"Yeah," chimed in Dengar." Your reputation is the biggest thing you've got going for you. There's a lot of creatures who'll just roll over and give up if they hear you're involved in something close to them. If you give all that up-if you give up your identity, your name-then you're starting from zero. Everything will have to be done the hard way, every time."
Boba Fett swiveled the pilot's chair around from the controls; his helmeted gaze, hidden behind the
dark, narrow visor, took in each of them in turn." You should consider yourselves unusually privileged," he said slowly," that I've explained as much as I have already. I'm not in the habit of justifying my methods to anyone. But now I have a partner, so that requires a certain forbearance on my part. And as for you" -he pointed to Neelah, then nodded, as though in deep contemplation-" I have no objection to your listening in to what passes between Dengar and myself. But harbor no illusions: I saved you, and brought you along with us, for a reason."
Neelah glared back at him, feeling the anger inside her going up another notch." Which is?"
"You'll find out soon enough. But for right now, you have value to me. Take comfort in that."
Sure, she thought to herself. Right up until I don't have any value for you. Then what?
That time might come at any moment. Neelah had already decided she would be ready for it, when it did arrive. Boba Fett might be the most dangerous bounty hunter in the galaxy-whether creatures believed he was dead or knew he was still alive-but if he thought she was just going to wait around for him to dispose of her in whatever way suited his plans. . .
Then he had made a fatal mistake. Neelah kept her face a mask as expressionless as the one into which she gazed. She didn't know how she was going to bring about that little surprise for Boba Feet, but the hidden workings of her brain were already in motion.
"And as for the need for secrecy. . ."
For a moment she thought he had somehow peered into her mind and read out some part of what he had found in there. Then Neelah realized that he was still answering the question that Dengar had raised.
"Some things are best accomplished in the dark." Boba Fett's voice had gone low and brooding as he turned back toward the cockpit's controls. In the forward viewport, the silent image of the Hound's Tooth loomed closer." There are many who wished me dead, and who tried their best to bring that about."
That was true. The memory was still fresh in Neelah's mind, of how the Dune Sea on Tatooine had been pounded by the bombing raid, the fury of unknown forces-unknown to her-who sought to destroy Boba Fett, no matter what it took. Those forces were still out there, somewhere amid the stars.
"Let's see how they like it. . ." Boba Fett's voice was a dark whisper now." When the dead return. . ."
3
The news had come a long way. From one side of the galaxy to the other; from the cold vacuum of space, just above one of the remotest backwater planets known to any sentient creature, to one of the Empire's brightest centers of power and wealth. And where power and wealth existed, there was also the irreducible, unavoidable elements of intrigue, conspiracy, and deceit.
"We live in a universe of lies," said Kuat of Kuat. One of his hands stroked the silken fur of the felinx cradled against his chest. The animal closed its eyes, content in its ignorance. Its master's words held no meaning for it. Lucky thing, thought Kuat." We breathe in lies and exhale treachery, as though they were an essential part of the atmosphere."
"Sir?" Fenald, Kuat's head of security, stood next to him, close to the private reception area's great segmented viewscreens. From here, the construction docks and engineering facilities of Kuat Drive Yards could be seen, stretching out toward the range of stars spiraling in the limitless distance. Generations of the Kuat bloodline had first created, then transformed the corporation into the apotheosis of industrial production; at the fringes of Kuat Drive Yards, immense freighters disgorged the raw materials stripped from other star systems, all to be forged into the ships and weaponry of the Imperial Navy. Even as the multi-leveled disc of the corporation's physical plant slowly revolved on its axis, battle cruisers and destroyers bristled with yet-unfired armaments, the reinforced plates of the hulls welded onto the structural frames by articulated laser torches, the glare brighter than the depleted sun at the center of the former planet's orbit.
He was aware of the security head's puzzlement; the remark had come after a long brooding silence. All of Kuat Drive Yards' high-level employees, the innermost circle of trusted-and well-paid-associates, knew better than to interrupt these deep meditations. But sometimes, it helped to speak one's thoughts aloud. To a trusted listener; the head of security's instinctive loyalty was reinforced with a munificent salary. Nothing spoken would go beyond this sanctum's walls, carefully screened and swept as they were for hidden listening devices.
"What little genius that I have," Kuat of Kuat said at last," is inherited from my father and from all my ancestors before him."
Fenald gave a slight smile; he had heard similar words before." The Technician is too modest."
"Better that than too vainglorious." Overweening pride would, he knew, be the eventual downfall of his enemies. There had been a certain Falleen prince, with ambitions and ego nearly equal to that of Emperor Palpatine, whose fiery arc across the stars had ended in a fatal crash." But as I was saying-there is more to that hereditary genius than the mere design and crafting of warships. If that were all I had to do," mused Kuat of Kuat," then life would be an unending pleasure. But life for me, as it was for my progenitors, is not so simple."
"Sir?"
"Even under the old Republic, there had been political intrigues with which to contend." Kuat rubbed behind the felinx's pointed ears as he gazed out the curved bank of viewscreens." And rival engineering firms that wished to supplant Kuat Drive Yards' position as the preeminent military contractor in the galaxy. It's always been that way." He nodded slowly." But now, under the rule of Emperor Palpatine, the stakes involved in these intricate, unending games has reached a zenith of deadly seriousness. Our every move, on this board that spans the inhabited worlds, could have fatal consequences-not just for one man, but for even the mightiest corporations. I have little regard for my own fate, but the thought of the Emperor grasping all of Kuat Drive Yards in his fist, as has been done with so many other worlds and entities in the galaxy. . ." He fell silent for a moment as that thought evoked the renewal of a cold vow inside him.
That will never happen, swore Kuat of Kuat." I would rather see Kuat Drive Yards, my heritage and the work of generations of Kuats before me, utterly destroyed and in ruins before letting it fall into the control of the Empire." He glanced over at his security head." That's not an empty promise, either."
"As I am well aware, Technician." Fenald gave a single nod of acknowledgment." I have personally supervised the necessary arrangements, to ensure another outcome. If that time should ever come, there will be no Kuat Drive Yards for the Emperor to take hold of."
There was a certain bleak comfort in Fenald's statement. What can be built up, thought Kuat, can be leveled. The same engineering and design skills that went into the construction of the Empire's warships had been turned to the means of annihilating the docks in which they were built. A vision came to Kuat of Kuat, not of the series-programmed, high-thermal explosions that would render all of Kuat Drive Yards into smoldering scrap, but the aftermath, when the twisted durasteel, the remnants of the cranes and immense grappling rigs, would be as cold as the stray atoms in the vacuum surrounding them. The KDY life-support systems, which kept the vacuum and the power-supply reactors' hard radiation at bay, would be shattered as well; no living creatures would be left among the rubble. The apocalypse would come upon them, the workers and servants of Kuat Drive Yards and their hereditary lord as well, in swift fury; they would all die at their stations, the lowliest machinist at a turret lathe's controls, Kuat himself reduced to an ashen corpse behind the torn-apart grid of the view-screens that had looked out upon his domain. That would then be his monument, and the memorial to his ancestors, those who had also borne the title of Kuat of Kuat. Living observers on the nearest worlds would turn their gaze to the nighttime skies and see the shadow of the wreckage passing in front of the stars, writing a black glyph toward the horizon, an emblem of past glories that would need no translation to an alien tongue.