Hard Merchandise

16

"I still don't understand how they were able to stop us." In the cockpit of the Hound's Tooth, Dengar shone a handheld worklight through the access panel. "What did they do to make the engines cut out like that?"

"It's obvious." Boba Fett's voice came muffled from beneath the control panel. He lay on his back, shoulders and helmeted head deep within the maze of circuitry ca-bles. "This ship wasn't built at the Kuat Drive Yards, but Bossk must have taken it in there at some point for some custom retrofitting. Probably an updated weaponry tar-geting system—that's one of the first modifications that a bounty hunter gets done on his ship when he's a few credits ahead."

That was accurate, Dengar knew—there had been a time when he had been planning on getting the same job done on his craft, back before he'd met up with his be-trothed, Manaroo, and other, more desirable goals had been put on his agenda. And Kuat Drive Yards, the top in the shipbuilding and engineering field, had been where he'd wanted to go for it.

He knelt down beside Boba Fett's outstretched legs, angling the light source up to where the other bounty hunter's gloved hands were working. "So you think Bossk took it in there, and they put in some hidden cut-out de-vice that he didn't know about?"

"Exactly," replied Fett. "Nothing too elaborate, just a simple override that could be triggered by a coded pulse from a remote transmitter. Which, of course, they had aboard their own security division vessel."

"Yeah, but why would they do that to Bossk's ship? I mean, KDY would've had to have done it a while back; they wouldn't have known it would come in handy like this someday."

"They didn't do it against Bossk specifically." With a needle-tipped logic probe, Boba Fett traced the intricate wiring beneath the control panel. "KDY probably does it to every ship that comes into their docks for retrofit work—just so they'd have a backdoor system in place, in case they ever needed to disable one of their customers' ships. It'd be an insurance policy for KDY—and shutting down the Hound's Tooth was one of the times they cashed it in."

"Yeah, but ..." Dengar shook his head. "I can't be-lieve they'd put something like that in the ships they build for the Imperial Navy—or in your ship. I mean, Kuat Drive Yards built Slave I, didn't they?"

"Of course KDY wouldn't try putting a cut-off device into my ship, or anything they built for the Empire." Boba Fett peered upward at the circuits, concentrating on his task. "There would be too much at risk if it was found. And KDY knows that the Imperial Navy has a standard practice of thoroughly checking out all the work done on new vessels, and on any retrofits, for pre-cisely that reason, to make sure that any kind of delayed or optional sabotage device hasn't been smuggled in. As do I; when I accepted delivery of Slave I, I went over the ship with a fine-tooth comb, just as I had told them I would. So naturally, I didn't find anything amiss. A cus-tomer like Bossk, though, isn't quite as thorough— which is what KDY was counting on." Boba Fett tilted his head to one side. "Bring the light in a little closer; I think I've found it."

"Can you fix it?" Leaning forward on his knees, Den-gar tried to see in through the access panel.

"It'll take some work. Typical KDY job; very well en-gineered. It's not just a simple break in the circuit with a pulse-reception activator. They wired in a parallel micro-filament of some kind of high-temp pyrogenic; when it went off, it vaporized the entire signal-relay subsystem, out to the main engines and the navigational jets." Boba Fett pulled himself out from underneath the control panel and sat up. "We'll need to strip out the circuits from most of the cargo area servo-mechanisms, just to get the materials to patch in here."

"Okay—" Dengar stepped back as the other bounty hunter got to his feet. "I'll get started pulling out the bulkhead sheaths." He reached down and picked up a clench-awl from the open tool kit on the cockpit's floor. "But I got another question."

Boba Fett didn't look at him, but continued examin-ing a section of charred wiring from beneath the controls. "What's that?"

"When we get this ship up and running—what hap-pens then?"

"Then we head for the planet Kuat," said Boba Fett. "I don't let anyone—not even Kuat of Kuat—take things from me. Without paying for them."

"We've got a lot to talk about," said Kodir of Kuhlvult. "Don't we?"

Neelah gazed back at the figure seated before her, in the security head's private quarters. The other woman had dismissed the rest of the ship's personnel, leaving her and Neelah by themselves. She had heard the door hiss shut behind her, as though it were sealing them both into a space inviolable enough for the revealing of secrets.

But I don't know if that is what will happen here, thought Neelah. For all she knew, there would be noth-ing but more lies and mystery, darkness and words whose only meaning was to conceal.

And worst of all—some of those words would be her own.

"I suppose we do." Neelah remained standing, even though Kodir had offered her a chair. "I've got a lot of questions. That I think you might have the answers to."

