by Timothy Zahn
His heart dwindled within himself, from that moment of recognition in the Shell Hutt's eyes. There had been others who had lived and fought, their struggles guided by a different code; there had been a time when even he had listened to tales of the Jedi Knights defending the old Republic. But those are fust stories now, Zuckuss told himself. Those days, and the brave creatures that had lived in them, were never coming back. And without them, the Rebels fighting against the Empire were poor, pathetic fools, doomed to failure. Their bones would be picked clean and discarded on the battlefields of worlds without names. The hungry ones, with their greed and lust for dominion, would always win... .
Bleak, wordless meditation ended as the Shell Hutt's knowing, judging smile moved away from him. Pull yourself together, Zuckuss told himself. He had made his pact with the universe he'd found himself in; he was a bounty hunter now, and had been so long enough to be traveling in league with some of the toughest ones in the galaxy.
If he showed any signs of weakness at this point, he knew, he wouldn't have to worry about Emperor Palpatine or any of the Shell Hutts; his own colleagues would tear him apart. A carnivore like Bossk would very likely con sume him, in the exact and literal sense of the word.
That thought made Zuckuss feel at least a little better about having become part of old Cradossk's intricate scheming. Better you than me, he thought, glancing over at Bossk.
"Don't worry about us." That was Bossk's voice, giving a snarling reply to Gheeta. "We can take care of ourselves."
"I'm sure you can." The Shell Hutt didn't stop smiling. "After all ... you're learning from the master, aren't you? Boba Fett has always done very well for himself."
"I would be doing even better," said Fett, "if we could limit our discussion to that which we came here for. Specifically, that merchandise known as Oph Nar Dinnid."
"But that merchandise isn't on the table right now, is it?" Gheeta's large eyes emitted a spark of anger.
"And it's not going to be. Not out here, at least. You want to discuss the fate of our guest, you will indeed have to come down to Circumtore to do it-just as you wish. I'm only here to explain how things are in that regard. I'm giving you the conditions, not cutting the deal."
"Why not?" Zuckuss spoke up. "I don't get it. The other members of your clan wouldn't have sent you out here if you didn't have some kind of authority to speak for them. If they'd just wanted to send us some message, they could've comm'd it out here or sent some flunky of a different species, like a Twi'lek or something. So why mess around? If you're willing to talk about Dinnid at all, why not do it here?"
The smile on the broad, jowly face turned into a sneer. "Your colleague Boba Fett wouldn't ask such a stupid question. A question which has an equally simple answer. We're all aboard the Slave I right now, aren't we? The Slave I is Boba Fett's ship; he controls it. So as long as we're here, he controls the discussion as well. There have been times when discussions with Boba Fett have gotten ... a little ugly. Things start out nice and friendly, and then they just ... change somehow."
Gheeta feigned mulling over that statement. "Probably because the parties involved couldn't come to an agreement about the value and price of the merchandise being discussed." He glanced over at Fett. "You always like to get things as cheaply as possible, don't you?"
Boba Fett made no reply.
"Cheaply," continued Gheeta, "as far as credits are concerned. When it comes to violence ... well, that's another story, isn't it?" The floating cylinder turned, bringing the Shell Hutt's face back toward Zuckuss.
"That's when your colleague has rather a free hand.
Especially when other creatures' skins are involved. And the blood-that can also get a little thick to wade through, when Boba Fett's around." Another shift in angle brought Gheeta's face toward the bounty hunters in general. "So if you think I'm going to remain here, in the heart of Fett's traveling circus of destruction, surrounded by his friends-or if not his friends, then creatures with whom he's come to a certain business arrangement-and talk about the merchandise in question, let alone actually bring that merchandise here ..."
Gheeta's jowls wobbled against the cylinder's gleaming collar as he shook his head. "Then it's not just Boba Fett who's gone a little insane. You're all not in sync with reality if you think that's going to happen."
A low growl came from the doorless holding cage.
"You've said your piece?" Bossk folded his arms across his chest.
Gheeta looked over at the Trandoshan. "Yes, I have."
"And now you're going to be on your way?"
"As charming as your company is, I see no reason for wasting any more of your time or mine."
