The Mandalorian Armor

18

She watched him at work. Or getting ready for work. His kind of work, though Neelah. That was what was indicated by the weapons, all the various mechanisms of reducing the galaxy's inhabitants to scattered pieces of bleeding or charred tissue. Boba Fett had returned from the land of the dead, from its gray portal in which he'd slept, and was ready to fill his hands again with death.

"Which one's that?" Neelah pointed to the brutally efficient-looking object, all matte-black metal and embedded electronics, in Boba Fett's grasp. An empty lens at the rear of the weapon's metal glittered in a curve of crosshaired glass. "What does it do?"

"Rocket launcher." Boba Fett didn't look up from his painstaking labors. With a tool as delicate as a humanoid hair, improvised from one of the medical droids' IV syringes, he scraped a dried mucuslike substance, a remnant of the weapon's time in the Sarlacc's gut, out of its intricate circuits. "And what it does, if you know how to work it, is kill a lot of creatures. At once. At a nice long distance away."

"Thanks." She felt one corner of her mouth twisting in an expression that would have been ugly if there had been an audience for it. "But I could figure that much out. Don't think you have to patronize me. I was just trying to pass a little time with something like conversation. But I guess that's not within your range of skills."

He made no answer. The motions of the wire-stiff tool and its sharpened point were reflected in the visor of his helmet as he continued working.

The warhead of the rocket launcher's missile appeared in Neelah's memory as well. She had seen it before, the tapered point rising above Fett's shoulder, on a trajectory parallel to his spine. Now, from where it lay on top of the bounty hunter's crossed legs, it seemed to be aimed at a dusty outcropping of the Dune Sea's fundamental rocks. The oppressive suns glazed the landscape with dry, shimmering heat, still visible in reversed colors when Neelah closed her eyes. Even in the shade of a sloping entrance to Boba Fett's underground cache, the hard radiation of the desert light cracked her dehydrated lips and baked her lungs with each fiery breath.

"You should drink more fluids." The blurry shape of the taller medical droid rolled up in front of her. "To replace the ones constantly being extracted from your body." A jointed appendage held out a canister of water, part of the life-support supplies that Boba Fett had hidden here sometime after starting his short-lived employment with Jabba the Hutt, who hadn't lasted much longer than the job. "The results, physiologically speaking, could be severe otherwise."

Neelah took the container from SHS1-B and drained it in one long swallow, head tossed back and thin rivulets leaking down both sides of her throat. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set the can down in the gravel next to where she sat. SHS1-B trundled over to another part of the shade cast by the overhanging jut of rock, where it consulted with its shorter, less articulate colleague. Another canister stood slowly evaporating next to Boba Fett; he hadn't touched it since it had been brought out to him. Redonning his armor, a set that had been kept under a coded autodestruct lock to foil any thieves who might have stumbled upon their hiding place, had transformed him, from a raw-skinned in valid to the imposing specialist in death that he had been before falling down the Sarlacc's throat. Sealing the restored helmet's edge to the uniform's collar had completed the apotheosis he didn't drink the water, Neelah realized, because he had become a self-contained unit, sealed against the frailties of mortal creatures. Or at least, that was the impression he tried to give. She leaned back against the mouth of the cave; the rock's residual heat spread across her shoulder blades. The day was dead time, a matter of waiting until Dengar returned from Mos Eisley. When he made it back here-if he did, she reminded herself; she knew enough of the spaceport's notorious reputation to be aware that anything could happen in its various dives and back alleys-then further plans would be finalized among the three of them. All depending, of course, upon what Dengar managed to find out and arrange with his various contacts.

Boba Fett, at least, had something to keep himself busy while the rocks' doubled shadows slid farther across the sands. After they had escaped from the bombingshattered remnants of Dengar's subterranean hiding place, and the regenerated Sarlacc that had wound its tendrils through the broken stone, only a single night had been spent in the chill open, their bodies huddled against each other to keep from freezing. Even if there had been the means to build a fire, they wouldn't have dared, for fear of attracting the attention of some nocturnal Tusken raiding party, crossing the Dune Sea on bantha mounts, the beasts sniffing out pathways invisible even to daylit eyes. When the morning had finally come, breaking violet across the distant mountains ringing the desert, Boba Fett seemed the strongest of the three humans, as though in the dark he had absorbed some precious segment of the others' dwindling energies. He had led the way, stumbling at first, but then with greater sureness as the landmarks had grown more recognizable. Like the other mercenaries and hard types that had worked for the late Jabba-or at least the smart ones, smart enough not to trust the wily Hutt-Boba Fett had maintained a stash of crucial supplies in the wilderness beyond the squat, iron-doored palace. With that many schemers and back-stabbers all in one place, including Jabba himself, it had always been a possibility, if not a probability, that sooner or later any of the henchmen would find himself on the run, scrabbling for survival. The tools that Fett had hidden away-weapons, replacement armor, comm gear-went a long way to ensure that his surviving would be bought at the price of any pursuers' death.