"That's not how it works." Kodir gave a single shake of her head. "Kuat of Kuat put me in charge of security for Kuat Drive Yards, not because I was good at giving information away, but because I know how to keep a lid on it. People—even you—find out things when I want them to, not the other way around."

"Perhaps I shouldn't have come along for the ride, then."

"You didn't have that choice." Kodir stood up and stepped toward her. The edge of the other woman's cape swirled close to Neelah's feet as Kodir reached out and gently stroked the side of her head.

"Choices have been in short supply for you, I know. So much has been lost to you..."

"Those are the things," said Neelah, "that I'm look-ing for." She didn't draw away from the other's hand, though it felt cold and alien as the fingertips drew down to the curve of her jaw. "The things I've lost: my past, and my name."

"And you've had no luck. What a shame." Kodir smiled sympathetically at her. "Perhaps you should have chosen your companions more wisely. One rarely profits by hanging out with bounty hunters."

Neelah didn't correct her, though she could have. My name, she thought to herself, is Kateel. She had discov-ered that much in the fragments of her memory. And that the name belonged to one of Kuat's ruling families. Nee-lah had remembered that as well, when she had seen the record in Boba Fett's datafiles of the emblem that his hard merchandise Nil Posondum had scratched into the floor of the holding cage. There had been other things she had remembered, little bits of light penetrating the mists, when she had seen Kodir of Kuhlvult's face...

She had seen the woman long before Kodir had stepped through the transit hatch and boarded the Hound's Tooth. Of that, Neelah was sure.

That certainty had given rise to caution inside her. In that past, whose shapes were still frustratingly vague, things had happened between this Kodir of Kuhlvult and herself—and they hadn't all been pleasant. She wanted me to do something—Neelah couldn't remember what yet, only that it had been important, and that a great many other creatures' fates besides her own had de-pended upon her answer. Which had been a refusal; she hadn't gone along with Kodir's plans back then, what-ever they had been.

There had been a spark between her gaze and Kodir's when the other woman had come aboard the Hound; Neelah had seen her eyes widen, a reaction that had been swiftly caught and controlled, as though Kodir had un-expectedly recognized her. She didn't expect me to be there, mused Neelah. It was a shock to her. But one that Kodir of Kuhlvult had made a considerable effort to hide. Why?

Another question without an answer; they multiplied rather than lessened the more she discovered about her-self, as though she were trapped in a galaxy composed of infinite and expanding darkness.

But there was one other thing of which Neelah was sure: if this Kodir of Kuhlvult, with all of her connections to the planet Kuat and to the mysterious figure Kuat of Kuat, was going to play it cagey about revealing what she knew ... then she would, too. Neelah had spent too much time with crafty and scheming creatures such as the bounty hunter Boba Fett not to have some of their survival-oriented mind-set seep into her own. Boba Fett didn't tell all he knew; and he had won so many times be-fore, just as in the stories that Dengar had told her while they had both been down in the cargo hold of the Hound's Tooth, the whole history of how Fett had come out on top of the wreckage of the old Bounty Hunters Guild. He won those wars, thought Neelah, by being smart. She'd have to do the same to win hers.

Which meant—for now, at least—concealing exactly how much she had remembered of her own past. Until she could be sure of Kodir's connection to it.

"You're better off here with me." Kodir had taken her hand away; she turned and walked back to the chair. "It's ... safer that way."

Safer for whom? wondered Neelah. "Where are we going?" She asked that question aloud, watching as Kodir rested one hand on the chair's curved back and raised her gaze to the private quarters' ceiling, as though deep in thought.

"Where?" Kodir glanced over her shoulder. "Shouldn't you have guessed that by now? We're going to that place that you most want to arrive at, the place where all your answers are waiting for you."

"You mean, we're going to Kuat?" The words slipped out of Neelah's mouth before she could stop them.

Kodir's brow creased as she studied Neelah for a mo-ment. Then she smiled. "Very near there," said Kodir. "So close, you'd almost be able to reach out and touch the world of Kuat—if that's what you meant. But there's another Kuat—a man, Kuat of Kuat—and we won't be seeing him just yet. There's a little more business that needs to be taken care of before that can happen. And then both of you will be in for a bit of a surprise."

Neelah listened, but did not reply. But inside her, the twin strands of caution and suspicion grew and knotted around each other.

"You were correct in your suspicions, sir." The comm specialist made his report to Kuat of Kuat. "There has been another person added to the Rebel Alliance fleet currently above our facility. Nonmilitary, but of consid erably high rank, from what we've been able to deter-mine; possibly of negotiating attache level."