"What makes you think we're going to let you leave?"
A weary sigh escaped from the Shell Hutt as he rolled his eyes toward the top of the holding area, "I really expected better from any companions of yours, Fett. Do you want to tell him or should I?" "He leaves when he wants to," said Boba Fett. He turned the hard gaze of his visored helmet toward the holding cage. "First of all, the merchandise we came here for is still down on Circumtore. Anything unpleasant we do to the negotiator that the Shell Hutts sent out will just make it harder to accomplish anything later, when we actually go on-planet."
Bossk laid his hand on the grip of his blaster.
"Maybe we should just worry about that when we get down there. I don't see any big difference between taking care of one canned Hutt and a whole world full of them."
"There's more inside that can than one Hutt. I've dealt with their negotiators before. They never send one out that isn't packed with high-thermal explosives."
"You see?" One of the mechanical hands beneath Gheeta's floating cylinder gestured theatrically toward Boba Fett. "That's why he's at the top of the bounty- hunter profession. It's why he's lasted so long, while others have met tragically untimely deaths. Because he's learned that other creatures can be just as clever ...
and violent, if need be." The thin metal arm telescoped outward so that the crab-like hand could reach up to an access hatch at the midpoint of the cylinder's tapered length. One claw pried open the hatch, revealing a ticking mechanism wired into several flat bricks of a dull gray substance.
From where he stood, Zuckuss could see the emblem and coding symbols of one of the Imperial Navy's main armaments dumps. The explosive charges had obviously been stolen, or smuggled out by some enterprising accomplice-but they were still more than lethal. Just looking at that much destructive force made Zuckuss's breath catch in the tubes dangling from his face mask.
IG-88 had also scanned the explosives, from where it stood next to Bossk. "It would be advisable," announced the droid, "if no one made an attempt to forcibly defuse the triggering mechanism. It has obviously been wired with a detect-and-destruct subsystem to prevent just such an occurrence."
"Of course." Gheeta looked pleased with himself. "As Fett indicated to you, Shell Hutt negotiators don't come into this kind of situation unprepared. If any of you were so foolish as to lay a finger on me, or this little present I came with, then the consequences would be of astronomical significance." His lipless smile broadened.
"A glowing cloud of radioactive dust ... perhaps they'd even be able to see it back at the Bounty Hunters Guild.
So at least your friends would know what had become of you."
"I think ... we can all be reasonable about this."
Zuckuss hastened to spe ak; on the other side of the holding area, Bossk looked furious enough to fling himself at the Shell Hutt and start pulling wires on the explosives, no matter what the consequences might be.
"Nobody's going to prevent you from leaving whenever you want."
"Good." Gheeta gave an appreciative nod to Zuckuss.
"You, at least, show some intelligence. Keep it up, and someday you might reach the same lofty pinnacle in your trade that Boba Fett has." The crablike hand folded the little hatch back down and sealed it in place. "This thing itches abominably. I'll be glad to be rid o
f it."
The hand scratched at the metal door. "I'll take my departure now. Though I imagine it won't be very long until we all see each other again-down on Circumtore, of course."
The Shell Hutt's tapered casing rotated 180 degrees so that it was facing the transfer hatchway. Without being bidden, Zuckuss hurried to the controls at the side.
As the hatch irised open, Gheeta turned the floating cylinder just enough", that he could look back at Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters. "Of course," he said blandly, "that's up to you. About whether we do business or not. Because I have to tell you-we take a very dim view of creatures coming to visit us if they bring along the kind of firepower that you like to carry around."
The cylinder moved through the fully open hatchway.
It sealed shut with a hiss; a few seconds later the mechanical noises of the negotiator's ship disengaging were audible. In the small viewport, the craft could be seen as it began traveling back down to Circumtore.
Bossk, looking as angry as before, stepped out of the doorless holding cage. "What was that last bit supposed to mean?"
"It's simple." Boba Fett grasped one of the ladder's rungs. "Like everything with the Shell Hutts." He started up toward the Slave Fs cockpit. "We're going to go down and talk business, and we'll do it unarmed. They'll send a shuttle for us to go on-world, and we'll leave all our weapons right here."
