[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(115)

When the footsteps of the men had faded down the corridor outside his quarters, Kuat of Kuat turned back to his lab bench. A simple audio recording device was plugged into the signal relay from the micro-probe spy device that listened to those other voices far above the construction docks. Those voices-Kodir’s, and the Scavenger Squadron commander’s, and that of the negotiating attache from the Rebel Alliance-had also talked of the fate of Kuat Drive Yards.





18


“You know,” said Kodir, “we really should have had this little talk a long time ago.”

Neelah stood with her arms folded across her breast, watching the other woman as she stepped away from the door and into the center of the tiny room. The door had been locked from the moment Neelah was shoved inside by a pair of KDY security operatives; she had expected as much, even before she tried opening it.

“I’ve been waiting.” Neelah made sure that no emotion was apparent in her voice. That was something she had picked up from Boba Fett, a way of masking one’s intent as completely as though behind the dark visor of a helmet. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, don’t we?”

“There’s enough.” With a thin smile on her face, Kodir halted a few steps away from Neelah. “But always-so little time.”

“So I can imagine.” Neelah warily regarded her. “You must be busy right now. What with that stuff you managed to take off of Boba Fett, and everything you could do with it.”

The smile shifted to a puzzled frown. “What do you know about that?”

“A lot,” said Neelah. “More than you might think I’d know. I’ve got a good idea why you’d want a pile of fabricated evidence against a dead Falleen, and who you’ve been talking to about it.” Neelah couldn’t help letting a thin smile of her own show. “And I know things about you, Kodir. I know you like keeping secrets. Well, this is one that’s gotten away from you.”

Surprise flickered at the center of Kodir’s gaze. “What do you mean?”

“Come on. There’s no sense in trying to create any more lies, any more mysteries. You’ve been talking to somebody from the Rebel Alliance. Haven’t you? Somebody important, who can get you what you want, what you’ve been after for a long time.”

“How do you know that?”

Neelah stepped to one side, in a slow, circling dance with Kodir, their gazes locked tight with each other.

“That part’s easy,” she said. “I could see the Rebel ships up above the construction docks as we came in. And I know that we didn’t land on the planet Kuat.” Neelah tilted her head for a moment toward the surrounding bulkheads. “And you can’t pass off something like this as the KDY headquarters. You see, I know what those headquarters are like. I’ve been there before. I remember them.”

Kodir’s eyes widened. “You remember …”

“Everything.”

Both women stood still, the wary circling ended. Neelah now had her back to the small room’s door.

“That changes … a great deal…” Kodir studied the figure standing before her. “Depending upon what it is that you think you know.”

“It’s not a matter of thinking,”replied Neelah grimly. “Next time you try something like this, you should hire better people to do your dirty work for you. Spend the credits; get the best. Not some incompetent like Ree Duptom-” That name produced a quick, startled reaction in Kodir that Neelah was pleased to see. “Because if a memory wipe isn’t done correctly-and thoroughly-then there’s a lot of little, disconnected pieces left over. Scraps of memory, right around the edges of the dark. And bit by bit, those memories can link up with each other, and with things that can bring back even more memories from the shadows. And then-like I said”- she gave a single, slow nod-“everything comes back.”

“That fool.” Kodir’s voice turned bitter. “I paid him enough so that whatever go-betweens and intermediaries were used, the end result would be to get just such a specialist, one that had formerly worked for the Empire itself-they’re available, but expensive. I wasn’t pleased when I found out later that some cheap hustler had pocketed the credits and done the memory-wipe job himself.”

“Lucky for me, then, that he wasn’t very good at it.” Neelah tapped the side of her head with one finger. “Because I had already remembered my real name-Kateel of Kuhlvult-before you ever showed up at the Hound’s Tooth; I had already found the clues that brought back that part of my memory. But when I saw your face-again-then all the rest came back.” Neelah’s hand lowered