Hard Merchandise

14

"I was wondering when you'd show up." Bossk's un-pleasant smile lit up in the shadows of the rear booth, the dim lights of the cantina glinting off the full array of his fangs. "I would've been real disappointed if you hadn't. I mean—disappointed in you."

Boba Fett slid into the opposite side of the booth. A few inquisitive faces had turned his way as he strode through the dimly lit space, but his visor-shielded glance over his shoulder had convinced them to limit their at-tention to their own business. "Hope you haven't been waiting." He set his gloved hands down flat on the ta-ble's damp-ringed surface.

"Oh, I've been waiting, all right." Grimly brooding anger tinged Bossk's words. "I've been waiting for this moment for a long time."

"Don't make a big deal about this," said Fett. "I just came here to do business with you. That's all."

"Yeah, and that's the moment I'm talking about. The moment when I've got something that you want."

Bossk leaned back in the booth's thinly padded seat and regarded—with growing satisfaction—the other bounty hunter sitting across from him. The feeling was the kind of satisfaction that came just before even stronger, more pleasurable feelings: the savoring of tri-umph and the satiation of one's appetite. He could al-most taste them, like the sweet saltiness of blood leaking through his fangs. Turnabout, thought Bossk, isn't just fair play. It was the peak of one's existence, at least for a creature like him. Trandoshans were famous throughout the galaxy for their ability to carry a grudge.

"Not only that you want," continued Bossk. "But that you need."

"Careful." Boba Fett's voice remained flat and un-emotional, as though all of Bossk's taunting had had zero effect on him. "You might be overestimating the value of the goods."

"I don't think so." Bossk set his own massive claws down on the table. "You wouldn't have come all this way—and back to Tatooine, which is hardly full of pleasant memories for you, is it?—if there hadn't been a pretty good reason for you to do so. You especially wouldn't have risked coming here with the odds stacked against you the way they are—what with every bounty hunter left over from the old Guild, and a bunch of new ones, all gunning for you."

"For somebody who's as far out of the loop as you are these days, Bossk, you seem to know a lot about what's been going down."

That remark got under Bossk's scales. "Look," he said, voice harshening, "I may not be working as a bounty hunter these days—" It galled him to have to make even that much of an admission of his prior defeats. "But that's all because you stole my ship from me. If I still had the Hound's Tooth, believe me, I'd be on top of this game."

"I didn't steal the Hound from you," said Boba Fett mildly. "You abandoned it, and I took it over. A piece of junk like that really isn't worth stealing."

"Junk!" His claws dug into the tabletop as he started to push himself up from the booth's seat. "That's the best ship in the galaxy—"

At the edges of his slit-pupiled vision, Bossk was aware of the others in the cantina looking once again in his and Boba Fett's direction, some of them glancing surrepti-tiously from the corners of their eyes, others more boldly. Bossk's raised voice had alerted them all to the possibility of imminent violence, which was always one of the chief sources of amusement for this crowd. He had always known that they didn't come here just for the clattering and whining music from the jizz-wailer band, still setting up and sound-checking their gear over in the corner.

"Junk," muttered Bossk sulkily. With an effort of will, he forced his temper below the boiling-over point as he sat back down. Boba Fett was playing the usual round of mind games with him, just as the other bounty hunter had done so many times before. It was all part of Fett's usual negotiating strategy, a way of getting a psychologi-cal advantage over an adversary. Whoever angers you, owns you —that was one of Boba Fett's operational mot-toes. Bossk had heard it before, and had fallen for it often enough, that he knew it was true.

"It's served my purposes," said Fett. "Well enough."

Bossk raised one of his scaly eyebrows. "It's not here with you, is it?" His voice lifted with hope. "I mean, here in the spaceport."

"Of course not. I had to get here in something of a hurry. I didn't have time to creep along in that pile of..." Fett paused for a moment. "That valuable relic."

"Don't start." Bossk let his shoulders slump. "I just thought. . . that maybe I'd gotten it wrong from my information sources. That you'd been detected as being aboard N'dru Suhlak's Headhunter." Bossk tried turning his opponent's verbal tactic around. "You know, that's kind of a new low, even for you, Fett. Using a hunt sabo-teur to ferry you around. I never knew anybody in the old Bounty Hunters Guild who would've touched one with a gaffi stick, except to beat him to death with it."

