Hard Merchandise

by K. W. Jeter

  "Great," muttered Dengar. The lifted spirits he had shown just minutes before had now evaporated. "We're dead. I knew this was going to happen ..."

  "Come, come." Balancesheet sounded almost pitying. "Would I have thrown my lot in with yours if I had thought you were all doomed? I'm a better business-creature than that."

  "Then you've got a plan," said Boba Fett. "What is it?"

  "Very simple. You just need to find another way to get to Tatooine. That's all."

  "Easier said than done. It's a long walk from here."

  "No need to, even if that were possible." The jagged smile returned to Balancesheet's narrow face. "I took the liberty of making other arrangements while you were on your way here to my ship. I've been in contact with a cer­ tain individual, with whom you've done business before— in a manner of speaking—and his ship is close enough to this sector, so that he can be here shortly."

  Boba Fett regarded the assembler with suspicion evi­ dent even through the helmet's dark visor. "Who is it?"

  "Oh ..." The assembler's smile widened even further than before. "You'll see soon enough ..."

  "Well, well." A thin figure had emerged from the trans­ fer hatchway, leaving his smaller craft tethered to the exterior of Balancesheet's freighter. From a face with youthfulness sharpened by feral cynicism, his gaze met with that of the helmeted bounty hunter. "Balancesheet told me he had a surprise in store. This is a good one."

  "I knew you'd be amused," replied Balancesheet. "For a lot of reasons."

  With a cocky swagger, the new arrival approached Boba Fett. "The last time we ran into each other, you just about killed me. I'm still wondering why you didn't."

  Fett gazed back at him coldly. "Don't make me start wondering, Suhlak."

  "Suhlak?" Dengar studied the youth for a moment, then glanced over at Balancesheet. "As in N'dru Suhlak? You called in a hunt saboteur?"

  "Who better?" The assembler's response was mild and unruffled. "He is uniquely qualified for the task we need performed."

  "Yeah, but ..." Dengar's expression soured as he shook his head in disgust. "I don't like dealing with this kind of lowlife. It ... it just goes against everything I be­ lieve in."

  "What?" Neelah turned and looked at the bounty hunter standing next to her. "That's hard to believe. Since when did people in your line of business start getting moral attitudes?"

  Suhlak smiled at her. "You'll have to excuse him, lady. But once a bounty hunter, always a bounty hunter. That's his job. And my job is to mess things up for him, and for every other bounty hunter." He made a small, mocking bow. "That's just what I do."

  "You see, Neelah ..." From the metal ledge, Balance-sheet gestured toward Suhlak. "The existence of special­ized entities such as bounty hunters has inevitably given rise to other, competing specialities. Such as this young— and very gifted—hunt saboteur. What he does is get cer­ tain individuals from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible; that in itself is not so special. But Suhlak here performs this service for individuals who have had bounties placed on their heads, and whom bounty hunters such as Dengar and Boba Fett are seek­ ing to capture. He, in essence, spoils their hunt. You can hardly expect bounty hunters to approve of someone like that."

  "Yeah, and like I care." Suhlak leaned his shoulder

  against a bulkhead and folded his arms across his chest. "They do what they do for credits, and I do what I do for the same. Which brings up the matter at hand. I take it you called me here for a reason, Balancesheet. That rea­ son better be a nice, high-paying job."

  "I think it's one for which we can offer you satis­factory terms." Balancesheet pointed a minuscule claw tip toward Boba Fett. "Our mutual friend here needs to reach Tatooine as quickly—and as unobtrusively—as possible."

  "That's going to be a little bit difficult for him." Suh­ lak aimed a smirk in Boba Fett's direction, then turned back toward the assembler. "There's a lot of other crea­ tures out there gunning for him. I mean, he wasn't too popular before; now that there's a pile of credits offered in exchange for his hide, his chances have gone way down."

