The pain ebbed a fraction, enough for Boba Fett's blood-reddened vision to clear. At the limits of his consciousness, he could hear Slave I's perimeter-breach alarms sounding with high-pitched, ululating cries. The vertical, tail-downward flight position of his ship-the engines' thrust-ports were all mounted on the hull side opposite the rounded curve of the cockpit-had resulted in the main viewport being the part to take the brunt of the collision with the unseen obstacle. Or seen too late to prevent a crash; the memory of the brief glimpse Boba Fett had caught, the telltale shimmer and reappearance of a star at the edge of the viewport, was still vivid.
At least, he had been able to slam on the reverse thrusters in time. There was an inherent limit to transparisteel's toughness; there had to be, for it to have enough of a glasslike refractive index to be used in viewports. If Slave I had been traveling any faster, the rounded exterior shape of the cockpit would have shattered like a crystal egg. Boba Fett would have found himself breathing vacuum, surrounded by glittering shards.
The ship's artificial gravity was still working; he managed to scramble back down to the pilot's chair from which he had been thrown. The alarm signals were still shrill and loud in his ears. That meant Slave I was still losing internal atmospheric pressure. Boba Fett made a quick visual scan of the viewport arching before the control panels. There was no crack in the transparisteel, but the crash had been hard enough to loosen a section of interstitial bond between the clear material and the surrounding dura-steel of the hull.
"Activate emergency weld sequence." The procedure was one of the few keyed to a voice command for the onboard computer. Fett had anticipated that if it had ever become necessary, he might not have been able to reach the cockpit controls at a time when speed was of the essence. He quickly gave the structural coordinates for the leaking section of the viewport bond; every millimeter of Slave I was precisely charted in Boba Fett's memory, as clear as if he had been looking at the original blueprints and design parameters." Initiate thermal ramp-now."
He could feel the glow of heat through the dark,
T-shaped visor of his helmet as the circuits laid in the cockpit's surrounding bulkhead powered up. A moment later the durasteel next to the viewport leak turned red, then white-hot; the crystalline structure of the metal turned ductile, just enough for the seal to reform around the transparisteel. The perimeter alarms fell silent as the loss of atmosphere tapered down to just a few molecules hissing out into space, then none at all.
The whole emergency repair process had taken only a few seconds. Slave I was like a living organism, designed in its essence to heal itself. Boba Fett could feel in his own nerve endings when that happened, just as any wound to the ship's fabric was sensed as a wound to himself. The only things closer to him, even more of a perceived extension to his spirit, were the weapons he carried. Those were as much a part of him as his own hands, instruments of his will.
Losing even a few seconds in the pursuit of N'dru Suhlak and his cargo was irksome. And to have it caused by a trap like this one turned Boba Fett's durasteel-like resolve even harder and colder.
The mechanics of the trap were close enough now for him to easily discern. Floating in space just in front of Slave I was a sheet of mass-altered, optic-filterable transparisteel, its jagged edges reaching out wider than the ship's hull. Suhlak must have gotten it from the ring of transport wreckage in orbit around Uhltenden; Boba Fett recalled that some of the wrecked freighters had been hijacked supply ships bound for the construction docks of Kuat Drive Yards. Chances were good that they might have been carrying advanced armaments-technology supplies-and that Suhlak had put them to use for his own escape route scheme.
Optic-filterable transparisteel hadn't been developed for observation purposes, but for armor plating of heavy destroyers and cruisers in the Imperial Navy, as well as tactical camouflage. The light transmitted through it could actually be routed, through interior" bucket-brigade" datalinks, from one side of a ship to another, effectively passing on the visual perceptions to an outside observer. A crude form of simulated invisibility, but with one important strategic advantage. The nano-tech datalinks could also be programmed to filter out any specific visual data, such as the presence of other navy ships. . . or the trail of a speeding Z-95 Headhunter. The optical image sent through the filterable transparisteel would show the distant stars on the other side of the barrier, and nothing else. Boba Fett realized that had been how N'dru Suhlak had managed to disappear from view, while the thermal and radioactive profiles from his small ship had continued to register on Slave Is tracking systems. A perfect trap. . . or almost. The only thing that had saved Boba Fett from a fatal crash into the floating barrier had been his lightning-fast reactions and the quick response of Slave I's reverse thrusters.
That still left the small matter of catching Suhlak's Z-95, which had an even bigger lead now than it had before.
Or did it? Boba Fett's preeminence in the bounty hunter trade was based on more than mere weaponry skills. Psychology played a significant part as well. Without ever having met him face-to-face, he had a good notion of how Suhlak's brain worked. Cocky, thought Fett as he reached out toward the cockpit's control panel. And not quite smart enough to play it safe, and just run when he's got the chance.
With a few quick adjustments, Boba Fett extended Slave I's docking claw; the sharpened points of the pincerlike extension dug hold of the huge piece of optic-filterable transparisteel. Fett slammed the joystick control hard to one side, simultaneously releasing the claw's grip. Through the forward viewport, he saw the distant stars shimmer and then become clear and focused once more, as the jagged-edged sheet of armor-thick, glass-clear material tumbled to one side of the ship.
There be is. Straight ahead through the cockpit's forward viewport, Boba Fett saw Suhlak's Z-95. Closer than it had been when he had been chasing the smaller craft, and with its powerful thruster engines damped down to standby level. Suhlak had turned his ship around, angling it back toward the vector it had previously traveled, so that he could get a clear view of Slave I crashing into the barrier trap he had set in place. And a perfect shot of Boba Fett dying in that crash. Only, thought Fett, it didn't work out quite like that.
And now there was no place for Suhlak to run. This close, he would never be able to maneuver his ship around, rev up its thruster engines, and hit top velocity before Slave I would be able to catch up with him.
Boba Fett slammed his palm down upon the thruster controls of his own ship. In its viewport, the Z-95 loomed closer and larger, like a bull's-eye target under high magnification.
The first crash had been satisfying enough to watch. N'dru Suhlak had smiled to himself, imagining the famous bounty hunter tumbling head over heels inside the cockpit of his ship, caught by an invisible trap.
The second crash was glorious.
"You see?" Suhlak turned away from the Head-hunter's viewport and displayed his self-satisfied smile
to his only passenger." So much for your unstoppable, implacable pursuer, the great Boba Fett."
Beside him, the Twi'lek Ob Fortuna, former major-domo at the headquarters of the Bounty Hunters Guild, leaned closer toward the transparent curve of the viewport. The Twi'lek's eyes, like those of all the males of his species, were usually half-concealed behind their lids, perfectly suiting his darting, sneaking gaze. But now those eyes were opened wide in amazement." I. . . I never would have thought such a thing possible." One of Ob Fortuna's pale, long-fingered hands reached out, coming within a fraction of an inch of touching the viewport's concave surface." He's gone. Absolutely. . ."