The bounty hunter's parsimonious streak, though, was apparent to Neelah as she sat in the cache's opening-it had been hollowed out of a sheer rock face, then camouflaged-and watched Boba Fett reassembling himself, piece by piece. None of the weapons or components of his battle armor that had been damaged by the Sarlacc's digestive secretions was discarded until Fett had examined and judged it beyond repair. He had already salvaged most of the personal armaments with which Neelah had seen him equipped back at Jabba's palace; a small blaster pistol had been reduced in the Sarlacc's gut to a fused lump of metal, and the propulsive charges for some of the larger ammunition had leaked away, rendering the shells useless. Those were replaced with exact duplicates from the sealed containers that Fett had dragged out from the cache's deep interior.

Like watching a droid, thought Neelah, not for the first time. Or some piece of Imperial battle machinery, capable of making repairs to itself. She had wrapped her arms around her knees and continued to watch as the human elements of Boba Fett had been progressively submerged and hidden beneath the layers of armor and weaponry, the hard mechanicals seemingly replacing the soft, wounded tissue beneath. The narrow visor of his restored helmet took away the last vestiges of humanity, the gaze of eyes like any other man's, caught in acid-ravaged flesh, its fevered blood seeping through the pores. ...

"He's pushing himself past all therapeutic limits." SHS1-B's high-pitched voice fussed from a place just outside Neelah's awareness. "Both le-XE and I have tried communicating with him, in an effort to make him aware of the necessity for rest. Otherwise, the potential for a serious physiological relapse will escalate to a lifethreatening status." Neelah glanced over at the medical droid that had trundled up next to her. "Really?" The ends of the droid's jointed appendages clicked against each other, as though imitating a nervous reaction of living creatures.

"That's what you're all in a stew about?"

"Of course." SHSl-B turned the lenses of its di agnostician optics toward her. "That is our programmed function. If there was some way to initiate a change in our basic design, even by means of a complete memory wipe, you can be assured that le-XE and I would immediately submit to it, no matter now disorienting it might be. Patching up and mending supposedly sentient creatures, who continually insist upon placing themselves in dangerous situations, is a tiresome and never-ending occupation."

"Eternity," chimed in le-XE. The other droid had rolled up behind its companion. "Fatigue."

"Concisely put." SHSl-B'shead unit gave a nod. "I expect we will be applying sterile bandages and administering anesthetics until the teeth of our gears are worn to nubs."

"Deal with it," said Neelah. "As for our Boba Fett"-she tilted her head toward the bounty hunter, still working at cleaning the rocket launcher's innards-"I wouldn't worry about him. You took care of what was needed at the time. But now…" Her nod was one of reluctant but genuine admiration. "Now he's way beyond all your medicine."

"That is a diagnosis to which it is difficult to give credence." The medical droid's tone turned huffy. "The individual being discussed is made of flesh and bone like other creatures-"

"Is he?" Neelah knew that was true, even though, when she looked at Boba Fett, she couldn't help but wonder.

"Of course he is," replied the nettled SHS1-B. "And as such, there are limits to his endurance and capabilities."

"That's where you're wrong." Neelah leaned back against the stone of the cache's entrance. She hoped it wouldn't be too much longer before Dengar returned. For a lot of reasons. If the parties responsible for the bombing raid decided to come back and do a more thorough job on their targets, she was sure Boba Fett would survive, but her own chances would be considerably fewer. Fett had plans for getting her and Dengar, as well as himself, off Tatooine and out to interstellar space, where they would be safe for at least a little while. And long enough to set further plans into motion. The only obstacle lay in getting the comm equipment that Fett needed. He couldn't go into Mos Eisley to buy or steal it, not without raising a general alert that he was still alive; that was why Dengar had gone into the spaceport instead. But if he screws up, thought Neelah, then what? She and Fett would still be stuck out here, waiting not for Dengar, but for whatever the next attempt to elimi nate them would be.

In the meantime the medical droid persisted in its arguments. "How could I be wrong? I have been extensively programmed in the nature of humanoid physiology-"

"Then you're a slow learner." Neelah closed her eyes and tilted her head back against a pillow of rock. "When you're dealing with someone like Boba Fett, it's not the human parts that make the difference. It's the other parts."

The droid fell mercifully silent. It either knew when it was defeated or when further discussion was pointless. He left the swoop bike in the dry, dusty hills outside Mos Eisley, then walked the rest of the way into the spaceport. Dengar figured he'd draw less attention to himself that way. And right now creatures noticing him-the wrong creatures, at least-was the last thing he wanted.

