Hard Merchandise (star wars) Read online

  Boba Fett collapsed in the pilot's chair as the ship's cockpit sealed tight around him. The dizzying constella-tion of dark spots, the forerunner of unconsciousness that had swelled in his vision as he'd climbed the ladder up from the main cargo hold, now faded as he breathed in the flow of air from the ship's minimized life-support systems. A moment later he leaned forward in the chair, eyes raised to the viewport as his right hand reached for the controls of the few navigational rockets still func-tioning on the ship.

  It wasn't necessary to fire the rockets to get away from the web. As Boba Fett watched, the last of the heavy structural fibers broke free from one another, the inter-woven fabric unraveling into loose strands. Where Kud'ar Mub'at's abode and place of business had blotted out the stars behind, the light-specked black of empty space now stood.

  In the distance, Prince Xizor's flagship awaited the ap-proach of the transfer shuttle bearing the Falleen noble, his guards and the Black Sun cleanup crew, and whatever might be left of the Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss'on't. It was of no concern to Fett whether the hard merchan-dise he had worked so hard to deliver in living condition might still be breathing; once payment had been made, his interest ceased.

  A swarm of dead subnodes, the creations and servants of the arachnoid assembler, bumped against the convex transparisteel of the cockpit's viewport. The crablike ones were ensnared in the same pale strands of disconnected neural tissue that tangled around the empty claws of the larger varieties. Atmospheric decompression had burst open the shells of some of them, spreading apart their contents like grey constellations of soft matter; others were still intact enough to appear as if they were merely asleep, awaiting some synapse-borne message from their parent and master.

  Boba Fett applied a burst of rotational force to Slave I. The hull-mounted navigational jet rolled the ship on its central axis, letting the loose, ragged net of subnodes slip past. A visual field clear of everything but cold stars showed in the viewport.

  At the edge of the viewport a brighter light glared, as though one of the stars had gone nova. Fett could see that it was Prince Xizor's flagship, maneuvering out of the sector and preparing for a jump into hyperspace. Whatever business the Falleen noble was about, it was likely far from this desolate area of the galaxy; it might very well be back at the Emperor's court on Coruscant. I imagine, thought Boba Fett, that I'll encounter him again, before too long. The course of events in the Em-pire was accelerating ever faster, spurred by both Palpa-tine's ambitions and the Rebellion's mounting challenge. Xizor would have to move fast if he was to have any chance of bringing Black Sun to victory on that rapidly shifting gameboard.

  It didn't matter to Boba Fett who won. His business would stay the same.

  Before he looked down to the control panel's gauges to assess what kind of condition Slave I was in, another pallid strand traced its way across the curved exterior of the viewport. The rope of silent neural fiber was linked only to the arachnoid assembler Kud'ar Mub'at, or what remained of it after the work of Xizor's cleanup crew. The once-glittering compound eyes were empty and grey now, like small round windows to the hollows of the corpse that drifted slowly past. Around the assembler's globular abdomen, split open like a leathery egg, the spidery legs were drawn up tight, forming the last self-contained nest for the once-proud, now-vanquished creature.

  Careful...

  Boba Fett indulged himself for a moment, imagining a warning from the dead. The expressionless face turned slowly past the viewport.

  Beware of everyone. If Kud'ar Mub'at's empty husk could speak, that was what it would have said. In this universe, there are no friends . . . only enemies. The assembler's gaping mouth was a small black vacuum, surrounded by the greater one of interstellar space. No trust... only betrayal...

  He didn't require advice such as that, even from one whose withered corpse testified to the truth of the silent words. Boba Fett knew all those things already. That was why he was alive, and the assembler was dead.

  All his remaining concerns—for the moment—were technical ones. Boba Fett turned toward the cockpit's navicomputer. He began accessing and inputting Slave I's astrogational coordinates, at the same time scrolling through the onboard computer's database of the sur-rounding systems and planets. What he needed now was an advanced-technology shipyard, one without too many entanglements with either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance, or scruples about working for payments made under the table, as it were. Some of the weapons and tracking modules aboard Slave I were technically re-stricted; a good deal of his profits from past jobs had gone into the bribery or commissioned theft necessary for getting top-secret beta-development tech out of the Imperial Navy's hidden research-and-development labs. Only a shipyard remote from the galaxy's center, and away from the prying scrutiny of Palpatine's spy agents, would have enough nerve—and greed—to do the kind of work that ordinarily had the death penalty attached to it.