Boba Fett didn't rise to the bait. "Circumstances, rather than desires, dictate my actions. That's why I'm still a bounty hunter, and you're not."

"Don't worry about that," replied Bossk testily. "I'm going to be in the game again—and real soon. Aren't I?" To be on the safe side, he tilted his head back and scanned the crowd in the cantina, trying to spot any crea-ture with whom Fett might be working. The chances of that were slim—most of the other top-rank bounty hunters would have been out searching for Boba Fett in-stead, scheming on turning him into the kind of hard merchandise for which Kuat of Kuat had posted such an impressive price. And Fett himself, as Bossk knew from his own past experience, rarely took on partners; Bossk was still amazed at having heard of him being in league with a relative second-rater like Dengar. "That's why you're here. You're going to make that all possible for me, huh? Even if you didn't bring the Hound back with you, so you could return it to me."

"You can have your ship back—when I'm done with it." Boba Fett shrugged. "And if there's anything left of it then."

Bossk ignored the comment, as being just another of Fett's infuriating verbal gambits. "Okay. So you came here to take care of some other business with me, right? Let's see if we can make this mutually rewarding. Be-cause it's not going to happen unless it is." Boss leaned across the table, letting his eyes narrow to slits. "How much you going to pay?"

"You're mistaken." The other bounty hunter gazed right back at him. "I wasn't planning to 'pay' anything."

"Plan again, pal." Bossk grated out the words. "I've got what you want—what I found inside that cargo droid aboard your ship—and I've got a real good idea of what it's worth. Because there are other creatures besides you looking for it, and they're offering a nice high fee on delivery."

"So why didn't you sell it to them? From the looks of it, you could use the credits."

"Because . . ." His fangs ground together, as though they had seized upon Boba Fett's throat. "I figured I could get even more out of you. And even if I couldn't get more—even if I couldn't get the same—I still wanted to get it out of your pockets. I wanted you to pay, Fett. Be-cause I know that's worse for you than if I killed you."

"You're right. I don't find that prospect at all pleas-ant." Boba Fett reached under the table. His hand came back up with a blaster pistol in it, which he pointed be-tween Bossk's eyes. "So why don't you just hand the goods over to me, and that way I won't have to kill you."

"Are you crazy?" The sight of the weapon, hanging motionless right in his face, had frozen him as well. Glancing out of the corner of his sight, Bossk saw that all the mingled hubbub of conversations in the cantina had suddenly died, with every creature there turning and looking in the direction of the rear booth in which he and Boba Fett sat. "I thought you wanted to do business."

"That's what this is." Boba Fett raised the weapon's muzzle a fraction of an inch higher. "Consider it my final offer."

The show was too good to ignore; the cantina's other patrons had started buzzing and whispering, excitedly pointing out details of the confrontation to one another.

"You are crazy." The blood in Bossk's veins, never warmer than the surrounding atmosphere, had suddenly chilled. "Look ... let's think about this."

"There's no need to," said Fett evenly. "It's a straight-forward proposition. Hand over the material that you found inside the cargo droid, when you were rummaging around in Slave I, and I won't kill you. What could be fairer than that? Mutually rewarding as well: I'd have what I came here for, and you'd still be alive."

"But. . . but look at the chance you're taking." The gears of Bossk's thoughts slowly started moving again. "I don't have what you're talking about right here on me. You think I'd carry stuff like that around? No way." Bossk shook his head vigorously. "I've got it well hid, someplace where nobody else would be able to find it."

"Whatever's been hidden can be found again."

"Maybe so," said Bossk, "but not without a lot of searching. And that would take time. Time that you don't have right now." His words started coming faster. "You said yourself, just a couple minutes ago, that you came here to Tatooine in a hurry. That must mean you've got to get your hands on that stuff real quick. You kill me now, and that's not going to happen. You'll be stuck here in Mos Eisley, rooting through every possible place I could have stashed the goods. And maybe you won't ever find it. Think about that." Bossk gave a quick nod, his own fanged muzzle almost brushing that of the blaster being held on him. "Then what'll you do? You won't be getting any help from me, if I'm already dead."

"Good point." The blaster pistol remained where it was, unwavering in Boba Fett's grip. "But not good enough. Do the math, Bossk. If I kill you now, I might in-deed have only a small chance of finding what I came here for. But all your chances will be over. What's incon-venient for me will be terminal for you." Boba Fett's fin-ger rested upon the trigger, a centimeter away from unleashing its fire. "There's nothing left to discuss. So what's it going to be?"

