FOREWORD.
This is my contribution to the legend that was, BOBA FETT. That is the legend that he was before George (please stop.) Lucas turned him into a New Zealand (no offence to the actor, I would’ve taken that pay cheque too!) joke in the STAR WARS prequels.
I was a shy kid and didn’t have any friends and most of my early teens were spent writing the first three chapters of an uncountable amount of what were sure to be best selling novels, screenplays and short stories. This was also fuelled by the fact that I had insomnia and as I didn’t have porn or cam on demand I would stay up sometimes till dawn… writing.
This is one of the better ones, or maybe one of the more favoured ones, that I pulled outta the folder the other day, dusted off, did a little tweaking and got my English teacher boy friend to proof read. I also thought it would be a good way to start my mate, Baldie’s, STAR WARS month off…
Hope you enjoy.
Tristan.
CALLOW SCARS.
He had only ever been truly amazed three times in his life. The first time was as a child. Hiding from several vicious assailants, crammed under some furniture he watched his entire family brutally killed, skinned and consumed in a bloody mess. Forced to remain silent the entire time lest he reveal himself.
The second time he was much older when he managed to escape the stomach bile of a Sarlacc creature on the planet of Tatooine. Left for dead, it was the same resilient will to survive that he showed as a child that returned to him then as he crawled out of the Sarlacc’s gaping jaws. However the encounter did not leave him unscathed. He now has a slight limp and the upper left side of his body shows barely any resemblance to a human, replaced by wires, metal and electronic workings.
The third was this moment…
Race Finovere of the Charame Alliance moved out of the shadows of his bodyguards and into view of the screaming crowd. Their screams were loud enough to drown out any mans thoughts but not enough to fill the emptiness Race was feeling at that moment. His father who had never left his side in his fourteen years was not with him this morning. For the first time in the young boys life he had disobeyed a direct order of his fathers and come to the planet of Maim…
“There is one reason and one reason alone that I think you must reconsider.” His father said slouched into his favourite old chair. There was one of these favoured chairs in nearly every room of the Palace. His father was steadfast amongst other things. “Maim can not be trusted and your life would be forfeit for political exposure and alliance gain.”
“Father” Race began making his father notice how his sons voice was too aged and confident for such a young boy. “It is because you only see the political side of this visit that you cannot understand that I must go. The alliance cannot rule planets on promises alone. The Empire has scorned these people badly, they need to see my hand extended and unafraid for them to trust us.”
His father looked upon his son with pride but the words he spoke were hard and void of affection. “If you go, you disobey me.” He pushed him self out of his chair and left the room, hiding the hurt in his eyes.
Race turned to look at Jozelle who had been sitting quietly in the corner of his bedroom during his father’s visit. Her tiny eyes were shrouded in a sea of freckles and seemed aloof to what had just transpired. Race knew better. He knew this girl better than anyone else, even his own father.
That night when they made love it had a greater intensity, the passion increased like desperate lovers that knew they would soon be torn apart from one another. Jozelle kept her thoughts to herself though Race knew very well that she agreed with his father. Her silent loyalty was reflected in the tears that rolled down Race’s face as they held each other. He could not tell her what he foresaw but he had a feeling she already knew…
The assignment had been a difficult one but the bounty he would receive for this assassination was greater than he had ever collected. It stunk of the Empire. Not his concern. Politics, leadership, who ruled the galaxy, all had no sway on him. He was alone and had always been. His isolation was his survival.
The young boy he watched address the crowd had power within him. His uncanny intelligence and rapid maturity also made him street smart. He was not the same as other boys and it was what they called, ‘The Gift’ that made him a powerful enemy to those that were not his friends. It was what they all feared the most. Watching him interact with crowd made him think it should be the boy’s confident leadership and persuasion that they should have feared but then maybe the two went hand in hand.
His eyes did not waiver from the boy for a moment. He had patiently waited on the edge of a rooftop for three days. He had ignored the pains that cramped the remaining muscles in his body and the bugs that crawled within his armour. It had taken eight months to get this opportunity. He was not about to fail as many others had.
On his arrival he had soon discovered he was not the only one here to kill the boy. Three allies down in the dirty gutters of the city, Arracmen blood had dried in a hard muddy pool around the large body it had drained out of. These mercenaries were never hard to sniff out but because it was near impossible to kill them, they didn’t care to hide themselves. They had three spinal cords all of which had to be severed and removed in order to kill them. If only a segment of one of these remained in the body it would regenerate itself and the creature to full strength.