Before heading in, along one of the old foot trails that led to Mos Eisley's back alleys, Dengar uprooted some dead scruff brush and hastily camouflaged the swoop with it. The stripped-down, one-person repulsorlift vehicle belonged to somebody else. Or used to-Big Gizz, the leader of one of Tatooine's toughest swoop gangs, had crashed and burned on this machine. Gizz had been hard and mean enough to have been one of Jabba the Hutt's most valuable employees, but that hadn't been enough to keep his leathery hide intact; creatures who worked for Jabba just naturally seemed to end up with short life expec tancies. If the work itself didn't wind up getting them killed, then their own violent natures brought about their fates. Dengar had never thought that the pay scale that Jabba offered was worth the risk. Big Gizz had been luckier than most; there had been enough of him left to scrape up and patch back together. Whatever he was up to these days, he had presumably gotten himself some new transportation to do it with.

The squat, indifferently maintained shapes of Mos Eisley came slowly into view as Dengar worked his way down the last, loose-graveled hillside. His on-foot progress wasn't much slower than the swoop had been, crossing the Dune Sea from where he had left Neelah and Boba Fett. The swoop had been unusable wreckage when Dengar had first found it, the bent and scattered pieces testifying to the way in which Big Gizz had ended that particular run. Dengar had pieced the vehicle back together, even buying and grafting on the bits of the repulsor-engine circuitry that were too burned out to be made functional again, then stashed it away near his main hiding place in the desert. A bounty hunter's life was one in which a working form of transport, no matter how banged up and slow, could be the difference between cashing in on valuable merchandise or winding up as bones being pecked at by the Dune Sea's scavengers. Tatooine's twin suns were smearing the sky dusky orange as Dengar approached the spaceport's ragged perimeter. Digging the swoop out from the bombing raid's aftermath, the tumbled rocks and displaced sand dunes, had taken a little while longer than he'd expected it to; the swoop had been buried nearly two meters deep, and he found it only because he'd had the foresight to tag it with a short-distance location beacon. Just my luck, he had thought sourly, when he'd finally managed to drag the swoop to the surface and start it up. The forward stabilizer blades had been bent almost double by the largest boulder that had crashed onto the minimal vehicle; any movement speedier than a relative crawl sent a spine-jarring shudder through the frame, quickly es calating to a rolling spin that would have crashed him to the ground if he hadn't backed off the throttle. The swoop's damaged condition had necessitated a more circuitous route across the Dune Sea wastes than he would have taken otherwise; he might have been able to outrun a Tusken Raider's bantha mount, but not a shot from one of their ancient but effective rifles.

"Looking for anything…special?" A hood-shrouded figure, with a distinctive crescent-shaped proboscis, sidled up to Dengar as soon as he'd made his way between the first of the low, featureless buildings. "There are creatures in this district…who can accommodate . .

. all interests."

"Yeah, I bet." Dengar brushed past the meddlesome creature. "Look, just take a hike, why don't you? I know my way around."

"My apologies." The hem of the creature's roughcloth robe swept across the alley dust as it made a small bow. "I mistakenly thought…that you were a ... newcomer here."

Dengar kept walking, quickening his strides. That had been an unfortunate encounter; he had been hoping to make it to the cantina at the center of Mos Eisley without being noticed. The spaceport abounded with snitches and informers, creatures who made a living selling out others either to the Empire's security forces or to whichever criminals and assorted marginal dealers might have a financial interest in someone else's comings and goings. That was what had always made Mos Eisley, an otherwise dilapidated port on a backwater planet, one of the galaxy's prime hangouts for those practicing the bountyhunter trade. If you stuck around long enough, you eventually heard something that could be turned to profit. The downside, as Dengar was well aware, was that it was hard to keep one's business a secret around here. A couple of whispers in the right ear holes, and you wound up becoming someone else's merchandise. Right now he wasn't aware of anyone looking for him; he wasn't that important. Though that might change all too rapidly, when word got out of his being hooked up with Boba Fett. An alliance with the galaxy's top bounty hunter brought a lot of less-than-desirable baggage with it other creatures' schemes and grudges, all of which they might figure could be advanced by either going through or eliminating anyone as close to Fett as Dengar had become. The bombing raid had proved that Boba Fett had some determined enemies. If those parties found out that a minor-rank bounty hunter had made himself useful to the object of their furious wrath, they might eliminate the individual in question just on general principle.

Those and other disquieting speculations scurried around inside Dengar's skull as he made his way through Mos Eisley's less pleasant-and less frequented-byways. A pack of sleek, glittering-eyed garbage rats scurried at his approach, diving into their warrens among the alley's noisome strata of decaying rubbish, then chattering shrill abuse and brandishing their primitive, sharp-edged digging tools at his back. The rats, at least, wouldn't report his presence in the spaceport to anyone; they kept to themselves for the most part, with a supercilious atti tude toward larger creatures' affairs.

