Star Wars - The Bounty Hunter Wars - The Mandalorian Armor Read online

  corrected himself. He could see the figure's chest

  moving, a slight rise and fall, right on the edge of

  survival. The half-naked combatant, whoever it might be,

  was still alive. Or at least for the time being.

  Now, that was worth checking out. Dengar slung the

  'binocs back onto his equipment belt. If only to satisfy

  his own curiosity-the distant figure looked as if he'd

  discovered a whole new way of getting killed. As a bounty

  hunter and general purveyor of violence, Dengar felt a

  professional interest in the matter.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw his own ship,

  the Punishing One, descending a few kilometers away, its

  landing gear extended. His bride-to-be, Manaroo, was at

  the ship's controls. Good, thought Dengar. He'd be able

  to use her help, now that he had determined that there

  would be no immediate danger to her. He didn't mind

  risking his own life, but hers was another matter.

  Balancing himself with one hand held back against the

  slope of the dune, Dengar worked his way toward the

  humanoid-shaped mystery he'd spotted. He hoped the other

  man would still be alive by the time he got there.

  This way of dying's not so bad. . . .

  Somewhere, past a jumble of disjointed thoughts and

  images, the oleaginous voice of Jabba the Hutt could be

  heard in memory, promising a new definition of pain, one

  that would last thousands of years, excruciating and

  never-ending.

  The fat slug had been correct about that, to a

  degree; the dying man had to admit it. Or was he already

  dead?-he couldn't tell. This fate, the infinitely slow

  etching away, molecule by molecule, of epidermis and

  nerve endings, had been intended for someone else. It

  struck the dying man as no more unjust than all the rest

  of the universe's workings that he should suffer it

  instead.

  Or have suffered it. Because the Hutt seemed to have

  been misinformed about how long the dissolution and

  torment would last. A few seconds had been more than

  adequate for pain's new meaning to have become clear, as

  the enfolding darkness's acids had seeped through uniform

  and armament, touching skin like the fire of a thousand

  commingled suns. And those few seconds, and the minutes

  and hours- days, years?-that followed had indeed seemed

  to stretch out to eternity...

  But they had ended. That pain, beyond anything he had

  ever endured or inflicted, had come to a stop, replaced

  by the simpler and duller ebbing away of life force. By

  comparison, that was a comfort like drifting asleep on

  pillows of satin filled with downy feathers. Even the

  blindness, the perfect acidic night, had been broken by a

  muted dawn. The dying man still could not see, but he

  could sense, through the T-shaped visor of his helmet and

  the wet rags swaddling him, the unmistakable photonic

  warmth of suns against his face and the eroded skin of

  his chest. Perhaps, the dying man thought, it reached up

  into the sky and swallowed them, too. The giant mouth,

  when he'd fallen down its ranks of razor teeth, had

  seemed that big.

  But now he felt gravel and sand beneath his spine,

  and his own blood miring him to the ground. That had to

  be some kind of a tactile hallucination. He had no gods

  to thank, but was grateful anyway for the blessings of

  madness. . .

  The light on his face dimmed; the differential in

  temperature was enough that he could just make out the

  blurred edges of shadow falling upon him. He wondered

  what new vision his agony-fractured brain was about to

  conjure up. There were others, he knew, here in the belly

  of the beast; he had seen them fall and be swallowed up.

  A little company, the dying man decided. He might as well

  hallucinate voices, from those about to be digested; it

  would help pass the long endless hours before his own

  body's atoms floated free from one another.

  One of the voices he heard was his own. "Help. . . ."

  "What happened?"

  He could almost have laughed, if any twitch of his

  raw muscles hadn't hurt so much, pushing him toward

  unconscious oblivion. Shouldn't hallucinations know these

  things?

  "Sarlacc . . . swallowed me." The words seemed to

  come of their own volition. "I killed it . . . blew it

  up. . . ."

  He heard another voice, a female's. "He's dying."

  The man's voice spoke again, in hushed tones.

  "Manaroo-do you know who this is?"

  "I don't care. Help me get him inside." The female's

  shadow fell across him.

  Suddenly he felt himself rising, dirt and grit fall

  ing from his mangled form. The next sensation was that of

  being thrown across someone's broad shoulder, an arm

  encircling his waist to steady him. A sense of shame

  filled the dying man. There had been so many times when

  he had faced his own extinction-painful or otherwise-the

  contemplation of his death, and the dismissal of it as

  being of no concern, had given him strength. And now some

  weak part of him had summoned up this pitiful fantasy of

  rescue. Better to die, he thought, than to fear dying.

  "Hang on," came the hallucinated voice. "I'll get you

  someplace safe."

  The man called Boba Fett felt the jostle of the

  other's footsteps, the motion of being carried across the

  stony ground. For a moment his vision cleared, the

  blindness dissipating enough that he could see his own

  hand flopping limp and disjointed, leaving a trail of

  spattered blood on the sand. . . .

