Hard Merchandise

2

He didn't need to kill him... but he did. Bossk thought it was a good idea, not just to stay in practice for the bounty hunter trade, but also to make sure that no one in the Mos Eisley spaceport knew the circumstances of his arrival.

The broken-down old transport pilot, a shambling wreck with a spine bent nearly double by too many high-g landings, had come gimping up to Bossk, obvi-ously looking for a handout. "Wait a minute," the old man had rasped, digging a yellow-nailed paw through the grey wisps of his beard as his rheumy eyes had peered closer at the figure in front of him. "I know you—"

"You're mistaken." Bossk had taken passage aboard a number of local system freighters, all under assumed names, to reach the remote planet of Tatooine. There had been plenty of times in the past when he had flown his ship Hound's Tooth directly here and had made no attempt at concealing his identity. Right now, circum-stances were different for him. "Get out of my way." He shoved past the beggar, heading for the perimeter of the spaceport's landing field and the low shapes of the build-ings beyond. "You don't know who I am."

"I sure do!" The beggar, dragging one foot-twisted leg behind himself, tagged after Bossk. They crossed the landing field, streaked with blackened char marks from thruster engines. "Bumped into ya out in the Osmani system; that was a long while back." He struggled to keep up with the Trandoshan's quick strides. "I was pi-loting a shuttle between planets—that was the cheapest gig I ever worked—and you lifted one of my passengers right off the ship." The beggar emitted a phlegm-rich, cackling laugh. "Gave me a damn good excuse for blow-ing my schedule, it did! I owe ya one!"

Bossk halted and turned on his clawed heel. From the corner of his eye, he spotted some of the other passen-gers that had disembarked with him, now glancing over in this direction as though wondering what the raised voices were all about. "You don't owe me anything," hissed Bossk. "Except a little peace and quiet. Here—" He dug into a belt pouch and pulled out a decicredit coin, then flipped it into the dust beside the beggar's rag-shod feet. "Now you've made a profit on our little encounter. Take my advice as well," growled Bossk, "and try to keep it that way."

The beggar scooped up the coin and followed after Bossk. "But you're a bounty hunter! One of the big ones! Top of the biz—or at least you were."

That brought blood up into Bossk's slit-pupiled gaze; he could feel the muscles tightening underneath the scales of his shoulders. This time, when he stopped and turned around, he reached down and gathered up the front of the beggar's rags in his clenched fists and lifted the inso-lent creature up on tiptoe. He didn't care if anyone was watching. "What," he said quietly and ominously, "do you mean by that?"

"No offense." A gap-toothed smile showed on the beggar's seamed humanoid face. "It's just that everybody in the galaxy knows what happened to the Bounty Hunters Guild. It's all gone, ain't it? Maybe there aren't any big-time bounty hunters left." The smile widened, like an overripe fruit splitting open in the heat of Tatooine's dou-ble suns. "Except for one."

Bossk knew which one the beggar meant. It didn't im-prove his temper to be reminded about Boba Fett. "You're pretty free with your little comments, aren't you?" Hold-ing the beggar up close, he could smell the encrusted dirt and sweat on him. "Maybe you should be a little more careful."

"I'm no freer with 'em than anybody else in this dump." Dangling from Bossk's doubled fists, the beggar nodded toward the sun-baked hovels of Mos Eisley. "Everybody around here talks their heads off, however many they've got of 'em. Pretty gossipy bunch, if you ask me."

"Did I?" Bossk felt the points of his claws meeting through the beggar's wadded rags.

"You don't have to, pal. 'Cause I'll tell you the way it is." The beggar appeared completely unafraid.

"Place like Mos Eisley, ain't much else to do except talk. Mostly about each other's business. Maybe your busi-ness, once they know you're in town. Lots of 'em would be real interested in hearing that a certain bounty hunter named Bossk just arrived. Without a ship of his own, traveling on an ordinary freighter, and"—the beggar leaned his head back to survey Bossk with one squinting eye—"not looking like he was doing too good at the moment."

"I'm doing fine," said Bossk.