Dengar halted his steps, in order to peer around a corner. From this point, he had a clear view of Mos Eisley's central open space. He saw nothing more ominous than a couple of Imperial stormtroopers on low-level security patrol, prodding the muzzles of their blaster rifles through an incensed Jawa's merchandise bales. Bits of salvaged droids-disconnected limbs and head units with optical sensors still blinking and vocal units moaning from the shock of disconnected circuits-bounced out of the cart and clattered on the ground as the Jawa shook its fist, hidden in the bulky sleeve of its robe, and yammered its grievances against the white-helmeted figures.

No one crossing or idling in the plaza regarded the confrontation with more than mild curiosity, except for a pair of empty-saddled dewbacks tethered nearby; they grizzled and snarled, drawing away from the noisy Jawa with instinctive aversion. The stormtroopers caused no concern for Dengar, either. He was more worried about those who might be on the other side of the law, the various scoundrels and sharpies who would be more likely to have heard the latest scuttlebutt and be looking to profit from it.

Dengar drew his head back from the building's corner. There was a fine line between being too paranoid and being just paranoid enough. Too paranoid slowed you down, but not enough got you killed. He'd already decided to err, if necessary, on the side of caution.

Keeping close to the building's crumbling white walls, Dengar found the rear entrance to the cantina. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he slid into the familiar darkness and threaded his way among the establishment's patrons. A few eyes and other sensory organs turned in his direction, then swung back to discreetly murmured business conversations.

He rested both elbows on the bar. "I'm looking for Codeq Santhananan. He been in lately?"

The same ugly bartender, familiar from all of Dengar's previous visits, shook his head. "That barve got drilled a coupla months ago. Right outside the door. I had a pair of rehab droids scrubbing the burn mark for two whole standard time periods, and it still didn't come out." The bartender remembered Dengar's usual, a tall water-and-isothane, heavy on the water, and set it down in front of him. The scars on the bartender's face shifted formation as one eye narrowed, peering at Dengar.

"He owe you credits?"

Dengar let himself take a sip; he had gotten seri ously dehydrated, riding the damaged swoop across the Dune Sea. "He might."

"Well, he owed me," growled the bartender. "I don't appreciate it when my customers get themselves killed and I'm the one that gets stiffed." He furiously swabbed out a glass with a stained towel. "Creatures in these parts oughta think of somebody besides themselves for a change."

Listening to the bartender's complaints wasn't accomplishing anything. Dengar drained half the glass and pushed it away. "Put it on my tab." He worked his way into the shadow-filled center of the cantina's space, gazing around as best he could without making direct eye contact with anyone. Some of the more hot-tempered cantina habitues were known to take violent offense over such indiscretions; even if he didn't wind up being the one laid out on the damp floor, Dengar didn't want to draw that kind of attention to himself.

"Excuse the lamentable discourtesy"-a hand with bifurcate talons tugged at Dengar's sleeve-"but I couldn't help overhearing …."

Glancing to his side, Dengar found himself looking into the black bead eyes, no more than a couple of centimeters in diameter, of a Q'nithian aer-opteryx. One of the beads swelled larger as the creature's other set of claws held a magnifying lens on a jeweled handle in front of it. Dengar had been expecting something like this; one's business didn't stay secret for very long in the cantina, if spoken in anything louder than a whisper.

"Let's go over to one of the booths," said Dengar. Those were far enough away from the cantina's crowded main area for a measure of privacy. "Come on." The Q'nithian flopped after him on the flattened tips of its shabby gray wings, useless for any kind of flight. It struggled into the seat on the booth's opposite side, then settled down as though wrapped in a feathered cloak.

"I heard you mention poor Santhananan's name." The taloned hand protruded from under the wings so that the Q'nithian could scratch itself with the magnifying-lens handle. "He met a sad demise, I'm afraid."

"Yeah, I'm sure it was tragic." Dengar set his arms on the table and leaned forward. He wanted to wrap up his errand here before the bartender had a chance to pressure him into settling his account. "What I want to know is, did anybody pick up on his business?"

The lens shifted to the other beady eye. "The late Santhananan had various enterprises." The Q'nithian's voice was a grating squawk. "A creature of many interests, some of them even legal. To which of them do you refer?"

"Keep it down. You know what I'm talking about." Dengar glanced across t he cantina, then turned back to the Q'nithian. "The message service he used to run. That's what I'm interested in."

"Ah." The Q'nithian made a few thoughtful clacking noises with its rudimentary beak. "What great good fortune for you. It just so happens that that is an enterprise…over which I now exercise control." Great good fortune-that was one way of putting it. Dengar wondered for a moment just how the late Santhananan had met his end, and how much this Q'nithian had had to do with it. But that was none of his business.