  That was when he knew that what he saw and felt was

  real. And that he was still alive.

  2

  A small object, moving by its own power through the

  cold expanses between the stars, had finally breached a

  planet's sensory perimeter. Kuat of Kuat had felt the

  hyperspace messenger pod's approach even before his own

  corporate security chief came to tell him that it had

  been intercepted. He had a fine-tuned awareness of

  machines, from the smallest nano-sporoids to

  constructions capable of annihilating worlds. It was a

  family trait, something encoded deep within the Kuat

  blood for generations.

  "Excuse me, Technician"-an obsequious voice came from

  behind him-"but you asked to be notified as the outer

  comm units picked up any traces. Of your . . . package."

  Kuat of Kuat turned away from the great domed

  viewport and its vistas of emptiness studded with light.

  Far beyond the expanded orbit of the planet that bore the

  name identical to his, the hazy arm of one of the

  galaxy's more aesthetically pleasing spiral nebulae was

  about to rise into sight. He tried not to miss things

  like that; they served to remind him that the universe

  and all its interconnected workings was, in its essence,

  a machine like other machines. Even its constituent

  atoms, beyond the confusion of unce
rtainty principles and

  observer effects, ticked like ancient, primitive chrono

  gears. And finer things than that, Kuat of Kuat told

  himself, not for the first time. Such as men's spirits.

  Those were machines as well, however ineffable their

  substance.

  "Very well." He stroked the silky fur of the felinx

  cradled in his arms; the animal made a deep, barely

  audible sound of contentment as his long, precise fingers

  found a specific zone behind the triangular ears. "That's

  just what I've been expecting." Machines, even the ones

  built in the Kuat Drive Yards, did not always function as

  intended; there were random variables that sometimes

  deposited metaphorical sand in the gears. It was a

  pleasure- frequent, but still undiminished-when things

  did work according to plan. "Has there been any readout

  on the contents?"

  "Not yet." Fenald, the security chief, was dressed in

  the standard Kuat Drive Yards worksuit, devoid of any

  emblem of rank except for the variable-dispersion blaster

  slung conspicuously at his hip. "There's a full crew

  working on it, but"-a wry smile lifted a corner of his

  mouth-"the encryption codes are rather tight."

  "They're meant to be." Kuat of Kuat would not be

  disappointed if the KDY employees weren't able to crack

  them; he had designed and implemented them himself.

  Setting Security's info-analysis division to work on them

  was a mere test, to see how well he'd done. "I don't care

  for anyone else reading my mail."

  "Of course not." A slight nod in acknowledgment;

  despite the importance of Kuat Drive Yards as the elite

  and most powerful contractor of engineering and

  construction services to the Empire, the formalities of

  KDY headquarters were minimal, and had been for

  generations. Pomp and show and courtly flourishes were

  for those who didn't understand where true power came

  from. Fenald gestured toward the viewport, its hexagonal

  strutwork curving three times higher than his boss's

  imposing two-meter height. "I doubt if anyone has."

  The felinx purred louder in Kuat of Kuat's arms; he'd

  found the exact spot wired into its pleasure centers.

  Born that way; a good amount of the minimal brain mass in

  the animal's excessively narrow skull- a trait of its

  inbred species-he'd had to replace with biosimulation

  circuits, to keep it from bumping into walls and gnawing

  raw the flesh beneath its fur. His fingertips felt the

  edge of the cut into the animal's skull as he stroked it.

  Transmuted even this far into a true machine, the animal

  was much more satisfactory, and-in ways Kuat of Kuat

  appreciated-even more beautiful.

  A single bell note sounded in the spacious office

  suite of KDY's hereditary CEO. Kuat of Kuat turned back

  to gaze at the viewport's limitless vista as his security

  chief leaned the side of his head against the small

  transponder embedded in his palm. The felinx had closed

  its eyes in ecstasy; it didn't see the rising edge of the

  far-distant nebula, like luminous smoke against black.

  "They're bringing it in now," said Fenald.

  "Excellent." Outside, in vacuum, an ion engine

  streaked fiery red, moving past the seemingly chaotic

  maze of construction platforms and grav-dock bays at a

  navigable sublight speed. The small utility shuttle, with

  its precious cargo aboard, was heading for the core of

  KDY's industrial complex. Perhaps a quarter of a standard

  time part before the shuttle arrived; Kuat of Kuat

  glanced over his shoulder at the other man. "You don't

  need to wait." He smiled. "I'll take care of it myself."

  Security chiefs were paid to be curious about ev

  erything that happened within their sphere of operations.

  "As you please, Technician." The words were spoken with a

  stiffened spine and a nod just bordering on curtness. He

  was also paid to obey orders. "Let me know if there's

  anything else you require, in regard to this matter."

