Hard Merchandise

18

"You know," said Kodir, "we really should have had this little talk a long time ago."

Neelah stood with her arms folded across her breast, watching the other woman as she stepped away from the door and into the center of the tiny room. The door had been locked from the moment Neelah was shoved inside by a pair of KDY security operatives; she had expected as much, even before she tried opening it.

"I've been waiting." Neelah made sure that no emotion was apparent in her voice. That was some-thing she had picked up from Boba Fett, a way of mask-ing one's intent as completely as though behind the dark visor of a helmet. "We've got a lot to talk about, don't we?"

"There's enough." With a thin smile on her face, Kodir halted a few steps away from Neelah. "But always—so little time."

"So I can imagine." Neelah warily regarded her. "You must be busy right now. What with that stuff you man-aged to take off of Boba Fett, and everything you could do with it."

The smile shifted to a puzzled frown. "What do you know about that?"

"A lot," said Neelah. "More than you might think I'd know. I've got a good idea why you'd want a pile of fab-ricated evidence against a dead Falleen, and who you've been talking to about it." Neelah couldn't help letting a thin smile of her own show. "And I know things about you, Kodir. I know you like keeping secrets. Well, this is one that's gotten away from you."

Surprise flickered at the center of Kodir's gaze. "What do you mean?"

"Come on. There's no sense in trying to create any more lies, any more mysteries. You've been talking to somebody from the Rebel Alliance. Haven't you? Some-body important, who can get you what you want, what you've been after for a long time."

"How do you know that?"

Neelah stepped to one side, in a slow, circling dance with Kodir, their gazes locked tight with each other.

"That part's easy," she said. "I could see the Rebel ships up above the construction docks as we came in. And I know that we didn't land on the planet Kuat." Neelah tilted her head for a moment toward the sur-rounding bulkheads. "And you can't pass off something like this as the KDY headquarters. You see, I know what those headquarters are like. I've been there before. I re-member them."

Kodir's eyes widened. "You remember ..."

"Everything."

Both women stood still, the wary circling ended. Nee-lah now had her back to the small room's door.

"That changes ... a great deal ..." Kodir studied the figure standing before her. "Depending upon what it is that you think you know."

"It's not a matter of thinking,"replied Neelah grimly. "Next time you try something like this, you should hire better people to do your dirty work for you. Spend the credits; get the best. Not some incompetent like Ree Duptom—" That name produced a quick, startled reac tion in Kodir that Neelah was pleased to see. "Because if a memory wipe isn't done correctly—and thoroughly— then there's a lot of little, disconnected pieces left over. Scraps of memory, right around the edges of the dark. And bit by bit, those memories can link up with each other, and with things that can bring back even more memories from the shadows. And then—like I said"— she gave a single, slow nod—"everything comes back."

"That fool." Kodir's voice turned bitter. "I paid him enough so that whatever go-betweens and intermediaries were used, the end result would be to get just such a specialist, one that had formerly worked for the Em-pire itself—they're available, but expensive. I wasn't pleased when I found out later that some cheap hustler had pocketed the credits and done the memory-wipe job himself."

"Lucky for me, then, that he wasn't very good at it." Neelah tapped the side of her head with one finger.

"Be-cause I had already remembered my real name—Kateel of Kuhlvult—before you ever showed up at the Hound's Tooth; I had already found the clues that brought back that part of my memory. But when I saw your face— again—then all the rest came back." Neelah's hand low-ered and clenched into a trembling, white-knuckled fist. "Everything—including why my own sister had tried to get rid of me."

"I got rid of you"—a sneer curled one corner of Kodir's mouth—"because you were a fool."

"Because I wouldn't go along with the schemes you had worked up to overthrow Kuat of Kuat and take con-trol of the corporation."

"Still a fool, I see." Kodir shook her head in disdain. "It's not a matter of 'overthrowing' anyone. As I told you long ago, it's simple justice. Kuat and his predecessors have run Kuat Drive Yards for generations—and they've kept all the other ruling families frozen out. Kuat and his bloodline have never had the right to do that. But if you had joined forces with me, all of that would have come to an end. The others in the ruling families who had tried to force Kuat from the leadership—they were nothing but a diversion, too stupid to even conceal their inten-tions from him as I have."

"You confuse justice with ambition, Kodir. That was your first mistake. And then you mistook me for some-one as greedy as yourself."

"Oh, I admitted that I was wrong—that's why I had to do something about you, before you could let Kuat of Kuat know that I was plotting against him. I had to have you abducted from the planet Kuat, and have your memory wiped, so you'd no longer present a threat to me." Kodir's expression darkened into a venomous scowl. "But when I found out that the ones I had trusted—and paid—to do my 'dirty work' for me, as you call it, had failed me, I realized that I should have taken care of these things myself." Kodir's smile was hardly less ugly than the scowl had been. "And that's exactly what I've done, isn't it? After all—I tracked you down before you could do any damage to my plans. And believe me, it wasn't easy."

"You were lucky," said Neelah. "I had just enough clues—enough little pieces of my memory left—to try and find out what had happened, and try to make my way to someplace where I could find out those answers. I didn't realize that what I was doing would make it possi-ble for you to stumble across me."

