[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(5)

“Hang on,” came the hallucinated voice. “I’ll get you someplace safe.”



The man called Boba Fett felt the jostle of the other’s footsteps, the motion of being carried across the stony ground. For a moment his vision cleared, the blindness dissipating enough that he could see his own hand flopping limp and disjointed, leaving a trail of spattered blood on the sand… .



That was when he knew that what he saw and felt was real. And that he was still alive.





2


A small object, moving by its own power through the cold expanses between the stars, had finally breached a planet’s sensory perimeter. Kuat of Kuat had felt the hyperspace messenger pod’s approach even before his own corporate security chief came to tell him that it had been intercepted. He had a fine-tuned awareness of machines,



from



the

smallest

nano-sporoids



to constructions capable of annihilating worlds. It was a family trait, something encoded deep within the Kuat blood for generations.



“Excuse me, Technician”-an obsequious voice came from behind him-“but you asked to be notified as the outer comm units picked up any traces. Of your … package.”



Kuat

of Kuat turned away from the great domed viewport and its vistas of emptiness studded with light. Far beyond the expanded orbit of the planet that bore the name identical to his, the hazy arm of one of the galaxy’s more aesthetically pleasing spiral nebulae was about to rise into sight. He tried not to miss things like that; they served to remind him that the universe and all its interconnected workings was, in its essence, a machine like other machines. Even its constituent atoms, beyond the confusion of uncertainty principles and observer effects, ticked like ancient, primitive chrono gears. And finer things than that, Kuat of Kuat told himself, not for the first time. Such as men’s spirits. Those were machines as well, however ineffable their substance.



“Very well.” He stroked the silky fur of the felinx cradled in his arms; the animal made a deep, barely audible sound of contentment as his long, precise fingers found a specific zone behind the triangular ears. “That’s just what I’ve been expecting.” Machines, even the ones built in the Kuat Drive Yards, did not always function as intended; there were random variables that sometimes deposited metaphorical sand in the gears. It was a pleasure-frequent, but still undiminished-when things did work according to plan. “Has there been any readout on the contents?”



“Not yet.” Fenald, the security chief, was dressed in the standard Kuat Drive Yards worksuit, devoid of any emblem of rank except for the variable-dispersion blaster slung conspicuously at his hip. “There’s a full crew working on it, but”-a wry smile lifted a corner of his mouth-“the encryption codes are rather tight.”



“They’re meant to be.” Kuat of Kuat would not be disappointed if the KDY employees weren’t able to crack them; he had designed and implemented them himself. Setting Security’s info-analysis division to work on them was a mere test, to see how well he’d done. “I don’t care for anyone else reading my mail.”



“Of course not.” A slight nod in acknowledgment; despite the importance of Kuat Drive Yards as the elite and

most

powerful contractor of

engineering

and construction services to the Empire, the formalities of KDY

headquarters were minimal, and had

been

for generations. Pomp and show and courtly flourishes were for those who didn’t understand where true power came from. Fenald gestured toward the viewport, its hexagonal strutwork curving three times higher than his boss’s imposing two-meter height. “I doubt if anyone has.”



The felinx purred louder in Kuat of Kuat’s arms; he’d found the exact spot wired into its pleasure centers. Born that way; a good amount of the minimal brain mass in the animal’s excessively narrow skull-a trait of its inbred species-he’d had to replace with biosimulation circuits, to keep it from bumping into walls and gnawing raw the flesh beneath its fur. His fingertips felt the edge of the cut into the animal’s skull as he stroked it. Transmuted even this far into a true machine, the animal was much more satisfactory, and-in ways Kuat of Kuat appreciated-even more beautiful.



A single bell note sounded in the spacious office suite of KDY’s hereditary CEO. Kuat of Kuat turned back to gaze at the viewport’s limitless vista as his security chief leaned the side of his head against the small transponder embedded in his palm. The felinx had closed its eyes in ecstasy; it didn’t see the rising edge of the far-distant nebula, like luminous smoke against black.