Fett ignored him for a moment. With a few adjustments from the still-functioning navigational rockets, he had brought Slave I around to where he could at last see the other ship that had fired upon them. Even from this distance, where the visible details of his enemy were little more distinct than the stars behind it, he could recognize the vessel whose laser cannons had brought his own to the brink of destruction.
He knew as well whose vessel it was, and who had given the orders to fire.
It’s Xizor. Another adjustment to the controls brought the viewport’s optical magnification into the circuit. The outlines of the Falleen prince’s flagship were unmistakable-and intimidating. The ship was known to be one of the deadliest and most thoroughly armored in the galaxy, the equivalent of anything matching its gross tonnage in Emperor Palpatine’s war fleet. If Slave I had gotten into a full-pitched battle with it, there wouldn’t even have been this much of Boba Fett’s ship left hanging together.
The mystery of why the Vendetta hadn’t moved in for the kill was easy enough to determine. He’s holding back, decided Fett. Just waiting to see if there’s any sign of life. Prince Xizor was known to be something of a trophy collector; it would be entirely consistent for him to want the hard physical evidence-the corpses-of those he had set out to kill rather than just blowing them into disconnected atoms drifting in space.
The greater mystery was why Xizor had lain in wait and fired upon Slave I in the first place. Fett had been aware of no connection between Xizor and this high-stakes job of rounding up the renegade stormtrooper for which Palpatine had posted such an astronomical price.
But there had to be some link-it was too much to believe that it was mere coincidence or just random malice on Xizor’s part. The Falleen prince’s mind was too coldly rational-similar to Boba Fett’s own in that manner-for anything like that to be the case.
Boba Fett lowered his gaze from the viewport and began punching in new commands on the control panel.
“What…” Voss’on’t’s voice was a harsh croak. “Tell me…”
There was neither time nor need to explain to the merchandise lying on the floor of the cockpit. “I’m doing,” said Boba Fett, “the same thing I’ve been doing all along. Saving both our lives-whether you like it or not.”
With a final jab of his forefinger, he hit the button to fire up the one main engine that was still functioning. Slave I shuddered, its hull threatened to tear loose from the battered structural frame beneath, as the engine’s convulsive thrust blurred the stars in the viewport.
6
“What’s he doing?” The comm specialist leaned closer to the Vendetta’s forward viewport, scanning the sector
ahead.
“It’s
amazing,
Your Excellency-he must be still alive!”
Prince Xizor wasn’t amazed. Standing at the bridge’s controls, with one hand still resting upon the laser cannons’ target acquisition module, he watched as, in the star-filled distance, the ship known as Slave I fired up its remaining thruster engine and started to move. Another screen, smaller and mounted to the side of the viewport, showed the damage-assessment scan that had been run on the target: a complete schematic showed in glowing red the operational systems that had already shut down. There were only a few-the one engine, basic navigational equipment, life support in the cockpit area-that still appeared in the green that indicated ongoing functions. Crippled, but slowly gathering speed, Boba Fett’s ship had some of its own life left in it yet.
“He’s hard to kill,” said Xizor with a slow, admiring nod of his head. He liked that in a sentient creature; it made the final victory over one of them so much sweeter. Too many of the galaxy’s denizens, on whatever remote systems they could be found or on the homeworlds in the Empire’s center, gave up all too easily when they perceived the hand of the Black Sun about to set its grasp upon their throats. Deep within himself, Xizor possessed the characteristic Falleen disdain for those too weak to put up a struggle, even when facing certain death. For a Falleen, that was the moment when the struggle should be at its keenest, when there was no hope of extending one’s life even by a single heartbeat. Xizor had suspected for a long time, from when he had first envisioned the scheme in which Boba Fett was now fatally enmeshed, that the bounty hunter would not disappoint him in this regard. “Hard to kill,”Xizor mused aloud once more. “A very worthy prey. But then …” He turned his head and smiled at the comm specialist standing beside him. “A true hunter would be.”