"How ironic." Kodir's words were edged with sar-casm. "The things we do to try and save ourselves—they so often put us right in harm's way. As when I offered to make you part of my plans to get rid of Kuat of Kuat; if I had known how stupid and blindly loyal you were, I'd never have done that." She spread her hands apart, palms upward, in a mocking, blase show. "But that's why it's so important to learn from our mistakes. Isn't it? You made your mistakes—and I've made mine. And we've both gotten what we wanted. You wanted the truth about the past, about what happened to you—and now you know. And I wanted the leadership of Kuat Drive Yards. Guess what? That's just what I've been given."

"So you convinced the Rebel Alliance to get rid of Kuat, so you can take over the corporation. Congratula-tions. For however long it lasts."

"That'll be for quite a while," said Kodir. "It doesn't even matter which side wins the battle out near Endor. Now that I've got control of the corporation, I can deal with the Alliance or the Empire—it makes no difference to me."

"I can see that." Neelah gave a slow nod. "Maybe if the Empire wins the battle, Palpatine will find that you're just the kind of servant he prefers. Greedy and self-serving, but smart enough to recognize just who's got the upper hand."

"Don't bother trying to insult me." Kodir's laugh was quick and harsh. "As long as I've gotten what I want, I really don't care about your moral opinions."

"I'm sure you don't. But that makes me wonder about just one thing." Neelah peered closer at the figure stand-ing before her, the woman whose bloodline she shared. "If getting what you want is all that matters . . . why were you so tenderhearted about my fate? If all that wor-ried you was my interfering with your plans, wouldn't it have been more effective—and final—to have simply had me killed, rather than abducted and memory-wiped?"

"As I said: we need to learn from our mistakes. And that's one I'm not going to repeat again." Kodir reached to the section of her belt that had been concealed by the flowing cape, and pulled out a small but efficient-looking blaster pistol. She raised and pointed it straight at Nee-lah. "I'm sorry that I don't still have the same sisterly feelings toward you that I once did. There was a time when my foolish sentimentality made me think that I could spare your life. I've gotten over it, though. The Rebel Alliance, on the other hand, has shown a depress-ing tendency to let mere ethics guide its decisions; that very likely means that after this coming battle at Endor, I will be dealing with the Empire rather than the Rebels. Palpatine, though, has a vindictive streak that's just as worrisome. And he doesn't like plotting and scheming that's not his own: if anyone was going to get rid of Kuat of Kuat, the Emperor would have wanted to be the one to do it. So you see"— Kodir raised the blaster a fraction of an inch higher—"there's no way I can afford to let you remain alive, and risk having you tell what you've re-membered."

"You're right," said Neelah. She didn't flinch from the weapon poised in her direction. "And you really do seem to have learned from your mistakes. There's just one problem with that."

A thin smile showed on Kodir's face. "And what would that be?"

Neelah didn't bother to reply. Instead, she stepped forward toward the blaster; at the same time, she brought one forearm up and smashed it against Kodir's wrist, faster than the other woman could react. The blaster pis-tol went flying, its high arc broken by the nearest bulk-head. With her other hand, Neelah grabbed the collar of Kodir's flowing cape; with a quick, sharp tug, she pulled her off balance. As Kodir fell forward, Neelah brought her raised knee into the other woman's solar plexus, knocking the air from Kodir's lungs in a pain-filled gasp. Neelah stood back and let Kodir fall, forearms clutched instinctively to her gut; another blow to the back of the head laid her out flat on the room's floor.

A few seconds later, Kodir managed to twist herself onto her back. She blinked at finding the muzzle of the blaster pistol set right between her eyes.

"The problem with learning from our mistakes"— Neelah leaned down to keep the weapon aimed point-blank at her sister—"is that sometimes we learn a little too late."

Face pale with shock and pain, Kodir gazed up at her in disbelief. "You ... didn't used to be able... to do stuff like that..."

"I've been hanging out with a tough crowd." Keeping the blaster muzzle fixed on Kodir's skull, Neelah reached down and grabbed the front of the cape, using it to draw Kodir to her feet. "If you can stay alive long enough, there's a lot you can pick up from somebody like Boba Fett. Especially when you've got nothing to lose."

Before Kodir could manage a reply, another sound pulsed through the room, so deep and low that Neelah could feel it through the soles of her boots. Both she and Kodir looked up, as though storm clouds could have been seen through the durasteel bulkheads surround-ing them.

The noise sounded like distant thunder. But she knew it was something else.

News from a distant world arrived almost simultane-ously with the shock wave from the explosions.

Commander Rozhdenst had been personally moni-toring the link to the Rebel Alliance communications ship near Sullust. When word came at last that the at-tack on the uncompleted Death Star had turned into a full-scale battle between Rebel and Imperial forces, he closed his eyes for a moment, letting his chin sink down upon his chest. The desire to be there, to be in any fight-ing craft no matter how antiquated or unwieldy, as long as it was in the thick of the action, rose with tidal force through his heart.

