by K. W. Jeter
means-"
The dangling mechanical hands suddenly shot forward
from beneath Gheeta's encasing shell and seized hold of
the edge of the dais's central platform. The remaining
florals, oozing sap from their broken petals, slid from
the top surface and landed wetly across the steps as the
thin metal arms tensed, lifting one side of the
rectangular shape. From the floating cylinder came a high-
pitched whine as the repulsor-beam engines strained
against the additional load. That was followed by the
grinding, tearing noise of decorative masonry being
ripped apart as the rectangular platform came loose from
the dais and tilted toward one side. Gheeta gave a final,
convulsive push, and the platform tore free and toppled
down the dais's encircling steps.
For a moment the panicked motion in the great
reception hall ebbed; the crash of the platform at the
feet of Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters had been
loud enough to distract the fleeing Shell Hutts from
their attempts at escape. At the exits, still blocked by
the insignialess mercenaries, the floating cylinders
turned, their wide-faced occupants looking back toward
the figures at the center of the vaulted space.
Plaster dust floated up from the wreckage of the
platform; it now looked like a coffin that had been
shattered open in a clumsy attempt at excavation, the
thin plastoid sides forced apart from each other by the
repeated impact of the steps. In the midst of the debris,
draped shroudlike by the embroidered cloth, with a single
broken-stemmed floral lying on its chest like a bad joke,
was a humanoid form, empty eye sockets gazing up at the
reception hall's distant ceiling. Without even looking at
the man's face, Boba Fett knew who it was.
"There's your Oph Nar Dinnid." Gheeta's voice came
from the top of the dais, gloating at the rubble strewn
across the floor. "Not such valuable merchandise now, is
he?"
From behind Boba Fett, the elder Shell Hutt Nullada
pushed forward, hard enough to shove Bossk and IG-88 to
one side; the riveted cylinder scraped sparks from the
unmoving armor of D'harhan. Fett looked over at the
massive figure hovering next to him and saw that
Nullada's face was quivering with rage. The silken lines
holding up the rolls of fat above the eyes and mouth were
shimmering like the bowstrings of an ancient projectile
weapon.
"This is madness!" As Nullada shouted at Gheeta he
shook one of his mechanical hands, clenched into a
compact fist. "Vengeance is one thing-we all desire
that-but now . . ." The old Shell Hutt sputtered with
incoherent anger. "Now you're interfering with business!
That creature was valuable to us. He was credits . . .
and now he's dead meat."
"Calm yourself." Gheeta sneered at the other Shell
Hutt. " 'Business' has been taken care of. Perhaps not to
your satisfaction, but to mine. And to the satisfaction
of the Narrant-system clan whose trade secrets our late
guest had stolen and was busily selling to us. I have
been in direct communication with the unfortunate victims
of Oph Nar Dinnid's larceny, and I encouraged them to set
a price on those trade secrets-not on what it would cost
to get those secrets back, but on what it would cost to
make sure that no one else would be privy to them. In
other words, the price of Oph Nar Dinnid's immediate
death. The clan made their calculations, named their
price, and I accepted on behalf of the Shell Hutts."
"You . . . you had no right to do that. . . ."
"That shows how old and senile you've become."
Gheeta's sneer turned even more withering. "You've
forgotten that there are no rights, except those that you
take unto yourself." The mechanical hands rose, claws
curling into sharp-edged fists. "Our treasury is richer
now for the dealing that I have done on my own
initiative."
"Idiot!" Thick drops of spittle flew from Nullada's
mouth. "There's no way that you could have gotten a price
from the Narrant system anywhere close to what the
information inside Dinnid's head was worth."
"Perhaps not." Gheeta's hands spread apart in a
gesture of unconcern. "But the price I got is paid now,
and not doled out over some twenty years to come. Credits
in one's pocket are worth more than the credits that
might be sprinkled someday over your grave." An ugly
smile welled up on his wide face, like inscribed
driftwood surfacing in rubbish-clogged waters. "A grave
that I think you'll be in sooner than I will be."
"Silence!" The roar was deafening; it came from
Bossk, thrusting himself to the foot of the steps that
surrounded the dais. One of his clawed hands shoved aside
the floating cylinder of the elder Shell Hutt Nullada.
