[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(18)

“That was foolish of you.” Fett knew how tight the Huttese were with credits; it was a characteristic of their species. There had been times when he’d needed to take extreme measures to get paid for the completion of a job, even when the terms had been agreed upon beforehand. So to steal from a Hutt, and to think that one could get away with it, was the height of idiocy.



“Maybe so-but there was so much of it. And I thought I could get away, that I could hide. And my new bosses would protect me… .”



“They did the best they could.” Boba Fett shrugged. “It just wasn’t good enough. It never is, when I’m involved.”



“Look, I’ll give you the credits. All of them.” Posondum trembled with the fervor of his plea. “Every credit I stole from the Hurts-it’s all yours. Just let me go.”



“And just where are these credits?”



Posondum drew back from the cage’s bars.



“They’re hidden.”



“I could very easily find out the location.” Fett kept his voice as level and emotionless as before. “The extracting of useful information is a specialty



of mine.”



“It’s

memory-encrypted,” said the accountant.

I “Below the conscious level. And with a trauma sen-sor implanted.” He pointed to a small scar just above his left ear. “You try to dig the info out of me, it’ll trip and wipe the cortical segment clean. Then nobody will ever find where I put the credits.”



“There’s ways around those things.” Boba Fett had seen them before. “Bypasses and shunts-they’re

not pleasant. But they work.” He supposed the Hutts were already preparing a deep neurosurgical dissection room for Posondum upon his return. “It doesn’t matter to me, though. Since I’m not making a deal with you, anyway.”



“But why not?” The accountant had reached one of his skinny arms through the bars, trying to grab hold of Boba Fett’s sleeve. “It’s a fortune-it’s more than the Hutts have offered you-“



“It very well might be.” He had stepped away from the cage, back to the unadorned and functional metal treads that would return him to the Slave I’s cockpit. “You might be as good a thief as you are a number cruncher. And if you’re going to steal even one credit from a Hutt, you might as well steal a billion. The consequences are the same. But even if you do have that kind of credits hidden

away, I’m not interested in them. Or

not interested enough. I have my reputation to think of.”



“Your …” Posondum gaped at him in amazement and dismay. “Your what?”



“The Hutts and all my other clients-they pay me the kind of bounties they do because of one thing. I deliver. Once I’ve caught my prey, nothing stops me from bringing it in. Nothing. If I take on a job, I complete it. And everyone in the galaxy knows that.”



“But … but I’ve heard of other bounty hunters … who’ll cut a deal… .”



“Other bounty hunters may conduct their business as they please.” Fett barely managed to keep from his voice the contempt with which he held the so-called Bounty Hunters Guild’s members. That kind of shortsighted greed was one of the reasons he had no desire to associate himself with the Guild. “They have their standards … and I have mine.” One of his gloved hands grasped the ladder’s side rail; he looked back over his shoulder at the cage. “And I’ve got the merchandise, and they don’t. There’s a connection.”



Posondum’s knees visibly weakened, his hands sliding down the bars as he sank limply toward the cage’s floor. Whatever glint of hope had been in his face was now extinguished.



“I suggest you go ahead and eat.” Boba Fett nodded his helmet toward the tray and its congealed contents. “You’ll need to keep up your strength.”



He didn’t wait for an answer. He climbed up from the ship’s holding pens and back toward its waiting controls.





5


“Here he comes.” Lookout had spotted the approaching ship. That was its job. “I can see him.”



“Of course you can,” said Kud’ar Mub’at. “That’s a good node.” With the tip of one multijointed, chitinous leg, the assembler stroked the little semicreature’s head. The exterior-observation node was one of the more simpleminded subassemblies scurrying about the web. Kud’ar Mub’at had let just about enough cerebral tissue develop inside so that it could focus its immense light-gathering lens on the surrounding stars and anything that moved among them. “Tell Calculator just what you saw.”