His left arm would have been torn completely off had it been human and not machine in the battle they had. Surprisingly there had been no others to challenge him for the prize. Maybe the Arracmen had eliminated his competition before he arrived.
Race finished addressing the people. Their cheers filled his ears. They called out his name and that of the Charame Alliance. The Alliance’s claim on Maim was a crucial one and one that they almost lost to the enforced fear the Empire inflicted upon the planet and its inhabitants. Race knew he had to come here in person. How else would they believe in the Alliance’s strength and their promise to stand with them against the tyranny of the Empire. His father knew this too but even this great gain was not enough to justify the great loss he so feared.
It was also because he knew his fathers fears to be right that he had come to Maim. One side of ‘The Gift’ or so they had called it, was similar to that of premonitions. An understanding of why an event has happened was happening or was to happen. The first time this occurred was as a young child when he watched his fathers favourite steed run free out into the field behind their home. Race knew that the Gormeres, beast like dogs that roamed the woods nearby would have plenty of feed for their young that night. When he warned his father he was dismissed, as Gormere’s were never bold enough to come close enough to their home to ever pose a threat. It was the first time and last time his father did not listen to his son’s warnings. The future was shown to him three other times.
The third was this moment…
Race Finovere came in and out of his aim. He couldn’t use a viewfinder in case the lens reflected in the sunlight that drenched the city from three merciless suns overhead. He had to rely on his keen eye from years of training and practice. The boy’s personal guards were the problem. Four of them flanked the boy creating a square with him in the middle. They each held a deflector sphere and were individually trained to perfection in the use of the device, some as early as four or five years of age. A force field could spiral out from the metal object that fit comfortably in their hand at the speed of light encompassing the diameter of about five feet and strong enough to deflect even an Imperial Ti Fighter blast. These guard’s senses and response times were akin to that of a Jedi. These four men stood in the way of his bounty.
They watched every part of their surroundings, neither one looking in the same direction at the same time and between them all covering every direction. To hope and fire would only alarm them of his presence and nothing more. Only a direct kill would make the guards of the Alliance pause slightly but long enough for him to escape. It had to be a perfect kill. It was what he had been waiting for.
Race was leaving the stand as the dust swamped circular pit chanted his name. Voices from the surrounding buildings joined in. He was going to walk away. Another failed attempt.
It was then that Race did something unexpected. He sidestepped out of his personal guards protection. The movement caused a split second opportunity. That was all he needed. That’s also when he noticed that the boy was staring straight back at him.
They say Race Finovere has two sides to ‘The Gift’. The first being close to that of premonitions but the other is the ability to soul seek. It was known and proven that he could look into the darkest soul and replenish it.
Some superstitions believe that when you are born you pass through what they call a ‘Hall of Souls.’ Here, your life’s essence enters the shell of your body during its existence before returning to this place when you die to continue the cycle. There is also a belief that several beings in history have remained longer in this place as they have passed through, long enough for the two to make an unnatural connection. These few are said to have been able to access this ‘Hall of Souls’ to various degrees, at will. All have been assassinated for this ability. Race Finovere was the last and only known person to have this ability. An ability that the Charame Alliance had gone to great extremes to keep secret for obvious political and religious reasons. A secret can never remain one, it’s the nature of these things and there was a saying, “Look not into the boys eyes. He will look into your soul.”
In that moment Race knew why a gun was aimed at him. That he was part of what had started as revenge for a brutal act and had engulfed the victim and become all the revenged knew how to do. Love had been replaced by desolation. Conscience was replaced by apathy. Race saw all this, he acknowledged the pain that created it and offered to heal it.
As Boba Fett set his panel controls to hyperspace he reflected on the boy he had once been. A boy whose life had been ripped from him and radically changed. Close to the same age the heir of the Charame Alliance had been that day. That he was once human but that he was not so any longer. The dead body of Race Finovere in the dusty town of Maim was evidence that even his soul he had forfeited. There was no regret. No sense of loss.
Race Finovere had stepped out of his guard’s protection for a reason. The same reason that brought him to the planet of Maim. It had nothing to do with the Alliance. He had not known for certain what the outcome would be, that his chest would be blown out and his organs spread several feet from his body, covered in dirt. For this reason he had not told anyone why he had come to Maim. Why he had stepped out of the protection of his guards. For this reason his secret was now his alone.
THE END.
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