The Fight to Survive Read Online Free PDF

the asteroid, and now
Slave I
was speeding through a narrow, winding tunnel.
    But going slower and slower.
    At least we’re still alive,
thought Boba
. But if the Jedi is chasing us, why are we slowing down?
    He soon found out. The tunnel went all the way through the asteroid. When
Slave I
emerged from the stone passage, it was right behind the Jedi starfighter.
    The hunted had become the hunter.
Slave I
was on the Jedi’s tail.
    It was the coolest maneuver Boba had ever imagined. He could hardly control his excitement.
    “Get him, Dad! Get him! Fire!”
    Boba didn’t have to tell his father. Jango Fett was already blasting away. On every side of the Jedi starfighter deadly lasers were stitching streaks of light through the blackness of
space.
    “You got him!” Boba cried, when he saw the Jedi starfighter rocked by an explosion.
    A near-miss, but not a kill.
    Not yet.
    “We’ll just have to finish him!” said Jango. He reached up to the weaponry console and, with two quick flicks of his wrist, hit two switches:
    TORPEDO: ARM
    and then
    TORPEDO: RELEASE
    It was
Slave I
’s turn to rock as the torpedo kicked out of the hull and locked onto the Jedi starfighter.
    Boba watched, fascinated. The Jedi was good, he had to admit. He zigged, he zagged, he tried every kind of evasive maneuver.
    But the torpedo was locked on, and closing.
    Then the Jedi starfighter flew straight into the path of a huge, tumbling asteroid—
    And it was all over.
    There was no way to avoid the collision. Caught between the torpedo’s blast and the unforgiving stone, the Jedi starfighter disappeared. Only a trail of debris remained.
    “Got him…” Boba breathed. “Yeaaaah!”
    Jango’s reaction was more subdued. “We won’t see him again,” he said quietly as he guided the ship out of the asteroids and put it into a descent pattern, down toward the
giant red planet.

CHAPTER NINE
    Boba had thought Geonosis might be different from Kamino, with schools, other kids, and lots to do.
    It was different, all right, but that was all.
    On Kamino it rained all the time; on Geonosis it hardly ever rained. Kamino was all sea; Geonosis was a sea of red sand, with big rock towers called stalagmites sticking up like spikes, here and
there, from the sandy desert.
    In fact, the planet looked deserted. At least that’s what Boba thought when he first arrived.
    Jango Fett landed
Slave I
on a ledge on the side of one of the stalagmites, or rock towers.
    Are we going to camp here on this rock?
wondered Boba as the ship settled on its landing struts and the engines died.
    Then a door in the stone slid open, and Maintenance Droids appeared to service the ship.
    Boba was wide-eyed as he followed his father through the doorway, which turned out to be the entrance to a vast underground city, with long corridors and huge rooms, all connected and lighted
with glow tubes, echoing with footsteps and shouts.
    Yet it still seemed empty. The only inhabitants were hurrying, distant shadows. No one greeted them; no one even noticed a ten-year-old tagging along after his father.
    As they climbed the stairs toward the apartment they had been temporarily assigned, Jango explained to his son that the Geonosians themselves were drones who worked all the time. Their planet
was a manufacturing center for Battle Droids. “And the people who make the droids aren’t much smarter or more interesting than the droids themselves,” Jango said.
    “So why are we here?” Boba asked.
    “Business,” said Jango Fett. “
He who hires my hand...
”
    “...
hires my whole self
,” finished Boba, grinning up at his dad.
    “Right,” said Jango. He rumpled his son’s hair and smiled down at him. “I’m very proud of you, son. You’re growing up to be a bounty hunter, just like your
old man.”
    The apartment was high in the stone tower, overlooking the desert. Jango went off to meet with his employer, leaving Boba with a stern warning: “Be here when I get
back.”
    After a