[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(65)

“So you put her in Jabba the Hutt’s palace?” The notion astonished Dengar. He stared at Boba Fett, eyes wide as Neelah’s had gone. “That hellhole? She could’ve gotten thrown to Jabba’s pet rancor!”

“The dangers of Jabba’s palace were well known to me,” said Boba Fett. “While substantial, they were nevertheless limited and predictable. And I would be on hand to circumvent them, in case Neelah had aroused any of Jabba’s crueler desires-the Hutt, like all of his greedy species, might have been averse to meeting my price, but he valued my services enough to have made a standing offer for me to stay on at his palace for as long as I cared to.”

“So you could keep an eye on me,” said Neelah. Her gaze narrowed as she slowly nodded. “But more than that-you had already come to a dead end, trying to find out anything about me, who I really was, why somebody had done all those things to me. So you passed me off as a mere dancing girl, bringing me there to Jabba’s palace while I was still too confused to even know what you were doing. But what you were really hoping for was that someone in that crowd of thugs and criminals in Jabba’s court would recognize me for who I really was-and that would be how you’d find out how to turn a profit from me!”

“That possibility had occurred to me. Jabba’s palace was a crossroads for all sorts of the galaxy’s lowlife; some of them had even been in business with Ree Duptom before. There was always a chance that one of them might have had an inkling about what kind of scheme he had been engaged upon when he met his death-who he was working for, and what they were trying to accomplish.”

The corner of Neelah’s mouth twisted in a sneer. “I guess it’s too bad for both of us, then, that you didn’t find out anything.”

“Ah.” A trace of amusement filtered into Boba Fett’s voice. “But that’s where you’re wrong. I did discover something. Perhaps not the whole truth-your real name and where you came from-but enough to follow up on.

Enough that might lead us to that mutually profitable truth.”

Standing beside Neelah, Dengar could see her hands tightening into fists.

“Tell me,” commanded Neelah. “Now.”

“I’ll tell you because it suits my own purposes, and not for any other reason.” The amused tone evaporated from Boba Fett’s words. “There was a former business associate of Ree Duptom at Jabba’s palace-his name doesn’t matter-but what is important is that the two of them had been working together until just before Duptom’s death. As a matter of fact, they’d had a falling out, the sort of thing that happens with low criminal mentalities like that. It was also the sort of thing that would lead one of them to do a delayed-effect sabotage on the engines of the other’s ship, resulting in a lethal core meltdown.” Fett shook his head. “No great loss-just as it wasn’t any great loss when I had to sneak out of Jabba’s court for a second, while the other dancing girl, the one named Oola, was giving her

final performance. That was just long enough to set up a rendezvous later with my informant. It wasn’t until after Princess Leia, disguised as an Ubese bounty hunter, had brought the Wookiee Chewbacca into the court that I had enough time to obtain the data that this certain creature had-and then I made sure that he wouldn’t be informing anyone else that I had been asking questions about your real identity.”

“He knew… he knew who I am?” Neelah leaned forward. “My real name?”

“Unfortunately, the creature knew nothing of that. And you can rest assured that I used every means of persuasion at my disposal to make sure he told me everything that he did know. I didn’t have to worry about leaving traces of those techniques; in Jabba’s palace, a corpse turning up in that kind of condition was pretty much a daily occurrence. What he did tell me, though, before I returned to Jabba’s court, was that his former business associate Ree Duptom had accepted two new jobs just before they had had their falling out with each other, and that one client would be paying for both jobs. But he didn’t know who that client was; Duptom hadn’t told him that much.”

“Then the information’s worthless!” A look of furious despair sparked in Neelah’s gaze. “It still doesn’t tell us who I really am, or what happened to me!”

“Calm yourself. You’ve waited this long for the answers you want; you can wait a little while longer. Because that may be all that it takes.”

“What… what do you mean?”

“Did you forget,” said the bounty hunter, “that I brought you to this point in space for a reason? Those answers, if they’re to be found anywhere, are here.” Boba Fett pointed to the cockpit’s viewport and its unsettling vista of dead arachnoid subnodes. “My late contact inside Jabba the Hurt’s palace wasn’t able to tell me your name-he had never even laid eyes on you before coming there-but he was able to provide the clue I needed.”