by K. W. Jeter
"Come on." Boba Fett moved toward the cave's opening.
"Let's get going. There's no reason to hang around here." She didn't know whether he had been speaking to both of them or just to Dengar. But she wasn't taking any chances. Neelah let the two men go before, at a quick sprint toward the Slave I ship. From the darkness of the surrounding dunes, a volley of laser bolts scorched the sand at their feet; the other besieger hadn't given up yet. Neelah didn't let that stop her from following after Boba Fett and Dengar, and quickly scooping up the dead man's blaster rifle as she ran.
"Hold it." At the hatchway of the ship, Neelah raised the weapon, her thumb at its firing stud. "Stop right there."
Dengar was already inside; with one gloved hand grasping the side of the hatch, Boba Fett turned and looked over his shoulder, his visored gaze meeting that of the blaster rifle's muzzle.
"You're not going anywhere without me," said Neelah coldly.
Boba Fett's hand shot out before she could react, the motion faster than her eye could perceive. His fist locked onto the rifle barrel; with a quick twist of his arm,. he had wrenched it out of her grasp. The weapon went spinning through the air as he flung it away, landing within inches of the corpse's unmov-ing arm. They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Boba Fett reached down and grabbed Neelah's wrist, and pulled her up toward the hatchway.
"Don't be stupid." Fett's grasp lightened, squeezing the bones together. "I'm the one who decides who goes and who stays. And right now you're too valuable a piece of merchandise to leave behind."
A second later she was inside the ship, with the hatchway door sliding shut behind herself. "Brace yourself," said Fett as he headed for a metal ladder at the side of the space. "We're leaving now." Neelah rubbed her aching wrist. As she looked about herself, at the bleak metal bars of the cages, she realized-though she didn't know when, in what part of her shrouded past-that she had been here before.
"That is just so entirely typical." SHS1-B tilted his head unit back, watching the ship ascend swiftly into the night sky. "You go to all that trouble fixing them up, putting them back together, and they don't even bother to thank you."
"Ingratitude." le-XE stood next to the taller medical droid. They had both come creeping out of their hiding places when the shooting had finally stopped. By now, even the human out in the dunes had presumably left, heading back to whatever den of iniquity he had come from; at least, there was no longer any indication of his presence. That was a further disappointment to both droids; after an encounter with Boba Fett, the man might have had some interesting wounds to take care of.
"Thoughtlessness."
"But of course, what else can you expect?" The ship's glowing trail had already dwindled to a speck of light among the stars. The hope had formed inside SHSl-B's circuits-to the degree that a droid could hope-that it and le-XE would have been taken along with the humans, particularly the one they had nursed back to health, the one named Boba Fett. They would have certainly been able to earn their energy sources, what with the considerable amount of tissue damage he had the knack for creating.
"It's their nature, I suppose. All flesh thinks it's immortal." SHSl-B brought its gaze down from the sky to the surrounding empty desert. "Now what?"
"Unemployment," squeaked le-XE's voice.
"Needlessness."
SHSl-B looked at its companion for a moment. Then it extruded one of its scalpel-tipped arms and scraped a spot of rust from le-XE's dented carapace. "You know"-SHSl-B's voice spoke with measured consideration-"you could use a little maintenance …."
21
He hated to do it. But Bossk knew he had to.
The greed impulses in his Trandoshan brain, as hardwired as any droid's circuits, almost overruled all the others. He could hear the words inside his head, ancient bounty-hunter wisdom, told to him by his own father The live ones are worth more than the dead ones. Old Cradossk had known what he was talking about, at least about that; whenever Bossk ran his clawed hands along the picked-clean bones he'd kept as mementos, he had a renewed sense of legacy and tradition. But even so, another truth remained, equally hard and obdurate. Things were different when you were dealing with a creature like Boba Fett.
On the screen of the Hound's Tooth's longdistance scanner, in the cramped cockpit, Bossk could see the tiny speck of light that represented Fett's ship. The Slave I had already left the surface of Tatooine, as Bossk had known it would. Soon-within seconds-it would be beyond the planet's atmosphere, and then it would be within his own sighting and tracking range. That was how little time Bossk had remaining to him to press the button beneath his clawed thumb and accomplish all that was necessary. No time for rethinking his decisions or regretting lost profits.
He had been back aboard Slave I, extracting a few more interesting files from its data bank, when the comm controls had lit up like the bright sparks of a disintegrating asteroid. That could mean only one thing that the message about Boba Fett being alive was true, and that he had just reinitiated contact with the ship that he had left in orbit above Tatooine. Bossk had also known what was to follow. Slave I would obediently follow Boba Fett's remote-transmitted commands, switch on and prime its engines, and head down to Tatooine to rendezvous with its master. And then Boba Fett would not only be alive, but free and active in the galaxy once again. Free and active-and the top, number-one bounty hunter on all the galaxy's scattered worlds.
Bossk could still feel the rage and fear that had come boiling up inside him. Rage was a familiar emotion-Trandoshans woke up angry-but fear was something new. And powerful it had pushed him into action, quick and efficient.
He hadn't wasted any thought on the mysteries that had been so tantalizingly uncovered to him. If the rich and powerful Kuat of Kuat was interested in Boba Fett being alive or dead, so be it; Bossk might still be able to cash in by confirming it to the owner of Kuat Drive Yards. And if there was some connection between Prince Xizor, the Black Sun's hidden ruler, and the raid on the moisture farm at the Dune Sea's edge…the answers about that weren't going to come from Boba Fett. Bossk would make sure of that.
There had been just enough time to haul a sufficient quantity of high-thermal explosives over from the Hound's Tooth, conceal them in the holding cages of Fett's ship, and rig the remote triggering device. Then Bossk had sealed the entrance hatchway of Slave I, disconnected his own ship, and watched from his cockpit viewport as the other craft had sped planet-ward.
Now that ship was heading back into space, bearing its helmeted master. The speck of light had grown larger; another second, and Bossk would have waited too long. All regret was expunged from his heart. He pressed the button on the cockpit's control panel. Instantaneously, the ominous light was transformed into a ball of churning flame, surrounded by extinguishing vacuum. Radiant sparks, bits of heated metal no bigger than a human's hand, drifted away from the core of the explosion, the dust and atoms of the other ship.
Bossk leaned back in the pilot's chair, feeling ex hausted as the tension began to drain from his coiled muscles. That does it, he thought with relief. Boba Fett's dead now. For good…
No regrets; he knew it had to be done.
But one thing still puzzled Bossk as he gazed out at the emptiness between the stars.
Why did he still feel afraid?
FB2 document info
Document ID: 7340e18c-dc53-4759-a709-cffa2b505a84
Document version: 1.3
Document creation date: 19 December 2011
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Scan/OCR-Demilich ([email protected])
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