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  Vader having known and, more, having approved of it— yet none of my information sources on the Imperial planet of Coruscant, some of them close indeed to Vader, have ever indicated that was the case. Similarly, my con­tacts inside Black Sun never reported their leader Xizor getting hooked up with one of Darth Vader's operations. Therefore, the best analysis would be that the evidence linking Xizor to the raid had been created by some third party, possibly as a way of drawing unwanted attention toward Prince Xizor. That possibility is reinforced by Ree Duptom's own history, before he met his death aboard his own ship: he had been involved on several previous occasions with various disinformation campaigns, some of them actually linking back to Emperor Palpatine's court. It had become something of a speciality with Dup­tom, the discreet spreading of lies in the various watering holes of the galaxy, so that they would do the most good for whoever had hired him."

  "That was how he got kicked out of the old Bounty Hunters Guild." Dengar gave a slow nod. "He got a cou­ ple of other bounty hunters killed by circulating stories that they had been the ones responsible for certain double crosses that went down. They weren't scams that he'd run, but shifting the blame let some other well-paying, weaselly creature get away."

  "A time-honored tradition," said Boba Fett drily. "And one which Ree Duptom had been making a good part of his living at. Given his reputation for being able to do that sort of thing, someone had obviously engaged his services in some kind of scheme to falsely link Prince Xizor with the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine in which Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle were killed. But two other deaths put an end to that plot: Duptom's own, when he was fried by the meltdown of his ship's engine core, and Xizor's. Whatever the intent had been in trying to link Xizor with the stormtrooper raid, it was hardly worth following through on it once he had been killed as well. The only thing left from the plot was the fabricated

  evidence contained in the cargo droid, and that was in my possession once I came across Duptom's ship drifting in space."

  "For which, I'm sure, you'd find some good use." Un­ folding an arm, Neelah held up two fingers. "But you said there was something else you found on that ship. What was the other item?"

  "Perhaps this one will compel more of your attention. Ree Duptom might have been dead—" Boba Fett shrugged. "No great loss; but there was still another creature alive aboard the Venesectrix. In the cargo hold's cages, I found a young female human. Not in the best of physical condition—Duptom wasn't as careful about maintaining his merchandise as I am—but at least still breathing. She was still unconscious, the aftereffect of a rather thorough memory wipe that she had received ..."

  Dengar heard a sudden gasp come from Neelah. He looked over at her, standing next to him, and saw that her eyes had gone wide with surprise.

  "Good," said Boba Fett. "I see that I have managed to pique your interest. That moment aboard Ree Duptom's Venesectrix was indeed our first encounter. One that still remains as mystifying to me as it undoubtedly is to you. I could only assume that a memory-wiped female human had been in Duptom's possession as part of his various business enterprises—though not, of course, as an item of hard merchandise for which a bounty had been posted. While it was possible that Ree Duptom might have got­ten wind of some paying gig before I had, enough time had passed—as was indicated by the advanced state of decomposition of his corpse—so that I would have heard of anyone offering a bounty for the return of a person matching your physical description. That was not the case, so obviously Duptom had been involved in some other, probably less savory, type of business. But what that would have been, I had no clue—when you regained consciousness, you couldn't even tell me your name."

  "I remember ..." Neelah's eyes were even wider than before. She nodded slowly. "Not my name ... that's still

  lost... but I remember now, that was the first time I laid eyes on you. Not in Jabba the Hutt's palace, but in a ship out in space." Neelah touched the side of her head with trembling fingertips. "It was like I woke up there ... and there were the bars of the cage, and I felt so cold ..."

  "That was because you were dying. Whoever had done the memory-wipe job on you had been both thor­ ough and brutal." Boba Fett's voice was flat and unemo­ tional. "They didn't leave you in good shape. Plus you had been unconscious for some time, without food or water, after Ree Duptom had managed to get himself killed. If I hadn't taken care of you and nursed you back to a reasonable semblance of health, you would have died there aboard the Venesectrix—or on Slave I after I had brought you over to my ship. So you might want to regard whatever you did for me, back in the Dune Sea on Tatooine, as just repayment in kind."

  "But you didn't save me ... because you felt sorry for me..."

  "And pity didn't motivate you either, when you found me near death." Boba Fett regarded her coldly, but with no tone of accusation in his voice. "It was a simple busi­ ness matter for both of us. You thought I might be of some use to you, just as long before that, I calculated the potential for turning a profit from you. And"—he turned his head slightly, as though studying her from another angle—"we both might be correct yet. But at the time I found you, that was an unknown quantity, just as it re­ mains now. I have my standards, though; no piece of possibly valuable merchandise has ever died while in my keeping, other than when they've managed to commit suicide. That, I could tell, wasn't going to happen in your case; even starving and dehydrated, suffering from a trau­ matic memory wipe, enough of your inner spirit remained, fighting to survive. Once you were out of physiological danger, it was just a matter of stowing you someplace where you'd be out of danger while I determined the best way of profiting from your situation."