"Sure you are, pal." The beggar managed a shrug. "Appearances can be deceiving, right? So maybe you got some real good reason for coming here, all incognito and all. Tricky guy like you, maybe ya got some big plan up your sleeve. So you probably want to stay incognito, right? Is that a good guess, or what?"

Bossk forced his anger down a few degrees. "If you're so smart, why are you a beggar?"

"It suits me. Nice clean outdoor work. You meet lovely people, too. Besides, it's only a part-time thing for me. It's a good cover for my real business."

"Which is?"

"Finding things out," said the beggar. "In a place like Mos Eisley, somebody like me is just about invisible. It's like being the plaster on the walls. So when crea-tures don't notice you, don't know you're even there, you can find out some interesting stuff. Stuff about other creatures—like you, Bossk. I didn't just recognize you, like pulling something out of my own personal memory bank. I knew you were coming here to Ta-tooine; I got friends all through this system and out on the freighters. They let me know you were heading this way. We kinda keep an eye on interesting characters like you, when they show up in these parts. Let's face it, no-body comes to a backwater world like this, unless they got a good reason. It's not exactly the center of the uni-verse, you know. So it figures that you've got some kind of a reason for coming here." The beggar scratched the side of his head with a dirty fingernail.

"Couldn't be any kind of job for Jabba the Hutt—he's dead, must be a coupla weeks now. Ain't nothing worth bothering with out in what used to be his palace. And there's nobody around here with a bounty on his head—and believe me, I'd know if there was." The expression on his grizzled face turned slyer."So maybe it's just kinda your personal business, huh?"

Bossk glared straight into the beggar's eyes. "I'd like to keep it that way."

"I'm sure you would, pal. So that's why I was think-ing, soon as I recognized you, when you came off that transport. Thinking about some way you and I could do business, like. You've had partners before—shoot, bounty hunters are always hooking up with each other. Guess that's so you can watch each other's back, huh?" The beg-gar showed some more of the gaps in his smile. "Well, maybe you and me can be partners."

"You must be joking." Bossk sneered at the beggar.

"What use would I have for a partner like you? My line of work is bounty hunting, not begging."

"Like I said before, pal, this ain't all I do. There's lots of other things I'm good at. One you might find really valuable. And that's keeping my mouth shut. I'm an ace at that—for the right price, of course."

"I bet you are." Bossk gave a slow nod, then lowered the beggar to the black-streaked surface of the space-port's landing area. "But what about all the others? The ones in your little network of informants that you heard about me from?"

"No problem; they can be taken care of." The beggar brushed off the front of his rags to little visible effect. "I've handed 'em a line before. All they knew was that you were heading this way, here to Tatooine. They don't need to know whether you stopped here, or for how long. I can tell 'em that you were just passing through, on your way to some other hole in the borderland regions. Communications are so bad out in these territories, they'll figure it just stands to reason if nobody reports spotting you for a while."

"I see." Bossk looked down at the beggar. "And just what is the price for this ... service of yours?"

"Very reasonable. Even in what appears to be your rather, um, reduced state financially, I'm sure you'll be able to afford it."

Bossk mulled it over for a few moments. "All right," he said at last. "You're right about one thing. We're both men of business." He didn't want to attract any more attention to himself, out here in the public zone of the landing field. "Why don't we go on into town?" Bossk nodded toward Mos Eisley itself. "So we can talk over the details of our little partnership. Like businessmen."

"Sounds good to me." The beggar started walking, in his hobbled, awkward manner, toward the distant build-ings. He glanced over his shoulder. "I'm a little thirsty, if you know what I mean."

"Everybody's thirsty on this planet." With an easy stride, Bossk followed after the beggar. He already knew just what business arrangements he was going to make.

When he was done making them, in one of the first back alleys that they came to inside Mos Eisley, Bossk wiped from his clawed hands the dirt that had stained the beggar's neck so greasily black. It didn't take long to do so; hardly more than the few seconds that had been required to snap the scrawny bones in the first place. Killing someone, Bossk had found over the years, was al-ways the best way to ensure their silence.