  "We're aware of the difficulties," said Balancesheet. "And while of course there's a certain, shall we say, irony that comes with asking a hunt saboteur to assist in con­ veying a bounty hunter past other bounty hunters, we still think your services might be useful in that regard."

  "Useful?" Suhlak gave a slow nod. "Yeah—and expensive."

  "There's a surprise," said Dengar sourly.

  "Shut up." Neelah hissed the words at him. "This is the only way we've got."

  Suhlak pointed toward Balancesheet. "You mentioned a certain sum of credits when you contacted me."

  "Yes—" The assembler nodded. "That was to get your interest."

  "Oh, you got it, all right. But now that I see exactly what you're talking about..." Suhlak made a show of reluctantly shaking his head. "I'm not sure it's enough. Given the risks involved, and all. And . . . certain per­ sonal issues that have to be overcome."

  "What sum," asked Balancesheet, "would take care of those problems for you?"

  "The figure you mentioned—up front. And then"— Suhlak's eyes narrowed to slits—"the same amount again, when the job's completed."

  It was Balancesheet's turn to look doubtful. "That's a considerable amount of credits."

  "Yeah, and it's a considerable amount of risk. Plus— you don't have any other options right now. So take it or leave it."

  "Taken," Boba Fett spoke up. "Pay this creature, Balancesheet. I don't feel like haggling."

  "You got yourself a good deal." Suhlak barked out a harsh laugh. "Think about it. I've made a lot of deliveries in my time—and you're the only one who ever succeeded at getting in my way. With you aboard this time, that'll be one thing I won't have to worry about."

  "So you're going to be taking all of us back to Ta­tooine?" Neelah pointed to herself and the two bounty hunters. "That's the deal?"

  Suhlak shook his head. "Sweetheart, I've only got a modified Z-95 Headhunter—that's what I use in my busi­ ness. Fast, maneuverable—but a little on the cramped side, even with the bubbled-out passenger space I had added to it. There's really just room for me and one other creature. Boba Fett's making this trip, and that's it."

  "But ..." An edge of panic, a glimpse into the un­known, cut through Neelah's thoughts. Everything—all the answers to the questions that remained with her— depended upon Boba Fett. "How do I know ... how do we know... that you'll come back?"

  "Don't worry," said Boba Fett. "This will be a two- way journey, all right. How else am I going to make any credits on this deal?"

  "Hey, wait a minute." Suhlak pushed himself away from the bulkhead on which he'd been leaning. "No­ body said anything about getting back here. My price was just for getting you to Tatooine!"

  Boba Fett turned his shielded gaze toward the younger man. "Take it or leave it, Suhlak. Or else we'll explore another option—namely, my killing you and then pilot-

  ing your ship myself. The odds of making it to Tatooine wouldn't be as good, but at least I wouldn't have to put up with you any longer."

  For a few seconds, the hunt saboteur glared back at Fett. Then he nodded. "All right. Let's get going."

  12

  "We've found them."

  Those words came from the comm unit speaker in Kuat of Kuat's private quarters. The felinx watched from its silken-lined basket beneath Kuat's lab bench as he turned toward the voice of the absent Kodir of Kuhlvult, security head for all of Kuat Drive Yards.

  "I'm not so much concerned about 'them.' The person we need to locate is Boba Fett." Kuat regarded the view of stars and construction docks visible from the curv­ ing bank of transparisteel panels near the bench. "If you haven't found him, I don't even want to hear your report."

  "Don't worry," said Kodir. "I wouldn't have put the link through if I hadn't succeeded at the task given to me."

