Jango Fett stared back.
The Count broke the silence.
"Patience, Viceroy," he said. "She will die."
A cheer went up and Boba looked down toward the arena.
The gates were opening again, all four of them this time. Droidekas rolled in, unfolding as they surrounded the prisoners, their blades gleaming wickedly in the light from the hole above the arena.
Before Boba could even blink, the droidekas had completely surrounded the three prisoners on their reek.
It was over.
Boba closed his eyes. He didn"t want to watch. Then he heard a noise behind him.
A very slight clicking sound. He opened his eyes and turned, and saw a terrible sight. A Jedi, standing behind his father.
The Jedi"s face was dark, like fine wood. His eyes were narrow and cruel. His purple lightsaber was drawn, and ignited.
And held across Jango Fett"s neck.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
The" Geonosians stopped cheering. The droidekas stopped advancing.
The reek, with the two Jedi and the beautiful woman on" its back, stopped prancing and bucking and rearing. A hush fell over the entire arena and all eyes turned away from the Jedi and the droidekas. All of a sudden the show was not in the ring, but in the stands.
Everyone was staring at the officials" box, where the Jedi held the lightsaber to Jango Fett"s neck.
We are the show! Boba realized with horror.
Jango Fett stood perfectly still. His Mandalorian battle armor Was useless against a Jedi lightsaber. One flick of the Jedi"s wrist and he would be decapitated.
Boba was scared.
As usual, the Count kept calm. Boba had noticed that he liked to turn everything into a game, even a bad situation. Even an emergency. The Count seemed to know the Jedi.
"Master Windu," he said, in a smooth, oily voice, "how pleasant of you to join us. You"re just in time for the moment of truth. I would think these two new boys of yours could use a little more training."
"Sorry to disappoint you," said the Jedi. "This party"s over."
The Jedi gave a little hand signal. It looked to Boba as if lights were coming on all over the arena.
Lightsabers.
There were at least a hundred of them - some in the corners down by the ring, others up high in the stands. They came on all at once.
And each was in the hands of a Jedi.
Where had they come from? How had they all gotten in?
Boba was amazed at how bad the Geonosians" security was. And he was beginning to understand his father"s grudging respect for the Jedi. They had their ways.
The Count, as always, tried to seem unimpressed. That was his style in a crisis.
"Brave but foolish, my old Jedi friend," he said. "You"re impossibly outnumbered."
"I don"t think so," said the Jedi called Windu.
He scanned the crowd with his hooded eyes. "The Geonosians aren"t warriors. One Jedi has to be worth a hundred Geonosians."
But the Count came right back at him. "It wasn"t the Geonosians I was thinking about."
It was the Count"s turn to give a hand signal, even slighter and more subtle than the one the Jedi had given. Boba heard a sound like a storm on Kamino - a low rumble. Suddenly all the doors in the arena opened and every aisle in the stands was filled with Battle Droids.
The Battle Droids ran down the aisles with their lasers flashing, firing at the Jedi and scorching whatever else was in their way.
Lasers flashed overhead, and Boba ducked. The Jedi called Windu had gone from offense to defense in an instant. He was deflecting the droids"
lasers with his lightsaber; it was like fencing with the air.
That was all Jango Fett needed. He crouched and fired the flamethrower that was built into his battle armor.
WHO0000SH!.
Windu was engulfed in a torrent of orange flame, and his robe caught fire. It flared behind him like the exhaust of a rocket as the Jedi jumped out of the stands into the ring.
Jango let him go. He turned and went into action with the Battle Droids and the Geonosian troops, toasting the Jedi with vicious laser fire.
The Jedi all began to clump in the center of the arena, back-to-back, around the reek with the apprentice Jedi, Obi-Wan, and the beautiful woman still on its back.
The fight was on!
The reek wanted no part of it. It leaped into the air, throwing the three off its back. Then it ran in wild circles, snarling and snorting, stomping and stamping, crushing droids, Geonosian troops, Jedi, and bystanders under its hooves.
"Go!" Boba shouted, out loud this time. It didn"t matter which side he was on - it was exciting to watch. Blood and bodies were flying. And the only person down there in the ring that he liked, the pretty woman, was unhurt, at least so far.
She was standing in the middle of the ring with the Jedi. Somebody had tossed her a blaster rifle. She was pretty good with it, too, blasting droids and Geos on all sides.
Jango was standing right beside Boba, taking a heavy toll from the stands, firing with deadly accuracy into the Jedi. It was the first time Boba had ever been in such a big battle with his father.
And he loved it!
"Stay down, Boba!" Jango ordered, and Boba knew better than to disobey. But he was able to peek over the railing and see down into the ring.
In the middle of all the confusion, Boba saw the Jedi called Mace Windu, the one his dad had scorched. He was mowing down droids and Geonosian troops with his lightsaber, rallying the Jedi with his boldness.