The darkly shining metal in the other bounty hunter's hand mesmerized Bossk. He had looked straight at death before—in the bounty hunter trade, it was a regular occurrence—but never with as much certainty as now. The pulse in his veins seemed to stop, along with time it-self; all the rest of the cantina faded away, along with its whispering voices and watching eyes. The universe seemed to have contracted, down to the width of the booth's ta-ble, holding nothing but himself and the helmeted figure across from him, with the blaster as the pivot of gravity between them.

"All right ..." Bossk's throat had gone as dry as the Dune Sea, somewhere out in that vanished world sur-rounding the booth. "I'll..." The next words caught in his throat, as though they were too big to dislodge. "I'll go ahead and ..." His hands drew into fists, claws dig-ging ragged parallel grooves in the table's surface. For a moment longer, Bossk remained paralyzed, then he found himself slowly shaking his head. "No, I won't," he said flatly. "I won't do it."

"What did you say?" The blaster didn't move, but a minute fraction of surprise sounded in Boba Fett's voice.

"You heard me." Bossk's heart was racing now; his vi-sion blurred with the increased pressure for a moment, then he managed to bring Boba Fett's image into focus again. "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to give you the stuff I found inside that droid." He raised his hand from the marks his claws had dug into the table and spread them wide, making an additional target out of his chest. "Go ahead and fire. I don't care." A certain exhila-ration came with those words; Bossk felt absolutely free for the first time in his existence. "You know ... I just realized something. That's how you always won before," he marveled aloud. "It was because you didn't care. Whether you lived or died, or whether you won or lost. So you always wound up surviving, and you always won." Bossk slowly shook his head, admiring his own sudden insight. "That's amazing."

"Spare me." The dark-visored gaze remained as steady as the blaster in Boba Fett's hand. "I won because I had more firepower—and brainpower—than you or anyone else did. That's what matters. Nothing else."

"Yeah, well, not this time." Bossk found himself smil-ing with genuine pleasure, even though he knew he might very well be enjoying the last few seconds of his life. "You know, I really should've figured this out be-fore. I've been in plenty of tight spots, where I was look-ing death straight in the face—like when Governor Desnand was planning on peeling my skin right off me— and I always managed to fight or bribe my way out of them. I even managed to steal the Hound's Tooth back from Tinian and Chenlambec, and that took some doing, believe me. And then to have you steal the Hound away from me ..." Bossk slowly shook his head. "Crazy busi-ness, huh? Not surprising that I never figured out what it all meant. At least until now." Bossk gestured at the blaster in Boba Fett's hand. "So you got the firepower, all right, for all the good it'll do you. Go ahead. Shoot."

A shadow fell across the table. The cantina's bar-tender had pushed his way through the crowd, right up to the side of the rear booth. "Hold on, you two—" The man's lumpish face was shiny with sweat.

"We don't want any trouble here—"

"It's a little late for that." Boba Fett swung the muzzle of the blaster around toward the bartender. "Isn't it?"

"Now . . . wait a minute ..." The bartender held up his hands, palms outward, as though they were capable of stopping a blaster bolt. "I was just ... trying to help you work things out. That's all..."

"And so you can." With his free hand, Boba Fett reached into one of the pouches in his battle armor and drew out a data-transfer chip. "Does this establishment have a verify-and-transmit connection with the local banking exchange?"

"Sure—" The bartender nodded and pointed toward the opposite side of the cantina. "Back in the office. We use it for our own accounts. We get a lot of credits, from a lot of different systems, moving through here."

"Fine." With his thumb, Fett punched in a few quick commands on the chip's miniaturized input module.

"Take this and have the balance in my local cache account deposited in the name and identity scan of this individual here." He indicated Bossk with a nod of his helmet. "Keep the five-percent service fee for yourself. Got that?"

The bartender nodded again.

"Then do it."

Bearing the transfer chip in his hands like a precious relic, the bartender turned and hurried toward the can-tina office. The crowd parted before him, to let him pass. Then their wondering faces all turned back toward the scene in the booth.

"All right," said Boba Fett. He tucked the blaster back into its holster. "There. You've won."

