Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Boba didn’t make the daily check in.

This was how Sin knew something was wrong, instantly, deep in her gut like a sick lurch. Boba was never late checking in. Ever. His utter punctuality and reliability were some of his better qualities, in her opinion. The information Sin had been looking into about Krayt Dragons suddenly seemed quite unimportant in comparison with this fact.

After the third time she tried to comm him and received no answer, she attempted to hail the comm board at Jabba’s palace; they damn well knew better than to ignore her. That had happened exactly once, and the fate of that di’kut had made a rather stark impression on the rest of the loathsome slug’s henchmen. She doubted that they’d ever gotten the stain out of the wall.

 Sintas Vel was not given to sentimentality. Sentimentality did not tend to make for good long term survival odds in the bounty hunting business, and Sintas had always been good at survival. But there were some places where she indulged it, and this was one of them.  

“Ailyn.” She didn’t have to call very loudly to wake her daughter up; Ailyn had learned well from both her parents. “Come up and strap in. We’re going planetside.”

Ailyn did so without arguing, though with some yawning. “Why?”

“Your father missed check in.”

A pause. “Kriff.” Ailyn’s knuckles tightened on the armrests of the copilot’s chair. At going on eighteen, she was as tall as Sin, and had her coloring, the same fine black hair, though her skin was not as pale and her eyes were Boba’s sharp, cool brown. She’d been setting aside credits, Sin knew, for her own ship, and soon enough would probably be out on her own. The thought sent a little pang through her; so fast, she grew up…

Neither woman said anything else. They didn’t need to. Both knew that there were very, very few things that would keep Boba Fett from his regular check-in, and most of those involved him being physically unable to do so.

Mos Eisley was the largest city on Tattooine, and  it was the preferred hangout of any sentient with less-than-legal business interests who passed through the system. It was, therefore, the best place to get information, be it what was going on forty light years away or at Jabba the Hutt’s court. Sintas disliked the place…not because of the clientele, but because of the climate. She much preferred the cool clean interior of the Slave 1 to the hot parched dust of Mos Eisley.

As they entered atmo, the comm blinked, signaling that they were being hailed. Sin hit the control; if she was lucky, they’d recognized the ship. The Slave 1 rarely had to wait in a spaceport like Mos Eisley for a docking bay; the ship was well known.

She was not lucky. The bored voice of the docking bay employee crackled over the comm system and set her teeth on edge. “Unidentified ship, you are not approaching on an approved vector. Illegally parking crafts outside approved docking bays is subject to a fine of up to…”

“Shut the fek up.” Sintas snarled back. “And save it for someone who cares.”

There was a pause. Another light blinked as the Slave 1 registered an attempt at scanning and automatic countermeasures. Sin deactivated the countermeasures.

The voice came back over the comm, with a significantly different tone to it. “I…ah. Slave 1. We do not have any clear bays at present, my apologies, but…”

Ailyn shut the comm off. Sin set the Slave 1 down outside of Mos Eisley, parking very illegally. There were at least four other ships of varying sorts also parked illegally. Sin knew perfectly well that nothing would be done about it, whatever the spaceport officials threatened.

She ran one last holonet check for news on Jabba the Hutt. Nothing. Right then.

She and Ailyn did not quite pack the arsenal that Boba did, but it was a near thing. She had not been married to the man for nearly twenty years without picking up a few habits, and Sin doubted she ever would caught his eye in the first place if she’d been any slouch herself.

She still thought it had been when he’d disarmed her the first two times and she’d pulled her third hidden blaster and kneed him in the groin on that one job, to be honest. Bruised the hell out of her kneecap, and she’d stomped on his instep instead.

Mos Eisley was as dusty and unpleasant as ever. Sin felt eyes on them as she strode through the narrow streets, and slowed her walk a bit. Figures darted in alleys, and she could almost hear the whispering, and almost smell the wave of gossip spreading. Her face, after all, was well known to most of the criminal underworld of the galaxy.

Hey, she’d heard, more times than she could count. You’re the one who kriffs Fett, right? He really a human under all that armor?

Hey, you’re the one who married Fett, right? How the shavit did you pull that off? The man doesn’t even have feelings, so’s far as anyone can tell…

Hey, girlie, you really fuck Fett? Must be nice, to ride his reputation like that…     

That last one happened often. There’d been many a sentient in the galaxy who suspected her of simply riding on the coattails of Boba’s reputation. Sin knew herself well enough to know that while she was very good, she was still a notch or two below Boba, but it didn’t bother her. She was still better than…well, nearly everyone else in the game, really.

