Neelah stiffened, regarding the other woman with suspicion. “Why should I?”
“Oh, I could give you all sorts of reasons. But there’s really just one important one, as far as you’re concerned.” Kodir of Kuhlvult tilted her head to one side, studying Neelah’s reactions. “You’ve got questions, don’t you? Questions that you want answers for-I know you do. Well, I’ve got the answers to them. That should make it a simple decision for you.”
A moment passed, then Neelah slowly nodded. She stepped away from Dengar and Boba Fett, and followed the first of the two KDY security operatives into the transfer hatch. Behind her as she stepped toward the other ship, she could hear Kodir give one last taunting farewell to the two bounty hunters.
“Good luck,” said Kodir to Dengar and Fett. “When you’re outsmarted and outgunned, that’s the best you
can hope for.”
Glancing over her shoulder, Neelah saw the transfer hatch seal shut.
Kodir pushed her forward. “Let’s get going. We’ve got an appointment to keep.”
16
“I still don’t understand how they were able to stop us.” In the cockpit of the Hound’s Tooth, Dengar shone a handheld worklight through the access panel. “What did they do to make the engines cut out like that?”
“It’s obvious.” Boba Fett’s voice came muffled from beneath the control panel. He lay on his back, shoulders and helmeted head deep within the maze of circuitry cables. “This ship wasn’t built at the Kuat Drive Yards, but Bossk must have taken it in there at some point for some
custom retrofitting. Probably an updated weaponry targeting system-that’s one of the first modifications that a bounty hunter gets done on his ship when he’s a few credits ahead.”
That was accurate, Dengar knew-there had been a time when he had been planning on getting the same job done on his craft, back before he’d met up with his betrothed, Manaroo, and other, more desirable goals had been put on his agenda. And Kuat Drive Yards, the top in the shipbuilding and engineering field, had been where he’d wanted to go for it.
He knelt down beside Boba Fett’s outstretched legs, angling the light source up to where the other bounty hunter’s gloved hands were working. “So you think Bossk took it in there, and they put in some hidden cut-out device that he didn’t know about?”
“Exactly,” replied Fett. “Nothing too elaborate, just a simple override that could be triggered by a coded pulse from a remote transmitter. Which, of course, they had aboard their own security division vessel.”
“Yeah, but why would they do that to Bossk’s ship? I mean, KDY would’ve had to have done it a while back; they wouldn’t have known it would come in handy like this someday.”
“They didn’t do it against Bossk specifically.” With a needle-tipped logic probe, Boba Fett traced the intricate wiring beneath the control panel. “KDY probably does it to every ship that comes into their docks for retrofit work-just so they’d have a backdoor system in place, in case they ever needed to disable one of their customers’ ships. It’d be an insurance policy for KDY-and shutting down the Hound’s Tooth was one of the times they cashed it in.”
“Yeah, but…” Dengar shook his head. “I can’t believe they’d put something like that in the ships they build for the Imperial Navy-or in your ship. I mean, Kuat Drive Yards built Slave I, didn’t they?”
“Of course KDY wouldn’t try putting a cut-off device into my ship, or anything they built for the Empire.” Boba Fett peered upward at the circuits, concentrating on his task. “There would be too much at risk if it was found. And KDY knows that the Imperial Navy has a standard practice of thoroughly checking out all the work done on new vessels, and on any retrofits, for precisely that reason, to make sure that any kind of delayed or optional sabotage device hasn’t been smuggled in. As do I; when I accepted delivery of Slave I, I went over the ship with a fine-tooth comb, just as I had told them I would. So naturally, I didn’t find anything amiss. A customer like Bossk, though, isn’t quite as thorough-which is what KDY was counting on.” Boba Fett tilted his head to one side. “Bring the light in a little closer; I think I’ve found it.”
“Can you fix it?” Leaning forward on his knees, Dengar tried to see in through the access panel.
“It’ll take some work. Typical KDY job; very well engineered. It’s not just a simple break in the circuit with a pulse-reception activator. They wired in a parallel micro-filament of some kind of high-temp pyrogenic; when it went off, it vaporized the entire signal-relay subsystem, out to the main engines and the navigational jets.” Boba Fett pulled himself out from underneath the control panel and sat up. “We’ll need to strip out the circuits from most of the cargo area servo-mechanisms, just to get the materials to patch in here.”