With his other hand, Bossk stepped forward and grabbed
the front of the sprawled corpse's jacket, singed with
laser fire and stiff with dried blood. "I've heard enough
of your endless bickering-" He held the lifeless figure
of Oph Nar Dinnid up in front of himself, the corpse's
feet dangling inches above the tessellated floor. "This
is what we came here for?" The corpse danced like a loose-
limbed puppet as Bossk angrily shook it. No answer came
from Dinnid's slack mouth, the skin of his face turned as
pallid and gray as that of the surrounding Hutts. With an
inarticulate growl, Bossk flung the corpse back down into
the rubble of the dais's broken platform. "That
creature's been dead for weeks! I can smell his death on
him!" Bossk's nostrils flared back, showing his
involuntary disgust. Just as with Hutts, Trandoshans were
the type of carnivore that preferred its meat fresh. He
turned his slit-eyed glare toward Boba Fett. "He was dead
before we ever left the Bounty Hunters Guild. This is a
fool's errand you've brought us on!" The corner of one
scaly lip curled in a sneer. "The great Boba Fett, the
master of bounty hunters, and he didn't even know that
the merchandise was already worthless."
Boba Fett had known that that accusation would come
before long, and he had briefly debated with himself
about how to answer it. / could say nothing-he was not
given to explaining his actions and strategies to anyone,
let alone a crude, rapacious thug like Bossk. Or he could
lie to Bossk, tell him that he hadn't known, or even
suspected, that Oph Nar Dinnid had already been killed,
long before he'd assembled this team of bounty hunters to
come here to Circumtore. Or ...
"I knew," said Boba Fett quietly. "Why wouldn't I?
I've dealt with these creatures before, and I know how
their minds work. Especially"-he gestured toward Gheeta,
still floating at the top of the dais- "when what's left
of one's mind is eaten away with the desire for
vengeance."
> "Wait a second." At Fett's other side, Zuckuss stared
at him, astonishment detectable even through the curved
lenses of the smaller bounty hunter's face mask. "You
knew all along? But if you knew that Oph Nar Dinnid had
already been killed . . . then there was no point in
coming here. ..."
"No point," growled Bossk, "unless Fett wanted to get
us all killed as well." He tilted his head toward the
perimeter of the great reception hall. The armed
mercenaries had stepped farther from the alcoves and
exits, herding the other Shell Hutts before them. "Is
that it?" Bossk turned his hard gaze back toward Boba
Fett. "Maybe you were feeling suicidal-maybe you're tired
of being a bounty hunter-so you decided to take some of
us with you. That's why you were so willing to hand over
our weapons and render us defenseless."
"Don't be an idiot." Fett returned the other's gaze.
"Or at least not any more of one than you have to be. You
may be without weapons-for the time being-but we were
never without defenses. No one walks naked into the midst
of creatures like thes e."
"No one . . . except somebody who's ready to die."
"I'll let you know," said Boba Fett, "when that time
comes. But right now I have other business to take care
of." He raised one arm, turning it so that the inside of
his wrist faced him; between that and his elbow was a
relay-linked control pad. With the forefinger of his
other gloved hand, Fett began punching out a command
sequence.
"Calling up your ship, are you?" Gheeta had caught
sight of what Boba Fett was doing. "Do you really believe
that your precious Slave I can get out of our landing
docks? It's sealed down tight with tractor beams. And
even if it could break away, what good would it do you?
It's as stripped of armaments as your pathetic selves."
Boba Fett ignored him. It was a long series of digits
to get past the control pad's encryption circuits, and
then another one to initiate the program he desired. That
one was buried years deep in his memory, but on matters
such as this, his memory was infallible. It had to be; in
circumstances such as this, he wasn't likely to be given
another chance.
"Is it a bluff, then?" The taunting voice of the
Shell Hutt came from atop the dais. "How sad for you to
think I'd fall for something as simpleminded as that. If
you want me to believe that you have some secret plan
that will save your skins, you'll have to do a lot better
than punching a few meaningless control buttons."
Standing next to Boba Fett, Zuckuss fidgeted and
gazed with alarm around the great reception hall. "Is
there a plan?" His eyes were like curved mirrors, showing
the distorted images of the dark-uniformed mercenaries.
"You have one, don't you?"
One of the other bounty hunters gave up waiting. With
a guttural curse in his native Trandoshan tongue, Bossk
reached down and snatched up a long, jagged-ended piece
of the wreckage from the dais's top platform. As he
lifted it shoulder-high, gripping one end with both his
clawed fists, a tiny strip of 1 bloodstained cloth
fluttered pennantlike, a scrap from the Dinnid corpse's
torn and charred clothing. "They're not taking me down
without a-"
Bossk's words were lost in the sudden roar of an
explosion. Its force struck Boba Fett, a surge of heat
and durasteel-hard pressure full against his chest. He
remained upright in the storm, his own weight already
braced against its impact. The visor of his helmet
flashed darker for a microsecond, to protect his sight
from the blinding glare. Sharp-edged pieces of debris
struck his shoulders, then were swept on by the billows
of smoke that poured out from where the dais and its
surrounding steps had been.
