"You state the obvious," replied Boba Fett. His gloved hands moved across the controls in front of the pilot's chair.
"Yeah, well, I don't get it, either." That comment came from Dengar, standing in the cockpit's hatchway. His face was still shiny with sweat from his recent exertions. There had been a lot of stuff to move, and in a hurry, from this ship into the cargo module that had been launched from it." That thug was trying to kill us."
"Not 'us,'" corrected Fett." Me. In all likelihood, Bossk didn't even know you two were aboard."
That didn't make Neelah feel any better. Things had been happening fast-too fast, for her taste-even before Boba Fett's personal ship had lifted off from Tatooine's Dune Sea. Slave I's swift, functional mass had come flaring down from the night sky like a magnified emblem of potentiated lethality, just in time
to crush beneath its hot rocket nozzles one of the two men who had pinned her, Dengar, and Fett down with their blaster-rifle fire. Irritatingly, Boba Fett had kept his cool during all the shooting. Easy for him, Neelah grumped to herself. He was the one who had transmitted the signal to Slave I, up in orbit above their heads. So he had known it was coming. He just hadn't felt like letting his partners know.
If that's what we still are, thought Neelah. With her arms folded, she studied each of the two bounty hunters in turn. Dengar wasn't too hard to figure out; she could probably make a deal with him, and he'd stick to it. Especially if there was some chance of realizing a profit out of it. She even knew what he needed the money for; Dengar had told her about his bride-to-be, a woman named Manaroo, and his desire to make a big enough score to get out of the bounty hunter trade once and for all. Smart man, Neelah had decided. Or at least smart enough to realize that keeping company with someone like Boba Fett was a dangerous proposition. From what she had already picked up, Neelah knew that Fett's business associates tended to have lives as short as those of his enemies.
Whereas Fett might as well be immortal, for all that she could see. He had already survived falling down the gullet of the Sarlacc beast, at the gaping bottom of the Great Pit of Carkoon. The condition in which Neelah had found him, with his skin virtually dissolved from his flesh by the Sarlacc's gastric secretions, would have spelled out death for any other creature. It hadn't destroyed Boba Fett, though, but only seemed to have made him even tougher and more fearsome.
Just my luck. Neelah kept her own face expressionless as she watched Fett maneuvering the ship.
Her own fate had become bound up with one of the hardest creatures in the universe, the least likely to be swayed by threats or violence . . . or seduction. In some ways, she had been better off when she had still been in Jabba's palace, as one of the late Hutt's troupe of dancing girls. At least then she had known that her youth and beauty, and Jabba's taste for those enticing and precious qualities, would keep her alive. For a while, or until Jabba had grown either jaded with her dark-eyed looks or stimulated by the thought of tossing her to his pet rancor, the way he had done with that poor little Twi'lek Oola. She closed her eyes, barely able to suppress the shudder evoked by the memory of the girl's screams, the rancor's grunting snarl, and Jabba's slobbering delight at what had happened in the bone-littered pit in front of his throne. Whoever the ones that had finally bested Jabba the Hutt were-Dengar had told her names, Luke Skywalker and a Princess Leia Organa, that meant nothing to her-they had done a good job in ridding the universe of that massive, loathsome slug. Neelah supposed it would be asking a lot to have expected them or anyone else to have also restored her past to her, the darkly shadowed memories of who she had been and all that had happened to her before she had found herself in Jabba's palace.
It would be a lot to expect from Boba Fett as well. The bounty hunter trade was concerned with only one thing, delivering their precious bits of hard merchandise to the highest bidder. If that merchandise had thoughts and fears and hopes, or whether all that went to make up the merchandise's spirit had been scoured away by a deep-level memory wipe-that didn't matter. If Boba Fett was keeping her alive-he had in fact pulled Neelah out of their attackers' line of fire and aboard Slave I just seconds before it had taken off-then she had to assume it was being done on a bounty hunter's agenda, and not out of any concern for her welfare. That's what I've got to figure out, Neelah reminded herself. What's in it for him. Before anything else; more than her own survival depended upon the answer to that question. She knew that it was undoubtedly the key to unlocking all the other mysteries, all the way back to her own true name.
Another voice broke into her brooding thoughts.
"You still didn't tell us," said Dengar," why you let that Bossk creature get away."
Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the bounty hunter standing in the cockpit's hatchway." You know his name?"
"Of course." Dengar pointed to one of the data-screens beneath Slave I's forward viewport." I recognized the ID profile that came up when we were approaching his ship. Last I heard, the Hound's Tooth is still Bossk's ship."
"Correction," said Fett." It was his ship."
"You're going to blow it up?" Dengar grimaced and slowly shook his head." I don't know if that's such a good idea. I've had a few run-ins with Bossk before, and he can be a pretty ugly customer."
"That goes without saying." Neelah had stayed aboard Slave I, watching as Dengar had operated the transfer-port controls between the two ships. From the port's remote view-cam, she had caught a glimpse of Bossk as he had sprinted away from the apparition of his supposedly dead enemy, suddenly materialized aboard the Hound. She had even gotten a measure of grim amusement from witnessing the Trandoshan's panic. But she had also recognized his scaly, fang-mouthed image from her time at Jabba's palace. Bossk had been one of the many lowlifes and dealers in profitable violence that had drifted in and out of the late Hurt's employ. Every time Neelah had spotted him, a sick chill had set into her gut; the reptilian gaze that he directed toward her and the other dancing girls spoke silently of appetites that would leave welters of blood and splintered bones as signs of their fulfillment.
"I've had much more experience with Bossk than you have." Boba Fett's voice remained level and unperturbed." He and I go back a long way. And believe me, I'm not concerned about any retribution at his hands."
"Fine for you," grumbled Dengar." Maybe you can take care of him. I'm just worried about what happens when he comes after me. That guy isn't exactly known for being able to forgive and forget. He wakes up ready to bite other creatures' heads off."
"I can take care of him; I've done so in the past." A note of amusement sounded in Boba Fett's voice." So as long as you stick with me-as long as we keep going with this partnership that we've agreed uponthen you don't really have anything to worry about at all, do you?"
The expression on Dengar's face indicated to Neelah that the end of the bounty hunter's worries was still far away.
She had to admit, though, that Boba Fett's claims seemed factual and not just boasting. He had been way ahead of Bossk, even as soon as they had all climbed aboard Slave I and sealed the entry hatch." This ship is going to blow," Fett had announced." Somebody's shoved a load of explosives aboard it."
"What?" Standing in the cargo hold, Dengar had gaped at the other bounty hunter." How do you know that?"
Boba Fett had tapped the side of his helmet as he explained." I've got an alarm relay, straight from the security systems I wired into the ship's perimeter web. Nobody gets in and out of Slave I, even when it's on autonomic standby, without my getting the details. The ship's computer has already done a spectrum read on the trade molecules in the air; there's some sloppy-but effective-high-thermal explosives somewhere around us, with a remote trigger charge attached."