by K. W. Jeter
corrected himself. He could see the figure's chest
moving, a slight rise and fall, right on the edge of
survival. The half-naked combatant, whoever it might be,
was still alive. Or at least for the time being.
Now, that was worth checking out. Dengar slung the
'binocs back onto his equipment belt. If only to satisfy
his own curiosity-the distant figure looked as if he'd
discovered a whole new way of getting killed. As a bounty
hunter and general purveyor of violence, Dengar felt a
professional interest in the matter.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw his own ship,
the Punishing One, descending a few kilometers away, its
landing gear extended. His bride-to-be, Manaroo, was at
the ship's controls. Good, thought Dengar. He'd be able
to use her help, now that he had determined that there
would be no immediate danger to her. He didn't mind
risking his own life, but hers was another matter.
Balancing himself with one hand held back against the
slope of the dune, Dengar worked his way toward the
humanoid-shaped mystery he'd spotted. He hoped the other
man would still be alive by the time he got there.
This way of dying's not so bad. . . .
Somewhere, past a jumble of disjointed thoughts and
images, the oleaginous voice of Jabba the Hutt could be
heard in memory, promising a new definition of pain, one
that would last thousands of years, excruciating and
never-ending.
The fat slug had been correct about that, to a
degree; the dying man had to admit it. Or was he already
dead?-he couldn't tell. This fate, the infinitely slow
etching away, molecule by molecule, of epidermis and
nerve endings, had been intended for someone else. It
struck the dying man as no more unjust than all the rest
of the universe's workings that he should suffer it
instead.
Or have suffered it. Because the Hutt seemed to have
been misinformed about how long the dissolution and
torment would last. A few seconds had been more than
adequate for pain's new meaning to have become clear, as
the enfolding darkness's acids had seeped through uniform
and armament, touching skin like the fire of a thousand
commingled suns. And those few seconds, and the minutes
and hours- days, years?-that followed had indeed seemed
to stretch out to eternity...
But they had ended. That pain, beyond anything he had
ever endured or inflicted, had come to a stop, replaced
by the simpler and duller ebbing away of life force. By
comparison, that was a comfort like drifting asleep on
pillows of satin filled with downy feathers. Even the
blindness, the perfect acidic night, had been broken by a
muted dawn. The dying man still could not see, but he
could sense, through the T-shaped visor of his helmet and
the wet rags swaddling him, the unmistakable photonic
warmth of suns against his face and the eroded skin of
his chest. Perhaps, the dying man thought, it reached up
into the sky and swallowed them, too. The giant mouth,
when he'd fallen down its ranks of razor teeth, had
seemed that big.
But now he felt gravel and sand beneath his spine,
and his own blood miring him to the ground. That had to
be some kind of a tactile hallucination. He had no gods
to thank, but was grateful anyway for the blessings of
madness. . .
The light on his face dimmed; the differential in
temperature was enough that he could just make out the
blurred edges of shadow falling upon him. He wondered
what new vision his agony-fractured brain was about to
conjure up. There were others, he knew, here in the belly
of the beast; he had seen them fall and be swallowed up.
A little company, the dying man decided. He might as well
hallucinate voices, from those about to be digested; it
would help pass the long endless hours before his own
body's atoms floated free from one another.
One of the voices he heard was his own. "Help. . . ."
"What happened?"
He could almost have laughed, if any twitch of his
raw muscles hadn't hurt so much, pushing him toward
unconscious oblivion. Shouldn't hallucinations know these
things?
"Sarlacc . . . swallowed me." The words seemed to
come of their own volition. "I killed it . . . blew it
up. . . ."
He heard another voice, a female's. "He's dying."
The man's voice spoke again, in hushed tones.
"Manaroo-do you know who this is?"
"I don't care. Help me get him inside." The female's
shadow fell across him.
Suddenly he felt himself rising, dirt and grit fall
ing from his mangled form. The next sensation was that of
being thrown across someone's broad shoulder, an arm
encircling his waist to steady him. A sense of shame
filled the dying man. There had been so many times when
he had faced his own extinction-painful or otherwise-the
contemplation of his death, and the dismissal of it as
being of no concern, had given him strength. And now some
weak part of him had summoned up this pitiful fantasy of
rescue. Better to die, he thought, than to fear dying.
"Hang on," came the hallucinated voice. "I'll get you
someplace safe."
The man called Boba Fett felt the jostle of the
other's footsteps, the motion of being carried across the
stony ground. For a moment his vision cleared, the
blindness dissipating enough that he could see his own
hand flopping limp and disjointed, leaving a trail of
spattered blood on the sand. . . .
