.

For a split second, the ladder swayed clear of the

bulkhead, overbalanced by the combined weight of Fett and his hard merchandise. With Voss’on’t’s chest pressed against one shoulder, Boba Fett bent his knees into a tense crouch. The edge of the hatchway to the cockpit area drew farther away from his upraised hand. Lungs burning, fingers straining clawlike, he pushed his legs straight, leaping for the metal ridge above him.

His fingertips caught hold of the hatchway’s curved lower rim. The stormtrooper’s weight slipped in the grasp of Boba Fett’s other arm; dangling alongside the crumpled bulkhead, he squeezed his hold tighter around Voss’on’t’s chest, his own fist locked under the edge of the other’s shoulder blade, tight enough that he could feel the ends

of

the stormtrooper’s broken ribs grind against one another.

The only device that Boba Fett had left that would be of any use was the wrist-mounted arrow-dart with its trailing, tethered line coiled along his forearm. Right now, that arm was the one holding up Voss’on’t; he couldn’t do that, and aim and fire the dart. Even with his own carefully trained resources of strength and will, Boba Fett’s grip with his other hand upon the open cockpit hatchway above was beginning to fail, the sharp metal edge scraping slowly, centimeter by centimeter, across the fingertips of his battle armor’s glove.

There was no time for further calculation. Boba Fett loosened his grip upon the renegade stormtrooper. Voss’on’t’s weight slid lower against him as Fett brought his arm vertical and fired the arrow-dart toward the cockpit.

The breath that Voss’on’t had managed to hold now escaped in an involuntary gasp of pain as the tip of the dart scored a red line across his shoulder blade and neck. His torso was jerked higher as the trailing line, penetrating the back of his uniform jacket, gathered up the heavy oil-and bloodstained fabric like a sling beneath Voss’on’t’s arms, dragging him almost a full meter upward. The torn front of his uniform jacket slid across the visor of Fett’s helmet.

Boba Fett felt the trailing line of the dart grow taut, indicating that the barbed metal had snagged onto some anchoring point inside the cockpit. The dart’s built-in circuitry was programmed to both spread its barbs wider upon target contact and alter its final trajectory into a tight loop, giving the head section of the trailing line the chance to magnetically seize and fasten upon itself.

Using the control studs at the base of his battle armor’s glove, Boba Fett hit the arrow-dart’s retract function. The line reaching up into the cockpit went even tighter, as though strung from the ends of a primitive bow weapon. Boba Fett had to grip the line with his upraised hand and strain his bicep muscles against its tension to keep his own weight and that of Voss’on’t’s body from pulling his arm out of its socket.

The miniaturized traction engine embedded in the sleeve of Fett’s armor had been designed only to handle one humanoid-sized burden, not two; he could sense a warning glow of heat against the flesh of his forearm as the dart’s trailing line reeled back, drawing him and Voss’on’t slowly up toward the open hatchway. The ladder fell away from his boot soles, its length clattering against two angles of bulkhead, then falling to the grated floor of the cargo hold. A swirl of red sparks burst up as the ladder slipped through one of the jagged openings and tumbled farther into the ship’s bowels.