With a couple of kicks, he pushed what now looked like no more than a bundle of rags over against the wall of the alley. Bossk glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no routine security patrol had spotted what had gone down. He had come here to Tatooine, and specifi-cally to Mos Eisley, for the purpose of lying low and making his plans without anyone being too curious about his identity—the beggar had been right about that much. About how to conduct business with a Trando-shan , the beggar had been a little off the mark. Too bad for him, thought Bossk as he headed for the bright-lit mouth of the alley.

As for the suddenly deceased beggar's network of con-tacts off-planet—Bossk had already decided not to worry about them. He was probably lying to me, anyway. The beggar could have recognized Bossk and then made up that story about informants strung through the system, all keeping an eye on bounty hunters and other suspi-cious creatures, just to jack up the price he had been ask-ing for his continued silence.

Which hadn't even been all that high; Bossk knew he could have easily afforded it, without dipping too far into his stash of credits. Things are cheaper on Tatooine, thought Bossk. They deserve to be. The shade of a pair of tethered dewback mounts fell across him as he made his way across Mos Eisley's central plaza and toward the cantina. Deciding to eliminate the beggar rather than pay the shakedown had been more a matter of general principles rather than economics. If a bounty hunter let himself begin paying to keep his affairs private, he'd eventually wind up paying off everybody. With that kind of overhead, Bossk knew, it'd be hard to turn a profit.

He descended the rough-hewn stone steps into the cantina's familiar confines. In a hole like this, he wouldn't have to worry about anyone sticking a proboscis into his affairs. They'd know what the consequences would be. Plus, most of them had their own secrets—some of which Bossk knew a little about—so silence was a mutually desired commodity.

A few glances were turned his way, but the faces re-mained carefully composed, devoid of even the slight-est sign of curiosity. The cantina's regulars, the various lowlifes and scheming creatures with whom he'd had innumerable business dealings, here and elsewhere in the galaxy, all responded as if they had never seen him before.

That was the way he liked it.

Even the bartender said nothing, though he remem-bered Bossk's usual order; he poured it from a chiseled stone flagon kept beneath the bar and set it down in front of the Trandoshan. Bossk didn't need to tell him to put it on his tab.

"I'm looking for a place to stay." With his massive, scaled shoulders hunching over the drink, Bossk leaned closer to the bartender. "Someplace quiet."

"So?" The scowl on the bartender's lumpish face didn't diminish; he continued wiping out an empty glass with a grease-mottled towel. "We ain't running a hotel here, you know."

This time, Bossk slid a coin across the bar. "Some-place private."

The bartender laid the towel down for a moment; when he picked it up again, the coin had vanished. "I'll ask around."

"Appreciate it." Bossk knew that those words meant the negotiations were concluded, and successfully. The Mos Eisley cantina actually did have some chambers for rent—dark, airless holes, down beneath the cellars and subcellars where the barrels of cheap booze were stored— but only a few creatures, even among the establishment's regular habitues, knew about them. The cantina's man-agement preferred keeping them little known, and empty more often than not; it cut down on the amount of raids and general hassles from the Empire's security forces. "I'll check with you later."

"Don't bother." The bartender slapped something down. "Here's your change."

Bossk didn't even bother to look. He palmed the small object, feeling the outline of a primitive all-metal key, and slipped it into one of the pouches on his belt. He al-ready knew the way to the chambers beneath the can-tina, down one of the narrow stairs tucked behind a crumbling stone wall.

Carrying the drink with him, he slipped into one of the booths along the far wall. It wasn't too long before somebody joined him.

"Long time, Bossk." A rodent-faced Mhingxin sat himself down on the other side of the booth's table. Eob-bim Figh's long-fingered hands, like collections of bones and coarse, spiky hairs, set out a multicompartmented box with an assortment of stim-enhanced snuff powders. "Good to see you." Figh's sharp-pointed nails dipped into the various powders, one after another, then to the elongated nostrils on the underside of his wetly shining snout. "Heard you were dead. Or something."

"It would take a lot to kill me, Figh." Bossk sipped at the drink. "You know that."

