Neelah’s hand had strayed to the butt of the blaster pistol at her side, resting there as though only another thought, and another decision, were all that stood between her and testing the advice that both Boba Fett and her own remaining caution had given her.
One shot was all that it would take; one fiery bolt from the blaster. The weapon grew warm within her grasp. Some wordless certainty deep inside her, unattached to any fragment of memory, any recall of her stolen past, told Neelah that she actually had a chance of pulling it off. The person she had been before, her true identity, hidden behind the blank curtain that had been drawn across all that was rightfully hers to recall-that person, she had come to realize, had reflexes nearly as fast as Boba Fett’s. Maybe faster, given that even now she had the element of surprise on her side. He wouldn’t expect it, thought Neelah. She could tell that for all his skills as a bounty hunter, both physical and psychological, there was a blind spot in that helmet-visored gaze: it was only to be expected that he would be unable to admit that any part of his plans, any piece of hard merchandise, could have moves equal to his own.
The notion was tempting. She could almost taste it under her tongue, like the hot salt of her own blood. It was the same temptation that she had yielded to once before, in Jabba’s palace back on the planet of Tatooine, when she had decided it was better to put an end to the Hutt’s ownership of her body and spirit, even if the price to do so was her life. The mystery of her true name and identity was just as maddeningly intolerable; knowing that the answer might be locked inside the mind held by that dark-visaged helmet of Mandalorian battle armor-that thought drove out all others. One quick move with her hand, which already could feel the cold metal of the blaster a millimeter away from her sweating palm, and the mystery would be over, one way or another. One of them would be dead, with either a smoking blaster hole drilled through Boba Fett’s chest or her own, depending upon which of them got a bolt off first. And right now, she knew deep inside herself, she was close to not even caring which of them it was …
“But then you’ll never know.”
Neelah heard the voice, and for a moment thought it was her own, speaking inside her head. Then she realized that the hard, emotionless words had been Boba Fett’s.
He can tell, she realized. He can always tell. Exactly what she had been thinking-her hand, trembling close to the butt of the blaster pistol at her side, had given it away.
“That’s the price,” continued Fett. “That’s still the price.”
She nodded. But didn’t pull her hand away from the blaster.
“I’ll make it easy for you.” Boba Fett reached down and drew the blaster that had been holstered on the belt of his battle armor. Holding it by the barrel, he threw it into the farther corner of the cockpit space, where it clanged against one of the bare durasteel bulkheads. “Now you won’t have to worry about whether it would cost you your life. The only one that’s at stake is my own.”
He’s playing with me. The lack of any perceptible emotion in his voice only made it clearer to her. The same thing she had known from the beginning: Boba Fett didn’t win by sheer violence, or the brutal efficiency of his weapons. The force of his will, and his understanding of other creatures’ thoughts, were just as annihilating. She was wrong, she knew that now. Whatever he did, it wasn’t play; it was deadly serious. Even in this, in making it easy for her to kill him-if that was what she chose-there was something he wanted from her.
Neelah pulled the blaster from her belt-the weapon seemed to rise of its own accord, as though directed by some intelligence wired into its intricate circuitry-and pointed it straight at Boba Fett’s chest. Her finger made closer contact with the trigger, the small bit of metal sensed by and made one with the twitching filament at the end of her nervous system, that then ran directly into the churning storm of thoughts and desires caught inside her skull. With her arm held out, unmoving, she gazed over the blaster’s sights at the cold, dark visage that mirrored her own face … And couldn’t fire.
She lowered the blaster, her finger loosening upon the trigger. “You win,” she said.
“Of course.” No more emotion sounded in Boba Fett’s voice now than before. “There was little doubt of that. You might not know who you really are-and I might not know, either. That’s something you haven’t determined. But I still know more about you; I know how your mind works.” A gloved forefinger tapped the side of his helmet. “You have to win here-” Shifting forward in the pilot’s chair, Fett reached out and set the same fingertip lightly on Neelah’s brow. “And here, before you have a chance of winning anywhere else. Or even surviving.”