Hard Merchandise Page 16

  The bounty hunter was either ignoring her as he went about his tasks on the Hound's control panel, or he hadn't been aware of her coming up the cargo-hold ladder to the cockpit's hatchway; he continued the work of his gloved hands without remarking on her presence. He knows I'm here, thought Neelah. There's not much he doesn't know...

  She raised her eyes to the viewport in front of the con­ trol panel just as Boba Fett dropped the Hound's Tooth out of hyperspace. A vista of stars, different from those left on the other side of the galaxy, filled the viewport. Neelah looked across the bright, cold field, hoping that the uncaring regard of the distant stars would provide her some relief from the cramped, claustrophobic quar­ ters inside the ship. She looked, and she saw—

  The past.

  Not her own, but Boba Fett's. It's just like the story, a part of Neelah marveled, almost childlike in its reaction. The story Dengar told.

  Floating in the vacuum outside the Hound's Tooth were the tattered fragments of Kud'ar Mub'at's web. It had not been from any particular skill on Dengar's part that she had been able to so vividly imagine the image of the arachnoid assembler and its web, both before and af­ ter Prince Xizor's cleanup crew had torn it apart. There had been another tantalizing fragment of memory in­ side her own head, something that had somehow evaded the attempt to wipe it out of existence. Somehow, from out of her past and the world that had been stolen from her, Dengar's account of Boba Fett's history had trig­gered that remembrance; she had known exactly what Kud'ar Mub'at and his flock of created subnodes had looked like. I knew it, thought Neelah. And now they were here, gently drifting, surrounded by strands of pal­lid neural tissue like elongated ghosts, bumping sound­lessly against the transparisteel of the cockpit's forward viewport.

  The dead subnodes looked both eerie and pathetic, their broken exoskeletons surrounded by thin, twiglike limbs, claws curled up under the split abdomens. Smaller ones, seemingly no bigger than a child's fist, were entan­ gled with the giants that had been capable of tethering a ship to the now-vanished web's docking area. All of them were hollow-eyed, with the unseeing gaze that blind, dead things turned toward those fortunate creatures still alive. Or unfortunate, thought Neelah. Maybe the poor dead subnodes, pieces of their defeated master and creator, were really the lucky ones; they no longer had to wonder about what would happen to them next. For them, all the galaxy's cruel uncertainties were over.

  For a moment, the sight of the space-drifting sub­nodes evoked the disturbing sensation in Neelah that she had fallen backward in time, pulling this ship and its contents along, as though her empty memory were a true black hole, with its own irresistible gravity. But some-

  how the process had wound up landing them in Boba Fett's past, the moment just after the crude dissection and death of his former business associate Kud'ar Mub'at. But that was so long ago, thought Neelah; it made her feel dizzy to even contemplate it. She closed her eyes, wondering if when she opened them again, time would begin unreeling on its proper course once more.

  Her eyelids flicked open without her willing them to. I was wrong. She saw that now. The momentary dis­ placement in time had passed. Neelah stepped forward and laid a hand on the back of the pilot's, steadying her­ self as she gazed out the viewport. "They've been dead a long time," she said softly. "A very long time."

  "Of course." Boba Fett had raised his own gaze from the instrument gauges; now he looked out on the same dark vista as Neelah did. "The last time I was in this sec­ tor, these entities had just been killed—along with their creator, Kud'ar Mub'at." He turned and looked over his shoulder at Neelah. "But you know all about that, don't you?"

  A sudden realization hit her. "You were listening in, weren't you? Over the ship's internal communications system. All the while that Dengar was telling me about what happened to you in the past."

  Boba Fett gave a single dismissive shake of his head. "I hardly needed to," he replied. "Since Dengar was act­ ing on the exact instructions I had previously given him."

