Hard Merchandise (star wars) Read online

  "All right," said Bossk. "Business it is. Pay as we go." He leaned across the table, bringing his hard, unsmiling gaze close to Figh. "What've you got for me?"

  "Very valuable." Figh didn't flinch. "Location of Boba Fett. Where at. Now."

  Bossk was impressed. "You got that?"

  "No. But can get."

  Unimpressed now, Bossk sat back, his spine against the booth's padding. "Let me know when you do. Then you get paid."

  "Don't worry." Figh slid out of the booth. "You see me again."

  Bossk watched the Mhingxin work his way through the crowd that had started to fill up the cantina. Then Figh was gone, up the stairs to the surface and the streets of Mos Eisley. Where presumably such marketable infor-mation could be found.

  He hoped that Figh did come back with the info. That was something he wouldn't mind paying for, no matter how slim his finances were at the moment. You can't hit a target, he told himself, if you don't know where it is. All the time he had been traveling toward Tatooine, he had made attempts to discern Boba Fett's whereabouts. That had been a big part of Bossk's rea-sons for coming to the planet on which Boba Fett had last been spotted, taking off from the Dune Sea with another bounty hunter named Dengar and some danc-ing girl who had managed to escape from Jabba the Hutt's palace; Bossk didn't even know her name, or why Fett would have had enough interest in her wel-fare to have kept her around. But those two had been with Fett when another low point in the continuing litany of Bossk's humiliations at his hands had occurred. With another one of his underhanded psycho-logical ploys, Boba Fett had managed to chase Bossk out of his own ship, the Hound's Tooth, and once more into an emergency escape pod, hurtling away from what Bossk had thought was certain destruction but which had turned out to be only a dud autonomic bomb.

  It was a good bet that Boba Fett was still in pos-session of the Hound's Tooth. Fett's own ship, Slave I, had been found abandoned by a Rebel Alliance patrol squad. Along with Dengar and the female, Boba Fett must have transferred over to the Hound and piloted it toward some unknown destination. Which makes, Bossk thought grimly, one more thing he's stolen from me. Bossk's reputation and his ship; Boba Fett had a lot to answer for.

  And Bossk had already vowed that he would. That kind of payback could only be made in one kind of coin. Death. The taste of blood in Bossk's jaws would not just be imagined then; soon it would be real.

  He sat brooding for a while longer, hunched forward at the table, the empty glass in front of his claws. Brood-ing and wondering where Boba Fett was right now; he was already impatient for Eobbim Figh to return with that information.

  Probably taking it easy somewhere, Bossk thought bitterly. The Hound's Tooth was a good ship, well ap-pointed in the best of Trandoshan taste; not just an effi-cient hunting craft, but one with a minimal but necessary degree of comfort for its rightful owner. Thinking of Boba Fett lounging about in the Hound's comforts infu-riated him even more.

  He's there, seethed Bossk, and I'm stuck here. His claws closed into fists, aching for a throat to break in-side them.

  There was no justice in the galaxy. While he scrabbled for a place to lie low, on a backwater hole like Tatooine, Boba Fett was safe in the peace and tranquillity of inter-stellar space, far from harm.

  No justice at all...

  3

  She had just about decided to kill them both.

  Neelah looked at the back of Boba Fett's helmet as he sat at the cockpit controls of the Hound's Tooth. There was no indication that he was aware of her standing in the hatchway behind him. But knowing Fett, with his constant, preternatural awareness, she felt sure that nothing was getting by him. He can bear the blood rush-ing in my veins, thought Neelah. He knows.

  The other bounty hunter, the one named Dengar, was still asleep in the ship's cargo area. Neelah had left him there, worn out from relating Boba Fett's grim history to her. Like most bounty hunters, Dengar was a creature of action; shifting words about, bringing the past to life in even the rawest, most direct terms, was hard labor for him. Especially under duress; she had woken him up be-fore this last time with a blaster pistol aimed at his head. She had been impressed with the degree of motivation that had inspired in Dengar.

