The Bounty Hunter Wars 1 The Mandalorian Armor

Standing against Vader-even in this insubstantial form-was like facing radiation hard enough to strip flesh from bone. Not for the first time Xizor felt an invisible hand settle around his throat. His own willpower kept the breath sliding in and out of his lungs. But if Vader were to unleash his complete wrath, the force of will might not be enough. Xizor had seen others, the highest-ranking officers in the Empire's forces, clutching their throats and gasping for air, writhing like a Dantooinian garfish caught on a barbed trawling line. Perhaps wisely, Vader tended to avoid such displays in front of the Emperor; why tempt the old man into showing how much greater was his own mastery of the Force that penetrated and bound the galaxy together?

"There is no attraction for me, Lord Vader." As always before, he wondered just how much Vader knew. How much he might suspect, and how much he could prove.

Vader's disdain for the galaxy's less reputable schemers and thugs was well known; he dealt with such as bounty hunters only on rare occasions. Which is to my benefit, thought Xizor. For Vader and the Imperial high command, criminals and mercenaries were all vermin that would be swept away, and soon if their latest plans went as expected. So that kind is left to me-he had built his own shadow empire, that of the Black Sun, out of exactly such rejected dregs. If the Emperor and Vader didn't want to dirty their hands, then he had no such tender scruples.

"I do what I must," said Xizor, not untruthfully. The fact that he was still standing here, in Emperor Palpatine's private sanctuary, and not cut down by the Emperor's or Vader's swift wrath, indicated that Black Sun still operated in the eclipse of its secrecy, for now, thought Xizor. He turned toward the Emperor. "This sacrifice," he lied, "I also make on your behalf. Judge as well, those who think it beneath them."

"Excellent." The Emperor displayed a cold smile. "If you had no other value to me, Xizor, I would still require your presence, just for the ... stimulating effect you have on Lord Vader."

He already hates my entrails, thought Xizor as he glanced over at the black-robed figure. Nothing had been lost in this exchange.

"But you still haven't answered my questions." The Emperor leaned forward, his sharp gaze fastening on Xizor. "I summoned you here for a reason. Let us set aside, for the time being, all this fractious comparison between your loyalty and that of Lord Vader. You say you have been busy on my behalf... ."

"On yours, my lord, and the Empire's."

"One and the same thing, Xizor. As all the worlds shall soon know." The Emperor settled back in the throne.

"Very well. Your doings are not something which you have discussed with either Lord Vader or myself. Either you have shown commendable initiative-or foolhardy rashness."

Any trace of amusement had drained out of the Emperor's voice. "Now is your chance to convince me that the former is the case."

He had known that this time would come. It was one thing to go out and set one's schemes in motion-that was the easy part-but it was another to come back here and defend those schemes when one's life or death depended upon eloquence. And, thought Xizor, lying eloquence, at that.

"As great as your empire is, my lord, it is still at peril." The combined gaze of Vader and the Emperor made him feel as transparent as glass, as though their mastery over the Force enabled them to look straight into the essence he kept so carefully shielded. "Great are your powers, but they are still not enough to achieve all that you want."

"You say nothing new." Contempt showed in the Emperor's eyes. "That is the same thing that my admirals tell me. They are not believers, as Lord Vader is; they doubt the existence of any power that they cannot unleash with the push of a button. They doubt, even when they've had the edifying experience of feeling the Force crushing the life out of them. Doubt weakens and makes fools out of such creatures." An unwavering hand raised and pointed toward Xizor. "You're not such a fool, are you?"

Xizor bowed his head. "I do not doubt, my lord."

"That's why I'm still listening to you." The Em peror's hand lowered and stroked the arm of the throne.

"My patience is such, however, that I listen to the Imperial admirals as well, fools that they are. Even fools say wise things, from time to time. And that is why I gave permission for their great project, the construction of what they called the Death Star-"

"You should have listened to me," said Vader. The rush of his breath sounded louder and angrier. "The Rebellion was growing even then, and the admirals wasted your time on such folly. I told them that the Death Star, when it was completed, would be a machine and nothing more. Its power would be nothing compared to that which you already possess." Vader's voice darkened in tone, indicating the depths of his annihilating temper. "And I was proved right, was I not, my lord?"

"Indeed you were, Vader." The Emperor gave a single nod. "But even in the wretchedness of their folly, my admirals were still right about one thing. Their little minds are made of the same unenlightened stuff as are the minds of most of the galaxy's inhabitants. They see things the same way-and other things are invisible to them. The Jedi Knights are no longer; they were the only ones, other than ourselves, who could see the Force for what it is. These lesser creatures are blind to that which moves the stars in all the worlds' skies and the blood in the veins of those below. They need something they can see-that was what my admirals hoped to give them with the Death Star. Its power-such as it was-lay within the comprehension of all the lesser creatures; it would have evoked the fear and obedience that the subtleties of the Force would take a great deal longer to achieve. You were right that it was a machine and nothing more. But still a useful machine. A tool. When all that is required is a hammer, it is folly to turn the universe's primal energy to such mundane purposes."

Darth Vader stood unmoved by the Emperor's words. "I trust that you will remember one thing. A hammer can be broken, as can any other tool. The Death Star was destroyed. But the Force is eternal."

"I won't forget, Vader. But for now, all such simple tools are the concern of my admirals. Let them occupy themselves with building better ones, if they can. We have already distracted ourselves from our purpose here."

The Emperor turned back toward Prince Xizor. "You say the Empire is at risk. You tell me nothing new. I am aware of the threat presented by the Rebel Alliance-a threat that will be extinguished in due time. But the level of your concern, Xizor, is what I find surprising. It sounds like doubt to me, no matter what you say to the contrary. And doubt should be eliminated at the source."

"Not doubt, but the truth." The edges of Xizor's own intricately stitched robes trailed across his boots as he folded his arms across his chest. "You cannot vanquish the Alliance without creating new threats to your authority. As your power increases and becomes closer to absolute, so does an unavoidable hazard. A hazard that is woven into the very fiber of the Empire."

"He speaks nonsense, my lord."

"Nonsense to those who cannot see." Xizor gazed from the corner of his eye at the black-garbed figure standing next to him. "Perhaps Lord Vader is blinded by the Force.

After all, his mastery of it is not equal to your own."

The invisible hand Xizor felt at his throat suddenly tightened, as hard and constricting as an iron band. Even Vader's mere image had the power to kill. Xizor's chin was thrust backward, the vision in his eyes filled with trapped blood.

"Leave him be, Vader." The Emperor's voice came from somewhere beyond that darkening red cloud. "I'm intrigued by what he has to say. I want to hear the rest. Before I make my decision."

The hand let go, and breath flooded back into Xizor's lungs. He had kept his arms folded throughout the brief ordeal, determined not to claw at his throat the way he had seen Vader's other, weaker victims do. But I won't forget, brooded Xizor. The other's touch, invisible or not, was an affront to the haughty pride that was characteristic of all Falleens. The day would come when all such offenses would be paid for.

"I speak better," said Xizor, "when the Emperor keeps a tight leash on his underlings." His voice rasped in his throat; when he swallowed, he tasted his own blood. "But the quality of those who serve my lord is exactly that on which I need to speak." His slit-pupiled gaze took in Vader and the Emperor. "You have both spoken of the fools who serve the Empire; necessary fools, but fools nonetheless. Do you think the situation is going to get any better, especially now that the Rebellion courts all those with an independent streak to their natures?"

A sneer sounded in Vader's voice. "They seal their fates with their 'independent' natures, as you describe them. The Rebels will be crushed."

"Undoubtedly so," said Xizor. "But that day of triumph is dekyed by the Emperor's own power. That seems a riddle, but it is one that can be solved by those with eyes to see."

"Go on." The Emperor gestured toward Xizor. "You have my full attention. Make sure you use it well."

He had prepared for this moment; the words were already chosen. He had only to speak them. And then await the outcome of his gamble.

"As I said The problem is with those who serve you."

Xizor pointed to the high transparisteel windows behind the throne, with their vista of limitless stars. "On all the worlds that are within your grasp, those who resist your power will be crushed; Lord Vader speaks the truth about that. But what does that leave you? Fools such as the Imperial admirals; fools who cannot even recognize the existence of the Force. If they are not fools before they enter your service, they become so soon after. How can it be otherwise? Your power annihilates their will, their capacity to judge and make decisions, their ability to operate on their own. Not everyone in the galaxy has a nature as strong as mine or Lord Vader's."

"This is true," said Emperor Palpatine. "And it is not a matter that has gone unnoticed by me. I see those who have gone over to the side of the Rebellion, and I recognize their strengths. It is a cruel waste to destroy them, no matter how necessary that might be." His voice dropped, low and musing. "How much better it would be if they could be brought over to our side... ."

Xizor concealed a shiver of disgust. As far-reaching as his own ambitions were, they paled by comparison to Palpatine's. There was something in the withered figure that didn't want just to control the galaxy's sentient creatures, but to consume them the way a greedy Hutt swallowed its wriggling food. The small and weak ones will go first, thought Xizor. And then someday it'll be the turn of Vader and me. That would be the reward for their loyalty. To be consumed last ...

Survival as well as ambition had dictated the cre ation of Black Sun. The Rebels were brave idiots to openly oppose the Emperor's might; for himself, Xizor had already decided that an existence in the shadows, the darkness in which criminals always wrapped themselves, was preferable to the Empire's insatiable appetite.

"There are those," said Xizor, "who would prefer death rather than serve the Empire."

Palpatine gave a small shrug. "So be it."

"But in the meantime you must deal with those whom you do command. And many of those are-let us be realistic about this, my lord-not of the first caliber. Some were born fools, others achieved idiocy through their own efforts, but many of the rest simply had their minds and spirits obliterated by your power." Xizor unfolded his arms so he could spread his hands apart, palms outward.

"Fear is an effective motivator, but it is also a corrosive one. It has an effect inside those who suffer it-"

"Are you one of those, Xizor?"

He shook his head. "Since I do not fear death, I do not fear that which might cause it. I fear your disapproval, my lord." Another lie. "If your displeasure is sufficient cause for my death, then I will have earned that fate."

"You haven't displeased me," said the Emperor. "Yet.

Continue."

"Not many of your servants, my lord, would risk your anger by telling you what you need to know. If some call me rash"-he glanced over at Vader-"you nevertheless might come to value my excess of courage. For this is the truth That which makes you powerful, that makes sentient creatures into tools in your hands, is the same thing that makes those tools weak and ineffective. It is an unavoidable concomitant of great power. There are those that I command, though not at a scale comparable to you, and I can see it in their eyes. And if you wish to crush the Rebellion, you will need the strongest possible forces at your call. I have contacts, spies that I have planted within the Alliance, and they have informed me of both the Rebels' plans and their determination to achieve them. They'll stop at nothing to achieve your overthrow; that's how insane their hunger for freedom is." He understood how the Rebels felt; if he hadn't cast his lot in with Black Sun, he could easily have joined the Alliance. "You will win, of course, my lord; power such as yours always wins. But not without cunning, and not without the services of your underlings. And that's where the problem lies. The more overwhelming the control that you establish over your empire, and as more and more of the universe's sentient creatures come under your domin ion, the more you risk losing the very elements you need to complete your galaxy-wide hegemony and defend it from the small but growing forces of the Rebellion."

Lord Vader spoke up. "At one time I would have said that such words were nonsense, if not close to treason.

However, I'm forced to admit that Prince Xizor may speak truth. I would not have had the difficulties that I've experienced with the Imperial high command if their brains were not addled with cowardice. But then, if your admirals were wiser creatures, the Death Star would not have been destroyed so easily."

"Precisely so." Things were going better than Xizor had hoped; to have Vader agree with him about anything was a surprise. "The Empire, by its very nature, destroys that which it needs to grow and survive. Take the Imperial stormtroopers, for example; you have trained them to obey, to fight, and to die in the service of the Empire ... but not to think. The same holds true with practically everyone else throughout the Empire's chain of command, right up to the topmost ranks; most of your underlings, my lord, lack any creative spark, any capability of deep analysis or real cunning; that's all been beaten out of them, crushed by your power. But the fledgling elements of the Rebellion do possess those characteristics; that's why they're in the Rebellion. Foolish they may be, to the point of being suicidal; nevertheless, their rebellious nature is exactly that which makes them a threat to the Empire."

The Emperor nodded, mulling over Xizor's words.

"You're very eloquent on this matter. I don't have to worry about you showing initiative, do I?" Palpatine raised his head, showing his unpleasant smile. "So what would you have me do about my servants? Perhaps I should just be ... kinder to them. Would that work?" Sarcasm turned his voice darker and uglier. "Or else I should just throw away the power I hold over them. But then, what power would I have left?"

"It's not a matter of throwing away power, my lord.

Even as they are, your servants have their uses. A hammer doesn't need a mind or a spirit to fulfill the purpose of he who holds it. Your admirals obey your orders; that is sufficient for them. The Imperial stormtroopers are tools for creating the desired level of terror on your subject planets; they would be less terrifying if they were capable of thought. But they are like machines, right to the core that no longer exists in them; set upon their course, they obey and die and kill, with no possibility of swaying them from their orders, by appeal to reason or emotion. That is how it should be; that is how these servants are most useful to you and to the Empire's glory." With a nod of his head, Xizor indicated the stars slowly wheeling behind the throne. "Nothing is achieved by throwing away those tools, my lord, however limited their uses may be. But what you must find are other tools, ones that are not within the absolute grasp of your power."

"I think," said the Emperor, "that I already have such tools, and such servants. Standing here in front of me."

"Just so." Lord Vader's image regarded Xizor for a moment, then turned again toward the Emperor. "And you must decide whether such a tool's usefulness is greater or less than the danger it represents to the Empire."

Back to where we were before, thought Xizor. If Vader had appeared to agree with him, it had been only for a moment. And only for the purpose of driving another wedge between the Emperor and any of Vader's rivals for influence. Someday he and I will come to grips with each other. With grim determination, Xizor looked forward to that confrontation with Darth Vader. And then we'll settle things, once and for all.

The Emperor spoke up. "When that happens," Palpatine said coolly, "it will be a judgment laid upon you as well, Lord Vader."

"Let your judgment be on our accomplishments, my lord." Xizor's gesture took in both himself and Vader. "And on our service to you. But as I said, the Empire requires other servants and tools. And those cannot be such as your stormtroopers and admirals, or even such as Lord Vader and myself. To destroy the Rebellion, to crush once and for all the resistance that has grown against your power, you must employ those who have sworn no loyalty to you."

"I think, Prince Xizor, that you may be increasing the dangers to the Empire rather than lessening them."

"Then I have yet to make my meaning clear to you, my lord. Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

The day will come when the Rebellion is no more, when your grasp of all the galaxy's worlds will be final and never-ending. Then you will have no need of servants and tools with minds of their own. You may, perhaps, have no need of me. But that is no concern of mine; my fate is nothing compared to the glory of the Empire. But that time is not yet here. In this time you must take into your hand the most dangerous tools. If a vibroblade's edge is sharp enough to cut both ways, then he who uses it must be careful. But the only thing more dangerous than picking it up is the failure to do so."

"You've thought this over a great deal, Prince Xizor." The Emperor's cold, deep-set eyes studied him. "I can hear in your words the sound of well-polished gears meshing together. You seek to convince me. Very well; you have. To some degree. But what I haven't heard from you is what these sharp-edged tools are, that I should bend to my purposes."

"That answer is very simple," said Xizor. "The tools you need are those individuals known as the bounty hunters."

Vader's words broke in, deeper and even more contempt- filled. "We have gone here from folly to madness. What the prince seeks to convince you of is nonsense. We waste our time even contemplating it. While Prince Xizor amuses himself with these idiotic notions, the Rebellion marshals its forces and conspires against the Empire."

"Your antipathy to the prince's suggestion seems somewhat extreme, Lord Vader." Beneath the unadorned hood, the Emperor's head tilted to one side. "Have you not employed bounty hunters yourself from time to time?

You have even spoken to me of one, that rather enigmatic individual named Boba Fett. He's been a bounty hunter for long enough to have gained a reputation nearly as fear- inspiring as your own."

"A bounty hunter has his uses," said Vader stiffly.

"The prince is correct about that. But they are limited.

If I've given a few of your credits to any of them, Boba Fett included, it was because they were willing to do those jobs dirty enough to match their own mercenary natures. Bounty hunters come from the sewers of the galaxy; they find it agreeable to troll through various criminal dens, sinkholes of depravity that can be found on any number of planets, and locate those whose greed rather than misplaced idealism has brought them into contact with the Rebellion. Scum seeks out other scum; even our Imperial stormtroopers are incapable of anything but the most rudimentary searches through places like that."

"Exactly," said Xizor. "Even if those were the only uses that bounty hunters had, they would still be of irreplaceable value to the Empire. But they have more than that. Lord Vader uses the word 'mercenary'; he speaks perhaps more tellingly than he realizes." He could sense, even through the dark lenses of Vader's mask, the angry reaction his words provoked. "A bounty hunter is just that a mercenary. Boba Fett and the others like him will do anything for credits. It is greed and not fear that drives them, and that alone marks them as different from your admirals and stormtroopers, my lord. Violence is a commodity for the bounty hunters, not merely the result of followin g orders. Creatures such as those that serve in the Empire's military forces are blind to the deaths and terror they create; they do as much as they are told to, and then they stop, like children's toys whose power sources have run down. Bounty hunters, on the other hand, seek to maximize the return from their efforts; they have an entrepreneurial attitude rarely found, if ever, among your followers."

"Though it is found often enough," said Vader, "among the galaxy's criminal classes."

The suspicion struck Xizor once again, about just how much Vader knew. Or could prove. The difference between those conditions might be what kept Vader silent. For now, thought Xizor.

"If you are referring to such creatures as the Hutts, you are correct." Xizor pointed to the windows full of stars. "And there are others besides them, working away, building up their own little empires and spheres of influence. They'll be dealt with, eventually. The only reasons we should not eliminate them right now is that the Rebellion is a more pressing concern, and the Hutts and their ilk provide an environment for the bounty hunters to flourish in. And that is to our advantage.

Criminals such as the infamous Jabba keep the members of the Bounty Hunters Guild fed on a regular basis so that they're available for our purposes whenever we need them; independent operators such as Boba Fett find a way to survive, and even prosper, no matter what. Since bounty hunters deliver their services to the highest bidder, the Empire can always get the best ones to take care of our dirty work, as Lord Vader would call it. And right now there is a great deal of dirty work that must be dealt with."

"Sewers," grated Vader, "and the vermin that live in them are belter dealt with by draining rather than lying down in them."

"The Rebellion doesn't have the same sort of scruples that you do, Lord Vader." Xizor regarded the black-robed figure through narrowed eyes. "And that is why the Rebellion is a growing danger to us. The Rebels'

desperation leads them to places that the Imperial stormtroopers and all our spies and informers are incapable of entering-or if they do go in there, they don't come back out except as corpses. The creatures that live in those shadows may be scum, but they are clever scum, for the most part. The Rebellion can deal with them, but the Empire can't. We need intermediaries that are just as clever and ruthless, and the only ones that fit the requirements are the bounty hunters."

"Your bickering does not interest me." The Emperor's voice was like the lash of a whip, pulling both Vader's and Xizor's attention toward the throne. Palpatine's hard gaze shifted toward Xizor. "Even if what you say is true-even if, Xizor, you have convinced me that your words contain any wisdom- there are still problems with the course you recommend. True, I prefer terror and fear to any other 1 means of ensuring obedience to my commands; fear obliterates sentient creatures'

essences, and that is always a worthwhile result. But I have no absolute aversion to buying the services the Empire requires, whether from bounty hunters or anyone else. Perhaps Boba Fett and the others have no spirits to be eradicated; if there is still something within them that can be driven by greed, then I can use that. But you still have not convinced me that these bounty hunters are the efficient tools you say they are."