A few sentients had found that out the hard way, when they underestimated her. Sin didn’t mind being underestimated; it often made her job easier.

Right now, she wanted that gossip to spread; that Boba Fett’s wife was here. Because if something had happened…

As she expected, she got her answer as soon as she kicked the door of the nearest bar open and strode inside. Eyes turned, customers of a dozen species took in her appearance, lingering on her tattoos, and whispers started immediately. Those same eyes flicked to Ailyn, a second behind her, and made the same assessment.

“Well.” A voice Sin recognized. She didn’t like the vaguely smug tone of it. “What have we here? Sintas, Sintas…good to see you and your girl again, Sin. So sorry to hear about your old man.”

Sintas turned her head very slowly. Behind her, Ailyn rested a hand on the grip of her blaster.

“And what, Labria.” Sin said coldly, as the Devonian lurched their way; she could smell the intoxicants on his breath from where she stood. “Has happened?”

The Devonian grinned at her. “Normally I charge for information, Sintas. You know tha…”

Sintas drew her blaster. Ailyn did the same.

“…but, as I was about to say, in this case I’ll make an exception.” He tottered closer, looming over her. Sintas held her ground. “Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that they’re a widow, before.”

Sintas’s stomach clenched like a fist. “News to me too.” She said evenly. “Forgive me if I don’t believe it, but this is the third time this decade someone’s told me that Bo is dead, so I tend to take that news with a grain of salt any longer.”

“Shavit, I forgot what a cold little piece of work you are…it’s true, darling.” The grin grew more unpleasant and leering. “Your man made himself some enemies even he couldn’t best, seems. It’ll be rough for you, without him to stick to, but I could be persuaded to take pity on a grieving wido….”

Sintas shot his left kneecap out. Ailyn’s blaster bolt took the right. The information broker went down with a screech, and Sintas slammed the toe of her boot sharply into the side of his head.

“Now.” Sintas said into the resulting silence, broken only by the howls of pain from the floor. “Anyone else want to give that a try, or make stupid fucking assumptions?”

General silence, save for Labria cursing in at least four languages at her feet.

“I thought so. Now, let’s start over again, from the top. What the fek happened with Jabba?” She kicked Labria again, in the blasted and smoking remains of his kneecap.

He howled in agony. “You bitch.”

“Well kriffing spotted. There’s a lot of you that doesn’t have blaster burns yet, you sack of osik, so start talking or I let my girl start with your toes.”

“Fek…” The Devonian whimpered slightly. “Word is that some of the friends of Solo showed up; he had contacts in high Alliance command, including a Jedi kriffing Knight. Skywalker, the Rebellion’s Jedi, they’re saying. Walked in like he owned the place, threatened Jabba in his own court. Jabba decided to throw Skywalker and Solo into the Pit of Carkoon, but the Jedi had backup. Now Jabba the Hutt is dead in the Dune Sea, and Boba Fett, word is, is in the belly of the Sarlacc.”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. They’d heard rumors that Skywalker had turned back up, seemingly in possession of all the skills of the old Jedi, and Solo and Skywalker were known to be friends. “When?”

“News came in this morning, supposed to have happened yesterday afternoon.”

Fuck. If Bo was alive, they were going to a morning and an evening check-in.

If. Sin gritted her teeth, and turned to leave. Ailyn raised an eyebrow at her, and then tilted her head at the wounded Labria. Sin shrugged. Ailyn nodded once, and then fired a single blaster bolt from the hip, apparently nonchalant. It took the Devonian directly through the left eye, and his head hit the extruded composite floor with a very final clunk.

“I don’t appreciate it,” Ailyn said, to the air in general. “When bottom feeding bastards insult my mother.”

Every patron in the bar studiously examined their drinks, not making eye contact. Ailyn and Sin left the corpse smoking on the floor, without looking back.

 Less than an hour later, and the two of them were back on the Slave 1, and tearing across the Tattooine desert as fast as the frankly highly illegal engines would push when flying in atmo. It didn’t take long to cover the distance from Mos Eisley to the Pit of Carkoon; Boba had sunk quite a bit of money into upgrading the Slave 1 over the years, and even in atmo it was a fast ship.

