[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(58)

“Neither you nor Dengar were aware of our destination, and there was a good reason for that as well. If you don’t know something, you can’t be compelled to reveal it. That’s why I’ve made it a practice not to tell anyone,

even my own associates, if I can avoid it.” Boba Fett pointed a gloved fingertip toward Neelah. “I don’t keep my silence for your sake, but it’s to your advantage, nevertheless. A good many of the ways to get someone such as yourself to talk are not pleasant. And some of them don’t leave you alive afterward, either.”

“Thanks for your concern,” Neelah said sourly. “I appreciate it.”

“Your sarcasm is pointless. When I decide to start caring about anyone else’s opinions of my operating methods, I’ll let you know.” Boba Fett leaned back in the pilot’s chair. “But you wanted to find out; you merely had to wait, and the time has come.”

Like flicking a switch, the bounty hunter’s words transformed the anger inside Neelah to sudden, unreasoning panic. “I… I don’t know…”

“You don’t know if you’re ready for that.” Boba Fett’s visor-shielded gaze seemed to penetrate to the depths of her spirit. “You’ve come all this way; you’ve waited so long and so impatiently; you’ve fought to find out all that’s been hidden from you. And now you’re afraid.”

“No-” She quickly shook her head. “No, I’m not.”

“We shall see about that,” replied Boba Fett, even more quietly-and more ominously-than before. “Because you don’t have a choice. You never did.”

He’s right. Neelah squeezed her eyelids shut once again; at her sides, her hands closed into fists, the sinews of her forearms straining with tension. From the moment she had caught sight of this helmeted figure, before she had learned his name, she had known that this moment would come. It had been fated to do so, if she could only stay alive long enough. She had done that much, escaping from the death that would have been hers inside Jabba the Hutt’s palace, then binding her destiny to one who had been only a shadow’s breadth away from death himself. Just to find out, Neelah told herself fiercely. To find out…

She didn’t know. Whether it would be better to discover what lay in that other world, the past that had

been stolen from her, or to go on in darkness, to leave it hidden.

“Go tell Dengar to come up here.”

Neelah heard Boba Fett’s command, and slowly opened her eyes.

I don’t have a choice. She nodded slowly. About any

Boba Fett glanced over his shoulder at the dead, hollow-eyed creatures drifting in the emptiness outside the ship, then brought his gaze back around to her.

“We have a lot to talk about,” said Boba Fett. “We’d better get started.”





8


He was dreaming.

Dengar knew he was, because he could see Manaroo right in front of him.

Turning with a bunch of flimsiplast sheets in her fist and a seriously annoyed look on her face-though that made her no less beautiful to him-Manaroo rapped the knuckles of one hand across the invoices. “Those Jawas are undercutting us again,” she said. “We’re going to have to do something about them, once and for all-“

“They undercut us because they sell junk.” In the loading bay of a medium-tonnage cargo freighter, surrounded by datacoded shipping containers and uncrated machinery still shiny with factory lubricants, Dengar took his wife in his arms and kissed her on the brow. They had been married how many years now, and the skip in his pulse was still the same as the first time he had ever held her soft warmth against himself. The tiny tattooed moons and stars on her wrists no longer glowed as brightly as before, but his own love for her showed no sign of fading. “That’s their stock in trade; they’re Jawas, right? So don’t worry about ‘em. They’re not our competition.”

Manaroo fretted some more, looking over his shoulder at the invoices in her hands. “They’re little chiseling womp rats, is what they are.”

“Don’t worry.” Another kiss; Dengar smiled as he leaned back from her face. “The word’s getting out among the moisture farmers, about what kind of equipment we’re selling. And what kind of long-term percentage contracts we can offer. Hey-” With one hand he stroked her hair, only slightly darker than the pale blue of her Aruzan skin, away from her forehead. “We’re already in the black…”

“You slimy bucket of nerf-waste.” That wasn’t Manaroo’s voice. And the kick in the ribs, as he lay on the makeshift pallet with his eyes closed, wasn’t from his beloved, either.