[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(109)

“Okay-” Dengar stepped back as the other bounty hunter got to his feet. “I’ll get started pulling out the bulkhead sheaths.” He reached down and picked up a clench-awl from the open tool kit on the cockpit’s floor. “But I got another question.”

Boba Fett didn’t look at him, but continued examining a section of charred wiring from beneath the controls. “What’s that?”

“When we get this ship up and running-what happens then?”

“Then we head for the planet Kuat,” said Boba Fett. “I don’t let anyone-not even Kuat of Kuat-take things from me. Without paying for them.”

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” said Kodir of Kuhlvult. “Don’t we?”

Neelah gazed back at the figure seated before her, in the security head’s private quarters. The other woman had dismissed the rest of the ship’s personnel, leaving her and Neelah by themselves. She had heard the door hiss shut behind her, as though it were sealing them both into a space inviolable enough for the revealing of secrets.

But I don’t know if that is what will happen here, thought Neelah. For all she knew, there would be nothing but more lies and mystery, darkness and words whose only meaning was to conceal.

And worst of all-some of those words would be her own.

“I suppose we do.” Neelah remained standing, even though Kodir had offered her a chair. “I’ve got a lot of questions. That I think you might have the answers to.”

“That’s not how it works.” Kodir gave a single shake of her head. “Kuat of Kuat put me in charge of security for Kuat Drive Yards, not because I was good at giving information away, but because I know how to keep a lid on it. People-even you-find out things when I want them to, not the other way around.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have come along for the ride, then.”

“You didn’t have that choice.” Kodir stood up and stepped toward her. The edge of the other woman’s cape swirled close to Neelah’s feet as Kodir reached out and gently stroked the side of her head. “Choices have been in short supply for you, I know. So much has been lost to you…”

“Those are the things,” said Neelah, “that I’m looking for.” She didn’t draw away from the other’s hand, though it felt cold and alien as the fingertips drew down to the curve of her jaw. “The things I’ve lost: my past, and my name.”

“And you’ve had no luck. What a shame.” Kodir smiled sympathetically at her. “Perhaps you should have chosen your companions more wisely. One rarely profits by hanging out with bounty hunters.”

Neelah didn’t correct her, though she could have. My name, she thought to herself, is Kateel. She had discovered that much in the fragments of her memory. And that the name belonged to one of Kuat’s ruling families. Neelah had remembered that as well, when she had seen the record in Boba Fett’s datafiles of the emblem that his hard merchandise Nil Posondum had scratched into the floor of the holding cage. There had been other things she had remembered, little bits of light penetrating the mists, when she had seen Kodir of Kuhlvult’s face…

She had seen the woman long before Kodir had stepped through the transit hatch and boarded the Hound’s Tooth. Of that, Neelah was sure.

That certainty had given rise to caution inside her. In that past, whose shapes were still frustratingly vague, things had happened between this Kodir of Kuhlvult and herself-and they hadn’t all been pleasant. She wanted me to do something-Neelah couldn’t remember what yet, only that it had been important, and that a great many other creatures’ fates besides her own had depended upon her answer. Which had been a refusal; she hadn’t gone along with Kodir’s plans back then, whatever they had been.

There had been a spark between her gaze and Kodir’s when the other woman had come aboard the Hound; Neelah had seen her eyes widen, a reaction that had been swiftly caught and controlled, as though

Kodir

had unexpectedly recognized her. She didn’t expect me to be there, mused Neelah. It was a shock to her. But one that Kodir of Kuhlvult had made a considerable effort to hide. Why?

Another question without an answer; they multiplied rather than lessened the more she discovered about herself, as though she were trapped in a galaxy composed of infinite and expanding darkness.

But there was one other thing of which Neelah was sure: if this Kodir of Kuhlvult, with all of her connections to the planet Kuat and to the mysterious figure Kuat of Kuat, was going to play it cagey about revealing what she knew … then she would, too. Neelah had spent too much time with crafty and scheming creatures such as the bounty hunter Boba Fett not to have some of their survival-oriented mind-set seep into her own. Boba Fett didn’t tell all he knew; and he had won so many times before, just as in the stories that Dengar had told her while they had both been down in the cargo hold of the Hound’s Tooth, the whole history of how Fett had come out on top of the wreckage of the old Bounty Hunters Guild. He won those wars, thought Neelah, by being smart. She’d have to do the same to win hers.