by K. W. Jeter
living out in the endless wastes of the Dune Sea, that
Kud'ar Mub'at had heard of. ...
Gloom permeated the meditations of Kud'ar Mub'at as
the assembler reminded himself of just how much still lay
beyond the strands of his web. Just as well, it
philosophically decided, that all those things are
Palpatine's concerns and not mine. True wisdom rested in
knowing one's limitations.
"Exactly so," chimed in Balancesheet. It had picked
up its parent's thought over the spun-silk neural network
that both connected and housed them. "That shows how wise
you are. Would Emperor Palpatine ever have thought of
such a thing?"
For a moment Kud'ar Mub'at was annoyed that the
little subassembler node had listened in to these private
musings-it thought that it had inhibited the appropriate
neurons to prevent just such two-way data flow. Then its
mood softened. "Now you're the one who's wise," said
Kud'ar Mub'at affectionately. It reached over another
black, spiky leg and let the accountant node scramble
onto its end. "I'll very much regret that day when I'll
have to-" Kud'ar Mub'at cut off its words just in time.
"Have to what?" At the end of Kud'ar Mub'at's leg,
the accountant node peered back at its progenitor.
"Nothing. Don't worry about it." Kud'ar Mub'at was
sure that the little node hadn't picked up on that
particular thought, the one that had to do with its
inevitable-and imminent-death. "Let me do th e deep
thinking."
"Of course," said Balancesheet. "I would not have it
otherwise. The only reason I asked about Boba Fett . . ."
"Yes?"
"I only asked," continued the subassembler node,
"because we would have to anticipate the cost of his
services to us rising as one of the results of the Bounty
Hunters Guild being catastrophically disbanded. Since
there would be a considerable diminishment in the number
and quality of the competition for such operations. That
should be factored into our calculations, regarding any
further negotiations involving this individual. Unless of
course"-Balancesheet spoke archly-"we were to make other
arrangements about Boba Fett's future. ..."
That was a good point; Kud'ar Mub'at realized he
should have thought of it himself. Though it was also one
of the advantages of having a well-developed, semi-
independent node like Balancesheet around. Whatever
slipped by Kud'ar Mub'at's attention would be caught by
the subassembler's.
"Thank you," said Kud'ar Mub'at to the little
creature still tethered to it. "I'll give it some
thought."
"Actually," said Balancesheet, "I have suggestions
along those lines."
Deep in the heart of the web Kud'ar Mub'at had spun
for itself, floating in the cold vacuum between the
stars, the assembler listened. Just as though it were
listening to its own wise and precise calculations,
whispered into its ear from something outside; something
almost separate.
From the docking port at the edge of the compound,
Boba Fett could hear the shouting and the sound of
blaster fire. None of it was aimed his way, so he went on
working, recalibrating and tuning Slave I's weapons
systems.
There hadn't been time, after he and the rest of the
team had lifted off and rendezvoused with the autonomic
storage unit in orbit above Circumtore, to get everything
fully functional once more. Not if he was going to get
Bossk back to the Bounty Hunters Guild in time to lead
the breakaway faction's uprising against the elders.
As he bolted down a recoil brace on one of the ship's
exterior laser cannons, Fett supposed that old Cradossk
was akeady dead by now. That was the first thing that
Bossk had sworn to take care of, once the Trandoshan had
fully comprehended how his father had set him up for
getting killed on the Oph Nar Dinnid job. A few encrypted
transmissions from Slave I, as it had journeyed back
toward the Guild compound, had also arranged for
Cradossk's death to be the start of the coup action.
More blaster fire sounded as Boba Fett's tools spot-
welded the wiring harness's main trunk connections. Slave
I's armaments were extensive and not designed for easy
removal; some of them had circuitry that reached right
down to the innermost bowels of the ship. Putting all of
that back together was a long job, and one that had to be
done exactly right; more than once, Fett's life had
depended on these weapons as much as the ones slung
across the back of his uniform and fastened to his wrists
and shins. With his attention thus focused, there was
little chance of his being distracted by the violent
internal politics of the Bounty Hunters Guild.
