Small, fresh mimbranes had more practical uses. They were the perfect eavesdropping device, recording into their gelatinous fibers any sounds that struck the tympanic cells in which the creatures were sheathed. Being totally organic, they couldn’t be detected by the usual antibugging sweep devices.
Hamame’s jag-edged fingertip pressed down on the bulging center of the mimbrane. The stored
energy converted back into sound.
“I heard you mention poor Santhananan’s name.” The Q’nithian’s familiar squawk spoke the words. “He met a sad demise, I’m afraid.”
“That’s right.” Phedroi gave a smirking nod. “You had us murder him for you.”
“Shut up,” said Hamame. “Let’s hear the rest.” He prodded the mimbrane again.
“Yeah, I’m sure it was tragic.” The mimbrane emitted Dengar’s recorded voice. “What I want to know is, did anybody pick up on his business?”
The two thugs listened to all of the deal that had gone down between Dengar and the Q’nithian. “Now, that’s interesting.” Hamame leaned back on his side of the booth. “That Q’nithian is a sneaky type, but he’s earned his keep with this bit.” On the table between him and Phedroi, the mimbrane was now perfectly flat, all the stored acoustic energy drained from its cells. “So Boba Fett’s still alive.”
“That’s one tough barve.” Phedroi gave an admiring shake of his head, the coarse and dirty ringlets of his beard scraping across his tunic collar. “You just can’t kill him. If falling down a Sarlacc won’t do the trick, then what will?”
Hamame reached inside his jacket and pulled out his blaster. He pointed the muzzle up toward the cantina’s ceiling. “This will.”
19
It had taken a long time for him to come into his own. To receive, to possess all that should have been his from the beginning. To be known as the toughest, hardest, most feared bounty hunter in the entire galaxy …
Bossk leaned back in the pilot’s chair of the Hound’s Tooth, savoring the pleasures that came with success. Mingled with a simmering anger that never completely ebbed from the essence of a Trandoshan; he folded the claws of both hands across the scales of his chest and gazed
slit-eyed at the stars visible through
the viewport. Too long, he brooded; too long a time. If all the creatures on all those worlds had had any sense, they would have recognized him as the best. The absolute best.
Instead-and this brought the fire inside him to a hotter pitch-he’d had to wait until Boba Fett was dead. And that had been much too long in coming.
A thread of regret mingled with the other emotions. He would have liked to have killed Fett himself, torn out his competitor’s throat with one roundhouse sweep of his claws. Or to have focused the crosshairs of a blaster rifle’s sight upon that nar-row-visored helmet, then pressed the firing stud and seen Boba Fett’s masked visage replaced by a quick explosion of blood and bone splinters …
Bossk slowly nodded. Now, that would have been a real pleasure. And one that he would have deserved to savor, just like the taste of Fett’s blood leaking between his fangs, after having suffered so many humiliations at the hands of that sneaking, underhanded barve.
Some of the anger was replaced with self-pity. There were so many things of which he had been cheated in this life. The leadership of the Bounty Hunters Guild-that should have been his as well. Now it could hardly be said that the Guild existed at all. Granted, a lot of personal satisfaction had come with killing old Cradossk, his father-that was the sort of thing that really defined the relationship between Trandoshan generations-but he hadn’t gotten much material benefit out of the act. Instead of becoming the head of a galaxy-wide organization of predators, skimming a cut off the bounties collected on all the hard merchandise changing hands on any inhabited world, he’d wound up on his own, a scrabbling independent agent like all the other bounty hunters. That had all been Boba Fett’s doing; the breakup of the Bounty Hunters Guild had been a long time ago, before Bossk had learned one of the most important lessons in this business-Don’t trust your competition. Kill them.
That’s true wisdom, Bossk assured himself. For a lot of reasons. There had been other sources of anger, other humiliations he had suffered at Boba Fett’s hands. They had just kept piling up, one after another. When Bossk had stood within striking distance of Fett, back when Darth Vader had been giving the job to all the best bounty hunters in the galaxy, to track down and find Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon, it had taken all of his self-control not to leap over and rip out Fett’s throat. And then that last infuriating maneuver, when Fett had outsmarted both him and his partner, Zuckuss, delivering the carbonite-encased form of Han Solo to Jabba’s palace right beneath Bossk’s outstretched claws-that had driven him almost insane with rage.