In the thinned remainder of the web’s air, the docking subnode’s hollowed exoskeleton collapsed silently, the translucent broken pieces thrust aside by Boba Fett’s forearm. He got to his feet, kicking aside the feeble claws of the smaller subnodes, just as a pulsing red dot at the side of his vision signaled the exhaustion of the helmet’s store of compressed oxygen. With lungs already beginning to ache, he sprinted for Slave 7’s entry hatchway.
Boba Fett collapsed in the pilot’s chair as the ship’s cockpit sealed tight around him. The dizzying constellation of dark spots, the forerunner of unconsciousness that had swelled in his vision as he’d climbed the ladder up from the main cargo hold, now faded as he breathed in the flow of air from the ship’s minimized life-support systems. A moment later he leaned forward in the chair, eyes raised to the viewport as his right hand reached for the controls of the few navigational rockets still functioning on the ship.
It wasn’t necessary to fire the rockets to get away from the web. As Boba Fett watched, the last of the heavy structural fibers broke free from one another, the interwoven fabric unraveling into loose strands. Where Kud’ar Mub’at’s abode and place of business had blotted out the stars behind, the light-specked black of empty space now stood.
In the distance, Prince Xizor’s flagship awaited the approach of the transfer shuttle bearing the Falleen noble, his guards and the Black Sun cleanup crew, and whatever might be left of the Imperial stormtrooper Trhin Voss’on’t. It was of no concern to Fett whether the hard merchandise he had worked so hard to deliver in living condition might still be breathing; once payment had been made, his interest ceased.
A swarm of dead subnodes, the creations and servants of the arachnoid assembler, bumped against the convex transparisteel of the cockpit’s viewport. The crablike ones were ensnared in the same pale strands of disconnected neural tissue that tangled around the empty claws of the larger varieties. Atmospheric decompression had burst open the shells of some of them, spreading apart their contents like grey constellations of soft matter; others were still intact enough to appear as if they were merely asleep, awaiting some synapse-borne message from their parent and master.
Boba Fett applied a burst of rotational force to Slave I. The hull-mounted navigational jet rolled the ship on its central axis, letting the loose, ragged net of subnodes slip past. A visual field clear of everything but cold stars showed in the viewport.
At the edge of the viewport a brighter light glared, as though one of the stars had gone nova. Fett could see that it was Prince Xizor’s flagship, maneuvering out of the sector and preparing for a jump into hyperspace. Whatever business the Falleen noble was about, it was likely far from this desolate area of the galaxy; it might very well be back at the Emperor’s court on Coruscant. I imagine, thought Boba Fett, that I’ll encounter him again, before too long. The course of events in the Empire was accelerating ever faster, spurred by both Palpatine’s ambitions and the Rebellion’s mounting challenge. Xizor would have to move fast if he was to have any chance of bringing Black Sun to victory on that rapidly shifting gameboard.
It didn’t matter to Boba Fett who won. His business would stay the same.
Before he looked down to the control panel’s gauges to assess what kind of condition Slave I was in, another pallid strand traced its way across the curved exterior of the viewport. The rope of silent neural fiber was linked only to the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at, or what remained of it after the work of Xizor’s cleanup crew. The once-glittering compound eyes were empty and grey now, like small round windows to the hollows of the corpse that drifted slowly past. Around the assembler’s globular abdomen, split open like a leathery egg, the spidery legs were drawn up tight, forming the last self-contained nest for the once-proud, now-vanquished creature.
Careful…
Boba Fett indulged himself for a moment, imagining a warning from the dead. The expressionless face turned slowly past the viewport.
Beware of everyone. If Kud’ar Mub’at’s empty husk could speak, that was what it would have said. In this universe, there are no friends … only enemies. The assembler’s gaping mouth was a small black vacuum, surrounded by the greater one of interstellar space. No trust… only betrayal…
He didn’t require advice such as that, even from one whose withered corpse testified to the truth of the silent words. Boba Fett knew all those things already. That was why he was alive, and the assembler was dead.
All his remaining concerns-for the moment-were technical ones. Boba Fett turned toward the cockpit’s navicomputer. He began accessing and inputting Slave I’s astrogational coordinates, at the same time scrolling through the onboard computer’s database of the surrounding systems and planets. What he needed now was an advanced-technology shipyard, one without too many entanglements with either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance, or scruples about working for payments made under the table, as it were. Some of the weapons and tracking modules aboard Slave I were technically restricted; a good deal of his profits from past jobs had gone into the bribery