[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(99)

“That… that was just insane …” Suhlak shook his head, still seeing in his mind’s eye the vision of the other ship coming within millimeters of a shattering crash with his own. “We were that close to being killed…”

“But we weren’t,” said Boba Fett. “So much for your new breed of bounty hunter. He might be able to predict what you’re going to do-but he can’t predict what I’m going to do. Nobody can.”

Suhlak reached for the ship’s controls and aimed toward the cloudless terrain of the Dune Sea. Predictions, he thought. I’ll give you predictions. He had already decided, deep inside himself, that whatever amount of credits he was slated to get for this job-It wasn’t going to be enough.





14


“I was wondering when you’d show up.” Bossk’s unpleasant smile lit up in the shadows of the rear booth, the dim lights of the cantina glinting off the full array of his fangs. “I would’ve been real disappointed if you hadn’t. I mean-disappointed in you.”

Boba Fett slid into the opposite side of the booth. A few inquisitive faces had turned his way as he strode through the dimly lit space, but his visor-shielded glance over his shoulder had convinced them to limit their attention to their own business. “Hope you haven’t been waiting.” He set his gloved hands down flat on the table’s damp-ringed surface.

“Oh, I’ve been waiting, all right.” Grimly brooding anger tinged Bossk’s words. “I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

“Don’t make a big deal about this,” said Fett. “I just came here to do business with you. That’s all.”

“Yeah, and that’s the moment I’m talking about. The moment when I’ve got something that you want.”

Bossk leaned back in the booth’s thinly padded seat and regarded-with growing satisfaction-the other

bounty hunter sitting across from him. The feeling was the kind of satisfaction that came just before even stronger, more pleasurable feelings: the savoring of triumph and the satiation of one’s appetite. He could almost taste them, like the sweet saltiness of blood leaking through his fangs. Turnabout, thought Bossk, isn’t just fair play. It was the peak of one’s existence, at least for a creature like him. Trandoshans were famous throughout the galaxy for their ability to carry a grudge.

“Not only that you want,” continued Bossk. “But that you need.”

“Careful.” Boba Fett’s voice remained flat and unemotional, as though all of Bossk’s taunting had had zero effect on him. “You might be overestimating the value of the goods.”

“I don’t think so.” Bossk set his own massive claws down on the table. “You wouldn’t have come all this way-and back to Tatooine, which is hardly full of pleasant memories for you, is it?-if there hadn’t been a pretty good reason for you to do so. You especially wouldn’t have risked coming here with the odds stacked against you the way they are-what with every bounty hunter left over from the old Guild, and a bunch of new ones, all gunning for you.”

“For somebody who’s as far out of the loop as you are these days, Bossk, you seem to know a lot about what’s been going down.”

That remark got under Bossk’s scales. “Look,” he

said,

voice harshening, “I may not be working as a bounty hunter these days-” It galled him to have to make even that much of an admission of his prior defeats. “But that’s all because you stole my ship from me. If I still had the Hound’s Tooth, believe me, I’d be on top of this game.”

“I didn’t steal the Hound from you,” said Boba Fett mildly. “You abandoned it, and I took it over. A piece of junk like that really isn’t worth stealing.”

“Junk!” His claws dug into the tabletop as he started to push himself up from the booth’s seat. “That’s the best ship in the galaxy-“

At the edges of his slit-pupiled vision, Bossk was aware of the others in the cantina looking once again in his and Boba Fett’s direction, some of them glancing surreptitiously from the corners of their eyes, others more boldly. Bossk’s raised voice had alerted them all to the possibility of imminent violence, which was always one of the chief sources of amusement for this crowd. He had always known that they didn’t come here just for the clattering and whining music from the jizz-wailer band, still setting up and sound-checking their gear over in the corner.

“Junk,” muttered Bossk sulkily. With an effort of will, he forced his temper below the boiling-over point as he sat back down. Boba Fett was playing the usual round of mind games with him, just as the other bounty hunter had done so many times before. It was all part of Fett’s usual negotiating strategy, a way of getting a psychological advantage over an adversary. Whoever angers you, owns you-that was one of Boba Fett’s operational mottoes. Bossk had heard it before, and had fallen for it often enough, that he knew it was true.