  The felinx protested as Kuat of Kuat bent down,

  depositing it on the intricately tessellated floor. Tail

  demandingly erect, the creature rubbed itself against a

  trouser leg cut of the same utilitarian dark green as all

  the other work uniforms worn by KDY employees. The

  concerns of the most powerful beings in the

  galaxy-perhaps the most powerful beyond Emperor

  Palpatine's inner circle-didn't matter to the animal. A

  heat source and continued stroking were the limits of its

  desires.

  As Kuat of Kuat straightened back up, the office

  suite's doors slid shut behind the departing chief of

  security. The felinx bumped its head more insistently

  against his shin. "Not now," Kuat told it. "I've got work

  to do."

  Persistence was a trait he admired; he couldn't be

  angry at the animal when it jumped up on his workbench.

  He let it march back and forth, level with his chest, as

  he assembled the necessary tools. Only when the pilot of

  the shuttle team, whose flight he had spotted from the

  viewport, entered and placed an elongated silver ovoid on

  the bench, then withdrew from his presence, did Kuat of

  Kuat shoo the animal away.

  A pair of hovering worklights drew closer, erasing

  all shadow, as he leaned over the mirror-finished

  torpedo. This messenger pod was not just wired with, but

  actually built of, self-destruct modules, to prevent

  unauthorized access-or access by anyone except Kuat of

  Kuat himself. And even that was intended to be difficult;

  if he erred now, KDY would have a new hereditary owner

  and chief designer.

  Held between thumb and forefinger, an identity probe

  bit almost painlessly into his flesh, drawing samples of

  fluid and tissue. The microcircuitry inside the slender

  needlelike device ran through its programming, matching

  both genetic information and the automutating radioactive

  tracers that had been injected into his bloodstream. The

  probe gave no sign, audible or visible, whether

  everything checked out. The only indication would be when

  he held the inoxide tip to the messenger pod; if his

  charred remains weren't embedded in the wall behind him,

  then all was as it should be.

  The probe tip clicked against the curved, reflective

  surface. No explosion resulted, except for the slight one

  of his held breath being released.

  A hairline fissure opened along the side of the pod.

  The work went faster now as Kuat of Kuat pried open the

  silvery ovoid, dismantling the pieces of its shell in a

  precise order. A misstep, a segment taken out of turn,

  would also result in a fatal explosion, but he wasn't

  concerned about that happening. The only place where the

  proper sequence had been put down was in his memory, but

  no more accurate record could be imagined. When he

  admired machines, he admired himself.

  The one on the workbench functioned just as
/>
  perfectly the last of the encasing shell separated into

  its component parts and fell away from the core. "You've

  come a long way, little one." He laid a tender,

  possessive hand on the holoprojector unit that had been

  revealed, "Just what do you have to tell me?"

  A fading heat radiated into Kuat of Kuat's palm. The

  messenger pod's energy cell was an accelerated-decay

  module, producing enough power for a onetime jump in and

  out of hyperspace. The navigational coordinates were

  hardwired; a matter of a few days ago it'd left the

  distant world of Tatooine. It could have reached the Kuat

  Drive Yards headquarters even sooner if a randomizing

  sublight process hadn't been programmed, to evade

  detection. Kuat of Kuat's own security men weren't the

  only ones watching the perimeter. A matter of business

  paranoia was one of the operating costs that came with

  being of service to the Emperor.

  Hands sheathed in insulated gloves, Kuat of Kuat

  lifted out the holoprojector. A standard playback unit,

  similar to ones found throughout the galaxy, but with

  tweaks and modifications far beyond the ordinary.

  Palpatine himself couldn't get this kind of detail in

  communications with his various underlings. But then . .

  . he doesn't need it, Kuat of Kuat reminded himself. Not

  the way I do. The Emperor could always get what he wanted

  through fear and death. In the engineering business, one

  had to be a little more careful, not to eliminate one's

  market.

  "Go away," he said to the felinx winding between his

  ankles. "You won't like this."

  The felinx didn't heed the warning. When Kuat of Kuat

  used the rest of his precise tools to complete the

  circuits inside the holoprojector, the images and sounds

  of another great room were laid over the office suite.

  The oppressive darkness generated by the recording and

  its chaos of noises, from the rattling of subsurface

  chains to cruel cross-species laughter, brought the

  silken fur straight up along the animal's spine; it

  hissed at what it saw, particularly the holoform of one

  grossly elephantine individual with tiny hands and

  immense, greedy eyes. When that image's lipless mouth

  opened to emit wetly glottal laughter, the felinx

  scrambled to safety beneath the farthest corner of the

  workbench.

  Kuat of Kuat used the magnetically fastened tip of

  the probe to freeze the playback; the cacophony was