"My lord, I speak only of-"

"Silence." The Emperor grasped the throne's arms and leaned forward, gaze boring into the slit pupils of Xizor's eyes. "There is little that I do not know of in this galaxy. I know more than you can imagine, Xizor; remember that. And 1 know a great deal about Boba Fett and the others, the ones who belong to the Bounty Hunters Guild. Before you ever came to my court, I was aware of Fett; not everything that you regard as a mystery about him is a secret to me. He wears the armor of the Mandalorian warriors; he's earned the right to that armor, by his own prowess. Lord Vader possesses some of the knowledge that belonged to the Mandalorians; I pos sess more. Believe me, you deal with Boba Fett at your own peril. But in that, he is unique among the bounty hunters. You recommend them to me as tools that I can use against the Rebellion; I say that indicates you are a fool, Xizor. The Bounty Hunters Guild is a joke in which I find no amusement."

Xizor bowed his head. "You anticipate the arguments that I wish to make, my lord."

"I anticipate nothing but more idiotic prattle from you. The bounty hunters with which you display such an obsession are a fading remnant of what they once were.

The Bounty Hunters Guild is an organization of senile, aging creatures and incompetent young bumblers. If any of them had the least amount of skills, they would wash their hands of the Guild and go independent like Boba Fett." Deep disgust sounded in the Emperor's voice. "The Guild members band together and cling to each other because they know they would have no chance in the galaxy on their own. That's why Boba Fett has nothing to do with them."

"On that point, my lord, I must respectfully offer a correction." Xizor displayed a thin smile. "The renowned Boba Fett, the most feared bounty hunter in the galaxy, has already applied for membership in the Guild. And I anticipate that Cradossk and the others on the Bounty Hunters Guild council will have no objection to his becoming one of their number."

"That is impossible." Vader's words were flatly emphatic. "I have had enough experience with Boba Fett to know that he would never do such a thing. He values his independence too much, and he has nothing but contempt for the Bounty Hunters Guild. You've gone from unamusing jests, Prince Xizor, to unconvincing lies."

"I neither jest nor lie, Lord Vader." He turned back toward the Emperor on the throne. "Boba Fett has applied for membership in the Bounty Hunters Guild at my instigation. He does not know that it was my idea that he should do so, or that his actions in this matter serve the purposes of the Empire. I used an intermediary to plant the notion in Boba Fett's head, one whose discretion is sufficient for this task." Xizor had no intention of revealing his involvement with the assembler Kud'ar Mub'at; to do so would only heighten Vader's suspicions about his network of shady and outright criminal contacts. "As with everything he does, Boba Fett's actions in this matter are motivated by his own greed." As were Kud'ar Mub'at's; he had gone to the assembler and pitched the scheme to it as the leader of the Black Sun organization, and not as the loyal servant of the Emperor. "His greed matches that of the aged Cradossk and all the rest of the Bounty Hunters Guild.

They all think they have something to gain by this change in their relationship to each other. But it is really you, Emperor Palpatine, that shall reap all the benefits."

"This makes no sense," growled Vader. "How could Boba Fett be convinced that it would be to his advantage to join the Bounty Hunters Guild?"

Xizor turned his knowing half smile in Vader's direction. "It is a rather simpler matter than you think.

My intermediary convinced Boba Fett to join the Guild, not to be one of the Guild's members- but to be the agent of its destruction."

The Emperor nodded in appreciation. "I begin to see aspects of your guile, Prince Xizor, of which I had not been aware."

"In your service, my lord. Think of it You are as knowledgeable as Lord Vader about Boba Fett's nature. His cunning and ruthlessness are legendary throughout the galaxy. Placed in the context of the Bounty Hunters Guild, those elements are bound to be disruptive. Sharp divisions already exist among the Guild's members, between the old leadership of the council members like Cradossk, and the younger bounty hunters such as his son.

The Bounty Hunters Guild is in many ways a microcosm of the Republic that your empire has replaced an aging, bureaucratic conglomerate with its best days far behind it. Where once the Guild was nearly as ruthless and efficient as Boba Fett, it now parcels out assignments to its members, divides up territories and responsibilities, pays off the galaxy's various law-enforcement agencies, shares out the steadily diminishing proceeds to its members, always with more going to the leadership, less to the lower-ranking bounty hunters who are still doing the hard and dangerous work upon which the organization depends. So, naturally, those younger members, if they have any intelligence and self-interest at all, spend more time trying to claw their way up through the Guild's ranks than actually chasing bounties."

Xizor let his own contempt sound in his voice. The fate of the Bounty Hunters Guild was something that he was not going to let happen to Black Sun; in that, he had taken a leaf from Emperor Palpatine's book. Autocracy, even tyranny, was how one kept an organization tough and alive.

"The Republic deserves to die, Prince Xizor." The Emperor raised one hand from the throne's arm. "It sounds as if you have passed a similar judgment upon the Bounty Hunters Guild."

"I did that which I knew you would want me to do, my lord. Your attention is focused upon the weightiest matters of the galaxy, and its transformation fr om indolence and democracy to a hard, shining instrument of your will. The fate of the Bounty Hunters Guild, while necessary for us to determine to your satisfaction, is but a small part of that process. And easily achieved, given a wisdom that is but a reflection of your own. The Guild is tottering, riven by the antagonistic forces it contains. If the council of the Bounty Hunters Guild had but a fraction of your wisdom, my lord, they would never allow Boba Fett to become a member; they would be able to foresee the doom that he brings into their midst. But their greed blinds them; all they will be able to envi sion is the possibility of his skills bringing more cred its into the Guild's coffers. The younger members of the Guild will see that as well, and their greed will also be stimulated. Each group will try to bring Boba Fett exclusively onto their side, and thus the delicate balance that has kept the Guild in one piece will be destroyed."

"You've put much thought into this, Prince Xizor."

The Emperor's bony finger pointed toward him. "If all goes as you believe it will, then there will be rewards for you as well."

"How can it not proceed as I have envisioned?" Xizor raised his head, bringing his eyes straight into the Emperor's intimidating gaze. "My intermediary has convinced Boba Fett of the advantages he will gain by the destruction of the Bounty Hunters Guild; that is why he has gone along with this scheme. The Guild is still an annoyance to him, a hindrance to his own enterprises.

Bumblers the Guild's members may be, but they still manage to get in Fett's way from time to time. With the Guild broken up and dispersed, nothing would stand between Boba Fett and complete control of the galaxy's bounty-hunter trade. The fees he charges for his services are already astronomical; with no competition to turn to, clients such as the Hutts would have to pay whatever Fett demands."

"That may be so," said Vader. "But what benefit does the Empire derive from the destruction of the Bounty Hunters Guild? We can already pay Boba Fett anything he asks for, but I see no advantage in being forced to pay him more than he's worth."

"What the Empire gets," replied Xizor, "is a return to the time before the creation of the Bounty Hunters Guild. A time when the galaxy's mercenaries were all as independent, hungry, and ruthless as Boba Fett. A time when they were at each other's throats, with no pretense of brotherhood. When the bounty hunters' greed was not limited by the strictures of the bureaucracy they have sealed around themselves. .Cradossk and the others of his generation have grown fat and lazy, somnolent within the protective walls of the Guild. Eventually, the Guild and all that remain part of it will wither away and die-but we cannot wait for that time to come. The Rebellion is a threat now. The Empire needs many creatures like Boba Fett, hungry and greedy, and independent enough to carry out our dirty work. The younger bounty hunters in the Guild chafe at its weight pressing upon their shoulders, its chains tangled around their feet. To destroy the Bounty Hunters Guild would be to free them-right into the service of the Empire."

"You overvalue these scum-"

"I think not." The Emperor interrupted Vader. "Prince Xizor speaks truly when he says that the forces under my command cannot do that which the bounty hunters are capable of. Or that they would be capable of, if the Guild were eliminated. Greed is valuable to me only if it is combined with a capacity for violence-and that capacity is exactly what would be unleashed when the Bounty Hunters Guild is no more. The survivors, whichever ones are left after Boba Fett's presence has shattered the organization, will be forced to adapt to a harsher, less protected existence, one in which they can survive only by placing their boot soles on the throats of those who had been their brothers only a short time before."

The Emperor's cruel smile widened. "We will have, our choice of them-each savage and driven by their unchecked appetites. The prince is right; these tools will be sharp and murderous, indeed."

"My lord flatters me." Xizor spread his hands, palms outward. "It is only the wisdom I have received from you that has guided both my thoughts and deeds."

"You are the flatterer, Xizor; in that, you do not deceive me. But your value to me has been enhanced by what you have done in this regard." The Emperor's smile faded, replaced by a hard gaze. "You have taken a considerable gamble in proceeding with your little scheme before consulting with me; if you had not been successful in convincing me of its worth, the consequences to you would have been severe.

"I know that, my lord. But time and events press upon us; the Rebellion's forces are not waiting for us to put our affairs in order."

Lord Vader's image shook its head, the points of light from the stars glistening on the black surface of his helmet. "Better that our trust should be put in the Force. Its power is greater than anything that can be derived from all these petty manipulations. The Death Star, Prince Xizor's unleashed bounty hunters-all these distract us from the Empire's real strength." Vader raised a black fist, as though crushing a rebellious world inside it. "Do not let yourself be swayed by the vain schemes of those who have no conception of the power inside you-"

"Advise me not, Lord Vader." The Emperor's anger flared, like fire suddenly revealed beneath gray ashes.

"You have some training in the Force's ways; you have even exceeded the training given to you by your vanished Jedi Masters. But do not presume to consider yourself my equal."

Xizor kept his silence, watching the confrontation between Palpatine and the black-garbed figure standing before him. Let him suffer the Emperor's wrath, thought Xizor with a measure of satisfaction. The Emperor's seductive powers had created Vader, the call of the Force's dark side turning him into what he now was. The Emperor could destroy Vader as well; Xizor was sure of it. And if that happened- Then my most powerful enemy would be gone. And worlds would open before him. The rays of the Black Sun would reach even farther across the galaxy. Perhaps ... even as far as the shadows of the Emperor's hand.

There would be another reward as well, if Vader's destruction came about. An even more satisfying one, the reward of vengeance accomplished. That would be my reward, brooded Xizor, not that of the Black Sun. Vader had no idea-yet-of the hatred that was directed toward whatever was left of his heart. The Imperial records had been wiped clean- Xizor's credits and power had seen to that-of any trace of the deaths of his family on the planet Falleen, deaths brought about by Vader's own experiments in developing new forms of biological weaponry for the Empire. Xizor's parents, his brother and sisters, along with a quarter million other innocent Falleens, had been reduced to ashes by the sterilization lasers Vader's orders had turned upon the bacterial outbreak-but those ashes were still hot in Xizor's own heart.

With his face a mask, except for his narrowed gaze, he watched his enemy.

"I mean no presumption, my lord." Darth Vader bowed his head in submission.

"Yet it irks you if I show favor to another of my servants." The Emperor smiled and nodded slowly. "Perhaps that is an indication of the depth of your loyalty to me." His withered hand pointed to Vader and Xizor in turn. "Your animosity toward each other serves my purposes well. There is never a moment when you are not at each other's throats, seeking what advantage you can in your struggle to please me. So be it; it keeps your teeth sharp. That is why I think Prince Xizor's scheme has a chance, however slight, of succeeding. The bounty hunters will be to each other what the two of you are hungry and ruthless. The struggle will end someday, with one of you destroying the other. I'm not sure which one of you will be the victor. And I do not greatly care, either." The Emperor appeared to savor the possibilities.

"In the meantime the Empire enjoys the benefits of your little war."

One that I will win, thought Xizor. And after that, it would be time for other plans and schemes. For all his respectful words, the Force and the Emperor's mastery of it meant nothing to him. Of what use was the greatest power in the universe-if it even existed at all, and wasn't just some figment of Vader and Palpatine's imaginations-when it was in the hands of a fool? An aging one, at that, so obsessed with the Rebellion that he would allow a greater danger to him walk the corridors of his palace. He doesn't know, thought Xizor, keeping his own face a mask as he gazed at the Emperor. Despite having given himself over to the dark side of the Force, Emperor Palpatine didn't suspect what was still hidden in the shadows surrounding him.

"Go about your self-appointed business, Xizor." The Emperor's hand made a dismissive gesture. "You plot and work to bring about other creatures' destruction; this pleases me. Knowing what I do about Boba Fett and the members of the unfortunate Bounty Hunters Guild, it is a process that I do not anticipate will take long to achieve the desired results. Come and report to me again when these sharper tools are ready to be delive red into my grasp."

"As you wish, my lord." Xizor bowed, then turned. The edge of his caped robes flared with that motion, the thick rope of his bound hair swinging across the exposed ridges of his vertebrae.

"I also will want to hear of your success." Lord Vader's holo image spoke as Xizor strode from the Emperor's throne room. "Or the lack thereof."

Xizor couldn't help smiling to himself as he left the presence of the Emperor and his chief servant. There would be successes, of that he was confident. But not the kind they expected.

of you will be the victor. And I do not greatly care, either." The Emperor appeared to savor the possibilities.

"In the meantime the Empire enjoys the benefits of your little war."

One that I will win, thought Xizor. And after that, it would be time for other plans and schemes. For all his respectful words, the Force and the Emperor's mastery of it meant nothing to him. Of what use was the greatest power in the universe-if it even existed at all, and wasn't just some figment of Vader and Palpatine's imaginations-when it was in the hands of a fool? An aging one, at that, so obsessed with the Rebellion that he would allow a greater danger to him walk the corridors of his palace. He doesn't know, thought Xizor, keeping his own face a mask as he gazed at the Emperor. Despite having given himself over to the dark side of the Force, Emperor Palpatine didn't suspect what was still hidden in the shadows surrounding him.

"Go about your self-appointed business, Xizor." The Emperor's hand made a dismissive gesture. "You plot and work to bring about other creatures' destruction; this pleases me. Knowing what I do about Boba Fett and the members of the unfortunate Bounty Hunters Guild, it is a process that I do not anticipate will take long to achieve the desired results. Come and report to me again when these sharper tools are ready to be delive red into my grasp."

"As you wish, my lord." Xizor bowed, then turned. The edge of his caped robes flared with that motion, the thick rope of his bound hair swinging across the exposed ridges of his vertebrae.

"I also will want to hear of your success." Lord Vader's holo image spoke as Xizor strode from the Emperor's throne room. "Or the lack thereof."

Xizor couldn't help smiling to himself as he left the presence of the Emperor and his chief servant. There would be successes, of that he was confident. But not the kind they expected.

Emperor slowly shook his head. "He is a sharp-edged tool in himself, Vader. He cuts through difficulties with ease. This scheme he has initiated against the bounty hunters-it is a stroke of genius. Even Boba Fett, as smart as he is, will have little conception of what forces have been brought against him." The thin smile showed on the withered face again. "There is a great satisfaction that comes from turning a sentient creature's own strengths against him. Fett and the others like him will soon find out just how that works."

Lord Vader's image was silent for a moment before speaking, words softer than his rasping breath. "And Prince Xizor?"

"His time will come as well," said the Emperor. "When he will learn the same." He gave the same gesture of dismissal with one hand, "Now go." The Emperor turned his throne toward the stars, the vast reaches that extended before him. "I have other things to contemplate." bottom of the door to swing it shut. "That's all I need from you right now."

He could hear the majordomo's steps running down the corridor, the sounds fading away until the space was silent except for a slow drip of water in one corner. A

native insect, bristling with antennae and eyestalks-a miniature version of the council member that spoke in nothing but questions-had been aroused by the presence of humanoid body heat. It tried to escape as Boba Fett reached over with his armor-gloved hand, but his forefinger cracked the bug's chitinous shell and left the tiny carcass smeared on the damp rock. Fett watched as a swarm of smaller creatures scurried away. Vermin and cold didn't bother him. He'd been in worse places.

This one had the advantage as well of being easily scoured for other bugs, the kind that would report one's words to Cradossk and his advisers. Fett hadn't even found it necessary to do a scan on the first room to which the Twi'lek had taken him, to know that the wall hangings had been studded with microscopic listening and observation devices. The old Trandoshan's welcoming party, complete with drunk act, hadn't fooled him. They know something's up, thought Fett. The Bounty Hunters Guild had been a tougher organization in the past; Cradossk hadn't become its leader by being a complete idiot.

Fett hadn't survived on his own by being one, either.

Cradossk would doubtlessly have expected him to reject the luxury quarters, and have an alternative already prepared. An alternative that would meet Cradossk's requirements. Boba Fett snapped on the scanning sweeps mounted in his helmet; a precisely calibrated grid snapped into view in the narrow visor.

What do we have here? Just as he'd expected turning slowly on his boot heel, Fett saw the pulsing red spark in the grid that indicated a miniaturized spy module. He completed his scan, finding two more at varying heights on the opposite stone wall. It would have been easy to have extracted them from their niches and crushed them between his fingertips, the way he had the living bug.

Instead, he took from one of his belt pouches a trio of audio drones, already set by him to reproduce the nearly subliminal traces of his breath and other homeostatic functions. He tapped the drones into place, directly on top of the bugs. No other sound would get past them; a signal in his gear would switch them off when he left the space, producing perfect silence.

He didn't anticipate spending much time here; he'd really only wanted to give Cradossk a chance to display his hospitality. And subterfuge. Any sleep or meals that Boba Fett required, he would take aboard the Slave I, safely docked and secured at the edge of the Guild's main compound. I've got enough enemies here, he'd decided.

There was no sense in making it any easier for them to get at him.

Though if they wanted to talk with him, face-toface- this dank little room was sufficient for that.

Just as he'd anticipated, he didn't have long to wait. A knock sounded on the splintered planks of the door, then the rusting hinges bolted into the stone creaked as a hand with claws and scales pushed it open.

"So we are to be brothers." Bossk stood in the doorway, his slit-pupiled eyes showing both resentment and a primitive guile. "How pleasant that shall be for both of us."

Boba Fett looked over his shoulder at the younger Trandoshan. "That matters little to me. I take my pleasure in my work. And in getting paid for it."

"You're famous for that." Bossk entered the space, his wavering shadow cast ahead by the torches mounted along the corridor. He sat down heavily on the bench carved out of one wall. "I'd find my pleasures the same way-if it weren't for you."

"You speak of the past." Fett stood in the center of the damp stone floor, his arms folded across his chest.

"Have you forgotten already what your father said?" The banquet had still been in progress as the Twi'lek majordomo had led Boba Fett to his quarters. "A new time has begun for us. For all bounty hunters."

"Ah, yes; my father." Shaking his head in disgust, Bossk leaned back against the wall. "My father speaks of great and noble things; he always has. It's one of the reasons I despise him. The day will come when I sharpen my teeth on the shards of his bones."

"Family matters don't interest me." Boba Fett shrugged. It had been obvious to him for a long time before this why Trandoshans were not a numerous species.

"Deal with the old creature as you feel best. If you think you're capable of it."

A low growl sounded from deep within Bossk's throat.

He leaned forward, eyes narrowing into slits as he focused on some personal vision. "Someday..." He nodded slowly. "When the Guild is mine ..."

Fool, thought Boba Fett. The Trandoshan had no idea of the machinery in which he was already caught, the gears grinding out a different future than the one of which he dreamed.

"But that's why you're here, isn't it?" Bossk looked up at him. "Why you've come all this way to join the Bounty Hunters Guild." One clawed hand pulled a small box that had been dangling from one of his chest straps; he flicked open the hinged lid and dug out a wriggling morsel. "Want one?" Bossk held the container out on his scaly palm.

Boba Fett shook his head. The little box's contents were identical to the insect he'd crushed against the stone wall. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't fool me." Bossk grinned as he refastened the box to the strap. "As I said before-you might fool a senile old lizard like my father, but you can't do the same with me. I know exactly why you came here."

"And why would that be?"

"It's simple." Bossk cracked the insect between his f ront fangs, then swallowed the two oozing pieces.

"You're aware of how old Cradossk is. You'd have to know; you had enough encounters with him in the past, before I was even spawned. His time has to come to an end, eventually. And then the leadership of the Guild will pass to me. That's already been decided. There's no one on the council that's any younger than my father; some of them are old enough to have cobwebs growing between their claws. They'll be glad to have me take over."

"You might be right about that." Fett had heard of other possibilities. There were other bounty hunters in the Guild who were as young and hungry as Bossk. The leadership of the Guild wouldn't be handed down without some kind of a struggle.