"Boba Fett is a lot. Lot of trouble." The Mhingxin shook his tapered head. "Shouldn't take him on. Not if you're smart."

"I'm plenty smart enough for Fett," said Bossk sourly. "I just haven't been lucky."

Figh exploded into high-pitched laughter, a squealing gale that sent clouds of acrid snuff rising from the box on the table. "Lucky! Lucky!" He slapped his narrow paws beside the box. "Luck is for fools. Used to tell me that. You did."

"Then I've gotten even smarter than I was before." Bossk could feel the expression on his muzzle turn ugly and brooding. "Now I know how important luck is. Boba Fett has luck. That's why every time I've encoun-tered him, he's won."

"Luck?" Figh shrugged. "Little more than that. What. I think."

The awkward Basic of the creature sitting across from Bossk irritated him. "I don't care what you think," he growled. "I've got plans of my own. Plus, I've got the odds on my side now."

"Figure that? How so?"

"Simple." Bossk had had a long time to brood over the matter. "Boba Fett's run of luck has gone on way too long. It's got to end; maybe it's already ended. Then it'll be my turn." He nodded slowly, as though already tast-ing blood seeping between the fangs in his mouth. "And it'll be payback time for Boba Fett."

That produced another bout of snickering laughter from Figh. "Long time coming. That payback. Not the only one—you."

Bossk knew that was true enough. The breakup of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, for which Boba Fett had been largely responsible, had left a lot of creatures throughout the galaxy with a simmering hatred for Fett. He hit us all, right where it hurts. Bossk nodded again, even slower and with eyes narrowed. In our pockets. The old system, under the Guild, had spread the wealth out, not evenly— Bossk's father, Cradossk, as head of the Bounty Hunters Guild, had always done better for himself than any of his followers—but well enough that no hunter went com-pletely hungry. All that was changed now; a lot of former bounty hunters were either dead or had dropped out of the trade, getting into other lines of work that were ei-ther closer to or further from being legal. The criminal organization Black Sun had reorganized; the Empire had picked up some new recruits, as had the Rebel Alliance.

"We could've hung together," sulked Bossk. "If we'd been smart." He couldn't—and didn't—blame himself for that much; he had tried to keep the other bounty hunters, or at least the younger and tougher ones, to-gether after the Bounty Hunters Guild had broken up. That had been the whole point of the Guild Reform Committee that he had put together—with himself at the head, naturally—right after he had eliminated old Cra-dossk, in the traditional and time-honored Trandoshan fashion. The old lizard would've wanted it that way, Bossk told himself. And if Cradossk hadn't, who cared? He was still just as dead and out of the way now.

"Smart, lucky—big ifs," said Figh. "For you. For Boba Fett, not ifs."

"Yeah, well, we'll see about that." The drink's intoxi-cants had fueled Bossk's anger. "Like I said, I got plans."

"Plans take money. You got?"

Bossk glared at the Mhingxin, wondering just how much he knew. "Enough."

"True?" Figh gave a doubtful shrug. "Not so heard around here."

The murder of the beggar, whose body Bossk had left in the alley at Mos Eisley's perimeter, was starting to seem pointless. Or at least pointless beyond the simple pleasure of snapping another creature's neck in his fists. It was beginning to seem that everybody in the spaceport had a line on his financial condition.

"You heard wrong, then." Bossk decided to bluff it out. "Use that little rodent brain of yours, for a change. The old Bounty Hunters Guild had a huge treasury stashed away, before it fell apart. Who do you think wound up with all those credits?"

Figh smiled unpleasantly. "Not you."

"Look, just because I didn't land here with my own personal ship—that doesn't mean anything. I got my own reasons for wanting to keep a low profile."

The Mhingxin uttered a common, low-slang ex-pression for bovine waste material. "Broke, you, that's the truth. What heard, more than one mouth. Smiling and laughing, too. Nearly as many enemies, you, as Boba Fett. All that killing." Figh shook his head, rudi-mentary snout whiskers fluttering. "Stepping on toes. Probably why your bad luck. Nobody wish you good luck."

