Hard Merchandise

15

"How long do you think we'll have to wait around here?" Dengar turned from the Hound's controls and glanced over his shoulder. "Before he shows up?" "I don't know," said Neelah. "Hope it's soon ..." They had dropped out of hyperspace and into the Oranessan system, followed by the KDY security cruiser, just as Boba Fett's scheme had predicted. Since then, Dengar had kept the Hound's Tooth at the precise speed that their strategy called for: just fast enough to stay out of reach of the pursuing cruiser. The mottled orb of Oran-u, the system's largest planet, filled the forward viewport as the chase continued.

All that Neelah and Dengar needed now was for Boba Fett to have successfully completed his mission on Tatooine and then rendezvous with them here, as they had agreed upon back at Balancesheet's freighter. Nee-lah had half expected Fett to already be here waiting for them; that sort of thing was exactly his style. But in-stead, when the Hound's Tooth had reached its destina-tion, they had been greeted with the disappointing reality of empty space, with no sign of the smaller Head hunter craft, with its hunt saboteur pilot and bounty hunter passenger.

"The way I see it," fretted Dengar, "is that there's a couple of things that could go sour right about now.

"Either something happened to Boba Fett and Suh-lak on the way to Tatooine or on the way here—like them getting intercepted and blown away by one of the other bounty hunters gunning for 'em—in which case they're not going to be showing up here at all. Or Boba Fett had some other plan of his own all along, and he's double-crossed us, which would mean that he never intended to meet up with us here at all." That notion made Dengar grit his teeth while giving a slow shake of his head. "Then we'd be waiting around here for nothing."

"I don't think that last one's too likely," said Neelah. Leaning back against the cockpit hatchway, she crossed her arms tight across her breast, as though that were the only way to keep her jangling nerves under control. "He's got reasons for hooking up with us again. Not be-cause he's got any great affection for either one of us, but because he'd still be thinking there'd be some way of gen-erating a profit from me."

"Maybe so." Dengar didn't seem convinced. "It's just that he's got such a devious mind. But then, I knew that before I ever became partners with him."

"There's another possibility." It was one that had been gnawing away for a while now, even before they had caught sight of the Oranessan system approaching in the distance. "The worst one."

"What's that?"

"Just this," said Neelah grimly. "That nothing hap-pened to Boba Fett on the way out to Tatooine, and nothing happened to them on the way here. And nothing happened on Tatooine, either."

Dengar's brow creased with puzzlement. "What do you mean?"

"Don't you get it? What if Boba Fett gets all the way to Tatooine, finds this Bossk creature—and Bossk doesn't have this fabricated evidence that was taken out of that cargo droid, back on Fett's ship." Neelah's voice tight-ened in her throat. "Maybe it doesn't exist anymore. Maybe Bossk got rid of it; maybe he decided it wasn't worth anything, and he destroyed it somewhere along the way."

"You're forgetting something," said Dengar. "Bossk has already put the word out that he's sitting on this stuff, looking for a buyer for it."

"That doesn't mean he has it." Neelah shook her head in disgust. "Boba Fett isn't the only bounty hunter with a devious mind. Bossk could've gotten rid of, or lost track of it in a hundred different ways, be-fore he had any idea of its value. Then when he heard that Kuat of Kuat was looking for it and was ready to pay a high price for it, he might have decided to see if he could scam the money for it from Kuat, without actually delivering it. Or Bossk might have thought that if it was so valuable, the prospect of getting it back would be a perfect enticement for luring Boba Fett within striking range—you know what kind of a grudge Bossk has against Fett. This might've been Bossk's way of finally settling up old scores—or at least try-ing to."

"Yeah . . . maybe so." Dengar slumped in the pilot's chair, looking deflated. "I hadn't thought about anything like that. But I guess you're right. It's possible."

Neelah had been doing plenty of thinking like that. All the way from Balancesheet's freighter and the drifting fragments of old Kud'ar Mub'at's web, her mind had been ceaselessly turning over one bleak idea after an-other. All of them processed out as the complete dashing of her hopes, of any chance of answering the remaining questions about her past. Those hopes had been raised from the dead, more thoroughly than Dengar and Boba Fett had revived Kud'ar Mub'at, by the assembler's suc-cessor and its surprise about the fabricated evidence be-ing back on Tatooine. Whether that was true or not, it had at least renewed Neelah's faith in there being still one more slender thread that would lead them out of the blind alley to which all their searching up until now had brought them.