  A list of possibilities appeared on the computer's read-out screen. He was already familiar with most of the shipyards; his line of work was hard on his tools, from personal weapons to navigable craft. Not those, Fett de-cided, eliminating with a few strokes of his fingertip all of the planet-based yards. In its present fragile condition, Slave I wouldn't survive a hard-gravity landing.

  The remoter possibilities, those on the other side of the galaxy, were similarly eliminated. Even if Boba Fett tried to make it that far—and if a hyperspace jump didn't wind up disintegrating Slave I—the longer he took to reach his destination, the greater the chances of attract-ing the attention of any number of his enemies. They'd be able to pick him off without much of a struggle. He had already decided that speed of service was as impor-tant a consideration as the quality. I need to get up and running, thought Boba Fett as he studied the remaining short list on the computer's readout screen. And fast.

  Before he could finish his calculations, a voice came over the comm unit.

  "It was a pleasure doing business with you." The voice of the distant Balancesheet was not quite as obsequiously formal as its parent Kud'ar Mub'at's had been. "We'll do it again."

  The control panel's proximity monitors registered the presence of another ship in the sector; from the ID pro-file, Boba Fett could see that it wasn't Prince Xizor's Vendetta. He scanned the viewport and spotted it, near the drifting wreckage of Kud'ar Mub'at's web. Hitting the viewport's long-range mag function brought up a clear image of a standard bulk freighter. Its registration was clear, but showed former ownership by one of Xizor's— and Black Sun's—holding companies.

  Boba Fett thumbed his own comm unit's transmit button. "I thought you were going independent, Balance-sheet."

  "I am," replied the voice from the comm unit speaker. "This freighter, however humble, is mine alone. But then, my needs are not elaborate. And Prince Xizor did give me a good deal on it—virtually free."

  "Nothing's free with him. You'll pay for it, eventually."

  "I suspect you're correct in that." Balancesheet did not sound overly concerned. "But in the meantime, it gives me a base of operations that is many degrees more suitable than Kud'ar Mub'at's shabby old web. A ship such as this already has the required operational systems built in; I won't have to create and extrude as many subnodes as my parent did in order to make it serve my needs. Thus the chances of a mutiny, such as the one by which I came to power, are greatly lessened."

  "Smart." Boba Fett made a mental note that dealings with this new go-between assembler were likely to be more dangerous than they had been with its predecessor.

  "It is, however, little more than a large empty space, with a set of thruster engines attached to an autonomic navigational system. I suspect that it was used for some of Black Sun's simpler smuggling operations, out in the edge systems, and it's become too outmoded and slow for the organization's current needs." The voice of the small assembler creature, alone in the vacated freighter, seemed to echo off the bulkheads around it. "I'll have to spend a considerable amount to equip it the way I wis
h."

  "Save up your credits, then." Boba Fett looked back down to the list of shipyard possibilities on the computer readout. "That kind of work doesn't come cheap."

  "Oh, I've got the credits already." Balancesheet's voice turned subtly smug. "More than enough."

  Something about the way the assembler's words had been spoken piqued Boba Fett's interest. "What are you talking about?"

  "You might want to check the status of your transfer accounts on Coruscant." The smile in Balancesheet's voice was almost audible. "You forget that I do a lot more financial business than you do; that's what I was created to do. And I inherited, so to speak, all of my cre-ator's old friends and associates—especially the ones will-ing to be bribed in exchange for certain small favors."

  " 'Favors'... what kind of favors?"

  "Merely the kind that involves splitting a transfer of credits from an escrow account, and very quietly divert-ing one half into my receipt account rather than yours." Balancesheet's voice turned pitying. "You really should have checked your own accounts after seeing that the transfer had been made; if you had, you would have seen that you wound up with half the bounty that had been posted for Voss'on't."

  Boba Fett pushed himself back from the control panel. His gaze locked upon the empty freighter visible in the distance. "That was a mistake," he said grimly. Without even checking further, he knew that what the assembler had said was true. It wasn't the kind of thing a sentient creature would joke about; not with him. "A big mis-take, on your part."

