by Andy Mangles
The most notorious and fearsome bounty hunter in the galaxy is also
the most mysterious. Many
legends and stories have arisen over the years, but few facts are known
of the man called Boba
Fett, or of his inextricable link to Han Solo.
Long before Luke Skywalker journeyed of Tatooine to fulfill his destiny
as a Jedi, Boba Fett was
also known as Journeyman Protector Jaster Mereel. Years past, the ugly
young law-enforcement
officer on the world of Concord Down had killed another protector,
and though the dead man had
been corrupt, disgracing his office and uniform, Mereel was still imprisoned
for the murder.
Against his wishes of his pleader, the arrogant young man remained
unrepentant to the trial court,
and Jaster Mereel was exiled from Concord Down, stripped of all he
owned.
Mereel's adoption of the name Boba Fett, and the manner in which he
acquired his rare battle
armor, are tales lost in time, remembered by no living being except
for Fett himself.
Fett wears the armor of the Mandalorians, a group of evil warriors
who were defeated by the Jedi
Knights during the Clone Wars. Fett's modified Mandalore armor includes
a helmet that has a
macrobinocular viewplate, motion and sound sensors, infrared capabilities,
an internal comlink to
his ship, the Slave I, and a broadband antenna for intercepting and
decoding transmissions. Wrist
gauntlets house lasers, a miniature flame projector, and a fibercord
whip/grappling device; a
backpack jet pack includes a turbo-projected magnetic grappling hook
with twenty-meter lanyard.
Fett also carries kneepad rocket dart launchers, spiked boots, a concussion-grenade
launcher,
and a Blas Tech EE-3 rifle. Braided Wookiee scalps hang over
his right shoulder to complete the outfit.
Beyond Fett and Fenn Shysa, the only other living person known to wear
the Mandalorian armor
is Jodo Kast, an ambitious young bounty hunter who patterned his career
after that of Boba Fett.
Prowling the Outer Rim Territories, Kast wears armor with much of the
same external weaponry
that Fett utilizes. It is unlikely, however, that he has much hidden
weaponry and modified circuitry
in his suit. In the past, Kast has allowed people to believe he was
Fett, adding even greater
mystery to the legends surrounding the older hunter.
Throughout his life, Fett has worked as a mercenary, a soldier, a personal
guard, an assassin, and,
most frequently, as a bounty hunter -- the most expensive bounty hunter
in the known systems. He
collected 150,00 credits for the capture of pirate Feldrall Okor, and
took a record 500,000 credits
when he caught the religious Ffib heretic Nivek'Yppiks for the Lohrans.
Fett has worked on retainer for Jabba the Hutt and other of the Hutt
clan, as well as for the Empire,
and has crossed paths with the Rebellion's greatest heroes more than
a few times over the years.
Fett is slow and methodical and as unpredictable as the shifting sands
of Tatooine. He rarely loses
his quarry, and has, thus far, shown no remorse for their fate. Fett
has been known to work with
other bounty hunters, but his motives may have been to show the others
up; Fett has always
emerged as the one who catches the prize.
Sometime in the years before the Battle of Yavin, Boba Fett had his
first meeting with R2-D2 and
C-3PO. On the desert Planet of Ingo, the droids had become the property
of speeder racer Thall
Joben and his friends, Kea Moll and Jord Dusat. Joben had angered the
criminal Fromm gang, and
Sise Fromm traveled to the Boonta speeder races to find them. There,
Sise hired the mysterious,
armor-clad bounty hunter to kill the young racing team, a job Fett
took as a favor owed Fromm,
even though Fromm himself was wanted by intergalactic crime lord Jabba
the Hutt. After the
contract to kill Joben was finished, Fett noted that all debts were
paid.
Fett's robot, BR-17, befriended C-3PO and turned him against R2-D2
while Fromm's gang put a
bomb in Joben's racing ship, the White Witch. Fett chased Thall and
Kea, but they escaped,
joining in the speeder race. At the same time, C-3PO learned of the
treachery of BR-17 --
who was then crushed by falling machines -- and discovered
the bomb planted in the Witch.
Unaware of the bomb, Fett followed Joben into the race and attempted
to stop him, using every
weapon at his disposal. When he tried magnets, Fett accidentally pulled
the bomb onto his own
speeder and had to escape at the last minute before it blew up. Angry
at the loss of his droid and
his speeder, Fett took Fromm and his gang hostage, to turn them over
to Jabba the Hutt. He
expected a great reward for the corpulent trio of villains.
Several years later, shortly after the Battle of Yavin, Luke Skywalker
took R2-D2, C-3PO, and a
Y-wing fighter to go look for Han Solo. The Corellian was due back
from his search for an
invisibility talisman, a mystic item the Empire also sought. When Luke
crashed-landed on a red-
water moon in the Panna system, he was rescued by the mysterious Boba
Fett.
Luke was felled by a strange sleeping virus that had also knocked out
Han, so Fett and
Chewbacca snuck into the Imperial-guarded city to get an antidote.
