[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(131)

His shadow leaped toward her, as did that of Boba Fett; both bounty hunters were silhouetted by the fiery glare that had banished what was left of the night. The encircled sand dunes were lit up as though by the fall of Tatooine’s twin suns. Beyond the cave’s mouth, the two other figures were visible, turning onto their sides and raising their outspread hands, trying to ward off the weight rushing down toward them.



All that happened in a few seconds, from the first whisper and bare glow, to the half-rounded shape that appeared just above the desert floor, balanced on the fiery column of its landing engines. One of the two men was able to scramble to his feet and run, making a final dive headlong that took him beyond the quickly braked impact of the ship. The other managed only to get to his knees, blaster rifle pressed into the sand beneath his palm; then the tail of the craft, nozzles blackened and still hot, crushed him flat.



“Oh.” Dengar’s voice broke the silence, the thrusting roar replaced by the glassy crackle of the molten sand cooling. “It’s your ship. It’s the Slave I.”



Neelah realized what had happened. He got through, she thought. On the comm unit. The link between the gear inside his helmet, the small transceiver antenna mounted at the side, and the equipment that Dengar had fetched back from the Mos Eisley spaceport-Boba Fett must have gotten that up and running just before the other two men had shown up. And all the time that the one named Hamame had been talking, and then when he had swung the blaster rifle up onto his hip, Fett had been sending a signal straight to his ship, outside Tatooine’s atmosphere. Giving Slave I, as Dengar had called the craft, the exact coordinates of this location-exact enough to bring it right down on the heads of the two men. One of them was still partly visible underneath the ship, a leg and an arm showing, his weapon lying on the sand just a few inches away from his fingers. He wouldn’t be making any deals anytime soon.



“Come on.” Boba Fett moved toward the cave’s opening. “Let’s get going. There’s no reason to hang around here.”



She didn’t know whether he had been speaking to both of them or just to Dengar. But she wasn’t taking any chances. Neelah let the two men go before, at a quick sprint toward the Slave I ship. From the darkness of the surrounding dunes, a volley of laser bolts scorched the sand at their feet; the other besieger hadn’t given up yet. Neelah didn’t let that stop her from following after Boba Fett and Dengar, and quickly scooping up the dead man’s blaster rifle as she ran.



“Hold it.” At the hatchway of the ship, Neelah raised the weapon, her thumb at its firing stud. “Stop right there.”



Dengar was already inside; with one gloved hand grasping the side of the hatch, Boba Fett turned and looked over his shoulder, his visored gaze meeting that of the blaster rifle’s muzzle.



“You’re not going anywhere without me,” said Neelah coldly.



Boba Fett’s hand shot out before she could react, the motion faster than her eye could perceive. His fist locked onto the rifle barrel; with a quick twist of his arm,. he had wrenched it out of her grasp. The weapon went spinning through the air as he flung it away, landing within inches of the corpse’s unmoving arm.



They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Boba Fett reached down and grabbed Neelah’s wrist, and pulled her up toward the hatchway.



“Don’t be stupid.” Fett’s grasp lightened, squeezing the bones together. “I’m the one who decides who goes and who stays. And right now you’re too valuable a piece of merchandise to leave behind.”



A second later she was inside the ship, with the hatchway

door sliding shut behind herself.

“Brace yourself,” said Fett as he headed for a metal ladder at the side of the space. “We’re leaving now.”



Neelah rubbed her aching wrist. As she looked about herself, at the bleak metal bars of the cages, she realized-though she didn’t know when, in what part of her shrouded past-that she had been here before.



“That is just so entirely typical.” SHS1-B tilted his head unit back, watching the ship ascend swiftly into the night sky. “You go to all that trouble fixing them up, putting them back together, and they don’t even bother to thank you.”



“Ingratitude.” le-XE stood next to the taller medical droid. They had both come creeping out of their hiding places when the shooting had finally stopped. By now, even the human out in the dunes had presumably left, heading back to whatever den of iniquity he had come from; at least, there was no longer any indication of his presence. That was a further disappointment to both droids; after an encounter with Boba Fett, the man might have had some interesting wounds to take care of. “Thoughtlessness.”