"You're joking!" Bossk stared after him in amazement.
"I'm not going down there defenseless!"
"That's up to you." At the cockpit hatchway, Boba Fett halted and looked back down at the Trandoshan.
"There's an alternative, of course. We can eliminate you from the team right now." He drew his blaster from his hip and aimed it at Bossk. "You decide."
A few seconds passed before Bossk finally gave a slow nod. "All right," he said. "You win. That's how we'll play it." An ugly sneer formed on his face. "But there's a slight problem. What about him?"
Zuckuss and the others turned in the direction to which Bossk's gesture pointed. At the side of the Slave I's holding area, silent and waiting, stood the massive shape of D'harhan. The tracking systems of the laser cannon, bonded inseparably to his torso, looked toward Fett.
"Even him," Fett said quietly. "He's going with us as well."
D'harhan punched a string of words into his voice box and turned the device away from himself. "you would have to kill me," it spoke aloud. "to render me weaponless."
The voice had sounded like thunder beneath the roiling clouds of steam. The laser cannon's tracking systems gazed hard at Boba Fett as the next words were displayed.
there is no DIFFERENCE... BETWEEN ME AND MY WEAPONS.
"Maybe..." With growing unease, Zuckuss let his gaze move up the enormous figure. The yellow lights on the side of the laser-cannon housing were darkening, as though they were about to shift to the red of imminent destruction. "Maybe we don't really need to take him with us. I mean ... if we're just going down to Circumtore to talk ... that's not really his specialty, is it?"
"No one is being left behind," Fett stated with cold finality. "The whole team is going. That's the plan."
"Whose plan?" demanded Bossk.
"Mine." Another simple, flat statement. "That's the only one that matters." Boba Fett turned back toward D'harhan. "I know better than anyone that to remove your weapon would be the same as killing you; I haven't forgotten about these things. I was there when you became as you are now. So I also know other things that your weapon can be rendered nonfunctional, incapable of firing, by a relatively simple procedure. The removal of the light-mass core alone will do it. And then the Shell Hutts will have no basis for refusing you permission to enter their world."
Zuckuss flattened himself against the holding area's bulkhead as he watched D'harhan rising to his full height, the top of the laser-cannon housing scraping the durasteel ceiling. The light inside the space seemed to dim, as though the creature's expanding form were swallowing it up. D'harhan's chest, the remaining fleshand- blood part of it, swelled outward, thrusting forward the curved gearing of the weapon mount welded to his breastbone; his shoulders pulled back, arms tensing at his sides, one hand clenching into a fist, the other still holding the muted voice box. Through clouds of hissing steam, the oiled metal of the pistons gleamed like naked sword blades; the indicator lights along the laser cannon's barrel burned a fiery, nebulous red. Now it's going to happen-fear twisted sicken-ingly in Zuckuss's gut. We're all going to die. Mesmerized, he watched as Boba Fett stepped up in front of D'harhan, the red light blurring through the steam and silhouetting him as though by fire seen through ominous storm clouds.
"you're wrong." D'harhan raised the voice box toward Fett. "IT won't be easy at all."
"I am aware of his meaning." A trace of fear sounded in even the droid IG-88's voice. "The light-mass core is shielded behind a grid of protective interlocks-that is standard for weapons of the class he bears, to prevent just such tampering. Removal is ill-advised, even for a skilled armory technician. You could trigger an overload destruct sequence that would destroy this ship even more thoroughly than the Shell Hutt's explosive charges would have."
"Listen to it," pleaded Bossk. "You're going to kill us all-"
"I know what I'm doing." Boba Fett spoke with an unnervingly icy calm. "Do not interfere-if you value your lives."
"do you know?" Another cloud of steam hissed from the laser cannon's mounting as the tracking systems narrowed their focus on the man standing in front of them. "the weapon is my spirit. when you take THAT BY WHICH I KILL
OTHERS ... THEN YOU KILL ME."
"It will only seem that way," said Boba Fett.
"There's a difference between this death and true death."
Slowly, he reached up toward the glistening machinery whose coils were buried deep in D'harhan's chest. "Trust me."
"Fett ... don't ..."
