by K. W. Jeter
"Don't ask me." Zuckuss glanced over at Bossk and gave a shrug, lifting his gloved hands to indicate his complete bafflement. "I haven't got a clue about what's going on." Things had seemed a lot simpler back at the Bounty Hunters Guild when he'd agreed to become part of Cradossk's plans-not that those were anything he felt like telling to Bossk. They'd only gotten more complicated since then. And dangerous; the confidence he'd felt at one time, that he'd survive all this just by sticking close to Boba Fett, had been seriously eroded. Fett packing his personal arsenal of blasters and rocket launchers was one thing; a disarmed Fett leading all of the team right into the center of Fett's grudge-bearing enemies was another. Maybe Bossk is right, mused Zuckuss. Maybe Fett is going to get us all killed. Another thought struck him Maybe that had been Cradossk's plan all along. The old Trandoshan hadn't been out just to get his own son eliminated, but a couple more of the Guild's young upstarts as well. Zuckuss could see why Cradossk and some of the other Guild elders would want to get rid of the coldly efficient droid IG-88, but he would have been surprised to find that anyone thought that he himself was at that level. And even if that were Cradossk's plan, where would Boba Fett hook up with it? Was Fett just leading Bossk and the other bounty hunters into a prearranged trap-which would mean that somehow Cradossk had gotten the Shell Hutts in on the scheme; how likely was that?-or had the galaxy's smartest and toughest bounty hunter somehow been fooled as well, and Fett was about to get eliminated along with the rest of the team? Or ...
The brain behind the insectoid eyes started to throb painfully as more and more possibilities swirled within. If he did get killed here on Circum-tore, Zuckuss hoped it wouldn't be before he had at least figured out part of what was going on. He was beginning to doubt the wisdom of having even wanted to become a bounty hunter.
"I suppose," growled Bossk, "we'll find out. One way or another."
"Maybe." The others of the team were waiting beside the ground shuttle; Zuckuss nodded toward them. "We better get going." He conquered his reluctance enough to start walking.
Even before the shuttle lifted on its repulsor beams and slid toward the Shell Hutts' spired buildings, Zuckuss had a revelation. He could see his face mask, air tubes dangling, reflected in the dark metal of D'harhan's silent, impotent laser cannon. It doesn't matter, realized Zuckuss suddenly. Whether we have weapons or not. Whatever was going to happen-which of them would die and which of them would live-would happen whether they were ready for it or not.
There was one of them who might be ready. Zuckuss looked toward Boba Fett, sitting in the front of the shuttle. If anybody was going to survive, it would be him.
That thought, even with all its embodied certainty, didn't make Zuckuss feel any better.
Gheeta came floating up, his welcoming smile nearly wide enough to split his wattled face in two. "At last!" The crablike mechanical hands beneath the rivet-studded cylinder spread expansively. "Now you will have a chance to truly partake of our hospitality."
"We're not here to enjoy ourselves." At the head of the team of bounty hunters, Boba Fett stopped and gazed around the grand reception hall of the Shell Hutts. "This is strictly business for us. I would appreciate it if we could get straight to it."
"All in good time, my dear Fett." The tapering end of the cylinder pointed toward the farther reaches of the hall, its high-vaulted roof interlaced with golden traceries and ornamental center bosses. "You are too dismissive of both pleasure and the past-the pleasures of the flesh, that we can enjoy now, and the memories of that past we share."
IG-88 and the shorter figure of Zuckuss came up on either side of Fett, the droid scanning the space with methodical thoroughness, the other bounty hunter glancing around with nervous apprehension. With a slower and more ponderous tread, D'harhan loomed up behind.
"The past is over," said Boba Fett. The Shell Hutt's wobbling face, protruding from the collar of the repulsorborne cylinder, evoked a cold revulsion inside him. "If not for you, then it is for me."
"I wonder about that." Gheeta raised one of the cylinder's mechanical hands, using the point of its claw to scratch a deep fold in his chin. "How much do creatures ever forget? I hope you'll excuse me for waxing philosophical-I know how impatient you become-but sometimes I feel that nothing is forgotten. Everything remains buried, deeply or just beneath the surface, just waiting for its certain resurrection, to be brought out into the light once more."