Bossk stared at him uncomprehendingly for a mo-ment before he could speak. "What did you say?"

"You've won." A note of impatience tinged Fett's words. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

A tiny bell note sounded from a pouch on one of the straps crossing Bossk's scale-covered chest. He fumbled out the small readout card with his own account balance encoded on it. A few minutes ago, the numbers had been pitifully small. But now the transfer of funds had gone through, as Fett had instructed the cantina's bartender. The resulting change in the readout figure widened Bossk's eyes into almost perfect circles.

The crowd in the cantina had heard what Boba Fett had said. The volume and buzzing urgency of their com-ments to each other went up several notches.

"I won?" Bossk lifted his gaze from the readout to his own reflection in the dark visor of Fett's helmet.

"Look," said Boba Fett. "I don't have time to either kill you or argue with you any further. I've paid you—" He pointed to the readout in Bossk's claws. "And that's more than you would've gotten from Kuat. So that's my half of the business we're doing here. So work with me on this, all right? Your turn. Where's the stuff you took from my ship?"

Bossk still felt slightly stunned. "It's... not here ..."

"You told me that already. So where is it?"

"Back at the hovel-stack... where I've been staying..." Bossk gave him the directions, the exact route down Mos Eisley's twisting alleys. "Move the pallet... and there's a hole underneath, covered with a board ..."

"That's your hiding place?" Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. "I could have saved my credits." He slid out from the booth. "Make it last," he said, pointing to the readout in Bossk's hand. "Might be all you'll see for a while." Fett turned and strode away, the crowd quickly shifting to either side of the cantina.

Bossk sat staring at the display for a few moments longer, then tucked it away again. He stood up from the booth and immediately halted in place.

The cantina crowd was massed solid in front of him, eyes of the galaxy's various shapes and colors regarding him, with none of the creatures saying a word. Then— slowly—the silence was broken, as first a few individu-als, then the entire crowd, began applauding and raucously cheering.

A drunken harf, with shining red, gogglelike eyes and an elongated snout, put a massive arm around Bossk's shoulders. "We don't like you any more than we ever did," said the creature. "We just never saw anything like that before. Not with Boba Fett, that is ..."

"Sure ..." Bossk nodded in appreciation of the other's words. "It means a lot to me, too." Back in the game, he thought dizzily. He didn't need the Hound's Tooth anymore; with the credits he had now, he could buy a whole new ship. And a better one ...

Ideas and desires whirled through Bossk's head. He pushed his way through the noisy crowd, heading for the light outside.

"Must've been one of those days." On a level stretch of plain outside Mos Eisley, N'dru Suhlak looked up from the access panel on his Headhunter's exterior hull. He had been keeping himself busy with necessary repairs to the craft; after the encounter with Osss-10 above Tatoo-ine's atmosphere, the Headhunter hadn't been in optimum shape. Reaching into his tool kit for a larger hydrospan-ner, he had spotted Boba Fett returning from his "busi-ness meeting" in the spaceport's cantina. "Couple of folks came by a little while ago; they told me some of what happened."

Fett had a small parcel, wrapped in unmarked flimsi-plast, tucked under his arm. "Creatures talk. You should ignore them."

"Don't know about that." Suhlak wiped his hands on a greasy rag, then slammed the access panel shut.

"Sounded kind of interesting. I mean, a big roaring blaster fight like that, and all those other creatures getting killed. Must have wiped out half the 'port's population."

"Nowhere near," said Fett drily. "These things get ex aggerated when they get told over and over." He reached up and stowed the package in the Headhunter's bubbled-out passenger area. "Is this thing ready to go? Just be-cause I got what I came here for, that doesn't mean I'm in any less of a hurry."

"We're outta here." Suhlak picked up his tool kit. "Sooner you're off my hands and I get paid, the happier I'll be."

In a few minutes, the Z-95 Headhunter was beyond Tatooine's atmosphere again, heading for deeper space and the rendezvous point with Dengar and Neelah aboard the Hound's Tooth. From the pilot's chair, Suhlak glanced over his shoulder and watched as Boba Fett un-wrapped the package and began examining its contents.

I don't even want to know, thought Suhlak. He turned back to the controls and the forward viewport. What-ever the package might hold, it was Fett's business and none of his own. Let him get killed over it.

Suhlak started punching numbers into the navicom-puter , getting ready for the jump into hyperspace.