Bossk lifted his head from the durasteel and strained to look past the treads clanking beneath him. A churning cloud of dust obscured the ground below. Boba Fett was still hidden from view, but he caught a glimpse of another figure, one that he could recognize even at this elevated distance.
"Voss'on't!" Bossk shouted again into the mike at his throat." I see him!" The crust-piercer's shadow gave a rough indicator of direction." He's to the north! North of me-" Bossk had no idea of where Boba Fett might be in the dust cloud mounting below." Toward the foothills and the colony gate!" For a moment, he lost sight of the tiny figure below, then spotted him again." Now he's moving west-"
There was something else that Bossk could see, a glint of dark metal in Trhin Voss'on't's hand. At some point in the chaos that had followed the mining equipment bursting up from beneath the watering-hole, the ex-stormtrooper had managed to scoop up a blaster pistol.
"He's armed-"
The need for informing his partner of that fact was eliminated as Bossk saw Voss'on't crouch down, weapon arm raised, and fire a quick barrage of blaster bolts into the dust cloud before him.
"Fett?" Bossk called into his throat mike." You still there?"
Nothing but silence came from the cochlear implant inside Bossk's head.
Well, thought Bossk, guess I won't be splitting any bounties with him
The mining equipment to which Bossk clung, the enormous, clattering, and howling bulk of the crust-piercer, had reared up far enough from the planet's surface that it had become hard to see exactly what was going on down below him. Voss'on't had gone from being a doll-like figure to an insect. Bossk could just discern the ex-stormtrooper's movements as he stepped forward, blaster still poised and ready, to investigate his kill.
Two things happened then
Voss'on't's tiny figure was suddenly knocked off its feet as a propelled dart with line attached zipped out of the dust cloud. The line wrapped itself around Voss'on't in a microsecond, pinning his arms to his sides; sprawled on his back, the ex-stormtrooper kicked furiously, trying to stand up again. Boba Fett emerged from the dust cloud at the crust-piercer's base, lowering the dart weapon from its braced position against his shoulder. As Bossk watched from on high, his partner pulled the line tight with one gloved hand, jerking the furious Voss'on't over onto his face and away from the blaster pistol on the ground.
The second thing was that the crust-piercer finally emerged all the way from the planet's surface. Enough momentum had been built up in the machine's enormous mass, from the speed of the treads grinding up through the rocky substrata, that for a moment it separated from its shadow spilling across the ruins of the abandoned mining colony. The crust-piercer hung suspended a dozen meters or more above the ground, its gouging prow and propulsive gears spinning free of contact with any substance other than the air itself.
On the ground, Boba Fett turned his visored gaze away from his captive and up toward the durasteel construct, looming as big as a flying mountain range above him.
This is not good, Bossk told himself as he clung to the machinery's bolt-studded flank. This is going to hurt
He felt himself going from a near-vertical position to lying prone, pinned by gravity, on the metal surface against his chest, as the crust-piercer lost the force of its momentum and tilted forward in the air. The machine's metal-toothed, conical snout was now parallel to the ground, with the treads directly beneath its mass, equivalent to that of a small Imperial fighting ship, but without the means to keep itself aloft.
Chewed-apart boulders, the last of the subsurface that the crust-piercer had ripped up and carried with itself, now tumbled away from its gears and shielding panels, spinning and raining across the shadowed area below.
That shadow suddenly loomed closer, as the crust-piercer began its fall, like a metallic stratosphere breaking apart and rushing toward the planet's core. Atop the machine, as though he were an ant stranded aboard a child's toy, Bossk braced for the impact.
He felt it, through every fiber and cell of his body. The grip of Bossk's claws was torn away from the bolt heads and the seam in the metal flank; a jutting projection of an auxiliary engine-exhaust pipe above kept him from flying completely off the immense machine. His outstretched forearms and torso struck flat against the metal, the blow knocking the wind from his lungs, dizzying and anaesthetizing him from the roar and fury of the crust-piercer's destruction of itself and whatever lay beneath it.
Bossk came to a second later, and wiped blood from his muzzle. Black smoke billowed upward into the sky, pouring from the crumpled and ripped-apart flanks of the crust-piercer. He ducked instinctively as muffled explosions sounded from deep within the machine, its shattered power sources igniting into flames and arcing, meteorlike sparks, dragging white trails behind them.
It's gonna blow, Bossk told himself. Get going
Pushing himself up on his bruised hands, Bossk managed to scramble to the edge of the panel beneath him. The metal was slick with lubricating oil, bubbling and hissing with the heat from the explosions farther inside the machinery. He let himself fall, not caring what the distance to the ground was.
That turned out to be only a couple of meters;
flopped on his back, Bossk saw that the gears and treads of the crust-piercer's propulsive devices were buried three-quarters of their height into the ground. Loose dirt and gravel sifted toward him as the crust-piercer's mass lay at the bottom of the wide funnel-shaped depression into which the abandoned mining colony had been transformed. A few of the ruined buildings perched teetering on the rim of the bowl. Hollow, realized Bossk. That's it. The terrain beneath the mining colony had been tunneled out, as layer after layer of ore had been extracted and the shafts and underground quarries had been left empty. He would otherwise have been killed by the impact of the crust-piercer's landing, if it had struck solid ground, with no way of dissipating even part of the crushing force.
Bossk got to his feet and staggered toward the front of the machine, away from the fires and continuing small explosions in the power units toward its tail section. The weight of those had set the crust-piercer at a tilt, its conical prow, stilled now, rearing up and pointing toward the sky.
He stood still, his breath and pulse gradually slowing as he brushed away the bits of rock that had imbedded themselves in his scales. The acrid odors of flame and burning oil stung his flared nostrils. He was alone in what was left of the mining colony; whatever inhabitants had been left were probably still fleeing through the surrounding hills. And nothing could have survived being buried under that many tons of durasteel falling out of the skies. . .
Something moved underneath the prow of the crust-piercer, halfway between the rectangular plates of its treads. Rocks and dust shifted, sliding into a dark space below.
As Bossk watched, a gloved hand emerged, clawing its grip into the dirt. Then a forearm swathed in
rags of battle gear, dragging the attached shoulder out into the light. A familiar helmet, even more dented and scraped than it had been before, showed its cracked T-shaped visor.
Bit by bit, as though rising from the grave, Boba Fett crawled out from beneath the smoldering wreckage.
When Fett was halfway out, Bossk recovered from his astonishment, enough to reach down and grab the other bounty hunter by the wrists, tugging him the rest of the way free and getting him to his feet.
"You okay?" Bossk peered into Boba Fett's dark visor.
Boba Fett didn't answer the question." Come on." He pointed back to the scraped-out hole from which he had just emerged, with the bulk of the crust-piercer towering above it." Voss'on't. . . he's right there. We have to get him out."
The job was made easier by the ex-stormtrooper being both motionless and still bound by the cord that Boba Fett's dart weapon had looped around him. Bossk backed up from the hole beneath the machinery, dragging Voss'on't with him. He stretched him out on the ground, a few meters away from the crust-piercer.