"Whatever communication you require," continued the Q'nithian, words and voice all mild bland-ness, "I think I can assist you with it."

"I bet you can." Dengar looked hard into the magnifiying lens and the mercenary intelligence behind it. "Here's the deal. I need to send a hyperspace messenger pod-"

"Really?" The feathers above one beady eye rose in apparent surprise. "That's an expensive proposition. I'm not saying it can't be done. Just that-since I haven't done business with you before-it would have to be done on a strictly credits-up-front basis."

Dengar reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small pouch. He loosened its drawstring and poured the contents out on the table. "Will that do?" Even without the magnifying lens, the Q'nithian's eyes grew larger. "I think"-the bifurcate talons reached out for the little hoard of hard credits-"we may be in business here. ..."

"Not so fast," Dengar grabbed the other creature's thin, light-boned wrist and pinned it to the tabletop.

"You get half now, half when I hear that the message reached its destination."

"Very well." The Q'nithian watched as Dengar divided the credits into two piles, one of which went back into the pouch, and then inside Dengar's jacket again. "That's a regrettably standard arrangement. But I can live with it." The talons picked up the rest of the credits and drew it someplace under the cloak-like wings. "So-what's the message you want to send?"

Dengar hesitated. He'd known how far he could trust Codeq Santhananan-he'd dealt with him before-but this Q'nithian was an unknown quantity. Still…right now there was no alternative. And if the Q'nithian wanted the other half of the payment for his services, there was a limit to any double-dealing he might be contemplating.

"All right." Dengar leaned even farther across the table, until he could see himself reflected in the Q'nithian's darkly shining eyes. "Just four words."

"Which are?"

" 'Boba Fett,' " said Dengar, " 'is alive.' " Both of the Q'nithian's feathered brows rose. "That's the message? That's it?" The wings lifted and fell in a rudimentary shrug. "Seems to me…that you're spending an awful lot of credits ... on some odd kind of hoax." The Q'nithian studied Den-gar through the lens.

"Not that anyone is going to believe it, anyway. Everybody knows…that Boba Fett got eaten by the Sarlacc. Some of Jabba the Hutt's ex-employees…came right here into the cantina…and told all about it."

"Good for them. I hope somebody bought 'em a drink."

"You appear to be ... a serious person. And you're paying…serious credits." The eye behind the magnifying lens blinked. "Are you telling me…that the renowned Boba Fett is alive?"

"That's none of your business," said Dengar. "I'm just paying you to get the message to where it needs to go."

"As you wish," replied the Q'nithian. "And just where is that?"

"The planet Kuat. I want Kuat of Kuat to receive it."

"Well, well." The Q'nithian's feathers rustled as he shifted position on the seat opposite Dengar. "Now, that is interesting. What makes you think a creature as important as the CEO of Kuat Drive Yards…would be interested ... in hearing something like that? Whether it's true or not."

"I told you already." Dengar spoke between gritted teeth. He was about ready to reach over and crush the magnifying lens in his fist. "That's not your business."

"Ah. But I think ... it is." The beak opened in a crude simulation of a humanoid smile. "We are something like partners now…you and I. If Boba Fett is alive…there are others who would be interested in knowing that…rather intriguing fact."

Dengar glared at the Q'nithian. "When Santhananan ran this business, he knew that his customers weren't just buying a message being transmitted. They were also buying him keeping his mouth shut."

"You're not dealing…with Santhananan now." The bright gaze behind the magnifying lens was unperturbed.

"You're dealing with me. And my backers; I'm not a completely independent agent the way Santhananan was . .

. but then, that may be why he's dead and I'm not. Let's just say…that I have certain additional expenses .

. . that I need to cover." The tip of the lens pointed toward Dengar. "For which you should be grateful."

"Yeah, I'm grateful, all right." Dengar shook his head in disgust. That was the problem with doing business in Mos Eisley; there were always payoffs that had to be made, bribes in either the form of credits or information. And disregarding what he was holding back for the on-delivery payment for the message, he was effectively tapped out of credits. That left only one thing to barter. "You want to know why Kuat would be interested? I'll tell you. It's because he just made one hell of an effort to make sure that Boba Fett was dead. Did word of that bombing raid out on the Dune Sea reach here?"

"Of course it did," said the Q'nithian. "The seismic shocks had structural beams cracking ... all over Mos Eisley. Really-the Imperial Navy cannot engage in a routine practice operation such as that…and not have sentient creatures notice it."

"It wasn't the Imperial Navy. It was a private operation."

"Oh? And what proof do you have of that?" Dengar reached inside his jacket, past the drawstring pouch with the rest of the credits and to the larger, heavier object he'd found when digging up the damaged swoop. Back there, he'd brushed the sand off the device, a dully gleaming sphere that had filled his hand with its weight and potentiality, and had read the words and serial numbers incised upon its thick, armored shell. Reading those words, and realizing what they meant, had changed all his plans in an instant; they were why he was here in the Mos Eisley cantina, talking to a message expediter like this Q'nithian. That hadn't been part of Boba Fett's plans for this little errand into the spaceport. Dengar was operating on his own now. He handed the sphere, with its two off-enter cy lindrical protrusions, to the Q'nithian. "Take a look." The sphere was cradled in the taloned hand before the Q'nithian realized what it was. He almost dropped it, then his twin claws gripped it desperately tighter and kept it from bouncing on the tabletop. A dismayed, wordless squawk sounded from deep within the featherwrapped body as he thrust it back toward Dengar.

"What's the matter?" Dengar let his own smile turn cruel, savoring the other creature's discomfiture.

"Something frighten you?"

"Are you mad?" The Q'nithian gaped at him without benefit of the magnifying lens. "Do you know what this is?"

"Sure," answered Dengar easily. "It's an atmospheric phase-change detonator for an Imperial-class M-12 sweep bomb. If it's the same as the others I've come across, it'd be set to ignite an attached charge at a perceived twenty-millibar differential." His smile widened. "Good thing it's not hooked up to one, huh?"

"You idiot!" The sphere trembled in the Q'nithian's talons. "There's still enough explosive in this fuse to take out half of Mos Eisley!"

"Relax." Dengar took the sphere back from the Q'nithian. "It's cold. Safely inert. Look-" He turned the object so a thumbnail-sized data readout showed. "Do you see those three illuminated red LEDs?"

The Q'nithian shook his head. "No." He raised the magnifying lens and peered closer. "I don't see any lights at all."

"Exactly." Dengar set the sphere down between them.

"This one's a dud. These particular detonation devices have a failure rate in the field approaching almost ten percent. That's why the Imperial Navy doesn't use them anymore; they've upgraded to a more reliable gravity-wave system that's integrated into the main explosive's casing. It's not removable like this thing. That should've been your first clue that it wasn't the Empire doing a practice bombing run out there in the desert."

"Hmm." The Q'nithian's ruffled feathers smoothed back down. "You seem to possess ... an unusual degree of expertise in these matters."

"I've worked at other things besides bounty hunting."

"I admire your versatility," said the Q'nithian.

"That's a useful trait in a sentient creature." He gin gerly prodded the sphere with the tip of the magnifying lens. "I'll grant you…for the sake of your exposition…that this is not an Imperial device. But I fail to see the connection between it and Kuat of Kuat."

"Check it out." Dengar held the sphere up to the lens. "Serial numbers. All these devices were manu factured at one armory subcontractor, which has ties to the Kuat Drive Yards engineering facilities on the planet Kuat. The devices were numbered sequentiall y, in production runs of a quarter million. All the ones numbered below the twelve-million mark were reserved for KDY's own use, for designing and testing the munitions storage chambers aboard the heavy cruisers and destroyers that were being built for the Imperial fleet." Dengar tapped the tiny incised number with his fingertip. "This is one of those devices. Obviously, KDY decided there would be a use someday for some major bombing action-the company didn't get to be the leading shipbuilder for the Empire by just underbidding its competition, you know. So it held some bombs and fuses back, after f all the testing on the Imperial ships was finished. If this one had gone off like the others, nobody would have known who had made that bombing run out on the Dune Sea."

"Interesting." The Q'nithian's beady gaze flicked from the sphere to Dengar's face. "Perhaps there is reason to believe that Kuat of Kuat wishes Boba Fett dead-if Fett is alive at all. But that leaves many other questions unanswered."

"They'll have to remain unasked, too. For the time being." Dengar leaned back on his side of the booth, tucking the metal sphere back inside his jacket. "I don't have time to give you a full rundown on everything that's happened out there. Some things you're just going to have to take on trust,"

"Trust?" The gray feathers rose again in a shrug.

"That ... is a variable commodity, my friend. Like so many other things. And it has its price."

"Which I've already paid," said Dengar. "With more to come into your pocket. If everything goes as planned. You can puzzle over the answers to your unasked questions later, if you'd rather do that than count your credits."

