by K. W. Jeter
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 flesh-
and-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 tr
embled 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. . . ."
16
"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.
"Hutts say all sorts of things." Boba Fett didn't
turn toward Zuckuss as he spoke. "There's a lot of it you
can safely ignore. A lot of creatures in the galaxy
believe that all the Huttese are efficient businessmen,
with nothing but credits on their minds, but they're not.
They spend too much time brooding about the past, keeping
old scores. Bearing grudges. That kind of emotion always
gets in the way of true rationality."
Nobody would ever make that kind of assessment,
Zuckuss figured, of Boba Fett. The more time he spent
anywhere near Fett, the more he was impressed-and
appalled by the cold calculations taking place inside
that visored helmet. Even over something like the team
disarming itself for its landing on the Shell Hutts'
world; if Boba Fett was willing to go along with that, it
must mean his intricately worked-out plans included this
factor, accounted for it in some way. We might make it
back out of here alive, thought Zuckuss. Or at least some
of us might. The plans that he had let himself become
part of- Cradossk's plans-called for one death out here,
if not more.
"It seemed kind of specific, though. What Gheeta
said." Zuckuss tried again. "When he was talking about
what happened before. Is there some kind of old score to
settle between you and the Shell Hutts?"
The customs inspectors-multilegged droids, bristling
with inspection probes and energy-level meters-continued
their inspection of the Slave I. Their black, spidery
forms could be seen through the ship's open hatches and
up inside the transparent shielding of the cockpit. One
of the inspectors lay crumpled in pieces, a few lights
still forlornly blinking, on the thrust-scarred landing
dock. That one had been a little too brusque in frisking
the Trandoshan Bossk for any concealed weapons, and had
paid the price in quick, bolt-snapping disassembly.
"Nothing you have to worry about," said Boba Fett.
"It's a personal thing. Actually, between me and Gheeta.
There was a time when he wasn't a mere negotiator, being
sent out on those kinds of errands to ships seeking
permission to land. He was very high up in the Shell Hutt
hierarchy. That was why he was in charge of the design
and construction of the on-planet terminal and diplomatic
reception site- basically, everything you see around you
here." Fett gestured with one raised hand; past the
landing dock's archways could be seen a complex of inter
linked spires and domes. "His budget allowed for a nearly
unlimited expenditure of capital, including the hiring of
one of the top freelance architects in the galaxy. A man
named Emd Grahvess-"
"I've heard of him." Zuckuss actually had, though he
couldn't remember from just where.
"There may be better ones, but if there are, they'd
be working for Emperor Palpatine, or someone like Prince
Xizor. Exclusively. So Grahvess was the top of the line
for the Shell Hutts, and Gheeta knew it; that's why he
hired him. The only problem was that Gheeta had other
plans for Grahvess, once the project was completed;
unfortunately for Gheeta, Grahvess was no fool. He knew
how dangerous it can be, working for any kind of Hutt.
They don't like paying up, and they like having things
that no one else can have. If they can't buy exclusivity,
they have . . . other ways of achieving it. And that's
what Grahvess found out that when this job was done, he
wouldn't be taking on any others." Fett glanced over at
Zuckuss. "Ever."
"That's kind of cold," said Zuckuss
. "Having somebody
killed, right after he's done some great job for you."
"Get used to it. It happens to bounty hunters as
well-if they're not careful." Boba Fett gave a slow nod.
"This galaxy is full of treachery. There's no one you can
really trust. . . ."
Words to live by, thought Zuckuss. Or die. "So what
happened to this architect, this Grahvess person? Did
Gheeta manage to have him killed or not?"
"Not." Satisfaction was audible in that single word
from Boba Fett. "Because Grahvess was just a little bit
smarter than Gheeta. Smart enough to contact me and
propose a mutually satisfactory business arrangement."
"Like what?"
"You don't need to know all the details." Boba Fett
continued to watch the customs inspectors stalking around
inside the Slave I. "At least not yet. Let's just say
that Grahvess and I had everything worked out well before
his work here on Circumtore was completed. So that Gheeta
and his hench creatures never had a shot at him.
Essentially, Grahvess put out a bounty on himself. A
nice, fat one, which I was only too happy to collect by
making a quick raid here and snatching him away, right
out from Gheeta's hands. That's the main reason why the
Shell Hutts' security procedures are so tight now; they
don't want a repeat of that kind of action. Makes them
look foolish. Hutts can't stand that."
"Pretty clever." Zuckuss nodded in appreciation. "The
only one that winds up screwed is this Gheeta. The
architect gets to keep his life, and you get the credits.
Smart."
"I got more than that out of it."
Zuckuss studied the other bounty hunter in puz
zlement. "What more would you want out of it than
credits?" He couldn't imagine any other incentive for
someone like Fett.
"An investment. So to speak." Boba Fett watched the
Shell Hutts' customs-inspection droids emerging from the
ship. "That pays off later. In a big way."
There wasn't time for Zuckuss to ask what that meant.
The inspectors spider-legged their way toward the waiting
bounty hunters. A couple of the droids lagged behind and
began picking up the scattered wreckage of their forcibly
disassembled companion, the broken circuits of its main
sensory input/ output box still buzzing and moaning.
"Thank you for your cooperation." The lead inspector
droid halted in front of Boba Fett. "Our examination of