by K. W. Jeter
impatient fury. "We should have been on our way by now!"
"Patience," counseled Boba Fett. "In this case, it is
not so much a virtue as a necessity. That is, if you want
to pull off this job and live to tell about it."
He watched the Trandoshan resume cursing and
muttering under his breath, pacing back and forth in one
of the landing docks farthest from the Bounty Hunters
Guild complex. It struck Fett that he wouldn't have to do
anything at all in order to ensure Bossk's destruction;
eventually, the reptilian would explode from the rage
bottled up inside him. Or at the least, he thought, that
much anger will cause a fatal mistake somewhere along the
line. Boba Fett's own survival was predicated on both
violence and the cold, emotionless precision of his
strategies and actions. Without the former, all the plan
ning and scheming in the galaxy would be impotent; that
was something that the Empire, from Darth Va-der's
underlings all the way up to Palpatine himself,
understood completely. What a creature like Bossk didn't
comprehend was that violence, however necessary, was a
bomb nestled against one's own heart, in the absence of
meticulous calculation. He'll find out, thought Fett.
Soon enough.
The smaller bounty hunter, Zuckuss, glanced nervously
from Boba Fett over to Bossk, then back again. "Maybe,"
he said, "an advance party could head out toward the
Shell Hutts. Do some reconnaissance so that when the rest
of our team shows up there, we'll be ready to go right
in."
"Don't be stupid." Boba Fett shook his head. "The
only thing that would accomplish would be to warn the
Shell Hutts of our intentions. It's going to be hard
enough keeping any element of surprise, without sending
them a message like that."
"But the ships are ready to go!" Bossk whirled about
on the clawed heel of his foot. "If we wait any longer,
the other Guild members will put together teams for
taking on this Dinnid job. They'll beat us to it!"
Boba Fett didn't look up from the data readout in his
hands; he continued checking the Slave I's armaments
list. "It would be no great tragedy if anyone did that.
Since they would have no chance off success, our
merchandise would still be safely in the hands of the
Shell Hutts, waiting for us. And it might actually
facilitate our own plans, once we put them into motion.
The Shell Hutts would see the difference between us and
some crude pack trying to blast their way into the
stronghold."
"You keep telling us about these great plans you've
made." Bossk aimed a venomous stare at Fett. "When are
you going to let us know exactly what they are?"
"As I said before." Unflinchingly, Boba Fett returned
the other's hard gaze. "You need to cultivate patience."
Bossk turned away again, his grumbling even louder
than before.
The other team member was there with them in the
landing dock. IG-88, a droid that had managed to become
one of the Bounty Hunters Guild's more respected
members-in fact, one of the few that Boba Fett would even
consider to be a serious rival- brought his optical
scanners around in Fett's direction. "There is patience,"
said IG-88 in a harshly synthesized voice, "and then
there is hesitation. The latter comes from fear and
indecision. We decided upon you as the leader of this
team's operations because we assumed that such were not
your qualities. Our disappointment would be great if we
found out otherwise."
"If you think you can pull off this job without
me"-Fett lowered the data readout in his hands- "then go
ahead."
IG-88 regarded him for a moment longer, then gave a
single nod of its head. "You remain our leader. But I
warn you Don't exhaust what patience we do have."
"Mine's already gone." Bossk had obviously continued
stewing; the look in his slitted eyes had gone from
murderous to annihilating. One hand hovered dangerously
close to the blaster slung at his hip. "I've changed my
mind. This whole team notion was a stupid idea-"
"Um, Bossk . . ." Zuckuss raised his voice. "It was
your idea."
"If I started it, then I can put an end to it as
well." His gaze slowly moved across the three other
bounty hunters. "You lot can do whatever you want. But
I'm out of this. I'm going out after Oph Nar Dinnid by
myself."
"I'm afraid you don't have that option." Boba
Fett tucked the readout inside one of his armor's
storage pouches. His voice seemed even more level and
emotionless, compared with Bossk's boiling anger. "You
know too much about this operation for you to be on the
outside of it. When you come in with me on a job, you
stay until it's over. There's really only one way for you
to quit."
"Yeah?" Bossk sneered. "What's that?"
IG-88 remained standing as before, his equally cold
droid emotions-or the lack of them-observing the
confrontation. Zuckuss drew back, ready to duck behind
the fuselage of one of the ships in the landing dock as
Boba Fett dropped his hand to the curved grip of his own
blaster.
"Go ahead," said Boba Fett, "and try walking out on
us. And you'll find out."
The atmosphere tensed, as though filling with
subphotonic discharge from a battle cruiser's venting
ports. In the taut silence, Boba Fett gave a silent com
mand to the heavily armed figure standing in front of
him. Go ahead, he thought. It'll save us all a lot of
time. . . .
