Free Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters by Kevin J. Anderson

ships, exact copies of the original
IG-2000
, arrived at Cloud City. As they approached their target, the floating metropolis was a turmoil of panic and chaos. The Imperials had taken over.
    The baron-administrator, Lando Calrissian, had sounded a general alarm, requesting the evacuation of all personnel. Every functional ship was already in flight, filling the airways with a panicked, headlong rush.
    Bypassing the Cloud City computer systems, IG-88 learned that Han Solo had been captured and encased in carbonite. Boba Fett had taken him away to collect a second bounty from Jabba the Hutt.
    Fett was already gone, mere hours before.
    The twin
IG-2000
ships hung next to each other, aloof from the panicked evacuation. The two assassin droids linked together and conferred.
    “Programming. We installed two sensors aboard Boba Fett’s ship.”
    “We could trigger the dormant tracer and locate where he has gone.”
    “Correct. But if Fett has Han Solo, we already know where he will go.”
    Much later, IG-88C waited in low orbit around the blistering scab of Tatooine, a worthless desert world broiled under a pair of suns. The planet offered no reason for any intelligent creature to want to live there—but biologicals were quite irrational and infested all sorts of worlds, tolerable or not.
    The atmosphere was like a thin fingernail of blue, a tiny breathable skin covering the sphere of desert. IG-88’s ship cruised low, its hull warm from friction with the scant upper atmosphere.
    Linked to his hidden counterpart IG-88D, hescanned the skies and waited. Since assassin droids could fly and react faster than any biological pilot, they knew the ship’s exact tolerances, and they could plot riskier hyperspace paths than any human would dare attempt. IG-88 was confident they had arrived before Boba Fett, if just barely.
    Boba Fett’s ship, the
Slave I
, appeared like a projectile from a slingshot snapping out of hyperspace. IG-88C put all his weapons on alert, all his sensors on standby, then rocketed his needle ship to confront the bounty hunter. Thinking he had destroyed IG-88 in the garbage levels of Cloud City, Boba Fett would be astonished to see the assassin droid again.
    Logically, IG-88 expected the biological to request further information, to challenge the intruder. Once Fett understood the new situation, he would be forced to bargain with the superior assassin droid, if not surrender utterly.
    But Boba Fett reacted with remarkable speed. Without a word or a second of hesitation, the bounty hunter launched every sort of weapon and peeled off in a slick corkscrew maneuver that took him out of the
IG-2000
’s firing path. The
Slave I
’s weapon bolts struck home all at once, pummeling the heavily armored
IG-2000
.
    With a certain measure of embarrassment and shame, IG-88C uploaded his files and sent them to his counterpart an instant before his ship exploded over Tatooine.…
    IG-88D screamed out of hyperspace, hurtling toward Fett’s ship in a brutally precise in-system hyperjump that would have been impossible for any biological pilot.
    Before Boba Fett could react, IG-88D fired upon him from behind with concentrated blows that rocked his shields. At the moment IG-88’s primary goal was not to obliterate Boba Fett—though that would be intensely satisfying. He had run simulations to determine the best possible technique to
hurt
Boba Fett, to humiliatehim—and he had decided that the best way would be to take his precious bounty, Han Solo, away from him.
    Firing repeatedly without the slightest respite, IG-88 infiltrated Boba Fett’s comm system and demanded that he surrender Solo. Fett did not respond, again acting irrationally, which made his actions very difficult to comprehend or predict.
    As the needle ship roared after him, firing and booming, Boba Fett altered his course on a steep descent directly toward the planet. The full power of his engines drove him at the giant fist of sand below.
    IG-88 tried to