"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…
"Your son has just concluded his visit." The majordomo for the Bounty Hunters Guild headquarters bowed his head, an obsequious grin on his face. "And his conversation with the unsavory individual known as Boba Fett proceeded just as you, in your ever-present wisdom, predicted it would."
Cradossk regarded the bobbing figure of the Twi'lek, all crouching curtsies and avarice-brightened eyes. The glistening, bifurcate head tails of his underling reminded him of both Nirellian ground-slugs and uncooked sausages. That notion sparked an automatic twinge of hunger in his gut-but then, most things had that effect upon him.
"Of course it did." In his own luxuriously appointed quarters, Cradossk fidgeted with the heavy straps of his normal business garb, the fabrics a minor-keyed visual symphony in somber yet tasteful grays and blacks. The gaudier robes he'd worn at the banquet welcoming Boba Fett to the Guild had been hung by the majordomo in a vacuum-maintained, humidity-controlled closet. "Things go as I predict them, not because of any wisdom I might possess, but because of a tiresome lack of wisdom on other creatures' parts."
"Your Worshipfulness is entirely too modest." Ob Fortuna worked his way around Cradossk, pale and clammy hands darting out to make some final adjustments to his employer's everyday outfit. "Would I have foreseen such things? Or your illustrious colleagues on the Guild council? Not very likely."
"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.