Whether it was his own voice or one of the others, Zuckuss could no longer tell. Flinching from certain doom, he averted his face; the last thing he saw was Boba Fett shrouded in steam, one hand sinking into the coils and wires nested beneath the laser cannon's mounting, as though the bounty hunter were a battlefield surgeon performing a crude, septic heart transplant. With a screech of grinding metal from the geared wheel, the weapon's barrel convulsively angled upward, the tracking systems blindly defocusing, as though a pain voltage beyond the reach of mortal anesthesia had coursed through D'harhan's embedded circuitry. The indicator lights pulsed and flared even brighter than before; Zuckuss could hear someone, probably Bossk, diving to the gridded floor of the holding area, as though there were any chance of hiding from the firepower that would rip the Slave I apart.
With all muscles involuntarily tensed, crouching against the bulkhead, Zuckuss awaited the harsh, deafening noise that he knew would be the last thing he would ever hear.
Instead, there was silence, ended by a sighing emission of steam, as though from a dying machine, the source of its energy shut off by a single valve.
He looked up, bringing his eyes away from his own lowered forearm. The red lights that had burned through the steam mist were gone now; as Zuckuss watched, the inert metal of the laser cannon shifted angle, its dark barrel slowly inching down from its ceiling-high trajectory. The blank voice box swung on a cord from D'harhan's waist as his black-gloved hands trembled open, palms outward. His knees buckled, diminishing the massive form that had reared up inside the ship's holding area, turning him into something weaker and more human than ma chine. D'harhan collapsed onto the floor, rolling heavily onto one broad shoulder, the muzzle of the laser cannon scraping an arc across the floor, ending at the tip of Boba Fett's boot.
Zuckuss's gaze broke from the silenced weapon and turned toward the other bounty hunter. Boba Fett hadn't moved from where he had been standing, as though the fall of the laser cannon was an ocean tide that he knew would break harmlessly upon the shore, millimeters away from him. In Fett's hand, the one that had reached into the intricate
lock and coil of D'harhan's chest, was a dull metal rod, less than half a meter long, thick enough to fill the grip fastened upon it. When Fett dropped it with a leaden clang, the residual heat from the weapon's reactor core brought a final sizzling puff of steam from the water vapor that had collected on the grid's surface.
The barrel of the laser cannon lifted, moving with crippled d ifficulty. D'harhan's tracking systems focused upon Boba Fett standing above him; one hand grasped the voice box and slowly thumbed in a few words.
you owe me. D'harhan raised the silent communication device. big time.
Boba Fett said nothing, but turned away and strode toward the ladder leading to the cockpit. He halted with one boot on the bottom rung and looked over at the others watching him. "They're already waiting for us," he said quietly. "Down on Circum-tore."
Then he was gone. Zuckuss looked over at Bossk, just now getting to his feet in the doorless holding cage.
"We're lucky," said Zuckuss, "to be alive."
Bossk glanced up, toward the empty hatchway of the cockpit, then back down. The thin smile he gave Zuckuss contained at least a small particle of admiration.
"I suppose we'll find out"-Bossk slowly nodded, his gaze narrowing-"just how lucky we are... ."
"What exactly is the history between you and the Shell Hutts?" Zuckuss wasn't asking just to pass the time. Sitting at last on the surface of Circumtore, surrounded by the durasteel-plated Hutts and, even worse, their various guards and mercenaries, he felt no less endangered than before. It just keeps getting worse, Zuckuss mused gloomily to himself. Pretty soon he'd be wishing that everyone on this intrepid little team had gotten blown to spiraling, whistling atoms. "I mean ...
the way that the negotiator talked ..."
Boba Fett stood with his arms crossed, watching the Shell Hutts' customs inspectors poking through the interior of the Slave I. They weren't looking for contraband-which was something that the Shell Hutts, like all the members of the species, had no aversion to, as long as they got their piece of the action-but were combing the ship and its passengers for undeclared weaponry. Without his usual panoply of rocket launchers and other means of destruction, Fett looked even more dangerous, oddly enough; as though his simmering anger were some newly aroused lethal force, provoked by the intrusion on his personal domain.