The Fight to Survive Read Free

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