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He pitied creatures like that. They simply had no sense of tradition.
concerned-but also a tighter control over the various worlds' inhabitants. That was probably bad... .
Something to think about. Feeling the weight of his age, Cradossk shambled into the memory-bone chamber co
It had been a long time since he'd had occasion to add another memento to his collection. My killing days are over, thought Cradossk, not without regret. He wandered farther into the chamber's ivory-lined recesses, letting memories of vanquished opponents and foolishly recalcitrant captives wash over him.
Until he came to the oldest and tiniest bones. They looked like something that might have been found in a bird's nest, on some planet where all the life-forms had been extinct for centuries. Cradossk let a couple of them rest in his palm as he poked at them with a single claw.
Tooth marks showed on the bones' surfaces, from little teeth that had been as sharp and hard as a newborn's.
Teeth that hadn't yet been dulled by the coarse flesh of enemies. Those teeth had been his, when he'd just barely been out of his mother's egg sac. The bones were those of his spawn-brothers, hatched just a few seconds later. And too late for them.
Cradossk sighed, mulling over the wisdom he'd been created with, and that which had taken him so long to achieve. He carefully set his brothers' bones back in the hollow of polished rock where he kept them.
This was why lesser entities like that moronic Twi'lek would never understand. About family loyalty and honor ...
He pitied creatures like that. They simply had no sense of tradition.
listening to the Twi'lek's report. "You're sure of all this?"
"But of course." The Twi'lek made no attempt to conceal the wickedness of his smile. "I have been in your father's service for some time. Longer than any of his previous majordomos. I haven't lasted this long by being blind to his thought processes. I can decipher the old fool like a data readout. And I can tell you this for a fact He trusts you absolutely. As he told me, that was why he sent you to talk to Boba Fett."
Sitting in a gold-hinged campaign chair, Bossk nodded in approval. "I suppose my father had all sorts of things to say. About loyalty and honor. And all the rest of that nerf dung."
"The usual."
"That must be the hardest part of your job," said Bossk. "Listening to fools talk."
You have no idea, thought the Twi'lek. "I've gotten used to it."
Bossk gave another, slower nod. "The time is coming when you won't have to listen to that particular fool any longer. When I'm ru
"I certainly expect so." More of the same, the Twi'lek told himself. He was careful to keep his thoughts from showing on his face. "In the meantime ..."
"In the meantime there will be a nice little transfer of credits to your private account. For all your services." Bossk dismissed him with a simple gesture of his upraised claws. "You can go now."
That fool is right about one thing. The Twi'lek felt a warm glow of satisfaction as he headed back to his own quarters. He was doing a good job- For himself.
looking straight into the dark, narrow visor of his helmet, they might have fled before even opening their mouths.
"Yes?" Boba Fett turned around-slowly, as nonthreateningly as possible for someone with his reputation. "What is it?"
"I was wondering"-the short bounty hunter, with the large insectoid eyes and breathing hoses, stood in the doorway-"if I might have a word with you... ."
What was this one's name? They all looked alike to Boba Fett. Zuckuss, he remembered. The partner of Bossk, at least as recently as that business where he had snatched the accountant Nil Posondum out from under their noses.
"Of course, if you're busy-" Zuckuss clasped his gloved hands together in an obvious show of nervousness.
"I can come back some other time-"
"Not at all." Boba Fett had also seen this one at the Guild's banquet hall, close to the reptilian Bossk. So there was undoubtedly still some co
This one didn't take long. Zuckuss was hardly in Fett's quarters for more than a few minutes before he had scuttled back out into the corridor, disappearing before anyone from the Guild could spot him there. Small fry, thought Boba Fett. Not one of the major players in the Bounty Hunters Guild that Kud'ar Mub'at had briefed him on. But important enough, with a line straight to the ear of Bossk. Who, as the impatient heir apparent to the Guild leadership, would have a great deal to do with it being torn apart.
The conversation went exactly as Boba Fett had expected, and just as Kud'ar Mub'at would have predicted.
Zuckuss was like so many others in the Bounty Hunters Guild, down in the lower ranks a perfect combination of greed and naivete. Just smart enough to kill, mused Fett after Zuckuss had left. The short bounty hunter had glanced nervously out the doorway, to make sure no one was there to see him as he scurried down the torchlit corridor. Not smart enough to keep himself from getting killed. It might not happen this time-Zuckuss might, with the erratic luck of the feckless, survive the breakup of the Guild-but it would eventually.
He supposed that was the big difference between himself and poor Zuckuss, between himself and Bossk and Bossk's vicious, aging father and all the rest of the Guild members. Boba Fett sat down on the stone bench for a moment; the armaments he carried with him, that were as much a part of him as his spine, prevented him from leaning back. He never wasted time thinking about himself, any more than an explosively lethal missile from the rocket launcher strapped to his back would have as it sped toward its doomed and pinpointed target. But he knew that the reason he was alive and that others were dead, or soon would be, was that he possessed the true and essential secret of being a bounty hunter- As good as he was at catching and, if need be, killing other sentient creatures, he was even better at surviving their attempts to kill him. Everything else was just a matter of superior firepower.
Boba Fett stood up from the stone bench. If he stayed here any longer, there would be others coming to talk to him. Others who thought they could protect themselves the way he did, but who were already fatally enmeshed in the trap spun by Kud'ar Mub'at, so far away that he couldn't be seen or the tugs on the strands of his web even felt.
Besides Bossk and Zuckuss, there had also been one of Cradossk's top advisers on the Guild council, and the Twi'lek major-domo, back for a longer talk than when he'd brought Fett to this dank chamber. All of them had been in pure deal-cutting mode, eager to help pull the Bounty Hunters Guild apart so they would get a bigger piece of whatever was left in the wreckage.
Right now he didn't feel like talking to anyone else.
Action meant more than words; that was one other thing Boba Fett was sure of. A man was killed by words, and saved by action. Spending so much time talking to other sentient creatures had been like wrapping himself in death. What he wanted to do right now was head back to the Slave I, his refuge docked at the edge of the Guild's main compound, lock himself behind its overlapping security layers, all systems primed to fry anyone who tried to breach them, and rest. If not the sleep of the virtuous-Fett had no illusions about that, or regrets-then at least the sleep of someone who had put in a good day's work. In his business, that meant helping others arrange their own destruction.