[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(121)

So when the word had reached him that Boba Fett was dead, dissolved in the digestive secretions of the Sarlacc beast, a combination of elation and frustration had welled up inside him. If the universe was going to be so obliging as to just give him that which he’d most fervently longed for, he’d just have to accept that as philosophically as he could. The fact that he was now forever frustrated in taking care of the job himself, of reaping the intense pleasure of personally separating Boba Fett from the realm of the living-that just showed that the universe wasn’t really fair and just, after all. But Bossk had set the Hound’s Tooth at maximum speed for the too-familiar planet of Tatooine, just to bask in the atmosphere that had been the last to fill his enemy’s lungs.



He didn’t get that far, though; Tatooine hung like a dusky smudge in the aft viewport screen. Before he’d had time to set landing coordinates for the Mos Eisley spaceport, Bossk had found something just as familiar-and even

more

intriguing-in autonomic

orbit

outside Tatooine’s atmosphere. When he’d first spotted the Slave I in the cockpit’s forward viewport, and recognized it as Boba Fett’s ship, his hands had immediately darted to the targeting and firing controls of the Hound’s blaster cannons. The only thing that had kept him from blowing Slave I into atoms floating in empty space was the realization that the other ship hadn’t trained any of its weapons onto his own. That, and remembering Boba Fett was already dead. A simple hailing call had returned the information that Slave I was empty, but still under the protection of its internal guard circuitry.



This is too good, Bossk had decided. It was one thing to inherit-by default-the mantle of top bounty hunter in the galaxy. But to also stumble upon the late Boba Fett’s personal ship, the repository of all his weaponry and databases, all the painstakingly acquired secrets and strategies that had put him at the top of this dangerous trade-Bossk couldn’t resist an opportunity like that.



He was smart enough to avoid trying to crack Slave I’s security measures himself. Other creatures had gotten killed trying to do just that. Boba Fett had wired the ship with enough traps and self-aiming firepower to wipe out a small army, if it had attempted to enter without the appropriate password authorization. But with Fett being dead, there was no time pressure about getting past the ship’s circuits; Bossk had the credits and the leisure

that

allowed for calling in

professional assistance.



That was one advantage to being this close

to Tatooine; services of that kind were exactly the sort available in Mos Eisley. If one could afford to pay the price.



A harsh electronic buzz sounded from the Hound’s comm unit. A message had been received; undoubtedly, the one for which Bossk had been waiting. He pulled himself closer to the cockpit’s control panel and saw something that puzzled him for a moment.



There were two messages waiting for him.



The first was from Slave I, just as he had expected. The other had arrived almost simultaneously: a messenger pod, sent straight from the surface of Tatooine; the small, self-propelled device was now sitting in the receptor bay of the Hound’s Tooth. Bossk prodded a few more buttons with his foreclaw and got a readout from it.



The coded message unit was from a Q’nithian message expediter down in Mos Eisley with whom Bossk had a long-standing working arrangement. A business relationship: the Q’nithian had a general knowledge of the kinds of things that Bossk was interested in. Any message that the Q’nithian was hired to send across the galaxy, that fit those criteria, would get routed first to Bossk before continuing on the rest of its journey.



Bossk read the destination info off the unit. It was headed to the distant engineering center of Kuat, to the head of Kuat Drive Yards, Kuat of Kuat. Bossk nodded to himself as he read the address data. The Q’nithian had been correct in figuring that he would want to see this. Anything, thought Bossk, that’s being sent to someone as rich

and powerful as Kuat is something that

I’m interested in. A successful bounty hunter always had to have his info sources open wideband so he could filter through all the galaxy’s secrets and rumors for the bits that might turn out profitable.



He had already decided, though, to read the encoded message unit later-after he had taken care of the other business, for which he had been waiting so long. The tip of his claw hit the next button on the cockpit’s comm controls.



“I’m all finished over here.” The recorded voice, dry and emotionless, was that of the lead technician for D/Crypt

Information

Services,

one