Sure enough, the scanners quickly picked up the wreck of what had once been Jabba the Hutt’s sail barge, now chunks of scrap scattered across the dunes. Smoke was still rising from the rubble in places, and the sick cold feeling in Sin’s gut tightened even more.

“Fuck.” Ailyn said, quietly. “Kriffing hells. That barge had some firepower, and Jabba had plenty of hired protection.”

What she didn’t say, of course, is that some of that hired protection had been her father; Jabba the Hutt was one of the few sentients in the galaxy who could afford to have Boba Fett on retainer as a bodyguard, even for a limited period of time.

Skywalker, the Rebellion’s Jedi, the Devonian had said. Walked in like he owned the place, and threatened Jabba in his own court.

Sin remembered the clone wars. She remembered stories of Jedi. She’d mostly discounted many of the claims as jumped-up propaganda; Boba had even collected some bounties on Jedi in hiding, years ago when there still were a few running around. He still had the lightsabers in a drawer somewhere, as trophies.

And yet, as she set the Slave 1 down on the dunes in the wreckage of what had once been the pleasure barge of one of the richest and most powerful crime lords in the galaxy, she reconsidered some of those assessments. The same Skywalker had destroyed the Death Star; perhaps, just perhaps, some of the legends growing up around the man were true.

“I’m going to look around.” She told Ailyn. “If he got away from the explosion, there will be a trail. See if you can find anything on Sarlacci in the databases and ‘net. If he is…” She gritted her teeth and made herself say it. “If he is in there, we need to know how to kill it and get him out. If nothing else, I’ve yet to meet the creature that can eat a thermal detonator and live to tell the tale.”

“Yeah.” Ailyn nodded. “Yeah.” A pause. “Mom…if he is…and the stories are true…”

“Hope they are.” Sin said. “If it takes a thousand years for that thing to eat someone, it might mean that if he is down there he’s still alive.”

“Yeah.” Another pause. “But if he is down there, and we can’t kill it unless you send a thermal detonator down…”

Sintas put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and looked her in the eyes. “Then it’s a clean, fast end, rather than getting dissolved alive. You know as well as I do what he’d pick.”

Ailyn looked away, the muscles in her jaw working, and nodded. Just a little, but her face was set. “Yeah. Yeah I do. I’d want the same.”

“Then get on it.”

The wreckage was a grim scene. Sin eyed the destruction, and then raised a handheld scanner and began searching.

Plenty of scrap…the Jawas were going to have a field day once they found this…and plenty of charred, twisted corpses, or at least bits of them. Sin picked her way over the heaviest concentration of scrap, praying to gods she didn’t believe in that none of the charred and blackened corpses she found were wearing that familiar green armor.

None were. She circled the area, and found no footprints in the sand save her own. No traces that anything living had walked away from this place. Her heart sank a little more as she tightened her search pattern in a bit more, closer to the pit where that horrible toothed maw sat, those tentacles whipping ceaselessly around in search of prey. Sin had seen the pit before, and hated it instinctively.

Except…she blinked.

The tentacles weren’t moving. Or they were, but only two, and those listlessly and weakly.

Oh. Oh no. She knew, in that instant, that her husband had gone down that horrible spined throat, because she couldn’t think of any other creature alive that could give a sarlacc a case of indigestion.

He’d had, she knew, the rocket on his jetpack, three concussion grenades, three fragmentation grenades, his blaster rifle, his blaster pistol, his flamethrower, and several other various weapons on him. If anything could make a sarlacc sick, it would be that much armament going off in its gullet, and she knew Boba well enough to know what he’d do, if he figured escape was impossible.

Even as she contemplated that, she caught something move out of the corner of her eye, in the scattered debris from the sail barge. She spun, drawing her blaster instinctively, and then squinted and blinked. The suns were high overhead, and the heat was shimmering off the sand in waves, but she didn’t think it had been a trick of her eyes.

There! Another movement, from what looked like another chunk of twisted metal, or rather from behind it, half covered in sand, some distance away from the main concentration of debris, in the lee of a dune. Sin broke into a jog, and as she rounded the twisted sheet of durasteel her heart leapt.

There was a figure in the sand, still half-buried, lying on its back, and on its head was a battered helmet, painted faded green.