  "What?" Neelah looked back at Fett in amazement. "You told him—"

  "It's convenient for me to have you brought up to speed on a few matters of common interest. Having Den­ gar take care of it saves me the trouble—and it kept the two of you occupied while I was tracing this sector's ex­ act location and navigating us here. That took time, as we arrived here via a route that would throw off anyone else who might have been spying upon my activities. Time, which you managed to pass in your own way." Boba Fett's voice sounded almost tinged by a partial

  smile. "I'll have to congratulate my colleague Dengar on his acting abilities—he kept his act going, even when you pulled that blaster pistol on him."

  Her surprise faded quickly. He's been ahead of me be­ fore, thought Neelah. He probably will be again. "So this is the location, huh?" She peered again toward the dark vista afforded by the viewport. "Where Prince Xi­zor tried to eliminate you, then changed his mind and took out that arachnoid assembler instead."

  "Precisely." Boba Fett pointed toward the viewport. "As you can see, everything Dengar told you about the incident was the truth. Xizor's cleanup crew didn't leave much of Kud'ar Mub'at's web. Black Sun operatives are known for their thoroughness."

  More of the dead subnodes, like the shed carapaces of ordinary crawling spiders, drifted past the Hound's Tooth. Neelah felt the skin of her forearms prickle into goose- flesh as she heard—or imagined that she did—the light scraping and tapping of empty chitin against the ship's hull. The sensation was more dreamlike than anything to do with actual memory.

  "Why did you bring us here?" The spirit-chilling un­canniness of the sight out of the viewport, the dead crea­ tures tethered together by the strands of neural tissue, as much a part of one another now as they had been in their living existence, touched a thread of anger inside Neelah. "Just to reminisce?"

  "There's very little I do," replied Boba Fett calmly, "that is without purpose. I came here for a reason. And you were brought here for the same reason."

  "How would I know that?" Neelah folded her arms across her breast. "You haven't seen fit to tell us anything about where we were headed, or why." She glared at the figure in front of her. "Or is this something else that you let Dengar in on, but not me?"

  "Neither you nor Dengar were aware of our destina­ tion, and there was a good reason for that as well. If you don't know something, you can't be compelled to reveal it. That's why I've made it a practice not to tell anyone,

  even my own associates, if I can avoid it." Boba Fett pointed a gloved fingertip toward Neelah. "I don't keep my silence for your sake, but it's to your advantage, nevertheless. A good many of the ways to get someone such as yourself to talk are not pleasant. And some of them don't leave you alive afterward, either."

  "Thanks for your concern," Neelah said sourly. "I ap­ preciate it."

  "Your sarcasm is pointless. When I decide to start caring about anyone else's opinions of my operating methods, I'll let you know." Boba Fett leaned back in the pilot's chair. "But you wanted to find out; you merely had to wait, and the time has come."

  Like flicking a switch, the bounty hunter's words trans­ formed the anger inside Neelah to sudden, unreasoning panic. "I... I don't know ..."

  "You don't know if you're ready for that." Boba Fett's visor-shielded gaze seemed to penetrate to the depths of her spirit. "You've come all this way; you've waited so long and so impatiently; you've fought to find out all that's been hidden from you. And now you're afraid."

  "No—" She quickly shook her head. "No, I'm not."

  "We shall see about that," replied Boba Fett, even more quietly—and more ominously—than before. "Because you don't have a choice. You never did."

  He's right. Neelah squeezed her eyelids shut once again; at her sides, her hands closed into fists, the sinews of her forearms straining with tension. From the moment she had caught sight of this helmeted figure, before she had learned his name, she had known that this moment would come. It had been fated
to do so, if she could only stay alive long enough. She had done that much, escap­ ing from the death that would have been hers inside Jabba the Hutt's palace, then binding her destiny to one who had been only a shadow's breadth away from death himself. Just to find out, Neelah told herself fiercely. To find out...

  She didn't know. Whether it would be better to dis­ cover what lay in that other world, the past that had

  been stolen from her, or to go on in darkness, to leave it hidden.

  "Go tell Dengar to come up here."

  Neelah heard Boba Fett's command, and slowly opened her eyes.

