“Taken,” Boba Fett spoke up. “Pay this creature, Balancesheet. I don’t feel like haggling.”
“You got yourself a good deal.” Suhlak barked out a harsh laugh. “Think about it. I’ve made a lot of deliveries in my time-and you’re the only one who ever succeeded at getting in my way. With you aboard this time, that’ll be one thing I won’t have to worry about.”
“So you’re going to be taking all of us back to Tatooine?” Neelah pointed to herself and the two bounty hunters. “That’s the deal?”
Suhlak shook his head. “Sweetheart, I’ve only got a modified Z-95 Headhunter-that’s what I use in my business. Fast, maneuverable-but a little on the cramped side, even with the bubbled-out passenger space I had added to it. There’s really just room for me and one other creature. Boba Fett’s making this trip, and that’s it.”
“But …” An edge of panic, a glimpse into the unknown, cut through Neelah’s thoughts. Everything-all the answers to the questions that remained with her-depended upon Boba Fett. “How do I know … how do we know… that you’ll come back?”
“Don’t worry,” said Boba Fett. “This will be a two-way journey, all right. How else am I going to make any credits on this deal?”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Suhlak pushed himself away from the bulkhead on which he’d been leaning. “Nobody said anything about getting back here. My price was just for getting you to Tatooine!”
Boba Fett turned his shielded gaze toward the younger man. “Take it or leave it, Suhlak. Or else we’ll explore another option-namely, my killing you and then piloting your ship myself. The odds of making it to Tatooine wouldn’t be as good, but at least I wouldn’t have to put up with you any longer.”
For a few seconds, the hunt saboteur glared back at Fett. Then he nodded. “All right. Let’s get going.”
12
“We’ve found them.”
Those words came from the comm unit speaker in Kuat of Kuat’s private quarters. The felinx watched from its silken-lined basket beneath Kuat’s lab bench as he turned toward the voice of the absent Kodir of Kuhlvult, security head for all of Kuat Drive Yards.
“I’m not so much concerned about ‘them.’ The person we need to locate is Boba Fett.” Kuat regarded the view of stars and construction docks visible from the curving bank of transparisteel panels near the bench. “If you haven’t found him, I don’t even want to hear your report.”
“Don’t worry,” said Kodir. “I wouldn’t have put the link through if I hadn’t succeeded at the task given to me.”
Kuat made no reply. Even though Kodir wasn’t physically present at the Kuat Drive Yards corporate headquarters, he had as clear an image of her as if she were standing before him. She had all the haughty bearing of a member of one of Kuat’s ruling families, combined with the intimidatingly honed athletic grace that had made her such a suitable candidate for the position she now held. That, plus a sharp-edged mental acuity equal to his own, evoked a small measure of unease in Kuat. In truth, he’d had a better personal relationship with Fenald, his previous security head; the only problem being that Fenald had been a traitor, to both Kuat and to Kuat Drive Yards, by being part of the scheme to wrest control of the corporation away from him and turn it over to the greediest and most ambitious factions among the ruling families. If it hadn’t been for Kodir of Kuhlvult, Fenald and the conspirators he’d fallen in with would very likely have succeeded in their plans-and the corporation that Kuat of Kuat and his predecessors had treasured and protected for so many generations would now be on its way to utter ruin. No one from the planet Kuat’s other ruling families had the experience and cunning to circumvent all of Emperor Palpatine’s schemes to break Kuat Drive Yards’ independence and make it a mere component of the Empire. So Kodir had earned both Kuat’s respect and his trust, no matter how much her tough, even brutal mannerisms grated against his own instincts. It’s a brutal universe, Kuat had told himself more than once. And he had certainly played his own hard game of survival in it. Perhaps what disturbed him about Kodir was a certain essential resemblance to his own ruthlessness in service to the corporation.
“So now we know where Boba Fett is.” Kuat spoke into the comm unit mike on top of the lab bench. “Is he still aboard the ship called the Hound’s Tooth}”
“That’s how I found him.” A tone of self-satisfaction was audible in Kodir’s voice. “The Hound’s Tooth was spotted by one of our paid spies, at the edge of one of the remoter border systems. Then it vanished again; obviously, Boba Fett was piloting a course designed to throw off any trackers. But the sighting of the Hound’s Tooth was close enough to a certain navigational sector that had figured prominently at one time in Boba Fett’s activities that I took a chance at keeping it under more intensive surveillance. And sure enough, the Hound’s Tooth showed up there.”