He heard the door to the officers' quarters open. Opening his eyes, Rozhdenst looked up from where he sat at the comm unit controls and saw Ott Klemp. "It's started," said Rozhdenst simply. He didn't have to ex-plain what he was referring to. "And we're stuck here, in the middle of—"

His words were cut off by the first explosion shiver-ing through the frame of the mobile base. A dull, low-frequency rumble made the air in the room suddenly tangible upon both the commander's and Klemp's skin. The younger man, muscles visibly tensing, looked up toward the ceiling. "What was that?"

Before an answer could be ventured, indicator lights burst red across the comm unit panel. The voice of one of the Scavenger Squadron's forward scouts crackled over the speaker. "Commander! Something's going on down at the KDY construction docks—something big!"

Rozhdenst had already switched on the scanners for the base's viewport array. Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up from the angular masses of equipment be-low. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks' central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane's framework crum-pled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several meters thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys.

The noise from the explosions couldn't pass through the surrounding vacuum to the Scavenger Squadron's mobile base above, but the shock wave and expelled metal debris were enough to conduct the rumbling and clattering sounds from the hull to the interior a few seconds after the bursts of glaring light on the display screens. As Klemp put out an all-craft command to pull back from the inferno erupting beneath them, the com-mander punched in the highest levels of surveillance magnification from the scanners.

"It's not the ships—" Rozhdenst laid a broad fingertip on the closest display screen. "The fleet isn't what's going up." The elongated ships of the cruisers and Destroyers could be seen through the smoke, harshly lit by flames and the hard-shadowed light of another series of explo-sions. "It's the docks and all of the major shipbuilding equipment." As both he and Klemp watched, a durasteel-jawed magna-hoist lurched forward like a dying saurian, its blind head bursting through a wall of fire and plowing into a rack of structural girders. "The whole facility's been stuffed with high-thermal explosives, from the looks of it."

"Yeah, but ..." Klemp shook his head. "That whole fleet is going to be scrap as well by the time it's all over." Another impact shook the mobile base. "You think Kuat of Kuat did this? What's he after—sabotage or suicide?"

"Who cares—"Rozhdenst reached for the comm unit mike. "We've got to get those ships out of there."

"Sir, that's impossible. There's nobody aboard any of those ships. Who's going to bring them out of the docks?"

Rozhdenst glanced over his shoulder. "Who do you think? Our guys can do it."

"That's crazy. I mean... it just is, sir." Klemp pointed to the image of the flames billowing up on the display screen. "You want our squadron to fly into that} The condition that most of our Y-wings are in, they can just barely avoid getting hit—and you want them to go into that kind of a mess? They'll get torn to pieces!"

"If they're in such rotten shape, then it won't be much of a loss, will it?" Rozhdenst locked his gaze with that of the younger man. "Look, if you or any of the other mem-bers of the squadron don't want this job, then fine— you can stay out here at the base and watch. But I'm going in."

Klemp was silent for only a fraction of a second. "And I'll be right behind you, sir. Along with everybody else."

"Good." Rozhdenst gave a single, quick nod, then handed the microphone to Klemp. "There's no time for plotting a formation attack; this show is going to be over in minutes. Give the squadron full operational initiative— everyone's on their own for vector, approach, and target. Total scramble, eye and comm unit contact to avoid tak-ing each other out." The Scavenger Squadron com-mander stood up from the controls. "Let's get going."

"They must have seen us coming," said Dengar. "So they decided to blow the whole place up."

The explosions had filled the forward viewports as soon as the Hound's Tooth dropped out of hyperspace. Both Dengar and Boba Fett, in the ship's cockpit, could see the fiery cataclysm taking place in the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks.

"Don't be stupid," snapped Fett. He pointed to the display screen. The tiny dark shapes of Y-wing craft could be seen silhouetted by the roiling masses of flame. "Those Alliance fighters are obviously going in to try and pull out what they can of the ships moored there. The docks are being blown up from within; there's only one person who could have arranged it, and that's Kuat of Kuat."

"He's blowing up his own facility?" Dengar frowned in puzzlement. "Why would he do that?"

"Because he'd rather destroy it," said Fett, "than let it fall into anyone else's hands. I've dealt with him before; Kuat Drive Yards is all that matters for him. Something must have happened—probably with the Rebel Alliance and that fabricated evidence his head of security took from us—that would end his control over the corpora-tion. So he's taking the whole thing with him."

"You mean . . . he's in there? You don't think he escaped?"

Boba Fett shook his head. "There's no place for Kuat of Kuat to escape to. Or at least no place that has Kuat Drive Yards in it. Survival doesn't mean the same thing for him that it does for you and me; for Kuat, it's just death without peace."

"This is the end of the road, then." Dengar stood back from the pilot's chair and folded his arms across his chest. "You're not going to get any answers out of him now."

"Don't bet on it." Boba Fett reached for the naviga-tional controls.

A sharp current of alarm raced up Dengar's spine. "What're you doing?"

"I'm going in. To find Kuat."

"You're crazy—" The main thruster engines had al-ready kicked in. As Dengar watched in mounting horror, the explosions bursting up from the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks swelled in the forward viewport. The black shapes of collapsing cranes and heat-warped gird-ers became visible. "You'll get us killed!"

