The Fight to Survive (2 page)

Then he reached down into the bowl and picked up one of the sea-mice. The sea-mouse made it easy, grabbing Boba’s fingers with his tiny paws.

Maybe he knows I’m not going to feed him to the eel
, Boba thought. But no, each of the others had looked at him in exactly the same way, right before he had dropped them into the
eel’s tank.

This one has it right, though,
Boba thought.
I have to make him gone, but I can do it another way. I am going to give him his freedom.

That was the plan, anyway.

Boba took the sea-mouse into the hall, down the turbolift, and out to the courtyard behind the apartment building.

He set him down in the weed garden. “So long, little sea-mouse,” he said. “You’re free.”

The sea-mouse looked up at Boba, more terrified than happy.
Maybe he doesn’t know what freedom is
, Boba thought. Boba gave him a push with his fingertips, and the tiny creature
disappeared into the tall, rain-wet grass. A little wave of movement in the grass showed where he was going.

Then a bigger wave intersected it.

Boba heard a tiny scream—then silence.

That afternoon Boba went to the library. It always made him feel better to go to the library.

Well, not always, but often.

He stuck the books he was returning into the slot. The light came on, and Whrr whirred and clicked. “Boba!” he said. “How’re you feeling?”

“Not great,” said Boba. He told Whrr what had happened with the sea-mouse.

“Not great,” agreed Whrr, “but at least you tried. Life is hard on the weak and the small, I guess.”

“What do you mean, you guess?” asked Boba. “Don’t you know?”

“Not really,” said Whrr. “That’s why I stay in here, out of the way.” He whirred his change-the-subject noise. “Ready for some new books? Did you actually
finish these?”

“Mostly,” said Boba. “I like to read about navigation and starship flying.”

“You are reading faster,” said Whrr, passing the new books through the slot. “That’s good!”

“Why is that good?”

“You can read more books!”

Boba had to laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” Whrr asked. He sounded a little offended.

“My dad says, if you are a pilot, everything looks like a ship,” said Boba.

“So?”

“So, Whrr, if you had your way, everybody would read books.”

“So? I don’t understand what’s so funny about that,” Whrr said, with a disapproving click.

“Never mind, see ya later!” Boba said, and he took his books and ran.

Time to get rid of another sea-mouse.

Boba woke up determined to try to do the right thing this time. He gave the eel all his breakfast. The eel ate it in one gulp.

There were only two sea-mice left in the bowl. They both looked up at him with their little brown eyes pleading.

“I have to make you gone,” Boba said as he picked one up. “But I’m not going to feed you to the eel. I’m going to set you free for real.”

He locked the apartment door and took the turbolift down to the street. He stuck the sea-mouse inside his shirt so no one could see it.

It seemed to like it there. When Boba pulled it out it was sleeping.

He held it out in the rain as he walked toward the edge of Tipoca City. He wanted to watch its paw turn into a flipper, but it only turned halfway.

I guess it takes seawater
, Boba thought, heading toward the sound of the waves.

Tipoca City is built on a platform over the sea. Huge waves boom and bang and crash, day and night. Kamino is called the “Planet of Storms.”

Boba hung onto the railing and leaned over the edge of the platform. He looked down, waiting for a lull in the waves.

Finally, there it was—a long green stretch of smooth water. It looked perfect for a little sea-mouse!

“You’re free, little buddy,” Boba said as he dropped the tiny creature into the water. The sea-mouse stared up as it fell, as if it wanted one last look at its benefactor, its
protector, the great giant Boba who had rescued it from its bowl….

It hit the water with a little
plunk
.

Then Boba saw a dark shape in the water, and a flash of teeth from below.

And the sea-mouse was gone.

Not even a stain on the water was left.

Boba spent the rest of the day playing hologames and staring out the window into the rain. He was tired of books. He was tired of reading about happy families and kids with
friends. And pets.

He was tired of being home alone.

He missed Zam’s jokes (even the dumb ones). He missed his father’s sayings (even the ones he had heard a million times).