  Kuat made no reply. Even though Kodir wasn't physi­ cally present at the Ku
at Drive Yards corporate head­ quarters, he had as clear an image of her as if she were standing before him. She had all the haughty bearing of a member of one of Kuat's ruling families, combined with the intimidatingly honed athletic grace that had made her such a suitable candidate for the position she now held. That, plus a sharp-edged mental acuity equal to his

  own, evoked a small measure of unease in Kuat. In truth, he'd had a better personal relationship with Fenald, his previous security head; the only problem being that Fen­ ald had been a traitor, to both Kuat and to Kuat Drive Yards, by being part of the scheme to wrest control of the corporation away from him and turn it over to the greed­ iest and most ambitious factions among the ruling fami­lies. If it hadn't been for Kodir of Kuhlvult, Fenald and the conspirators he'd fallen in with would very likely have succeeded in their plans—and the corporation that Kuat of Kuat and his predecessors had treasured and protected for so many generations would now be on its way to utter ruin. No one from the planet Kuat's other ruling families had the experience and cunning to cir­ cumvent all of Emperor Palpatine's schemes to break Kuat Drive Yards' independence and make it a mere component of the Empire. So Kodir had earned both Kuat's respect and his trust, no matter how much her tough, even brutal mannerisms grated against his own instincts. It's a brutal universe, Kuat had told himself more than once. And he had certainly played his own hard game of survival in it. Perhaps what disturbed him about Kodir was a certain essential resemblance to his own ruthlessness in service to the corporation.

  "So now we know where Boba Fett is." Kuat spoke into the comm unit mike on top of the lab bench. "Is he still aboard the ship called the Hound's Tooth}"

  "That's how I found him." A tone of self-satisfaction was audible in Kodir's voice. "The Hound's Tooth was spotted by one of our paid spies, at the edge of one of the remoter border systems. Then it vanished again; obvi­ ously, Boba Fett was piloting a course designed to throw off any trackers. But the sighting of the Hound's Tooth was close enough to a certain navigational sector that had figured prominently at one time in Boba Fett's activi­ ties that I took a chance at keeping it under more inten­ sive surveillance. And sure enough, the Hound's Tooth showed up there."

  "Indeed." Kuat nodded to himself. That was the type

  of work, both methodical and insightful, that he had ex­ pected from Kodir. "So where is it?"

  "It's out by where the arachnoid assembler Kud'ar Mub'at used to have its web, before it was destroyed by Prince Xizor. And the fragments of the web had drifted a bit since then, so Boba Fett apparently had to do some searching of his own to find them. But he did; by the time my ship got close enough to do some surreptitious moni­ toring of his activities, he and his companions had recon­ structed most of the web."

  "Interesting." Rubbing his chin, Kuat wondered what that piece of information meant. The death of the assem­ bler Kud'ar Mub'at at the hands of Prince Xizor's Black Sun cleanup crew had previously been something of a re­ lief to him. Kud'ar Mub'at had had too much knowledge of Kuat's own dealings with the assembler; those kinds of secrets were better kept by the dead than by any living creature, no matter how well paid for silence. If Xizor hadn't taken care of Kud'ar Mub'at, then the chances would have been good that Kuat of Kuat would have been forced to, eventually. "Were you able to discern ex­ actly what they were up to?"

  "Negative on that," came Kodir's reply. "I ordered our ship to pull back from the sector when another vessel was detected, approaching from directly opposite us. We did manage to ID that ship; it's the freighter that Kud'ar Mub'at's successor Balancesheet is now using as its base of operations."

  "Do you think there was some kind of arranged ren­ dezvous between Balancesheet and Boba Fett?"

  "I'm pretty sure there wasn't." Kodir's voice sounded grimly amused. "Balancesheet has had that clunky old freighter of his outfitted with some decent armaments; it opened fire on both the reconstructed web and the Hound's Tooth alongside. Things got a little confused af­ter that, but right now it seems as if Balancesheet and Boba Fett have sorted it out; Fett and his associates are currently aboard Balancesheet's freighter."

  "Any way of finding out what they're discussing?"

  "Negative again," replied Kodir. "Balancesheet val­ ues its privacy as much as Kud'ar Mub'at did. That freighter is shielded against every distance-operational spy apparatus we've got. Short of cracking open the hull with one of our own laser cannons, that meeting is com­ pletely secured."

