[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(23)

AND THEN…

Oust after the events

of Star Wars: A New Hope)

“Where’s Boba Fett?”

That was the most important question-and Prince Xizor, the head of the Black Sun criminal organization, expected an answer from his underlings. And soon, thought Xizor grimly. Under the present circumstances, he didn’t feel like taking the time to kill a few of them just to motivate a quicker response time.

“We’re tracking him, Your Lordship.” The comm specialist aboard the Vendetta bowed his head with a sufficient measure of cringing obsequiousness to avoid Xizor’s wrath. Serving aboard the Falleen prince’s personal flagship was an honor earned not only by excellence at one’s job, but also by attention to all the little rituals that flattered his ego. “Our tracking sensors had detected his jump into hyperspace; his ship should be arriving in this sector of realspace momentarily.”

Xizor stood brooding at the Vendetta’s forward viewport; the curved transparisteel revealing the dark panorama of stars and vacuum extended far above his head. One hand rubbed the angles of his chin as the violet centers of his half-lidded eyes focused on the arc of his own thoughts. Without turning around, he spoke another question: “Were we able to determine his final navigation coordinates? Before the jump.”

“Data analysis was able to break out only the first broad-scale coordinates-“

Once again, he turned his hard glare onto the comm specialist standing on the platform walkway behind him. ” ‘Only’?” He slowly shook his head, eyes narrowing even farther. “I don’t think ‘only’ is good enough. Make a note”-Xizor extended the tapered claw of his forefinger toward the datapad clutched in the specialist’s hands-“to the disciplinary unit. They need to have a little discussion with the data analysis section. They need to be… motivated.”

The change in the comm specialist’s face, from merely pallid to dead white, was pleasing to Xizor. Motivation, in the lower ranks of Black Sun, was a synonym for terror; he had put a lot of his own effort in designing and maintaining the appropriate measures for creating just that effect. Violence was an art; a balance had to be maintained, somewhere short of the deaths of valuable and not easily replaced staff members. At the same time, it had to be made clear that no creature ever left Black Sun, at least not while alive. Such administrative duties would have been a chore to Prince Xizor, if the practice of the art involved had not been such an intrinsic pleasure.

“So noted, Your Excellency.” As long as it was someone else’s neck on the chopping block, the comm specialist was only too eager to comply with Xizor’s request.

He had already dismissed the comm specialist from his mind. With only fragmentary information available about the trajectory of the bounty hunter Boba Fett’s ship, Slave I, there was much for Xizor to mull over. He gazed out at the galaxy’s bright skeins, not seeing the individual stars and systems so much as the possibilities they represented. It had already been verified that Boba Fett had left the dull, virtually anonymous mining planet on which the former Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t had taken refuge; a refuge that had proven ineffective when Fett and his temporary partner Bossk had tracked

Voss’on’t down for the bounty that Emperor Palpatine had placed on his head. Voss’on’t was now Boba Fett’s hard merchandise, to use the language of the bounty hunters; the bounty for the traitorous stormtrooper was due to Fett as soon as delivery was made to the arachnoid arranger and go-between known as Kud’ar Mub’at.

Turning his gaze to one side of the viewport, Xizor could see the unlovely fibrous mass of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web, floating in otherwise empty space. The web had been woven, over a period of unknown decades, perhaps centuries, from the assembler’s own extrudations. Mired in the weft of tough exterior strands were bits and pieces of various ships, poking out like metal scraps sunk in the corrugated mud of a dried swamp; those fragments were all that remained of debtors that Kud’ar Mub’at had foreclosed upon, or business partners whose dealings with the assembler had gone disastrously awry. Involvement with Kud’ar Mub’at might not lead to the same degree of violence as with Boba Fett, but annihilation was just as final.

To enter into the web-Xizor had done it many times-was to step inside Kud’ar Mub’at’s brain, both metaphorically and literally. The thinner, palely glistening fibers were spun-out extensions of Kud’ar Mub’at’s own cerebro-neural tissue; tethered to the strands and scuttling along them were the numerous subnodes that the assembler had created, little replicas and variations of itself, taking care of appointed duties ranging from the simple to the complex. They were all linked to and under the control of their master and parent-Or so Kud’ar Mub’at thinks, Prince Xizor reminded himself. The very last time he had been inside the assembler’s web, just before coming back here aboard the Vendetta, Xizor had had a most interesting-and potentially profitable-conversation. Not with Kud’ar Mub’at itself, but one of the assembler’s creations, the accountant subnode called Balancesheet. It had shown Xizor that it had managed to detach itself from the web’s linked and intertwining neurofibers, without Kud’ar Mub’at being aware of what had happened. Balancesheet had also mastered the assembler’s knack of creating subnodes, one of which it had spliced into the web in order to deceive Kud’ar Mub’at that all was well. The net result was as if part of Kud’ar Mub’at’s brain had begun its own mutiny against its creator, laying out plans and schemes, of which Kud’ar Mub’at was as yet unaware.