"Maybe," said Fett. "But I'm willing to take the chance."

"Yeah, well, you might be willing, but I'm not." Standing behind Boba Fett, Dengar clutched the back of the pilot's chair to keep the Hound's surging acceleration from throwing him off his feet. "I can live without every question in the galaxy being answered."

"I don't care about every question. Just the ones that deal with me."

The shock wave from another explosion, larger than the ones before it, buffeted the Hound's Tooth. In the forward viewport, a gaping hole could be seen in the cen-ter of the KDY construction docks large enough to fly a ship through and ringed with twisted, smoldering metal.

Dengar, with sudden desperation, tried to reach past Boba Fett and grab the controls. "We're supposed to be partners—" His fist locked on to one of the main thruster engine throttles. "And I say we don't get our-selves killed—"

With a quick swing of his forearm, Boba Fett knocked Dengar back against the cockpit's rear bulkhead.

"You're outvoted on this one," said Fett.

Slumping down to the floor and squeezing his eyes shut, Dengar could still see the bright glaring light of the explosions, as though they were about to shatter the viewport and annihilate everything in the cockpit. Alarm signals shrieked from the control panel as the Hound's Tooth bucked and spiraled through an engulfing bloom of shrapnel-filled flame.

Not a good idea, thought Dengar as he ground his teeth together and scrabbled for any hold he could find. The worst one yetThe commander of the Scavenger Squadron had been within a few meters of Ott Klemp's wingtip, matching velocity with him all the way to the inferno consuming the KDY construction docks. But he'd had to bank hard to one side to avoid another fireball and whirling tangle of girders and cables; by the time Klemp pulled back on course, any visual contact with the rest of the squadron was cut off by roiling masses of smoke and flame.

A gap appeared in front of the Y-wing through which Klemp could just make out a moored Lancer-class frigate. As with the other newly constructed ships in the docks, a tug module was magnetically clamped to the bridge. The tugs were not much bigger than the fighter craft swarming through the explosions and white-hot shrapnel; they had no thruster engines of their own, but were designed to be wired through the cruisers' and De-stroyers' data-cable ports, using the larger craft's engines to maneuver out of the docks and into open space. At the moment, the tugs were still enclosed in the balloonlike atmospheric-maintenance shrouds in which the Kuat Drive Yards had worked while routing the control lines. The durasteel-laced shrouds had a programmed viscous layer between the inner and outer membranes, with near-instantaneous resealing capabilities to prevent fatal air-loss during routine industrial accidents. Without those shrouds, Klemp knew, there would be no chance of the Scavenger Squadron's pilots pulling any of the fleet out of the cataclysm engulfing the construction docks.

He could see the bridge of the frigate now, with the shroud's bubble on the section of hull immediately be-hind. The sequenced explosions hadn't reached the ship yet, though its flanks were tinged with the churning red and orange of the approaching flames. Klemp rolled the Y-wing into a diving arc, straight toward the shroud.

The Y-wing's prow ripped through the shroud's fab-ric; Klemp could hear the sharp ping of the durasteel threads snapping against the leading edges of the wings. At the same time, he was blinded by the thick semiliquid smearing across the cockpit's canopy. That wouldn't be enough to slow the Y-wing down; within a fraction of a second of penetrating the shroud, he slammed on the craft's braking rockets, their maximum force nearly enough to cut the pilot seat's restraining straps through his chest, and snapping his head forward hard enough to momentarily dizzy him.

A tangle of broken durasteel threads, embedded in the shroud's viscous resealing layer, pulled away from the Y-wing's hull as Klemp popped the canopy. There wasn't time to check if there was any atmospheric pressure left in the construction shroud; he gulped in the thin oxygen and looked back along the inner curve of the bubble be-hind the Y-wing. The fighter's rear section was mired in the rapidly setting substance, with fluttering tatters of the white fabric sucked into the dwindling gaps. Klemp didn't wait to see if the new seal would hold, but instead ran along the frigate's upper hull toward the tug module.

Within seconds, he was inside the tug and slamming the exterior hatch shut behind him. The controls on the panel before him were the minimum necessary for lifting the frigate out of the dock in which it had been built; even before Klemp hit the tug module's pilot's chair, he had engaged the controls running to the cruiser's aux-iliary thruster engines. There was a response lag of nearly a second before the ship responded; with a slow surge of power, its enormous mass began ponderously rising from the dock. The power cables and mooring conduits that were still connected to the hull's various ports now taut-ened and snapped free when they had stretched to their limits.

He hadn't rescued the ship a moment too soon. A burst of fire filled the tug module's viewports as a sudden crashing impact struck the frigate from below. The shock wave of an explosion ripping apart the empty dock jolted the frigate's stern. Klemp struggled with the navigational controls, fighting to keep the ship from toppling end over end and the prow out of the churning debris that welled up toward it.

The nearest dock cranes still towered above the frigate, like immense durasteel-strutted gallows. Even with the thruster controls pushed to their maximum, the ship seemed to be only inching toward the clear space where Klemp would be able to hit the main thrusters and bring it out of danger. The fierce heat from the explosions seeped through the tug module's thin hull, evaporating the sweat as it beaded on his brow.

