The dead subnodes looked both eerie and pathetic, their broken exoskeletons surrounded by thin, twiglike limbs, claws curled up under the split abdomens. Smaller ones, seemingly no bigger than a child’s fist, were entangled with the giants that had been capable of tethering a ship to the now-vanished web’s docking area. All of them were hollow-eyed, with the unseeing gaze that blind, dead things turned toward those fortunate creatures still alive. Or unfortunate, thought Neelah. Maybe the poor dead subnodes, pieces of their defeated master and creator, were really the lucky ones; they no longer had to wonder about what would happen to them next. For them, all the galaxy’s cruel uncertainties were over.
For a moment, the sight of the space-drifting subnodes evoked the disturbing sensation in Neelah that she had fallen backward in time, pulling this ship and its contents along, as though her empty memory were a true black hole, with its own irresistible gravity. But somehow the process had wound up landing them in Boba Fett’s past, the moment just after the crude dissection and death of his former business associate Kud’ar Mub’at. But that was so long ago, thought Neelah; it made her feel dizzy to even contemplate it. She closed her eyes, wondering if when she opened them again, time would begin unreeling on its proper course once more.
Her eyelids flicked open without her willing them to. I was wrong. She saw that now. The momentary displacement in time had passed. Neelah stepped forward and laid a hand on the back of the pilot’s, steadying herself as she gazed out the viewport. “They’ve been dead a long time,” she said softly. “A very long time.”
“Of course.” Boba Fett had raised his own gaze from the instrument gauges; now he looked out on the same dark vista as Neelah did. “The last time I was in this sector, these entities had just been killed-along with their creator, Kud’ar Mub’at.” He turned and looked over his shoulder at Neelah. “But you know all about that, don’t you?”
A sudden realization hit her. “You were listening in, weren’t you? Over the ship’s internal communications system. All the while that Dengar was telling me about what happened to you in the past.”
Boba Fett gave a single dismissive shake of his head. “I hardly needed to,” he replied. “Since Dengar was acting on the exact instructions I had previously given him.”
“What?” Neelah looked back at Fett in amazement. “You told him-“
“It’s convenient for me to have you brought up to speed on a few matters of common interest. Having Dengar take care of it saves me the trouble-and it kept the two of you occupied while I was tracing this sector’s exact location and navigating us here. That took time, as we arrived here via a route that would throw off anyone else who might have been spying upon my activities. Time, which you managed to pass in your own way.” Boba Fett’s voice sounded almost tinged by a partial smile. “I’ll have to congratulate my colleague Dengar on his acting abilities-he kept his act going, even when you pulled that blaster pistol on him.”
Her surprise faded quickly. He’s been ahead of me before, thought Neelah. He probably will be again. “So this is the location, huh?” She peered again toward the dark vista afforded by the viewport. “Where Prince Xizor tried to eliminate you, then changed his mind and took out that arachnoid assembler instead.”
“Precisely.” Boba Fett pointed toward the viewport. “As you can see, everything Dengar told you about the incident was the truth. Xizor’s cleanup crew didn’t leave much of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web. Black Sun operatives are known for their thoroughness.”
More of the dead subnodes, like the shed carapaces of ordinary crawling spiders, drifted past the Hound’s Tooth. Neelah felt the skin of her forearms prickle into goose-flesh as she heard-or imagined that she did-the light scraping and tapping of empty chitin against the ship’s hull. The sensation was more dreamlike than anything to do with actual memory.
“Why did you bring us here?” The spirit-chilling uncanniness of the sight out of the viewport, the dead creatures tethered together by the strands of neural tissue, as much a part of one another now as they had been in their living existence, touched a thread of anger inside Neelah. “Just to reminisce?”
“There’s very little I do,” replied Boba Fett calmly, “that is without purpose. I came here for a reason. And you were brought here for the same reason.”
“How would I know that?” Neelah folded her arms across her breast. “You haven’t seen fit to tell us anything about where we were headed, or why.” She glared at the figure in front of her. “Or is this something else that you let Dengar in on, but not me?”