"Of course I'm right." With the point of one claw, Bossk extracted a fragment of bug shell from between his fangs. "And you're the proof of it."

"How do you figure that?"

"Come on; let's face it. We've both been around the galaxy a few times. Maybe I don't have the same amount of experience that you do, but I'm a fast learner." Seated on the stone bench, Bossk smiled with cozy familiarity at Boba Fett. "You'll be glad you've met up with me like this, rather than both of us scrabbling over some minor bounty. There's big credits to be made here; bigger than my father and his dried-up old cronies ever dreamed of.

You know that, don't you?"

Fett didn't bother to indicate yes or no. "I'm always on the lookout for a profitable arrangement."

"That's what makes you the kind of mean barve I really like." Bossk's carnivorous grin widened. "My father was right about one thing You and I, we really are like brothers. We should get along just fine, given the changes that are going to happen around here." He leaned back against the stone wall. "Like you said-we have to change with the times. We just have to make sure the changes go our way, huh?"

The assembler knew what it was talking about, thought Boba Fett. He had to give Kud'ar Mub'at credit for the accurate assessment of how things would go here at the Bounty Hunters Guild. Fett had been here for less than a standard time part, and already the pieces were falling into place. Better than that leaping into place. The son of the Guild's leader was volunteering to take his place in the scheme that would tear apart the organization.

"You're a clever creature." Boba Fett gave a slow nod of acknowledgment. "Very clever."

"Smart enough to figure out what you're up to, pal."

The slit-pupiled eyes regarded Fett with satisfaction.

"You're famous for a lot of things. One of them is that you've always been a lone operator. You've never worked with a partner, even in the worst situations."

"I've never had to," replied Fett. "I can take care of myself."

"Yeah, and you still can. Like I said-you're not fooling me. All that talk back there in the banquet hall, about the Empire squeezing us out-what a crock of nerf waste. The only reason you got my father and the rest of them to go for that line is because they wanted to believe it. They're old and tired, and they're looking for an excuse to roll over and quit. But I'm not buying it. Things don't change like that. I've seen enough of the Empire to know that there's always going to be some use for bounty hunters. There's stuff we can do that nobody else can."

"An astute observation."

"One that you've made as well, I bet." Bossk dug at his fangs again, then inspected the tips of his claws.

"If anything, there's going to be more business for us with Emperor Palpatine than there ever was under the Republic. There'll be all sorts of creatures that the Emperor wants to get his hands on, who don't Want to be found. That's where bounty hunters come in. Plus the Rebellion-they got their needs, too. That's the great thing about being on neither one side nor the other. We can sell our services to anyone who can pay our price.

And there's going to be a lot of buyers."

This Trandoshan also deserved credit, Boba Fett had to admit. Bossk might be a fool, and a particularly crass and bloodthirsty one, but he was sharp enough to discern at least one important thing about the nature of evil.

Which was that it always bred more of the same. More business for us, thought Fett. He felt no emotion about that, one way or the other.

"It's a simple matter, then, isn't it?" Boba Fett spoke his next thoughts aloud. "Of just making sure we get paid the price we want."

"You got that right. And that's why you came walking in here and asked to become a member of the Bounty Hunters Guild, isn't it? Not because things are changing out there"-Bossk waved his clawed and scaled hand, indicating the reaches beyond the mold-encrusted stone ceiling-"but because the Guild is changing. Or it's just about to. You've had it pretty easy for a long time, haven't you? Even when my father still had sharp fangs, he was never your equal in the bounty-hunter trade. None of those old creatures were. And as they got older all they really managed to do was get in the way of me and the other young hunters-the ones who would've given you a run for your credits, Fett. So you've really had the field all to yourself, haven't you? Must've been nice."

Fett gave a small shrug. "It hasn't been exactly easy."

"Yeah, but it would've been a lot harder if you'd had to deal with me." Bossk's eyes flashed angry fire as he jabbed the point of one claw into his chest. "If I'd been able to go up against you on some of those jobs, the way I really wanted to. You wouldn't have been raking in those big bounties, the kind that Jabba and the rest of the Hutts put up, if you'd had some real competition for them."

"Yes," said Fett. "If I'd had some real competition, it might have been different."

Bossk didn't pick up on the irony concealed in Fett's words. "That's all coming to an end, though, isn't it?

That's the real reason you're here. You know that my father and the rest of the Guild council is just about ready to have their bones picked clean. And that somebody else will be taking over. Somebody a lot harder and tougher, who isn't just going to let you walk off with all the easy credits."

"And that someone would be you, I suppose."

"Don't suppose with me, Fett. It's time for you and me to work some things out. You didn't come here just because you wanted membership in the Bounty Hunters Guild. You're here because you know it isn't going to be long before I'm running things. I can tell how your mind works."

"Is that so?"

Bossk nodded. " 'Cause it's so much like mine. You and me, we want the same things. Top price, and nobody getting in our way. But we've got to deal with each other." The last of the Trandoshan's smile faded. "As equals."

You idiot. "Negotiations between equals can sometimes be profitable. Or fatal."

"Let's go for a profitable one. Here's the deal, Fett." One claw raised, Bossk leaned forward on the stone bench. "There's no point in us tearing out each other's throats. Even if it would be fun. That just lets the old ones like my father stay in power for a while longer. And they've had their turn long enough. I don't feel like waiting any longer than I have to, just to get my chance."

"What do you want me to do about it?"

"It's not just what I want; it's what you want as well. Better you should get on my good side now, Fett, than have me for an enemy later on." The claw tip pointed to each of them in turn. "Let's be partners, you and me.

I know that's what you came here for."

"I see that I was correct when I said that you were a clever creature." Just not clever enough, thought Fett.

"Flatter me some other time, why don't you? After we've taken over the Bounty Hunters Guild." The fanged smile returned to Bossk's face. "When I slice up my father's carcass, I'll save you one of the best pieces."

"Don't bother," said Fett. "I'll be pleased enough knowing that I've accomplished what I came here for."

Whether Bossk would be as happy about it remained to be seen.

"I'm glad-really glad-that we're in agreement about this." Bossk stood up from the damp stone. He stepped close to Boba Fett, bringing his face to where it almost touched the visor of the helmet. "Because otherwise I would have had to kill you."

"Perhaps." Fett didn't draw away. "Though I think you're actually the lucky one. Look down here."

Bossk's slit-pupiled eyes widened when they glanced down and saw the muzzle of a blaster pressed against his abdomen. Fett rested his thumb on the weapon's firing stud.

"Let's get one thing straight." Boba Fett kept his voice level, stripped of emotion. "We can be partners.

But we're not going to be friends. I need those even less."

Bossk regarded the weapon for a moment longer, then lifted his head and barked a raw-edged laugh. "That's good! I like that." All the points of his fangs showed as he glared fiercely into the dark visor.

"You watch out for yourself, and I'll watch out for me. That's just the way I like it."

"Good." Fett slipped the blaster back into its holster. "We can do business."

As he stepped out into the corridor Bossk stopped and glanced over his shoulder. "And of course," he said slyly, "this is all a private arrangement, isn't it?

Between you and me."

"Of course." Boba Fett hadn't moved from the center of the space. "It'll work better that wa y."

For me, thought Fett, after the Trandoshan had stridden away, past the flickering torches. For you, it's another matter. The Twi'lek majordomo had other household duties as well. Chief among which was spying.

"Your son has just concluded a long conversation with Boba Fett." All the comings and goings in the Bounty Hunters Guild headquarters were observed by Ob Fortuna.

"From what I could tell, your son seemed rather pleased with the results."

"I'm not surprised." Cradossk's blunt claws fumbled with the catches of his ceremonial robes. The heavy fabric, with embroidery that depicted his species'

ancient battles and triumphs, was stained with the wine that had been spilled at the banquet. "Bossk gets his eloquence from me." He shrugged off the robes.

"Persuasiveness is a specialty of his."

"But aren't you concerned?" The Twi'lek's tapering head tails swung forward as he gathered up the robes.

"About what the two of them found to talk about?" He spread the robes out on a lacquered rack at the side of Cradossk's sitting room. "Your son has ... shall we say"-the Twi'lek's smile was a combination of nerves and obsequiousness-"a bit of a conspiratorial streak."

"Of course he does! He wouldn't be my son, oth erwise." Cradossk sat down on the edge of a canopied pallet and stuck his legs out. His claws ached from all the standing he'd had to do, giving toasts and welcoming the famous Boba Fett into the brotherhood of bounty hunters. "I don't expect him to take over the leadership of the Guild someday merely because he has a talent for killing sentient creatures."

The Twi'lek knelt down to unfasten the metal-studded straps laced between Cradossk's claws. "I think," he said softly, "that your son is rather eager to assume that leadership. Perhaps even ... impatient ..."

"Good for him. Keeps him hungry." Cradossk leaned back against a mound of pillows. "I know just what my son wants. The same thing I did when I was his age. Blood leaking through my fangs, and a pile of credits in my hand."

"Oh!" Ob Fortuna's eyes glittered at any mention of credits. "But perhaps ... it would be better for you to be careful."

"Better for me to be smart, you mean. I don't intend to wind up on my son's dinner plate. That's why I'm on his side in all this."

The head tails rolled across the Twi'lek's shoulders as he looked up. "I don't understand."

"You wouldn't. You're not a sneaky enough barve. It takes a Trandoshan to understand the subtleties of these kinds of maneuvers. We're born with it, like scales. Do you really think I'm such an idiot that I'd let Boba Fett walk in here and become a member of the Bounty Hunters Guild, and just take everything he has to say on trust?"

Cradossk had no anxiety about revealing his thoughts and schemes to his majordomo; Twi'leks were too cowardly to act upon anything they heard. "The man's a scoundrel. Of course, that's nothing I hold against him; he's just not our scoundrel. He's still looking out for himself-and why shouldn't he? But in the meantime I'm not fooled by all his talk of some grand alliance between himself and the Bounty Hunters Guild. And if he was taken in by all my rhapsodizing about brotherhood between us, then I really am disappointed in the great Boba Fett." He reached down and scratched between the exposed claws of his feet.

"That's why I sent my son Bossk in there to talk with him. Bossk may be a bit of a hothead-that's another way he resembles me when I was that age-but he's smart enough to follow through on a good, underhanded plan."

"You sent him to talk with Boba Fett?" "Why not?"

Cradossk felt content with the universe, and how things were proceeding in his corner of it. "I told Bossk what to say as well. Probably no more than what Boba Fett was expecting from the impatient young heir to the leadership of the Guild. A partnership between the two of them-and against me."

The Twi'lek gaped at him. "Against you?" "Of course.

If I hadn't sent Bossk in there to talk with Fett, and have him propose exactly that, then my son would very likely have done it on his own initiative. Not because Bossk really wants to conspire against me. He's too loyal-and too smart for that. Plus he knows I'd have his internal organs for breakfast if he tried anything like that." Cradossk gave a self-satisfied nod of his head.

"It's much better this way. Now we have an in with our mysterious visitor and would-be brother, one to whom Boba Fett will confide the true reasons why he's come here to the Guild. My son gains points with not only his loving father, but also with some of the council members who have voiced some fear about his ambitions. And I remain in control of the situation. That's the most important thing."

A puzzled look remained on the Twi'lek's face as he rolled up the leather foot straps and placed them in his employer's ornamentations box. "Could it not be"-the Twi'lek's head tails glistened with the effort of his musing-"that your son has a different idea? Different than the one you put into his head?"

Cradossk folded his claws over the age-yellowed scales of his stomach. "Such as?"

"Perhaps Bossk doesn't want to just pretend that he has entered into a conspiracy with Boba Fett. A

conspiracy against you and the rest of the Guild council." The Twi'lek rubbed his chin, gazing at some point beyond the sitting room's caparisoned walls, where his infrequently encountered thoughts could be found.

"Maybe he would have gone and talked to Boba Fett anyway-whether you had sent him or not. And he would have made just that proposition. For real."

"Now, there's an interesting notion." Cradossk sat up, bringing his heavy-lidded-and unamused- gaze straight into that of his household majordomo. "And one for which I should pull your flopping little head off. Do you realize what you're suggesting?"

The Twi'lek's smile was even more nervous than before. "Now that I think of it ..."

"You should've done your thinking before you opened your mouth." Anger simmered inside Cradossk. The only reason he didn't pull off the Twi'lek's head was that a good majordomo, one that was used to his various ways and preferences, was hard to find. "You're questioning not only my son's intelligence, but his loyalty to me. I realize that members of your species have only an abstract understanding of that concept. But for Trandoshans"- Cradossk thumped his bared chest with his fist-"it is something in our blood. Honor and loyalty, and the faith that exists between family members, even unto the last generations-those are not negotiable substances."

"I beseech your pardon... ." Hands clasped together, the Twi'lek bobbed up and down in front of Cradossk, the speed of his genuflections increased by his anxiety. "I meant no disrespect... ."

"Very well." Cradossk shooed him away with a quick, contemptuous gesture. "Because you're an idiot, I'll overlook your insulting comments." He wouldn't forget them, though; long, grudge-filled memories were another characteristic of Trandoshans. "Now get out of my sight, before I have reason to be hungry again."

The Twi'lek scurried away, still hunched over and bowing as he retreated toward the sitting room's door.

Maybe I should eat him, brooded Cradossk as he drew on a lounging robe stitched together from the skins of former employees. Standards were becoming deplorably lax among the Guild's hirelings. Staffing had always been a problem over the decades; in that, the Bounty Hunters Guild had the same difficulties that their clients the Hutts did. Not many of the galaxy's sentient creatures were so desperate as to seek employment in establishments where the constant threat of death was one of the working conditions. He wondered if Emperor Palpatine's dismantling of the Republic would improve things in that regard, or just make them worse. The establishment of the Empire promised a net increase in the galaxy's misery quotient-that was good, at least as far as Cradossk was concerned-but also a tighter control over the various worlds' inhabitants. That was probably bad... .

Something to think about. Feeling the weight of his age, Cradossk shambled into the memory-bone chamber connected to the sitting room. He lit one of the candles set in a niche filled with years of congealed wax; the guttering flame sent interlaced shadows wavering across the walls and their white treasures.

It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to add another memento to his collection. My killing days are over, thought Cradossk, not without regret. He wandered farther into the chamber's ivory-lined recesses, letting memories of vanquished opponents and foolishly recalcitrant captives wash over him.

Until he came to the oldest and tiniest bones. They looked like something that might have been found in a bird's nest, on some planet where all the life-forms had been extinct for centuries. Cradossk let a couple of them rest in his palm as he poked at them with a single claw.

Tooth marks showed on the bones' surfaces, from little teeth that had been as sharp and hard as a newborn's.

Teeth that hadn't yet been dulled by the coarse flesh of enemies. Those teeth had been his, when he'd just barely been out of his mother's egg sac. The bones were those of his spawn-brothers, hatched just a few seconds later. And too late for them.

Cradossk sighed, mulling over the wisdom he'd been created with, and that which had taken him so long to achieve. He carefully set his brothers' bones back in the hollow of polished rock where he kept them.

This was why lesser entities like that moronic Twi'lek would never understand. About family loyalty and honor ...

He pitied creatures like that. They simply had no sense of tradition.

concerned-but also a tighter control over the various worlds' inhabitants. That was probably bad... .

Something to think about. Feeling the weight of his age, Cradossk shambled into the memory-bone chamber connected to the sitting room. He lit one of the candles set in a niche filled with years of congealed wax; the guttering flame sent interlaced shadows wavering across the walls and their white treasures.

It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to add another memento to his collection. My killing days are over, thought Cradossk, not without regret. He wandered farther into the chamber's ivory-lined recesses, letting memories of vanquished opponents and foolishly recalcitrant captives wash over him.

Until he came to the oldest and tiniest bones. They looked like something that might have been found in a bird's nest, on some planet where all the life-forms had been extinct for centuries. Cradossk let a couple of them rest in his palm as he poked at them with a single claw.

Tooth marks showed on the bones' surfaces, from little teeth that had been as sharp and hard as a newborn's.

Teeth that hadn't yet been dulled by the coarse flesh of enemies. Those teeth had been his, when he'd just barely been out of his mother's egg sac. The bones were those of his spawn-brothers, hatched just a few seconds later. And too late for them.

Cradossk sighed, mulling over the wisdom he'd been created with, and that which had taken him so long to achieve. He carefully set his brothers' bones back in the hollow of polished rock where he kept them.

This was why lesser entities like that moronic Twi'lek would never understand. About family loyalty and honor ...

He pitied creatures like that. They simply had no sense of tradition.

listening to the Twi'lek's report. "You're sure of all this?"

"But of course." The Twi'lek made no attempt to conceal the wickedness of his smile. "I have been in your father's service for some time. Longer than any of his previous majordomos. I haven't lasted this long by being blind to his thought processes. I can decipher the old fool like a data readout. And I can tell you this for a fact He trusts you absolutely. As he told me, that was why he sent you to talk to Boba Fett."

Sitting in a gold-hinged campaign chair, Bossk nodded in approval. "I suppose my father had all sorts of things to say. About loyalty and honor. And all the rest of that nerf dung."

"The usual."

"That must be the hardest part of your job," said Bossk. "Listening to fools talk."

You have no idea, thought the Twi'lek. "I've gotten used to it."

Bossk gave another, slower nod. "The time is coming when you won't have to listen to that particular fool any longer. When I'm running the Bounty Hunters Guild, things will be different."

"I certainly expect so." More of the same, the Twi'lek told himself. He was careful to keep his thoughts from showing on his face. "In the meantime ..."

"In the meantime there will be a nice little transfer of credits to your private account. For all your services." Bossk dismissed him with a simple gesture of his upraised claws. "You can go now."

That fool is right about one thing. The Twi'lek felt a warm glow of satisfaction as he headed back to his own quarters. He was doing a good job- For himself.

looking straight into the dark, narrow visor of his helmet, they might have fled before even opening their mouths.

"Yes?" Boba Fett turned around-slowly, as nonthreateningly as possible for someone with his reputation. "What is it?"

"I was wondering"-the short bounty hunter, with the large insectoid eyes and breathing hoses, stood in the doorway-"if I might have a word with you... ."

What was this one's name? They all looked alike to Boba Fett. Zuckuss, he remembered. The partner of Bossk, at least as recently as that business where he had snatched the accountant Nil Posondum out from under their noses.

"Of course, if you're busy-" Zuckuss clasped his gloved hands together in an obvious show of nervousness.

"I can come back some other time-"

"Not at all." Boba Fett had also seen this one at the Guild's banquet hall, close to the reptilian Bossk. So there was undoubtedly still some connection between the two of them. "No time like the present," said Fett. "For talking about important things."

This one didn't take long. Zuckuss was hardly in Fett's quarters for more than a few minutes before he had scuttled back out into the corridor, disappearing before anyone from the Guild could spot him there. Small fry, thought Boba Fett. Not one of the major players in the Bounty Hunters Guild that Kud'ar Mub'at had briefed him on. But important enough, with a line straight to the ear of Bossk. Who, as the impatient heir apparent to the Guild leadership, would have a great deal to do with it being torn apart.

The conversation went exactly as Boba Fett had expected, and just as Kud'ar Mub'at would have predicted.

Zuckuss was like so many others in the Bounty Hunters Guild, down in the lower ranks a perfect combination of greed and naivete. Just smart enough to kill, mused Fett after Zuckuss had left. The short bounty hunter had glanced nervously out the doorway, to make sure no one was there to see him as he scurried down the torchlit corridor. Not smart enough to keep himself from getting killed. It might not happen this time-Zuckuss might, with the erratic luck of the feckless, survive the breakup of the Guild-but it would eventually.

He supposed that was the big difference between himself and poor Zuckuss, between himself and Bossk and Bossk's vicious, aging father and all the rest of the Guild members. Boba Fett sat down on the stone bench for a moment; the armaments he carried with him, that were as much a part of him as his spine, prevented him from leaning back. He never wasted time thinking about himself, any more than an explosively lethal missile from the rocket launcher strapped to his back would have as it sped toward its doomed and pinpointed target. But he knew that the reason he was alive and that others were dead, or soon would be, was that he possessed the true and essential secret of being a bounty hunter- As good as he was at catching and, if need be, killing other sentient creatures, he was even better at surviving their attempts to kill him. Everything else was just a matter of superior firepower.