A sharp blast ripped through the base of the nearest crane. Glancing toward the side viewport, Klemp saw the tapering metal structure begin to topple toward the frigate. There would be no way he could get the ship be-yond the reach of the crane's top-mounted arm as it swung scythelike into the hull. If the crane's weight struck midship, it would break the frigate in half, send-ing the pieces tumbling back down toward the exploding construction docks. Klemp knew he would be dead be-fore the ship's remnants hit the twisted metal rubble be-low it.

He quickly calculated the chances of abandoning the tug module, sprinting back toward the Y-wing, and fly-ing it out through the entangling construction shroud and into the clear. Possible, he told himself. But you wouldn't have done the job you came here forCursing, Klemp reached for the navigational controls. The frigate halted its slow rise as he diverted all available power from the auxiliaries to the stern's side thrusters. With increasing speed, the ship pivoted about on its ver-tical axis.

The toppling crane hit, its mass shearing along the flank of the frigate, grinding and tearing away any protruding structural elements; inside the tug module, the impact of metal shearing away against metal sounded louder than any of the explosions below. Wincing against the stabbing, deafening noise, unable to take his hands away from the controls to shield his ears, Klemp saw a jagged piece of the crane snag the construction shroud's fabric. As the crane continued to topple away from its shattered base, it ripped away the shroud and the Y-wing fighter mired in it.

No great loss, Klemp told himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw the Y-wing breaking apart, dragged toylike across the topside of the ship's hull. With a last, shuddering impact, the crane hit the stern and then top-pled away.

The ship was clear—at last. Klemp expelled his pent-up breath in one gasp, then slammed on the main thruster engines. The Lancer frigate seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second, then heaved its bulk toward the stars.

"All right. That does it." Dengar picked himself up from the floor of the Hound's Tooth's cockpit. On wobbling, unsteady legs, he confronted Boba Fett. "The partner-ship's over."

He reached over to the nearest bulkhead and steadied himself against it with one hand, watching as Fett me-thodically checked out the weaponry strapped across his Mandalorian battle armor. Lucky we're even alive, thought Dengar. Though how long that was going to last, he had no idea. Their ship had barely managed to survive the high-velocity plunge from open space into the thick of the construction docks' roiling explosions. More of the blasts, approaching in sequence, shook the Hound's shock-loosened frame, the metal of its hull grat-ing against the rubble-strewn area on which it had crashed.

"Suit yourself," said Fett. "I owed you for saving my life back on Tatooine. You decide if that debt's repaid by now."

"Oh, it's paid, all right." Trembling with anger and accumulated shock, Dengar stepped back as Boba Fett approached the hatchway. "A few thousand times over. You haven't managed to get me killed yet—but I don't feel like giving you any more chances."

"Fair enough." Boba Fett started down the ladder to the Hound's cargo hold. "I've got business to take care of."

From the cockpit hatchway, Dengar stared at him in amazement. He's going looking for Kuat. The realization caused Dengar to slowly shake his head. There's no stop-ping him.

"You go your way," Dengar shouted into the smoke filling the hold. "And—"

The explosions out in the construction docks grew louder, mounting on top of one another and blocking his words.

And I'll go mine, he thought to himself. Dengar turned from the hatchway and dived toward the controls.

He didn't bother plotting a trajectory, but simply slammed maximum power to the main thruster engines. Holding on to the controls inside the Trandoshan-sized forearm grooves, Dengar heard and saw a tangle of cables, their insulated sheaths charred and smoking, drag across the forward viewport. The hull's underside scraped across the warped freight tracks beneath as it ac-celerated; the explosions that had been marching across the docks finally caught up with the Hound's Tooth, lift-ing the stern as though it were caught and thrown by a giant hand. Dengar hung on desperately as the ship spun end over end, directly toward the side of one of the tow-ering cranes.

The sequence of explosions was faster than the tum-bling ship. Before the Hound's Tooth struck the crane, the dizzying image through the viewport was blotted out by pure white light, as if Dengar had caught a glimpse into the searing heart of a nova star.

Metal ripped apart from metal as the crane dissolved in the blast, its massive struts flaring outward and then spiraling into the vacuum. Through the flames and smoke filling what had been the explosion's center, the Hound's Tooth spun into the clear.

Dengar gaped at the cold, bright stars filling his vi-sion. Made it... I made it...

A few quick adjustments with the navigational jets steadied the ship to a level course. Panting, and with his pulse beginning to slow, Dengar let a fragile smile form across his face. He hadn't been expecting to survive at all; his real intent, he realized now, had been only to keep his corpse from being crushed and incinerated in the wreckage of the Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks.

Pulling his hands from the grooves on the control panel, he laughed in amazement. "After all that," he said aloud. "And I'm the one who's still alive—"

The words inside his head were wiped out by another blinding burst of light. Dengar shielded his eyes with a quickly raised forearm. As the glare faded, he lowered his arm and squinted through the forward viewport. In the distance, another, larger ship—one of the fleet that the Rebel Alliance pilots had been trying to rescue from the construction docks—had not been as lucky as he had been. The other ship's stern had been engulfed by flames just as it lifted away; one main thruster engine had been destabilized in the blast, and had gone into core overload. The resulting explosion had blown a gaping hole in the ship's hull, stranding the ship close to the Hound's Tooth.