While there, Boba contacted
Darth Vader, who called him the "best bounty hunter in the galaxy."
It was at this point that the
droids intercepted Fett's message that he planned to capture the Rebels
and claim the talisman.
Back at the Millennium Falcon, following a harrowing chase by stormtroopers,
Boba administered
the antidote to Han and Luke. Still groggy, Han didn't recognize Boba,
and didn't object when
Luke offered the hunter a place in the Rebellion. C-3PO and R2-D2 interrupted,
telling the Rebels
of Fett's transmission to Vader. Fett rocketed away, vowing vengeance.
Prior to the Rebels' establishment of the Hoth base, Fett reappeared
in pursuit of "the Mole," a
man wanted for leaving the service of Darth Vader. Piloting a TIE fighter,
Fett was chased down
by Luke Skywalker in an X-wing. Luke chased the mercenary's ship through
ice canyons of the
frozen world of Ota, and both ships crashed. Fett got the drop on Luke,
but both of them were
captured by the apelike Snogars. The Snogars' city was growing colder,
and they were convinced
the off worlders could restore their heat-providing machines.
Meanwhile, Han, Chewie, Leia Organa, and the droids had come to Ota
to find Luke. While Luke
and Boba made a break from the Snogars, Han himself was captured. Ever
the opportunist, Boba
agreed to go with Luke to rescue Han, planning to capture the smuggler
for profit.
It a wild sequence of events, the Rebels and the Mole were caught between
the Snogars and Fett.
When Fett tried to take both the Mole and Han prisoner, the Mole used
a giant magnet to pin the
bounty hunter to the wall. The Rebels and the Mole made their respective
escapes, Fett swearing
vengeance yet again.
Fett sometimes used his bounties against each other. Once, for example,
Fett found out that the
magician, Magwit, was performing small frontier settlements in the
wasteland. The dwarf had a
minor Imperial bounty on his head, but Fett knew Magwit could help
him in acquiring another
bounty; Gorga the Hutt had hired Fett to bring the notorious space
pirate Bar-Kooda. Fett forced
Magwit to buy his freedom by smuggling the hunter in his magic props.
Magwit was "captured"
and taken aboard Bar-Kooda's massive pirate vessel, Bloodstar, where
the savage carnivore
demanded the magician's final performance. Magwit's most impressive
trick used a hoop to cause
objects to appear and disappear. The hoop was connected to a short-range
matter transmitter, with
Fett waiting on the other side. Working in concert with Magwit, the
hunter pulled Bar-Kooda
through the hoop and escaped, causing carnage along the way. Magwit
survived via a speedy exit,
and true to his word, Fett gave the magician his freedom.
Shortly before the Battle of Hoth, Jabba the Hutt hired Fett to find
Han Solo. Working both sides
of the fence, Fett met Darth Vader mask to mask for the first time.
For reasons unknown to either
of them an instant sense of mutual respect was born, and the bounty
hunters agreed to work with
Dengar, Bossk, and a rookie bounty hunter named Skorr. But on the planet
of Ord Mandell, the
wily Han Solo, Luke, and Chewie escaped Fett's clutches, heading back
to the newly established
Rebel base on Hoth.
Despite his failure to capture Solo and the other Rebels, Fett was
once again summoned to work
with Vader. One of the six bounty hunters instructed to find the Millennium
Falcon, Fett
succeeded in tracking the ship to the Bespin system. There, he aided
Vader in capturing the Rebel
leaders and exacted his price in the capture of Han Solo.
Unfortunately for Han, Vader wanted to use him as a test subject for
the carbonite-freezing
process. Solo survived, and Fett took the quick-frozen Corellian to
his ship for transport to Jabba
the Hutt's Tatooine palace. On the way to board the Slave I, he exchanged
shots with the wary
Luke Skywalker, who was attempting to save his friends.
As he neared Tatooine, Fett was angered to find that IG-88, one of
Vader's other bounty hunters,
had tracked him. Fett used evasive maneuvers and his weaponry to blow
up the starfighter IG-
2000 and its pilot. He continued on his way, delivering to Jabba his
Han Solo "wall sculpture"
and collecting his bounty. Arguing that the carbonite piece was actually
the art of Darth Vader, Fett
was able to talk Jabba into raising Solo's bounty from 100,000 credits
to 250,000.
For the following year, Boba was steadily employed, and a constant
presence in Jabba's court.
Although the Hutt would never admit it, he was afraid that the Alliance
would retaliate for the
capture of Solo, so he gave Fett assignments to keep him around, knowing
how valuable the
hunter was. One such job offered a 100,000 credit bounty to capture
a live krayt dragon to be
placed in battle with the Hutt's monstrous rancor.
When Luke, Leia, and Chewie came to Tatooine and were all captured
while trying to rescue Han,
Jabba sentenced them to death in the Great Pit of Carkoon. But Jabba
had not counted on
Skywalker's Jedi powers or initiative, and the Rebels broke free. In
the battle that followed, Fett's
backpack was hit and he flew, out of control, into the mouth of the
Sarlacc.
