[Legacy Of The Force] - 05(37)
Fett peered over the side. Fraig was twisting helplessly like a devee hooked on a fishing line, making gasping sounds. The line was tight around his waist and chest. He was dangling fifteen meters below the rail.
“Don’t struggle, and think calm thoughts,” Fett called. “It helps you remember. And it’ll stop you from slipping out of the loop.”
“You’re crazyI’ll have your throat cut for this”
“You’re on the end of a line. I’m on solid ground. Think about it.”
“You’re a dead man.”
“Perceptive to the last. Give me names, vermin.”
“I tell you I didn’t pay the Mando. I’m glad he whacked Cherit, but I never paid him to do it”
“Try again.”
Fraig’s voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the waterfall behind him. “The Twi’leks were from some family called Himar.”
“Good start.” Fett paid out another meter of line with a jolt. Fraig shrieked as he slipped farther toward the permacrete, stone, and raging water a hundred meters below. “Is that helping? Memory often needs a trigger.”
Himar. Any Mando who pitched in hard to play the hero for a couple of dancers would be known in the Twi’lek community. It didn’t happen that often; nobody else cared what happened to Twi’lek girls. Fett had his lead. He’d have a contact somewhereand if he didn’t, Beviin would. Beviin wouldn’t press him to find out why.
“Anything else you want to get off your chest?”
“I don’t know the guy, Fett. But I know you’re going to regret this.”
Fett could hear the dull rhythmic thuds of Fraig’s bodyguards trying to smash the doors apart. “If I find you’ve given me a load of garbage, I’ll be back to finish the job.”
He braced his boot on the bottom rail and began winching in the gangster. Mirta stood next to him with her blaster trained on the doors.
“You’re going soft. Why are you reeling him back in?”
“I want the fibercord back. It’s my favorite Ultra-fine.”
“When you get him on the balcony, I’ll tranquilize him …”
“Then back to Slave I. Scenic route.”
“You’re lucky we’ve got jets.”
“I wouldn’t have come up here if I hadn’t.” Fett felt the sweat breaking out and running down his spine. This would have been an easier task a few years ago. “And I wouldn’t have gone much above thirty floors anyway.”
“Why?”
“Hundred-meter line. In case I had to rappel down.”
Fraig’s face was two meters away now. He’d stopped yelling and settled for labored breathing.
“I haven’t got a hundred-meter line,” Mirta said.
“Lucky you’ve got jets, then.” He heaved Fraig over the rail in a tangled heap, and Mirta delivered a roundhouse punch that laid the man out. If that was her tranquilizer treatment, she was a born medic. “Time to go.”
Mirta shot off at an awkward angle and crashed through the sheet of water ahead of him; there was no force field up here to part the falls. When Fett looked down, he could see speeders crisscrossing the plaza on either side of the boulevard. He needed to land and find the speeder bike: jets were great for fast exits, but the flame made both of them conspicuous targets in the night sky.
The speeder was still where he’d left it, primed with a detonator and hidden in bushes on the edge of a park. Both the painkiller and the adrenaline were wearing off at the same time, and Fett had never been
more conscious of the reason for his search. He set off for the landing strip at top speed down freight lanes that had the lightest traffic, noting that Mirta was happily fixing a grenade launcher attachment to her blaster with both hands and gripping the saddle of the speeder with her knees. She looked like she was used to fast getaways.
“You’re doing okay for a dead man, Ba’buir.’”
“Your dad trained you well, too.”
“Most of that I learned from Mama.”
“Well … she did a good job of it.”
Fett took one hand off the bars and activated Slave Ps remote controls. Her drives would be primed: he could drop the speeder into the cargo hold and get off this planet inside a minute. In his HUD display, he was already scanning databases for that Twi’lek family name.
This was the one time he felt truly, thrillingly alive: when he was winning, being the best, surviving. Is that it? Is that all I can do? He almost envied the Beviins and Carids of this world, who delighted in simple things like good food and family. But there was a clean, uncomplicated satisfaction in danger. It erased worries and fears and memories. There was only the moment, and surviving it.