  "Too bad." For both myself—and Boba Fett, thought Kuat. If there had been some way of determining exactly what the bounty hunter was discussing and scheming with the arachnoid assembler, Kuat would have been able to more accurately assess what kind of threat Boba Fett's continued existence represented to him and to Kuat Drive Yards. But as it was, he'd have to err on the side of caution...

  And eliminate Fett.

  "That's the situation at this point." Kodir's voice broke into his thoughts. "I await your decision about what to do next."

  "Have you got this freighter of Balancesheet's in your weapon-sights?"

  "Not yet," said Kodir. "We're out of range for that. But that problem can be corrected very shortly."

  "Then do so." Kuat had already made his determina­ tion about the bounty hunter's fate. "And when you've locked on to the target, proceed with its destruction. I want complete annihilation of the freighter and all living creatures aboard it."

  "We could be a little more surgical in our approach. It wouldn't be too difficult to disable the freighter, then board it and extract Boba Fett without harming the oth­ ers. We could eliminate him alone—that is, of course, if there were some value to be placed on the lives of the others with him." Kodir expanded on the option she had presented. "Balancesheet, for instance; the assembler has its uses for us."

  "Not enough of them." Kuat shook his head, though there was no way that Kodir could see him. "Not enough to outweigh the disadvantages of having it remain as a witness to our actions against Boba Fett. I don't want

  any of this traced back to Kuat Drive Yards. So proceed as I indicated."

  "Very well. I'll report back when the operation is con­ cluded." From the faraway ship, Kodir broke off the comm unit connection.

  In the resulting silence, Kuat of Kuat could hear the felinx asking for attention, its voice a mere guttural whine. He reached down and scratched behind its ears.

  "Believe me," said Kuat. "It'll be for the best..."

  "Not so fast," said Suhlak. "There's a couple of other things that have to be taken care of before we go any­where."

  The hunt saboteur hadn't moved toward the transfer hatch that would have led both him and Boba Fett to his waiting Headhunter. Fett and the others aboard Balance-sheet's freighter gazed at him impatiently.

  "Now what's the problem?" Neelah set her hands on her slim hips. "I thought we already figured out, we don't have time to waste."

  "Look, I'm just trying to help you out here. So you'll be like a satisfied customer and all. I've got a reputation to maintain," Suhlak said testily. "If all you wanted was for me to get this bounty hunter here to Tatooine, quick and quiet, I can take care of that for you. But you want a roundtrip; you want me to bring Fett back here as well. Now that's going to be kind of hard for me to pull off if this whole freighter and everybody aboard it is gone by the time Fett and I return."

  "Why would we be gone?" Puzzled, Dengar stared at the hunt saboteur. "Where would we go?"

  "You wouldn't have gone anywhere, pal, except up in flames." Suhlak shook his head in disgust. "None of you even knows what's sitting out there, keeping a watch on your every move. But there's a light cruiser, top of the li ne, from the Kuat Drive Yards, keeping surveillance on this tub right now. Matter of fact, it's a KDY ship; I iden-

  tified it when I snuck past it. It's the Kuat Drive Yards' main security enforcement vessel, and it's armed and very dangerous."

  "It didn't spot you?" Boba Fett gestured toward the hull of the freighter and the empty expanses
of space out­ side it. "They don't know you're here?"

  "Naw; I've got my ways of sliding past something like that—especially when their attention is fixed on some­ thing else, like this freighter here."

  Neelah looked over at Fett. "What do you think they want?"

  "Given the fact that the last time any KDY ships got this close to me, they unloaded enough bombs to atom­ize a few square kilometers of the Dune Sea, I'd expect that this one isn't going to be any friendlier."

  The arachnoid assembler Balancesheet had scurried over to its freighter home's detect and tracking screens. "It would appear," it announced, "that not only is our young friend correct about the presence of this other ship, but that we also have a limited time in which to de­ termine what to do about it. It's come within range of my ship's scanners, and is continuing to head this way."