Fett somehow escaped the Sarlacc, crawling away from the pit and lapsing
into a painful oblivion.
A short time later the bounty hunter Dengar, who had also been in Jabba's
employ, set out a
search for the Hutt's body. Instead, he found Boba Fett, devoid of
armor and covered in scars and
fibers from the Sarlacc. Dengar nursed Fett back to health, using Jabba's
medical droids. A month
later, Fett was well enough to travel, and since the Alliance had confiscated
the Slave I, the two
hunters set off in Dengar's ship for the spaceport moon of Nar Shaddaa,
the smuggling center of
the galaxy.
Boba had little-used backup ships on Nar Shaddaa: The Slave II was
a MandalMotors Pursuer
enforcement ship, and few sentients in the galaxy even knew that Fett
had one. The hunter used
this to his advantage, knocking out old enemies who thought him dead,
and collecting bounties
quickly, sometimes working with the tagalong Dengar. Meanwhile, the
Alliance let the Slave I sit
on Grakouine, gathering dust.
Wary of another encounter with Solo and Skywalker, Fett decided to
buy his ship back legally.
With the help of an old employer, Crystalboy, he used a system of dummy
corporations, paper
trails, and forged requisition forms, eventually getting the Slave
I as part of a "surplus liquidation"
deal. Fett repaired his ship and put it in orbit of Nar Shaddaa. He
would use it again, but for now,
he was profiting more from the anonymity the Slave II and his "death"
had given him.
It wasn't long before the galaxy realized Fett was alive. When he captured
an infamous pirate,
Feldrall Okor, Fett took a page from the plan Princess Leia had used
when she infiltrated Jabba's
palace. He presented Feldrall to Imperial Governor Isis, but when she
balked at his bounty price,
he charged a thermal detonator. As tense seconds ticked by, the governor
argued, while Fett calmly
upped his price. Ultimately, the governor trusted her fortunes more
than she trusted Fett's sanity,
and she gave the hunter his ransom.
Six years after the death of Jabba the Hutt, Han and Leia went to Nar
Shaddaa, the galactic
smuggling center. There, Han was surprised to find that Fett and Dengar
were waiting for him in
his quarters. Fett told Solo that the Sarlacc had found him "indigestible"
adding that the
descendants of Jabba the Hutt wanted Han and Leia, dead or alive!
In a hail of blaster fire, Leia and Han made it off world, escaping
in Salla Zend's Starlight
Intruder. Fett and Dengar followed in the Slave II, snatching the Intruder's
coordinates and
jumping into hyperspace. Although Slave II arrived at Byss before the
Starlight Intruder, only
Salla's ship had been cleared to get through the planetary security
shields, which closed, locking
out Fett's ship and breaking off a control rudder. As they spun away,
trying to regain control of
the ship, Dengar angrily informed Fett this was the last time he'd
ever work with him. Although
he was grateful to Dengar for saving him back on Tatooine, Fett was
glad to get rid of another
hunter.
When Han and Leia again returned to Nar Shaddaa seeking the Jedi Master
Vima-Da-Boda, they
were afraid Fett might be lying in wait. In fact, two Imperial Dark
Side Warriors were attempting
to blackmail the bounty hunter into working for them. They claimed
knowledge of his past -- that
Fett had been a stormtrooper who had murdered his superior officer.
Fett rejected their attempts
and fought back as the two warriors attacked him. He escaped even as
Solo's Millennium Falcon
prepared to touch down.
Fett bided his time, and when the Falcon prepared to depart, the Slave
I rushed forward on a
suicidal run. Fett expected Han to turn tail; instead, the Corellian
used his freighter to clip the Slave
I's stabilizers. Although Fett lost some control, he was still able
to blast the Falcon, causing the
ship to lose all sensor frequencies.
The bounty hunter tracked the Falcon to the lower levels, where he
ambushed Leia and Han shortly
after they found Vima-Da-Boda. In turn, he was ambushed by Chewbacca.
During the ensuing
firefight, Boba shot Chewbacca in the side, but the Wookiee managed
to rip off Boba's helmet and
send him spiraling into the roof high above.
Fett recovered quickly enough to board the Slave I and pursue the Falcon
through the floating
space debris of the spaceport moon. Scoring a hit on the freighter,
Fett figured he finally had his
bounty. He was surprised when Solo piloted the Falcon into an interstellar
gas cloud. His ship's
sensors were useless, so Fett hung back, waiting several days before
the Falcon reemerged.
Unfortunately for Fett, Solo had beefed up his firepower and used it
to pay havoc with the Slave I.
Fett's ship spun out of control into the gas cloud.
Though Fett disappeared, and has not reappeared on Han Solo's trail,
new reports of the bounty
hunter's adventures have surfaced throughout the galaxy. Han Solo knows
that one day, he will
once again -- perhaps for the final time -- face the toughest and most
feared bounty hunter in space
-- Boba Fett.
by Andy Mangles