 Sin ran. As she reached the figure and dropped to her knees, Boba’s head turned fractionally, with what seemed to be immense effort, as her shadow fell across him.

“Sin?” His voice was a rough, barely audible croak. He was….oh, no.

“Bo.” She fumbled with his helmet for a moment, and it slid free. He blinked, very slowly, and seemed to struggle to focus on her face, and fail, his eyes glassy and unfocused. Sin grabbed for her commlink, trying not to look down. Boba was naked save for the helmet and one boot, and from what she could see whatever had eaten his clothes and armor off had taken most of his skin with it. “It’s me, Bo, hang on.” She hit the comm button. “Ailyn, get the hovercart out here now.”

“You found him?” The sheer hope in those words nearly broke Sin’s heart.

“Yes. He’s in bad shape. He’s in real bad shape.”

“Coming.”

“Hurry.” Boba’s eyes had drifted shut, and she patted him on the cheek. “Stay with me, Bo. Tell me what happened.”

“Sar….” Speaking seemed to be too difficult for him, and the sounds rasped like gravel. Sintas wondered how long he’d been laying here in the suns, leaking fluids into the sand. “…lac.”

The faint hum of a small repulsorlift grew louder. Ailyn with the cart. “But you got out.”

“Con…concussion grenades.” He made an effort to reach towards her, and she took his hand. There was sand sticking to raw flesh; it was going to be a murderous job to clean him up. “Made…my own exit.”

“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like you. Hold on. We’ll get you on the ship and get some painkillers into you. You’re not dying yet.” She tried not to look at his left arm; it was broken, and horribly so; white bone poked through flesh, and his movement had broken open barely-scabbed wounds. Fresh blood oozed.

“Kriff.” Ailyn’s voice was soft, horrified. “Mom…”

“I know. Help me.”

Boba was a solidly built man, and it took both of them to shift him onto the hovercart. The movement jostled his shattered arm, and blood started dripping more rapidly. Boba’s eyes closed, and Sin could read pain in every line of his face and body, barely conscious though he was.

As soon as they were back in the safety of the Slave 1, Sin sealed the hatch and they got to work, right there in the cargo hold.

As they got him into the cooler, climate controlled air of the ship, he began shivering violently. Sin had seen shock enough times to know what was happening, and Ailyn sprinted for the medical supplies without being told. She came sprinting back moments later, handed her mother a back of fluids and a tube pack, and ran off again.

A scan, sure enough, showed severe dehydration. Sin was by no means a doctor, but bounty hunters learned how to patch someone up, be it themselves or merchandise you needed alive. Sin got a drip tube in his arm and fluids going.

“Sin.” His voice was still a rasp. “Sin, if I don’t make it, go back to Con…”

“Shut up,” she told him. She knew perfectly well that she’d be welcome back on Concord Dawn, where he wasn’t, and that she’d likely be safe there. He had family there, for all he’d never spoken to them. “Shut up. You’re too stubborn a bastard to die on me now, got it?”

“Your name…it’s on everything.” He closed his eyes again; his jaw was tight, and his shoulders were rigid with pain. Sin had no idea how he wasn’t screaming. “You’ll…be fine.”

“I told you to shut up.” Ailyn returned, medical supplies in her arms. Sin grabbed one of the color-coded, pre-measured and loaded injectors out of the box and slammed it into his arm, giving him a dose of the strongest general painkiller they had. It took effect quickly, and his face eased a bit and his eyes drooped shut again as Ailyn tore open a pack of sterile saline wipes and began to gingerly clean away sand crusted on with dried plasma and blood.

It was a long, grim task, and they went through three packs of sterile wipes. Even then there was sand still ground into raw flesh, but they didn’t have the facilities on the Slave 1 for this sort of debridement.

As the sand came off, Sin finally made a proper list of his injuries. At least two thirds of his skin was gone, thanks to a rather horrible mix of thermal and chemical burns. His face had been spared, thanks to his helmet, as had his groin, parts of his shoulders and back, and some of his chest and shins. Sin could see exactly where his armor plates had been, in the patterns of lesser acid burns on his body. Thermal burns edged everywhere the armor plates had been, and bit even deeper into the tissue between where they’d protected him. His left arm was broken in two places, a rather horrible complex fracture that had jabbed through the skin on his upper arm. At least five of his ribs were cracked and broken, and he was a mess of deep bruises beneath the acid burns.

