Her name was Neelah; she had told him that much when he had caught her sneaking down the sloping tunnel from the surface. He had gotten the drop on her, catching her off guard from behind a stack of empty supply crates. With her throat in the crook of his arm, as Dengar’s other hand had painfully bent her wrist up toward her shoulder blades, she’d answered a few questions for him. And then she had caught him in the shin with a hard, fast back kick, followed by a knee to the groin that had sent a small constellation of stars to the top of his skull.
“That’s personal.” They were in a standoff now, glaring at each other from across the cramped space. “I have my own business with him.”
What business would an ex-dancing girl have with a bounty hunter? Especially one as close to death as Boba Fett was right now. Maybe, mused Dengar, she thinks she can get a discount from him, since he’s so messed up. Though who would she want him to track down?
He glanced over to the doorway of the hiding place’s other chamber. “What condition is our guest in today?”
The taller medical droid tilted its head unit to study the display of vital signs mounted on its own cylindrical body. “The patient’s condition is stable,” announced SHS1-B. “The prognosis is unchanged from its previous trauma-scan indices of point zero zero twelve.”
“Which means?” “He’s dying.”
That
was
another question: Why couldn’t
these fnarling droids just say what they meant? He’d had to bang this one around until the solenoids had rattled inside its carapace just to get it to speak this much of a plain Basic.
“Wounds,”
added
SHSl-B’s
shorter
companion. “Severity.” le-XE gave a slow back-and-forth rotation of its top dome. “Not-goodness.”
“Whatever.” Dengar was looking forward to being rid of this irritating pair. That would come with either Boba Fett’s
death-or
his recovery. Which
was
looking increasingly less likely.
“If that’s the case,” said Neelah, “then you’re wasting my time. I need to talk to him right now.”
“Well, that’s sweet of you.” Arms folded across his chest, Dengar nodded as he regarded her. “You’re not really concerned with whether some bounty hunter pitches it or not. You just want to pump him for some kind of information. Right?”
She made no reply, but Dengar could tell that his words had struck home. The look the female gave him was even more murderous than before. A lot had changed since she’d been one of Jabba’s fetching playthings; even in this little time the harsh winds of Tatooine’s Dune Sea had scoured her flesh leaner and tauter, the heat of the double suns darkening her skin. What had been soft, nubile flesh, revealed by gossamer silks, was
now concealed by the coarse, bloodstained trousers
and sleeveless jacket that she must have scavenged from the corpse of one of Jabba’s bodyguards; a thick leather belt, its attached holster empty, cinched the uniform tight to her waist and hunger-carved belly.
Starving, thought Dengar. She had to be; the Dune Sea didn’t exactly abound with protein sources. “Here-” Keeping an eye on her, Dengar reached into one of the crates and dug out a bar of compressed military rations, salvage from an Imperial scoutship that had crash-landed years before. He tossed the bar to the female. “You look like you need it.”
Appetite widened her eyes, showing their deep violet color. Her fingers quickly tore open the thin metallic wrappings; she raised the slab, already softening as it absorbed what moisture it could from the air, to her mouth, but stopped herself before taking a bite.
“Go ahead,” said Dengar. “I’m not in the habit of poisoning people.” He reached behind himself to one of the niches concealed in the chamber’s stones. “If I wanted to get rid of you”-his fist came out with a blaster in it; he raised the weapon and pointed it at Neelah’s forehead-“I could do it easier than that.”
Her gaze fastened on the blaster, as though its muzzle were doing the talking.
“Good,” said Dengar. His groin still ached from the blow he’d received. “Now I think we understand each other.”
A few seconds passed, then the female nodded slowly. She took a bite of the rations bar, chewed and swallowed.
“I must inform you,” came SHSl-B’s voice from the subchamber doorway. “That any further casualties will have a deleterious impact on our ability to perform our functions in a manner consistent with an appropriate level of therapeutic practice.”