The next morning he picked up the last sea-mouse out of the bowl. “Sorry, buddy,” he said as he dropped it into the eel’s tank. “It’s just the way the world
works.”

Then he sat down to eat his own breakfast and wait for his father and Zam to get home.

All day Boba was excited, waiting for a certain sound.

Or a bunch of sounds.

Finally, late in the afternoon, there they were: a symphony of little clicks and clacks, all coming from the locks that hung on the apartment door.

Then the door slid open, and there was Jango Fett, looking strong and bold in his Mandalorian battle armor, standing in a puddle of rainwater in the hall.

“Dad!” Boba said. “Where’s Zam?”

“Later,” his father said.

Jango Fett took off his battle armor and laid it out on the floor of the bedroom while Boba watched. He called it “the suit.” He was much smaller without it.

Jango’s face under the helmet was sad and grooved with old scars. The face on his helmet was ruthless and cruel. Boba never wondered which was his father’s “real” face.
Both were real to him: the worried father, the fearless warrior.

“Where’s Zam?” Boba asked again.

“Why are you asking all these questions, son?”

“I have a joke to tell her.” He didn’t really, but he figured he could always think of one.

“You’ll have to save it for somebody else.”

Somebody else? There wasn’t anybody else! But Boba knew better than to argue with his father.

“Okay,” he said. He hung his head to hide his disappointment and started to leave the room. He could tell his father wanted to be alone.

“Zam won’t be around anymore,” Jango said.

Boba stopped at the door. “Ever?”

“Ever,” said Jango.

Only the way he said it, it sounded like
never
.

When Jango Fett wasn’t wearing the Mandalorian battle armor, he wore regular clothes. Without the helmet, few recognized him as Jango Fett, the bounty hunter.

The armor was old and scarred, like Jango Fett himself. He always took it off and cleaned it after returning from a job, but he never polished it. He left the scratches alone.

“You don’t want it to shine,” he told Boba as they worked together cleaning the armor later that afternoon. “
Never call attention to yourself.
”

“Yes, sir,” Boba said.

Jango Fett’s face seemed even sadder and older than usual. Boba wondered if it had to do with Zam.

Finally he got up the courage to ask.

“She was about to betray us,” Jango said. “It couldn’t be allowed. There are penalties. She would have done the same if it were me.”

Boba didn’t understand. What was his father trying to tell him? “Did something bad happen to Zam?”

Jango nodded slowly. “Being a bounty hunter means you don’t always make it home. Someday the inevitable will happen. And when it does…”

“What does
inevitable
mean?” Boba asked.

“Inevitable means a sure thing. Death is a sure thing.”

Suddenly Boba got it. “Zam is dead, isn’t she, Dad?”

Jango nodded.

Boba fought back tears. “How—how did it happen?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Boba felt sadness wash over him like a wave. Followed by a colder wave of fear. If it could happen to Zam, could it happen to his father?

Boba didn’t want to think about that. His dad was right: He didn’t want to know.

After he had finished helping his father clean the battle armor and reload the weapons systems, Boba went out and walked all the way down to the end of the street and back.

Zam, dead. No more dumb jokes. No more bright laughter. Boba Fett’s lonely world had just gotten even lonelier.

Kamino is a good planet for feeling sad because it’s always raining. When you’ve been in the rain, nobody can tell you’ve been crying.

When Boba got back to the apartment, he saw that his father had been walking in the rain, too.

Funny
, thought Boba.
I didn’t see him out there.

After supper, Jango Fett said, “Boba, listen up.”

Boba listened up.

“What happened to Zam could happen to any of us. To any bounty hunter. Do you understand?”

Boba nodded—but his nod was a lie. He was determined
not
to understand. He had promised himself
not
to think about it. He couldn’t imagine it, anyway. Who or what
could get the best of his father in a fight?

“Good,” said Jango Fett. “So, son, I want you to take this.”

Jango handed Boba a book.

Boba was shocked.
My dad?! A book?!

Jango seemed to know what Boba was thinking. “It’s not a book, son,” he said. “It’s a message unit, from me. For you, when the time comes.”