Boba Fett stood up from the stone bench. If he stayed here any longer, there would be others coming to talk to him. Others who thought they could protect themselves the way he did, but who were already fatally enmeshed in the trap spun by Kud'ar Mub'at, so far away that he couldn't be seen or the tugs on the strands of his web even felt.

Besides Bossk and Zuckuss, there had also been one of Cradossk's top advisers on the Guild council, and the Twi'lek major-domo, back for a longer talk than when he'd brought Fett to this dank chamber. All of them had been in pure deal-cutting mode, eager to help pull the Bounty Hunters Guild apart so they would get a bigger piece of whatever was left in the wreckage.

Right now he didn't feel like talking to anyone else.

Action meant more than words; that was one other thing Boba Fett was sure of. A man was killed by words, and saved by action. Spending so much time talking to other sentient creatures had been like wrapping himself in death. What he wanted to do right now was head back to the Slave I, his refuge docked at the edge of the Guild's main compound, lock himself behind its overlapping security layers, all systems primed to fry anyone who tried to breach them, and rest. If not the sleep of the virtuous-Fett had no illusions about that, or regrets-then at least the sleep of someone who had put in a good day's work. In his business, that meant helping others arrange their own destruction.

The presence of those other sentient creatures, carrying their fates around with them, all unaware, laid

-a cold hand on Boba Fett's heart, or whatever passed for it after all these years of death. It felt like some prophecy of his own death, though he was just as sure that that was a long way off, far from here in both time and space.

Being back inside his own ship would be as much a relief as being out in the emptiness between the stars.

He would be alone there, sealed off from all the others, living and dead... .

That was what he needed. He pushed the rough wooden door shut behind himself and strode down the corridor, beneath the flickering light of the torches. Anywhere but here, thought Boba Fett. The tunnel stretched out before him. Above him, the invisible weight of rock and stone pressed down, like the tomb he hadn't earned yet.

here, thought Boba Fett. The tunnel stretched out before him. Above him, the invisible weight of rock and stone pressed down, like the tomb he hadn't earned yet.

"You were saying things." Dengar handed the figure on the pallet a metal cup filled with water. "In your sleep."

Sleep was the wrong word, he knew. Dying would have been more accurate. Except that Boba Fett hadn't died, after all. After everything.

"Is that so?" Even unhelmeted, Boba Fett had a gaze that was as cold and exterminating as anything that had looked out from the black, narrow visor. Lying on the improvised bed in the hiding place's smallest subchamber, Fett's lethal potential appeared undiminished, as though his ravaged flesh were only a temporary costume, less real than the ragged battle-gear stacked up in the corner. "What did I say?"

"Nothing important," replied Dengar. He knew better than to have told the truth, if Fett's drugged, unconscious mutterings had amounted to anything. This barve lives by secrets, thought Dengar. To get inside any of those secrets would be like stealing something from him. And the consequences of that, Dengar was well aware, would not be pretty. "Something about not liking so many sentient creatures around you. Stuff like that."

"Ah." Boba Fett raised his head and managed to sip the water he'd been given. His smile looked like a blade wound in the abraded skin of his face. "I still don't like it."

"Please do not agitate the patient." The taller of the two medical droids scolded Dengar. The droid and its shorter partner were busily changing the dressings around Boba Fett's torso. Bloodied rags and sterile gel sheets were peeled away from the raw flesh beneath. Wounds such as Fett's took a long time to heal; the Sarlacc's gastric secretions were like acid creeping toward the bone, long after the beast itself was dead. "If I had the authority to do so," continued SHS1-B, "I would order you out of this area immediately."

"But you don't." Dengar leaned back against the subchamber's crumbling rock wall. The air inside the hiding place was as hot and desiccating as the interior of one of the ancient burial mounds that studded the farther reaches of the Dune Sea, where Tatooine's double suns turned corpses into withered leather. "Besides," said Dengar, "if you two haven't killed him by now, nothing will."

"Sarcasm." le-XE spoke as it readied another combination of opiates and antiseptics.

"Nonappreciation."

"There's someone else in this place, isn't there?"

Boba Fett had drawn his head back from the metal cup that Dengar had held out to him. The mere effort of his words sent his chest laboring, the dials and readouts on the surrounding equipment blipping into the red. "A female."

Dengar said nothing. He placed the half-empty cup on top of one of the sighing machines that the two medical droids tended. He had other things to take care of, other things to do besides talk with the sinister figure lying on the pallet, a little farther away from death's shores than Fett had been even a couple of days ago. One of the hiding place's power generators had conked out, spewing white sparks and a dense cloud of greasy smoke. That had necessitated shutting down all but the minimum air recyclers, resulting in the hot, thick miasma bound inside the hiding place. Dengar could more profitably take care of the generator, getting it up and back online, rather than staying here at Boba Fett's bedside.

But the other man's cold gaze held him as tight as the curved hook of a gaffstick.

"There's no need to lie to me about it," said Boba Fett. His words were as cold and unemotional as the gaze from his eyes. "I saw her. She came in here. Yesterday, I suppose. It's still hard for me to tell about these things. But it was dark, and she must have thought I was asleep. Or that I had died, perhaps."

"Please," said SHSl-B. It fussed with the tubes running between the machines and Boba Fett's body.

"You're making our job considerably more difficult."

Dengar ignored the medical droid. He was about to answer Fett, to tell the bounty hunter who the female was, when the bombs hit. Real bombs.

Dust sifted from the subchamber's ceiling, speckling the lenses of SHZl-B's head unit swiveling up toward the sound of thunder. Windstorms infrequently lashed the Dune Sea, floods of sand churning down the stone gulleys and vanishing just as quickly beneath the twin suns. Dengar had always thought that the hiding place he'd dug for himself was too far beneath the planet's surface to take any damage from mere weather. It'll take something stronger, he'd decided, to get in here.

His own words were still looping around inside his head when the rocks fell, with even louder thunder from above, onto his face.

He'd looked up, along with the two medical droids. He had a memory flash, of a light sharp as blades against his eyes and brighter than Tatooine's suns combined into one. Then he was spitting out gravel and blood as he felt his arm being tugged by someone unseen.

"Come on!" The voice was Neelah's; her hands gripped tight around his forearm and pulled. Rocks and sand poured off his chest as his scrabbling efforts, feeble at first and then made stronger by sudden desperation, combined with hers to extract him from the remains of the subchamber. "He's still in there!"

She meant Boba Fett, of course. The hiding place's emergency lights flickered as the remaining generator came to life. Dengar could still hear thunder, receding into the distance up on the surface level. The thunder would return, he knew; he was familiar enough with saturation-bombing techniques to be aware that that was what was going on up there. One wave would be succeeded by another, crossing the ground at a right angle from the first sweep. There wouldn't be any stones left, no gulleys or eroded pillars; everything would be hammered into dust. And as for whatever might lie beneath the surface ...

Neelah was already digging at the rubble that blocked the doorway to the subchamber. Enough of the dust had settled that Dengar could see how the bombs' impact had knocked him back toward the hiding place's main area. If he had been any farther inside, where the medical droids had been taking care of their patient, the rockfall would have come straight down on him, crushing his skull.

"Confusion." Neelah's bleeding fingers had already excavated the smaller of the droids. With its carapace dented, torso readouts cracked and blinking, le-XE

crawled away from the rocks and righted itself with difficulty. "Noise. Not-goodness."

"What are you waiting for?" Neelah looked back around at him, her eyes blazing through the dust and sweat covering her face. "Help me!"

"Are you crazy?" Dengar reached down and grabbed an arm, pulling Neelah to her feet. "There isn't time for that-whoever's laying down those bombs on the surface will be back in less than a minute. We've got to get out of here!"

"I'm not going without him." Neelah yanked her arm from Dengar's grasp. "Save yourself, if you want to." She turned away and started tugging at one of the larger rocks, nearly as high as herself.

There were tunnels underneath the hiding place, curving and smooth-sided, that ran deep into the planet's bedrock. Dengar had investigated them far enough to know that they connected with the Great Pit of Carkoon; with the Sarlacc beast dead now, they would make a safe refuge from the bombing. But only if they were reached in time, before the next destructive wave collapsed what remained of these spaces.

He hesitated only a moment, before cursing himself as a fool and laying both his hands on the rock, just above Neelah's hands. The stone surface was already slick with her blood; Dengar dug his own fingertips into it and pulled, straining with his weight against the rock's resistance. From far off and above, he could hear the bombing of the surface come to a halt, like a storm that has spent its thunderous fury. That's only temporary, he knew. They'd be returning in this direction soon enough.

Dengar put his shoulder against the rock, his hands clawing for a better grip. It struck him, between one gasp for breath and the next, that he didn't even know who it could be that was pounding the Dune Sea above his head into scorched powder. Forces of the Empire, maybe, or the Rebel Alliance, or the Hutts, or the Black Sun organization-at this point it wasn't as important as just surviving the hard, murderous rain. The only thing he knew for certain, down in his gut, was that it had something to do with Boba Fett. Getting involved with this barve was a sure ticket to disaster.

The large rock suddenly shifted, spilling Neelah forward onto the main chamber's rubble-strewn floor.

Dengar managed to keep his balance, shifting his hold and thrusting with his bent legs, keeping the stone rolling.

Neelah scrambled out of its way as the debris of the subchamber's shattered doorway came tumbling after it.

"You are wasting time," announced SHSl-B from within the suddenly revealed space beyond the rocks and settling dust. The medical droid had busied itself by disconnecting the various tubes and monitoring wires that had been hooked up to Boba Fett. "Therapeutic protocols render it imperative that the patient be removed from these unsafe premises at once."

Lying on the pallet, Boba Fett had lapsed back into unconsciousness, either from the crashing impact of the bombing raid or from an anesthetic dose administered by the medical droid. Dengar and Neelah scrambled over the rocks; each took one end of the pallet and lifted, hoisting Fett high enough to carry out into the hiding place's main chamber.

"Wait a second." After they were clear, Neelah set down her end of the pallet and climbed back into what remained of the subchamber space. Cracks spidered across its ceiling, showering down more dust and loose stones as the sharp, percussive hammer strokes from above grew louder. Neelah emerged a second later with Boba Fett's scoured and dented helmet and combat gear; she piled it on top of the unconscious bounty hunter, then grabbed hold of the pallet again. "Okay, let's go."

They both collapsed in exhaustion when they had reached the safety of the lower, Sarlacc-dug tunnels. The two medical droids fretted over their patient as Dengar and Neelah sprawled back against the fused-smooth walls curving around them. From here, the bombing raid sounded as though it were happening on some other, unluckier world.

"What's that smell?" Neelah wrinkled her nose as she turned her gaze toward the darkness and the stench of the tunnel's lower reaches.

Dengar lifted the lantern he had managed to scavenge hastily from the hiding place's equipment. Its feeble glow extended a few meters into the dark before being swallowed up. "Probably the Sarlacc," he said. "Or what's left of it. The part that could be seen in the Great Pit of Carkoon was just its head and mouth; it had tentacles extending all through the rock. Some say as far as the edges of the Dune Sea. When our friend here blew out the Sarlacc's gut"- Dengar pointed with his thumb to Boba Fett on the pallet-"there was a lot of dead beast left rotting down here. You can't expect something like that to smell too good, you know."

The stench of decay grew worse, as though the vibration of the surface bombing had shaken open a buried pustule. Neelah's face paled, then she quickly scrambled to her knees and hurried to a farther bend of the tunnel.

The sounds of gagging and retching traveled back to Dengar.

She's not used to this sort of thing, mused Dengar.

Or some part of her wasn't; something held in the darkness and hidden memory inside her. That intrigued him. A mere dancing girl, a pretty servant in the court of Jabba the Hutt, would have gotten accustomed to the smell of death quickly enough; it had pervaded the walls of Jabba's palace, seeping up from the rancor pit beneath the throne room. Hutts in general liked that smell; it was one of the more loathsome characteristics of their species to revel in a constant olfactory reminder that they were alive and their enemies, and the objects of their lethal amusements, were dead and rotting beneath them. That, among other things, was why Dengar had considered employment with the late Jabba or any of the other members of his clan as a choice of last resort.

Especially so after Dengar had found Manaroo-and his love for her. How could one return to that being who represented one's essence, an almost forgotten purity and grace, with the stink of dead, defeated flesh wrapped around oneself? It was impossible.

It seemed impossible for this Neelah to endure as well. She had the temperament of one born to the galaxy's nobility, a bloodline accustomed to command and the obedience of others. Dengar had noted that, just from the way she had faced him down in their first encounter.

Anyone else who had gone through the unsavory rigors of Jabba's court, followed by unprotected exposure to the Dune Sea, would have quailed before the obvious superiority of Dengar's strength and weaponry. But some spark of courage inside Neelah had burned even brighter under those conditions, fierce enough to have burned his outstretched hand, if he had dared to touch her.

That aristocratic strain was apparent in the female's face as well, even darkened and toughened as it was by the lash of the double suns and the scouring of the Dune Sea's hot, razorlike winds. She'll be trouble, Dengar already knew. He'd had enough on his hands before she had come along, but with her presence added to the equation, the result was increased exponentially.

Neelah returned, face even paler in the glow from the single lantern. "I'm sorry," she said.

"Don't be." Dengar gave a shrug. "I'll be the first to admit that this isn't the most pleasant neighborhood."

He got to his feet. "We might as well see what kind of shape we're in."

The two medical droids were stationed on either side of Boba Fett's pallet.

"How's the patient?"

SHS1-B glanced back at Dengar. "As well as can be expected," the droid said irritably. "Given the dis turbance he's been put through."

"Hey-" Dengar poked himself in the chest. "Did I order a bombing raid to start up? Don't blame everything on me."

"That's not a bad question." Standing beside him, Neelah glanced over the unconscious form of the bounty hunter. "Who did order it?"

"Who knows?" Dengar set the lamp on a shoulder-high outcropping. "This guy's got major enemies. It was probably one of them."

"Then that would mean somebody knows that he's alive.

Somebody besides us."

That realization snapped together in Dengar's brain, like a pair of wires that had become disconnected during the tumult. She's right-somehow the word must've gotten out, to somebody for whom it was an important piece of information, that Boba Fett hadn't died; that breath, however shallow, was still going in and out of his body. Someone wasn't happy about that. Someone who would send out sufficient explosive force to pulverize an army, just to make sure that there wouldn't be enough left of Boba Fett to take a breath.

"Somebody was spying on us," said Dengar. He had already eliminated himself as the source of the leak, and he had sworn Manaroo to secrecy. Neelah wasn't a likely suspect; there had been no place for her to go, no one for her to talk to while she'd been out in the Dune Sea.

And she hadn't left the hiding place since Dengar had taken her in. Maybe somebody from Jabba's palace, he thought. There had been plenty of scoundrels there, even after Jabba's death, with the necessary skills for staying unseen while watching the comings and goings out in the wastelands. Especially after losing a lucrative gig with the Hutt, any one of them would be motivated to sell valuable info to the highest bidder. To some agent of the Empire or anybody else who had a big enough grudge against Boba Fett. "That must have been what happened."

Dengar nodded slowly. "Somebody saw me taking Fett down into my hiding place."

"Don't be stupid." Neelah shook her head. "If somebody knew exactly where Fett had been taken, they wouldn't bother blowing up everything within sight of the Great Pit of Carkoon. One missile, straight down the tunnel entrance, would've done the job. Simple and clean." She pointed toward the silent form on the pallet.

"If that's all it took to kill him off, they would have done it the easy way. And the quiet way."

She had a point, Dengar admitted to himself. Boba Fett wasn't the only one who lived by secrets; the kind of clients he'd had, and enemies he'd made, were the same way. A surgical strike would have eliminated Fett without the risk of drawing attention that a bombing raid entailed. Dengar had heard nothing the last time he'd been talking to his own information sources in Mos Eisley about a contract being put out on Boba Fett. So if anybody was actively gunning for him, they were definitely keeping it quiet.

"Unless," said Dengar, "there's some other reason for the raid... ."

Neelah gave him a withering look. "Do you think there's some other reason?"

He didn't bother to answer. Silence filled the tunnel as he looked upward, listening and waiting. "I think we're all clear now."

"We can go back up?"

"Are you kidding?" Dengar shook his head, then picked up the lantern and directed its light toward the tunnel they had come down. The light picked up the jumbled shapes of the rubble filling the passageway. "We're blocked off. Even if there's anything left of my hiding place-which is a big if, given the pounding that was going on up there-we couldn't get to it now. We'll have to push on, and see if there's some other way of getting out to the surface."

A shiver of disgust ran across Neelah's shoulders.

The smell of rot was noticeably stronger toward the tunnel's unlit end.

"Can he travel?" Dengar pointed toward Boba Fett.

"It would be better," said SHSl-B, "from a ther apeutic standpoint, if he were left undisturbed."

"That's not what I asked."

"I don't know why you bothered to inquire at all."

SHSl-B's tone was distinctly haughty. "I imagine you'll do whatever you're planning on, no matter what le-XE and I tell you."

"Come on." Dengar motioned Neelah over toward the pallet. "These droids don't know how tough this barve really is."

They managed to lift the pallet, with Dengar taking most of the unconscious figure's weight into his arms, until the loose gravel shifted under his feet and he saw how strong Neelah actually was; she braced herself and caught the load from toppling to one side. Dengar instructed one of the medical droids to loop the carrying strap of the pallet around his neck. With the lantern's beam wavering ahead of them, they started downward into the murk and stomach-churning smell.

"How do you know ..." At the pallet's back end, Neelah gasped for breath. "How do you know we can get out this way?"

"I don't," said Dengar simply. "But there's an air current coming in from somewhere. You can feel it on your face." He glanced over his shoulder at her. The nauseated pallor had diminished slightly; she had gone numb to the smell of the decaying Sarlacc's carcass, buried beneath whatever was left of its nest under the Great Pit of Carkoon. Neelah took a deep breath, nostrils flared, and only gagged slightly. "Even with the stink," continued Dengar, "I can tell it's coming from somewhere outside of these tunnels. If we follow it to its source, we might find someplace where we can either crawl out or dig our way to the surface. Or ..." He gave a shrug. "We won't.

The bombing raid might have collapsed the rest of the tunnels with too much rubble for us to get through. In which case, it's pretty much over for all of us."

"You sound pretty calm about that possibility."

"What's my choices? I volunteered for this gig." One corner of Dengar's mouth lifted in a grim smile. "Later on, when I'm actually dying, I might let myself get a little more emotional about it. In the meantime we might as well save our strength for whatever digging we're going to have to do." He lifted his end of the pallet higher. "Come on. We might as well find out what it's going to be."

The two medical droids followed behind. "This goes against all sound therapeutic protocols." SHS1-B voiced its concern again. "We're not taking responsibility for whatever happens to our patient."

"Absolution." The shorter one trundled with dif ficulty over the tunnel's rough terrain. "Lack of blame."

"Yeah, right. Whatever." Dengar didn't look back at the complaining droids. "You're off the hook." The lantern's beam faded away into the darkness ahead of him.

"Just don't tell me about it."

"Do you think he'll be okay?" The worry in Neelah's voice was audible. "He's been jostled around quite a bit.

Maybe we should let the droids take a look at him-"

"That's a good idea." Dengar kept on walking down the tunnel's slope, his hands gripping the corner of the pallet at his back. "That'll give whoever it is topside lots of time to take another pass at us."

"Oh." Neelah sounded abashed. "I guess you're right."

"About this one, I am. We'll all be better off the sooner we get out of here." He was already thinking about the next time he would see Manaroo. And if he would ever see her again. A lot of his recent decisions, his plans and schemes, were swiftly metamorphosing to regrets. And this could be the last one, he thought as the pallet's weight combined with that of its unconscious passenger to dig into Dengar's hands. Even his sensory perceptions-the tantalizing hint of fresh air against his sweating face-could have been lies and wishes, rather than the simple truth that he was walking through his own tomb.