That was when he knew that what he saw and felt was
real. And that he was still alive.
2
A small object, moving by its own power through the
cold expanses between the stars, had finally breached a
planet's sensory perimeter. Kuat of Kuat had felt the
hyperspace messenger pod's approach even before his own
corporate security chief came to tell him that it had
been intercepted. He had a fine-tuned awareness of
machines, from the smallest nano-sporoids to
constructions capable of annihilating worlds. It was a
family trait, something encoded deep within the Kuat
blood for generations.
"Excuse me, Technician"-an obsequious voice came from
behind him-"but you asked to be notified as the outer
comm units picked up any traces. Of your . . . package."
Kuat of Kuat turned away from the great domed
viewport and its vistas of emptiness studded with light.
Far beyond the expanded orbit of the planet that bore the
name identical to his, the hazy arm of one of the
galaxy's more aesthetically pleasing spiral nebulae was
about to rise into sight. He tried not to miss things
like that; they served to remind him that the universe
and all its interconnected workings was, in its essence,
a machine like other machines. Even its constituent
atoms, beyond the confusion of unce
rtainty principles and
observer effects, ticked like ancient, primitive chrono
gears. And finer things than that, Kuat of Kuat told
himself, not for the first time. Such as men's spirits.
Those were machines as well, however ineffable their
substance.
"Very well." He stroked the silky fur of the felinx
cradled in his arms; the animal made a deep, barely
audible sound of contentment as his long, precise fingers
found a specific zone behind the triangular ears. "That's
just what I've been expecting." Machines, even the ones
built in the Kuat Drive Yards, did not always function as
intended; there were random variables that sometimes
deposited metaphorical sand in the gears. It was a
pleasure- frequent, but still undiminished-when things
did work according to plan. "Has there been any readout
on the contents?"
"Not yet." Fenald, the security chief, was dressed in
the standard Kuat Drive Yards worksuit, devoid of any
emblem of rank except for the variable-dispersion blaster
slung conspicuously at his hip. "There's a full crew
working on it, but"-a wry smile lifted a corner of his
mouth-"the encryption codes are rather tight."
"They're meant to be." Kuat of Kuat would not be
disappointed if the KDY employees weren't able to crack
them; he had designed and implemented them himself.
Setting Security's info-analysis division to work on them
was a mere test, to see how well he'd done. "I don't care
for anyone else reading my mail."
"Of course not." A slight nod in acknowledgment;
despite the importance of Kuat Drive Yards as the elite
and most powerful contractor of engineering and
construction services to the Empire, the formalities of
KDY headquarters were minimal, and had been for
generations. Pomp and show and courtly flourishes were
for those who didn't understand where true power came
from. Fenald gestured toward the viewport, its hexagonal
strutwork curving three times higher than his boss's
imposing two-meter height. "I doubt if anyone has."
The felinx purred louder in Kuat of Kuat's arms; he'd
found the exact spot wired into its pleasure centers.
Born that way; a good amount of the minimal brain mass in
the animal's excessively narrow skull- a trait of its
inbred species-he'd had to replace with biosimulation
circuits, to keep it from bumping into walls and gnawing
raw the flesh beneath its fur. His fingertips felt the
edge of the cut into the animal's skull as he stroked it.
Transmuted even this far into a true machine, the animal
was much more satisfactory, and-in ways Kuat of Kuat
appreciated-even more beautiful.
A single bell note sounded in the spacious office
suite of KDY's hereditary CEO. Kuat of Kuat turned back
to gaze at the viewport's limitless vista as his security
chief leaned the side of his head against the small
transponder embedded in his palm. The felinx had closed
its eyes in ecstasy; it didn't see the rising edge of the
far-distant nebula, like luminous smoke against black.
"They're bringing it in now," said Fenald.
"Excellent." Outside, in vacuum, an ion engine
streaked fiery red, moving past the seemingly chaotic
maze of construction platforms and grav-dock bays at a
navigable sublight speed. The small utility shuttle, with
its precious cargo aboard, was heading for the core of
KDY's industrial complex. Perhaps a quarter of a standard
time part before the shuttle arrived; Kuat of Kuat
glanced over his shoulder at the other man. "You don't
need to wait." He smiled. "I'll take care of it myself."
Security chiefs were paid to be curious about ev
erything that happened within their sphere of operations.
"As you please, Technician." The words were spoken with a
stiffened spine and a nod just bordering on curtness. He
was also paid to obey orders. "Let me know if there's
anything else you require, in regard to this matter."