But if, as she couldn't keep herself from fearing, the last possible clue no longer existed—if it had been a fool's errand on which Boba Fett had gone to Tatooine— then she had no idea of where she would be able to turn next. In a galaxy consumed with the struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, the chances were slim for someone with only a name as the key to the mysteries of her past, a name and its connection to the ruling families of the planet Kuat. For all she knew, it might have been the powerful Kuat of Kuat who had ordered the wiping of her memory and the abduction from her homeworld. And she'd already seen evidence enough, in the bombing raid on the Dune Sea, that Kuat was not someone who would forgo murderous violence to achieve his ends. If she were to blithely show up on the planet Kuat, seeking whatever position in its ranks of nobles that had been stolen from her, she might well be placing herself in the hands of those who had sought to eliminate her once before. Kuat might indeed be the one place where the answers could be found to the mysteries surrounding her—but it could just as easily be where certain death awaited her. With-out Boba Fett returning from Tatooine with the fabri-cated evidence that had been hidden in the cargo droid aboard his ship, she had no chance of knowing which would be the case.

He either meets up with us here, she thought, gazing above Dengar's head toward the viewport, and has the evidence with him ...

Neelah left the thought uncompleted in her mind. It was something she didn't want to contemplate any further.

And—she realized—she didn't have to.

"Look." Neelah pointed to the viewport. "Right there..."

Dengar had been monitoring the relative position of the KDY security cruiser behind them, on the dis-play from the Hound's rear scanner. He looked up and saw the bright spot of light in the midst of the field of stars. Bright and growing brighter, straight ahead of them.

"It's pretty small, from the looks of it. And fast. Maybe ..." Quickly, Dengar punched up the approach-ing craft's ID profile. "It's him," said Dengar, dropping his tensed shoulders in relief. "It's that Headhunter ship of N'dru Suhlak's. So Boba Fett has to be aboard it, right?" Smiling, Dengar glanced over his shoulder at Neelah. "I mean, it stands to reason—Suhlak wouldn't have come here to rendezvous with us without Fett, would he?"

"No—" Neelah shook her head. "He wouldn't have any reason to." So that set of possibilities, of the total that she had been obsessing over, was ruled out. At least Boba Fett hadn't abandoned them; she and Dengar were still part of whatever plans he was pursuing. "Now all we have to see is whether he found what he went to Tatooine for."

"We'll have to do a running transfer, in order to get him aboard." Dengar pointed to the image from the rear scanner. The cruiser from the Kuat Drive Yards' security division was still the same distance behind the Hound's Tooth. "If we come to a halt, even for a couple of min-utes, they'll be on top of us."

"Can we do that?"

"It's tricky, but possible." The comm unit mike was already in Dengar's hand. "Suhlak's Headhunter is com-ing within range. I'll get the details worked out with Boba Fett. You'll need to run the controls here in the cockpit while I man the transfer hatchway."

She listened as first Suhlak's, then Boba Fett's voice came over the cockpit speaker. As Dengar and Fett quickly calculated the necessary matching velocities for the ships, Neelah fought the impulse to ask—demand, rather— what had been found and brought back from Tatooine.

You've waited this long, she scolded herself. You can wait a few moments longer.

Left by herself in the Hound's cockpit, Neelah kept her hands poised on the thruster engine controls. Suhlak had brought the Z-95 Headhunter up alongside the Hound's Tooth, carefully modulating his speed and nar-rowing the gap between the two ships' hulls. A muted thump sounded through the frame, followed by the sharper vibrations of the transfer hatchway locking into place.

The three men showed up in the cockpit area at last, with Suhlak trailing behind the bounty hunters. "I got a stake in this now," Suhlak said to Neelah with a grin. "I didn't want to miss any of the show."

"You found it," said Neelah. She had spotted the ob-ject, a black rectangle a few inches thick, in one of Boba Fett's hands. The data recording unit trailed a few loose connectors, as though Fett had been working on it while en route. "You got it from Bossk."

"That poor guy." Dengar shook his head pityingly. "I hope Bossk was smart enough not to put up too much of a fight. What kind of condition did you leave him in? Or is he even still alive?"

"When I left him," said Boba Fett, "he still was. And not in too bad a shape."

"Who cares about him?" Neelah could conceal her impatience no longer. "You got it—that's all that matters."

"Correction." Suhlak pointed to the rear scanner dis-play. "You've still got a KDY security cruiser on your tail. And"—he leaned toward the control panel, peering at the image—"it's gaining on us."

"I'll take care of that." Boba Fett took over the pilot's chair from Neelah. She stood back and watched as the bounty hunter's hands fastened onto the thruster engine controls. With his hands inside the Trandoshan-sized grooves on the panel, Fett slammed the controls to their maximumAnd nothing happened.

"The engines have cut out," said Dengar. Reaching past Boba Fett, he tapped a forefinger against the power consumption gauges. "Take a look at that." The glowing red digits had dwindled to zero. He pointed to the indicator lights for the navigational jets. "Every-thing's gone down. This ship's not going anywhere."

