Hard Merchandise Page 35

  "This part isn't negotiable," said Fett. "I'm taking the fabricated evidence with me whether you hand it over or not."

  "Since I don't have any use for it—" Neelah shrugged and held the parcel out. "Go ahead."

  Boba Fett took the parcel with no word of thanks. She hadn't expected any, either.

  "Wait a minute." Neelah spoke up as Fett turned away. The dark gaze of his visored helmet looked back at her. "You realize," she said quietly, "that you're being a complete fool about this. Don't you?"

  A moment passed before Fett spoke. "How so?"

  "Come on. Use your brains." Neelah pointed to the parcel in Boba Fett's gloved hands. "You're going to be carrying that stuff into a pretty dangerous place. Sure, this Black Sun usurper faction is going to be happy to get it, but that doesn't mean they're going to keep their end of the deal. They want to keep things quiet, about what they're up to? Then they're more likely to take the fabri­ cated evidence from you, say thanks very much, and then drill a blaster bolt through your skull. There wouldn't be any trail linking them to you, after that."

  "Of course not," replied Fett. "But I've already thought about that. And I've got a few tricks up my sleeve, in case they try anything."

  "Tricks which might not work. Not on some Black Sun faction. As you said, killing is one of their specialities."

  "True." Boba Fett gave a single nod. "But as it is, if I don't deliver the fabricated evidence to the usurpers, I have very little chance of surviving. If I do deliver it to them—then my chances will be up to me."

  "Do it, then." Neelah stepped back and gestured toward the bridge's exit hatchway. "Good luck."

  "It's not a matter of luck. Not for me." Fett turned and walked toward the hatchway. He stopped and looked back at her. "You can trust in your luck, if you care to. When you came here, did you stop to think what your chances would be if I had decided to tie up a few loose ends by eliminating you?"

  "Sure." Neelah reached into the shoulder bag and pulled out a blaster pistol. She held it with both hands, aimed straight toward Fett. "That's why I came prepared."

  Fett gazed at her and the weapon for a moment, then slowly nodded. "Good," he said. "I'm glad you learned a few things from me."

  "Oh, I learned lots." Neelah kept the weapon pointed at him. "More than I wanted to."

  She lowered the weapon only when she could hear the echo of his boot steps fading away in the corridor be­ yond the hatchway.

  A few moments later, Neelah glanced toward the bridge's main viewport. What was visible there was the fiery trace of the Hound's Tooth, battered but still capa­ ble of traveling toward its hidden destination. But when Neelah closed her eyes, what she saw were the heat- shimmering expanses of the Dune Sea on Tatooine, and a nearly dead figure, skin and battle armor eroded, face­ down in the sand.

  She still couldn't decide whether it might have been better if she had just left him lying there.

  A woman talked to a bounty hunter.

  Though maybe, thought Dengar, I'm not one any­ more. It didn't matter to him now; he was just glad to be alive.

  "You came all that way, and found me." Both he and Manaroo sat in the cockpit of his ship, the Punishing One. "And just in time."

  "It took some doing," said his betrothed. "You weren't easy to track down."

  She couldn't have cut it any finer, either. Punishing One had shown up near the KDY construction docks just as Bossk's former ship Hound's Tooth was hit by the ragged chunk of metal that had come whirling toward it. Manaroo had witnessed the Hound shuddering from the impact; without a second thought, she had hit the Pun­ ishing One's thruster controls to maximum, swooping into the debris and managing to grapple and lock on to the other ship's cargo hold before it lost its remaining atmospheric pressure. They had both been aboard the

  Punishing One when she slapped him back to full consciousness.

  The relief at finding himself alive, and in the arms of the woman he loved, ebbed a little inside Dengar. "I'm sorry," he said to her. "I failed you. I failed us both."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "We're right back where we started." He shook his head ruefully. "We needed credits, a lot—and I didn't get them. With everything I did, risking my life all that time being partners with Boba Fett, and we still can't pay off that debt load I'm carrying." He laid his head against Manaroo's shoulder. "We're no closer to the life we want than we were before."

  "You are an idiot." She laughed and pushed him back to where she could look at him full in the face. "None of that matters as long as you're alive."

  "That's sweet of you to say so."

  "No, really; I mean it." Manaroo's expression turned earnest. "You don't realize what you've done just by re­maining alive. You've won; we've won."

  He looked at her in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

  "Before I came to find you," said Manaroo, "I wa­ gered on you. Every credit I could scrape up, every one I could borrow—I took us even deeper into debt in order to get the stake together. Then I went to the gambler Drawmas Sma'Da; he agreed to cover the wager I pro­ posed. A wager on the survival of a bounty hunter. Your survival." Her smile brightened her face. "Believe me, I got great odds on you. Nobody expected you to be able to live through being partners with Boba Fett. But you did!"

  "But that would mean ... you and I..."

  "Yes!" Manaroo grabbed him by both shoulders. "I've already contacted Drawmas Sma'Da and claimed my winnings—our winnings. I only made the bet; you won it for us. The credits have been transferred into our holding account. It's more than enough to pay off your debt load. Pay it off, and start us in whatever business we

  want." She leaned forward and kissed him, long and happily, then looked into his eyes again. "It's our new life together. It's come at last."

  "Yes . . ." Dengar nodded slowly. "You're right.. ." An unbidden chill touched his heart as a shadow fell across the joy he knew he should feel. "If only ... every­ thing else works out..." He could hear the echoes of the dire warnings that Boba Fett had given him. "There's still the Empire to worry about. How can anyone in the galaxy be happy with that looming over us?"

  Manaroo kissed him on the brow this time, then leaned back and shook her head, still smiling. "You don't know," she said, "what I heard. Just a few minutes ago. I intercepted a comm unit transmission from the Rebel Alliance headquarters out at Sullust to the Scav­enger Squadron's commander here. The battle's over." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "And the Rebels won. It's the Empire that was crushed ... to a billion pieces ..." She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. "Everything will be different now."

  He could hardly believe it, yet he knew it was true. Everything, thought Dengar. All their plans and hopes— those could come true now. And he wouldn't be a bounty hunter anymore ...

  In the midst of his happiness, there was a thread of re­gret. It seemed a shame, after having survived and even profited from a partnership with Boba Fett—how many other creatures could say the same?—for him to turn his back on all that. Plus, there had been a certain excite­ ment to all that had happened, from the moment when he first stumbled upon an almost lifeless Boba Fett, lying on the hot sands of Tatooine's Dune Sea.

  Maybe, thought Dengar, I could still keep my hand in. Just a little. His business enterprise with Manaroo might not be immediately successful; it might require a fresh in­ fusion of credit now and then. Right at the beginning...

  He'd have to think about that some more. But for the moment, Dengar wrapped his arms around his be­ trothed. He turned his face away from hers and looked out the cockpit's viewport at all the stars cascading in stately progression to the galaxy's edge.

  Everything ...

  The stars were so bright, even as he closed his eyes and held his betrothed closer to himself.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  K. W. Jeter is one of the most respected sf writers working today. His first novel, Dr. Adder, was described by Philip K. Dick as "a stunning novel ...
it destroys once and for all your conception of the limitations of sci­ ence fiction." The Edge of Human resolves many dis­ crepancies between the movie Blade Runner and the novel upon which it was based, Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Jeter's other books have been described as having a "brain-burning intensity" (The Village Voice), as being "hard-edged and believable" (Locus) and "a joy from first word to last" (San Fran­cisco Chronicle). He is the author of more than twenty novels, including Farewell Horizontal and Wolf Flow. His latest novel, NOIR, was described by the New York Times as "the science fiction equivalent of The Name of the Rose."