Dengar watched, then ducked reflexively as another one of the larger ship's thruster engines went off. Weak-ened by the first engine's explosion, the ship disinte-grated, one fireball after another ripping the structural frame to pieces.

He watched, then froze in place, held by what he saw in the viewport. A massive section of the other ship's hull, larger than the Hound itself, shot away from the fragmented wreckage, its jagged edges trailing white-hot streaks and quick sparks of debris. The hull section spun and swelled in the viewport, heading directly for the Hound's Tooth.

I guess I spoke too soon ...

There wasn't time to either dodge or swing the ship about and try to outrun the doom heading for it. Dengar didn't even bother to brace himself as the broken section of the larger ship raced toward him.

It hit, and he was thrown through sparks that stung his face and arms like a swarm of angry insects, into a darkness filled with the shrieks of alarm systems and the even louder clash of metal being ripped apart. For a mo-ment, Dengar felt weightless; then he realized, as his arms flailed behind him, that he had been knocked through the cockpit hatchway and was falling to the cargo hold below. The impact of its grated floor against his spine and the back of his skull brought him right to the point of losing consciousness. He held on, dazed and unable to move, listening as the Hound's Tooth's deflec-tor shields collapsed, and the ship began to come apart around him.

He had the cold but genuine comfort that he had at least gotten away from the exploding construction docks. That's all I wanted, Dengar thought once more. Just so my body could be found... somewhere, by someone...

Another realization struck him. I must be already dead. It couldn't have happened while he was still alive, that a hand was reaching for him and taking his arm, pulling him up as though from his own grave. And that there would be light, and a face looking down at him; the one face he wanted to see more than any other.

"Dengar!" The vision spoke his name. "It's me—it's Manaroo—"

"I know." Drifting closer to unconsciousness, he smiled up at her. "I'm sorry, though . . . I'm sorry I'm dead..."

"You idiot." A real hand, not a hallucination, slapped him across the jaw, jolting him fully aware. "I'll let you know whether you're dead or not."

And then he knew he wasn't.

"How did you know I'd be here?" Kuat of Kuat turned and regarded the figure that had entered the bridge of the moored Star Destroyer.

"Where else would you be?" Boba Fett's battle armor was blackened with ash from the fires consuming the con-structions docks' wreckage. "It suits you; this is the biggest ship in the fleet. That makes for a suitably grandiose cof-fin. Plus—the construction shroud had been obviously torn away before the explosions started. So there wouldn't be any risk of the Rebel Alliance pilots dropping in."

"Very astutely observed." Kuat gave a judicious nod. "But I really believed that I'd be alone, right to the end. I didn't think that even you would try to track me down here."

The ship's bulkheads trembled as another series of explosions went off. From the viewports of the bridge, masses of dark clouds, shot through with reddening flame, mounted up toward the stars.

"It's worth making the effort," replied Boba Fett. "I've got questions that I want answers to."

"Ask away, then." Kuat of Kuat smiled gently. "It's too late for me to try and conceal anything from you."

Boba Fett stepped closer, across the floor buckled with heat and through the smoke filtering into the bridge. "Why did you want me dead?"

"Nothing personal," said Kuat. "You mean zero to me. But I knew you had in your possession certain items that could prove rather embarrassing to me. And fatal to Kuat Drive Yards. There's an ancient piece of wisdom that advises anyone taking a shot at a powerful creature to be sure to hit him. That's very good advice; I knew the risks I was taking when I created that false evidence against Prince Xizor. But if my scheme had worked, I would have eliminated a major enemy—or at least given him something else to deal with, rather than con-spiring to take over my corporation. But the one thing happened that I was unable to foresee: that both Xizor and a vital element of my scheme would be killed before the blow could be struck. Which left a considerable mess to clean up. Getting rid of you would have just been part of that cleanup process. Regrettable—but necessary, in the course of business."

"I already figured out that much. A long time ago." Boba Fett had come within arm's reach of the other man. He pulled out his blaster pistol from its holster and aimed it at Kuat's chest. "What I need to know now is whether that's the end of it."

Kuat looked with amusement at the weapon in front of him. "Rather late for that kind of threat, isn't it? I al-ready consider myself as good as dead."

"You can die here, the way you want—or I can drag you out of here and hand you over to Palpatine or the Al-liance, or whoever else would be interested in settling some old scores with you. Your choice."

"Very persuasive, Fett. But unnecessary. I'll be happy to tell you the truth—since I have nothing to lose now by doing so." Kuat reached out his hand and pushed the blaster muzzle away from himself. "All the conspiracies end here. There's no one else involved, no other forces to deal with, once these particular loose ends are taken care of. You don't have anything to be concerned about. Once I'm gone—and I've taken Kuat Drive Yards with me—there won't be anyone else coming after you. Or at least not in regard to the evidence I fabricated against Prince Xizor. You'll just have your usual run of enemies, and all the various creatures with a grudge against you, to deal with." Kuat peered more closely at the bounty hunter. "But you knew that already, didn't you? You said as much, that you had figured it all out. You wouldn't have come all this way, and risked this much—even your life, which you seem to value so highly—just to make ab-solutely sure of what you knew. So there must have been something else on your mind—right? Some other ques-tion you needed to ask of me. What is it?"