  I don't have a choice. She nodded slowly. About any

  Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the dead, hollow- eyed creatures drifting in the emptiness outside the ship, then brought his gaze back around to her.

  "We have a lot to talk about," said Boba Fett. "We'd better get started."

  8

  He was dreaming.

  Dengar knew he was, because he could see Manaroo right in front of him.

  Turning with a bunch of flimsiplast sheets in her fist and a seriously annoyed look on her face —though that made her no less beautiful to him—Manaroo rapped the knuckles of one hand across the invoices. "Those Jawas are undercutting us again," she said. "We're going to have to do something about them, once and for all —"

  "They undercut us because they sell junk." In the load­ing bay of a medium-tonnage cargo freighter, surrounded by datacoded shipping containers and uncrated machin­ ery still shiny with factory lubricants, Dengar took his wife in his arms and kissed her on the brow. They had been married how many years now, and the skip in his pulse was still the same as the first time he had ever held her soft warmth against himself. The tiny tattooed moons and stars on her wrists no longer glowed as brightly as before, but his own love for her showed no sign of fad­ ing. "That's their stock in trade; they're Jawas, right? So don't worry about 'em. They're not our competition."

  Manaroo fretted some more, looking over his shoul­ der at the invoices in her hands. "They're little chiseling womp rats, is what they are."

  "Don't worry." Another kiss; Dengar smiled as he leaned back from her face. "The word's getting out among the moisture farmers, about what kind of equipment we're selling. And what kind of long-term percentage contracts we can offer. Hey —" With one hand he stroked her hair, only slightly darker than the pale blue of her Aruzan skin, away from her forehead. "We're already in the black ..."

  "You slimy bucket of nerf-waste." That wasn't Manaroo's voice. And the kick in the ribs, as he lay on the makeshift pallet with his eyes closed, wasn't from his beloved, either.

  "I ought to kill you," continued Neelah, from some­ where on the other side of his closed eyes and the sweet, dwindling remnants of his dream. A blow from her small, rock-hard fist, right across the side of Dengar's jaw, pro­ duced a constellation of stars that blotted out the image he was trying to hold, of Manaroo wrapped in his em­ brace. "As a matter of fact, maybe I will..."

  He had been knocked far enough awake that he was able to roll with the next punch Neelah delivered from where she stood above him. Getting onto his hands and knees, Dengar scrambled toward the nearest bulkhead, then grabbed hold of it and pulled himself upright to face her.

  Definitely not dreaming, Dengar told himself, not now. He found himself uncomfortably awake and stand­ing in the rank-smelling, close-quartered cargo hold of the Hound's Tooth. "What are you going on about?" He crouched slightly, taking a stance with his empty hands outstretched to fend off another attack from the anger-crazed female in front of him. "What did I do?"

  "What did you do ..." Neelah echoed his words as she looked at him in disgust, her own hands planted on her slim hips. "Tried to make a fool out of me, that's what. All that time I was pressing on you to tell me about

  what'd happened to Boba Fett in the past, and you were already under orders to fill me in on exactly that."

  "Oh." Dengar relaxed a bit, lowering his hands. "No big deal." He immediately raised them again when he saw that her anger hadn't ebbed any. "Anyway—what're you complaining about? You didn't have somebody wav­ ing a blaster in your face, wanting a bedtime story!"

  The structural damage sustained by the Hound's Tooth had loosened the durasteel bars of the holding cage, with several of them wrenched free of their upper sockets and splaying out into the cargo hold. Neelah grasped one of the shorter bars from near the cage's door and pulled it free of the socket below. It made a formidable if simple weapon; with it cocked back over her shoulder, ready to swing, she took a step closer to Dengar.

  Fire flashed in her eyes for a second, then just as quickly dimmed. "Let's face it," she said. The metal bar clanged on the hold's floor as she tossed it away. "He ran a number on both of us. Just so he could have as much peace and quiet as he wanted while he navigated the ship."