  "So you put her in Jabba the Hutt's palace?" The

  notion astonished Dengar. He stared at Boba Fett, eyes wide as Neelah's had gone. "That hellhole? She could've gotten thrown to Jabba's pet rancor!"

  "The dangers of Jabba's palace were well known to me," said Boba Fett. "While substantial, they were nevertheless limited and predictable. And I would be on hand to circumvent them, in case Neelah had aroused any of Jabba's crueler desires—the Hutt, like all of his greedy species, might have been averse to meeting my price, but he valued my services enough to have made a standing offer for me to stay on at his palace for as long as I cared to."

  "So you could keep an eye on me," said Neelah. Her gaze narrowed as she slowly nodded. "But more than that—you had already come to a dead end, trying to find out anything about me, who I really was, why somebody had done all those things to me. So you passed me off as a mere dancing girl, bringing me there to Jabba's palace while I was still too confused to even know what you were doing. But what you were really hoping for was that someone in that crowd of thugs and criminals in Jabba's court would recognize me for who I really was— and that would be how you'd find out how to turn a profit from me!"

  "That possibility had occurred to me. Jabba's palace was a crossroads for all sorts of the galaxy's lowlife; some of them had even been in business with Ree Duptom be­ fore. There was always a chance that one of them might have had an inkling about what kind of scheme he had been engaged upon when he met his death—who he was working for, and what they were trying to accomplish."

  The corner of Neelah's mouth twisted in a sneer. "I guess it's too bad for both of us, then, that you didn't find out anything."

  "Ah." A trace of amusement filtered into Boba Fett's voice. "But that's where you're wrong. I did discover something. Perhaps not the whole truth—your real name and where you came from—but enough to follow up on.

  Enough that might lead us to that mutually profitable truth."

  Standing beside Neelah, Dengar could see her hands tightening into fists.

  "Tell me," commanded Neelah. "Now."

  "I'll tell you because it suits my own purposes, and not for any other reason." The amused tone evaporated from Boba Fett's words. "There was a former business associate of Ree Duptom at Jabba's palace—his name doesn't matter—but what is importan
t is that the two of them had been working together until just before Dup­tom's death. As a matter of fact, they'd had a falling out, the sort of thing that happens with low criminal mentali­ties like that. It was also the sort of thing that would lead one of them to do a delayed-effect sabotage on the en­gines of the other's ship, resulting in a lethal core melt­down." Fett shook his head. "No great loss—just as it wasn't any great loss when I had to sneak out of Jabba's court for a second, while the other dancing girl, the one named Oola, was giving her final performance. That was just long enough to set up a rendezvous later with my in­ formant. It wasn't until after Princess Leia, disguised as an Ubese bounty hunter, had brought the Wookiee Chew­bacca into the court that I had enough time to obtain the data that this certain creature had—and then I made sure that he wouldn't be informing anyone else that I had been asking questions about your real identity."

  "He knew ... he knew who I am?" Neelah leaned for­ ward. "My real name?"

  "Unfortunately, the creature knew nothing of that. And you can rest assured that I used every means of per­ suasion at my disposal to make sure he told me every­ thing that he did know. I didn't have to worry about leaving traces of those techniques; in Jabba's palace, a corpse turning up in that kind of condition was pretty much a daily occurrence. What he did tell me, though, before I returned to Jabba's court, was that his former business associate Ree Duptom had accepted two new

  jobs just before they had had their falling out with each other, and that one client would be paying for both jobs. But he didn't know who that client was; Duptom hadn't told him that much."

  "Then the information's worthless!" A look of furi­ ous despair sparked in Neelah's gaze. "It still doesn't tell us who I really am, or what happened to me!"

  "Calm yourself. You've waited this long for the an­ swers you want; you can wait a little while longer. Be­ cause that may be all that it takes."

  "What... what do you mean?"

  "Did you forget," said the bounty hunter, "that I brought you to this point in space for a reason? Those answers, if they're to be found anywhere, are here." Boba Fett pointed to the cockpit's viewport and its unset­tling vista of dead arachnoid subnodes. "My late contact inside Jabba the Hurt's palace wasn't able to tell me your name—he had never even laid eyes on you before coming there—but he was able to provide the clue I needed."

  Dengar spoke up this time. "So what was that?"

  "Simple. The two last jobs that Ree Duptom had taken on were obviously the ones I found aboard his ship Venesectrix—whoever the person was who had hired him to do something with the fabricated evidence about Prince Xizor's involvement in the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine, that person must also have been the one that had arranged for the abduction and memory wipe of Neelah. But what my contact in the palace told me was that the person who paid for those jobs hadn't hired Ree Duptom directly. He had used an intermediary—a go-between."

  "A go-between . . ." Suddenly, Dengar understood. "It must have been Kud'ar Mub'at! The assembler was the only creature who would have arranged that kind of job for Ree Duptom. But—"

  "But it's dead," Neelah said flatly. "Kud'ar Mub'at is dead, remember? You were here when it happened." She shook her head in disgust. "You've brought us all the way out here for nothing. The dead can't tell us any secrets."