Boba Fett hesitated a moment before speaking. "There's a female named Neelah that's been traveling with me."

His voice lowered slightly. "But that's not her real name. She doesn't know I found out that she's actually Kateel of Kuhlvult. She's a member of one of the ruling families of the planet Kuat."

"Very interesting." Kuat raised an eyebrow in sur-prise. "She would also then be the sister of Kodir of Kuhlvult, the head of security for Kuat Drive Yards. And someone that Kodir had been extremely interested in locating."

"Did Kodir tell you why?"

Kuat shrugged. "The love between one sister and an-other, I suppose—that's within the range of normal hu-man emotions. But whatever the reason, it was enough for Kodir to force her way into becoming security head so she would have the resources to find this sister who had vanished."

"Then here're the questions." Boba Fett's dark-shielded gaze locked upon Kuat's eyes. "You've heard of a man named Fenald?"

"Of course. He was head of security for Kuat Drive Yards, before Kodir of Kuhlvult was given the position." "So naturally," continued Fett, "you would've given a sensitive, important job—like making the arrangements for the planting of fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor—to him."

"True enough." Kuat nodded. "That's exactly what I had him do. But how do you know about Fenald?"

"There was encoded material attached to that fabri-cated evidence when I found it inside the freight droid that had been converted to a spy device. I didn't have time to break the encryption seal then, but when I was coming back from Tatooine, where I had retrieved the evidence from another bounty hunter named Bossk, I managed to crack it. The encrypted material was Fe-nald's own identity code, including his connection to Kuat Drive Yards. He probably put it there so he'd have the ability to blackmail you by threatening to reveal to Xizor—or Palpatine or the Rebel Alliance—exactly where the fabricated evidence had come from, and who had been responsible for it."

"I wouldn't put it past him."

"Here's the other question," said Boba Fett. "Did you also order Fenald to make arrangements for Kateel of Kuhlvult to be abducted and memory-wiped?"

"Of course not," said Kuat stiffly. "That's absurd. What motivation would I have for wanting something like that done?"

"Then this Fenald could have been following some-one else's orders when he contacted a go-between named Nil Posondum and made those arrangements?"

"Very likely." Kuat smiled ruefully. "I know from per-sonal experience that Fenald was capable of working for another at the same time he was my head of security. Loyalty, as I found out, was a negotiable item with him; he double-crossed me when members of some of the other ruling families conspired to take over Kuat Drive Yards."

"Fenald's treachery might have been even more com-plicated than that. Apparently he was double-crossing Kodir of Kuhlvult at the same time."

Kuat's brow creased. "What do you mean?"

"What better way for Kodir to have gotten your confidence—and the security head position—than to ex-pose Fenald as a traitor to you? And the best way to do that would be to arrange for it with Fenald himself. Especially since Fenald had already been working for Kodir while he was still your security head. In fact—" Boba Fett's voice drew taut as a durasteel wire. "Fenald was working for Kodir—following her orders—when he set up Kodir's sister Kateel to be abducted and memory-wiped."

"Interesting," said Kuat, "if true."

"It's true, all right. The only thing I needed to find out was whether or not you had ordered the acts committed against Kateel of Kuhlvult—and as you've pointed out, you're beyond having any interest in lying about the matter. So that leaves Kodir as the only one who could have given that job to Fenald to take care of."

"How do you know that?"

"Simple," replied Boba Fett. "When Kodir intercepted me with the KDY security division cruiser, she also found her sister Neelah—or Kateel, her real name—aboard the ship I had been using. Yet Kodir deliberately concealed any reaction to seeing Neelah there; in particular, Kodir showed no surprise at Neelah's not recognizing her in re-turn. So Kodir knew that a memory wipe had been done on Neelah. If Kodir hadn't found that out from you—be-cause you had been the one who ordered it—then logically, it must have been done on Kodir's instructions. It's easy enough to figure out what Fenald did: he had or-ders from you for one job to be taken care of on the sly, and he had orders from Kodir for another, different job that had to be kept quiet. So he put more credits in his own pocket by using the go-between Nil Posondum to hire just one lowlife, Ree Duptom, to take care of both jobs. Fenald must have gotten a good rate that way. The only problem was that when Duptom was accidentally killed, it left a mess for both you and Kodir of Kuhlvult to worry about, without either one of you knowing that the other was involved. But it took getting information from both you and Kodir to figure out what must have happened back then."

"I'm impressed." Kuat regarded the bounty hunter thoughtfully. "You're a creature of considerable intelligence; a shame that you found no better use for it than being a bounty hunter."

"It suits my personality."

"Perhaps so. But that makes me wonder about some-thing else." Kuat's gaze grew sharper. "You've gone to a lot of trouble, not to find out what you needed to know— because you already knew that. You've risked your life coming here to find out what someone else, this female named Neelah, desperately needs to know. That kind of tenderheartedness isn't exactly your style, Fett. Unless..."