Bossk felt the urge rise in him to reach across the table and do the same thing to Figh that he had done to the beggar he had left in the alley. He restrained himself; the consequences wouldn't have been insurmountable, but he didn't need the expense right now of paying the bar-tender to take care of the mess. Plus—now that Bossk thought about it—there was a certain value to having an information source like Figh around.

"So tell me something." Bossk leaned across the table, clawed hands folded around the drink in front of him. "Since you've heard so much about my state of affairs. If I didn't get the Bounty Hunters Guild treasury, then who did?"

"Everybody knows. Not even worth charging you for." Figh's sneer split one side of his face. "The credits gone, and so is Gleed Otondon. Figure out."

That jibed with everything Bossk had been able to find out while he had been making his way here to Ta-tooine . He could still remember the annihilating fury that had boiled up inside him when he had attempted to access the mountain of credits that had been stashed away from the vanished Guild and had found the ac-counts completely ransacked. Whoever had been re-sponsible, and who now had the credits that should rightfully have been in Bossk's pockets, had not only known the crypto-security codes for the accounts, but also exactly what banking and financial-center worlds they had been located at. Obviously an inside job: some of the accounts had been emptied just a few min-utes before Bossk got to them and found them bare. So it must have been somebody who had been at the top levels of the old Bounty Hunters Guild, Bossk figured, one of his father Cradossk's most trusted advisors, a creature that would have been in a position to snoop out the access codes and the other information neces-sary for locating all those hidden credits. And stealing them, brooded Bossk. The injustice of it still rankled. If anyone was going to steal that money, it should have been him.

Whoever it had been, though, it obviously wasn't one of the younger bounty hunters that had gone with him into the Guild Reform Committee. None of those had had access to that kind of information in the old Guild; they had all still been trying to scrabble up the ladder to those levels, with the places and positions of influence all occupied by their elders.

That had been the reason why so many of them had welcomed the breakup of the old Guild, and had even helped bring it about; even Bossk had seen the per-sonal advantages in revolution, of smashing the system in place and putting in a new one with himself in charge, supported by the younger and tougher bounty hunters. It just hadn't worked out that way. We should've killed 'em all, thought Bossk in retrospect, right at the start. Too many of the elders in the old Guild had survived the breakup, and had gone on to form their own spin-off fragment, the so-called True Guild. All that had been ac-complished by the existence of two splinter groups was a war of attrition between them. The elders had been a lot tougher than the young bounty hunters, Bossk in-cluded, had expected; tough enough, at least, to have thinned out the Guild Reform Committee's ranks pretty drastically, at the same rate that the True Guild's mem-bers had been picked off. If the goal had been to reduce the number of bounty hunters alive and working in the galaxy—and Bossk had heard rumors to that effect, about whoever had been behind Boba Fett's entry into the old Guild—then that goal had been well and bloodily achieved.

Though now, it appeared as if somebody else had done all right by the smashing of the old Guild. It and its successor fragments, the Guild Reform Committee and the True Guild, were long gone—why would any bounty hunter in his right mind stay in either organization when all it seemed to do was target him for death by the other side? The even smaller and less powerful splinter groups, forming after the disintegration of the two main factions, held no attraction for Bossk. He had already decided that it was better to be an independent operator, on one's own or, at the most, hooked up with a partner. The Hunter's Creed, the honor code that had kept most bounty hunters from killing one another off too readily, was over with; from now on, it was every hunter for him-self. The only thing left of value from the old Bounty Hunters Guild had been its treasury—and now that was gone as well.

As was Gleed Otondon. That scum, brooded Bossk. Otondon had been one of old Cradossk's chief advisors, a power on the ruling council of the Bounty Hunters Guild. Then he had become the head negotiator for the True Guild splinter group. For all Bossk knew, Otondon might well have been the absolute leader of the True Guild all along, the one that the other old-timers had looked to for their marching orders. If so, Otondon had pulled a fast one on them as well: Bossk knew the whereabouts of all the bounty hunters still alive, the young ones and the old-timers who hadn't yet managed to kill one another off, and none of them showed any signs of having that kind of credits on them. They were all scrabbling to survive, now that the Guild and its off-shoots were no more. The only one that couldn't be lo-cated, either alive or in his grave, was Gleed Otondon. He had conveniently vanished—conveniently for him-self, that was; if Bossk had been able to get his hands on him, he would have torn out Otondon's throat and most of his internal organs in pursuit of the stolen Guild treasury.