They always kept bacta spray and dressings on hand; they used them everywhere they’d been able to get the sand and grit out. The shattered arm was the worst; it took their combined strength to set it tolerably well, and the sick crunching sensation was something that was going to haunt Sin’s nightmares for a long time.

They went through their entire supply of sterile gauze to wrap the worst of it, and at last Sin sat back on her heels, exhausted. Ailyn’s face was tight as she swapped out the bag of fluid, but he did look better for having gotten one into him.

“He needs a bacta tank.” Ailyn said plainly.

“Yes.” Sin agreed, and climbed to her feet. “Help me get him up to our bunk and we’ll get the hells out of here.”

It was a tricky thing, to get him up the ladder to the cabin, but they managed it, and got him wrestled onto the bunk and strapped down. Ailyn collapsed into the copilot’s chair as Sintas got the Slave 1 in the air and headed for space.

“Stip’s the closest off the books medic with a bacta tank,” Ailyn said, once they were past atmo.

“Yes.” Sintas agreed. “It’s also exactly where someone would expect us to head, if he was alive and badly injured. It’s safer if he’s thought dead, until he’s back up and moving.”

“Where then?”

Sintas punched a query into the Slave’s database, and waited a moment as it crunched the numbers and spat out a reply. Her lips flattened. Ailyn looked, and grimaced. “He won’t like it. Wenn’s a cheat. Charges three times the going rate.”

“I don’t care, so long as he’s alive to not like it. I don’t give a shit how badly he cheats us right now.” Sin paused. “And we can always shoot him after if he tries to really screw us.”  

“It’s a longer jump.” Ailyn glanced back at the bunk. She’d been admirably stoic so far, but now there was a tremble in her lip, just a bit. “What if he…”

“Your father is a stubborn man. He’ll make it.” Sin hoped she was right, as she punched in a course for Arami and pulled back on the hyperdrive lever. “Otherwise, I’ll kill him.”

Chapter Text

Blackness faded into pain, and Boba Fett knew that he was still alive, if only because he suspected that being dead would hurt less.

Not only was he not dead, but his throat wasn’t so horribly dry any longer, and instead of the endless hiss of wind on sand or the ceaseless snap of the sarlacc’s tentacles there was the familiar, comforting deep thrum of the Slave 1’s hyperdrive engines. And, thank providence, none of Susejo’s ceaseless nattering in his head. He was in his own familiar bunk, and none of that changed the fact that everything hurt.

He attempted to move, which was a mistake. It hurt to just lie there, and it hurt worse to breathe, but it hurt even worse to try and sit up. He opened heavy eyes, and stared up at the familiar durasteel of the conduit and wiring panels above the main bunk.

He must have made some sort of sound, because there was a soft sound of bare feet on deck plating, and then the bunk depressed as someone sat down on the edge of it. The familiar touch of Sin’s fingers, long and slim and callused, stroking his hair. He closed his eyes again; if he focused on that, the pain was a little easier to ignore.

“Hey.” Her voice was soft, and there was a worried edge to it that anyone who didn’t know her very well would have missed. “You’re looking better.” A pause. “Though that’s a low bar right now. But at least you’re getting fluids to replace what you’re leaking all over the place. There’s a few minutes yet before I can give you another dose of painkillers. We’re heading for Arami, but we’re going to have to stop over a few places to restock. We used most of our stock of dressings and fluids on you.”

He opened his eyes at that and managed to tilt his head up enough to eye her, which drew screams of protest from his neck and shoulders. “Wenn’s a fekking thieving barve.”

“Yes.” She said. “He is, and I don’t give a shit. He’s got a bacta tank, he’s a competent surgeon, he’ll keep his fekking mouth shut, and he’s about fourth down on the list of people we’d be expected to take you to.”

Well. She had him there. And, to be quite frank, he couldn’t stop her right now anyway. He sighed and closed his eyes again; the dregs of the painkiller she’d given him were still making his eyelids heavy.

“What happened, anyway?” Her hand was still stroking his hair, almost absently. “I couldn’t raise anyone in Jabba’s palace, I couldn’t contact you, and Jabba’s in smoking bits over half a kilometer of desert. That takes a lot of firepower.”

“Solo’s friends.” He told her. “The wookie, Organa, Calrissian, and Skywalker. The rumors about Skywalker are true.”

