by K. W. Jeter
"Like who?"
Cradossk didn't answer him for a moment. The old
Trandoshan's gaze drifted again to some inner point of
contemplation. "You know," he said finally, "as
inevitable as I suppose this all is, it had to be brought
to this crisis by one individual. If it hadn't been for
him-the Bounty Hunters Guild might have continued as it
was for quite a while, Emperor or no Emperor."
Zuckuss knew the individual to whom he referred. "You
mean Boba Fett?"
"Who else?" Cradossk gave a slow nod, as though in
admiration of that absent other. "It's all because of
him. Everything that has happened, and that is going to
happen; all the changes, and all the deaths. Well . . .
most of them, at any rate. He is the unaccountable factor
that has been entered into the equation. It makes you
wonder . . . what were his real reasons for journeying
here."
"But he told us," said Zuckuss. "When he first
arrived. Because of all the changes, with the Empire and
everything else-"
"And you believed him?" Cradossk shook his head.
"Time for another lesson, child. There is no one you can
trust-least of all someone who trades in the deaths and
defeats of others. You can trust Boba Fett now, if you
wish, but I promise you The day will come when you'll
regret it."
A chill ran through Zuckuss's spirit, or whatever was
left of it after having become a bounty hunter. Part of
him knew that the old Trandoshan had spoken truly;
another part hoped that the day he had foretold was still
a long way off.
"Well ... I better be going." Zuckuss gestured toward
the door of the private quarters. "There's still a lot I
have to take care of." He was pretty sure that the
Twi'lek majordomo would have had enough time by now to
contact everyone that needed to be. "You know . . . since
coming back from the job . . ."
"Of course." Cradossk bent down and picked up the
pieces of the shattered rib bone. "I've got to learn to
control my temper." Clutching the white splinters in one
clawed hand, he smiled at Zuckuss. "Or do you think it's
just too late for that?"
Zuckuss had stepped back toward the door. "To be
truthful ..." He reached behind himself and grasped the
door's edge. "It's too late."
"I suppose you're right." Cradossk looked suddenly
older, as though weighed down with the burdens of
leadership. Carrying the broken trophy from his younger
days, he shuffled toward the entrance of the bone
chamber, the repository of all his precious memories.
"It's always too late. . . ."
The door to the private quarters creaked as Zuckuss
pulled it farther open, but he didn't step out to the
corridor beyond. He stayed where he was so he could watch
what he knew was about to happen.
Which took place within seconds Cradossk found his
way blocked by his offspring Bossk. The younger
Traridoshan stood with his arms folded across his chest;
a wide smile split his face as he gazed down into his
father's startled eyes.
"But . . ." Cradossk gaped at his son. "You . . .
you're supposed to be dead. ..."
"I know that was the plan," said Bossk, with feigned
mildness. "But I made some changes to it."
Cradossk whirled about, looking back toward the
private-quarters door and Zuckuss. "You lied!"
"Not entirely." Zuckuss gave a small shrug. "Just the
bit about him not getting up again after he was shot."
With a single foreclaw, Bossk pointed to the sterile
bandage running diagonally across his chest, from one
shoulder and under the opposite arm. "It really hurt," he
said, still smiling. "But it didn't kill me. You should
know how hard our species is to get rid of. And
also-whatever doesn't destroy one of us just makes us
that much more pissed off."
A look of panic appeared in Cradossk's yellowed eyes;
he took a step backward from the figure looming in front
of him. "Now wait a minute. . . ." The bone shards fell
on the floor as he raised his scaly hands, palms outward.
"I think you might be making some . . . rash assumptions
here. . . ."
One of Bossk's hands shot out, grabbing his father by
the throat. "No, I'm not." The smile was gone from his
face. On the other side of the private quarters, Zuckuss
could see the red anger tingeing the younger Trandoshan's
eyes. "I'm making the same assumption I made a long time
ago, before I ever left for Circumtore. And you know what
that is? It's that there isn't room in the Bounty Hunters
Guild for both you and me."
"I ... I don't know what you're talking about. . . ."
Cradossk grabbed the other's wrist, in a futile attempt
to ease his hold and get another breath into his own
lungs. "The Guild... the Guild is for all of us. ..."
"I'm talking about the same thing you were talking
about, just now." With his other hand, Bossk pointed a
clawed thumb back toward the unlit depths of the bone
chamber behind him. "I was in there the whole time the
two of you have been blabbing away. And I heard
everything you said. All that stuff about clearing out
the undesirables from the Bounty Hunters Guild. And you
know what?" Bossk tightened his hold, his fist at
Cradossk's throat lifting the older Trandoshan up onto
the claws of his toes. "I agree with you about all that.