The kind of disappearance that Otondon had under gone took credits, a lot of them; the galaxy was stuffed with informants and squealers, and none of them had a clue as to Otondon's whereabouts. Bossk didn't even bother asking Eobbim Figh sitting across from him whether there had been any word in these parts about the missing bounty hunter; that kind of news would only reach Tatooine long after it was common knowledge everywhere else.

"No talk Gleed Otondon? All those credits?" Figh made a show of feigning sympathy for Bossk. "Can under-stand. More bad luck for you, eh?" He gave a slow shake of his head. "Silence preferred, no surprise."

"I'll take care of Gleed Otondon when the time comes," said Bossk. "He'll have his turn. But not right now. I've got other things on my agenda."

"No—one thing." Figh smiled. "Boba Fett."

The Mhingxin had read that much right, as though Bossk's anger had written the other bounty hunter's name on his scale-covered brow. The image of Fett's narrow-visored helmet, battered and dented, but still as awesomely functional as when it had shielded some long-ago Mandalorian warrior, filled Bossk's gaze when he squeezed his eyelids shut. He had never seen Boba Fett's actual face—very few creatures had, and lived to tell about it—but Bossk could still vividly imagine how the blood would seep from beneath that helmet's hard gaze as he crushed the other's neck in his bare hands. Right now, here in the Mos Eisley cantina, his fists clenched tighter, talons digging into his palms, as he yearned to make the vision of Boba Fett's death a reality. That vision, that death, was all that Bossk could think of; the thirst for revenge, like burning acid poured down his throat, seeped through every fiber of his being. As much as he hated and despised the vanished Gleed Otondon for having stolen from him, that was a matter of mere credits. For a Trandoshan, wealth meant nothing com-pared to honor. And that was what Boba Fett had stolen from him.

"My reputation," said Bossk, ominous and quiet. "That's what he took. Over and over and over..."

"Reputation? Yours?" Another gale of squealing laugh-ter came from Figh. "Such doesn't exist. Not anymore. Zero on any scale, what creatures think of you."

A galling realization broke over Bossk. He's not afraid of me —he looked across the table at the Mhingxin with something like horror. That was how much his own reputation had diminished; that was the ultimate conse-quence of his continuing series of defeats at the hands of Boba Fett. A scurrying sentient rodent such as Eobbim Figh could laugh at him, without apparent fear. The humiliation of that fact was like a flood of ice water dumped on the fires of his anger. And more than humilia-tion: if fear hadn't shown itself in the creature sitting across from him in the booth, its dark flower now rose inside himself.

How can I survive? For a moment, that thought blot-ted out all others in Bossk's mind. He had his own list, one that he had never before paid much attention to, of creatures in the galaxy that had reason to hold a grudge against him. In his own bounty hunter career, back when the Guild had still been in existence, he had bought his personal triumphs at the cost of stepping on a lot of other hunters' toes, stealing hard merchandise out from under their noses and handing out other humiliations, just as if none of the others would ever have a chance of retribution at him. That list was probably as long as Boba Fett's—perhaps longer, considering that more of them were still alive. Creatures who wound up running afoul of Boba Fett also had a way of winding up dead, their grievances buried with them.

The other difference, between his list of enemies and Boba Fett's, was that only a few, and those the most foolhardy ones, would take a shot at getting satisfaction from Fett. Better to sit on one's grudges rather than give Boba Fett any more reasons for eliminating someone else from the universe of the living. If Bossk had still been in any way rational on the subject of the long-hated Boba Fett, that would have been the advice he'd have given to himself. The same kind of warning no longer held for any of Bossk's own enemies, especially now that it had been demonstrated to the entire galaxy, over and over, that he could be bested in a confronta-tion. Any other bounty hunter who might have previ-ously had second thoughts about settling accounts with Bossk would now be having third thoughts about the matter—and deciding to act on them. If Bossk hadn't had a good reason for keeping a low profile before, that one would do for now.