His doubts faded a bit when the tunnel's floor leveled beneath his feet; the slope he and Neelah had carried Boba Fett down had extended, through its various twists and turns, at least a hundred yards. That wasn't enough, Dengar knew, to take them out of the territory of another bombing raid. But he was familiar with the rocky outcroppings of the Dune Sea's surface all around what had been his hiding place's entrance; there was a good chance that they had reached a point where the ground's bones hadn't been completely atomized. The bombs' impact might even have created new passages to the oxygen above, untainted by the stench of the rotting Sarlacc. By now, the smell had gotten bad enough that Dengar could taste it, a nauseating film that had crept down the back of his tongue... .

"Look!" Neelah called out from behind him.

Dengar glanced over his shoulder, then in the di rection in which her upraised hand pointed, as she balanced the corner of the pallet against her thigh. The lantern's beam swept across a slanting heap of broken stone. "I don't see anything... ."

"Turn off the lantern," ordered Neelah.

He thumbed off the power switch. The light had been dim enough that his eyes only took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Which wasn't complete a thread of daylight, clouded with dust motes, drew a jag-edged spot only a few inches from the toes of his boots. Dengar tilted his head back and spotted the cleft in the rocks overhead. The hole looked hardly bigger than the width of his hand.

"This'll take a little work." Dengar mulled over the situation. He and Neelah had lowered the pallet between themselves. With the lantern switched back on, he studied the wall of crumbled stone nearest the hole. "I can get up there, all right. And so can you; it doesn't look like that bad a climb." He pointed to Fett. "He's going to be the problem, though."

"You've got a line coil, don't you?" With a nod of her head, Neelah indicated one of the equipment pouches at Dengar's waist. "If you could get up there and pry the gap open wider-or if you could get out to the surface-then I could tie a loop around his chest and under his arms, and you could haul him up."

Nothing had been heard from the medical droids for a while as they had straggled along behind Den-gar and Neelah. But now SHSl-B spoke up. "The patient," it protested loudly, "is not in any kind of condition for a maneuver as you've described. Very simply, you'll kill him if you try that."

"Yeah, and if we leave him down here, he'll be just as dead." Under the best of circumstances, Den-gar would have gotten tired of the droid's officious carping. He took out the line and fastened one end to his belt so his hands would be free for climbing. He gave the rest of the coil to Neelah, then nodded toward Boba Fett. "Pull him back a bit so the both of you will be out of the way of whatever I pull down." There was another possibility that Dengar had left unspoken. Specifically, that in trying to widen the light-spilling gap overhead, he'd bring down the entire roof of this underground space, burying himself and the others under a few tons of rock. The bomb ing raid had left the area in a state of fragile balance; even removing the smallest stone might trigger a collapse of everything surrounding it.

He left the lantern with Neelah, instructing her to point it toward the area around the bright crevice he'd be working on. As he started to climb, fingertips digging into the loose rock, he could hear her dragging the pallet over to the farthest angle of the space below him.

One stone shifted as he put his hand's weight on it.

The stone came free and tumbled away; he would have followed it, crashing hard down the slope he'd traversed so far, if he hadn't managed to loop one arm around a larger outcropping just above and to the side of his head. His feet dangled in air for a moment as more of the dislodged stones rattled and slid out from under his boot soles.

"Are you all right?" Dengar heard Neelah's voice from below as the lantern beam pinned his one hand straining to hold its grip on the outcropping and his other dug in next to it.

"Do I look all right?" The hazard annoyed Dengar more than alarmed him. Without turning his head, he shouted down to Neelah. "Move the light ... over just a bit. .

. ."

The beam shifted as he managed to get more of his weight balanced on the outcropping, his chest pressing against its top ridge. He reached up and grasped the edge of the tiny gap he had spotted from the floor of the tunnel. With a push, it gave way; he flung the stone away as he turned his head to shield his eyes from the gravel and dust raining down.

More daylight spilled down from the Dune Sea's surface; Dengar could even see, as he tilted his head back, a patch of cloudless sky. We can make it, he thought with relief. Sweat trickled down his neck and across his chest as his free hand yanked out a few more stones jutting into the vertical opening. They fell into darkness, striking the others he had previously torn loose. He was grateful for the fresh air, dry and hot as it was from the suns' pounding temperature, that flooded across his face and into his throat. Anything was better than the stink that filled the caverns and tunnels beneath the surface... .

The beam of light suddenly disappeared.

"Hey!" Dengar shouted to Neelah below him. "Swing that light back up here!" The glare of daylight coming down the widened hole wasn't enough for him to make out the details of the space's ceiling; he couldn't see which rock to grab and pull on next. "I still need it-"

"There's something down here!" Neelah's shout echoed off the curved walls of crumbling stone. Her next words were tinged with sudden fear. "Something big!" as the segment made visible by the lantern lay immobile.

"That's why it smells so bad in here, remember? There's probably pieces of it scattered all through these tunnels, or whatever's left of them."

Nose wrinkling in disgust, Neelah stepped a little closer to the giant form. Enough light bounced off its scales, made shinier by patches of decay and the dried ichor of its blood, that the pallet with Boba Fett on it could be seen several meters away. The two medical droids, the readouts o n their torsos blinking, regarded Neelah's investigations with only mild curiosity.

Dengar turned back to his work on their escape route. "Get that light beam up here-"

"It's alive!"

The force of Neelah's shout came close to knocking Dengar loose from the outcropping. "What're you talking about?" He pulled himself farther up on the stone before looking back down. "You can smell that the thing's deader than-"

"It moved!" With her voice a mixture of fury and alarm, Neelah pointed at the bulk of the Sarlacc segment.

"I saw it just now. When I poked at it."

"Nothing to worry about," said Dengar. His arm, where it crossed over the stone's corner ridge, was starting to go numb. "Probably just part of the decomposition process. You must've disturbed some gas bubble inside the tissues. It's probably going to get a lot worse smelling in here real soon-"

His words turned to silence as a visible shiver ran across the towering convex wall of the Sarlacc segment.

Dengar could easily see the motion, like a peristaltic wave traveling across the scales and crusted decay patches.

"There!" Neelah kept the lantern beam directed at the glistening bulk. "That's what it did before! I thought you said this thing was dead!"

It'd better be, thought Dengar. A sense of foreboding moved up from the base of his stomach and into his throat. Boba Fett had killed the damn thing; he'd blown his way out of its gut. From trauma like that, 'the Sarlacc had to have died; there was no other possibility.

None-the word looped inside Dengar's head with a touch of panic.

That fear rose out of his dark, unbidden wondering.

No one had ever seen the Sarlacc entire; it had lain buried in its nest in the Great Pit of Carkoon before there had ever been sentient beings on the planet of Tatooine. The Tusken Raiders, who had ridden their shaggy bantha mounts across the Dune Sea wastes for centuries untold, had ancient legends of the Sarlacc giving birth to itself at this world's center in the days before the twin suns had split apart. Born and growing with the slow persistence of an eternal creature, digging and rooting itself in its tunnels beneath the sand and rocks, until the day would come when it had eaten everything else and would consume itself, continuing an endless cycle of destruction and rebirth.

It was all nonsense, Dengar knew. There was no point in paying attention to Tusken myths. But at the same time nobody on or off Tatooine had ever determined the exact physiology of the Sarlacc. Maybe it's got more than one stomach, thought Dengar. Or it can regenerate itself, like a plant. Nice possibilities for it; too bad for anybody who might have foolishly wandered into its reach.

Like us- His fears proved suddenly correct. The curving wall of the Sarlacc segment reared up, like a giant serpent uncoiling. It reached higher than Dengar's hold on the outcropping, the scales dragging across the roof of the cavern several meters away from him. A shower of rocks and sharp-edged debris rained down as Neelah scrambled to temporary safety near the pallet and the two medical droids.

The interior of the cavern shook with seismic force as the Sarlacc's writhing form crashed down again. Dengar gripped the outcropping tighter, trying to keep from being thrown loose from it. More rubble poured down the widened gap, with hot stones and sand falling across his shoulders and the side of his averted face.

Even before he could see what was happening down below, Dengar had gotten his end of the rope line around the outcropping and had knotted it fast. "Grab the line!" he shouted as the dust started to settle. "I'll pull you up!" , He could feel her tugging at the other end of the line. But when he could see below himself again, the space dimly illumined by a combination of the daylight from above and the beam of the lantern knocked on its side, he saw that Neelah had dragged the unconscious figure of Boba Fett from the pallet and had gotten him upright. Fett's weight was braced against her shoulder as she looped the line around his chest.

"There-" Neelah stepped back and shouted to Dengar.

"Take him up! Start pulling!"

Boba Fett's arms dangled at his side, the tautened rope all that kept his limp body from collapsing to the floor of the cavern. His head lolled forward, chin against his chest. The only sign of him still being alive was the slight motion of his ragged breath.

No point in arguing; Dengar knew that it would be a waste of time with the obstinate female. He clambered up onto the outcropping's top surface, then reached down and grabbed the line with both hands. His spine hit the rock wall behind him as he reared back and pulled. The body of the unconscious bounty hunter straightened, feet dangling clear of the ground, as Dengar drew Fett toward himself.

The cavern shook as the Sarlacc segment, either in its death throes or from hunger spurred by its awareness of the humans' presence, convulsively lifted itself and slammed its length against the side of the cavern directly beneath Dengar. Beneath the pounding of his heart, the outcropping trembled and groaned, as though the larger stone it was part of was about to pull free from the upper reaches of the cavern wall. He reached down and grabbed another section of line, hauling Boba Fett higher into the open space; the Sarlacc segment came within inches of the bounty hunter's feet as it doubled upon itself in hissing agony.

Fett was still several meters away from Dengar's grasp as the Sarlacc segment crashed down toward the cavern floor once again. Its head and tail were still unseen, extending into the darkness at either end of the space. The echo of its impact against the ground rolled through the cavern like buried thunder; more sharp bits of rock pelted against Dengar's back. One side of the gap, the escape route to the surface he had been widening, sheered off and fell tumbling, inches away from the suspended figure of Boba Fett. The limp bounty hunter slowly revolved as Dengar strained to pull him higher.

That was the only motion Fett showed, as though the loop around his chest had squeezed the last remaining life force from him.

Past Fett, Dengar could see the two medical droids scurrying to safety at the other side of the cavern as the Sarlacc segment twisted onto its side, scales crushing the rocks beneath it to powder. Neelah backed away, the lantern's beam widening against the Sarlacc's flank, then turned and ran as the towering curve gained speed, rolling toward her. As Dengar watched, the stone fragments slid out from beneath her feet, throwing her onto her hands and knees. The lantern clattered to a halt less than a meter away, its beam angling upward onto the bulk of the Sarlacc.

The glowing ellipse of light on the Sarlacc's scales grew larger as the segment continued to twist about, like a hideous tidal wave of rough-edged armor and injured flesh. Neelah gave a cry of mingled pain and fear as the segment rolled onto her foot and lower leg, pinning her to the floor of the cavern.

The Sarlacc segment halted its motion, as if some sense within it were aware of the captive it had made. Its convex mass loomed over Neelah as she twisted onto her side and pushed futilely at it with her bare hands. All that it would take to crush her into a lifeless and broken thing would be for the Sarlacc to continue its twisting, rolling motion, the heavy tide of its bulk sweeping through the cavern and obliterating everything in its path.

Dengar tugged the rope line high enough to loop it around the end of the outcropping, leaving the un conscious Boba Fett suspended above the Sarlacc segment.

With one hand holding on, he dug with the other into the holster on his belt, caught between his own weight and the rock's surface. He managed to drag out his blaster, leaving abraded skin from the back of his hand across the rough stone. Dengar shifted his position on the outcropping, trying to line up a clear shot, past the dangling figure of Boba Fett and into the mass of the Sarlacc... .

That shifting of weight on the stone, plus the damage to the already precarious walls of the cavern caused by the Sarlacc's convulsive thrashing, was enough to break the outcropping free, a hairline crack just past Dengar's elbow splitting open with a puff of dust. The forward edge of the outcropping shot downward as he scrambled to keep hold of it. His teeth rattled in his head as the narrow point of stone jammed itself against the other side of the crevice, a meter below where the outcropping had been positioned before. The knot of the line fastened to Boba Fett slid down the outcropping and caught at the juncture of the stone and the crevice wall.

The sharp, sudden movement had knocked the blaster free from Dengar's grip. Clutching the stone, he watched helplessly, time expanding into slow motion, as the weapon spun in the air and choking dust near the cavern's ceiling, then fell. Grip and muzzle tumbled end over end, beyond any point where Dengar could have caught it, even if he'd been able to take one of his clawing hands away from the stone.

He saw something else then, something that had come to life as unexpectedly as the buried Sarlacc. The sudden drop of the line had snapped Boba Fett's head back, so that his pale, unhelmeted visage was turned toward Dengar and t he daylight spilling into the cavern from above. The bounty hunter appeared dead, as though the medical droids' disregarded warnings had proved true, after all; it might as well have been a corpse that Dengar and Neelah had carried through the underground tunnels, and that now dangled unmoving in midair... .

Boba Fett's eyes opened, gazing directly into Dengar's. Slow-motion time stopped entirely as Fett's cold regard pierced the other bounty hunter's spirit.

Then time started up again, slamming into microsecond events. One of Boba Fett's hands raised from his side, shot out and caught the falling blaster, as sharply and deftly as an uncoiling serpent striking its prey. The weapon filled his grasp as though it were an extension of his being, a part of him as much as the bones of his spine.

Fett's gaze broke away. As Dengar watched from above, Boba Fett scanned downward to where the great bulk of the Sarlacc segment held Neelah trapped against the cavern's floor. He extended his arm, the blaster's muzzle on the same direct course as his sight, straight into the massive curved flank of the Sarlacc.

The cavern filled with blade-edged shadows as the blaster erupted into coruscating fire, its explosive touch pulsing at a diagonal across the open space. Its force was enough to deflect the rope line from vertical, like a miniature rocket thrusting Boba Fett away from its flaring burst. Fett kept the blaster's impact pouring into the same spot on the curved surface of the Sarlacc as a burning stench mingled with the thick odor of decay that had already hung in the close, lung-oppressing air.

At the exact same moment the Sarlacc segment reared upward, stung by the blaster's white-hot needle. Bits of broken scales and charred flesh scattered across the cavern; the creature's raw wound, cut deeper by the continuing fire, sizzled beneath an acrid haze of black smoke.

Neelah dug her fingertips into the rubble-strewn cavern floor as more sparks and pieces of blackened tissue rained around her, striking a pool of the Sarlacc's blood with quick, spattering steam. She crawled painfully forward, dragging the leg that had been trapped behind her, as the bright stream from the blaster in Boba Fett's grip continued tearing open a wider and deeper section, like a red doorway being carved into living stone.

A scream of agony, the wordless cry of a wounded beast, sounded from far within the unlit tunnels beyond the cavern space. Louder and shriller, until it was a physical presence, its force shivering the walls and tearing one stone loose from another. Neelah crouched against the side of the cavern, close to the two medical droids, as sections of the cavern's ceiling cracked apart and fell. The broken stones struck the bleeding and charred flank of the Sarlacc segment, then tumbled and rolled to a halt, mounting against the creature.

The cry broke off as a different motion seized what was left visible of the Sarlacc. The rocks piled against it shifted as the segment retracted into the tunnel opening at the farthest edge of the cavern. From above, Dengar had a momentary glimpse of a ragged terminus, gray and scabbed with the segment that had been torn from its connection with the larger creature. Then it was gone, leaving the stones and churning dust behind.

In Boba Fett's hand, the blaster went silent. He looked back toward the light-filled opening and the outcropping precariously slanting across. Dengar could see in the bounty hunter's face that he was burning up the last of his strength, summoned from a reserve deep within him.

"Lower me...." Fett's voice rasped, like words spoken within an airless tomb. "Now ..."

Dengar managed to brace his feet against the side of the gap, enough to unfasten the line from the outcropping and pay it out hand over hand, gradually dropping Boba Fett toward the floor of the cavern. When the line slackened, Dengar looped it over his shoulder, using his other hand to climb up the vertical opening. He reached the surface, collapsing onto the hot sands of the Dune Sea. Drawing in an exhausted breath, he sat up and clutched the line tight in his fists.

A tug came on the line. Dengar stood up and pulled, grabbing more of the line as he backed step-by-step away from the opening. He could tell from the weight that there was more than just Boba Fett at the other end of the line now.

More muscle ... than brain, thought Dengar as he brought the line inch by inch over the rocks and sand. He supposed that was why he had a certain place in the bounty-hunter business, and Boba Fett had a different, and much more famous one. He dug in, the line's tautness keeping him from falling over backward, and finally saw one of Fett's arms reach upward from the hole, his hand sinking into the ground and leveraging his chest into view. Boba Fett had his other arm around Neelah, holding her tight against himself; the hole had been widened just enough, between Dengar's efforts and the crashing of the Sarlacc segment, to allow the two close-pressed bodies to scrape through.

The line went slack, dumping Dengar onto his seat, as Boba Fett got Neelah up onto the sand, then with a final push against the sides of the hole, collapsed beside her.

In all directions, the silence of the Dune Sea ex tended from them. Wearily, Dengar got to his feet and scanned across the low hills; tilting his head back, he searched the cloudless sky, sun glare almost blinding him. There was no sign of any ships. The bombing raid that had left the desert wasteland cratered and scorched seemed effectively over, its perpetrators having removed themselves beyond the atmosphere of Tatooine. Though by this point, if they had returned, Dengar didn't feel capable of anything other than flopping on the ground and letting the explosive charges finish him off. He walked over to the other two. Boba Fett lay on his back, eyes closed; the only indication of life was the slow rise and fall of his chest. Whatever strength had been left in him was enough for basic respiratory functions, and nothing else.

"How are you doing?" Dengar's shadow fell across Neelah's face.

She nodded slowly. "I'm okay." With the back of a begrimed hand, Neelah pushed her sweat-damp hair away from her eyes; the motion left a black smear across her face. She sat up and drew her knees toward her breast so she could examine the ankle that had been pinned beneath the weight of the Sarlacc segment. A wince drew her eyes shut for a second as she poked at the bruised flesh.

"Nothing's broken, I don't think." Leaning against Dengar for balance, she stood upright and gingerly put her weight on the leg. "Yeah, it's all right."

A voice sounded out of the hole from which they had just escaped. "Given the circumstances I have just observed," called SHSl-B loudly, "I would anticipate that medical attention is required by all parties in the immediate vicinity. Plus, the patient we had previously been attending is undoubtedly in need of-"

The hectoring comments were cut short when Neelah picked up a rock and tossed it down the hole. It clanked against metal and plastoid, rendering the medical droid silent for a moment.

"I'm not going back down there," announced Neelah.

"I've had enough time on that line already."

Dengar gave a weary sigh. As always, he supposed it was up to him. The medical droids still had their uses-for one, SHSl-B had been obviously right about Boba Fett needing some further attention, especially after what had been drained out of him underneath the Dune Sea's surface. And there were the various supplies-bits and pieces; not much-that he and Neelah had managed to carry with them from the hiding place. Those would un doubtedly come in handy, given their present exposed situation.

"All right," said Dengar. He looked around for the nearest boulder to which to fasten the line. "But when I get done, you're both going to owe me. Big time."

"Don't worry about that." Neelah smiled up at him.

"You'll get all the rewards that're coming to you."

He wasn't sure what that meant. Even as he was clambering back down the escape-route hole, the strap of the lantern clenched in his teeth, he was wondering whether those rewards would be a good or bad thing, when they finally got to him.

He walked over to the other two. Boba Fett lay on his back, eyes closed; the only indication of life was the slow rise and fall of his chest. Whatever strength had been left in him was enough for basic respiratory functions, and nothing else.

"How are you doing?" Dengar's shadow fell across Neelah's face.

She nodded slowly. "I'm okay." With the back of a begrimed hand, Neelah pushed her sweat-damp hair away from her eyes; the motion left a black smear across her face. She sat up and drew her knees toward her breast so she could examine the ankle that had been pinned beneath the weight of the Sarlacc segment. A wince drew her eyes shut for a second as she poked at the bruised flesh.

"Nothing's broken, I don't think." Leaning against Dengar for balance, she stood upright and gingerly put her weight on the leg. "Yeah, it's all right."

