[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(83)

The airlock’s interior door hissed open. Boba Fett didn’t bother to reach down and help Dengar stand upright, but instead just stumbled into the ship’s cargo hold. Even weaker, Dengar crawled after the other bounty hunter, then used the bars of one of the empty cages to pull himself to his feet. He stood clutching the bars as his heart slowly stopped hammering in his chest.

“All right…” Dengar managed to wheeze out a few painful words. “Now… we’re even…”

Boba Fett didn’t seem to hear him. As Dengar watched, the other bounty hunter started climbing the ladder up to the ship’s cockpit.





11


The thruster engine controls were under Neelah’s palm, ready for her to shove them forward and send the Hound’s Tooth bursting out of the remains of the entangling web. Before she could move, she heard something from the hatchway behind her; she turned and saw Boba Fett standing there. The only time she had seen him looking worse had been back on Tatooine when he had been lying on the desert sands, half-dead from the Sarlacc’s digestive secretions.

Strands of Kud’ar Mub’at’s extruded neural fibers were draped and twisted about Boba Fett’s battle armor as he pushed himself from the hatchway and shoved Neelah away from the control panel. Pressing herself back into the pilot’s chair, keeping out of his way, she watched as he slapped row after row of weapons systems controls; their bright red lights pulsed on like bright, fiery jewels.

Once the Hound’s own laser cannons had all been brought operational, Boba Fett hit the thruster control on which Neelah’s hand had been poised only a few seconds before. One quick flare from the main thruster engines, and the tattered fragments of the web broke apart and swirled away from the ship’s forward viewport. He quickly hit the braking jets, slamming the Hound to a dead stop in empty space. The attacking vessel was centered in the cannon’s targeting systems.

Fett snapped on the comm unit. “You can fire or you can try to run.” The indicator light on the control panel showed that the ship he had hailed was receiving the transmission. “Either one won’t do you much good.”

Leaning past him, Neelah peered through the viewport. From this close, the other ship didn’t appear to be much of a threat. Instead of the sleek, threatening lines of a fighting craft, it looked more like a slow and bulky freighter vessel.

“What a surprise,” came the voice over the comm unit speaker. It sounded amused rather than angry-or frightened. “I did not know it was you, Boba Fett. Believe me, if I had, I wouldn’t have fired upon you.”

“Wait a minute.” Neelah looked up at the comm unit in amazement, then over to Boba Fett. “This creature … knows you}”

Boba Fett gave an acknowledging nod. “We go back a bit, with each other. And you already know about it.”

That last remark puzzled her even more. “Who is it? And does everybody who knows you just open fire when they see you?”

“It happens often enough.” He shrugged. “Just an occupational hazard. Especially in this line of business.” Turning from her, Boba Fett hit the comm unit button again. “Balancesheet-I could blow you away right now, and I’d be justified in doing that.”

“How fortunate for me then that you’re so capable of controlling your wrath.”

Another sound came from the cockpit hatchway. Neelah turned and saw Dengar-looking even worse for his experiences aboard the reconstructed web-standing there.

“Balancesheet?” Dengar stared up at the comm unit speaker, then glanced over at Neelah. “You mean the little assembler that used to be Kud’ar Mub’at’s accountant subnode? That’s who fired on us?”

“I guess so,” replied Neelah. “I mean-how would I know for sure? You’re the one who told me about it.”

“That doesn’t mean I know it personally.” Dengar stepped closer and peered at the viewport. “I was just repeating the stuff Fett told me. But that must be the freighter that Prince Xizor gave to it, after the web was destroyed the first time. So …”

“It’s Balancesheet, all right.” Boba Fett turned away from the comm unit. “I’ve heard its squeaky little voice enough times to recognize it.” He pressed the transmit button again. “You’ve got some explaining to do, Assembler. So presumably there’s some accounting for what you’re doing in this sector-since there’s not a lot of your kind of business going on here at the moment-and why you’re so prepared to fire on other creatures before you even know who they are.”