She hissed through her teeth. “And here I was contemplating that hundred thousand on his head.”

“Don’t.” That sent a little jolt of adrenaline through him, enough to let him ignore the pain enough to reach up and catch her hand and look her in the eye. “He cut through Jabba’s security like it was nothing, Sin. I don’t know where the fek he found a teacher, but for a hundred thousand he’s not worth the risk.”

She gave him a severe look that softened at the edges after a moment. “No. If the rumors are true, it’d take a lot more than a hundred thousand for me to consider it. Lie still, Bo. We just got that arm set.”

He’d thought he was hallucinating for a minute, when her face had swam out of the haze of heat and dehydration as he was lying there in the sand. Thought that she was a phantom cooked up by dehydration, pain, and the immediate probability of death, of what he’d most hoped to see. He’d never been so relieved to be wrong in his life.

 He didn’t want to think about what a sight he was at the moment; he was perfectly aware that he must look like a man-shaped hunk of raw meat, more or less. It must have been a terrible job to get him cleaned up and bandaged.

“I’m going to go back,” he muttered. “If I live. And I’m going to feed that barve as many explosives as I can cram into it.”

“You will.” Sin said. “And I’ll help. Ailyn’s in favor of getting some bunker buster bombs and glassing the whole area.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up at that. “Good girl.” He paused a moment. “How is she?”

“Fine.” A beat. “Well, no. She’s not fine. She just helped me scrub sand and blood off of her father’s half-dead, skinless ass as he dripped blood all over the cargo hold. But she’s holding up okay. She’ll be all right, and better once we get you into a bacta tank. She’s a tough girl.”

Another little half smile, pride for a moment taking precedence over pain. “She is.”

“Kriff, she’s the same age now as you were when I got pregnant.” Sin shook her head. “We were so young, and so stupid.”

Well, that was true enough. But… “I didn’t hear you complaining while we were making her.”

“Dammit, Bo.” A pause, and then she shifted off the bunk, took a few steps, and returned. There was a prick on his arm. Within a minute, the pain eased, replaced by the floating lethargy of heavy painkillers. His eyes slid shut as if weighted, and the black closed in again.

They dropped out of hyperspace above Molavar. Boba was still unconscious, deep under in the sedated sleep of heavy painkillers. Sin didn’t like to think about how many doses she’d had to give him in the last two standard days. They were running low on fluid packs too, and desperately needed more sterile dressings and bacta patches and spray.

He seemed to be stable, at least, so long as they could keep a fluid drip going. When he woke, he could talk, and was lucid. They’d even gotten some liquid ration pouches into him, but the pain had to be unbearable. Sin had been burned before; losing a few centimeters of skin to a blaster graze had been painful enough. She didn’t want to contemplate similar burns over most of her body.

“I’ll go, mom.” Ailyn said, as they finished setting down outside of one of the dilapidated spaceports. “I’m not as well known as you or Dad.”

She was right, of course. “Be careful,” Sin said, already knowing that Ailyn would be. “Comm if you run into any trouble, and keep an ear to the ground.”

“I will be, and I’ll be quick.” She pocketed a few credit chits of varying denominations, armed up, and headed out. Sin watched her go. She knew the girl could handle herself…she’d had the best possible teachers, in that regard…but also worrying despite that, unable to not. It seemed only last week that Ailyn had been a red faced, burbling little bundle of baby and blankets in her arms. How had she grown up so fast? Gods, she’d barely been more than a child herself when she’d gotten married and gotten pregnant. In retrospect, they’d been very young and very stupid and not ready for any of it.

“After this,” Sin told the air in general. “We’re finding her some armor. I don’t care if you don’t like going to the Mandalorian sector, Bo, we’re going, and we’re buying her some armor. I might even cave and let you get me some.”

There wasn’t an answer. She hadn’t expected one.

She fixed herself something to eat and some tea, and busied herself at the console. Boba maintained, among many other things, a list of slicer codes for shielded ‘net access longer than her arm, getting new ones as they ran through the list. She put one to use now to see what the galaxy had to say about the current status of one Boba Fett.

Being out of hyperspace also let comm messages catch up with them, and when she checked there were no fewer than thirty, from assorted contacts from one edge of the galaxy to the other. She checked through them one by one; every single one was consolation on the death of her husband, and hopes that this wouldn’t affect their working relationship, and a few were downright offensive offers. Those she filed away for later, with a mental note of exactly how many legs she needed to break on skeevy barves.