  She still had the blaster pistol with her; in fact, it dan-gled from her hand as she watched Fett adjusting the ship's navigational controls. Originally, it had been one of Boba Fett's weapons; she had managed to slip it away from him here in the cockpit, before he had been able to stop her. That had earned Neelah a grudging congratula-tions from him. Very few creatures had ever managed a stunt like that.

  Maybe I should've killed him then, thought Neelah. Or at least tried to. Her finger tightened upon the weapon's trigger. All she had to do was raise the weapon, aim—hardly difficult at this minimal distance—and fire. And this uncertainty in her existence would be taken care of, once and for all...

  "Don't delude yourself." Boba Fett's voice snapped her out of the murderous reverie into which she had fallen. "I'm aware of your presence." He hadn't turned around, but had continued his adjustments to the ship's controls. A final number was punched into one of the navicomputer touchpads, then Fett swiveled around in the pilot's chair to face her. "You'd have more luck if you were a droid. Some of those can be virtually silent."

  The remark struck Neelah as unintentionally ironic. If I were a droid, she thought, I wouldn't have any of the problems I do now. Even her identity, knowing who or what she was, other than a human female with a false name, a name not her own, and a past that had been stolen from her—it was hard to imagine a droid being concerned about things like that. Memory for a droid was a matter of chips and micro-implants, tiny recording devices as manufactured and interchangeable as them-selves. Machines have it easy, thought Neelah. They didn't need to find out what they were; they knew.

  "I'll be more careful next time," said Neelah. With Boba Fett facing her, she had no more clue than before as to the secrets held within his skull. The dark, T-shaped visor of his helmet, that battered and discolored but still awesomely functional relic of the ancient Mandalorian warriors, concealed anything that might have told her what he thought and knew. The entire answer about who she was and how she had come to the remote, friendless sectors of the galaxy in which she had found herself might be locked up inside Boba Fett, like a key hidden in the very strongbox it was meant to unlock.

  But the helmet, and its dark, shielded gaze, didn't matter; not really. She was one of the few creatures in the galaxy who had ever seen Boba Fett without his helmet— for all the good it had done her. Back on the planet Tatooine, in the harsh glare of the twin suns above the Dune Sea, Neelah had found him close to death, vomited out onto the hot sands by the Sarlacc beast whose death throes he had engineered from inside its gut. The Sar-lacc's gastric secretions, like a corrosive acid capable of etching unalloyed durasteel, had stripped Boba Fett of his armor, right down to and including a good deal of his skin. If she hadn't stumbled across him, his life would have oozed away like the blood seeping out from his raw flesh and hissing on the sun-baked rocks surrounding him.

  She had saved his life then, hiding him with the help of Dengar, and keeping him safe long enough to let his wounds heal, wounds that would have killed a creature of lesser will. Even unconscious, under the chemical weight of the most powerful anesthetic drugs, he had still been Boba Fett, tenacious in his grasp on the world of the living.

  And Boba Fett afterward, as well—frustratingly so. Gratitude seemed to be a substance in short supply among bounty hunters. Save the guy's life, thought Nee-lah bitterly, and what do you get? Not much—and defi-nitely not answers to questions. Anything she knew of her past was limited to the few scraps that had survived that mystery-producing memory wipe, and the infuriat-ingly little bits and pieces that she had picked up back in Jabba the Hutt's palace, and then here aboard the stolen ship Hound's Tooth. So far she had gotten nothing from Dengar; the history he had been relating to her, of the in-fighting and skulduggery that had finally broke
n up the old Bounty Hunters Guild, hadn't yet revealed anything of her past. And what it had told her about Boba Fett's past she had already pretty well figured out: that he was nobody to get involved with, even on a partnership basis. A successful business dealing with Boba Fett was one where he kept all the credits, and the other creature got to keep its life. And an unsuccessful one? Boba Fett still kept the credits.

  For him to have hauled Neelah onto first his own ship, Slave I, when they had all been under siege by a couple of well-armed lowlifes out of Mos Eisley, then onto this ship he had taken from the reptilian bounty hunter known as Bossk, didn't indicate any gratefulness on Boba Fett's part, any recognition of the fact that he wouldn't even be alive now if it hadn't been for her. He's got some use for me —Neelah had figured that out a while back. If she wasn't exactly hard merchandise—the bounty hunter term for their captives, to be traded in for the nice fat re-wards that had been placed on their heads—she was nevertheless part of one of Fett's mercenary schemes. I just don't know what part yet.