Boba Fett could decipher the meaning behind the Shell Hutt's words. What he's saying, thought Fett, is that he hasn't forgotten. The reminder about the past and what it contained, back aboard the Slave I, hadn't been enough to indicate how fiercely that humiliation burned in Gheeta's memory. If one looked past all his cloying and ingratiating manners, the show of welcome here on Circumtore, the desire for vengeance could be plainly seen.
And counted on. He's got his plans, thought Boba Fett, and I've got mine.
For a split second, as Fett gazed back into Gheeta's broad, half-lidded eyes, he wondered if there was another meaning to what the Shell Hutt had spoken. Resurrection ... brought out into the light ...
When one played a dangerous game, there was always the possibility that the opponent was one move ahead. Fett knew that in this game, that would mean death. If he found out, mused Fett as he searched Gheeta's massive face for any clue. If he's figured out everything that happened here, in the past. Then the game was already over; there would be no more moves to play, just the sweeping of the broken pieces from the board. Those pieces would include himself and the other bounty hunters that he had brought here with him. And maybe one more...
Whatever happens, decided Boba Pert as he gazed unflinching into the dark centers of Gheeta's eyes. Whatever happens-he's going with me.
"But enough of all that." The floating cylinder that encased Gheeta rotated slightly, so that one of the mechanical hands could gesture toward the center of the reception hall. "As you have so forcefully reminded me, this is-alas!-more a business occasion than a social one. Let us proceed; there are others here who are more than eager to meet with you and your companions."
"After you," said Boba Fett. "They're your species, not mine."
Years ago he had picked up some profitable mer chandise on a backwater world where the dominant form of long-distance transportation had been lighter-than-air freighters-slow and immense, tapered ovoid dirigibles, filled with helium and other buoyant gases. The planet's skies had been filled with the craft, like elongated silvery moons, their crew gondolas and cargo containers slung underneath their curved and shaded bellies. That was what Cir-cumtore's great reception hall reminded Fett of; there were a dozen Shell Hutts besides Gheeta, the riveted cylinders floating on their repulsor beams, turning and bumping into each other with graceless sloth. At the front end of each cylinder protruded another bejowled Huttese face, like a wad of some unpleasant organic substance that had been inserted in the circular metal collar. Some of the Shell Hutt faces appeared younger than Gheeta, their large eyes glittering with avarice, slit nostrils flared by the trace scents on which their constant appetites fastened. The younger ones' encasing cylinders were smaller as well; Boba Fett knew how the Shell Hutts enjoyed throwing lavish parties for themselves, upon the occasion of one's expanding bulk being transferred to a new and larger cylinder.
With their artificial exoskeletons, the cylinders raised by repulsor beams, the size to which Shell Hutts could aspire was no longer restricted by gravity-only by how much they could grab of the galaxy's wealth and stuff into their lipless mouths. Gheeta was only in the middle range when it came to sheer mass; Boba Fett recognized a few of the other Shell Hutts in the great reception hall, elders of the clan that were to Gheeta as an Imperial battle cruiser was to a TIE fighter craft. Those faces protruding from their cylinder's metal collars were so heavily wattled from brow to throat that hooks had been surgically implanted in the blubbery tissue, the sharp metal bits connected to a web of thin, high-tension strands fastened to the top edge of the cylinder
. If not for that support, the old Shell Hutts' eyes and nostrils would have been buried beneath avalanches of their own slack flesh.
As Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters approached, the largest of the repulsor-borne cylinders turned majestically, like an interstellar luxury ship being maneuvered into an off-planet berth. A low voice rumbled from the gargantuan Hutt bound by the riveted durasteel plates "I grow weary, Gheeta." The larger Shell Hutt fastened the irritable gaze of its yellowed eyes upon its clan member. "You keep us waiting…and for what? Some of us may still be amused, but I assure you that I am not."
Gheeta bobbed forward, the little crablike hands rising from underneath his cylinder and making fluttery gestures of mollification. "Patience will yet be rewarded, Your Magnitude. Our-ahem-guests have arrived at last. The show will begin in a moment."
" 'Show'?" Bossk scowled. "What show are you talking about? We came here on business."