  "Well, yeah, I'm willing to let him have it, if that's what he wants." Dengar slowly straightened from his de­ fensive crouch, ready to drop back into it if this female showed any more signs of her murderous temper. There was a big difference between her and Manaroo, it struck him. His betrothed could be just as tough if necessary, but so far she hadn't ever given any indications that she wanted to kill him. That might change after they were married—if that ever happened—but he was willing to take the chance. "He's not just the head bounty hunter around here. He's also the pilot of the ship. I can wait un­ til he gets us to where he wants to go."

  "Your waiting's over," said Neelah. With her thumb, she pointed toward the cockpit above them. "We've arrived."

  "Yeah?" Dengar rubbed his chin, warily regarding the female. A hard knot of apprehension coalesced in his stomach. It was one thing to travel toward an unknown

  destination, but quite another thing to reach that myste­rious point. Whatever else Boba Fett might have filled him in on—it didn't amount to much—there hadn't been any talk about the events that would go down once they got there. "Now what?"

  "That's the big question. But our intrepid captain has decided to break his silence, at least. So get a move on— Fett wants us both up in the cockpit for a briefing."

  Dengar nodded, then managed a half smile. "That oughta improve your disposition, at least."

  He followed Neelah up the ladder. But even as he mounted the metal treads, his mind slipped back to the last fading vestiges of the dream he had been enjoying be­ fore being so violently awoken. It had been all about the same fantasy in which he indulged even when awake, during those relatively quieter times when he wasn't try­ ing to keep from getting killed. The partnership with Boba Fett had to pay off, figured Dengar. Big time. Fett had to have something major cooking, or he wouldn't have bothered taking on a partner—gratitude wasn't a sufficient motivation with a hard character like that. Save a guy's life, brooded Dengar, and what do you get for it? Not much, except for a chance to get killed in some scheme of his. That was the easy part; the harder one would be turning this partnership gig into cold, hard credits, the kind that would pay off his debt load and set him and Manaroo up in a new life. Something like bro­kering the galaxy's high technologies to underdeveloped backwater planets, like that dump of a world Tatooine. That was where the real profits were to be made, and a lot more safely besides. Even with paying out the bribes to keep a commercial operation going, either to the Em­pire or, if the wildest imaginable possibilities came true, to whatever was put together by the Rebel Alliance, there would still be the chance of him and Manaroo do­ing well together. All it took were the connections—I've got those already, Dengar told himself—and a little bit of operating capital. Actually, a lot of capital; that was why he'd agreed to hook up with Boba Fett in the first place.

  As he stepped from the ladder and through the cock­pit hatchway, Dengar slowly shook his head. Whatever was next on Boba Fett's agenda, he had the feeling it might not lead to that pile of credits he needed, and the new life they could buy.

  "Let's get right to business," said Boba Fett, turning aroun
d in the pilot's chair to face Dengar and Neelah. "I don't care to waste any more time than we already have." He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. "This is what's left of Kud'ar Mub'at's web—"

  Dengar leaned forward, peering toward the viewport behind the other bounty hunter. "You're right," he said after a moment. The drifting corpses of the assembler's subnodes, tangled in ropelike strands of neural tissue, were both eerie and impressive. "It must be ..."

  "I hardly need to be told when I'm correct about something." A trace of irritation sounded in Boba Fett's otherwise emotionless voice. "I rarely am not. And when I say that there is a considerable amount of time pressure upon our actions here, you should believe it."

  "You mean what's going on with the Empire and the Rebels?" Dengar shrugged, then shook his head. "I don't see what the worry is. The big battle they've got shaping up between them—that's way out by Endor. That's prac­ tically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it's a long stretch from us. I don't see how it could affect what we're doing here. If anything—" He pointed to the view­ port. "Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever you brought us here for. Both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance have pulled out most of their forces from whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. That leaves a lot of systems and space just about empty of them. We can do what we want, and neither the Em­pire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser."