Hard Merchandise

5

The first hit was nearly the last one.

Boba Fett didn't even see it coming. The first indica-tion that Slave I had come under attack was the sudden burst of light that flared across the cockpit's viewport, as though the ship had struck the heart of some hidden sun. He would have been permanently blinded if the optical filters in his helmet's visor hadn't flashed opaque, pro-tecting his eyes. Fett's own quick instincts had snapped him away from the searing glare, raising a forearm across the front of the helmet as he had twisted about in the pi-lot's chair, away from the navigation controls and the obliterated view of stars he had seen only a fraction of a second before.

The impact of the laser-cannon bolt struck the ship's frame and his contorted spine simultaneously, throwing him from the pilot's seat and sprawling him out across the bare durasteel floor of the cockpit, his arms barely able to brace himself and catch the rush of the bulkhead near the hatchway. Past the roar of the explosion shud-dering through Slave I's hull and into the core beams run-ning from forward sensor antennae to the shielded engine compartments, Boba Fett could hear the high-therm welds of the bulkhead panels ripping free from one an-other. A metal edge as viciously sharp as a vibroblade's business end peeled upward from the cockpit's floor, com-ing within a centimeter of slashing through the heavy collar of his Mandalorian battle armor and across his throat. All that prevented a slashed jugular vein and sub-sequent death was a tight ducking of his head against one shoulder, so that the ripped durasteel panel caught one side of his helmet instead. The left side of the helmet blunted the cutting strike, adding another mark of vio-lence to the other dents and scrapes gathered in combat.

Rumbling downward in pitch, the sound of the laser-cannon bolt and its concussive hammer-blow against the ship faded enough that the wails and shrieks of the ship's alarm systems became audible to Boba Fett. He may have escaped death—for the moment—but Slave I had been mortally wounded; the ear-shredding, electronic screech was its death cry.

"Mute alarms." Fett spoke the command into the microphone of his helmet. "Switch to optical status report." As the high-pitched notes fell to ominous silence, a row of minuscule lights appeared at the limit of Boba Fett's peripheral vision. He knew what each glowing dot meant, which of the ship's systems was represented by vertical rank order, and what conditions were indicated by the lights' colors. Right now, they were all red, with a few of them pulsing at various speeds. That wasn't good; the only thing that could have been worse would be if one or more had gone to black and out, the indicator of a complete systemic failure. The topmost dot of light in the row was for Slave I's structure-envelope integrity, mea-sured in atmospheric-maintenance capability. If that one blinked out—and at the moment it was flickering faster than Boba Fett's own pulse rate—it would mean that the ship was breaking into fragments, the hull's durasteel sheath delaminating away from the broken internal frame and scattering into empty space like the silvery ashes from an extinguished groundfire. It would also be a sight that Boba Fett wouldn't live to see; the loss of the ship's air when the hull was breached would be an event with a survival rate of zero for any living creatures aboard.

Fett rolled onto his side, away from the sharp edge of the bulkhead that would have at least given him a quick death, and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He shook away the last bit of dazing fog from the blow to the battle armor's helmet. The now-silent alarms hadn't informed him of anything that he couldn't discern by other means. With the fragile condition that the ship had already been in, a direct hit by a Destroyer-grade laser cannon was bound to have a significant—and close to catastrophic—effect. After the stresses of jumping in and out of hyperspace, Slave I had barely been holding to-gether; that the vessel could have taken another blow on top of that without disintegrating was a tribute to the ex-tra armor and structural reinforcements that Boba Fett had ordered installed by Kuat Drive Yards. But there was a limit to how much damage those protective measures could soak up before collapsing along with the rest of the ship. When they went, his life span would be measurable in seconds; there was no emergency escape pod in which he could bail out.

Getting to his feet, the bounty hunter grabbed the back of the empty pilot's chair and pulled himself toward the cockpit controls. The panel's indicator signals and gauges were awash with pulsing red lights, telling him the same story he'd already surmised from the dots at the side of his helmet, bright as the ends of severed arteries.

Quickly, Boba Fett punched a gloved forefinger at the manual override command pad, inputting the code that would allow the ship's onboard computer to take over the navigational procedures.

"Randomize all maneuvers," he instructed. "Calculate and implement nonpredictive evasion pattern." Even before he took his hand away from the pad, Slave 7's docking-correction rockets burned on hard, twisting the ship out of its previous slow course and slamming Fett against the side of the cockpit; another burn, close to ninety degrees off the first one, would have sent him sprawling again if he hadn't kept a tight hold on the back of the pilot's chair.

The evasive maneuver was just in time: a second laser-cannon bolt shot cometlike past the curve of the forward viewport, coming close enough for Boba Fett to feel its heat through the clear transparisteel. Fading to a dull red, the bolt trailed away, leaving a bright afterimage in Fett's vision, but without hitting the ship's hull.

Another warning sound became audible as the stressed frame groaned from the transmitted force of the rockets. No electronic sensors were needed to register what was happening; Boba Fett could feel the chill of falling tem-perature through his battle armor, and hear the sibilant hiss of dwindling atmospheric pressure. The reserve oxygen tanks' emitters kicked in, attempting futilely to overcome the loss from the ship's main cabin areas. The evasive maneuver initiated by the onboard computer had wrenched some part of the hull loose, already weakened by the first laser-cannon hit. Slave I might be able to dodge most, and perhaps even all, of the coruscating bolts being aimed its way—Boba Fett had personally programmed in the randomizing algorithms—but it would be a process equally fatal, and rapidly so, as the quick, darting shifts in direction and acceleration tore at the ship's damaged fabric.

Boba Fett leaned over the back of the pilot's chair, scanning the forward viewport for any sign of the enemy that had opened fire on him. It didn't matter who it might be—he figured that he had enough enemies, from his years in the bounty hunter trade, that at any given moment there would be someone yearning to take a shot at him. For all he knew, it might have been possible that Bossk had already found some way to catch up with him; what the Trandoshan lacked in smarts, he made up in tenacity and the ability to carry a grudge.

All that mattered right now was where the laser-cannon's bolts had come from. Slave I had a deep arsenal of long-range weaponry itself; if Boba Fett could get a fix on the other ship, he would be able to bring his own laser cannons to bear on the target. That would be a calcu-lated gamble on his part: setting up and holding position long enough to return fire would increase the enemy's tar-geting ability, and the laser cannons' drain upon Slave I's rapidly dwindling power resources, as well as the struc-tural shock from firing the weapons, could very likely de-stroy rather than save the ship and its occupants. Two shots, calculated Boba Fett as he looked out across the field of stars. Maybe three. His instinctive connection with the ship he mastered told him that that would be the limit of its endurance. If he wasn't able to take out his enemy that quickly, any further action, including the resuming of evasive maneuvers, would leave him as a lung-emptied corpse drifting amid his own ship's debris.

The main engines came on again, a quick burst thrust-ing Slave I away from its previous location. A trail of churning, fading light at the corner of the viewport indi-cated the effectiveness of the onboard computer's ran-domizing program; the enemy's laser-cannon bolt had scorched past, only a few meters away from the ship's hull. Boba Fett leaned closer to the cockpit's forward viewport, balancing himself with one hand braced against the control panel's flashing red lights, scanning with a hunter's intent gaze for any sign of the opponent he faced. His enemy, whoever it might be, obviously was aware that its target would be doing exactly that, trying to lo-cate the source of the bolts aimed toward him. That was the reason why the other ship wasn't sending out a steady stream of rapid-fire laser-cannon bolts; their fiery pas-sage would have been a dead giveaway, negating the ad-vantage it had at the moment, of mounting its offensive from some undetermined hiding place.

Boba Fett's strategizing had been encompassed in mere milliseconds. Without warning, the computer's evasion program kicked in again, twisting Slave I into a full 360-degree looping spiral, the side-mounted rockets diverting the thrust of the main engines. It wasn't enough: Boba Fett's grip upon the back of the pilot's chair was torn loose as another laser-cannon bolt scored a direct hit upon the curved center of the hull. The impact sent him flying backward, landing sprawled on his back halfway through the cockpit's open hatchway. A torrent of sparks, blind-ing gnatlike miniatures of the laser fire that had filled the viewport, lashed against his chest and helmet visor as the control panel's circuits overloaded and shorted out. The acrid smell of burning hard-wire insulation and frying silicon mixed with the hissing steam of the fire-extinguisher cylinders letting loose their contents beneath the panel's gauges and buttons.

As the cockpit filled with smoke, Boba Fett grabbed the side of the hatchway and pulled himself upright. The louder hiss in his ears was the sound of oxygen venting from the ship's hull; the last laser-cannon bolt had done even more damage than the first that had hit Slave I.

His helmet comlink had gone dead, as well as the red warning lights arrayed at the side of the visor. Fett pushed past the toppled pilot's chair, its pedestal stan-chion ripped loose from the buckling floor. The panel was slick with combustion-retardant foam and wet ash as he punched the computer's input microphone control. "Prepare to seal off cockpit area," he commanded. The only way to obtain a few precious minutes more of breathing time—and the chance, however slim, to sur-vive beyond that—was to reduce the stress on Slave I's life-support systems to as close to zero as possible. Letting every other section of the ship go to complete vacuum would turn the cockpit into a temporary bubble of safety. Once it was set up, Boba Fett could override the com-puter's evasion program and turn the underside of the craft toward the source of the laser-cannon bolts, so the inert metal would act as a shield for the cockpit's curve of transparisteel.

The rest of the plan formulated itself in Fett's mind. He had limited options at this point, but there was still always the chance of outwitting his foe. Play dead, he told himself. That could work. The damage that Slave I had suffered would be obviously visible from the out-side; with the engines shut down and all signs of onboard power switched off, his ship would look like a lifeless hulk drifting in space. That might be enough to get this unknown enemy to come close enough, imprudently within range of a sudden, unexpected volley from Boba Fett's own laser cannons. At that kind of distance, he could cripple or even destroy the other ship; either way, he'd then have the time to head for the safety of Kud'ar Mub'at's web, before the remaining store of oxygen aboard Slave I ran out.

"Atmospheric lockdown procedures concluded," an-nounced the onboard computer's voice, still emotionless though coarsened now with burring static. "Cockpit area ready to be sealed on your order."

"Maintain status," said Fett. There were things he had to do before the cockpit's life-support systems were secured. "Standby until I return to this area." He pushed himself away from the control panel.

From the cockpit area, Boba Fett quickly descended the metal treads of the ladder leading down to the main cargo hold. He still had hard merchandise aboard the ship that he intended to deliver and be paid for. The rene-gade stormtrooper Trhin Voss'on't had to be alive in or-der for that to be accomplished.

The air pressure in the cargo hold had dropped to a dizzying, heart-accelerating level. As he stepped from the last tread of the ladder, Boba Fett could see a swimming cluster of black dots form in his vision, a telltale sign of oxygen starvation. The spots quickly vanished as his bat-tle armor's reserve oxygen supply kicked in. As useful as those reserves were in emergencies such as this, they were still limited; Fett knew that he would have to ac-complish his mission here fast, and get back up to the cockpit with Voss'on't before they ran out. All his strate-gizing would do him little good if he was lying on the cargo hold's floor unconscious when the enemy ship approached.

"I was . . . wondering . . . when you'd show up." Gasping for breath, eyes reddened from the smoke that filled the cargo area, Trhin Voss'on't held himself upright with both fists tightly clenched upon the holding cage's bars. "Figured ... maybe you were dead already ..."

"Lucky for you that I'm not." The miniaturized secu-rity key was implanted in the fingertip of Boba Fett's gloved hand; the mere act of grabbing the pull-bar on the cage's door would unlock it and allow him to yank Voss'on't out. He could feel the renegade stormtrooper's hard gaze bearing down on him like two laser trackers as he stepped close and reached for the door. "Let's get going."

Fett had already calculated that he didn't have time to render Voss'on't unconscious, or the strength, given the depleted level of oxygen in the cargo hold, to drag the stormtrooper's limp body up the ladder to the cockpit. It would be better just to get him up there, with whatever degree of threats or personal violence was necessary, then knock him out so he wouldn't interfere with the rest of the operation.

"Why should I?" Voss'on't hunched over, his head at a level with his hands gripping the bars, chest laboring to draw in enough breath to support life functions. "What... do I get.. .out of it?"

That was one more thing he didn't have time for: one more argument from Voss'on't. The stormtrooper had never yet seemed to realize that Boba Fett wasn't inter-ested in his opinions on what to do next.

"What you get," said Boba Fett as he pulled open the holding cage's door, "is a chance to go on living a little while longer. If that's not important to you—too bad. You don't get a vote on it."

"I'll tell you... what's important to me ..." Voss'on't straightened up, pushing himself back from the vertical bars. "Giving you ... a little surprise ..." His voice was suddenly louder and more forceful, as though he were now expending a carefully husbanded store of vital en ergy. Taking one step backward to brace himself, he swung the single bar that had somehow come loose from its mounting at both the top and bottom welded frames of the cage. The length of glistening metal moved through a flat horizontal arc, its end striking Boba Fett directly in his abdomen. The blow had all of Trhin Voss'on't's weight and strength behind it, hitting Fett with enough velocity to lift him for a moment off his feet and slam his spine back against the edge of the open cage doorway.

Stunned and doubled over from the blow to his gut, Boba Fett lay on the cargo area's grated metal floor, one shoulder rolled beneath him. His own sudden flurry of motion revealed to his dazed and swimming vision what had previously been concealed by the thick smoke gath-ered at the base of the cage: the laser-cannon bolts from the hidden enemy ship had buckled the hold's floor enough to spring loose a section of cage bars. The one with which Voss'on't had struck him had come com-pletely free, and had been held in place only by the stormtrooper's fist, giving the visual impression that he was still trapped inside the cage. In fact, and as Boba Fett had just painfully learned, he had been merely waiting for Fett to unlock the door and come within striking distance.

"You should have ... listened ..." Voss'on't's words came from somewhere in the blurred, red-tinged distance above Boba Fett. "When you had... the opportunity..."

As Fett tried to push himself up from the floor, an-other blow from the metal cage bar to the base of his battle armor's helmet sent him sprawling again. The hel-met's visor scraped across the cargo hold's grating. His mouth filled with the taste of smoke as he gulped for breath.

"But you . . . didn't. . ." Voss'on't had planted his boots on either side of Boba Fett, the better to raise the cage bar high and aim a killing blow at the top of the bounty hunter's vertebrae. "You don't get... a second chance..."

Boba Fett heard the bar come whistling down through the oxygen-thinned air. But the broken weld of its tip struck the hold's floor instead of his spine as his own arm grabbed hold of one of Voss'on't's legs and jerked him off balance. Voss'on't lost his grip on the metal bar as he fell backward, and it clattered across the floor and against the farthest bulkhead.

The butt of the holstered blaster pistol was already clamped in Boba Fett's fist. Before he could draw it and fire, Voss'on't's close-combat training asserted itself: with his elbows braced against the floor, he brought the heel of his boot hard under Boba Fett's chin, snapping his helmeted head back. The blaster went flying from Fett's loosened grasp. Before Boba Fett could recover, the renegade stormtrooper dived for the weapon. Voss'on't landed with his chest scraping across the edges of the grate, outstretched hands clawing desperately for the blaster.

Fett didn't wait to see if Voss'on't came up with it. He scrambled onto his knees and snatched up the cage bar that had fallen from the stormtrooper's grasp before. In one fluid motion, Fett twisted about, the bar poised javelinlike in one gloved hand; he saw Voss'on't also kneeling a couple of meters away, turning with the blaster pistol gripped in his doubled fists. Behind the weapon, and through the eye-stinging haze filling the cargo hold, the harsh angles of Voss'on't's triumphantly grinning face could be seen as he took aim and squeezed his finger upon the weapon's trigger.

The cage bar flew from Boba Fett's hand as he whipped his arm straight before him. A bolt from the blaster pistol scorched an inch away from Fett's helmet as he dived to one side. Across the hold, a screeching intake of breath sounded from Voss'on't' as the jagged tip of the cage bar ripped through his sleeve and tore a red wound through the flesh underneath. The force of the thrown bar was enough to pull one hand away from the blaster—but the other hand tightened its grip.

"Good . . . shot . . ." With his heart and lungs laboring in his chest, Voss'on't stood up, his wounded arm pressed tight against his side in a vain attempt to stanch the flow of blood. Dark red ribbons wound past the hip of his grease-stained uniform trousers and down his thigh. "But not... good enough..."

Boba Fett made no reply, but watched as the blaster pistol in Voss'on't's shaking hand drew down upon an invisible line to the center of his helmet.

"I might've ... put you in the cage ..." Voss'on't gri-maced with the effort of pulling in enough breath to re-main conscious. Beneath the smoke and ash streaking his narrow face, the scarred and chiseled flesh was as pallid white as a sheet of flimsiplast. "And kept you... alive..." He held the blaster, unwavering now, straight out in front of him. "But I've changed my mind."

Fire and a blinding glare erupted through Slave I's cargo hold, overwhelming the single bolt that shot out from the muzzle of the blaster. Boba Fett felt himself be-ing thrown backward as the hold's grated flooring ripped into pieces from the explosion that pushed apart the ship's bulkheads as though they were mere fluttering sheets of metallic cloth. He knew what had happened, even as he fell again, with one forearm protectively shield-ing his helmet's visor. From somewhere in the airless dis-tance outside, the other ship, his unidentified enemy, had taken aim and fired its laser cannon, scoring a direct hit on his own ship's hull.

Another explosion rumbled from deep in the bowels of Slave I, in the main engine compartments. Fire, laced with electrical sparks, white-hot wasps swirling in dense clouds of oily smoke, leapt up through the chasms that had been driven through the flooring and bulkheads. The blood that had already been spilled now hissed into red steam as the remaining atmospheric content shim-mered with the fierce heat from below.

There he is —

Boba Fett spotted the renegade stormtrooper behind a wall of flame and black, coiling smoke. Stunned by the impact of the laser-cannon bolt and the catastrophic sys-tems failure it had triggered, Voss'on't had fallen to his knees and now-empty hands, his head lowered as though to preserve the last flickerings of consciousness inside his oxygen-starved brain.

At the same time, the ship's alarm systems overrode the muting command that Boba Fett had given them. A chorded electronic wail sounded both inside his helmet and through the diminished air, as though the damage suffered by Slave I had given it a shrill, ululating voice, one with which it could keen its own death.

Tendrils of smoke streamed past Boba Fett like elon-gated ghosts as he strode through the flames; the ship's hull had been breached in enough places that the vacuum outside had begun sucking out the remaining oxygen in the cargo hold. The fire from the main engine compart-ments had begun to diminish, but still remained high enough that its bright tongues lapped past Fett's knees.

"Let's go." Boba Fett reached down through a wash of smoke and grabbed Voss'on't underneath one arm. He lifted the stormtrooper up onto his wobbling legs.

Voss'on't's head lolled back, as though the bones had been surgically extracted from his neck. The fire's heat had cauterized his wounded arm, stopping the flow of blood, but a thinner red line trickled from the corner of his mouth. The close impact of the laser-cannon bolt had taken him closer to death than any of Boba Fett's weap-ons could have.

"Go ahead ..." Voss'on't's eyelids were barely able to drag back above his unfocused sight. There was barely enough breath left in his lungs for his voice to be emitted as a dry, forceless whisper. "Finish ... me off..."

"I told you before." The other man was taller than Fett; he had to lift Voss'on't higher and brace him against his chest, then step backward to pull him away from the flames and smoke. "You're too valuable to let die." Boba Fett took one hand away from where he had clutched the torn front of the stormtrooper's insignia-less uniform, and prodded his gloved fingertips up underneath the edge of his own armor's helmet. He took one last, lung-filling inhalation from the helmet's air supply, then tugged and ripped the breathing tube out beneath the helmet's lower edge. The tube extended only a few inches from the helmet; Boba Fett had to bring the stormtrooper's face up close to his own, foreheads separated only by the dark visor, in order the thrust the end of the tube into Voss'on't's mouth.

The minute flow of oxygen from the helmet's air sup-ply triggered an automatic response in Voss'on't. His back arched as his lungs filled reflexively, drawing deep from what little remained in the tiny canister inside the helmet. Voss'on't coughed, expelling the tube.

Fett saw that the stormtrooper still had enough of his wits about him, despite the battering he had taken in the explosions that had ripped through the cargo hold, to clamp his mouth shut and hold in the life-restoring breath he had been given. Bearing Voss'on't up, with one arm wrapped around him, Boba Fett dragged the unre-sisting figure through the smoke and toward the ladder leading up to the cockpit area.

The ladder still stood upright, though it swayed when Boba Fett put a hand upon one of the metal treads. Looking past the threads of smoke sifting toward the hull's air leaks, he could see that one of the upper attach-ment points had been ripped loose by the laser-cannon bolt's impact; the entire bulkhead behind the ladder had buckled nearly in two, as though crumpled in a giant fist.

A screech of tormented metal sounded, barely audible through the dinning layers of system alarms, as Boba Fett mounted the ladder and began the laborious process of carrying the barely conscious stormtrooper toward the cockpit. With Voss'on't's weight balanced precari-ously against himself, each higher tread he stepped upon threatened to break the ladder's single remaining weld with the bulkhead above. If the ladder was to come crashing down, once he and his awkward burden were at the halfway point, the fall would be enough to send both of them plummeting through the broken grating below and into the smoldering pit of the main engine compart-ments. Boba Fett knew he wouldn't be climbing out from there. With that much lethal hard radiation going un-shielded, no one could.

The weld point broke just as Boba Fett reached for the top rung.

For a split second, the ladder swayed clear of the bulk-head, overbalanced by the combined weight of Fett and his hard merchandise. With Voss'on't's chest pressed against one shoulder, Boba Fett bent his knees into a tense crouch. The edge of the hatchway to the cockpit area drew farther away from his upraised hand. Lungs burning, fingers straining clawlike, he pushed his legs straight, leaping for the metal ridge above him.

His fingertips caught hold of the hatchway's curved lower rim. The stormtrooper's weight slipped in the grasp of Boba Fett's other arm; dangling alongside the crumpled bulkhead, he squeezed his hold tighter around Voss'on't's chest, his own fist locked under the edge of the other's shoulder blade, tight enough that he could feel the ends of the stormtrooper's broken ribs grind against one another.

The only device that Boba Fett had left that would be of any use was the wrist-mounted arrow-dart with its trailing, tethered line coiled along his forearm. Right now, that arm was the one holding up Voss'on't; he couldn't do that, and aim and fire the dart. Even with his own carefully trained resources of strength and will, Boba Fett's grip with his other hand upon the open cock-pit hatchway above was beginning to fail, the sharp metal edge scraping slowly, centimeter by centimeter, across the fingertips of his battle armor's glove.

There was no time for further calculation. Boba Fett loosened his grip upon the renegade stormtrooper. Voss'on't's weight slid lower against him as Fett brought his arm vertical and fired the arrow-dart toward the cockpit.

The breath that Voss'on't had managed to hold now escaped in an involuntary gasp of pain as the tip of the dart scored a red line across his shoulder blade and neck. His torso was jerked higher as the trailing line, penetrat-ing the back of his uniform jacket, gathered up the heavy oil-and bloodstained fabric like a sling beneath Voss'on't's arms, dragging him almost a full meter upward. The torn front of his uniform jacket slid across the visor of Fett's helmet.

Boba Fett felt the trailing line of the dart grow taut, indicating that the barbed metal had snagged onto some anchoring point inside the cockpit. The dart's built-in circuitry was programmed to both spread its barbs wider upon target contact and alter its final trajectory into a tight loop, giving the head section of the trailing line the chance to magnetically seize and fasten upon itself.

Using the control studs at the base of his battle ar-mor's glove, Boba Fett hit the arrow-dart's retract func-tion. The line reaching up into the cockpit went even tighter, as though strung from the ends of a primitive bow weapon. Boba Fett had to grip the line with his up-raised hand and strain his bicep muscles against its ten-sion to keep his own weight and that of Voss'on't's body from pulling his arm out of its socket.

The miniaturized traction engine embedded in the sleeve of Fett's armor had been designed only to handle one humanoid-sized burden, not two; he could sense a warning glow of heat against the flesh of his forearm as the dart's trailing line reeled back, drawing him and Voss'on't slowly up toward the open hatchway. The lad-der fell away from his boot soles, its length clattering against two angles of bulkhead, then falling to the grated floor of the cargo hold. A swirl of red sparks burst up as the ladder slipped through one of the jagged openings and tumbled farther into the ship's bowels.

A tendril of grey smoke, lighter than the dark, oily clouds from the fire in the main engine compartments, leaked from a tear in Boba Fett's sleeve. The heat against his skin increased to a white-hot burn as the retracting line brought him inches away from the metal ridge above him. With nothing to push against from below, Fett had to wait until the line had dragged him high enough to throw one elbow across the rim of the hatchway, then lever himself into position for pushing Voss'on't up onto the floor of the cockpit area.

Voss'on't came to, at least enough to realize what Boba Fett was trying to accomplish. The stormtrooper's fingertips reached out and scrabbled a hold on to the cockpit flooring; with a kicking thrust, he managed to drag himself up and out of Fett's supporting grasp.

With both arms free now, Boba Fett threw his other elbow across the hatchway's lower rim and tensed to pull himself the rest of the way up.

"Hey ... thanks ..."

Fett heard the grating, smoke-harshened voice and looked up into Voss'on't's grinning face. The stormtrooper had rolled over and gotten himself into a sitting position, his one good arm braced behind himself, knees drawn up toward his chest. The narrowed eyes and an-gles features wore a black mask of sweat-streaked ash and oil; his leering smile broke through as though cut with a diagonal swipe of a vibroblade.

"Thanks," repeated Voss'on't. The cockpit's air filters had cleared away enough smoke for the ex-stormtrooper to draw in a full breath. "I appreciate it. Now you can go die."

One boot shot out, its sole catching Boba Fett directly in the visor of his helmet. The kick had enough force to knock him back from where he had clambered onto the lower rim of the hatchway; only the line tethered from his wrist into the cockpit behind Voss'on't kept Fett from falling back down toward the cargo hold.

Boba Fett managed to grab the rim of the hatchway with one hand. He looked up and saw that Voss'on't had gotten to his feet, and now stood gazing down at him. In one hand, Voss'on't held a sharp fragment of metal, part of the debris that the laser-cannon bolts had scattered through the cargo hold. His ugly smile growing wider, Voss'on't held the edge of the shard against the line run ning past him, from Fett's wrist to its anchor inside the cockpit.

"This time," said Voss'on't, sneering, "it's really good-bye. For you, at least." As he pressed the cutting edge of the metal fragment harder against the line, he raised one booted foot and prepared to smash it down upon Boba Fett's hand.

Before the boot came down, Voss'on't was thrown off balance by the tethered line going suddenly slack. Press-ing the miniature control studs at the base of his wrist, Boba Fett let the arrow-dart's line reel out, until it had lengthened by several meters. That was enough for him to cock his free arm back and snap it forward again. The tethered line looped lassolike and snagged around Voss'on't's neck. Fett hit the wrist-mounted control studs again, retracting the line once more, into a choking gar-rote around the other man's throat.

Voss'on't staggered backward, fingertips clawing at the line digging under his throat. The pull from the taut line enabled Boba Fett to climb up into the hatchway.

With his eyes squeezed shut in pain, Voss'on't didn't see the blow from Boba Fett's gloved fist that sent the stormtrooper sprawling onto his back, head slamming against the base of the pilot's chair. Boba Fett reached over with his other hand and snapped the arrow-dart line free from his own wrist, pushed the dazed Voss'on't over, and used the loose end of the line to bind Voss'on't's hands together with a hard knot. He pulled the rest of the line down to Voss'on't's ankles and bound them the same way. Then he picked Voss'on't up by the front of his jacket, hoisted the stormtrooper to eye level, and threw him into the far corner of the cockpit.

"Seal off the cockpit area," Boba Fett spoke aloud. He was already leaning over the control panel as Slave I's onboard computer executed the command; with a hiss, the hatchway door closed behind him. With a few quick jabs at the controls, he silenced the alarm signals once again.

The silence was broken by Fett's own deep, ragged breathing as his lungs refilled themselves from the cock-pit's reserves of oxygen. Those were enough to bring Voss'on't back to full consciousness as well.

"Now... now what..." Hands tied behind himself, Voss'on't lay on one shoulder and labored to speak.

"Are you ... going to do ..."

Fett ignored him for a moment. With a few adjust-ments from the still-functioning navigational rockets, he had brought Slave I around to where he could at last see the other ship that had fired upon them. Even from this distance, where the visible details of his enemy were little more distinct than the stars behind it, he could recognize the vessel whose laser cannons had brought his own to the brink of destruction.

He knew as well whose vessel it was, and who had given the orders to fire.

It's Xizor. Another adjustment to the controls brought the viewport's optical magnification into the circuit. The outlines of the Falleen prince's flagship were unmistak-able—and intimidating. The ship was known to be one of the deadliest and most thoroughly armored in the galaxy, the equivalent of anything matching its gross tonnage in Emperor Palpatine's war fleet. If Slave I had gotten into a full-pitched battle with it, there wouldn't even have been this much of Boba Fett's ship left hanging together.

The mystery of why the Vendetta hadn't moved in for the kill was easy enough to determine. He's holding back, decided Fett. Just waiting to see if there's any sign of life. Prince Xizor was known to be something of a tro-phy collector; it would be entirely consistent for him to want the hard physical evidence—the corpses—of those he had set out to kill rather than just blowing them into disconnected atoms drifting in space.

The greater mystery was why Xizor had lain in wait and fired upon Slave I in the first place. Fett had been aware of no connection between Xizor and this high-stakes job of rounding up the renegade stormtrooper for which Palpatine had posted such an astronomical price.

But there had to be some link—it was too much to be-lieve that it was mere coincidence or just random malice on Xizor's part. The Falleen prince's mind was too coldly rational—similar to Boba Fett's own in that manner— for anything like that to be the case.

Boba Fett lowered his gaze from the viewport and be-gan punching in new commands on the control panel.

"What..." Voss'on't's voice was a harsh croak. "Tell me..."

There was neither time nor need to explain to the mer-chandise lying on the floor of the cockpit. "I'm doing," said Boba Fett, "the same thing I've been doing all along. Saving both our lives—whether you like it or not."

With a final jab of his forefinger, he hit the button to fire up the one main engine that was still functioning. Slave I shuddered, its hull threatened to tear loose from the battered structural frame beneath, as the engine's convulsive thrust blurred the stars in the viewport.