  "Careful might not be enough." Boba Fett's cold, emotionless words broke into her thoughts. "Being smart is better. A smart creature doesn't make it a habit to come up behind me without warning. I've killed a few, just for doing that."

  "Oh?" Neelah had become sufficiently used to his ca-pacity for violence to no longer be intimidated. Plus, hav-ing nothing to lose—not even one's self—reduced one's fears. "And for no other reason?"

  "A warning, perhaps." Boba Fett gave a slight shrug. "To others, not to do the same thing."

  "That only works," said Neelah, "when the creature who's listening cares what happens."

  He gave no sign of being amused by her comment. "You don't?"

  "I'm still trying to find out. If I do or not."

  "It doesn't matter to me," said Boba Fett, "whether you do. Just as long as you stay out of the way. While I go about my business."

  Neelah felt a hot spark of anger igniting inside her, triggered by Fett's matter-of-fact tone. "And what busi-ness is that? Specifically."

  "You'll find out soon enough. When we reach our destination."

  Even as small a piece of information as that had proved impossible for her to pry out of Boba Fett. He hadn't seen fit to divulge it to Dengar, either, even though the two bounty hunters were supposed to be partners. In-stead, Fett had been cagey and silent as to the course he had plotted for the Hound's Tooth since they had taken over the ship.

  "I've asked you before." Neelah spoke through grit-ted teeth, her hand straying toward the blaster pistol she had tucked inside her belt. "Why all the big mystery?"

  "No mystery at all," replied Boba Fett. "Just as I said, you'll find out soon enough. Right now, you don't need to know."

  A part of herself that was as cold and dispassionate as the bounty hunter observed her own reaction to his ob-stinate words, as though there were some small clue to be derived there. Neelah was well aware that the imperious response, which she had to keep a tight grip upon, was not that of someone born to be a slave, a dancing girl, and eventual food for a pet rancor in some obese Hutt's palace. She had known that even while she had been un-der the control of the late and unlamented Jabba, with-out even the slightest scrap of memory as to how she had come to be there. The only thing left of her previous existence, whatever it had been and on what distant world, had been the certainty that the cold attention the bounty hunter Boba Fett had directed toward her, in that grisly pit of depravity known as Jabba's palace, had been for some reason inextricably linked with that past.

  "You can't blame me," said Neelah, "for wanting to know. You're the one who's told me so many times about what a dangerous place the galaxy is. If we're heading into some region that's going to turn out to be trouble— big trouble—I'd like some warning about it."

  "Why?" The question, the way it was spoken by Fett, didn't invite an answer. "There wouldn't be anything you could do about it."

  That infuriated her even more. The feeling of helpless-ness, of events being out of her control—that rubbed against some part of her innermost nature as though it were a raw wound. But the blood that she wanted to spill wasn't her own, but Fett's.

  "Don't be too sure about that," said Neelah. "There's two other people on this ship—and only one of you."

  "If you think that you and Dengar could pull off a lit-tle mutiny, you're welcome to try." No emotion, not even scorn, sounded in Boba Fett's voice. "I've some use for both of you at the moment, but that could change. Real fast." He gestured with one gloved hand toward Neelah. "It's up to you."

  She already knew that it was no good asking him what exactly that "use" was. Boba Fett was notorious for play-ing his cards close to his chest, revealing nothing, not even to those who were supposedly his partners.

  "You don't leave someone with very many options." Neelah heard her own voice go as cold and hard as Fett's. "Do you?"

  "My business is to reduce other creatures' options. That's why I always kept a cage in the cargo hold of my own ship." Boba Fett's hand now pointed toward the decks below the cockpit. "The previous owner of this ship had the same facilities installed; all bounty hunters have them. If you'd rather make the rest of the journey in a rather less comfortable manner, believe me, it can be arranged. Don't expect Dengar to join you, though. He's at least smart enough not to go along with a plan like that."

