Hard Merchandise Page 15

  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 pro­file, 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 wish."

  "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 run­ning. 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 Tran­doshan 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 cer­tain. 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 forc­ing 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 nos­trils 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. And 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 pack­ing 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 actu­ally quitting the dangerous bounty hunter trade and set­tling down with his beloved Manaroo. The couple had been betrothed for some time, but had put off their mar­riage until Dengar had found some way of getting out from under the enormous weight of debt he carried. Fi­nancially, it had all been downhill for him since he'd quit—at Manaroo's gentle prodding—his previous spe­ciality as a Grade One Imperial Assassin. He was a dif­ferent 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 accumu­lated 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.

  She looked down again at the bounty hunter on the makeshift pallet. Dengar was already asleep, or doing a good imitation of it. Telling stories—even true ones—was obviously not in his usual repertoire of skills. Any kind of action, no matter how strenuous or life-endangering, was more suited to him than stringing words together.

  A feeling of acute distaste rose inside Neelah as she raised her eyes again to the dull metal bulkheads of the ship's cargo hold. She had only been able to stand being here as long as the unreeling story had diverted her atten­ tion. Now, the close, stench-filled air formed a choking fist inside her throat, as though she could literally taste the despair and anger of that other hard merchandise, the ones who had fallen into the hands of Bossk. They might not have been as profitable as those that Boba Fett tracked down and secured, but their lives had been worth just as much to themselves, if no one else.

  I've got to get out of here, thought Neelah desper­ ately. She didn't know if her own words meant the cargo hold, this ship that its previous owner had named Hound's Tooth, or the dark mystery that her life had become. It didn't matter; there was only one exit before her, the metal ladder at the side of the hold that led to the ship's cockpit area. Go on, Neelah told herself, hesitating as she set a hand on an eye-level tread. You've faced him be­ fore. A wry smile twisted the corner of her mouth. And you're not dead yet. She had even pulled and held a blaster pistol on Boba Fett, right there in the Hound's cockpit—how many other creatures in the galaxy could say they had done something like that and survived to talk about it? Neelah put her boot on the lowest rung and started climbing.

  Boba Fett was at the cockpit's panel, making precise adjustments to the large, troughlike controls designed for a Trandoshan's outsize claws. In the hatchway be­ hind, Neelah stood watching him, the back of his scarred

  and dented helmet as enigmatic as the dark, T-shaped vi­ sor that hid his eyes. I've seen those as well, she reminded herself. And lived. Another accomplishmen
t that un­ doubtedly put her in a tiny fraction of the galaxy's inhabi­ tants, on all the worlds and in every system. The helmet had been the one part of the battle gear that hadn't been reduced to wet rags by the acidic digestive juices of the Sarlacc creature in the Great Pit of Carkoon, into which Boba Fett had fallen when Han Solo had been rescued by his friends Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. But Nee­ lah and Dengar had still had to remove the helmet from the unconscious Fett to feed and rehydrate him until he could fend for himself once more. Even in that condition, hovering between life and death, Boba Fett had still seemed an intimidating figure. Anyone with a degree less furious energy and survival instinct as part of his spirit would have been consumed by the blind, gaping-mawed creature that had swallowed him, rather than finding the means to literally explode his way out to the open air. It wasn't just Boba Fett's short way with other creatures' lives that made him such a legend; it was also the tenacity with which he clung to his own.