Not a book? It looked like an ordinary book, about two fingers thick, with a hard cover. It was black, with nothing on the cover. No words, no pictures. Nothing, front or back.

Boba tried to open it but the pages seemed stuck together. He pulled harder on the cover, and his father shook his head.

“Don’t open it,” Jango said. “Because when you open it, your childhood will be over. And it is too soon for that. I want you to have what I never had: a
childhood.”

Boba nodded. Though he was confused. Why had his father given him a book if he didn’t want him to open it?

Then his father told him:

“If something happens to me, you should open it. It will tell you what you need to know. Who to ask for. Who to avoid. What to do. What not. Until then, keep it closed, and keep it hidden.
Understand, son?”

Boba nodded. He tossed the black book (that was not really a book) into the pile with his library books. He wasn’t going to need it. Ever. No way. Like, something bad was going to happen
to his father, the fiercest, fastest, most fearless bounty hunter in the galaxy?

No way. Unthinkable. Which simply meant that Boba was
not
going to think about it.

The next day, Boba and his father went fishing. The rain was light, so they sat on a rock at the edge of the sea. Boba took potshots at rollerfish with his pocker, a
laser-aimed spear-thrower. Jango made him turn the laser off and sight by eye.

Boba knew that the fishing trip was his father’s way of trying to make him feel better, so he’d forget about Zam’s death. Boba did his best to concentrate.

He kept on fishing even when Taun We, one of the Kaminoans, stopped by to talk with Jango. She was tall and white, like a root that has just been pulled out of the ground. Her dark eyes were as
big as saucers, her neck long and thin.

Boba usually liked Taun We, but today it was business, business, business. Something about the clones. Boba tried not to listen. He didn’t want to hear about the clone army—his ten
thousand twin brothers. It made him feel creepy just thinking about it.

He was glad when Taun We left, and to prove it, he speared a few more rollerfish. He tried to act excited to please his dad, but the fun had gone out of it.

Boba couldn’t stop thinking about the clones.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Zam.

Boba
did
get excited again, though, when they passed the spaceport on their way back to the apartment. There was a new ship on the landing pad. It was a sleek
starfighter he had only seen in pictures before.

“Wow!” he said. “It’s a Delta-7!”

“And what of the droid?” Jango asked, pointing to the nav unit behind the cockpit.

“It’s an R4-P,” said Boba excitedly. While his father listened, he listed the starfighter’s features. Extra armaments, extra speed—the Delta-7 with the R4-P was the
kind of ship only a few, select pilots could handle.

“Like who?” Jango asked.

“Like you!” Boba said as they hurried home in the rain. He was happy to show off what he had learned from his reading. And even happier to bring a smile to his father’s
face.

But the smile didn’t last. Jango seemed thoughtful. Preoccupied. Even worried.

He went into the bedroom to take a nap while Boba sat down with a reference—
Starfighters of the Galaxy.
He was curious to know how such a sleek ship as the Delta-7 had found its
way to out-of-the-way Kamino, where nothing important or exciting ever happened.

Boba had barely started to read when he heard the door buzz. He and his father didn’t have any friends, especially with Zam gone, so he was surprised.

It was Taun We again. And this time she wasn’t alone. The man standing next to her wore a simple robe and no jewelry. Under his robe Boba could see the outline of a
lightsaber.

A Jedi.

All of a sudden, Boba knew where the starfighter had come from.

Cautiously, he opened the door.

“Boba, is your father here?” Taun We asked.

“Yes.”

Say no more than necessary.
That was a favorite saying of Jango Fett. And Boba knew that it especially applied when the Jedi were around.

“May we see him?”

The Jedi said nothing. Just stood there, watching and listening. Cool and collected. But also a little scary.

Boba tried to be cool himself. “Sure,” he said.

Always be polite. Especially to your enemies.
And the Jedi, as keepers of the peace, were the natural enemies of bounty hunters, who operated outside the law.

Boba stepped back to let them in. The Jedi was looking around as if he had never been in an apartment before.
Nosy!
Boba thought. He decided to ignore him.