  "I don't think so." No apprehension sounded in the voice coming from the speaker. "The way I see it, you owed me at least that much. If it hadn't been for me, Prince Xizor would have gone ahead and eliminated you. Permanently. You might not care to show any gratitude for that—I don't expect it, either. So let's just call this an-other little business deal."

  "Let's call it theft." Boba Fett rasped out the words. "I'm the wrong creature to steal from."

  "Perhaps so," replied Balancesheet. "But it's in your interest for my go-between business to be up and run-ning. There's a lot of potential clients out in the galaxy, who will only deal with someone like you at an arm's-length basis. You need me, Boba Fett. So you can go on hunting down more hard merchandise and collecting the bounties for it. Without a go-between to hold the credits, a lot of this business breaks down; it doesn't work anymore."

  The analysis didn't sway Boba Fett. "I can take care of my own business."

  "Good for you. But I'm still keeping half the Voss'on't bounty. I've got expenses as well."

  "You don't have to worry about meeting them. You won't live that long. Nobody does who steals from me."

  "Get serious, Fett." The assembler's mocking words slid out of the comm unit speaker; Balancesheet had given up any semblance of maintaining the formalities and sly fawning in which Kud'ar Mub'at had indulged. "What are you going to do about it? The condition your ship is in, you're not able to blow away a midge-fly. Not without blowing yourself up. And as slow as this freighter might be, it's still faster than you at the moment."

  "I'll catch up with you," promised Boba Fett. "Sooner or later."

  "And when you do, you'll have either figured out how much you do need me, or I'll be under the protection of Prince Xizor—Black Sun also needs a go-between. Or I'll have some other surprise waiting for you. It doesn't mat-ter; I'm not exactly worried."

  "Get worried." The thought of the stolen credits burned deep within Boba Fett's breast. "Get real worried."

  "Until the next time," said Balancesheet. "I'll be wait-ing, bounty hunter."

  The comm unit connection with the freighter broke off, and silence filled Slave I's cockpit once more. Boba Fett watched as the other ship's thruster engines flared into life, then dwindled into fading, starlike points.

  For a moment longer, he gazed out at empty space, his own thoughts as dark and brooding. Then he turned again to the calculations of the slow journey ahead of him...

  7

  NOW...

  The story ended.

  Or at least for now, thought Neelah. She had been sit-ting for a long time with her back against the cold dura-steel bulkhead of the Hound's Tooth's cargo hold. Sitting and listening as the other bounty hunter Dengar had fin-ished his account of Boba Fett's past, and all that had come out of the scheme to destroy the old Bounty Hunters Guild.

  "That's it, huh?" She was glad she hadn't had to keep a blaster aimed at Dengar to motivate him to keep talk-ing. Her arm would have gotten tired by now. It had been a long story, though filled with enough action and vio-lence to keep her from getting bored. With one hand she rubbed at the small of her back, then unfolded her legs and stood up. "I take it that Boba Fett got everything sorted out after that."

  "Good guess," said Dengar. He rapped his knuckles on the bulkhead behind himself. "Since you've been on Slave I, before we transferred over to this ship, you know it's in fully functional shape now. There were some inci-dents I heard about, though, that happened in the process of getting repaired. And redesigned, from the bulkheads to the engine core." Dengar pointed with his thumb to the cage. "Apparently, Fett decided that he needed bigger quarters for the amount of hard merchandise he was going to be ferrying around—so things had to be shifted around to make room for it. Otherwise, the ladder wouldn't be necessary to get to the cockpit. The whole refitting process took more than just credits, from all reports. And a few other creatures wound up getting killed. But that's not unusual with the way Boba Fett works."

  "I'll say." After hearing the story of the war among the bounty hunters, Neelah found it a wonder that any-body who had ever come in contact with Boba Fett was still alive. Creatures he doesn't like, she thought wryly, have a habit of winding up dead. If Bossk, the Tran-doshan bounty hunter that Fett had stolen this ship from, was still alive somewhere, it was a triumph of the same dumb luck that had gotten him out of his previous scrapes with his rival. "Too bad for those creatures, I suppose."