You're absolutely right The Guild is going to be a lot
smaller. Real soon.'"
"Don't... don't be an idiot...." Cradossk managed to
summon up a reserve of courage. "You can't kill me ...
and get away with it...." His claws dug deeper into
Bossk's wrist, enough to let a trickle of blood seep down
his son's forearm. "I've got . . . connections . . .
friends. . . ." His voice became weaker and more
fragmented as the hold at this throat constricted
tighter. "All the . . . council of elders..."
"Those old fools?" Bossk sneered at his father. "I'm
afraid you're a little behind the times; there have been
things happening already that you just don't know about.
Maybe if you didn't waste so many hours in here, mumbling
and fondling your moldy reminders of past glories, these
things wouldn't have sneaked up on you quite so fast."
Still holding Cradossk upright, he turned and slammed the
older reptilian against the table outside the bone
chamber's entrance; the impact against his spine visibly
dazed Cradossk. "Some of your old friends, your beloved
elders, have already seen the light; they've come over to
my side. In fact, some of them have been on my side for
quite a while, just waiting for the right moment to-shall
we say?-force your retirement. One way or another." The
elaborate wording, so much different from Bossk's usual
blunt speech, was a cruel way of toying with his father.
"Of course, some of the elders weren'
t so smart; they per
sisted in their folly. Right up to the end."
"What . . ." Cradossk could barely squeeze any words
out at all. "What do you mean . . . ?"
"Oh, come on. What do you think I mean?" Bossk looked
disgusted. "Let's just say there are going to be some
fresh acquisitions in my little trophy chamber. The
skulls of some of your old friends will look very nice
mounted on its walls-"
"Watch out!" Zuckuss shouted a warning to Bossk.
As Cradossk had fallen back against the table one of
his hands had reached back and grasped an ornate
ceremonial dagger; the gems embedded in its hilt flashed
as he swung his arm around, the point of the blade aiming
straight for Bossk's throat.
There was no way for Bossk to avoid the blade; if he
had leaned back, the movement would only have presented a
wider target for the blade to slash across. Instead, he
lowered his head, catching the razor-sharp edge with the
corner of his brow. The impact of flesh and bone against
metal was enough to knock the weapon out of his father's
hand and send it spinning off into a far corner of the
room.
Ta king a hand from his father's throat, Bossk wiped
away the blood seeping down through his face scales and
into his eyes. "Now that," he said with eerie self-
possession, "didn't hurt at all." With a shake of his
head, he sent blood spattering across Cradossk's face, as
though sealing the bright ideogram of a death sentence
there. "But I promise you- this will."
From the doorway, Zuckuss could hear shouts and
blaster fire coming from somewhere else in the Guild
compound. That didn't surprise him; it had been pretty
much what he'd been expecting since the Twi'lek majordomo
had gone off to notify the others in the breakaway
faction.
He turned back toward Cradossk's private quarters and
watched the rest of what happened in there. For as long
as he could. Then he stepped out into the corridor,
shaking his head.
Bossk was certainly right about one thing, he had to
admit. It did take a lot to kill a Trandoshan.
The sound of the breakaway faction's weapons was
heard even farther away.
Not literally; the news was reported secondhand to
Kud'ar Mub'at. "Ah," the assembler purred, "that is most
excellent!" Identifier had relayed all the details to him
as they had come in from the listener nodes embedded in
the web's fibrous exterior. "Isn't it pleasant," Kud'ar
Mub'at asked rhetorically, "when things go fust the way
they're supposed to?" It wrapped several sets of its
thin, chitinous legs around itself in a hug of self-
satisfaction. "All my planning and scheming, and
everything just so. Excellent! Exceedingly excellent!"
The assembler's multiple eyes looked around the close
space of its throne room, watching how its own pleasure
and excitement spread in concentric waves through all the
nodes connected to the strands of his nervous system.
Even the most developed and relatively independent of
them, like Balancesheet, was visibly aglow, with its
little claws and arachnoid legs skittering around the
tangled walls as though it were the complete embodiment
of the assembler's good mood.
Perhaps even a little too excited; ostentatiously so,
it seemed to Kud'ar Mub'at. Sometimes he detected a
certain false note to Balancesheet's displays of
enthusiasm. For a simple number-crunching node, Kud'ar
Mub'at found himself thinking, that's a bit much. He made
a mental note, one that was carefully shielded from the
synaptic connections that would have let the subassembler
nodes in on it, to reabsorb this balancesheet and begin
growing a new one. Just as soon as this business with
Boba Fett and the Bounty Hunters Guild was finished . . .
It didn't seem like that would be much longer, from
what the identifier node had just told Kud'ar Mub'at.