A voice sounded out of the hole from which they had just escaped. "Given the circumstances I have just observed," called SHSl-B loudly, "I would anticipate that medical attention is required by all parties in the immediate vicinity. Plus, the patient we had previously been attending is undoubtedly in need of-"

The hectoring comments were cut short when Neelah picked up a rock and tossed it down the hole. It clanked against metal and plastoid, rendering the medical droid silent for a moment.

"I'm not going back down there," announced Neelah.

"I've had enough time on that line already."

Dengar gave a weary sigh. As always, he supposed it was up to him. The medical droids still had their uses-for one, SHSl-B had been obviously right about Boba Fett needing some further attention, especially after what had been drained out of him underneath the Dune Sea's surface. And there were the various supplies-bits and pieces; not much-that he and Neelah had managed to carry with them from the hiding place. Those would un doubtedly come in handy, given their present exposed situation.

"All right," said Dengar. He looked around for the nearest boulder to which to fasten the line. "But when I get done, you're both going to owe me. Big time."

"Don't worry about that." Neelah smiled up at him.

"You'll get all the rewards that're coming to you."

He wasn't sure what that meant. Even as he was clambering back down the escape-route hole, the strap of the lantern clenched in his teeth, he was wondering whether those rewards would be a good or bad thing, when they finally got to him.

Kuat of Kuat's arms as he stroked its silken fur. "There, there," he soothed the frightened animal. "It's all over now. You have nothing to worry about." That was the difference between creatures such as the felinx and the galaxy's sentient inhabitants. "Go to sleep, and dream whatever you want." He stood at the great viewport of the Kuat Drive Yards' flagship, watching the mottled sphere of the planet Tatooine dwindle in the distance, a clump of dirt among the hard, cold stars. A good part of that dirt was now in considerably more battered condition than before; the military squadron that had pounded the surface of the Dune Sea to dust was already en route, heading back to Kuat by a circuitous route, jumping in and out of hyperspace to foil any possible attempts at tracking and linking them to the just-concluded bombing raid on Tatooine. All insignia and identification beacons had been carefully stripped from the vessels before they had left on their mission. W hen word of the raid filtered through the watering holes and back alleys of Mos Eisley, and any corresponding places on other worlds, the specu lation would most likely be directed toward the Empire or possibly the Black Sun organization. That notion pleased Kuat of Kuat as he scratched behind the sighing felinx's ears. We move in secret ways, mused Kuat. The better to reach our destination ...

The even more pleasing notion was that Boba Fett had reached his final destination. That had been the whole point of the bombing raid. Reports of the bounty hunter's death had already reached Kuat of Kuat; many other sentient creatures, humanoid or not, would have heard of someone going down the gullet of the Sarlacc and would have concluded that was the end of that person. Kuat of Kuat had, however, more experience with the individual in question; Boba Fett had always had an unnerving ability to show up alive, if somewhat battered, long after any ordinary man's death would have been well assured.

Attention to detail had made KDY the manufacturing force that it was in the galaxy, supplier of vessels to Emperor Palpatine as well as the shadowy figures that ran Black Sun; the present Kuat of Kuat had inherited the same thoroughness that had characterized his ancestors.

"It's not enough to know that someone is dead," he whispered to the felinx as he held the animal's luxurious fur close to his throat. "You want them buried, or better yet, scattered across the landscape in little pieces-"

"Excuse me, sir."

Kuat of Kuat glanced over his shoulder and saw one of his comrn supervisors. "Yes?" Even aboard the corporate flagship, he had no taste for the obsequious formalities that characterized Palpatine's court; KDY was a business, not a theater for mono-maniacal self-aggrandizement. "What is it?"

"The damage survey has just come in." The comm supervisor held up a thin, self-contained data readout, with red, glowing numbers arranged in neat rows. "From the monitoring devices we left behind on Tatooine."

He had been expecting those. "What's the analysis?"

"Maximum ground penetration was achieved." The comm supervisor glanced at the readout. "All areas surrounding the Great Pit of Carkoon were effectively saturated by the bombing raid. Probability of anything on the surface of the Dune Sea, or anywhere underground, to a depth of twenty meters, is"-a few quick buttons were punched on the readout's controls-"zero-point-zero-zero-zero-one.

The targeted tolerance level we went in with was only two zeroes past the decimal point." A satisfied expression crossed the comm supervisor's face as he lowered the device. "I'd say the chances are pretty good that we achieved our objective."

"Ah." Kuat of Kuat slowly nodded. " 'Pretty good,'

you say?"

The comm supervisor's pleased expression vanished; he was one of the younger staff members reporting directly to the heir and owner of the company. "A figure of speech, sir." He still had a lot to learn. "The objective was undoubtedly accomplished."

"That's more like it." The felinx murmured drowsily beneath Kuat of Kuat's hand. "Or as undoubtedly as can be expected in this stubborn universe." He bestowed a smile on his underling. "We have to play the percentages, don't we?"

"Sir?"

"Never mind." A sleepy protest came from the felinx as Kuat bent down and set it on the intricately tessellated floor. "Thanks for the information. You can go now."

The comm supervisor made his exit, and Kuat of Kuat turned back to his contemplation of Tatooine, now hardly more than a thumbnail-sized blot in the viewport. Its wordless voice louder, the felinx rubbed against his ankles, negotiating to be picked up again.

"A long way to come ..." Kuat nodded as he murmured his thoughts aloud. "Just for nothing."

He didn't share the comm supervisor's certainty about what had been achieved. Being sure of anything, in this universe, was one of the follies of youth. Still, thought Kuat, it was worth trying. Just for the sake of thoroughness, and on the off chance that Boba Fett could be killed. There was so much at stake-so many plans and schemes, so deeply laid, and so critical to the survival of KDY-that it was worth any expenditure of time and capital to try to remove Fett from the multileveled game board on which the Empire's pawns advanced. There were other players in the game as well-Black Sun, the Rebellion, smaller and even less savory empires like those of the Hutt clans and their like-but Kuat of. Kuat wasn't concerned with those for the moment.

The opponents didn't know, and neither did the pawn, just how important Boba Fett was in this game-Kuat of Kuat found some wry amusement in that datum. If Fett or Emperor Palpatine ever did find out, though, the game would swiftly become more serious. And deadly. There would be no more heirs to Kuat Drive Yards because the corporation itself would cease to exist. The Emperor's scavengers would pick the bones apart like a gem- encrusted corpse... .

There were still a great many moves left in the game, though, before that happened. Kuat was determined to play them all.

"I suppose," he told the felinx, "we'll be seeing him again." That had been the main reason that he had canceled any orders for a second bombing run on Tatooine's Dune Sea. The conviction had settled in Kuat of Kuat that it was a pointless endeavor; if Boba Fett was going to be eliminated, it wasn't by any means as relatively crude as that. "He'll take a good deal of killing. Before he's dead enough."

He supposed it hadn't been a complete waste, though.

Perhaps I've slowed him down-there would be time to shift a few other pieces into position, to contemplate the game board and devise strategies for it.

The felinx had waited long enough; now it impatiently informed its master so.

"Soon enough." Kuat of Kuat cradled the animal in the crook of his arm again and idly scratched the spot behind its ears that it liked the best. "A little time, perhaps.

But it won't be long."

It never was, when it came to dealing with Boba Fett.

Just as before, on another part of the board, when the pawns had been creatures such as that wretched spidery assembler Kud'ar Mub'at and the Bounty Hunters Guild.

That game, Kuat knew, had played out with fatal speed.

"Not long," murmured Kuat of Kuat again. "Not long at all ..." board on which the Empire's pawns advanced. There were other players in the game as well-Black Sun, the Rebellion, smaller and even less savory empires like those of the Hutt clans and their like-but Kuat of. Kuat wasn't concerned with those for the moment.

The opponents didn't know, and neither did the pawn, just how important Boba Fett was in this game-Kuat of Kuat found some wry amusement in that datum. If Fett or Emperor Palpatine ever did find out, though, the game would swiftly become more serious. And deadly. There would be no more heirs to Kuat Drive Yards because the corporation itself would cease to exist. The Emperor's scavengers would pick the bones apart like a gem- encrusted corpse... .

There were still a great many moves left in the game, though, before that happened. Kuat was determined to play them all.

"I suppose," he told the felinx, "we'll be seeing him again." That had been the main reason that he had canceled any orders for a second bombing run on Tatooine's Dune Sea. The conviction had settled in Kuat of Kuat that it was a pointless endeavor; if Boba Fett was going to be eliminated, it wasn't by any means as relatively crude as that. "He'll take a good deal of killing. Before he's dead enough."

He supposed it hadn't been a complete waste, though.

Perhaps I've slowed him down-there would be time to shift a few other pieces into position, to contemplate the game board and devise strategies for it.

The felinx had waited long enough; now it impatiently informed its master so.

"Soon enough." Kuat of Kuat cradled the animal in the crook of his arm again and idly scratched the spot behind its ears that it liked the best. "A little time, perhaps.

But it won't be long."

It never was, when it came to dealing with Boba Fett.

Just as before, on another part of the board, when the pawns had been creatures such as that wretched spidery assembler Kud'ar Mub'at and the Bounty Hunters Guild.

That game, Kuat knew, had played out with fatal speed.

"Not long," murmured Kuat of Kuat again. "Not long at all ..."

"There's something big coming down." Bossk's smile was jagged and ugly. As always. "Something really big."

Boba Fett leaned back against the wall behind the stone bench. Nothing the Trandoshan told him ever came as a surprise; the big reptile just hadn't learned that yet, about how far behind the curve he was always fated to be.

Maybe he will find out, thought Fett, before he dies. "Go on," said Fett. In the meantime there was some value to a pretense of ignorance on his own part. "Tell me about it."

"Wait a second." Bossk turned his scaly head, looking over the bleak contents of Boba Fett's temporary quarters at the Bounty Hunters Guild's main complex. He had already pushed the iron-hinged door shut behind himself with a push from his clawed hand. "This isn't," he growled in a low voice, "something everybody needs to know about." The inspection from his slit-pupiled eyes apparently satisfied him, that there were no obvious listening devices installed in the cracks between the damp stones. "At least, they don't need to for the moment."

"You have a compulsion for secrecy." Idiot, thought Boba Fett-a thousand snooping machines could have been hidden in the chamber that a mere visual scan wouldn't have detected. "That's commendable."

"Gotta be careful." Bossk sat down on the bench beside him and leaned in close. "Especially about 1 something like this."

"Which is?"

All around the sparsely furnished, rough-hewn space, the corridors of the Bounty Hunters Guild compound folded and coiled around each other, replicating the devious pathways of the minds contained therein. Those minds, of the bounty hunters themselves, had been getting progressively more devious since Boba Fett's arrival in their midst. He could sense it, like being inside an infinitely replicating maze, branching through fractal progressions of paranoia and deceit. That was fine by him it was what his plans, and those of the arachnoid assembler Kud'ar Mub'at, called for. The bounty hunters were already getting lost in that maze; some of them wouldn't survive to find their way out.

It's different for me, thought Fett. He was un concerned about the maze's exponential complexity. It didn't matter whether he had a map, or a thread leading his way out. When the time came, he would break his way through the encircling walls, as though they were made of flimsiplast rather than the stone of other sentient creatures' greed and malice. Soon enough ...

"A big job," said Bossk. His claws tightened reflexively, as though upon either the neck of some merchandise or the credits to be gotten for it. "The kind you like."

Fett kept any trace of emotion out of his voice, words blank as the visor of his helmet. "How big?" Leaning even closer, Bossk whispered hoarsely into the audio receptor at the side of Fett's helmet. The Trandoshan's fang-lined smile was even bigger when he drew away, the number recited.

"I see." Boba Fe tt wasn't surprised by the amount of the bounty being offered; he had his own sources of information, so much sharper and beyond those of any Guild member. "That's an enticing sum." He wasn't surprised, either, that Bossk had shaved a quarter million credits off the price. Like most bounty hunters, Bossk had a flexible notion of what constituted a fair division of profits. "Very enticing, indeed."

"Yeah, ain't it?" The contemplation of that kind of credits flow seemed to inspire a new level of glittering- eyed avarice in Bossk. "I knew you'd go for it."

"And what is the exact nature of this merchandise?"

Boba Fett already knew, but he had to ask in order to keep up the masquerade; Bossk had to believe that he was revealing the details rather than just confirming them.

"Somebody must want it pretty badly to put that kind of price on it."

"You can say that again." Bossk held up one claw.

"Here's the scoop. Seems a certain Lyunesi comm handler named Oph Nar Dinnid managed to work himself up a real case of hyper-eros." The toothy smile shifted into a leer. "You know how it goes-the same old story."

Fett knew what the Trandoshan was talking about. The Lyunesi were one of six sentient species on Ryoone, a planet down-spiral from one of the remoter sectors of the Outer Rim Territories. Unusually dismal conditions had been brought about millennia ago by a seemingly permanent suspension of volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere, resulting in a ruthless competition for survival. The other inhabitants of Ryoone would have wiped out the Lyunesi long ago if the fragile creatures hadn't mastered the arts of interspecies communication. Their skills went far beyond mere translation of words and meaning; surrounded by enemies, with the continuation of their own breed dependent upon every nuance of language and gesture, the Lyunesi bought their lives with interpretive skills far beyond even the most highly developed protocol droid. On Ryoone, that meant they made possible all the fluid and rapidly shifting diplomacy between the planet's other species, the madly dissolving and re-forming alliances, the declarations of war and swiftly terminated peace treaties between sentient creatures who didn't even share the same metabolic basis, let alone language. In the galaxy beyond Ryoone, the Lyunesi were found at every communication nexus, sorting out and fine-tuning the messages and negotiations between one wildly dissimilar sector of the Empire and another. All that expertise at reading other species' inten tions and secrets had its downside, though. From time to time various Lyunesi fell prey to their own sensitivity.

An all-consuming passion seized them; worse, it was nearly always reciprocated by the object of their desire.

Unlike members of the reptilian Falleen species, whose conquests were achieved with a notable coldness and lack of feeling, Lyunesi and their hypererotic targets rapidly found themselves in situations where neither partner was left with a shred of self-preserving intelligence. Given the high-level diplomatic stations where Lyunesi were so often found, the results were usually catastrophic.

And fatal.

"I know the story," said Boba Fett. Both in general and in the specific case of Oph Nar Dinnid, which his own sources had told him about. "Better that a high-ranking female should get involved with someone like Prince Xizor. The experience is reputedly more intense and pleasurable, and after it's over, the female might still be alive. If she keeps her wits about her." Fett supposed that with someone like his sometime employer Xizor, that was what passed as chivalry. "The problem with Lyunesi is that they're not smart enough to be heartless."

"Yeah, well, this Dinnid person managed to get himself into a large-capacity vat of nerf waste." Bossk sneered; he had been born without those wasteful, sentimental emotions. "He was working for one of the major liege-holder clans out in the Narrant system; I won't say which one-"

"You don't have to. They're all alike." Boba Fett was well acquainted with those clans; they were really more loose confederations of genetically linked species, with deep layers of ritual obeisance and internal blood oaths patching over their differences. It didn't work; they needed the ultradiplomatic Lyunesi around just to keep from killing each other off. A good gig for the natives of a backwater world like Ryoone-as long as they didn't screw up.

But they always did.

"Let me guess," said Boba Fett. "Dinnid's employers found him in a, let's say, compromising position with a wife or daughter from one of the top clan houses."

"Got that one right." Bossk's eyes glittered as sharp as his fangs. A Trandoshan's enjoyment of another creature's troubles went far beyond the mere anticipation of profit to be gained thereby. "All the way to the top.

Right up to the supreme liege-lord himself. And just like these Lyunesi-they've got no sense at all-the revelation of the affair was in public. At one of the formal clan- oath ceremonies, couple thousand sublieges and their retinues all in their lord's great hall. Somebody accidentally struck the curtain behind the dais, it collapses, and there's our Oph Nar Dinnid and the liegelord's alpha concubine, for all the galaxy to see. Like I said no sense at all."

Bossk's description of events matched what Fett's sources had told him. "It's remarkable that this Dinnid person got out alive."

"I take it back the guy had some sense." Bossk shrugged. "Not enough to keep himself out of trouble, but at least enough to have already planned his escape route when the nerf droppings hit the ventilation system. There was a lot of confusion in the great hall-you can imagine-and Dinnid hightailed it out to a speeder he'd kept fueled and waiting, with its destination coordinates already programmed in."

"Where could he go? Where he'd be safe, that is."

Boba Fett already knew the answer, but continued with his pretense. "The Narrant liege-lords have a sense of honor that doesn't easily accept embarrassment. They'll stop at nothing to get someone who has publicly humiliated them back in their grasp."

"True." Bossk gave a quick nod. "That's why this particular lord has put up such a killer bounty for the merchandise he wants. He can't just take his own troops out and hunt down the little idiot, haul him back, and get whatever satisfaction he can out of Dinnid's hide-at least, not without spreading the story even farther afield. So, naturally, the lord wants the bounty hunters to do his dirty work for him."

Silence was always a desired commodity in the bounty- hunter trade. Boba Fett had made a specialty of quick, efficient-and quiet-work. "With that kind of credits being put up, I expect every bounty hunter in the Guild will be going after Oph Nar Dinnid."

"It's not that easy," said Bossk. "The sneak not only had his escape means planned, he had the perfect place to hole up figured out as well. He's with the Shell Hutts."

Boba Fett had heard that much as well. Of all the Huttese clans, the Shell Hutts were the least numerous, and the most removed from the various alliances and interconnected dealings that bonded the other Hutts together. The Shell Hutts didn't even look like their distant brethren, except in bulk and physiognomy; they had the same basic body mass and large-eyed, slit-mouthed faces, perfect for greedily stuffing assorted wriggling tidbits into. In that sense, of wanting to control everything on which their immense eyes fastened, they were identical to the rest of the Hutts.

Identical in anatomic toughness as well, with thick leathery skins impervious to blaster shots and acids, and vital organs so deeply buried under layers of blubber that they couldn't be even nicked with a vibroblade-the only physical threat that Hutts feared was specific bands of hard unshielded radiation, the kind whose toxic effects built up in their bodies' shielding fat rather than being dissipated through normal excretion processes.

That had kept the Hutts from extending their criminal enterprises to certain areas of the galaxy. Until one of the Huttese clans, sometime in the hazy millennia of the past, had given themselves what their own genetics had failed to protective armored casings, bolted and welded together from heavy durasteel plates, supported and maneuvered about by built-in repulsor fields. All that showed of the Shell Hutts' soft, gelatinous flesh were their jowly faces, protruding tortoiselike from iris- collared ports at the front of the floating ovoid cases.

Even the Shell Hutts' delicate little hands were hidden inside, manipulating the controls for the externally mounted grasping devices. Those seemed to work just as well at grabbing onto and holding big chunks of ill- gotten wealth.

"Why would the Shell Hutts be interested in a comm handler on the run?" Boba Fett had had dealings with various members of the Shell Hutts; he knew they didn't do anything without a credits-related reason, just like the other Huttese. "If they need that level of translation and diplomacy skills, they can just buy whoever's on the market. Someone who doesn't have a price on his head."

"Oph Nar Dinnid made himself valuable to them." A

trace of grudging admiration sounded in Bossk's harsh voice. "Seems he had memory aug-mentors surgically implanted in his cortical areas, and stuffed them full of the Narrant system's top-secret business information, dealings, and records that he had access to from working as the supreme liege-lord's protocol intermediary.

There's a lot of data inside Dinnid's head that the Shell Hutts have found to be pretty interesting. And profitable."

"So? That's not something that would keep Dinnid safe for long. The Shell Hutts aren't exactly reticent about stripping data out of somebody's memory and then tossing the remains out like an empty husk."

Bossk leaned closer, close enough that Boba Fett could smell blood and meat through his helmet's air filters. "Dinnid may be an idiot, all right, but he's not that kind of idiot. The memory augmentors he had installed inside his skull have a time-based readout function wired into them. All the secret business data from the Narrant system that he's carrying is released a few bits at a time-plus it's under an autodestruct encryption. The Shell Hutts try to crack his head open to get at the data, everything gets wiped. But that's not even the best part. They can't even tell how much data is inside Dinnid. Basically, he's valuable to the Shell Hutts for an indefinite period of time; it could be decades before the information is done spooling out of him."