The ‘net seemed to be in agreement. There were a scattering of news articles in official sources speaking of the death of Jabba the Hutt at Alliance hands, a few of which mentioned Fett, and his fall into a Sarlacc and supposed demise.

The underworld channels, on the other hand, were lit up like a nova. Jabba had maintained a stranglehold on spice smuggling for decades, and was one of the richest and most powerful crime lords in the galaxy. His removal was sending shock waves through the entire underbelly of respectable civilization, and Sin noted at least five rivalries already rumored to be rising as people attempted to grab a piece of the Hutt’s empire. That was, for a bounty hunter, very promising. She’d bet every credit in her accounts that work was going to be very good for the next few standard years.

Almost as shocking to the criminal world was the news that Boba Fett had taken a one-way trip down a Sarlacc’s gullet while in Jabba’s employ. That news had been met, as she’d expected, with a mix of delight and suspicion. People had, after all, reported Boba Fett’s death at least three times in the last decade, and been very disappointed to find themselves incorrect.

It took her some time to filter through most of that, but finally she picked out what she was after; the consensus was  that Slave 1 had visited Mos Eisley, according to the information that had filtered up the underworld information network. Sintas Vel and Ailyn Vel had been seen asking for information on Fett’s whereabouts, and had left town. Shortly after, the Slave 1 had left Tatooine’s orbit and had jumped for hyperspace, along a vector that indicated Iskalon as a possible destination, and there’d been no indication at any off-the-books clinic on Tattooine that they’d found Fett. Scrappers had reported that the Sarlacc seemed to be injured, and general consensus seemed to be that she and Ailyn had injured it in an attempt to retrieve Fett, but there was no indication that they’d succeeded. Current opinions seemed to be leaning towards Fett being dead, and his widow and kid having chosen to lie low.

Good. It was rather insulting that general opinion was that she’d be stupid enough to take a man with as many enemies as Bo to the first untrustworthy medic she could find, but Sin was fine with that. Being underestimated meant that she came out on top, and the look of dawning comprehension of how very fucked they were in a target’s eyes was always good for a warm little hit of serotonin. Being underestimated in this particular case meant that the chances that they’d be safe long enough for Boba to get back on his feet in relative peace went sharply up.

There was, of course, a chance that Ailyn would be recognized, and that the fact that they were buying medical supplies would not go unnoticed, but it was a necessary risk.

She scanned through a few more bits of information. Hmmm. Bossk had been sighted on Tatooine, asking about Fett. Bossk was an annoying individual, who hated Fett and hated Sin for her association with Fett, all because of that little job they’d pulled on the Guild some years back. If he was convinced Bo was dead, it was likely that most of the other hunters from the old Guild did as well. Good. A person could get a lot done when they were thought dead.

The console beeped, the automatic defense systems registering an approaching individual, and then just as quickly registering a correct recognition code. A moment later, and the hiss of the hatch opening sounded.  Ailyn was back, then. Sin stood and headed down to the cargo hold.

Ailyn had brought back more than just medical supplies. “This way,” she said as they packed ration bars and soap and other assorted supplies away. “It looks more like just a standard resupply stop. Like if we were going to drop out of the galaxy for a bit. And we’ll use ‘em eventually.”

“Good thinking.” Sin said approvingly. Ailyn grinned a little at that; she was still young, and soaked up praise from her parents like a sponge, particularly since she knew it was only given when it was the truth. “If you want to get us in the air, I’ll check on Bo.”

A nod. “How…”

“Still unconscious. The last painkiller shot won’t wear off for another hour or so. But he’s still stable, at least as long as we keep getting fluids into him. And where we got bacta on him, tissue is regrowing. He’ll pull through.”

“Any infection?”

“No. There were some indications, so I gave him a shot of antibiotics. Seems to be holding stable now.” She carded the hair back from Ailyn’s face with her fingertips, tucking it behind her ear, as she had since the girl was very small. “We’re only a couple more days from Arami. He’ll make it. I told you, your father is a tough bastard. And, better yet, the galaxy seems to think he’s really dead this time.”

Ailyn managed a smile at that. “Someone’s in for a rude surprise.”

“Oh, they’ve no idea.”