As he stepped from the ladder and through the cockpit hatchway, Dengar slowly shook his head. Whatever was next on Boba Fett’s agenda, he had the feeling it might not lead to that pile of credits he needed, and the new life they could buy.
“Let’s get right to business,” said Boba Fett, turning around in the pilot’s chair to face Dengar and Neelah. “I don’t care to waste any more time than we already have.” He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “This is what’s left of Kud’ar Mub’at’s web-“
Dengar leaned forward, peering toward the viewport behind the other bounty hunter. “You’re right,” he said after a moment. The drifting corpses of the assembler’s subnodes, tangled in ropelike strands of neural tissue, were both eerie and impressive. “It must be …”
“I hardly need to be told when I’m correct about something.” A trace of irritation sounded in Boba Fett’s otherwise emotionless voice. “I rarely am not. And when I say that there is a considerable amount of time pressure upon our actions here, you should believe it.”
“You mean what’s going on with the Empire and the Rebels?” Dengar shrugged, then shook his head. “I don’t see what the worry is. The big battle they’ve got shaping up between them-that’s way out by Endor. That’s practically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it’s a long stretch from us. I don’t see how it could affect what we’re doing here. If anything-” He pointed to the viewport. “Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever you brought us here for. Both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance have pulled out most of their forces from whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. That leaves a lot of systems and space just about empty of them. We can do what we want, and neither the Empire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser.”
“That kind of simplistic analysis is why you’re the one taking orders, and I’m the one giving them.” Boba Fett laid his gloved hands flat on the arms of the pilot’s chair. “The battle that’s likely to take place near Endor might be over, once it’s begun, in less than a few minutes. And it will have a decisive impact on the fate of the ongoing struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. They’ve been building
up
to
this confrontation for a long time. And it does matter which side wins, to creatures like us. Palpatine wishes to make absolute his control over the galaxy, and everything in it. Such a grasp would extend to you, Dengar, as well as to myself. Our own ambitions, and what we do to pursue them, might no longer be possible if Palpatine were to achieve all that he desires.”
“And what about mine?” Standing beside Dengar, the female Neelah spoke up. “What happens to me, and what I want?”
“You don’t even know what that is,” replied Boba Fett. “But you can believe me about it-or not, just as you choose. The past and the world that was stolen from you will be lost forever if Palpatine wins this struggle with the Rebel Alliance. There will be no way for you to get it back then.”
“And if the Rebels win?”
“There’s no way they can.” Boba Fett gave a flat, hard shake of his head. “My own career as a bounty hunter should be proof enough that cunning and ruthlessness inevitably triumph over all the high-minded ideals that the universe can generate.” The bounty hunter’s scorn for the Rebels, for any creature motivated by something beyond profits, was evident. “But if the impossible should happen-the galaxy has seen stranger events come about-then that would be bad for our business as well. The Rebels’ pretenses to a higher morality would prevent them from paying the established rates for our services, and they would also at the same time seek to exterminate those criminal operations which have been some of my best customers. Let’s face it-the best outcome, as far as bounty hunters are concerned, would be for this battle near Endor to wind up being a draw somehow, with neither force eliminating the other, and the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire continuing. We can hope for that to happen-but we can’t count on it.”
Dengar had felt his own hopes falling as he had listened to Boba Fett’s bleak prognosis. What a universe, he thought glumly. Whether the war was won by the forces of good or by the greatest evil the galaxy had ever known, somehow the results were the same, at least for him. I wind up losing, no matter what. That longed-for future, with him and Manaroo and nothing to do with the bounty hunter trade, seemed to recede at a light-speed pace. The only way for him to make the kind of credits he needed was as a bounty hunter, hooked up with the notorious Boba Fett, but that same Boba Fett made it sound as if it was soon going to be impossible to even be a bounty hunter. Where was the fairness in an arrangement like that?