"That was clever of him." As with the rest of the story that Bossk had just related, Boba Fett feigned hearing it for the first time. "But it also means that the Shell Hutts aren't going to let go of him for a good long time."

"Damn straight," agreed Bossk. He tapped a single claw against Boba Fett's chest. "It's not going to be easy, prying him out of their hands. That's why the bounty hunters aren't going out one by one to try and pull off this job. It's going to take a team to nail down this piece of merchandise."

Fett had been expecting this as well. "Are you making me an offer?"

"Maybe." Bossk pulled back, taking another scan around the chamber and toward the rough-hewn door. "Let's face it things have been pretty tense around here since you showed up." The Trandoshan's slitted eyes bored fiercely into the dark visor of Fett's helmet. "There's a lot of talk going on, from the old guard like my father and the rest of the Guild council, all the way down to the rawest bounty hunter on the membership list."

"What kind of talk?"

"Don't mess with me," growled Bossk. "You're valuable to me right now, but if you start getting funny, I'll eat your brains out of your helmet like a soup bowl. If I'm making you an offer, then it isn't just about catching hold of this Oph Nar Dinnid guy-though that should be reason enough for you to be interested. But it's about the future of the whole Bounty Hunters Guild. There's going to be some big changes coming down here, and people are lining up on one side or another, depending on which way they think it's going to go. Frankly, I'd rather have you on my side than not-but whatever side you're on, I'm still going to win. It'll just be easier with you than without. And it'll be easier if you and I and a couple other handpicked barves pull off this Dinnid job. The bounty we'll get from it will buy us a lot of friends.

But more than that, it'll show some of the fence-sitters around here just who's got what it takes to snag the hard merchandise. The ones who can do this job are the ones who should be running the Guild."

"You've thought a great deal about this." Boba Fett kept his own voice level and free of emotion. "Again-I'm impressed."

"Cut the flattery." The point of Bossk's claw dug a little deeper into Fett's chest. "All I want to know is, are you with me on this one?"

Bossk's eyes widened in surprise as Boba Fett's hand suddenly grabbed the other's fist, squeezing the bones hard enough to grate them together beneath the overlapping scales. Fett slowly and deliberately moved Bossk's captured hand away from himself, like setting a peculiar and unlovely art object at a distance.

"All right." Fett released his durasteel-hard grip.

"I'm with you."

Sulkily, Bossk rubbed the joints of his hand. "Good," he said .after a moment. "I'll talk to some of the others. The ones who'll make the kind of team we need."

He stood up from the stone bench. "I'll let you know how it's going."

Boba Fett watched the Trandoshan pull the chamber's door shut behind himself, then listened to the sound of his footsteps fading down the corridor outside. It's almost sad, thought Fett. The poor barve didn't know just how well things were already going.

But he'd find out. Soon enough ... "That's because you and they are fools alike." The thought depressed Cradossk; all the burdens of leadership weighed upon his shoulders. There was no one to help him guide the Bounty Hunters Guild through these perilous shoals, in which conspiratorial enemies thronged like pack sharks. Not even his own son. Spawn of my seed, Cradossk mused gloomily. It just showed that true rapacious savvy was derived more from experience than genetics. I shouldn't have been so easy on him, when he was just a little reptile.

"Someone else is here to see you." The major-domo made a few more final adjustments to Cradossk's garb.

"Did you call for him? Should I grant him admittance?"

"Yes to both questions." The fawning Twi'lek was getting on his nerves. "And it's a private matter. So your presence is not required."

The majordomo ushered in the bounty hunter Zuckuss, then disappeared on the other side of the door he closed behind himself.

Of all the younger, rawer bounty hunters who'd gained admittance to the Guild, Zuckuss had always seemed one of the least suited for the trade. Cradossk gazed at the breathing-masked figure in front of him and wondered why any rational creature would place himself at such risk; it was like a child playing a dangerous adult game, where the wagers were one's own life and the forfeits were measured out in pain and death. His original motivation for pushing Zuckuss, with that less-than-imposing stature and dangling tubes of breathing-assistance apparatus, onto Bossk had been to give his son an easily disposable partner, someone who could be sacrificed in a tight situation with little regret or loss to the organization.

There were more where Zuckuss came from; would-be bounty hunters, with inflated notions about their own skills and toughness, were always lining up at the Guild's doors.

This particular situation had changed, though; Cradossk had another use for young Zuckuss.

"I came as quickly as I could." Zuckuss was visibly nervous. And audibly the breath tubes curving at the bottom of his face mask fluttered. "I hope it isn't anything that-"

"Calm yourself." Cradossk lowered himself into a folding campaign chair made of femurs reinforced with durasteel rods. "If you were in any kind of trouble, believe me, you'd know about it already."

Zuckuss didn't appear reassured. He glanced over his shoulder, as though the door of the chamber had been a trap mechanism snapping shut.

"Actually, there's nothing wrong at all." The bones of the chair were worn smooth beneath Cradossk's palms.

"Much of what you've done has met with my approval."

"Really?" Zuckuss turned his gaze back toward the Guild leader.

"Of course," lied Cradossk. "I have had reports concerning you. My son Bossk is not easily impressed-that is, with anyone other than himself. But he spoke quite highly of you. The business with that accountant ...

what was his name?"

"That was Posondum." Zuckuss gave a quick nod. "Nil Posondum. It's really a shame that didn't go better. We nearly had him."

Clawed hands spread wide, Cradossk's shrug was both elaborate and soothing. "One does the best one can. Not everything happens the way it should." To say something like that required genuine acting ability on his part.

"Bad luc k can happen to anyone." Inside himself, Cradossk still felt like pulling off both his son's and Zuckuss's heads for screwing up that job so badly. Boba Fett had made complete fools out of both of them, and then repeated the ignominy when he'd slipped past them to come sailing into the Bounty Hunters Guild headquarters.

"Don't worry about it. There'll be other times, other chances. There's always another piece of merchandise."

"I'm ... glad you feel that way... ."

"You have to take the long view in this business." He had given the exact same lecture to Bossk, and had been sneered at, years ago. "You win some, you lose some. The trick is to win more than you lose. Go for the averages."

"That's true, I guess." Zuckuss's anxiety level now seemed genuinely lowered. "Except for Boba Fett. He always seems to win."

"Even Boba Fett." One of Cradossk's hands made a grand, all-encompassing gesture. "You wouldn't know it just by his reputation, but he and I go back a long way, and I can tell you that he's had his share of times when he's come up empty. Don't let that general aura of invincibility fool you."

"Well ... it's hard not to be impressed. The things that are said about him ..."

Cradossk leaned forward in the campaign chair and jabbed a claw into Zuckuss's chest. "I've been in the bounty-hunter trade a long time, boy, and I'm telling you now, you're every bit as tough a barve as the great Boba Fett."

"I am?"

"Sure you are." In a Gamorrean's eye, thought Cradossk to himself. He continued with the pitch. "I can tell. There are certain-shall we say?-ineffable characteristics of the born bounty hunter. Someone with the appetite and the skills for succeeding in this trade.

I can smell 'em. That's why I'm the head of the Bounty Hunters Guild, just because of my being such a keen judge of character." He tapped the side of his snout with one claw. "And my instincts tell me that those are exactly the skills you have."

"Well." Zuckuss slowly shook his head in amazement.

"I'm ... flattered."

It's too easy, thought Cradossk. Telling creatures what they wanted to hear, down in however many hearts they carried around inside themselves, was the quickest and surest way to get them ready for sticking the knife in. Their defenses went down like so many security shields with surge-blown power fuses.

"Don't be." He had this Zuckuss exactly where he wanted him; time to spring the rest of the trap. "The truth in this matter is important to both of us. Because there's something I need you to do for me. Something important."

"Anything," Zuckuss said quickly. He spread his gloved hands apart. "I'd be honored-"

"That's fine." With his own upraised hand, Cradossk cut off the young bounty hunter. "I understand. Loyalty is another one of those characteristics, so important in our trade, that I discern in you." He tilted his head to one side, displaying an uneven, insinuating smile. "But we have to choose our loyalties, don't we?"

"I'm not sure I know what you mean... ."

"You've worked with my son Bossk on a couple of jobs.

So you're loyal to him, aren't you?"

There was no hesitation before Zuckuss spoke. "Of course. Absolutely."

"Well, get over it." The partial smile disappeared as Cradossk slouched back in the campaign chair. "Your loyalty is to me. And that's for a very simple reason.

There's some rough times coming around here-as a matter of fact, they've already started. Some creatures aren't going to come out the other end of those times; there'll still be a Bounty Hunters Guild, but it's going to be a lot smaller. You want to be one of those that survive the shakeout, because the alternative is death." He peered closer at Zuckuss, seeing himself reflected and magnified in the other's eyes. "Am I making myself clear?"

Zuckuss gave a rapid nod. "Perfectly clear."

"Good," said Cradossk. "I like you-that's why I'm making you this kind of offer." In truth, it was a Trandoshan characteristic to despise all other life- forms, and he wasn't making any exception in this case.

"You stick with me, and there's a good chance you'll make it. I'm not just talking about survival, but really getting somewhere in this organization. Loyalty-to the right creatures, that is-has its rewards."

"What ... what is it you want me to do?"

"First off, keep your vocal apparatus muted, concerning what we're talking about right now. The first part of loyalty is being able to keep a secret. Any bounty hunter who can't keep his mouth shut isn't long for this galaxy, at least not in any organization that I'm running."

Another fast nod. "I can keep quiet."

"I figured as much." Cradossk let his smile reappear.

"We're all scoundrels here, but some of us are better scoundrels than others." He leaned farther forward this time, close enough that the breath from his flared nostrils formed momentary clouds on Zuckuss's eyes.

"Here's the deal. You've heard about the Oph Nar Dinnid job?"

"Of course. Everybody in the Guild is talking about it."

"Including my son Bossk, I take it?"

Zuckuss nodded. "He's the one I heard it from."

"I knew he'd jump on it." Cradossk got some satisfaction from that; his spawn was at least ambitious, if not overly smart. "He likes the big jobs, with the big payoffs. This Dinnid job is just the kind of thing to get him salivating. Did he say anything about putting together a team to go for it?"

"Not to me."

"He will," said Cradossk. "I'll see to that per sonally. My son may show some initial reluctance to having you on the team, but I'll make it worth his while to take you along. There's some equipment to which I can provide access, some inside information sources I'm sure he'd find valuable-that sort of thing. More than enough to make up for whatever share he and the others would have to cut you in on for being part of the operation."

"That's very ... kind of you." Suspicion was discernible behind the curved lenses of Zuckuss's eyes.

"But why would you do something like that?"

There was hope for this creature yet; he wasn't a complete idiot. "It's very simple," said Cradossk qui etly. "I do something for you"-he tapped his claw against the top of the other's face mask-"and you ... do something ... for me." With the last word, the point of Cradossk's claw tapped against his own chest. "Now, that's not too hard to understand, is it?"

Zuckuss nodded slowly, as though the claw in front of his face had hypnotized him. "What is it ... that you want me to do?"

"Now, that's simple as well." Cradossk rested both his hands on the bony arms of the campaign chair. "You're going to go out with the team that my son Bossk is putting together to snag this particular piece of merchandise named Oph Nar Dinnid. The difference between you and Bossk, however, is that you'll be coming back."

It took a few seconds, but illumination finally struck Zuckuss. "Oh ..." The nod was even slower this time. "I see... ."

"I'm glad you do." Cradossk gestured toward the door.

"We'll talk some more. Later."

When Zuckuss had scurried out of the chamber, Cradossk allowed himself a few moments of self-satisfied musing. There was lots more to do, strings to pull, words to be whispered in the appropriate ears. But for now, he had to admit to himself that he actually did like this Zuckuss creature. To a degree, thought Cradossk. Just smart enough to be useful, but not smart enough to realize how he was being used-at least, until it was too late. He might even feel some regret when it came time to eliminate Zuckuss as well.

But such, Cradossk knew, were the burdens of leadership. Idiot, thought the majordomo. He had heard every syllable that-had passed between this creature and Cradossk. Whether Cradossk was aware of it or not, there were no secrets around here. Not as far as I'm concerned.

"Excellent." The majordomo smiled, showing all of his own sharp-pointed teeth. He held open the anteroom door, using his other hand to keep his head tail from falling across his shoulder as he gave a precisely calculated bow. "I trust we will have the pleasure of your company again."

"What?" Standing in the corridor, Zuckuss gazed at him as though puzzled by those simple words. "Oh ...

yes, of course. I imagine you will." He turned and walked away, like one weighted by a new and unforeseen responsibility.

The majordomo watched him go. He was more familiar with the various shades of meaning attached to Cradossk's utterances. Nothing was ever as it seemed on the surface.

The poor bounty hunter didn't have a clue as to what kind of lethal mess he was getting into.

But Ob Fortuna did. He glanced behind him, across the length of the anteroom, to make sure that the door to Cradossk's chambers was still closed. Then he hurried down toward the opposite end of the corridor, to where the others who would be interested in this conversation would be waiting. With his hands tucked inside the folds of his long-skirted robes, he was already calculating the profits that would come from another piece of information bro-kering.

Idiot, thought the majordomo. He had heard every syllable that-had passed between this creature and Cradossk. Whether Cradossk was aware of it or not, there were no secrets around here. Not as far as I'm concerned.

"Excellent." The majordomo smiled, showing all of his own sharp-pointed teeth. He held open the anteroom door, using his other hand to keep his head tail from falling across his shoulder as he gave a precisely calculated bow. "I trust we will have the pleasure of your company again."

"What?" Standing in the corridor, Zuckuss gazed at him as though puzzled by those simple words. "Oh ...

yes, of course. I imagine you will." He turned and walked away, like one weighted by a new and unforeseen responsibility.

The majordomo watched him go. He was more familiar with the various shades of meaning attached to Cradossk's utterances. Nothing was ever as it seemed on the surface.

The poor bounty hunter didn't have a clue as to what kind of lethal mess he was getting into.

But Ob Fortuna did. He glanced behind him, across the length of the anteroom, to make sure that the door to Cradossk's chambers was still closed. Then he hurried down toward the opposite end of the corridor, to where the others who would be interested in this conversation would be waiting. With his hands tucked inside the folds of his long-skirted robes, he was already calculating the profits that would come from another piece of information bro-kering.

understood completely. What a creature like Bossk didn't comprehend was that violence, however necessary, was a bomb nestled against one's own heart, in the absence of meticulous calculation. He'll find out, thought Fett.

Soon enough.

The smaller bounty hunter, Zuckuss, glanced nervously from Boba Fett over to Bossk, then back again. "Maybe," he said, "an advance party could head out toward the Shell Hutts. Do some reconnaissance so that when the rest of our team shows up there, we'll be ready to go right in."

"Don't be stupid." Boba Fett shook his head. "The only thing that would accomplish would be to warn the Shell Hutts of our intentions. It's going to be hard enough keeping any element of surprise, without sending them a message like that."

"But the ships are ready to go!" Bossk whirled about on the clawed heel of his foot. "If we wait any longer, the other Guild members will put together teams for taking on this Dinnid job. They'll beat us to it!"

Boba Fett didn't look up from the data readout in his hands; he continued checking the Slave I's armaments list. "It would be no great tragedy if anyone did that.

Since they would have no chance off success, our merchandise would still be safely in the hands of the Shell Hutts, waiting for us. And it might actually facilitate our own plans, once we put them into motion.

The Shell Hutts would see the difference between us and some crude pack trying to blast their way into the stronghold."

"You keep telling us about these great plans you've made." Bossk aimed a venomous stare at Fett. "When are you going to let us know exactly what they are?"

"As I said before." Unflinchingly, Boba Fett returned the other's hard gaze. "You need to cultivate patience."

Bossk turned away again, his grumbling even louder than before.

The other team member was there with them in the landing dock. IG-88, a droid that had managed to become one of the Bounty Hunters Guild's more respected members-in fact, one of the few that Boba Fett would even consider to be a serious rival- brought his optical scanners around in Fett's direction. "There is patience," said IG-88 in a harshly synthesized voice, "and then there is hesitation. The latter comes from fear and indecision. We decided upon you as the leader of this team's operations because we assumed that such were not your qualities. Our disappointment would be great if we found out otherwise."

"If you think you can pull off this job without me"-Fett lowered the data readout in his hands- "then go ahead."

IG-88 regarded him for a moment longer, then gave a single nod of its head. "You remain our leader. But I warn you Don't exhaust what patience we do have."

"Mine's already gone." Bossk had obviously continued stewing; the look in his slitted eyes had gone from murderous to annihilating. One hand hovered dangerously close to the blaster slung at his hip. "I've changed my mind. This whole team notion was a stupid idea-"

"Um, Bossk ..." Zuckuss raised his voice. "It was your idea."

"If I started it, then I can put an end to it as well." His gaze slowly moved across the three other bounty hunters. "You lot can do whatever you want. But I'm out of this. I'm going out after Oph Nar Dinnid by myself."

"I'm afraid you don't have that option." Boba Fett tucked the readout inside one of his armor's storage pouches. His voice seemed even more level and emotionless, compared with Bossk's boiling anger. "You know too much about this operation for you to be on the outside of it. When you come in with me on a job, you stay until it's over. There's really only one way for you to quit."

"Yeah?" Bossk sneered. "What's that?"

IG-88 remained standing as before, his equally cold droid emotions-or the lack of them-observing the confrontation. Zuckuss drew back, ready to duck behind the fuselage of one of the ships in the landing dock as Boba Fett dropped his hand to the curved grip of his own blaster.

"Go ahead," said Boba Fett, "and try walking out on us. And you'll find out."

The atmosphere tensed, as though filling with subphotonic discharge from a battle cruiser's venting ports. In the taut silence, Boba Fett gave a silent com mand to the heavily armed figure standing in front of him. Go ahead, he thought. It'll save us all a lot of time... .

"There's someone coming!" Zuckuss's voice broke through the adrenaline-frozen moment. He pointed to the distant high arch that formed the entrance to the landing dock; beyond it, a streak of fiery light cut a crescent past the stars. "Another ship-"

Bossk held his gaze tight on Boba Fett's for a moment longer, then glanced over his shoulder. The approaching light had grown brighter, its docking jets flaring into a sudden corona. He looked back at Fett. "Is this who we've been waiting for?"

"It could be." Boba Fett didn't take his hand from the grip of his blaster. "Lucky for you."

"That's right," said Fett. "If I had killed you, I would have needed to find another person for the team."

His hand moved away from the smallest of his weapons. "I find personnel changes to be aggravating."

Zuckuss peered past them at the approaching ship. "I don't recognize this one." It was close enough that its outlines could be seen a featureless ovoid, barely larger than a TIE fighter, trailing a metallic seine, a stiffly interlinked net, behind its flaring engines. "How did it get clearance-"

"I arranged for that." Boba Fett stepped past Zuckuss and the others, walking toward the pad that the approaching craft had locked upon. "But it wouldn't have made any difference if I had or not."

"What do you mean?" Zuckuss scurried after Fett.

"Believe me-this barve goes where he wants to."

The ovoid could be seen more clearly now as it slid into the landing dock, thrust engines shut down and repulsors on. Its rounded surfaces were pitted and scored with the impact marks of high-intensity armaments, including one large scorch mark where the metal had actually melted and fused back together. As it hovered above the pad its trailing mesh shifted and drew forward, one part curling above like a scorpion's tail, the other forming a reticulated cradle beneath, onto which the craft slowly sank and was still.

"Look at this thing." Fascinated, Zuckuss had walked right up to the ovoid, his boots stepping onto the mesh.

He laid a gloved hand on the battered and corrosion- marked surface. "It looks like it's been in every battle since the Clone Wars-"

"Watch out," said Boba Fett. But the warning was already too late.

A microscopic hairline fissure around the top of the ovoid widened, with a hiss of inrush ing air. An elliptical section separated from the rest, tilting up ward on previously hidden internal hinges. For a moment nothing further showed from inside the craft. ...

As though released by a high-compression spring, the barrel of a close-range laser cannon rose up, with its power sources and recoil housing mounted directly behind.