"When creatures think zero," continued Figh, "chances of death high. For you."

One corner of Bossk's muzzle lifted in a snarl. "Tell me something I don't know."

Figh stroked the stiff whiskers of his pointed snout. "So not matter of mere emotion, your grudge against Boba Fett. More important. Squatting aquatic avian, un-til proved that killer stuff in you. Somebody get, sooner, later. Too bad. Only way to get respect of others back, plus keep skin intact, take down Boba Fett. Nothing else do."

He knew Eobbim Figh was right about that. There was a lot more at stake than just his honor and repu-tation. Once word got out that he was stuck here on Tatooine—and it would, no matter how many gos-sipy street beggars he killed—then he'd be a target for all those other bounty hunters. Some of them might even have conceived the notion that he, rather than Gleed Otondon, was sitting on the treasury from the old Bounty Hunters Guild. That would add a financial motive—always an effective one for bounty hunters— to their personal ones, for seeking him out, murder in mind.

"Wait a minute." Bossk peered suspiciously at Figh. "How do you know Boba Fett's still live?"

"Simple." Figh mimed a shrug. "Open data, one like you. Can see through all way. Brooding on failures, humiliations—very unlike. Heard about, before your ar-rival here, even. To get under scales that bad, only possible for Boba Fett. Your long-standing rivalry well known, everywhere. If Fett really dead, you a happy Trandoshan. Happy as Trandoshans can get. Brood, sulk, you know that Fett alive. What you know, I know. Or can guess." Figh's imitation smile showed. "Guess proved right, just now."

Bossk nodded. "You're pretty smart," he said. "For a Mhingxin."

The comment got the reaction he expected—and wanted. Figh's coarse, spiky fur bristled across his neck and shoulders. "Smarter than you," spat Figh. "Not waiting to get killed, sitting around. Like you."

"Simmer down. You didn't come over here to talk to me just to point out the obvious, did you?" The glass was empty in front of Bossk; he pushed it away with one claw-tipped finger. "You must have had your reasons. Some-body like you always does."

Figh's black, beadlike eyes still flashed with irritation. "So smart, then you say. My reasons, talk with you."

Bossk had dealt with other Mhingxins in the past. They had a simple, easily manipulable psychology.

"Sim-ple," he said. "You think the two of us can do some busi-ness together." Mhingxins had a low self-image, due probably to their resemblance to the kind of furtive crea-tures that crept into food supplies on any number of worlds, and a well-aimed personal remark could easily provoke them. That's when their guard slipped. "You know what I want to do; maybe you got some notion of how you could help me accomplish that."

"Help you? Not likely!" Figh thrust his tapering snout forward; his long, hairy, and knobby hands flattened themselves against the table. "Want to track down Boba Fett, get name back, do it on your own. Got information that could help, but give to you, think again."

"Come on, Figh; nobody gives anybody anything, not in this galaxy. But now that we've established that you've got something to sell, we can talk about price."

" 'Sell'?" Figh drew back, eyeing Bossk warily. "What would be?"

"Information, obviously. You don't have to play around with me. You must have something on Boba Fett, some-thing that you think I'd be interested in. Okay, you're right about that; I am interested." Bossk jabbed a finger toward the creature on the other side of the table. "I was interested even before you came around, trying to get the price jacked by getting me all worked up about Fett. So let's deal."

"Deal... price ... sell..." Figh shook his head. "All need something else, if happen."

"What's that?"

"Credits," Figh said bluntly. "Your credits. Got?"

"I've got enough." Bossk shrugged. "For the time being."

"Said before. Doesn't look like it."

It was Bossk's turn to grow irritated. "Appearances can be deceiving."

