Flashing in and out of consciousness, glimpses of Boba Fett’s life flashed before him as he tumbled through space aboard an out-of-control Slave lV. His father’s death, his lost family, the enduring loneliness, the many brushes with death. Fleeting memories of a life fueled by tragedy, hidden away from the galaxy underneath a cloak of worn Mandalorian battle armor. And still, Slave lV plummeted through open space. Power down, oxygen quickly depleting from the cabin. “Everyone dies. It is the final and only ever lasting justice,” Fett once told a former bounty many years ago before disintegrating him. It appeared as if he soon live up to his own words.

Fett’s helmets HUD display was malfunctioning and his verbal command sensors were down. He struggled in vain with his right hand to reach his left wrist’s command keypad, but the centrifugal force of Slave lV’s spinning threw his right hand away from his opposite arm time and again. Slowly, he concentrated to make another attempt to hit the keypad, this time plunging his right finger into the system override button, causing his helmet and armor to revert to emergency mode. Oxygen rushed into his helmet as he quickly regained consciousness and screamed “Override” into his helmet’s microphone, reestablishing contact with Slave lV’s onboard computer. The cockpit suddenly lit up, Slave lV’s control system alarms at blast, alerting Fett that something had gone horribly wrong on the last jump to hyperspace. The spinning slowed as Slave lV’s engines began to regain control and enter a new orbit in a strange system. Fett checked the Hypderdrive computer. It read ‘Inaccurate course trajectory altered by black hole.’

Fett ignored the message from the Hyperdrive and tried to remember what had happened prior to the equipment blackout. Had it been minutes? Days? He couldn’t be sure. All onboard computers, including his HUD display, had been reset following the override request, which he had never had to use in over 40 years of space travel. He looked in the hyperdrive’s direction again. He had heard of black holes, read about them in his father Jango’s journal, but had never experienced them. Nor had he ever known any beings that had gone in or out of them. In all his years, the prospect of a black hole was equated with death. Even the Galactic Empire had avoided them in their flight manuals. And the Empire certainly wasn’t afraid of throwing away one of their own in the name of experimentation.

There was little time to speculate. Fett’s emergency power would soon be emptied. He needed to find a habitable system. One who’s atmosphere was filled with oxygen. There, he could refuel, inspect Slave lV for damages and hopefully figure out what had happened in the past few days to himself. He surveyed life readings and system habitations on Slave lV’s computer to no avail. This system was completely alien to anything Slave lV had previously encountered. As power dropped to emergency levels, Fett narrowed his onboard computer’s searches down to systems with oxygen in the atmosphere. There was but one. Supporting life, within reach, divided between land and water, Fett directed Slave lV to the third planet away from the system’s sun.

As Slave lV approached the atmosphere, Fett surveyed life readings below. The system was highly populated, almost to the levels of Coruscant, the political hub of the galaxy for millennia. Fearing an ambush in this unknown system, he switched on Slave lV’s cloaking device as he broke the barrier from space to atmosphere. Slowly, the atmosphere gave way to sunlight, clouds, high readings for a gas called carbon dioxide and unidentified aircraft. He programmed Slave lV to land in a highly populated metropolitan area sandwiched between several rivers that opened up to an ocean. Assuming danger at all levels, Fett piloted Slave lV into a forested area over a river and due east of the metropolitan center. The area housed the oldest deciduous trees of the region, allowing ample camouflage for his ship if needed. He spotted several humans nearby as he silently landed Slave lV in a heavily wooded area. While powering the emergency systems down, he noticed a marker outside the cockpit window. In Galactic Basic, it read “Welcome to Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Park closes at dusk.”