  "That's where you're wrong." Boba Fett turned in the

  pilot's chair and pointed to the viewport behind him. "Look."

  The Hound's Tooth had slowly moved farther into the tethered constellation of dead subnodes. Until it had at last come to the center of the torn strands of neural tissue.

  In the scan of space visible outside the ship, a spider-like corpse larger than all the others drifted, jointed legs tucked up beneath what was left of its globular abdomen. The hollow, blind eyes of Kud'ar Mub'at gazed back at the visitors to the cold vacuum of its tomb.

  "We only need to bring the dead back to life." Boba Fett spoke with calm assurance, just as though nothing would be easier. "And then listen ..."

  9

  A woman talked to a traitor.

  "You got what you wanted." The traitor's name was Fenald; in the dim, smoky light of the underground wa­ tering hole, his smile was both unpleasant and knowing, like an animal toying with its prey. "That's what it's all about, isn't it?"

  Kodir of Kuhlvult tried to keep her cloak from touch­ing the damp walls of the establishment. She had known there were such places on the world of Kuat, but she had never been in one before. Her life had been spent in an­ other world, one that was on the same planet but that might as well have been light-years away. That world contained all the luxury and power of Kuat's ruling fami­ lies; this one contained the planet's human dregs.

  A candle stub's inadequate light flickered from a rough niche carved in the wall, merging her shadow and Fenald's with the darkness in which other figures sat hunched and brooding over squat mugs of intoxicants. Even the air seeped rankly into Kodir's lungs, every molecule laden with the soot that lined the low, crouch-inducing stone ceiling.

  "I've got some of what I wanted." Kodir leaned for­ ward, arms on the sticky-wet table, so that Fenald would be able to make out her hushed words. "There's always more."

  Fenald was a little drunk; he had obviously been wait­ ing for her to show up for some time. '"Fraid I can't help you much with the rest. I'm not exactly in an influential position these days, am I? I sort of spent all that on the last part of your plans."

  "Yes—" Kodir nodded inside the cloak's loose hood that she had put on to conceal her identity from any pry­ ing scrutiny. "You're quite an actor. Everybody was fooled. And they still are. So you did a very good job for me. I appreciate that."

  "Good," said Fenald thickly. He regarded her from heavy-lidded eyes. "Because I need you to show that ap­ preciation. I'm a little short on credits these days . . . what with having lost my job and all. And since you've got that job now—just what you wanted, huh?—then I think it's only fair if you pay a little more than what you did up front. Like on a continuing basis. So I wouldn't be tempted into talking to anybody about our little ... per­ formance, shall we say. It'd be a shame to spoil the show, while it's still going on."

  "You're right. It would be." Kodir reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. "But you know—there's more than one way for me to show my appreciation."

  In his present state, it took Fenald a few seconds to understand what she meant. Then his smile grew wider and uglier. "Fine," he said. "But that'll have to be in ad­ dition to the credits."

  She didn't say anything in reply, but leaned farther across the table, bringing her face closer to his. Just be­ fore their lips met, her other hand emerged from inside the cloak with something bright and glittering in her grip. Fenald's eyes went round with shock as he felt the object move across his throat.

  "No," said Kodir softly. She dropped the vibroblade onto the table, next to where Fenald had collapsed face­ down in a widening pool of his own blood. "It's instead."

  Drawing the cloak's hood forward, Kodir turned and looked back across the watering hole's dim space. None of its clientele appeared to have noticed that anything at all had happened. She slid a few coins onto the table's corner, then got up and walked unhurriedly toward the steps leading back up to the surface level.

  A woman talked to a gambler.

  A different woman, and far from the planet of Kuat. But she too had wrapped herself in a hooded cloak to prevent anyone from prying into her affairs.

  "Business is still a little slow for me right now," said the gambler. His name was Drawmas Sma'Da, and he sat at a table in a glittering, brightly lit pleasure den. The laughter of the galaxy's rich and foolish denizens sounded from all sides of the establishment. "You have to under­stand, I'm not yet at the level where I used to be—I had a little, um, embarrassment a few weeks ago. I had to spend most of my operating capital getting out of that mess; you know, the usual bribes and payoffs and stuff. Believe me, Palpatine's not
the only greedy creature inside the Empire." Lacing his hands together across his expansive belly, he leaned back in his chair. "So I can't cover any big bets at the moment. None of that Alliance versus the Empire stuff."

  "That's fine." The woman kept her voice low. "I want to place a different kind of wager. On a bounty hunter."

  "Bounty hunters, huh?" Sma'Da's face darkened into a scowl. "I'll give you a good bet on a couple of 'em. You can bet that if I ever get my hands on a pair named Zuckuss and 4-LOM, they're both dead meat. They're the ones who dragged me out of here, not too long ago

  She shook her head. "I'm not interested in them."

  "All right." Sma'Da gave her a jowly, cajoling smile. "Who do you want to bet on?"