Kuat managed a thin smile. "Unless you've developed some other interest in her besides just business."

"Guess again," said Boba Fett. "I owe her a favor. And I always pay my debts. But I've got better reasons than that for what I do."

"Well, you're going to have a hard time letting this person know what you found out. Listen." Kuat raised a hand. Outside the Star Destroyer, the rumbling, percus-sive sounds of the explosions advanced closer and closer. "I saw the ship, the one that brought you down here to the construction docks, take off; there must have been somebody aboard it with an even sharper sense of self-preservation than your own. So there's no way out of here now."

"Yes, there is." Fett gestured with the blaster pistol. "Get away from the controls."

"Don't be ridiculous. One man can't fly a ship this size; it takes a trained crew. The only way it would be possible is with the tug module, and you can't get to that with the atmospheric pressure shroud gone."

"I said—get away from the controls. If you want to stay here in the docks, go ahead. But this ship is leaving."

"As you wish," said Kuat. "Every man should pick his own way of dying. And I've already chosen mine." He turned and walked toward the bridge's hatchway and the corridor beyond that would lead to one of the ship's main exit ports.

The explosions hadn't yet torn away the narrow con-nector to the pressurized equipment shed next to the Star Destroyer. Kuat sealed its hatch behind himself, then sat down on a crate marked with the emblem of Kuat Drive Yards. He felt tired and glad at the same time; tired from his long work, glad that it would soon be over.

His eyes closed for a moment, then snapped open when something soft and warm jumped into his lap. He looked down and saw the golden eyes of the felinx gaz-ing back at him.

"So you're faithful, too." Kuat stroked the creature's silken fur. "In your own way." Somehow, it had gotten out of his private quarters and followed him this far, through all the chaos and noise of the corporation's fiery death. "Just as well," he murmured. "Just as well..."

He picked up the felinx and held it to his chest, bend-ing his own head down low, so that the pulse of its heart drowned out everything that was to come.

"How many did we get out?" Commander Rozhdenst stood at the mobile base's largest viewports, gazing at the conflagration sweeping across the distant construc-tion docks.

"Four of the Lancer-class frigates, sir." From the center of the room, Ott Klemp made his report. "Those were our top priority. The rest that we extracted were Zebulon-B frigates."

"And how many men did we lose?" The commander glanced over his shoulder.

"Only two. One in the frigate that got caught in the explosions, and another still in his Y-wing, going in." Klemp carried his helmet in the crook of his arm. Both he and Rozhdenst were still in their flight gear. "I think, sir, you'd have to consider this a successful operation."

"Perhaps," said Rozhdenst. "But I only consider it worth losing good pilots if something worthwhile is accomplished. Until we hear what's happened out at En-dor, we don't know whether there's even going to be an Alliance that can make use of these ships."

Klemp looked toward the control panels. "We're still under comm unit silence?"

"You got it." The commander nodded. "Right now, there's no signals going in or coming out of that sector—"

His words were interrupted by a sudden, brighter flare of light from the Kuat Drive Yards' facility. Both men turned toward the viewport.

"What's going on?" Rozhdenst's brow furrowed. "Those aren't explosives."

"It's the Star Destroyer," said Klemp, pointing out the flame-engulfed shape. "The big one at the end of the docks that we couldn't get any of our men into. Some-body's giving its engines full power. It's moving!"

Klemp and the commander watched as the Star De-stroyer, larger than any of the rescued ships nearing the base, slowly began to rise from the dock in which it had been moored. The ship suddenly veered to one side, the flank of its hull crashing against the warped and broken towers of the cranes arching above it.

"Whoever's aboard that thing—they've lost control of it." Rozhdenst shook his head. "They'll never get it out."

The commander's assessment appeared to be true. The Star Destroyer's stern had slewed around horizon-tally, barely meters above the dock. Metal collided with metal, as the rear thruster ports flared through the base of the crane. The impact was enough to send the already loosened tower crashing down upon the upper length of the ship's hull.

"If he tries to pull out of there," said Rozhdenst, "he'll tear that ship to pieces."

Klemp peered closer at the image in the viewport. "It looks like ... he's got another idea ..."

The Star Destroyer's thruster engines had throttled back down. There was a moment of stillness at the end of the construction docks, lit by the encroaching flames, then the ship was lit suddenly brighter by the simultane-ous flash of its arsenal of high-powered laser cannons going off. The bolts weren't aimed, but achieved an im-pressive amount of damage despite that, ripping through the weakened structure of the docks and the twisted metal of the fallen crane. Another volley of flaring white bolts followed the first.

Now the two men at the viewport could see the crane and the surrounding docks slowly disintegrate, the girder beams and great, torn masses of durasteel collapsing across one another and into a loose tangle over the Dreadnaught. Once more, thruster engines lit up; this time, the awkward forward course of the ship sent the metal fragments scattering like straws.

Rozhdenst nodded in appreciation as he watched the Star Destroyer move away from the burning wreckage of Kuat Drive Yards and into open space. "Too bad ..."

"Too bad that's not one of our guys."