"What's happening?" Neelah looked from the image on the rear scanner display, showing the KDY cruiser rapidly approaching, to the bounty hunters' faces. "What's gone wrong?"

"Good question," said Boba Fett. "If it was just the main thruster engines going dead, or the navigational jets by themselves, it could be a simple systems malfunc-tion. But for all of them to go out at once—something else did that to them. And deliberately."

"Like what?"

"Right now, I don't know—but let's take a look at the comm unit log." With a couple more commands tapped out inside the control grooves, Boba Fett brought a dif-ferent set of data scrolling across the smaller display screen. "There's part of the explanation." He pointed to the last line of digits and letters.

"A coded pulse was re-ceived from the vector directly behind us—obviously, from the KDY cruiser. We didn't hear anything on the comm unit speakers because the pulse didn't include a transceive request. So the pulse was picked up and acted upon by some other part of the Hound's operational circuitry."

"Hey—don't worry about it." The hunt saboteur Suhlak's voice broke into the discussion. "I can fix it."

"You can?" Standing next to Suhlak, Dengar looked at him in surprise.

"Sure." Before Dengar could react, Suhlak reached over and plucked the blaster pistol out of Dengar's belt. Suhlak took a quick step backward, covering the others with the weapon raised in his hand. "At least as far as I'm concerned."

Neelah glanced up from the blaster to Suhlak's face. "What're you doing?"

"Figure it out." Suhlak backed toward the cockpit area's hatchway. "That KDY cruiser has obviously got some way of keeping this ship stuck here—but it can't do it to my Headhunted So I'm outta here. And you peo-ple can deal with whoever's aboard the cruiser." Still keeping the blaster trained on them, Suhlak set his foot on the top tread of the ladder down to the Hound's cargo area. "Don't bother to ask if any of you can come along. I'm not going to risk having that cruiser chasing after me."

Boba Fett watched as the hunt saboteur started down the ladder. "If you think you're going to get the cut we agreed on, you're wrong."

"Chances are good that there won't be anything to get a share of once that KDY cruiser finishes with you." Suh-lak's head and the upraised blaster were just visible above the lower rim of the hatchway. "I'd rather cut my losses and keep my skin intact, if you know what I mean."

A few moments after Suhlak had made his exit, they heard the noises through the hull, of the Headhunter dis-engaging from the transfer hatch. In the forward view-port, the smaller ship could be seen, speeding away from the Hound's Tooth and then disappearing among the stars.

"That's one person who's managed to save himself." Dengar slowly shook his head. "Now what happens to the rest of us?"

"We're about to discover that," said Boba Fett. "The KDY cruiser has already come within targeting range, and it didn't fire on us. So they must have something else in mind, other than just blowing us away."

"Somebody must want to talk, then." Dengar pointed to the viewport. "We're moving; they've got a tractor beam locked on us."

A voice came over the comm unit speaker: "This is Kodir of Kuhlvult, head of security for Kuat Drive Yards." A female's voice, crisply articulating. "Am I cor-rect in assuming that the bounty hunter Boba Fett is aboard this ship?"

He hit the transmit button on the panel. "You're speaking to him now."

"Then I'll be transferring over with a couple of my people. I want to have a meeting with you. And I don't want any funny stuff."

"What do you think I'm likely to try," said Fett, "with a cruiser sitting on top of me?"

"Just keep that in mind." The comm unit connection broke off.

"What do you think she wants?" Neelah glanced from the overhead speaker toward Fett.

"Could be anything. But given that I've returned here from Tatooine with exactly what her boss Kuat of Kuat has been looking for, the chances are slim that it has much to do with anything other than that."

There wasn't time for Neelah to question Boba Fett about what he'd brought back with him. The hull of the Hound's Tooth had already come up against the larger ship's grappling mechanisms and been seized by them. "Let's get down to the cargo area." Boba Fett pushed himself up from the pilot's chair. "We all might as well hear what this person's got to say."

Kodir of Kuhlvult, flanked by two KDY security operatives, proved to be an arrogantly impressive figure, with a full cape falling back from her shoul-ders and brushing the heels of her outspread boots. Neelah found herself gazing intently at the woman's face, searching for any clue that might be revealed there.

"So you're the bounty hunter that I've heard so much about." Kodir's gaze had swept across all three of them and then locked upon Boba Fett's dark-visored helmet. "You have a considerable reputation for surviving in situations where others would have died. Is that luck or intelligence, Fett?"

"Creatures who depend upon luck," replied Boba Fett, "don't survive."

"Well spoken." Kodir nodded in appreciation. "Be-lieve me, I bear you no ill intent; I would just as soon have you alive as not. So whether it's luck or brains, your string doesn't have to be broken now—if you don't want it to."