"Very." Figh had recovered enough of his compo-sure to show his unpleasant smile again."But have to be credits up-front. Pay as you go. Not running a tab; not with me." Figh nodded toward the bartender at the other side of the cantina. "Stiff that fool, you want. Here, business."

Business was all that mattered. Bossk had already made some decisions along that line. It wasn't just a mat-ter of his own personal priorities, his thirst for revenge against Boba Fett, that had led him to put off going after Gleed Otondon and the pilfered treasury of the old Bounty Hunters Guild. He was caught in a double-bind situation: as useful as all those credits would be—there was more than enough to buy a new ship and completely outfit it with all the necessary weaponry for hunting down and eliminating Fett—his chances of successfully tracking down Otondon were virtually nil as long as his own reputation was so badly impaired, with every other bounty hunter with a grievance against him in the way. It was a better idea, with the limited resources at his dis-posal, to reestablish his reputation by settling his own grudge against Boba Fett; that would make him a feared individual once more in the galaxy-wide community of bounty hunters, and he would have a free hand in going after the stolen property that should rightfully have been his all along.

"All right," said Bossk. "Business it is. Pay as we go." He leaned across the table, bringing his hard, unsmiling gaze close to Figh. "What've you got for me?"

"Very valuable." Figh didn't flinch. "Location of Boba Fett. Where at. Now."

Bossk was impressed. "You got that?"

"No. But can get."

Unimpressed now, Bossk sat back, his spine against the booth's padding. "Let me know when you do. Then you get paid."

"Don't worry." Figh slid out of the booth. "You see me again."

Bossk watched the Mhingxin work his way through the crowd that had started to fill up the cantina. Then Figh was gone, up the stairs to the surface and the streets of Mos Eisley. Where presumably such marketable infor-mation could be found.

He hoped that Figh did come back with the info. That was something he wouldn't mind paying for, no matter how slim his finances were at the moment. You can't hit a target, he told himself, if you don't know where it is. All the time he had been traveling toward Tatooine, he had made attempts to discern Boba Fett's whereabouts. That had been a big part of Bossk's rea-sons for coming to the planet on which Boba Fett had last been spotted, taking off from the Dune Sea with another bounty hunter named Dengar and some danc-ing girl who had managed to escape from Jabba the Hutt's palace; Bossk didn't even know her name, or why Fett would have had enough interest in her wel-fare to have kept her around. But those two had been with Fett when another low point in the continuing litany of Bossk's humiliations at his hands had occurred. With another one of his underhanded psycho-logical ploys, Boba Fett had managed to chase Bossk out of his own ship, the Hound's Tooth, and once more into an emergency escape pod, hurtling away from what Bossk had thought was certain destruction but which had turned out to be only a dud autonomic bomb.

It was a good bet that Boba Fett was still in pos-session of the Hound's Tooth. Fett's own ship, Slave I, had been found abandoned by a Rebel Alliance patrol squad. Along with Dengar and the female, Boba Fett must have transferred over to the Hound and piloted it toward some unknown destination. Which makes, Bossk thought grimly, one more thing he's stolen from me. Bossk's reputation and his ship; Boba Fett had a lot to answer for.

And Bossk had already vowed that he would. That kind of payback could only be made in one kind of coin. Death. The taste of blood in Bossk's jaws would not just be imagined then; soon it would be real.

He sat brooding for a while longer, hunched forward at the table, the empty glass in front of his claws. Brood-ing and wondering where Boba Fett was right now; he was already impatient for Eobbim Figh to return with that information.

Probably taking it easy somewhere, Bossk thought bitterly. The Hound's Tooth was a good ship, well ap-pointed in the best of Trandoshan taste; not just an effi-cient hunting craft, but one with a minimal but necessary degree of comfort for its rightful owner. Thinking of Boba Fett lounging about in the Hound's comforts infu-riated him even more.

He's there, seethed Bossk, and I'm stuck here. His claws closed into fists, aching for a throat to break in-side them.

There was no justice in the galaxy. While he scrabbled for a place to lie low, on a backwater hole like Tatooine, Boba Fett was safe in the peace and tranquillity of inter-stellar space, far from harm.

No justice at all...