Star Wars - The Bounty Hunter Wars - The Mandalorian Armor

by K. W. Jeter

  damaged swoop.

  What Dengar hadn't seen was the little creature that

  inched its way down the metal support pillar of the

  booth's table, then started a slow, laborious crawl

  across the cantina's floor. Still no bigger in diameter

  than Dengar's hand, it had been thin as paper when it had

  surreptitiously emerged from the cloak of the Q'nithian's

  feathers; by the time the mimbrane organism had finished

  listening to the conversation between the two larger

  creatures in the booth, it had swollen pillowlike, to the

  thickness of a humanoid finger joint.

  Its milkily translucent tissues shimmered with the

  acoustic energy stored within as the tiny, rudimentary

  legs around its edges helped it slither past the feet of

  the cantina's paying customers. A row of primitive

  sensory organs on its top surface gave the mimbrane just

  enough ability to distinguish between light and shadow;

  it navigated mainly by ingrained memory, taking the route

  it had been taught between the Q'nithian and the other

  creatures who were waiting for it.

  High above the mimbrane's creeping progress, one of

  the Tonnika sisters, her face all avaricious delicacy

  framed between intricate braids, laughed at the joke her

  identical-twin companion had just told her; the punch

  line had something to do with a crude comparison between

  Wookiee mating practices and the sour, pinched faces of

  the Imper ial Navy's top admirals. The gray trail rising

  from the smoking wand in Senni Tonnika's fine-boned hand

  drew a wavering line in the cantina's muggy air as she

  took a step backward, too quickly for the mimbrane to

  scurry away from the sharp point of her boot heel. It

  caught the mimbrane at one corner of its amorphous body,

  with just enough force to squeeze out the last thing it

  had absorbed while clinging to the underside of the

  booth's table.

  "Did you hear something?" Senni stopped laughing and

  looked around herself in puzzlement.

  "I hear a lot of things." Her sister, Brea, smiled

  and leaned closer, drawing deep the smoke the other had

  just exhaled. "All the time . . ."

  "No-" She frowned and looked down toward the floor,

  slick with spilled drinks and littered with the discarded

  wrappings of small, unmarked packages. "I mean from down

  there." She gave a shake of her head. "I very distinctly

  heard a little voice, and it said, I'll be checking to

  make sure that it gets there.' "

  "You're imagining things."

  The mimbrane had already crept away, hurrying as best

  it could toward its destination. When it reached the

  booth on the farthest side of the cantina, it didn't need

  to climb up to the table. A greasy, black-nailed hand

  reached down and picked it up.

  "Fat little thing, ain't it?" Vol Hamame had once

  been a member of Big Gizz's swoop gang. They had had a

  parting of the ways, and not an amicable one. Since then,

  Hamame had found other employment, equally criminal. But

  a little more profitable. In a lot of ways, life had

  improved since he had been able to get away from Spiker,

  Gizz's obnoxious second in command. "Looks like the

  Q'nithian seat it over here, all stuffed with

  information."

  "What else?" Hamame's partner was equally villainous-

  looking; the mucus-lined pleats of his nasopharynx

  fluttered wetly with each breath. "That's what these

  things are for." The mimbrane's tiny legs wriggled

  futilely as Phedroi flipped it onto its glistening back.

  "Let's see what it's got for us."

  Only one of the Q'nithian system's moons had its own

  atmosphere; it was there, on deeply creviced fault lines,

  grinding constantly against each other from the tidal

  pull of the moon's captor planet, that the thick clusters

  of the mimbrane creatures grew and multiplied like the

  shelf fungi found on arboreal worlds. They lived on

  acoustic energy, absorbing sound vibrations and

  incorporating them layer by layer into their own simple

  bodies. Millennia of seismic shifts and groans were

  recorded in the oldest mimbranes, buried beneath the

  weight of their overlapping offspring and grown into

  undulating masses big enough to wrap around an Imperial

  cruiser like a shining blanket.

  Small, fresh mimbranes had more practical uses. They

  were the perfect eavesdropping device, recording into

  their gelatinous fibers any sounds that struck the

  tympanic cells in which the creatures were sheathed.

  Being totally organic, they couldn't be detected by the

  usual antibugging sweep devices.

  Hamame's jag-edged fingertip pressed down on the

  bulging center of the mimbrane. The stored energy

  converted back into sound.

  "I heard you mention poor Santhananan's name." The

  Q'nithian's familiar squawk spoke the words. "He met a

  sad demise, I'm afraid."

  "That's right." Phedroi gave a smirking nod. "You had

  us murder him for you."

  "Shut up," said Hamame. "Let's hear the rest." He

  prodded the mimbrane again.

  "Yeah, I'm sure it was tragic." The mimbrane emitted

  Dengar's recorded voice. "What I want to know is, did

  anybody pick up on his business?"