  One more creature around here, thought Neelah, that I can't trust. Boba Fett was infuriatingly correct about that as well; she knew that if Dengar was given the choice between throwing his lot in with her or maintain-ing whatever kind of partnership he had with Fett, he'd go on following the other bounty hunter's orders in a flash. Why wouldn't he? If Dengar stuck with Boba Fett, he had a chance of getting a piece of the action, a slice of the credits that Fett's various schemes and enterprises generated. And that slice, however thin it was cut com-pared to Boba Fett's own, was still better than risking a shot at getting killed for the sake of somebody without even her real name, let alone any other known friend or ally in the galaxy. Dengar couldn't be blamed if he was smart enough to know the odds and to play them for his own benefit.

  As for winding up in the cage herself—Neelah wasn't sure whether she cared or not. What's the difference? She could see her own face reflected in the dark visor of Boba Fett's helmet; it was a face that bore the grim, fatalistic expression of someone who might have managed to save herself from the deadly confines of Jabba the Hutt's palace, only to have wound up in another situation that was just like it in essence. I don't make the decisions, she thought. Even whether I live or die.

  "So we should all go along with your plan," said Nee-lah, "whatever it is. Without complaining."

  Boba Fett shrugged. "Complain all you want. Just not to me. And"—he pointed to the blaster pistol tucked in her belt—"without thinking you could get a jump on me. It's not going to happen."

  "Sure about that?"

  "Let me put it another way," said Fett. "It hasn't hap-pened yet. And all those who tried to make it happen— they're no longer with us."

  She didn't need to be reminded about that. Everything she had heard about Boba Fett, from her time back in Jabba's palace to here onboard the stolen Hound's Tooth, listening to Dengar's tale of the disintegration of the old Bounty Hunters Guild and its ugly aftermath, had rein-forced the impression she'd already had of him. A sen-tient creature put its own life up as the wager when it gambled in any dealings with Boba Fett.

  Still —it was a thought she'd had more than once— there are times when you have to go ahead and place your bet. If she hadn't done that, back when she had been the personal property of the late Jabba, she would have eventually wound up being fed to the Hurt's pet rancor, just as poor Oola had been. It was better to die with a wager on the table than to just cringe and wait for any one of the many grisly deaths that this galaxy held for the timid.

  Neelah's hand had strayed to the butt of the blaster pistol at her side, resting there as though only another thought, and another decis
ion, were all that stood be-tween her and testing the advice that both Boba Fett and her own remaining caution had given her.

  One shot was all that it would take; one fiery bolt from the blaster. The weapon grew warm within her grasp. Some wordless certainty deep inside her, unat-tached to any fragment of memory, any recall of her stolen past, told Neelah that she actually had a chance of pulling it off. The person she had been before, her true identity, hidden behind the blank curtain that had been drawn across all that was rightfully hers to recall—that person, she had come to realize, had reflexes nearly as fast as Boba Fett's. Maybe faster, given that even now she had the element of surprise on her side. He wouldn't ex-pect it, thought Neelah. She could tell that for all his skills as a bounty hunter, both physical and psychologi-cal, there was a blind spot in that helmet-visored gaze: it was only to be expected that he would be unable to ad-mit that any part of his plans, any piece of hard merchan-dise, could have moves equal to his own.

  The notion was tempting. She could almost taste it under her tongue, like the hot salt of her own blood. It was the same temptation that she had yielded to once be-fore, in Jabba's palace back on the planet of Tatooine, when she had decided it was better to put an end to the Hutt's ownership of her body and spirit, even if the price to do so was her life. The mystery of her true name and identity was just as maddeningly intolerable; knowing that the answer might be locked inside the mind held by that dark-visaged helmet of Mandalorian battle armorthat thought drove out all others. One quick move with her hand, which already could feel the cold metal of the blaster a millimeter away from her sweating palm, and the mystery would be over, one way or another. One of them would be dead, with either a smoking blaster hole drilled through Boba Fett's chest or her own, depending upon which of them got a bolt off first. And right now, she knew deep inside herself, she was close to not even caring which of them it was ...