Ignoring the jabbering of the nodes surrounding itself,
the assembler adjusted its soft, globular abdomen into a
more comfortable position in the self-generated nest;
when it was done making adjustments, it contemplated the
news with a calmer, more tranquil attitude. No sense
getting agitated, it admonished itself, over something I
knew was going to happen. Empires might rise and
fall-they had before-and the galaxy might even collapse
upon itself in one dark ball of relentless gravity. But
until then, Kud'ar Mub'at, or some creature very much
like it, would still be trading in the folly of other
sentient creatures. That was its nature, just as it was
the nature of those less wise to find themselves enmeshed
in the traps spun for them. . . .
"Sometimes," mused Kud'ar Mub'at aloud, "they don't
even know until it's too late. And sometimes they never
know."
"Know what?" Balancesheet, a little calmer after its
initial burst of enthusiasm, dangled itself close to the
spiky mandibles of its parent's face. "What do you mean?"
That kind of curiosity on a subassembler's part
indicated the degree of independence that Kud'ar Mub'at
had let develop in the node. There hadn't even been a
mention of numbers, and still this tethered offspring
wanted to know. A sharp paternal feeling twinged inside
Kud'ar Mub'at; it would be a shame, however necessary, to
pluck the node's legs one by one and crack its shell to
extract the recyclable proteins and cellular matter
inside.
Kud'ar Mub'at reached out one thin black leg and
stroked the ridges of Balancesheet's small head.
"Creatures are dying," said Kud'ar Mub'at, "even as we
speak." That had been the gist of the message transmitted
through the web by the listener and identifier team of
nodes. With the transport engines that had been salvaged
decades ago and incorporated into the web's external
structure, Kud'ar Mub'at had slowly brought its drifting
home-and-body within communication range of the Bounty
Hunters Guild. It had wanted to be close to where the
action was happening, the pulling shut of the snare he
had woven, with no delay in getting word sent out by an
encrypted tight-beam signal from his contacts in the
Guild compound. "Of course," it said, "there will be
other deaths after these; that's all part of the plan."
One snare led to another, a universe of entangling
strands, as though the contents of Kud'ar Mub'at's web
had been turned inside out and transmogrified into
something big enough to loop whole planets into its
grasp. It spoke matter-of-factly, without sympathy or
remorse. "Even the ones who think they're on my side, who
believe they are still free-they'll find out the truth
soon enough. No one escapes forever."
Balancesheet folded a couple of its own legs across
its smaller abdomen. "Not even Boba Fett?"
&n
bsp; That question surprised Kud'ar Mub'at. Not that the
answer wasn't known to it, but that the question had come
from a source such as one of his subassembler nodes. Even
from a developed one such as Balancesheet; that indicated
a level of strategic thinking that Kud'ar Mub'at hadn't
expected.
"Not even Boba Fett," answered Kud'ar Mub'at slowly.
It kept a set of eyes on the accountant node, dangling
from the intricately woven ceiling of the throne space.
It watched for any expression in the narrow-angled face,
so much like a miniature version of its own. "How could
he? Escape, that is. For him to do so, he would have to
be wiser than I am." Kud'ar Mub'at peered closer at
Balancesheet. "Do you really believe that such a thing is
possible?"
The eyes studding Balancesheet's face were like sets
of black pearls, darkly shining but revealing no depths
beyond their surfaces. "Of course not," said the
subassembler. A chorus of other nodes, bobbing or
scurrying around the space like the embodiments of Kud'ar
Mub'at's own thoughts, echoed the sentiment. "No one is
even as wise as you are. Not even Emperor Palpatine."
"True," said Kud'ar Mub'at. Though the assembler had
to admit that Palpatine operated on a grander scale. But
that's just megalomania, brooded Kud'ar Mub'at. For
Palpatine to think that he could control the entire
galaxy, to lay his cold hand upon the neck of every
sentient creature on all the worlds . . . even those who
didn't have necks, properly speaking . . . that was
madness, sheer madness. And worse, in Kud'ar Mub'at's
estimation it was folly. To become absorbed in the big
picture, the sweep of history on a cosmic scale, and
overlook the little details, was to risk the complete and
utter ruination of one's plans. There were things going
on underneath Emperor Palpatine's nose that he knew
nothing of; not just the hidden errands of the Rebellion
and its sympathizers, but connections between beings that
were yet so faint that even it, the wise Kud'ar Mub'at,
couldn't trace them out. Bits and pieces of rumors,
stories of long-vanquished Jedi Knights, and its own
wordless guesses were all that Kud'ar Mub'at had to go
on. Something to do with the planet Tatooine, and a few
humans who lived thereon, innocent and unaware of exactly
how important they were. Or did they know? Perhaps one of
them had a notion of these secrets, perhaps that old man