  The two thugs listened to all of the deal that had

  gone down between Dengar and the Q'nithian. "Now, that's

  interesting." Hamame leaned back on his side of the

  booth. "That Q'nithian is a sneaky type, but he's earned

  his keep with this bit." On the table between him and

  Phedroi, the mimbrane was now perfectly flat, all the

  stored acoustic energy drained from its cells. "So Boba

  Fett's still alive."

  "That's one tough barve." Phedroi gave an admiring

  shake of his head, the coarse and dirty ringlets of his

  beard scraping across his tunic collar. "You just can't

  kill him. If falling down a Sarlacc won't do the trick,

  then what will?"

  Hamame reached inside his jacket and pulled out his

  blaster. He pointed the muzzle up toward the cantina's

  ceiling. "This will."

  19

  It had taken a long time for him to come into his

  own. To receive, to possess all that should have been his

  from the beginning. To be known as the toughest, hardest,

  most feared bounty hunter in the entire galaxy . . .

  Bossk leaned back in the pilot's chair of the Hound's

  Tooth, savoring the pleasures that came with success.

  Mingled with a simmering anger that never completely

  ebbed from the essence of a Trandoshan; he folded the

  claws of both hands across the scales of his chest and

  gazed slit-eyed at the stars visible through the

  viewport. Too long, he brooded; too long a time. If all

  the creatures on all those worlds had had any sense, they

  would have recognized him as the best. The absolute best.

  Instead-and this brought the fire inside him to a

  hotter pitch-he'd had to wait until Boba Fett was dead.

&nb
sp; And that had been much too long in coming.

  A thread of regret mingled with the other emotions.

  He would have liked to have killed Fett himself, torn out

  his competitor's throat with one roundhouse sweep of his

  claws. Or to have focused the crosshairs of a blaster

  rifle's sight upon that nar-row-visored helmet, then

  pressed the firing stud and seen Boba Fett's masked

  visage replaced by a quick explosion of blood and bone

  splinters ...

  Bossk slowly nodded. Now, that would have been a real

  pleasure. And one that he would have deserved to savor,

  just like the taste of Fett's blood leaking between his

  fangs, after having suffered so many humiliations at the

  hands of that sneaking, underhanded barve.

  Some of the anger was replaced with self-pity. There

  were so many things of which he had been cheated in this

  life. The leadership of the Bounty Hunters Guild-that

  should have been his as well. Now it could hardly be said

  that the Guild existed at all. Granted, a lot of personal

  satisfaction had come with killing old Cradossk, his

  father-that was the sort of thing that really defined the

  relationship between Trandoshan generations-but he hadn't

  gotten much material benefit out of the act. Instead of

  becoming the head of a galaxy-wide organization of

  predators, skimming a cut off the bounties collected on

  all the hard merchandise changing hands on any inhabited

  world, he'd wound up on his own, a scrabbling independent

  agent like all the other bounty hunters. That had all

  been Boba Fett's doing; the breakup of the Bounty Hunters

  Guild had been a long time ago, before Bossk had learned

  one of the most important lessons in this business-

  Don't trust your competition. Kill them.

  That's true wisdom, Bossk assured himself. For a lot

  of reasons. There had been other sources of anger, other

  humiliations he had suffered at Boba Fett's hands. They

  had just kept piling up, one after another. When Bossk

  had stood within striking distance of Fett, back when

  Darth Vader had been giving the job to all the best

  bounty hunters in the galaxy, to track down and find Han

  Solo's Millennium Falcon, it had taken all of his self-

  control not to leap over and rip out Fett's throat. And

  then that last infuriating maneuver, when Fett had

  outsmarted both him and his partner, Zuckuss, delivering

  the carbonite-encased form of Han Solo to Jabba's palace

  right beneath Bossk's outstretched claws-that had driven

  him almost insane with rage.

  So when the word had reached him that Boba Fett was

  dead, dissolved in the digestive secretions of the

  Sarlacc beast, a combination of elation and frustration

  had welled up inside him. If the universe was going to be

  so obliging as to just give him that which he'd most

  fervently longed for, he'd just have to accept that as

  philosophically as he could. The fact that he was now

  forever frustrated in taking care of the job himself, of

  reaping the intense pleasure of personally separating

  Boba Fett from the realm of the living-that just showed

  that the universe wasn't really fair and just, after all.

  But Bossk had set the Hound's Tooth at maximum speed for

  the too-familiar planet of Tatooine, just to bask in the

  atmosphere that had been the last to fill his enemy's

  lungs.