Besides, thought Boba Fett, I've already done my
part. He touched a probe to the bare join, read off the
voltage, then withdrew it and let the replicating
insulation swarm a thin yellow sheath over the wire. Or
at least most of it, he corrected himself. The ship
repair would be completed soon enough, but he knew there
was still more to be taken care of before the job of
destroying the Bounty Hunters Guild was finished. One
great rift, between the old leadership and the upstarts,
wasn't enough. By his calculations, there would be an
even split between the two groups once the binding agent
of Cradossk had been removed. Some of the elders, who had
always chafed under the old Trandoshan's leadership,
would throw in their lot with the young, impatient bounty
hunters; some of the latter, reluctant to accept Bossk's
leading the breakaway faction, would side with whatever
was left of the Guild's elder council. But on both sides,
Boba Fett would have his ringers and stoolies, feeding
him useful information and helping to drive even more
wedges of suspicion and greed between one bounty hunter
and the next. There were two factions now; soon there
would be dozens. And then, thought Fett with a cold lack
of emotion, it'll be every bounty hunter for himself.
That was something he was looking forward to.
He closed the access panel on the Slave I's curved,
glistening hull and looked up the craft's length. The
muzzle of the laser cannon, a newer and sleeker
instrument of destruction than D'harhan had ever carried,
could just be seen as it pointed toward the wash of stars
overhead. D'harhan was dead, another piece of the past
erased as though it had never happened at all; eventually
all the past would be gone, consumed as if by the
annihilating energy at the heart of the darkest stars. .
. .
And that was fine with him as well.
Boba Fett moved over to another panel, close to the
ship's anterior maneuvering jets. With the code function
embedded in his glove's fingertip, he opened the panel
&nb
sp; and got to work, tracing and reconfiguring the intricate
circuits.
The blaster fire from the compound continued, like
the electrical discharge of a distant storm.
Someday, Fett supposed, the destruction of the Bounty
Hunters Guild would be nothing but memory. But not his;
he had no use for memory.
All remembering was in vain. . . .
18
NOW
She watched him at work. Or getting ready for work.
His kind of work, though Neelah. That was what was
indicated by the weapons, all the various mechanisms of
reducing the galaxy's inhabitants to scattered pieces of
bleeding or charred tissue. Boba Fett had returned from
the land of the dead, from its gray portal in which he'd
slept, and was ready to fill his hands again with death.
"Which one's that?" Neelah pointed to the brutally
efficient-looking object, all matte-black metal and
embedded electronics, in Boba Fett's grasp. An empty lens
at the rear of the weapon's metal glittered in a curve of
crosshaired glass. "What does it do?"
"Rocket launcher." Boba Fett didn't look up from his
painstaking labors. With a tool as delicate as a humanoid
hair, improvised from one of the medical droids' IV
syringes, he scraped a dried mucuslike substance, a
remnant of the weapon's time in the Sarlacc's gut, out of
its intricate circuits. "And what it does, if you know
how to work it, is kill a lot of creatures. At once. At a
nice long distance away."
"Thanks." She felt one corner of her mouth twisting
in an expression that would have been ugly if there had
been an audience for it. "But I could figure that much
out. Don't think you have to patronize me. I was just
trying to pass a little time with something like
conversation. But I guess that's not within your range of
skills."
He made no answer. The motions of the wire-stiff tool
and its sharpened point were reflected in the visor of
his helmet as he continued working.
The warhead of the rocket launcher's missile appeared
in Neelah's memory as well. She had seen it before, the
tapered point rising above Fett's shoulder, on a
trajectory parallel to his spine. Now, from where it lay
on top of the bounty hunter's crossed legs, it seemed to
be aimed at a dusty outcropping of the Dune Sea's
fundamental rocks. The oppressive suns glazed the
landscape with dry, shimmering heat, still visible in
reversed colors when Neelah closed her eyes. Even in the
shade of a sloping entrance to Boba Fett's underground
cache, the hard radiation of the desert light cracked her
dehydrated lips and baked her lungs with each fiery
breath.
"You should drink more fluids." The blurry shape of
the taller medical droid rolled up in front of her. "To
replace the ones constantly being extracted from your
body." A jointed appendage held out a canister of water,
part of the life-support supplies that Boba Fett had
hidden here sometime after starting his short-lived
employment with Jabba the Hutt, who hadn't lasted much
longer than the job. "The results, physiologically
speaking, could be severe otherwise."
Neelah took the container from SHS1-B and drained it
in one long swallow, head tossed back and thin rivulets
leaking down both sides of her throat. She wiped her
mouth with the back of her hand and set the can down in
the gravel next to where she sat. SHS1-B trundled over to
another part of the shade cast by the overhanging jut of
rock, where it consulted with its shorter, less
articulate colleague. Another canister stood slowly
evaporating next to Boba Fett; he hadn't touched it since
it had been brought out to him. Redonning his armor, a
set that had been kept under a coded autodestruct lock to
foil any thieves who might have stumbled upon their
hiding place, had transformed him, from a raw-skinned in
valid to the imposing specialist in death that he had
been before falling down the Sarlacc's throat. Sealing
the restored helmet's edge to the uniform's collar had
completed the apotheosis he didn't drink the water,
Neelah realized, because he had become a self-contained
unit, sealed against the frailties of mortal creatures.
