[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(125)

Others might pay even more than Vader or Palpatine. Bossk mulled over the possibilities. After all, the droid with its carefully concealed surveillance equipment had all the appearances of having been put together by Kuat Drive Yards. Why would Kuat of Kuat have been interested in Skywalker? That would be something worth finding out as well.



In front of Bossk, the holographic image froze, having reached the end of the recording. The black smoke from the stormtroopers’ raid on the moisture farm hung motionless in the small segment of the past, like the scrawled emblem of the dark forces that controlled the universe. …



Part of Bossk’s brain, the most evolved and cautious part, told him that this was nothing with which he should get involved. The closer one got to those circles of intrigue and deceit, with Darth Vader at their center, the closer drew one’s own death. Look at what happened to Boba Fett, he reminded himself. Fett might have suffered his final, terminal defeat because of Luke Skywalker, but he wouldn’t have even been there on Jabba’s sail barge, up above the Great Pit of Carkoon, if it hadn’t been for Vader’s

endless

manipulations

of

other

sentient creatures.



The cautions voiced inside Bossk’s head fell silent, consumed by the other, hungrier elements that made up a Trandoshan’s nature. Boba Fett had died because he was a fool; his death proved that he was a fool. That was all the logic that Bossk needed. He’s dead and I’m alive-that also proved he was smarter than Fett had ever been. So what was there to be afraid of?



It’s this ship, Bossk thought. can’t get any work done here. He’d have a better chance of figuring out what the holographic recording meant if he took it back over to the Hound’s Tooth and puzzled over it. The holographic image blinked out of existence as he reached inside the droid’sp>

cargo space and started disconnecting

the circuits.



One of the data leads surprised him. It was hooked up to an olfactory sensor on the droid’s exterior. He could understand wanting to get a high-resolution visual and auditory record of the event, but why collect scent molecules in the air? Corpses and stormtroopers smelled like death, if anything.



The data cable was routed to an analyzer unit rather than the recording device. The small readout panel on its angled top showed that it was set to detect organic anomalies, anything of a biological nature that shouldn’t have been at the scene that the droid had spied upon. Bossk pulled out the analyzer and peered closer at the screen. It had picked up something from the recording; numbers and symbols flickered by as the device sorted out the possibilities.



After a moment the numbers slowed, then turned to letters, then words. pheromones detected. Another second passed before the rest appeared. subtype sexual, gender male. Then the last: species match-fal-leen. The words remained until Bossk blanked the screen with a press of his clawed thumb.



That was even more interesting. Bossk nodded slowly to himself, the analyzer device resting silent in his hands. Falleens didn’t serve in the Imperial stormtroopers; the whole species was too congenitally arrogant to submit to military discipline. They were fearsome enemies, but strictly solo fighters. And schemers, given to intrigues matched only by those of Emperor Palpatine himself.



And there was one Falleen in particular, who had risen almost to the top in Palpatine’s court. Prince Xizor had been perhaps the only one there who could get away with defying Lord Vader’s commands, and Xizor was dead now. There had been even more to Xizor’s defiance than the Emperor had been aware of, though rumors told of Vader having suspected the truth. That Prince Xizor had been in fact the secret head of the infamous Black Sun, the criminal organization that spanned the galaxy, an empire in its own right.



Speculations raced inside Bossk’s skull. Had Prince Xizor

also

been there on Tatooine

when

Vader’s stormtroopers had raided the moisture farm at the edge of the Dune Sea? When Luke Skywalker’s aunt and uncle had been killed? That was what the olfactory record in the droid’s spy circuits would indicate. But it didn’t tell why Xizor would have been there-or why Kuat of Kuat would have planted a surveillance system that would detect the evidence of Xizor’s involvement. Or how Boba Fett had come to possess the spy recording …



That many questions without answers made Bossk’s head hurt, as though it might explode from the pressure building within. This is going to take some time, he thought grimly, to figure out. He extracted the rest of the recording devices from the droid, stacked the metal boxes up in his hands, and turned back toward the secret chamber’s doorway.