"There's someone coming!" Zuckuss's voice broke
through the adrenaline-frozen moment. He pointed to the
distant high arch that formed the entrance to the landing
dock; beyond it, a streak of fiery light cut a crescent
past the stars. "Another ship-"
Bossk held his gaze tight on Boba Fett's for a moment
longer, then glanced over his shoulder. The approaching
light had grown brighter, its docking jets flaring into a
sudden corona. He looked back at Fett. "Is this who we've
been waiting for?"
"It could be." Boba Fett didn't take his hand from
the grip of his blaster.
"Lucky for you."
"That's right," said Fett. "If I had killed you, I
would have needed to find another person for the team."
His hand moved away from the smallest of his weapons. "I
find personnel changes to be aggravating."
Zuckuss peered past them at the approaching ship. "I
don't recognize this one." It was close enough that its
outlines could be seen a featureless ovoid, barely
larger than a TIE fighter, trailing a metallic seine, a
stiffly interlinked net, behind its flaring engines. "How
did it get clearance-"
"I arranged for that." Boba Fett stepped past Zuckuss
and the others, walking toward the pad that the
appro
aching craft had locked upon. "But it wouldn't have
made any difference if I had or not."
"What do you mean?" Zuckuss scurried after Fett.
"Believe me-this barve goes where he wants to."
The ovoid could be seen more clearly now as it slid
into the landing dock, thrust engines shut down and
repulsors on. Its rounded surfaces were pitted and scored
with the impact marks of high-intensity armaments,
including one large scorch mark where the metal had
actually melted and fused back together. As it hovered
above the pad its trailing mesh shifted and drew forward,
one part curling above like a scorpion's tail, the other
forming a reticulated cradle beneath, onto which the
craft slowly sank and was still.
"Look at this thing." Fascinated, Zuckuss had walked
right up to the ovoid, his boots stepping onto the mesh.
He laid a gloved hand on the battered and corrosion-
marked surface. "It looks like it's been in every battle
since the Clone Wars-"
"Watch out," said Boba Fett. But the warning was
already too late.
A microscopic hairline fissure around the top of the
ovoid widened, with a hiss of inrush ing air. An
elliptical section separated from the rest, tilting up
ward on previously hidden internal hinges. For a moment
nothing further showed from inside the craft. ...
As though released by a high-compression spring, the
barrel of a close-range laser cannon rose up, with its
power sources and recoil housing mounted directly behind.
The gleaming surfaces of black metal shone like the coils
of an aroused serpent, intricate and deadly. A faint,
shrill electronic whir sounded as the massive weapon's
range-sighting devices locked onto Zuckuss, swinging the
point of the muzzle down within a meter of the bounty
hunter's chest. Another series of sharp, concussive
noises sounded within the machinery as the indicator
lights' glow shifted from yellow to a hot red, charged
and ready to fire. That was followed by silence; Zuckuss
froze where he stood, as though hypnotized by the black
hole almost within touching distance of his hand, and its
lethal potential even closer than that. There would be
only a haze of disconnected atoms floating above the
scorched remains of his boots after one shot from the
weapon.
"Back up," said Boba Fett quietly. "Do it slow, and
you probably won't get hurt."
"Hurt?" Beside him, Bossk was gazing in wide-eyed
fascination at the laser cannon's darkly gleaming barrel.
"He's going to be vaporized!"
Zuckuss was unable to take his own gaze away from the
death-bestowing machinery locked upon him. But he did
manage to take one cautious step backward, then another;
all the while the weapon's tracking systems followed his
every move, shifting angle slightly to remain targeted.
A few more steps and Zuckuss was back with the other
bounty hunters. "Stay here," Boba Fett told him.
"Don't worry." The stink of panic sweat seeped out of
Zuckuss's gear. "I'm not going anywhere."
Boba Fett had already stepped past him, leaving Bossk
and IG-88 behind as well. He strode without visible
apprehension across the landing dock toward the ovoid
resting above its glittering mesh. The laser cannon swung
and locked onto him as he approached.
"It's been a long time." He stopped and spoke to the
weapon itself, as though its charge-primed muzzle were a
face masked like his, with the tracking systems as its
all-seeing eyes. "A very long time."
The red indicator lights along the weapon's housing
cooled from red, through a dull orange, down to a steady-
state yellow. The optics and sensors of the tracking
systems defocused slightly, as though the hand and mind
behind the trigger had relaxed to a state of mere
vigilance, rather than instantaneous aggression.
