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The interior of the cavern shook with seismic force as the Sarlacc's writhing form crashed down again. Dengar gripped the outcropping tighter, trying to keep from being thrown loose from it. More rubble poured down the widened gap, with hot stones and sand falling across his shoulders and the side of his averted face.
Even before he could see what was happening down below, Dengar had gotten his end of the rope line around the outcropping and had knotted it fast. "Grab the line!" he shouted as the dust started to settle. "I'll pull you up!" , He could feel her tugging at the other end of the line. But when he could see below himself again, the space dimly illumined by a combination of the daylight from above and the beam of the lantern knocked on its side, he saw that Neelah had dragged the unconscious figure of Boba Fett from the pallet and had gotten him upright. Fett's weight was braced against her shoulder as she looped the line around his chest.
"There-" Neelah stepped back and shouted to Dengar.
"Take him up! Start pulling!"
Boba Fett's arms dangled at his side, the tautened rope all that kept his limp body from collapsing to the floor of the cavern. His head lolled forward, chin against his chest. The only sign of him still being alive was the slight motion of his ragged breath.
No point in arguing; Dengar knew that it would be a waste of time with the obstinate female. He clambered up onto the outcropping's top surface, then reached down and grabbed the line with both hands. His spine hit the rock wall behind him as he reared back and pulled. The body of the unconscious bounty hunter straightened, feet dangling clear of the ground, as Dengar drew Fett toward himself.
The cavern shook as the Sarlacc segment, either in its death throes or from hunger spurred by its awareness of the humans' presence, convulsively lifted itself and slammed its length against the side of the cavern directly beneath Dengar. Beneath the pounding of his heart, the outcropping trembled and groaned, as though the larger stone it was part of was about to pull free from the upper reaches of the cavern wall. He reached down and grabbed another section of line, hauling Boba Fett higher into the open space; the Sarlacc segment came within inches of the bounty hunter's feet as it doubled upon itself in hissing agony.
Fett was still several meters away from Dengar's grasp as the Sarlacc segment crashed down toward the cavern floor once again. Its head and tail were still unseen, extending into the darkness at either end of the space. The echo of its impact against the ground rolled through the cavern like buried thunder; more sharp bits of rock pelted against Dengar's back. One side of the gap, the escape route to the surface he had been widening, sheered off and fell tumbling, inches away from the suspended figure of Boba Fett. The limp bounty hunter slowly revolved as Dengar strained to pull him higher.
That was the only motion Fett showed, as though the loop around his chest had squeezed the last remaining life force from him.
Past Fett, Dengar could see the two medical droids scurrying to safety at the other side of the cavern as the Sarlacc segment twisted onto its side, scales crushing the rocks beneath it to powder. Neelah backed away, the lantern's beam widening against the Sarlacc's flank, then turned and ran as the towering curve gained speed, rolling toward her. As Dengar watched, the stone fragments slid out from beneath her feet, throwing her onto her hands and knees. The lantern clattered to a halt less than a meter away, its beam angling upward onto the bulk of the Sarlacc.
The glowing ellipse of light on the Sarlacc's scales grew larger as the segment continued to twist about, like a hideous tidal wave of rough-edged armor and injured flesh. Neelah gave a cry of mingled pain and fear as the segment rolled onto her foot and lower leg, pi
The Sarlacc segment halted its motion, as if some sense within it were aware of the captive it had made. Its convex mass loomed over Neelah as she twisted onto her side and pushed futilely at it with her bare hands. All that it would take to crush her into a lifeless and broken thing would be for the Sarlacc to continue its twisting, rolling motion, the heavy tide of its bulk sweeping through the cavern and obliterating everything in its path.
Dengar tugged the rope line high enough to loop it around the end of the outcropping, leaving the un conscious Boba Fett suspended above the Sarlacc segment.
With one hand holding on, he dug with the other into the holster on his belt, caught between his own weight and the rock's surface. He managed to drag out his blaster, leaving abraded skin from the back of his hand across the rough stone. Dengar shifted his position on the outcropping, trying to line up a clear shot, past the dangling figure of Boba Fett and into the mass of the Sarlacc... .
That shifting of weight on the stone, plus the damage to the already precarious walls of the cavern caused by the Sarlacc's convulsive thrashing, was enough to break the outcropping free, a hairline crack just past Dengar's elbow splitting open with a puff of dust. The forward edge of the outcropping shot downward as he scrambled to keep hold of it. His teeth rattled in his head as the narrow point of stone jammed itself against the other side of the crevice, a meter below where the outcropping had been positioned before. The knot of the line fastened to Boba Fett slid down the outcropping and caught at the juncture of the stone and the crevice wall.
The sharp, sudden movement had knocked the blaster free from Dengar's grip. Clutching the stone, he watched helplessly, time expanding into slow motion, as the weapon spun in the air and choking dust near the cavern's ceiling, then fell. Grip and muzzle tumbled end over end, beyond any point where Dengar could have caught it, even if he'd been able to take one of his clawing hands away from the stone.
He saw something else then, something that had come to life as unexpectedly as the buried Sarlacc. The sudden drop of the line had snapped Boba Fett's head back, so that his pale, unhelmeted visage was turned toward Dengar and t he daylight spilling into the cavern from above. The bounty hunter appeared dead, as though the medical droids' disregarded warnings had proved true, after all; it might as well have been a corpse that Dengar and Neelah had carried through the underground tu
Boba Fett's eyes opened, gazing directly into Dengar's. Slow-motion time stopped entirely as Fett's cold regard pierced the other bounty hunter's spirit.
Then time started up again, slamming into microsecond events. One of Boba Fett's hands raised from his side, shot out and caught the falling blaster, as sharply and deftly as an uncoiling serpent striking its prey. The weapon filled his grasp as though it were an extension of his being, a part of him as much as the bones of his spine.
Fett's gaze broke away. As Dengar watched from above, Boba Fett sca
The cavern filled with blade-edged shadows as the blaster erupted into coruscating fire, its explosive touch pulsing at a diagonal across the open space. Its force was enough to deflect the rope line from vertical, like a miniature rocket thrusting Boba Fett away from its flaring burst. Fett kept the blaster's impact pouring into the same spot on the curved surface of the Sarlacc as a burning stench mingled with the thick odor of decay that had already hung in the close, lung-oppressing air.
At the exact same moment the Sarlacc segment reared upward, stung by the blaster's white-hot needle. Bits of broken scales and charred flesh scattered across the cavern; the creature's raw wound, cut deeper by the continuing fire, sizzled beneath an acrid haze of black smoke.