"Counting my credits," said the Q'nithian, "is a favorite avocation of mine. But there's one question that I still must ask now. You wish to inform the rich and powerful Kuat of Kuat that, despite all his efforts to the contrary, Boba Fett yet lives. When Kuat comes and finds you, as he undoubtedly will…and as I presume is your intention that he should…then what?" Dengar remained silent. That's a good question, he thought to himself. One that he'd been working on during the whole long ride from the Dune Sea into Mos Eisley. A dangerous question as well, since he was now sneaking around behind the back of one of the deadliest individuals in the galaxy. If Boba Fett were to find out that he was being two-timed-which was what contacting Kuat of Kuat amounted to-then Dengar's life wasn't worth the smallest coin in the pouch inside his jacket. Still, mused Dengar, I've got to look out for myself. If not for his own sake, then for that of Manaroo as well; he was still betrothed to her. His decision to send her away, to keep her at a safe distance from this unsavory business into which he had fallen, was something that still produced mixed feelings in his heart. Dengar missed her terribly, as though a living part of himself had been excised without the benefit of anesthesia, a wound that could never heal. But I had to do it, Dengar told himself again. Getting involved with the fate of Boba Fett in any way was too dangerous-and the life expectancy of those who had put their trust in him was on the short side. Fett's offer of a partnership between the two of them still worried Dengar. Now that Boba Fett had just about recovered completely from his time in the Sarlacc's gutand had gotten nearly all of his old strength and skills back-how long would he have any use for another bounty hunter cutting in on his action? He's always been a lone operator-the suspicion that that hadn't changed for Boba Fett was sharp and nettlesome in Dengar's mind. Fett could be playing him for a fool, the way he had done to others; a lot of those had survived only long enough to regret trusting a barve like that, and then they'd been the merchandise that Boba Fett dealt in. Or ashes, or even less.

None of those were fates that Dengar wanted for himself. So it's all a matter, he told himself again, of who sells out the other first. And as a purchaser, somebody as rich and powerful as Kuat of Kuat had some definite advantages. Not only in terms of the price that could be paid, but also in the protection he could give. It had only been a fluke that the bombing raid hadn't reduced Boba Fett to dust and disconnected atoms; the next effort that Kuat made would be even more severe. I could get the credits, though Dengar, and there would be nothing that Boba Fett could do about it. Because he'd be dead.

The shining bead eyes of the Q'nithian seemed to have read his thoughts. "It's a dangerous game you're playing," the Q'nithian remarked.

"I know that." Dengar slowly nodded his head. "But it's the only one I've got."

There were a few more details to settle, and he and the Q'nithian took care of them. Dengar knew that Boba Fett was planning on getting off Tatooine; that would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Kuat of Kuat to get back in touch with the sender of the message about Fett's still being alive. So the Q'nithian would also act as the contact point; that meant he would also get a cut of whatever payment Kuat made for the necessary information of Boba Fett's whereabouts.

"So when will you be sending off the messenger pod?" Dengar worked at securing the fastenings of his gear. Even from inside the windowless cantina, he knew that night had settled in on the Dune Sea. It would be a long cold journey on the exposed saddle of the swoop to get back to where he had left Boba Fett and the girl Neelah.

"The sooner you send it, the better."

"Don't worry," soothed the Q'nithian. He folded his bifurcate talons on top of each other, with the magnifying lens laid flat on the table. "It will be on its way to Kuat, both the planet and the man himself, within a matter of hours."

"Great." Dengar slid out from the booth. "I'll be checking to make sure that it gets there." He stopped inside the same arched doorway by which he had entered the cantina. The place was packed now; it had taken some effort to squeeze his way among the various off-planet anatomies that frequented this dive. At the side of the cantina's central area, the jizz-wailer band had set up on the little stage they always used; their clattering, wailing racket had already added another layer of noise above the mingled conversations. Nobody ever actually listened to the music, but it provided a useful acoustic cover for the various business dealings that the cantina's patrons wished to keep private. Dengar moved up the short flight of steps that led to the street level outside. From the doorway's arch, he could see across the heads of the crowd, all the way back to the booth where he had left the Q'nithian. Even if he hadn't been in shadow, the Q'nithian's weak eyesight would have ruled out his being spotted as he watched and waited. Several minutes passed, and he didn't see the Q'nithian get up from the booth, and none of the other creatures in the cantina joined him there, either. Dengar figured that was a good sign; if the Q'nithian was going to sell him out, stab him in the back by passing on the information about Boba Fett to some other interested party in the cantina, the creature would have done so immediately. That way, some bunch of thugs could have jumped him before he'd had a chance to get out of Mos Eisley, then painfully extracted the other bounty hunter's location from him.

He was jostled a few times by other creatures entering the cantina before he finally decided that the Q'nithian was staying on the up-and-up with him-or at least as much as he could reasonably expect from one of Mos Eisley's shadier denizens. Dengar turned and headed up the rest of the steps. A few seconds later he was threading his way through the spaceport's dark alleys. He had one more errand to take care of-the one on which Boba Fett had sent him here-before he could return to the hills on Mos Eisley's outskirts, where he had left the damaged swoop.