Kuat sat near the bank of transparisteel overlooking the KDY construction docks. Stroking the silken fur of the felinx curled in his lap, he had listened to the report without turning to look at the comm specialist. "When did this attache arrive?"

"About six minutes ago, sir. Commander Rozhdenst personally smuggled in the attache—or attempted to, but our spy units managed to penetrate their operation without them knowing. Both Rozhdenst and this attache— the name is Wonn Uzalg, from what we've been able to determine—are currently aboard the base station unit."

"Indeed," said Kuat. The felinx murmured beneath his gently moving hand. "And do we have access to what's going on in there?"

The comm specialist smiled. "Excellent access, sir. From this close a range, we had no problem sending out a micro-probe unit with stealth auguring capabilities. It's already penetrated the base unit's hull and tapped into the interior monitoring circuits. We can hear everything that's said in there."

"Very good; I commend you and your staff on the quality of your work." Kuat gave no compliment beyond that, but he felt an undeniable measure of gratitude toward the comm specialist, and to the other personnel of Kuat Drive Yards. Their loyalty was still unques-tioned. "And what is being said at this moment?"

"Not much," admitted the comm specialist. "Or at least nothing that our security analysts feel is significant. Both Rozhdenst and this attache Uzalg appear to be waiting for the arrival of another person, with whom they'll be having some kind of meeting."

"And do we know," said Kuat of Kuat patiently, "who that 'other person' is?" Both his gut instinct and logic told him it had to be someone important; the Scav-enger Squadron's commander wouldn't have gone to the effort of sneaking in a Rebel Alliance attache if the indi-vidual in question was some nonentity.

"That's the critical part, sir." The comm specialist stood with his hands clasped behind the back of his standard-issue, insignia-less overalls. "And that's why I thought it best to make this report to you personally, rather than routing it through the usual security division channels." He hesitated nervously for a moment. "It's possible—but unlikely—that Rozhdenst discovered the bug device we've managed to place aboard their base station, and that he and Uzalg are using it to feed us false information. As I indicated, our own analysts feel there's little chance that the micro-probe has been found yet; it didn't trip any of the base unit's perimeter alarms. So there's a definite probability that Rozhdenst and the Rebel Alliance at-tache are indeed waiting for the person whose name we've overheard in their conversation so far."

Kuat swiveled the chair about and regarded the comm specialist. "And what name is that?"

Another fraction of a second passed before the comm specialist spoke. "It's Kodir of Kuhlvult, sir. That's who it appears they're waiting for. And she's on her way; we've picked up the approach signals from the cruiser she's aboard."

"Kodir?" One hand froze where it had been scratching behind the felinx's ear. "That's impossible. Our analysts must have misunderstood what Commander Rozhdenst and the Rebel Alliance attache said ... or there's some-thing wrong with the bug you've planted." Kuat shook his head firmly. "There's simply no way that Kodir could be rendezvousing with them. Not without notifying me first."

"I'm sorry, sir." The comm specialist stood his ground. "The facts remain. Our analysts did a thorough spectral breakdown of the signals we recorded from the base sta-tion probe. And there's no other interpretation of the data: the person that Rozhdenst and the attache said they're waiting for is Kodir of Kuhlvult."

"And her cruiser is presently on its way here?" "Either here, sir—or to the Scavenger Squadron's base station."

"Establish a comm unit hookup with her. Immedi-ately," ordered Kuat of Kuat. "I need to speak with her now."

"I'm afraid that's not possible, sir."

"And why not?"

"We've already attempted raising Kodir's cruiser on both the secured and unsecured transceiving bands." The comm specialist gave an apologetic shrug. "The communications equipment seems to be working—we know that the cruiser received our signals—but Kodir has apparently given orders to her own crew not to re-spond. They're effectively maintaining link silence—or at least they have been since their last transmission, which we just managed to detect before the micro-probe bug was activated. That transmission was to the Scav-enger Squadron base station."

The felinx stirred beneath Kodir's hands; it could sense its master's tension.

"Sir?" A few moments had passed in silence. "Do you have orders for us?"

Deep inside Kuat, his brooding thoughts had grown darker. "Yes," he said slowly. "I'll need to speak to the a-foreman and B-supervisors out in the construction docks. It's time..."

The comm specialist frowned in puzzlement. "Sir? Time for what?"

"Don't worry." Kuat closed his eyes as he stroked the soft fur of the felinx. "Everything will be all right. You'll see..."