"All right." Boba Fett folded his arms across his chest. "So what is it that you do want?"

"Please." A smile lifted one corner of Kodir's mouth. "Let's not make this any more difficult than necessary. You're aware, I imagine, that Kuat of Kuat seeks certain things—"

"Including my death."

"Only as an incidental matter. And that merely as a way of preventing a certain item from falling into the wrong hands." Kodir's gaze narrowed, the smile turn-ing cruder and more knowing. "Now, if that certain item were to be placed in Kuat's hands, then I can as-sure you that he would have no interest in your death at all."

"And what makes you believe I have this . . . 'cer-tain item,' as you put it?" The gaze from the darkvisored helmet remained level with hers. "If you're referring to the fabricated evidence purportedly linking the late Prince Xizor with Imperial stormtrooper raids on Tatooine, then I can give you equal assurance that at the time Kuat of Kuat tried to kill me before, it wasn't in my possession."

"Ah ... but that was then, and this is now. It doesn't matter what the situation used to be; it only matters if you have that fabricated evidence with you now." The smile disappeared from Kodir's face. "And don't bother saying that you don't have it. You were brought to this rendezvous point by a ship that was re-ported having been seen recently at the planet Tatoo-ine; we've also just heard that your fellow bounty hunter Bossk was seeking to find a buyer for exactly that item we've been seeking. It'd be too much of a coincidence for your journey to Tatooine to be un-related to what Bossk had for sale. And in fact"her smile reappeared, more unpleasantly—"I'm some-what grateful to you for having gone to Tatooine and acquired the item for us; you've saved me the journey and the potential unpleasantness of dealing with a creature like Bossk. He doesn't have the same reputa-tion for being a levelheaded businessman that you do, Boba Fett."

"I'm enough of a businessman," replied Fett, "to lis-ten to a good offer."

"Then I'll make you an excellent one." Kodir of Kuhlvult signaled with one hand to her accompany-ing KDY security operatives; they immediately drew blaster pistols from the holsters on the belts and covered the two bounty hunters and Neelah with them. "And it's an offer open to everyone: hand over this fab-ricated evidence and you won't be killed." She spread both her hands apart. "What could be a better offer than that?"

Dengar broke the resulting silence. "It's up in the cockpit. Stashed by the pilot's chair."

"You idiot." Neelah glared at him. "Now we'll never "Don't be too hard on him," said Kodir. "Your associ-ate's acceptance of my offer, while appreciated, merely saves me time and effort. Even if you had gone to some effort to hide the desired item, we would have found it soon enough after you were all... gotten out of the way, so to speak. Even if we'd had to take this ship apart bolt by bolt; I haven't gone to this much effort not to get my hands on it."

One of the KDY security operatives had already climbed up the ladder to the cockpit. He returned carrying in one hand the object Boba Fett had brought back from Tatooine. Pulling his blaster from its hol-ster again, the operative resumed his position flanking Kodir.

"Perfect." Kodir looked at the object that the opera-tive had just given her. She turned it over and examined the code marks on the underside. "Exactly what I came for." Kodir looked up at Boba Fett.

"It's been a plea-sure doing business with you. I've enjoyed it so much that I'm actually going to keep my end of our bargain. After all ... you've been useful to Kuat Drive Yards in the past; there's no saying when we might find you handy to have around again. Plus, you're not going anywhere soon in this ship—are you? So that should keep you from interfering with any of my immediate plans."

Kodir signaled to the KDY operatives. They began backing toward the transfer hatch, while still keeping their blasters pointed at the Hound's occupants.

"Sorry things didn't go as well for you as you might have hoped." Holding the black data recording unit in the crook of one arm, Kodir smiled even less humorously than before. "But I've had a very good day—surprisingly so. I not only got what I originally wanted, but I found an unexpected bonus as well." She gestured to Neelah. "You—you're coming with us."

Neelah stiffened, regarding the other woman with suspicion. "Why should I?"

"Oh, I could give you all sorts of reasons. But there's really just one important one, as far as you're con-cerned." Kodir of Kuhlvult tilted her head to one side, studying Neelah's reactions. "You've got questions, don't you? Questions that you want answers for—I know you do. Well, I've got the answers to them. That should make it a simple decision for you."

A moment passed, then Neelah slowly nodded. She stepped away from Dengar and Boba Fett, and followed the first of the two KDY security operatives into the transfer hatch. Behind her as she stepped toward the other ship, she could hear Kodir give one last taunting farewell to the two bounty hunters.

"Good luck," said Kodir to Dengar and Fett. "When you're outsmarted and outgunned, that's the best you can hope for."

Glancing over her shoulder, Neelah saw the transfer hatch seal shut.

Kodir pushed her forward. "Let's get going. We've got an appointment to keep."