[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(78)

“Don’t worry. It’s only a temporary condition.” Boba Fett didn’t bother displaying to the creature’s blind eyes the black cable he held. “Soon as we’re done here, I’ll pull the plug. And you can go back to being what you were a few moments ago. A corpse, floating in space.”

The triangular head slowly nodded. “Then you have at last, Boba Fett, that which I want… more than anything else. Bargain with it, as you will.”

“I want information, Kud’ar Mub’at. Information that you have.” Boba Fett’s gloved fist closed tighter upon the cable. “That you knew when you were alive, but you wouldn’t have told me then.”

At Dengar’s back, he felt the slow pulsing of the web around him. He turned and saw brighter sparks racing across the neural fibers. Once more, the sensation of being inside a living brain-or at least a partly living one-assaulted him. The assembler’s thoughts and ideas were like storm clouds, threaded with electrical discharges, ominous as a slowly darkening horizon.

“What would you like to know, Boba Fett?”

Stepping closer to the assembler’s revivified corpse, Boba Fett brought his own visor-shielded gaze closer to the blind one’s. “I want to know about a client of yours. A former client, I mean.”

“Exactly so.” The dry, rasping laughter sounded again. “I understand that certain progeny of mine … have taken over the family enterprise, as it were.” The upraised forelimb reached out and lightly tapped the brow of Fett’s helmet. “Perhaps you should go and talk to young Balancesheet. It keeps secrets very well, though, as I learned so painfully. You’d have to bargain hard to get what you want.” Feebly, the limb folded back in on itself and scratched at Kud’ar Mub’at’s chest, or what would have been the place where its heart had once functioned. “I don’t feel so well… I feel cold…”

Boba Fett shook his head. “I know enough about how you managed your affairs. Some things you let your subnodes in on, and others you kept to yourself. There were certain matters-the shadier sorts of deals you arranged-that you preferred to keep just in your own private memory, rather than the one shared through the web’s neural fibers. The client I’m inquiring about was one of those. His name was Nil Posondum-“

The deracinated laugh from Kud’ar Mub’at’s mouth was even harsher and louder this time. “Posondum!” The noise from the hollowed-out form was like the claws of rats scuttling across crumpled flimsiplast. “A client of mine!” From beneath the dead assembler, several of its limbs thrashed about in a spasm of mirth. “You are so rarely wrong, Boba Fett… but this time you are!”

The mention of the human’s name puzzled Dengar. He had heard it before, from Neelah when she had been musing aloud, away from Boba Fett, about the few scraps of memory left to her. But even before that, Dengar had come across the name; he remembered it as a piece of hard merchandise for which a standard bounty had been posted, some time in the past. It wouldn’t have surprised him at all to have learned that Boba Fett had been the bounty hunter who had collected the credits on that one, like so many others.

“Don’t lie to me.” Boba Fett seemed as if he were about to jerk the black cable like a noose around the dead assembler’s neck. “I know all about the money you received from Nil Posondum. I found the record of it aboard Ree Duptom’s ship Venesectrix.”

“You might … very well have,” wheezed Kud’ar Mub’at’s corpse. “And that is in fact the truth; I did receive a substantial sum of credits from our late friend Nil Posondum. But such a transaction … does not mean he was a client of mine. Just as I was a go-between, an arranger of deals, when I was still alive … so have other creatures served that oh-so-useful purpose. Perhaps not on the overarching scale … at which I did …” The chitinous form paused, as though it needed to catch its breath, or more likely, let the pulsating energy from the black cable recharge its neuro-cerebral tissues. It hunkered down lower in the nest, the joints of its thin legs sticking above its head. “Posondum was merely-what is the term criminal types use?-a bagman. Yes … that’s right… that’s the word.” Two of Kud’ar Mub’at’s forelimbs slowly wavered apart in an expansive gesture. “He brought the credits here to the web … to me … and communicated certain important details … of what his client desired. I then made certain other arrangements on behalf of that third party … such as the hiring of Ree Duptom to carry out two very delicate assignments. Which, alas, he never lived to do-and so much trouble and confusion has resulted from that lapse!”