The reek saw him, too. The big, horned beast singled him out and started chasing him around the arena. Boba had to laugh. The Jedi had gone from hound to hare in about one second.
Mace Windu tried to make a stand. He skidded to a stop and slashed out at the reek with his lightsaber. But the reek kept coming - and knocked the lightsaber out of his hand.
It went flying, and the Jedi took off running again.
Jango Fett put his big, gloved hand on his son"s head and growled, "Stay here, Boba. I"ll be back!"
That turned out to be the last thing he ever told his only son.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
Jango Fett used the jet-pack on his Mandalorian battle armor to rocket down into the arena. He landed right in the middle of the fighting. The runaway reek, which made no distinction between friend and foe, tried to stomp him.
From the stands, Boba saw his father dodging and rolling, trying to get out of the way. He bit his tongue to keep from screaming out. Those hooves were as sharp as knives.
But Boba needn"t have worried. His dad rolled free, jumped to his feet, and proceeded to kill the beast. A couple of blasts and the reek was no more.
Then Jango Fett and the Jedi, Mace Windu faced off, one-on-one, while the fight raged all around them.
Boba stood on tiptoe, trying to see, and at the same time dodging the bolts that were filling the air like angry insects. Super Battle Droids, more powerful than the Battle Droids, were now dominating the battle.
The dust rose in a cloud. The arena was filled with screams and shouts, the clash of lightsabers and bolts of laser fire. Boba yelled "Dad! " as he tried to see.
And then he saw.
He saw.
He saw the Jedi"s lightsaber swing in a deadly arc. He saw his father"s empty helmet go flying. He saw his father"s body drop to its knees, as if in prayer.
Boba watched in breathless horror as Jango Fett fell lifeless onto the b.l.o.o.d.y sand.
"No!" Boba cried. No, it can"t be!
The concussion from a nearby blast of laser fire knocked Boba down.
He stumbled to his feet, ears ringing, and saw that the arena below was littered with bodies and pieces of droids and droidekas.
The acklay and the reek both were dead. The Jedi were outnumbered but still fighting. And the beautiful woman was right in the middle of it all, blasting droids and Geonosians alike.
Boba couldn"t see his father or the Jedi he had been fighting. Had he dreamed it all? The swing of the lightsaber, the helmet flying off; the warrior falling to his knees, then toppling over, like a tree.
A bad dream, Boba decided. That was it! His father was somewhere back up in the stands.
Boba knew that he didn"t like to fight alongside droids. Jango Fett scorned the droids because they had no imagination. Imagination, he often said, is a warrior"s most important weapon.
A bad dream, Boba thought, pushing his way down the stairs, toward the arena.
Even without imagination, the Super Battle Droids were winning.
They were programmed to win, or at least to never give up. And even with all their losses, they far outnumbered the Jedi.
The droids in the stands kept firing, and the droids in the arena kept advancing, and soon there were only twenty or so Jedi left.
They stood in a clump in the center of the arena, back-to-back, lightsabers and lasers drawn. Trapped!
The aisles were full, so Boba climbed down from seat to seat, toward the arena. The Geonosians were cheering as the droids moved in for the kill. Then the Count raised his hand.
"Master Windu!"
Silence.
Boba stopped. What"s this? He watched as the Jedi his father had been fighting stepped forward, covered with dust and sweat.
"You have fought gallantly," said the Count. "Worthy of recognition in. "
Boba didn"t wait to hear more. He knew it was all a lie. It had to be.
He continued to jump from seat to seat, down toward the ring, pushing and shoving his way through the crowd.
He couldn"t think. He didn"t want to think. He just wanted to get into the ring and find his father, Jango Fett, who would tell him: Don"t worry, Boba, it was all a dream. A bad, bad dream.
"Now it is finished," said the Count. "Surrender, and your lives will be spared."
"We will not be hostages for you to barter with, Dooku."
"Then I"m sorry, old friend," said the Count. "You will have to be destroyed."
The Count nodded and the droids were just about to fire into the little clump of Jedi, ending the whole thing, when all of a sudden the woman looked up.
All around the arena, the Geonosians started looking up.
Boba stopped and looked up, too.
Gunships were descending from the sky, One, two, three gunships... six altogether.
They landed around the Jedi survivors. Doors in the ships opened and troops poured out, running down the ramps, firing at the droids. Boba knew the troops well, although he was surprised to see them. The Jedi began backing into the ships, still blocking laser blasts with their lightsabers, The battle was on again, but Boba hardly noticed. He was running again, jumping from seat to seat, down toward the arena, as the gunships took off, with the Jedi still running up the ramps. Some were barely hanging on by their fingertips as the ships rose.
They were getting away. Not only the beautiful woman, but the Jedi he and his father hated. The Obi-Wan Jedi; the apprentice Jedi; the dark-faced fighter called Mace Windu. They were all escaping!