  He didn't get that far, though; Tatooine hung like a

  dusky smudge in the aft viewport screen. Before he'd had

  time to set landing coordinates for the Mos Eisley

  spaceport, Bossk had found something just as familiar-and

  even more intriguing-in auto-nomic orbit outside

  Tatooine's atmosphere. When he'd first spotted the Slave

  I in the cockpit's forward viewport, and recognized it as

  Boba Fett's ship, his hands had immediately darted to the

  targeting and firing controls of the Hound's blaster

  cannons. The only thing that had kept him from blowing

  Slave I into atoms floating in empty space was the

  realization that the other ship hadn't trained any of its

  weapons onto his own. That, and remembering Boba Fett was

  already dead. A simple hailing call had returned the

  information that Slave I was empty, but still under the

  protection of its internal guard circuitry.

  This is too good, Bossk had decided. It was one thing

  to inherit-by default-the mantle of top bounty hunter in

  the galaxy. But to also stumble upon the late Boba Fett's

  personal ship, the repository of all his weaponry and

  databases, all the painstakingly acquired secrets and

  strategies that had put him at the top of this dangerous

  trade-Bossk couldn't resist an opportunity like that.

  He was smart enough to avoid trying to crack Slave

  I's security measures himself. Other creatures had gotten

  killed trying to do just that. Boba Fett had wired the

  ship with enough traps and self-aiming firepower to wipe

  out a small army, if it had attempted to enter without

  the appropriate password authorization. But with Fett

  being dead, there was no time pressure about getting past

  the ship's circuits; Bossk had the credits and the

  leisure that allowed for calling in professional

  assistance.

  That was one advantage to being this close to

  Tatooine; services of that kind were exactly the sort

  available in Mos Eisley. If one could afford to pay the

  price.

  A harsh electronic buzz sounded from the Hound's comm

  unit. A message had been received; undoubtedly, the one

  for which Bossk had been waiting. He pulled himself

  closer to the cockpit's control panel and saw something

  that puzzled him for a moment.

  There were two messages waiting for him.

  The first was from Slave I, just as he had expected.

  The other had arrived almost simultaneously a messenger

  pod, sent straight from the surface of Tatooine; the

  small, self-propelled device was now sitting in the

  receptor bay of the Hound's Tooth. Bossk prodded a few

  more buttons with his foreclaw and got a readout from it.

  The coded message unit was from a Q'nithian message

  expediter down in Mos Eisley with whom Bossk had a long-

  standing working arrangement. A business relationship

  the Q'nithian had a general knowledge of the kinds of

  things that Bossk was interested in. Any message that the

  Q'nithian was hired to send across the galaxy, that fit

  those criteria, would get routed first to Bossk before

  continuing on the rest of its journey.

  Bossk read the destination info off the unit. It was

  headed to the distant engineering center of Kuat, to the

  head of Kuat Drive Yards, Kuat of Kuat. Bossk nodded to

  himself as he read the address data. The Q'nithian had

  been correct in figuring that he would want to see this.

  Anything, thought Bossk, that's being sent to someone as

  rich and powerful as Kuat is something that I'm

  interested in. A successful bounty hunter always had tor />
  have his info sources open wideband so he could filter

  through all the galaxy's secrets and rumors for the bits

  that might turn out profitable.

  He had already decided, though, to read the encoded

  message unit later-after he had taken care of the other

  business, for which he had been waiting so long. The tip

  of his claw hit the next button on the cockpit's comm

  controls.

  "I'm all finished over here." The recorded voice, dry

  and emotionless, was that of the lead technician for

  D/Crypt Information Services, one of the many

  semilegitimate businesses that abounded in Mos Eisley.

  "The security codes have been sieved out, and you now

  have full access to the ship designated as Slave I. After

  you pay me, of course."

  That detail was already taken care of. Bossk

  transmitted an account transfer order to Mos Eisley's

  black-market escrow exchange, then fired up the primary

  navigation engines. In the time it would take for him to

  maneuver the Hound's Tooth over to the other ship, the

  D/Crypt tech would already have received the payment

  confirmation.

  "Good thing you didn't keep me waiting." The D/Crypt

  technician was a wizened little humanoid, the top of his

  bald head barely coming up to Bossk's chest. "I don't

  like to be kept waiting. If you had kept me waiting, I

  would have charged you triple overtime."

  "Don't sweat it." Bossk let the transfer connection,

  between his own Hound and the Slave I, seal shut behind

  him. "I would've paid." He glanced around the bleakly

  functional confines of Slave I's cargo hold; the bars of

  the merchandise cages were uncomfortably familiar to him

  from the last time he had been aboard the ship. The

  hinges of the main cage's door had been repaired, but

  still showed signs of the laser bolt that D'harhan had

  unleashed upon them. That had been a long time ago, when

  Boba Fett had still been alive and busily engaged upon

  breaking up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. "Everything's

  clear?"

  "As far as I can determine, it is." With his high-

  power trifocals slid up onto his pink, unsunned brow, the

  D/Crypt tech busily packed up his equipment cases.

  "What's that mean?"

  The tech blinked myopically at Bossk. "Nothing's

  perfect. Not in this galaxy, at least." He gave a shrug

  with his thin shoulders. "Ninety-nine percent, though; I