Slowly, the laser cannon rose, as though being lifted
on some mechanism inside the ovoid-shaped craft. A cloud
of hissing steam surrounded it, obscuring for a moment
the outlines of the weapon, as though it were an
outcropping of black rock, on a mountain peak wreathed in
a sudden, violent storm. The cannon parted the steam as a
massive humanoid torso appeared below, its wide shoulders
bearing the weapon's crushing weight. From the underside
of the barrel, a quarter circle of gear-toothed metal
curved down into an anchoring plate set in the creature's
chest, with interlocking motors to adjust the muzzle's
terminal elevation. Heavy cables, some glistening black,
others made of silvery durasteel, looped beneath the arms
and around the muscle-sheathed chest and ribs, connecting
with the counterbalancing cylinders of power sources
flanking the spine. The latter were revealed when the
individual climbed out of the ovoid, black-gloved hands
and thick-soled boots weighing upon the mesh's strands.
From the intricate joins of the weapon's mounting, more
steam lashed out, gathered, and dissipated in trailing
wisps, indicating the presence of an old-style, liquid-
based cooling system, primitive technology dating from
the earliest days of the Republic. The laser cannon swung
180 degrees around on its mounting, as though the
tracking system optics were actually the eyes in a head
made of pure destructive capacity.
A tail section, like a primitive saurian's, but made
of segmented black metal and mounted by articulated bolts
to the creature's hips, was the last thing to be dragged
out of the craft. With its top section hinged back and
its pilot standing before it, the resemblance to a giant
egg was complete, as though it had just now cracked open
to disgorge a new combination of living matter and lethal
machinery.
Behind the stranger, the tail curled across the edge
of the stiffened mesh. With one hand, the creature
undipped a small keyboard device from the band of metal
running from the hip bolts and across his abdomen. His
other hand punched in a rapid sequence of ideograms, then
thumbed a larger button i in the device's corner.
"long . . . time." The device's speaker crackled as
the stranger held it up in front of himself. Underneath
the synthesized words, the hissing of the steam from the
laser cannon's housing could still be heard.
"YOU DO NOT . . . SEEM TO AGE . . .
BOBA FETT."
"Should I?" The statement amused him. "Time enough
for that when I'm dead."
He could hear the other bounty hunters behind him.
Bossk's voice was louder than the rest "I don't like the
looks of this. . . ."
The stranger was instantly transformed; Boba Fett
knew that something had triggered a reaction sequence. On
the housing of the laser cannon, the indicators flared
red again; the tracking systems narrowed their focus,
sighting in on a point behind Fett
. Steam jetted farther
from the housing's apertures as the segmented metal tail
stiffened, bracing the stranger into a tripod rigid
enough to take the force of the high-powered weapon's
recoil.
Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder and saw that
Bossk had instinctively dropped his hand to the butt of
the blaster slung at his hip; the Trandoshan always did
that when something aroused his suspicions.
"Not a good idea," said Fett. With a nod of his
helmet, he indicated Bossk's hand, frozen in place by the
laser cannon snapping into firing mode. "D'harhan tends
to kill first and not bother investigating afterward."
Bossk took his hand away from his blaster.
"Good." Boba Fett looked toward Zuckuss and IG-88 as
well. "Now our team is all here."
"D'harhan and I go back a long way." Across the
controls of the Slave I, Boba Fett's hands moved swiftly,
setting the coordinates for dropping back out of
hyperspace. "Longer than you can imagine."
"How come I've never heard of him?" The ship's
cockpit area was small enough that Zuckuss had to remain
standing in the hatchway behind Fett just to exchange a
few words with him. "He seems very . . . impressive."
Zuckuss had had a choice of traveling with Bossk and
IG-88 in the Hound's Tooth, but the Trandoshan's
worsening temper had pushed him into the Slave I instead.
Let the droid deal with him, Zuckuss had decided. Droids
don't take all that snarling and muttering personally.
But heading toward the Shell Hutts' home base, a ring-
shaped artificial planetoid called Circumtore, aboard the
Slave I had proved even more unnerving. The stranger
named D'harhan-or friend or mercenary companion, or
whatever he might have been at one time to Boba Fett-had
found the most secure corner of the ship's belowdecks
holding area, and had sat down on the gridded flooring
with his back to the angle of the bulkheads. D'harhan had
wrapped his flex-shielded arms around his knees,
partially resting the weight of the laser cannon mounted
on his shoulders on them, the weapon's gleaming barrel
thrust slightly forward. When Zuckuss had entered the
area, moving as stealthily as possible, he'd suddenly
heard a whisper of vented steam; the other's tracking
systems had registered his presence, swinging the laser
cannon in a horizontal arc toward him. Luckily, the
firing indicators on the cannon's housing had remained in