"Of course, of course-just as your leader Boba Fett keeps reminding me." Gheeta turned his wide, wet-edged smile toward the Trandoshan. "Your patience will be rewarded as well, I assure you. But you've traveled so far-all of you have." The mechanical hands' gesture took in all of the bounty hunters. "And through some of the emptiest and least rewarding stretches of the galaxy. I'd hate for you to go away from here, after our business is concluded, and tell the sentient creatures of all the worlds that the Shell Hutts put out a mean and scanty table for their visitors. We have a reputation for hospitality to maintain, don't we? What would our fellow Hutts, our cousin Jabba for instance, say if he heard that we had not provided for others' famished appetites?"
"We're not hungry," said Boba Fett. "Not for anything that you're likely to serve."
"Ah-I think otherwise, my dear Fett. This meal is one that I've been preparing for a long time; a very long time. Since the last time you were here on Circumtore, and things went less than graciously... for some of us."
"More complaints." The immense Shell Hutt-his name, Fett remembered, was Nullada-rolled his yellow eyes beneath his brow's folded and sagging pouches. "Nothing but complaints," he rumbled ole-aginously. "You've been obsessed for too long a time, Gheeta. Perhaps you should be relieved of even those duties that you've retained this far so that you could take a long rest to clear your mind."
A flash of anger showed in Gheeta's face, like a lightning stroke in storm-heavy clouds. The crablike mechanical hands locked their claws together, as though preventing themselves from slashing a set of parallel bloodied furrows down the older and larger Shell Hutt's face.
"I've had time enough." Gheeta's voice was a snarling whine. "But let's not waste any more of it. Come along, then." Even with just his own jowl-wrapped face protruding from the collar of his floating cylinder, the effort required to regain control was visible. The cylinder turned slightly, angling toward the center of the great reception hall, where more of the Shell Hutts' encased forms jostled around a rectangular dais, surrounded on all sides by low, concentric steps.
"Everything has been placed in readiness for you." The claws unclasped, allowing one of them to make a sweeping gesture toward the dais. "Shall we?" Boba Fett didn't feel like making any further conversation with their host. He led the way toward the dais, letting the other members of the bounty-hunter team fall in behind. There were enough reflective surfaces scattered throughout the space, beams of polished durasteel supporting the domed roof above, that he could see Bossk and the droid IG-88 following his quick stride, with the Trandoshan glaring with suspicion and enmity at every one of the bobbing and floating Shell Hutts. Behind that pair, the massive shape of D'harhan trod heavily, the inert laser cannon still impressive in its glistening darkness, like an emblem of latent destruction wrapped in trails of hissing steam.
At Fett's elbow, Zuckuss trotted to keep up with him.
"I don't like the looks of this," panted the shorter bounty hunter. "I don't like the looks of this one bit-" He knew just what Zuckuss was talking about. Around the sides of the great reception hall, from alcoves and corridors branching off the central space, other figures had appeared, ones that weren't Shell Hutts.
"Mercenaries," said Boba Fett quietly. In black, insignialess uniforms, armed and watching; if he'd wanted to, he could very likely have identified more than a few of them from past encounters. There was always a loose assemblage of thugs and venal murderers, varying in number and quality, depending mainly upon who had been killed recently and to a lesser degree upon who was rotting away in the galaxy's various penal institutions, shifting back and forth among the less civilized worlds, finding employment as enforcers and private hit men. The Shell Hutts' distant species relation, the notorious Jabba on backwater Tatooine, usually paid the highest wages and got the pick of the lot, the quickest with their chosen weapons and the least encumbered by scruples about what kind of jobs they took care of for their employer. "What else," Fett asked Zuckuss, "did you expect?"