The felinx protested as Kuat of Kuat bent down,
depositing it on the intricately tessellated floor. Tail
demandingly erect, the creature rubbed itself against a
trouser leg cut of the same utilitarian dark green as all
the other work uniforms worn by KDY employees. The
concerns of the most powerful beings in the
galaxy-perhaps the most powerful beyond Emperor
Palpatine's inner circle-didn't matter to the animal. A
heat source and continued stroking were the limits of its
desires.
As Kuat of Kuat straightened back up, the office
suite's doors slid shut behind the departing chief of
security. The felinx bumped its head more insistently
against his shin. "Not now," Kuat told it. "I've got work
to do."
Persistence was a trait he admired; he couldn't be
angry at the animal when it jumped up on his workbench.
He let it march back and forth, level with his chest, as
he assembled the necessary tools. Only when the pilot of
the shuttle team, whose flight he had spotted from the
viewport, entered and placed an elongated silver ovoid on
the bench, then withdrew from his presence, did Kuat of
Kuat shoo the animal away.
A pair of hovering worklights drew closer, erasing
all shadow, as he leaned over the mirror-finished
torpedo. This messenger pod was not just wired with, but
actually built of, self-destruct modules, to prevent
unauthorized access-or access by anyone except Kuat of
Kuat himself. And even that was intended to be difficult;
if he erred now, KDY would have a new hereditary owner
and chief designer.
Held between thumb and forefinger, an identity probe
bit almost painlessly into his flesh, drawing samples of
fluid and tissue. The microcircuitry inside the slender
needlelike device ran through its programming, matching
both genetic information and the automutating radioactive
tracers that had been injected into his bloodstream. The
probe gave no sign, audible or visible, whether
everything checked out. The only indication would be when
he held the inoxide tip to the messenger pod; if his
charred remains weren't embedded in the wall behind him,
then all was as it should be.
The probe tip clicked against the curved, reflective
surface. No explosion resulted, except for the slight one
of his held breath being released.
A hairline fissure opened along the side of the pod.
The work went faster now as Kuat of Kuat pried open the
silvery ovoid, dismantling the pieces of its shell in a
precise order. A misstep, a segment taken out of turn,
would also result in a fatal explosion, but he wasn't
concerned about that happening. The only place where the
proper sequence had been put down was in his memory, but
no more accurate record could be imagined. When he
admired machines, he admired himself.
The one on the workbench functioned just as
/>
perfectly the last of the encasing shell separated into
its component parts and fell away from the core. "You've
come a long way, little one." He laid a tender,
possessive hand on the holoprojector unit that had been
revealed, "Just what do you have to tell me?"
A fading heat radiated into Kuat of Kuat's palm. The
messenger pod's energy cell was an accelerated-decay
module, producing enough power for a onetime jump in and
out of hyperspace. The navigational coordinates were
hardwired; a matter of a few days ago it'd left the
distant world of Tatooine. It could have reached the Kuat
Drive Yards headquarters even sooner if a randomizing
sublight process hadn't been programmed, to evade
detection. Kuat of Kuat's own security men weren't the
only ones watching the perimeter. A matter of business
paranoia was one of the operating costs that came with
being of service to the Emperor.
Hands sheathed in insulated gloves, Kuat of Kuat
lifted out the holoprojector. A standard playback unit,
similar to ones found throughout the galaxy, but with
tweaks and modifications far beyond the ordinary.
Palpatine himself couldn't get this kind of detail in
communications with his various underlings. But then . .
. he doesn't need it, Kuat of Kuat reminded himself. Not
the way I do. The Emperor could always get what he wanted
through fear and death. In the engineering business, one
had to be a little more careful, not to eliminate one's
market.
"Go away," he said to the felinx winding between his
ankles. "You won't like this."
The felinx didn't heed the warning. When Kuat of Kuat
used the rest of his precise tools to complete the
circuits inside the holoprojector, the images and sounds
of another great room were laid over the office suite.
The oppressive darkness generated by the recording and
its chaos of noises, from the rattling of subsurface
chains to cruel cross-species laughter, brought the
silken fur straight up along the animal's spine; it
hissed at what it saw, particularly the holoform of one
grossly elephantine individual with tiny hands and
immense, greedy eyes. When that image's lipless mouth
opened to emit wetly glottal laughter, the felinx
scrambled to safety beneath the farthest corner of the
workbench.
Kuat of Kuat used the magnetically fastened tip of
the probe to freeze the playback; the cacophony was