[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(71)

all in their lord’s great hall. Somebody accidentally struck the curtain behind the dais, it collapses, and there’s our Oph Nar Dinnid and the liege-lord’s alpha concubine, for all the galaxy to see. Like I said: no sense at all.”



Bossk’s description of events matched what Fett’s sources had told him. “It’s remarkable that this Dinnid person got out alive.”



“I take it back: the guy had some sense.” Bossk shrugged. “Not enough to keep himself out of trouble, but at least enough to have already planned his escape route when the nerf droppings hit the ventilation system. There was a lot of confusion in the great hall-you can imagine-and Dinnid hightailed it out to a speeder he’d kept fueled and waiting, with its destination coordinates already programmed in.”



“Where could he go? Where he’d be safe, that is.” Boba Fett already knew the answer, but continued with his pretense. “The Narrant liege-lords have a sense of honor that doesn’t easily accept embarrassment. They’ll stop at nothing to get someone who has publicly humiliated them back in their grasp.”



“True.” Bossk gave a quick nod. “That’s why this particular lord has put up such a killer bounty for the merchandise he wants. He can’t just take his own troops out and hunt down the little idiot, haul him back, and get whatever satisfaction he can out of Dinnid’s hide-at least, not without spreading the story even farther afield. So, naturally, the lord wants the bounty hunters to do his dirty work for him.”



Silence was always a desired commodity in the bounty-hunter trade. Boba Fett had made a specialty of quick, efficient-and quiet-work. “With that kind of credits being put up, I expect every bounty hunter in the Guild will be going after Oph Nar Dinnid.”



“It’s not that easy,” said Bossk. “The sneak not only had his escape means planned, he had the perfect place to hole up figured out as well. He’s with the Shell Hutts.”



Boba Fett had heard that much as well. Of all the Huttese clans, the Shell Hutts were the least numerous, and the most removed from the various alliances and interconnected dealings that bonded the other Hutts together. The Shell Hutts didn’t even look like their distant brethren, except in bulk and physiognomy; they had the same basic body mass and large-eyed, slit-mouthed faces, perfect for greedily stuffing assorted wriggling tidbits into. In that sense, of wanting to control everything on which their immense eyes fastened, they were identical to the rest of the Hutts.



Identical in anatomic toughness as well, with thick leathery skins impervious to blaster shots and acids, and vital organs so deeply buried under layers of blubber that they couldn’t be even nicked with a vibroblade-the only physical threat that Hutts feared was specific bands of hard unshielded radiation, the kind whose toxic effects built up in their bodies’ shielding fat rather than being dissipated through normal excretion processes. That had kept the Hutts from extending their criminal enterprises to certain areas of the galaxy. Until one of the Huttese clans, sometime in the hazy millennia of the past, had given themselves what their own genetics had failed to: protective armored casings, bolted and welded together from heavy durasteel plates, supported and maneuvered about by built-in repulsor fields. All that showed of the Shell Hutts’ soft, gelatinous flesh were their jowly faces, protruding tortoiselike from iris-collared ports at the front of the floating ovoid cases. Even the Shell Hutts’ delicate little hands were hidden inside, manipulating the controls for the externally mounted grasping devices. Those seemed to work just as well at grabbing onto and holding big chunks of ill-gotten wealth.



“Why would the Shell Hutts be interested in a comm handler on the run?” Boba Fett had had dealings with various members of the Shell Hutts; he knew they didn’t do anything without a credits-related reason, just like the

other Huttese. “If they need that

level

of translation and diplomacy skills, they can just buy whoever’s on the market. Someone who doesn’t have a price on his head.”



“Oph Nar Dinnid made himself valuable to them.” A trace of grudging admiration sounded in Bossk’s harsh voice.

“Seems he had memory augmentors surgically implanted in his cortical areas, and stuffed them full of the Narrant system’s top-secret business information, dealings, and records that he had access to from working as

the

supreme liege-lord’s protocol intermediary. There’s a lot of data inside Dinnid’s head that the Shell Hutts

have

found

to be pretty interesting.