What Dengar hadn't seen was the little creature that inched its way down the metal support pillar of the booth's table, then started a slow, laborious crawl across the cantina's floor. Still no bigger in diameter than Dengar's hand, it had been thin as paper when it had surreptitiously emerged from the cloak of the Q'nithian's feathers; by the time the mimbrane organism had finished listening to the conversation between the two larger creatures in the booth, it had swollen pillowlike, to the thickness of a humanoid finger joint.

Its milkily translucent tissues shimmered with the acoustic energy stored within as the tiny, rudimentary legs around its edges helped it slither past the feet of the cantina's paying customers. A row of primitive sensory organs on its top surface gave the mimbrane just enough ability to distinguish between light and shadow; it navigated mainly by ingrained memory, taking the route it had been taught between the Q'nithian and the other creatures who were waiting for it.

High above the mimbrane's creeping progress, one of the Tonnika sisters, her face all avaricious delicacy framed between intricate braids, laughed at the joke her identical-twin companion had just told her; the punch line had something to do with a crude comparison between Wookiee mating practices and the sour, pinched faces of the Imper ial Navy's top admirals. The gray trail rising from the smoking wand in Senni Tonnika's fine-boned hand drew a wavering line in the cantina's muggy air as she took a step backward, too quickly for the mimbrane to scurry away from the sharp point of her boot heel. It caught the mimbrane at one corner of its amorphous body, with just enough force to squeeze out the last thing it had absorbed while clinging to the underside of the booth's table.

"Did you hear something?" Senni stopped laughing and looked around herself in puzzlement.

"I hear a lot of things." Her sister, Brea, smiled and leaned closer, drawing deep the smoke the other had just exhaled. "All the time…"

"No-" She frowned and looked down toward the floor, slick with spilled drinks and littered with the discarded wrappings of small, unmarked packages. "I mean from down there." She gave a shake of her head. "I very distinctly heard a little voice, and it said, I'll be checking to make sure that it gets there.' "

"You're imagining things."

The mimbrane had already crept away, hurrying as best it could toward its destination. When it reached the booth on the farthest side of the cantina, it didn't need to climb up to the table. A greasy, black-nailed hand reached down and picked it up.

"Fat little thing, ain't it?" Vol Hamame had once been a member of Big Gizz's swoop gang. They had had a parting of the ways, and not an amicable one. Since then, Hamame had found other employment, equally criminal. But a little more profitable. In a lot of ways, life had improved since he had been able to get away from Spiker, Gizz's obnoxious second in command. "Looks like the Q'nithian seat it over here, all stuffed with information."

"What else?" Hamame's partner was equally villainouslooking; the mucus-lined pleats of his nasopharynx fluttered wetly with each breath. "That's what these things are for." The mimbrane's tiny legs wriggled futilely as Phedroi flipped it onto its glistening back.

"Let's see what it's got for us."

Only one of the Q'nithian system's moons had its own atmosphere; it was there, on deeply creviced fault lines, grinding constantly against each other from the tidal pull of the moon's captor planet, that the thick clusters of the mimbrane creatures grew and multiplied like the shelf fungi found on arboreal worlds. They lived on acoustic energy, absorbing sound vibrations and incorporating them layer by layer into their own simple bodies. Millennia of seismic shifts and groans were recorded in the oldest mimbranes, buried beneath the weight of their overlapping offspring and grown into undulating masses big enough to wrap around an Imperial cruiser like a shining blanket.

Small, fresh mimbranes had more practical uses. They were the perfect eavesdropping device, recording into their gelatinous fibers any sounds that struck the tympanic cells in which the creatures were sheathed. Being totally organic, they couldn't be detected by the usual antibugging sweep devices.

Hamame's jag-edged fingertip pressed down on the bulging center of the mimbrane. The stored energy converted back into sound.

"I heard you mention poor Santhananan's name." The Q'nithian's familiar squawk spoke the words. "He met a sad demise, I'm afraid."

"That's right." Phedroi gave a smirking nod. "You had us murder him for you."

"Shut up," said Hamame. "Let's hear the rest." He prodded the mimbrane again.

"Yeah, I'm sure it was tragic." The mimbrane emitted Dengar's recorded voice. "What I want to know is, did anybody pick up on his business?"

The two thugs listened to all of the deal that had gone down between Dengar and the Q'nithian. "Now, that's interesting." Hamame leaned back on his side of the booth. "That Q'nithian is a sneaky type, but he's earned his keep with this bit." On the table between him and Phedroi, the mimbrane was now perfectly flat, all the stored acoustic energy drained from its cells. "So Boba Fett's still alive."

"That's one tough barve." Phedroi gave an admiring shake of his head, the coarse and dirty ringlets of his beard scraping across his tunic collar. "You just can't kill him. If falling down a Sarlacc won't do the trick, then what will?"

Hamame reached inside his jacket and pulled out his blaster. He pointed the muzzle up toward the cantina's ceiling. "This will."