[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(77)
For a moment, a great, calming peace descended upon Neelah, like the hand of a noble infant’s nurse drawing a blanket snug upon the small, cooing form; a blanket marked with the exact same image, only embroidered with pure golden thread rather than scratched into the floor of a squalid holding cage on a bounty hunter’s ship. One by one, the locked doors inside her head opened, spilling their pent-up light into the depths of her spirit, chasing away the dark, obscuring shadows in which she had been wrapped for so long.
She gazed upon the image awhile longer, not caring if anyone should discover her doing so. None of that mattered now. The key she had found had not only opened the locks, but had burst them asunder. Nothing could make her forget.
That’s what the corporation used as its emblem, Neelah told herself, a long time ago. Before I was born…
The old, archaic letters spelled out the initials KDY, for Kuat Drive Yards. Bound by a triangle, for the art of engineering, and a greater circle that represented the universe and everything in it.
Another key turned, in one of the farthest locks, as she looked upon the image.
It turned, and she remembered her name.
Her real name …
The empty eyes opened, but were still blind.
Yet Kud’ar Mub’at-the hollowed thing that had been Kud’ar Mub’at-seemed to sense the presence of other creatures.
The joints of the spidery legs creaked as though about to break into splinters. The broken abdomen, edges of its wound frozen by exposure to the cold of the vacuum surrounding the web, scraped against the remains of what had been its nest and throne of power, the point from which it had drawn the strands entangling so many others of the galaxy’s creatures. Slowly, the small triangular head rose from where it had shrunk into the chitinous thorax.
“Is there… business… to transact?” The assembler’s voice, which had once been so gratingly high-pitched, was now a rasping whisper, as of dry strings twisting against one another. “Business … is what I want… all that I want…”
Dengar had the unnerving sensation that the assembler’s gaze had fastened upon him. The narrow face, with its clusters of unseeing eyes, turned in his direction and stopped for a moment, before moving like a rusted mechanical apparatus toward the other bounty hunter in the web’s central chamber.
“I won’t say it’s good to meet up with you again, Kud’ar Mub’at.” Standing closer to. the arachnoid assembler’s withered form, Boba Fett held the black cable looped in one gloved hand. The cable’s surface shimmered, seeming much more imbued with life than the greyed-out thing in the nest, as the power and controlling data continued to stream from the ship tethered alongside the web. “But then, I never much cared for our little meetings.”
“Ah! You are so unkind.” The triangular head gave a tiny nod, imitating human gestures as it had done in its previous existence. “You were always nearly as cruel as you were greedy, Boba Fett-it is Fett, isn’t it? I can recognize your voice, but it’s so dark in here now … I can’t see you.”
“It’s not dark, you fool.” From Boba Fett’s hand, the black cable ran into the narrow cleft right behind the assembler’s head; a metal needle had been inserted into the knot of ganglia inside the thinly armored skull that had functioned as the neuro-cerebral center for the creature. “You’re dead. Get used to it.”
“Believe me, Fett… I already have.” A lopsided smile opened on the narrow face. “There are advantages… to my present condition.” One thin forelimb withdrew from the cluster of legs curled beneath Kud’ar Mub’at’s abdomen, and wavered feebly in the air. “For one … death is much less painful than dying… which I remember in excruciating detail… not pleasant. And second… now I can say whatever I please … without worrying about the consequences. What can I suffer now, any greater than that which I already have?” Laughter like breaking twigs came out of the angled mouth. “So let me tell you right now, Boba Fett… I never cared for you, either.”
“Then we’re making progress,” replied Fett. “Since we can skip your usual line of empty flattery.”
Dengar stood back, watching the confrontation between the former business associates. One’s dead, he thought, and the other’s alive-but they still have something in common. Neither one gave up easily.
“Very clever of you … managing this.” The dry husk of the assembler shifted in the flaccid remains of the nest, as though its vacuum-blunted nerve endings were capable of feeling discomfort. “I didn’t know such a thing was possible …” One of its hind limbs scratched at the inserted cable, but was unable to dislodge it. “I’m not sure I care for it…”