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The majordomo watched him go. He was more familiar with the various shades of meaning attached to Cradossk's utterances. Nothing was ever as it seemed on the surface.
The poor bounty hunter didn't have a clue as to what kind of lethal mess he was getting into.
But Ob Fortuna did. He glanced behind him, across the length of the anteroom, to make sure that the door to Cradossk's chambers was still closed. Then he hurried down toward the opposite end of the corridor, to where the others who would be interested in this conversation would be waiting. With his hands tucked inside the folds of his long-skirted robes, he was already calculating the profits that would come from another piece of information bro-kering.
understood completely. What a creature like Bossk didn't comprehend was that violence, however necessary, was a bomb nestled against one's own heart, in the absence of meticulous calculation. He'll find out, thought Fett.
Soon enough.
The smaller bounty hunter, Zuckuss, glanced nervously from Boba Fett over to Bossk, then back again. "Maybe," he said, "an advance party could head out toward the Shell Hutts. Do some reco
"Don't be stupid." Boba Fett shook his head. "The only thing that would accomplish would be to warn the Shell Hutts of our intentions. It's going to be hard enough keeping any element of surprise, without sending them a message like that."
"But the ships are ready to go!" Bossk whirled about on the clawed heel of his foot. "If we wait any longer, the other Guild members will put together teams for taking on this Di
Boba Fett didn't look up from the data readout in his hands; he continued checking the Slave I's armaments list. "It would be no great tragedy if anyone did that.
Since they would have no chance off success, our merchandise would still be safely in the hands of the Shell Hutts, waiting for us. And it might actually facilitate our own plans, once we put them into motion.
The Shell Hutts would see the difference between us and some crude pack trying to blast their way into the stronghold."
"You keep telling us about these great plans you've made." Bossk aimed a venomous stare at Fett. "When are you going to let us know exactly what they are?"
"As I said before." Unflinchingly, Boba Fett returned the other's hard gaze. "You need to cultivate patience."
Bossk turned away again, his grumbling even louder than before.
The other team member was there with them in the landing dock. IG-88, a droid that had managed to become one of the Bounty Hunters Guild's more respected members-in fact, one of the few that Boba Fett would even consider to be a serious rival- brought his optical sca
"If you think you can pull off this job without me"-Fett lowered the data readout in his hands- "then go ahead."
IG-88 regarded him for a moment longer, then gave a single nod of its head. "You remain our leader. But I warn you Don't exhaust what patience we do have."
"Mine's already gone." Bossk had obviously continued stewing; the look in his slitted eyes had gone from murderous to a
"Um, Bossk ..." Zuckuss raised his voice. "It was your idea."
"If I started it, then I can put an end to it as well." His gaze slowly moved across the three other bounty hunters. "You lot can do whatever you want. But I'm out of this. I'm going out after Oph Nar Di
"I'm afraid you don't have that option." Boba Fett tucked the readout inside one of his armor's storage pouches. His voice seemed even more level and emotionless, compared with Bossk's boiling anger. "You know too much about this operation for you to be on the outside of it. When you come in with me on a job, you stay until it's over. There's really only one way for you to quit."
"Yeah?" Bossk sneered. "What's that?"
IG-88 remained standing as before, his equally cold droid emotions-or the lack of them-observing the confrontation. Zuckuss drew back, ready to duck behind the fuselage of one of the ships in the landing dock as Boba Fett dropped his hand to the curved grip of his own blaster.
"Go ahead," said Boba Fett, "and try walking out on us. And you'll find out."
The atmosphere tensed, as though filling with subphotonic discharge from a battle cruiser's venting ports. In the taut silence, Boba Fett gave a silent com mand to the heavily armed figure standing in front of him. Go ahead, he thought. It'll save us all a lot of time... .
"There's someone coming!" Zuckuss's voice broke through the adrenaline-frozen moment. He pointed to the distant high arch that formed the entrance to the landing dock; beyond it, a streak of fiery light cut a crescent past the stars. "Another ship-"
Bossk held his gaze tight on Boba Fett's for a moment longer, then glanced over his shoulder. The approaching light had grown brighter, its docking jets flaring into a sudden corona. He looked back at Fett. "Is this who we've been waiting for?"
"It could be." Boba Fett didn't take his hand from the grip of his blaster. "Lucky for you."
"That's right," said Fett. "If I had killed you, I would have needed to find another person for the team."
His hand moved away from the smallest of his weapons. "I find perso
Zuckuss peered past them at the approaching ship. "I don't recognize this one." It was close enough that its outlines could be seen a featureless ovoid, barely larger than a TIE fighter, trailing a metallic seine, a stiffly interlinked net, behind its flaring engines. "How did it get clearance-"
"I arranged for that." Boba Fett stepped past Zuckuss and the others, walking toward the pad that the approaching craft had locked upon. "But it wouldn't have made any difference if I had or not."
"What do you mean?" Zuckuss scurried after Fett.
"Believe me-this barve goes where he wants to."
The ovoid could be seen more clearly now as it slid into the landing dock, thrust engines shut down and repulsors on. Its rounded surfaces were pitted and scored with the impact marks of high-intensity armaments, including one large scorch mark where the metal had actually melted and fused back together. As it hovered above the pad its trailing mesh shifted and drew forward, one part curling above like a scorpion's tail, the other forming a reticulated cradle beneath, onto which the craft slowly sank and was still.
"Look at this thing." Fascinated, Zuckuss had walked right up to the ovoid, his boots stepping onto the mesh.
He laid a gloved hand on the battered and corrosion- marked surface. "It looks like it's been in every battle since the Clone Wars-"
"Watch out," said Boba Fett. But the warning was already too late.
A microscopic hairline fissure around the top of the ovoid widened, with a hiss of inrush ing air. An elliptical section separated from the rest, tilting up ward on previously hidden internal hinges. For a moment nothing further showed from inside the craft. ...
As though released by a high-compression spring, the barrel of a close-range laser ca
The gleaming surfaces of black metal shone like the coils of an aroused serpent, intricate and deadly. A faint, shrill electronic whir sounded as the massive weapon's range-sighting devices locked onto Zuckuss, swinging the point of the muzzle down within a meter of the bounty hunter's chest. Another series of sharp, concussive noises sounded within the machinery as the indicator lights' glow shifted from yellow to a hot red, charged and ready to fire. That was followed by silence; Zuckuss froze where he stood, as though hypnotized by the black hole almost within touching distance of his hand, and its lethal potential even closer than that. There would be only a haze of disco