The gleaming surfaces of black metal shone like the coils of an aroused serpent, intricate and deadly. A faint, shrill electronic whir sounded as the massive weapon's range-sighting devices locked onto Zuckuss, swinging the point of the muzzle down within a meter of the bounty hunter's chest. Another series of sharp, concussive noises sounded within the machinery as the indicator lights' glow shifted from yellow to a hot red, charged and ready to fire. That was followed by silence; Zuckuss froze where he stood, as though hypnotized by the black hole almost within touching distance of his hand, and its lethal potential even closer than that. There would be only a haze of disconnected atoms floating above the scorched remains of his boots after one shot from the weapon.

"Back up," said Boba Fett quietly. "Do it slow, and you probably won't get hurt."

"Hurt?" Beside him, Bossk was gazing in wide-eyed fascination at the laser cannon's darkly gleaming barrel.

"He's going to be vaporized!"

Zuckuss was unable to take his own gaze away from the death-bestowing machinery locked upon him. But he did manage to take one cautious step backward, then another; all the while the weapon's tracking systems followed his every move, shifting angle slightly to remain targeted.

A few more steps and Zuckuss was back with the other bounty hunters. "Stay here," Boba Fett told him.

"Don't worry." The stink of panic sweat seeped out of Zuckuss's gear. "I'm not going anywhere."

Boba Fett had already stepped past him, leaving Bossk and IG-88 behind as well. He strode without visible apprehension across the landing dock toward the ovoid resting above its glittering mesh. The laser cannon swung and locked onto him as he approached.

"It's been a long time." He stopped and spoke to the weapon itself, as though its charge-primed muzzle were a face masked like his, with the tracking systems as its all-seeing eyes. "A very long time."

The red indicator lights along the weapon's housing cooled from red, through a dull orange, down to a steady- state yellow. The optics and sensors of the tracking systems defocused slightly, as though the hand and mind behind the trigger had relaxed to a state of mere vigilance, rather than instantaneous aggression.

Slowly, the laser cannon rose, as though being lifted on some mechanism inside the ovoid-shaped craft. A cloud of hissing steam surrounded it, obscuring for a moment the outlines of the weapon, as though it were an outcropping of black rock, on a mountain peak wreathed in a sudden, violent storm. The cannon parted the steam as a massive humanoid torso appeared below, its wide shoulders bearing the weapon's crushing weight. From the underside of the barrel, a quarter circle of gear-toothed metal curved down into an anchoring plate set in the creature's chest, with interlocking motors to adjust the muzzle's terminal elevation. Heavy cables, some glistening black, others made of silvery durasteel, looped beneath the arms and around the muscle-sheathed chest and ribs, connecting with the counterbalancing cylinders of power sources flanking the spine. The latter were revealed when the individual climbed out of the ovoid, black-gloved hands and thick-soled boots weighing upon the mesh's strands.

From the intricate joins of the weapon's mounting, more steam lashed out, gathered, and dissipated in trailing wisps, indicating the presence of an old-style, liquid- based cooling system, primitive technology dating from the earliest days of the Republic. The laser cannon swung

180 degrees around on its mounting, as though the tracking system optics were actually the eyes in a head made of pure destructive capacity.

A tail section, like a primitive saurian's, but made of segmented black metal and mounted by articulated bolts to the creature's hips, was the last thing to be dragged out of the craft. With its top section hinged back and its pilot standing before it, the resemblance to a giant egg was complete, as though it had just now cracked open to disgorge a new combination of living matter and lethal machinery.

Behind the stranger, the tail curled across the edge of the stiffened mesh. With one hand, the creature undipped a small keyboard device from the band of metal running from the hip bolts and across his abdomen. His other hand punched in a rapid sequence of ideograms, then thumbed a larger button i in the device's corner.

"long ... time." The device's speaker crackled as the stranger held it up in front of himself. Underneath the synthesized words, the hissing of the steam from the laser cannon's housing could still be heard.

"YOU DO NOT ... SEEM TO AGE ...

BOBA FETT."

"Should I?" The statement amused him. "Time enough for that when I'm dead."

He could hear the other bounty hunters behind him.

Bossk's voice was louder than the rest "I don't like the looks of this... ."

The stranger was instantly transformed; Boba Fett knew that something had triggered a reaction sequence. On the housing of the laser cannon, the indicators flared red again; the tracking systems narrowed their focus, sighting in on a point behind Fett. Steam jetted farther from the housing's apertures as the segmented metal tail stiffened, bracing the stranger into a tripod rigid enough to take the force of the high-powered weapon's recoil.

Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder and saw that Bossk had instinctively dropped his hand to the butt of the blaster slung at his hip; the Trandoshan always did that when something aroused his suspicions.

"Not a good idea," said Fett. With a nod of his helmet, he indicated Bossk's hand, frozen in place by the laser cannon snapping into firing mode. "D'harhan tends to kill first and not bother investigating afterward."

Bossk took his hand away from his blaster.

"Good." Boba Fett looked toward Zuckuss and IG-88 as well. "Now our team is all here." "D'harhan and I go back a long way." Across the controls of the Slave I, Boba Fett's hands moved swiftly, setting the coordinates for dropping back out of hyperspace. "Longer than you can imagine."

"How come I've never heard of him?" The ship's cockpit area was small enough that Zuckuss had to remain standing in the hatchway behind Fett just to exchange a few words with him. "He seems very ... impressive."

Zuckuss had had a choice of traveling with Bossk and IG-88 in the Hound's Tooth, but the Trandoshan's worsening temper had pushed him into the Slave I instead.

Let the droid deal with him, Zuckuss had decided. Droids don't take all that snarling and muttering personally.

But heading toward the Shell Hutts' home base, a ring- shaped artificial planetoid called Circumtore, aboard the Slave I had proved even more unnerving. The stranger named D'harhan-or friend or mercenary companion, or whatever he might have been at one time to Boba Fett-had found the most secure corner of the ship's belowdecks holding area, and had sat down on the gridded flooring with his back to the angle of the bulkheads. D'harhan had wrapped his flex-shielded arms around his knees, partially resting the weight of the laser cannon mounted on his shoulders on them, the weapon's gleaming barrel thrust slightly forward. When Zuckuss had entered the area, moving as stealthily as possible, he'd suddenly heard a whisper of vented steam; the other's tracking systems had registered his presence, swinging the laser cannon in a horizontal arc toward him. Luckily, the firing indicators on the cannon's housing had remained in their yellow standby mode.

It had taken a few moments for Zuckuss to realize that this intimidating and unfamiliar entity was only partially conscious at that moment. The square, heavily armored box mounted beneath the laser cannon's curved forward support, resembling a thick breastplate with rows of input sockets and flickering LEDs, was the repository of all of D'harhan's cerebral functions, surgically encased and transferred there from the emptied skull, discarded like an empty combat-rations container when the massive weapon's base had been drilled into the collarbones and vertebral column. What Boba Fett had described of the operation had been enough to set Zuckuss's spine crawling. It was one thing to augment oneself with weapons and detection systems-Zuckuss frankly envied Fett's impressive array of sensor and destructive devices; the man was a walking armory- but to go beyond that, to have whole major sections of one's anatomy cut away and replaced with dura-steel and attack- level charge batteries, to actually turn oneself into a weapon rather than just a bearer of weapons ... a sick feeling had moved inside Zuckuss's gut as he'd spied upon the sleeping D'harhan. That's where it ends up, he'd thought gloomily. If you go all the way. The segmented metal tail, the third leg of the laser cannon's tripod support, curled around D'harhan like a defensive barrier separating him from contact with the universe of living things... .

Zuckuss had taken a cautious step closer in the Slave I's hold. He'd known that D'harhan wasn't so much asleep as just partially shut down, conserving energy for the ever-alert weapon above his torso, its glowing lights a simple constellation in the darkness. A residual circuit was triggered by Zuckuss's approach; one of the black- gloved hands turned the illuminated screen of the keyboard voice box outward. do not disturb me, read the screen, its audio function switched off. leave me be.

Like a sleeping dragon in a cave, the fiery destruction of its breath only smoldering ...

The silent warning had been enough; Zuckuss had been only too happy to retreat to the ladder leading back to the Slave Fs cockpit. The dark, somnolent, yet threatening form of the creature who had turned himself into a weapon aroused mingled dread and nausea inside Zuckuss. Once, before he'd decided to become a bounty hunter himself, he'd caught a fleeting glimpse of Darth Vader, the Dark Lord of the Sith, commanding a punitive sweep of Imperial stormtroopers across the capital city of a world that had been slow to pay obeisance to the distant Emperor Palpatine. The thought had struck him then, as it did again now, that there were some paths one could follow, where even if one wound up powerful beyond one's dreams, one also became somehow diminished, as though the essence hidden inside the armor were progressively stripped away and replaced with unfeeling metal and circuitry.

That was all too deep to think about, especially now, when he had allied himself with creatures like Boba Fett and D'harhan. Maybe later, Zuckuss had mused as he'd climbed the ladder to the cockpit. If there was a later.

"I don't get that voice-box device he carries around." Zuckuss nodded toward the ladder and the hold below. "Seems kind of awkward. I would've thought something that left his hands free would be more useful for communicating."

"D'harhan doesn't have a lot of need for com municating." Boba Fett's voice sounded dryly amused. "And before, when there were others like him, they coordinated their actions with their own internal comm network."

"There were others? Like him?" That seemed a dismaying prospect to Zuckuss. "What happened to them?"

Fett made no reply.

Zuckuss tried another question. "What was he like before?" He didn't even feel like saying the other's name aloud. "Before he became ... what he is now?"

"That's none of your business." Boba Fett didn't take his eyes away from the Slave I's controls. "He's been as he is for a long time. If you never knew of D'harhan before, it's because he minds his own business, in regions of the galaxy where such as you never travel."

Fett glanced over his shoulder at Zuckuss. "For which you should be grateful."

The discussion of the final team member was concluded; Zuckuss knew better than to ask any more prying questions. I'll be glad when this fob is over, he thought ruefully. Things had been getting increasingly sticky back at the Bounty Hunters Guild, with its rapidly thickening air of conspiracy and stealth, the various backstabbing alliances forming and dissolving and recoalescing with new partners and enemies on a daily, even hourly basis. Going on this Oph Nar Dinnid job, dangerous as the Shell Hutts' defenses were reputed to be, seemed like a piece of baked confectionery by comparison. But even here, in the starless void of hyperspace, Zuckuss knew he was still in the uncomfortable midst of those dangerous spiderwebs; all it would take would be for Bossk or Boba Fett to find out that he was working from Cradossk's agenda, and he'd be pitched out into vacuum from either the Slave Fs or the Hound's waste chute, boots first. Agreeing to Cradossk's schemes was beginning to look like less of a good deal now that Zuckuss was out here, with nothing to count on but his own smarts and urge to survive.

"Stop fidgeting." Boba Fett spoke without looking around at Zuckuss. "Brace yourself; we're about to drop into sublight space."

Zuckuss was already familiar with the Slave I's abrupt navigational transitions; Fett's working vessel was stripped of any deceleration buffers that might have impaired its speed or fighting abilities. The ship consequently slammed from one transit mode to another with a gut-wrenching impact. Zuckuss grabbed either side of the hatchway and averted his lidless eyes so he wouldn't have to see the stars blur sicken-ingly into focus beyond the cockpit's main viewport.

"There's Bossk."

Opening his eyes, Zuckuss saw the Hound's Tooth floating before them, engines shut off. A signal light flashed, and Boba Fett reached over and pressed the comm button. "Fett here. Have you made contact with the Circumtore landing authorities?"

"Positive on that." IG-88's flat, expressionless voice sounded from the cockpit speaker. "Approach and landing permission has not-I repeat, not-been granted."

"I didn't expect it would be," said Boba Fett dryly.

"When people like us show up, hardly anyone puts out a welcome mat."

"At the conclusion of our last exchange, the Shell Hutts indicated they would be sending out a negotiator."

"What level?"

Bossk's voice broke into the discussion. "The fat slugs said it would be an Alpha Point Zero. What's that mean?"

Boba Fett kept his thumb on the comm button. "That's the Shell Hutts' top authority level. They don't go any higher than that. So it means two things One, we don't have to bother with any small-fry underlings, and two, they're taking our arrival very seriously."

"When this negotiator gets out here, what's our plan?" Bossk sounded hungry for action, as though the journey out from the Bounty Hunters Guild had been an eternity of chafing inaction. "Kill him?"

Typical, thought Zuckuss, slowly shaking his head.

He'd had enough experience with Bossk to know that that was always his Plan A. And there usually wasn't a B.

Fett glanced over his shoulder at Zuckuss. "Don't worry." He turned and pressed the comm button again. "We can be a little more subtle than that. You and IG-88 should transfer over here to the Slave I before the Shell Hutts' negotiator arrives. But remember-I do the talking."

Bossk's ship, the heavily armed Hound's Tooth, was left in autostandby, its alarm systems set to refuse entry to anyone other than its returning master. Zuckuss was aware of the level of Bossk's paranoia, and the number of lethal booby traps he had installed throughout the Hound, all to prevent anyone from invading his base of operations. That was the main reason Zuckuss had gone instead with Boba Fett; his nerves had still been frayed from the last time he had been aboard the Hound's Tooth, when he'd constantly had to be on guard against setting off any of the security devices. Better to let the bounty- hunter droid IG-88 take the risk, even if it meant losing track of Bossk-the main reason Zuckuss was on the team for this job-for the duration of the journey.

He went down into the Slave J's holding area to open the transfer hatch between the two ships. The hunched shape of the partially shut-down D'harhan filled one corner of the area; he could feel the laser cannon's standby optics registering his presence, lifting the weapon's barrel slightly and turning it in his direction, as he stepped from the bottom rung of the ladder.

From the small viewport beside the hatch, Zuck-uss could see the Hound's Tooth being maneuvered into docking position. When it had connected with the Slave I, Zuckuss hit the hatch release controls; a sharp hiss sounded as the two ships equalized their internal atmospheric pressures. The hatch irised open, and Bossk and IG-88 stepped aboard. Bossk pressed a button on the remote cockpit control at his waist, and the Hound disengaged and drew into a parallel orbit above the surface of Circumtore.

"Where's Fett?" Bossk scanned the Slave I's holding area. Though it was the largest open space aboard the ship, it was already cramped with the three bounty hunters in it. Boba Fett's ship was built for speed and destruction, not comfort.

Zuckuss pointed to the ladder leading to the cockpit.

"He's still up there. I think he's getting ready for the arrival of the Shell Hutts' negotiator."

His guess was proved correct when Boba Fett's voice crackled from a speaker mounted on the bulkhead. "We'll need to make room," said Fett over the ship's internal comm system. "I've just been informed that the negotiator is one of the Shell Hutts; they didn't send one of their pet intermediaries. If we're going to get one of those tanks aboard here, we'll need all the space we can get."

"I don't see how ..." Zuckuss turned, looking around the Slave I's holding area. "The only room down here is in the cages."

"So?" Boba Fett's voice spoke again. "What's the problem?"

Bossk glared at the cages where Boba Fett kept his captured pieces of merchandise, en route to collecting the bounty on them. "I'm not going in there," he growled.

"You're the biggest one here," Zuckuss pointed out helpfully. "Except, of course-" He pointed to D'harhan's massive bulk, the laser cannon's barrel protruding slightly above the drawn-up knees and encircled metal tail. "For him."

The three bounty hunters looked over at D'harhan.

"I don't know," said Bossk. Even he seemed in timidated by the presence of a fully charged laser cannon in their midst. "Maybe it's not a good idea to wake him up." too late. One of D'harhan's hands tapped out another message on the silenced voice box and turned its glowing screen toward them, I hear ... EVERYTHING YOU SAY.

Zuckuss and the other two bounty hunters stepped back, spines against the bulkhead, as the roused D'harhan slowly stood up, the segmented metal tail drawing around behind him. The housing of the laser cannon mounted onto D'harhan's chest and shoulders reached above even Bossk's head. The massive weapon's tracking systems regarded the bounty hunters in silence for a moment.

"Watch out!" Zuckuss's cry was involuntary, triggered by the sight of the indicator lights on the laser cannon suddenly surging to red. He dived to the floor as Bossk and IG-88 scattered to either side of the cramped holding area.

On the gridded floor, with his arms pulled over his head, Zuckuss heard the quick, sharp sizzle of a laser bolt, then another; their glare lit up the space, stinging his eyes. In the quiet that followed, he could smell ozone and scorched metal.

Lifting his head, Zuckuss saw the lights on the side of the animate laser cannon dwindling back down to yellow and safety. Flanking the holding area, Bossk and IG-88 looked first toward D'harhan, then toward the target of his ramped-down laser bolts. The impacts had been precisely calculated and aimed, shattering the hinges of the main merchandise cage; fragments of molten durasteel, scattered across the floor, glowed a dull red. Wisps of acrid smoke rose from the edge of the cage door as it fell with a resounding clang.

"there," spoke D'harhan's voice box aloud.

"NOW YOU SHOULD HAVE ... NO OBJECTIONS."

"Your point is valid." IG-88's circuitry had re covered completely from the sudden burst of laser fire.

The droid stepped over the bars of the fallen door and into what was left of the cage, then turned around.

Bossk regarded D'harhan for a moment longer, his slitted eyes looking up at the cooling laser cannon with something like envy, then followed the other bounty hunter into the area's adjoining space, now incapable of being shut and locked.

That'll take some fixing, thought Zuckuss. Con sidering the proprietary attitude that Boba Fett natu rally took toward the Slave I and its fittings, he was more than relieved that D'harhan had blown the holding cage hinges and not him.

At that moment Boba Fett appeared on the ladder coming down from the cockpit. The bounty hunters watched as Fett's visored gaze turned toward the cage in which he transported his merchandise, then down to the barred door lying in front of it.

"That's coming out of your share," Fett told D'harhan.

The black-gloved hand moved across the voice box's keyboard. "no, it's not."

For a moment longer they stood facing each other-one masked behind the visored helmet, the other faceless except for the muzzle of the laser cannon-before Boba Fett finally gave a slow nod. "We'll talk."

"There's a ship approaching." Zuckuss pointed to the viewport. "It must be the Shell Hutts' negotiator."

In the viewport, a spherical craft moved closer to the Slave I; a simple off-planet shuttle, it displayed tortoise insignia of the Shell Hutts and a diplomatic emblazon showing its unarmed status. The shuttle's forward hatch had already deployed its docking arms, ready to hook up with the Slave I's transfer hatch.

A few moments later, as Zuckuss manned the hatch's controls, a broad face with a slit gash of a mouth appeared floating before the bounty hunters. The elongated, tapering cylinder of the Shell Hutt negotiator moved with ponderous grace into the holding area, its underside repulsor beams pushing invisibly against the floor grids. As the end of the tanklike casing made it through the transfer hatch, Zuckuss hit the button and irised the hatch closed again.

"Ah, Boba Fett!" The casing, studded with rivets and various maintenance ports, swung about in the holding area, past the other bounty hunters and toward the figure standing near the metal ladder. A leering smile formed on the Shell Hutt's face. Tiny mechanical hands dangled beneath a gleaming chromium collar, sealed tight around the wattled gray flesh of its neck; the claws, delicate as a scuttling sea crab's, clicked happily against each other. "How pleasant to see you again."

Fett's response was dry and emotionless. "My feelings, Gheeta, are the same as the last time we met."

Bossk spoke from the holding cage. "You know this creature?"

"We've had ... business dealings." Fett didn't look back at the Trandoshan. "A couple times before."

"And very profitable they were, too." The cylinder with the Shell Hutt inside bobbed slightly as it turned toward Bossk. "At least ... for some people." The smile on Gheeta's face soured. "I hope," he said to Boba Fett,

"that you're not expecting the same degree of trust that you found previously on Circumtore." The little crablike hands snapped their metal claws together, hard enough to produce sparks. "After that last affair of yours, Fett, you're not going to be greeted with open arms."

"I don't need to be." Boba Fett stood face-to-face with the Shell Hutt. "You're a business creature, Gheeta, and so am I. Warm sentiments have nothing to do with it.