"This many?" Still at Boba Fett's side, Zuckuss quickly scanned the perimeter of the great reception hall. "There must be a couple dozen of them. At least." He took another count, looking past the raised dais in the middle of the space. "Maybe fifty of 'em-"
"Gheeta told us that he'd been preparing for this for a long time." Without turning his visored helmet, Boba Fett had taken his own estimate of the forces arrayed along the hall's perimeter. "He's obviously called in a lot of favors." This much firepower didn't come cheap; most of the mercenaries cradled late-model blaster rifles against their chests; Gheeta must have provided the weapons, as they were obviously more expensive than the usual cheap and nasty-if lethally efficient-gear with which mercenaries usually kitted themselves. These types disgusted Fett; they took no real pride in their equipment, the tools of their trade; if they did, they wouldn't spend s o much of their ill-gotten pay on their own bad habits. "He couldn't pay for all this himself," continued Boba Fett aloud. "Gheeta must've gone into major hock with his other clan members."
"But what for?" Zuckuss's curved eyes reflected the ominous black-clad figures. "We're unarmed-"
"I know how Gheeta's mind works. Let's just say he's not given to taking chances. Or at least," said Fett, "not after the last time I did business with him." Bossk had overhead the comment. "I'm ready to do business with him," the Trandoshan growled from behind Boba Fett. "Right now." His clawed hand hung close to the empty blaster holster at his side. Even without a weapon, Bossk looked ready to take on whatever army the Shell Hutts had assembled, as though he could pull each of the mercenaries apart, limb from limb, with nothing but his own brute strength. "Let's get it over with."
"It seems apparent," commented IG-88, "that your desire in that regard is about to be fulfilled." Pushed along by his riveted casing's repulsor beams, the Shell Hutt Gheeta had floated ahead of the bounty hunters. As they reached the bottom of the steps surrounding the dais, Gheeta had already risen to the top section, where the cylinder bobbed beside a rectangular construction a little over two meters long and a quarter of that dimension in width; its surface was draped with a heavy cloth embroidered with golden thread, the corner tassels loosely knotted and flowing down the steps. On top of the cloth were towering arrangements of exotic, off-planet florals, their brilliant petals thick and heavy as flayed Tatooinian dewback hide; from their stickily wet confluence exuded cloying, opiatelike perfumes. Even through his helmet's filtration units, Boba Pert could taste the acrid molecules collecting on his tongue; they had no effect on the clarity of his own thoughts, but he saw how some of the Shell Hutts gathered closer to the dais, the pupils of their eyes narrowing as their slit nostrils widened, deeply inhaling the laden air. Their lipless mouths curved into all-encompassing pleasure.
Behind him, Boba Fett heard Bossk snort in disgust. He knew that the Trandoshan nervous system lacked any receptor sites for the flowers' narcotic fragrance; any scent less subtle than rotting meat was wasted on him.
"Lovely." Bossk sneered. "Looks like you've got the place ready for a funeral."
"How perc
eptive of you!" Gheeta had perhaps inhaled too deeply, though the scent appeared to have a stimulant rather than a soporific effect on him. "Exactly so!" The floating cylinder spun about, bringing the Shell Hutt's face, luminous with toxic sweat, toward the bounty hunters. Ramping up the strength of the repulsor beams, Gheeta floated above the rank-smelling blossoms, the thick petals quivering with the unseen force. "How often, though, that we fail to understand-" The crablike mechanical hands reached down and scooped through the floral mass, gathering the bright colors and pulpy tissues to the underside of the cylinder. For a moment the crushed blossoms obscured the lower half of Gheeta's face; then his ecstatic expression was revealed again as the gleaming metal appendages flung themselves wide, scattering the flowers across the steps of the dais. "We fail to appreciate what a joyous occasion a funeral can be!"
The overripe stench of the flowers filled the inside of Boba Fett's helmet as the petals, bruised and crushed by Gheeta's mechanical arms, fell across the toes of his boots. He looked down at them for a moment, then kicked the flowers away; the heaviest of them left wet, bleeding trails across the inlaid floor of the great reception hall.
"I don't have much of a feeling for funerals," said Fett evenly. He looked up across the dais steps toward Gheeta. "One way or the other."
"Oh, but you should! You will!" Gheeta's manner became even more frenetic and excited. The cylinder vibrated as it hovered in place, as though the fever of the creature inside had somehow been transmitted to the enclosing metal. Some of the other Shell Hutts edged away from the central dais, as though fearful of an explosion; Gheeta's agitation had even pierced the stupor of those who had fallen furthest beneath the blooms' heavy fragrance. "I guarantee it!"