As the smoke began to thin, restoring visibility to
the center of the great reception hall, Boba Fett took
his gloved hand away from the control pad on his opposite
forearm. The command sequence, keyed to the long-dormant
receptor buried in the hall's foundation, had done its
job. Perfectly, just as it had been designed and he had
expected it to.
The explosion had caught Gheeta unawares- also as
Fett had expected-and its force had sent the Shell Hutt's
cylinder tumbling and crashing against one of the hall's
supporting pillars, hard enough to dent one of the
riveted plates and bend the column, its top wrenching
loose from the vaulted ceiling above. Gheeta's eyes were
dazed, bordering on unconsciousness; a rivulet of blood
seeped through the rolls and crevices of his broad face
from where the pharmaceutical IV line had been torn out
from the vein. The plastoid tube now lay on the rubble-
strewn ground like a dead serpent, its single fang
weeping drop after drop of a clear liquid.
Some distance behind Boba Fett, the larger cylinder
encasing the elder Nullada slowly righted itself, like a
planetary oceangoing vessel that had been swamped by a
tidal wave. The cylinder rolled from side to side as
Nullada groaned in dizzied confusion. The silken lines
holding up his face's obscuring rolls of blubbery tissue
had all snapped; his repulsive Hut-tese features, the
large yellowed eyes and slavering lipless mouth, appeared
and disappeared as gravity shifted the gray wattles back
and forth.
"What . . . what was ..." A gloved hand rose from the
tangled, still-smoking rubble directly in front of Boba
Fett. The explosion had knocked Zuckuss backward, his
breath mask covered with dust and gray flecks of ash. A
few broken scraps of construction material, the charred
remains of the dais's top platform, tumbled down his
chest as he struggled to raise himself up on his elbows.
"I can't ..."
Right now Boba Fett couldn't give the fallen Zuckuss
any assistance. The chaos into which the explosion had
plunged the great reception hall was still at a peak-past
the settling billows of smoke could be heard the cursing
and shouts of the armed mercenaries as the frightened
Shell Hutts gibbered and collided with each other and
their floating cylinders pushed toward the
building's exits. That wouldn't last long, Fett knew;
even security guards as ill-trained and poorly paid as
these would eventually be able to sort things out. He
stepped over the struggling body in front of him-one of
Zuckuss's gloved hands reached, but failed to catch hold
of Fett's boot-and strode quickly into the center of the
dais's smoldering wreckage.
As he reached down for the shock-protected container
of hardened durasteel that he knew would be there, a bolt
from a laser rifle shot a fraction of an inch to one side
of Boba Fett's head, then struck and sparked against a
pillar farther on. Fett quickly turned, his muscle
s
tensing to dive away from the angle of the following
shot-
There wasn't one. The dark-uniformed mercenary that
had come sprinting into the hall's center, rifle lifted,
was felled by a long section of rubble swung level into
his gilt. His momentum folded him around the improvised
weapon; the mercenary then collapsed onto his face as
Bossk's clawed fist struck him with a vertebra-cracking
blow to the back of the neck. Bossk threw away the piece
of scrap and scooped up the mercenary's blaster rifle.
Fett saw a look of fierce delight in the Trandoshan's
eyes as Bossk whipped the rifle around, a level arc of
bright fire cutting through the smoke and across the
other mercenaries who had been foolish enough to move
away from the security of the perimeter alcoves.
That'll hold them for a while, thought Boba Fett as
he tugged at the end handle of the tube-shaped container,
caught tight by the rubble collapsed around it. More
laser bolts stitched the air around him with their
burning tracery; he glanced over his shoulder and saw
Bossk, standing with legs braced wide apart, squeeze the
blaster rifle's trigger stud with wild disregard for the
counterfire now coming from all directions. IG-88, with
the cold rationality typical of droids, had grabbed the
weapon of another dark-uniformed figure, that had been
cut nearly in half by one of Bossk's initial shots;
crouching down behind the corpse and a jagged sheet of
bent plastoid construction material, IG-88 carefully
aimed and picked off its targets.
Another sight had caught Boba Fett's eye even as he
wrapped both hands around the durasteel tube's molded
grip, braced his boot sole against the singed remnants of
one of the platform's side panels, and tugged harder; as
he tilted back, arms locked straight down to the tube, a
laser shot sizzled through the exact space in which his
head had just been. The streak of light temporarily set
his helmet visor blind and opaque, so that it was only
behind his eyelids that Boba Fett could still see the
image of D'harhan, roused from his silent torpor by the
sounds of combat echoing inside the great reception
hall's spaces. As the mercenaries' fire streaked past
D'harhan like a giant spiderweb set aflame, the barrel of
the laser cannon, inert and silenced, rose upward, as
though it were the neck and head of some primeval beast,