[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(27)

“What, you blind?” Voss’on’t scoffed at him. “This ship’s falling apart. Even if you hadn’t told me about that bomb your former partner hit the hull with, I would’ve been able to make the damage assessment for myself, just from looking around here. The last time I heard so many structural integrity alarms going off, I was on an Imperial battle cruiser being attacked by an entire wing of Rebel Alliance starfighters.”

“Tell me something,” growled Boba Fett, “that I don’t already know.” That Slave I was in bad shape was a fact of which he was uncomfortably aware. Even before he had made the jump into hyperspace, away from the colonial mining planet where Voss’on’t had been hiding out, he had to make a hard assessment as to whether the ship was even capable of standing up to the journey. If he’d had any option, he would have laid over at the closest suitable planet for repairs. But with such a valuable cargo as the former stormtrooper aboard, and with every other bounty hunter in the galaxy eager to relieve him of this hard merchandise, the choice to make the jump had been forced on him. It was either that or wind up a sitting target in the crosshairs of too many laser cannons to even have a chance of surviving. “This ship will come out all right,” Boba Fett told his captive. “It might be just barely holding together when we get there, but we’ll make it.”

“Sure it will, pal-but then what?” Voss’on’t tilted his head to one side, peering at Fett, an eyebrow raised.

“Then I get paid. And there’ll be plenty of time for repairs.” He was even looking forward to that. There were some modifications to Slave I-some advanced weaponry systems, proximity and evasion scan units-that he had been contemplating for some time.

“Oh, you’ll get paid, all right.” Voss’on’t’s smile widened, showing more of his yellowed ivory and steel-capped teeth. “But maybe not in the way you’re expecting.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“Of course-there’s nothing else you can do. But if you’re wrong about what’s waiting for you …” Voss’on’t slowly nodded. “Then your options are even more limited than they are now.”

Boba Fett calmly regarded the other man. “How do you mean?”

“Come on. Don’t be naive. You have a reputation for smarts, Fett. Try earning it. You’ve got no maneuvering ability in this ship, not in the condition it’s in now. All your weaponry won’t do you any good if you can’t bring it to bear on a target. And if that target is firing at you instead-if there’s a lot of targets with you in their gunsights-then there isn’t going to be anything you can do, except take it, for as long as you think you can hold out.”

“Hardly my only option,” said Fett. “I can always jump back into hyperspace.”

“Sure-if that’s your preferred method of dying. This broken-down tub barely made it through one jump without disintegrating.” Voss’on’t’s smile indicated how much he enjoyed the dismal prospects he was describing. “You might be able to slam this thing into hyperspace-but you won’t be able to get it back out.” An evil glint appeared in one of the stormtrooper’s eyes. “I’ve heard that’s a real unpleasant way to go. Nobody even ever finds the pieces.”

Boba Fett had heard the same. A squadron of the ancient Mandalorian warriors, a suit of whose battle armor he wore as his own, was reputed to have been destroyed in just that manner by the now-vanished Jedi Knights. “You sound as if you’ve been analyzing this for a while.”

Voss’on’t shrugged. “It didn’t take long. Just like it didn’t take long to figure out your only other option. The one that leaves you alive afterward.”

“Which is?”

“Surrender,” said the smiling stormtrooper.

Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. “That’s something I don’t have a reputation for doing.”

“Too bad,” replied Voss’on’t. “Too bad for you and your chances of getting out of this mess alive. You can either be smart and survive, Fett, or carry on with what you’re doing, and wind up as a toasted corpse. Your choice.”

Another chime signal sounded from Slave I’s cockpit. He had already wasted too much time with this creature. Boba Fett made a mental note that in the future he should remember that all merchandise was the same, given to trying to talk its way out of a jam.

He allowed himself one more question before he returned to the cockpit and began the final preparations for emerging from hyperspace. “Just who do you think it is that I should surrender to?”