  And what about me? She had been warned by Dengar that the story wasn't going to answer all of her questions. It didn't matter how much she had found out about Boba Fett—as if she had needed more confirmation about how cold and ruthless he could be—she still hadn't found out anything more about herself. I still don't know who I am, thought Neelah glumly. Who I really am. All the mysteries, all the questions that repeated over and over inside her skull, were still infuriatingly present. They had been in there since she had found herself in Jabba the Hurt's palace, back on that remote world of Tatooine. Since then, little scraps of the past had slipped into her memory-scrubbed brain, tantalizing pieces of the world from which someone, some dark entity, had abducted her. The only constant, the only link between that past world and this harsh, threatening one in which she was forced to feel her way like a blind creature in a vibroblade-edged corridor, was Boba Fett—of that, Neelah was cer-tain. She could feel it in the tightening of her sinews, the white-knuckled clenching of her fists, that overtook her every time she found the reflection of her face caught in the dark visor of Boba Fett's helmet. Even in Jabba's palace, when she had seen his ominous form across the Hurt's crowded, noisy throne room, Neelah had been certain of the connection between herself and the bounty hunter. He knows, she thought bitterly. Whatever my true name is—he knows it. Her name, her past, all that she had lost. But as of yet, she had found no way of forc-ing him to reveal those secrets to her.

  She was beginning to wonder why she had bothered to save his life.

  Turning her head, Neelah looked around at the con-fines of the ship's cargo hold. This part of the ship that had formerly belonged to the Trandoshan Bossk was not much different from Boba Fett's own Slave I. Form and function, stripped bare metal, cages for hauling around a bounty hunter's unwilling merchandise. It smelled differ-ent, though; the acrid, reptilian stench curled in her nos-trils with each breath, reminding her unpleasantly of the blood-scented musk that had permeated the stone walls of the fortresslike palace where she had served as a danc-ing girl. An
d where I would've wound up, she knew, as rancor bait. The same mix of odors from dozens of the galaxy's species, their bodies' exudations and hormonal secretions, that had hung in the palace's close, stifling air, seemed to have penetrated the very metal of Bossk's ship. Slave I had been cleaner and closer to sterile, befitting the cold, precise logic of its owner. A clinical surgery, in its own way, with Boba Fett the doctor that took creatures' spirits apart, the better to convert them into the hard merchandise in which he traded. An involuntary shiver traced Neelah's spine as she saw in her mind's eye the scalpel that lay in Boba Fett's hidden gaze.

  "Sorry it didn't do the trick for you." Dengar's voice broke into her thoughts. "But if you didn't know it be-fore, at least you do now. He's not anybody to fool around with. Not unless you don't care whether you live or die."

  "I don't have that choice," replied Neelah. "Believe me, if I could have avoided meeting Boba Fett, I would have." She had the notion, unsubstantiated yet by any hard facts from memory, that the life she had led before had been one where bounty hunters, and all the sticky, spirit-corroding evil they brought with them, were on the scarce side. "I could have done without the pleasure of his acquaintance."

  "Suit yourself." Dengar had made up a little pallet for himself near the bulkhead where he had sat while re-counting the story about Boba Fett's past. "Now for me, it's a real honor, hooking up with him and all. Being as I'm in the bounty hunter business myself. Not at the same level as him, though." Hands clasped behind his head, Dengar lay down on the thin nest of rags and pack-ing foam. "So for him to ask me to come along as his partner..."

  Dengar didn't have to explain anything more than that. Good for you, thought Neelah. Back on Tatooine, in their hiding place below the parched surface of the Dune Sea, Dengar had told her about his hopes of actu-ally quitting the dangerous bounty hunter trade and set-tling down with his beloved Manaroo. The couple had been betrothed for some time, but had put off their mar-riage until Dengar had found some way of getting out from under the enormous weight of debt he carried. Fi-nancially, it had all been downhill for him since he'd quit—at Manaroo's gentle prodding—his previous spe-ciality as a Grade One Imperial Assassin. He was a dif-ferent person now, and a better one—working for the Empire ate away at one's spirit, sometimes fatally so, and he had Manaroo to thank for saving him from that fate. But it still left the mountain of debt that had accumu-lated so swiftly upon his back. Creatures who owed credits in this galaxy, and who didn't pay up, also had a good chance of winding up dead; even with Jabba the Hutt dead, there were plenty of other hard lenders who operated that way. A partnership with the notorious Boba Fett was the best, and maybe only, opportunity Dengar had for clearing his accounts. If, Neelah figured, he doesn't get killed along the way.