Or at least, that was the impression he tried to give.
She leaned back against the mouth of the cave; the
rock's residual heat spread across her shoulder blades.
The day was dead time, a matter of waiting until Dengar
returned from Mos Eisley. When he made it back here-if he
did, she reminded herself; she knew enough of the
spaceport's notorious reputation to be aware that
anything could happen in its various dives and back
alleys-then further plans would be finalized among the
three of them. All depending, of course, upon what Dengar
managed to find out and arrange with his various
contacts.
Boba Fett, at least, had something to keep himself
busy while the rocks' doubled shadows slid farther across
the sands. After they had escaped from the bombing-
shattered remnants of Dengar's subterranean hiding place,
and the regenerated Sarlacc that had wound its tendrils
through the broken stone, only a single night had been
spent in the chill open, their bodies huddled against
each other to keep from freezing. Even if there had been
the means to build a fire, they wouldn't have dared, for
fear of attracting the attention of some nocturnal Tusken
raiding party, crossing the Dune Sea on bantha mounts,
the beasts sniffing out pathways invisible even to daylit
eyes. When the morning had finally come, breaking violet
across the distant mountains ringing the desert, Boba
Fett seemed the strongest of the three humans, as though
in the dark he had absorbed some precious segment of the
others' dwindling energies. He had led the way, stumbling
at first, but then with greater sureness as the landmarks
had grown more recognizable. Like the other mercenaries
and hard types that had worked for the late Jabba-or at
least the smart ones, smart enough not to trust the wily
Hutt-Boba Fett had maintained a stash of crucial supplies
in the wilderness beyond the squat, iron-doored palace.
With that many schemers and back-stabbers all in one
place, including Jabba himself, it had always been a
possibility, if not a probability, that sooner or later
any of the henchmen would find himself on the run,
scrabbling for survival. The tools that Fett had hidden
away-weapons, replacement armor, comm gear-went a long
way to ensure that his surviving would be bought at the
price of any pursuers' death.
The bounty hunter's parsimonious streak, though, was
apparent to Neelah as she sat in the cache's opening-it
had been hollowed out of a sheer rock face, then
camouflaged-and watched Boba Fett reassembling himself,
piece b
y piece. None of the weapons or components of his
battle armor that had been damaged by the Sarlacc's
digestive secretions was discarded until Fett had
examined and judged it beyond repair. He had already
salvaged most of the personal armaments with which Neelah
had seen him equipped back at Jabba's palace; a small
blaster pistol had been reduced in the Sarlacc's gut to a
fused lump of metal, and the propulsive charges for some
of the larger ammunition had leaked away, rendering the
shells useless. Those were replaced with exact duplicates
from the sealed containers that Fett had dragged out from
the cache's deep interior.
Like watching a droid, thought Neelah, not for the
first time. Or some piece of Imperial battle machinery,
capable of making repairs to itself. She had wrapped her
arms around her knees and continued to watch as the human
elements of Boba Fett had been progressively submerged
and hidden beneath the layers of armor and weaponry, the
hard mechanicals seemingly replacing the soft, wounded
tissue beneath. The narrow visor of his restored helmet
took away the last vestiges of humanity, the gaze of eyes
like any other man's, caught in acid-ravaged flesh, its
fevered blood seeping through the pores. ...
"He's pushing himself past all therapeutic limits."
SHS1-B's high-pitched voice fussed from a place just
outside Neelah's awareness. "Both le-XE and I have tried
communicating with him, in an effort to make him aware of
the necessity for rest. Otherwise, the potential for a
serious physiological relapse will escalate to a life-
threatening status."
Neelah glanced over at the medical droid that had
trundled up next to her. "Really?" The ends of the
droid's jointed appendages clicked against each other, as
though imitating a nervous reaction of living creatures.
"That's what you're all in a stew about?"
"Of course." SHSl-B turned the lenses of its di
agnostician optics toward her. "That is our programmed
function. If there was some way to initiate a change in
our basic design, even by means of a complete memory
wipe, you can be assured that le-XE and I would
immediately submit to it, no matter now disorienting it
might be. Patching up and mending supposedly sentient
creatures, who continually insist upon placing themselves
in dangerous situations, is a tiresome and never-ending