“You’d know,” muttered Zuckuss under his breath.
“Did you say something?” Cradossk glanced over at him.
Zuckuss shook his head. “It was a bubble.” He pointed to the dangling air tubes. “In my gear.”
“Ah.” Cradossk resumed his contemplation of his long-dead enemy’s rib, letting it evoke deep, musing thoughts. “It’s good to remember these things. To be wise. More than wise; cunning. Because”-he nodded slowly-“there’s going to be a lot more killing before everything’s straightened out around here.”
“What do you mean?” He already knew what the old Trandoshan meant, but asked anyway. The creaky old carnivore wants to talk, Zuckuss told himself, should let him talk. It was only polite, and it didn’t cost him anything. Besides-other things were going to happen that Cradossk probably didn’t know about. And those things took time to get ready.p>
He heard a slight noise from the doorway. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Cradossk’s majordomo, the Twi’lek that was always sneaking around the place, on his own and others’ shadowy errands. Ob Fortuna held one of his elongated forefingers to his lips, signaling Zuckuss to remain silent himself. From the corner of one large eye, Zuckuss looked over at the leader of the Bounty Hunters Guild; the old reptilian was still sunk deep in his brooding meditations. Zuckuss and the Twi’lek ex changed a quick nod, and the Twi’lek scurried away, down the Guild’s dark corridors.
“Now’s not the time to start playing stupid.” The ancient rib cracked in two, with a splintered fragment in each of Cradossk’s tightly squeezed fists. He looked in angry surprise at what he’d just done, then tossed the relic’s pieces away. He shot a hard-eyed gaze over his shoulder at Zuckuss. “Don’t try telling me you’re not smart enough to know what’s going on around here.”
“Well …”
“Bossk was only the first one. The first that had to be eliminated.” A bone shard had been left on the back of Cradossk’s hand, caught underneath one of his rough-edged scales. He extracted it and used it to pick his fangs, nodding in grim thought all the while. “There will be others; I’ve got a list.”
I bet you do, thought Zuckuss.
“Not all of them young and foolish, either.” Cradossk examined a still-wriggling fragment of food on the end of the improvised toothpick, then resumed his meditative work with it. “Some of my oldest and most trusted advisers … bounty hunters that I’ve known and supped blood with for decades … so to speak …” He ruefully shook his head. “I should’ve anticipated it-but then again, how could I? I loved these killers.”
“Anticipated what?” Zuckuss knew that as well, but figured the question would keep Cradossk going awhile longer. By his calculations, the Twi’lek majordomo would need
a
little
while longer to
finish
up
his conspiratorial rounds.
“Traitors … backstabbers …” Cradossk’s voice was a low, muttering growl. “That’s what you get in this galaxy for being nice to creatures. Taking them in when they were runny-nosed little scavengers who wouldn’t have known how to get their claws on a piece of merchandise if it’d been given to them with a ribbon tied around it. I taught most of these Guild members everything there is to know about this business.”
“I imagine that’s quite a lot.”
“You better believe it,” Cradossk said fiercely. “There’s parts of the bounty-hunter trade that I in vented. And if these scum think they can get it all away from me …” He chomped down on the bone toothpick, grinding it between his back fangs. “They’d better think again.”
“What
particular scum are you
talking
about?” Cradossk’s mention of a list still had Zuckuss worried. The old Trandoshan might have gone senile, perhaps forgetting just who he was talking to. Just my luck, thought Zuckuss glumly, to find my own name on there.
“They know who they are. The same as I know. Though maybe …” Cradossk gave another slow nod. “Maybe I shouldn’t take any chances. Maybe I should just have everyone killed. Wipe clean the whole roster of the Bounty Hunters Guild. Start fresh …”
Great, thought Zuckuss. He had been warned about this, by Boba Fett on the way back from Circumtore. Up in the Slave I’s cockpit area, Fett had given him another insight
into the way Cradossk’s mind worked.
The Trandoshan had always been paranoid, long before he had clawed to the top of the Bounty Hunters Guild. Arguably, a personality trait like that was what had enabled him to do it, or had at least helped. Hard on his associates, though, figured Zuckuss.