The Mandalorian Armor

20

"There they are." Phedroi used the muzzle of his blaster rifle to point over the top of the dune. "We could probably take 'em all out, right now." Beside him, lying belly-down in the sand, Hamame shook his head. "Naw-" His rifle lay parallel to his partner's, aimed toward the three distant figures. Five, if the two medical droids were counted. "They're worth more alive than dead. Or at least Boba Fett is."

"Are you kidding?" Phedroi looked over at him in amazement. "You're going to try and take Boba Fett alive? That's crazy. The barve's too dangerous for that. Why push our luck? We should just be glad to get the chance to kill him."

Heat radiated up from the dune, though Tatooine's suns had set long ago. But it was more than the temperature differential between the ground and the starswept night that kept both men sweating. One thing, Hamame knew now, to have followed the other bounty hunter Dengar all the way from Mos Eisley to here, keeping a safe distance so they wouldn't be detected; it was something entirely different to have ditched their swoops and crept within firing distance of a tough customer like this. There was a history of bad things happening to crea tures who thought they had the drop on Boba Fett. Hamame kept watching what was going on at the mouth of the tunnel slanting beneath a low crest of hills.

"There's Dengar to take care of as well," he said, voice barely more than a whisper. "Plus there's some female there-I suppose you want to off her, too."

"Well, sure." That was how Phedroi's mind worked. It probably seemed obvious enough to him. Dengar had never had much of a reputation, but if he and this woman were hanging around with Boba Fett, it would be better to err on the side of caution. And he didn't know of any safer way of handling things, other than just wiping out everyone as long as there was the chance to do so. "Isn't that what you were planning on doing?"

"Not until I've had a chance to find out some more." Hamame nodded toward Fett and his companions. "Dengar picked up a sublight relay modulator back in Mos Eisley; that's what Fett's working on right now, getting it sync'd in with his comm equipment. So, obviously, he's going to be making some kind of contact just outside the planet's atmosphere. The question is, who with?"

"How should I know?"

"Exactly," said Hamame. "You don't know. And you're going to off Boba Fett without discovering who it is he wants to talk to? Maybe there's someone out there that wants to keep him alive, would pay big credits if we had him and didn't him."

Phedroi thought it over. "I suppose that could be the case."

"Yeah, well, you suppose and I know." Hamame squinted at the scene in question, lit by Dengar holding up a small portable worklight. His and the female's shadows stretched away and merged with the surrounding darkness as they watched Boba Fett applying the sizzling point of a miniature torch to exposed circuitry. "There's a lot more going on here than what it looks like. I can tell that right down in my gut."

"I'm getting a bad feeling about this …." Phedroi shook his head. "Maybe we should go back and get some more people in on this action. You know, like safety in numbers." If he could have arranged for a whole Imperial battalion to help them out, his nervousness would have been only slightly diminished. "I mean, especially if we're going to take on Boba Fett…"

"What, and w ind up splitting the profits with every scrabbling little thief in Mos Eisley?" Hamame looked over at him in disgust. "Look. From what we can get for Boba Fett-from somebody-we'll be able to retire from this game. One big score, and we're golden."

Of course, he had laid that kind of talk before on his partner. That was how they had both wound up on a forsaken dump of a planet like Tatooine. But this time, vowed Hamame, it'll be different. They just had to see it through.

"All right." Phedroi looked along his blaster rifle's barrel at the other figures in the night, then back to his partner. "So just what is it you're going to do?"

Hamame stood up, his boots digging into the slope of the dune. "Simple." He smiled as he slung his blaster rifle's leather strap across his shoulder. "I'm going to go down there and talk to them."

"That does it," muttered Phedroi aloud as he watched his partner go striding toward the distant pool of light.

"This is definitely the hardest merchandise you've ever gotten me mixed up with."

She watched him tighten and seal the last connectors.

"Is that thing ready to go?" Neelah pointed to the comm unit on the pebble-strewn ground, its interior filled with the hard shadows cast by the worklight in Dengar's upraised hand.

"It has to run through its logic checks," said Boba Fett, "before it can sync up with the database of transmission codes." He set down the handheld servodriver he had been using, then picked up a circuit probe; he tapped its point against the side of his helmet. "We were real lucky-none of the onboard memory in here got corrupted, in spite of all the banging around it's gone through. If I'd had to build the comm protocols up from scratch, it would've taken a couple of days. At least." For a moment she thought he had been talking about the contents of his head, the brain tissue encased in bone, and all its memories and hard, unfeeling personality. The true Boba Fett, thought Neelah. Back from the dead. Then she realized he was talking about the elaborate circuits inside the helmet itself, the comlink between him and his ship orbiting above the planet's atmosphere. What was it called? He'd told her; something sinister and cold, stripped of even the minimal affection that could exist between a sentient creature and his tools. Slave, Neelah remembered. Slave I; that was it. Something to be used and discarded, when its pure functionality was at an end. She supposed that human beings and all other sentient creatures were that way for him as well. That was how things had been in the palace of Jabba the Hutt as well; when there had been more amusement to be gained from tossing poor Oola into the rancor pit, nothing else mattered to the master holding the other end of the chain.

She had been there, and she had been lucky to escape. Not just luck; she had fought and schemed her way out of the palace and the inevitable death it had held. Better to die out in the wastes of the Dune Sea, bones cracked by the desert's scavengers, than be the victim of a fat slug's idle boredom. But where did I wind up instead? That was the question that circled in Neelah's mind as she watched the two bounty hunters. It had been one thing to get hooked up with a mercenary creature like Boba Fett when he had represented nothing more than a mystery to her, the black hole of her own hidden past. It was another thing entirely now that he had recovered from his wounds and was pursuing his own agenda again. Revenge and credits, supposed Neelah, in varying proportions; that was all that any bounty hunter was concerned with. Even this Dengar, though he had given some indication of a human nature developed beyond those two fundamental desires. She knew that she could trust either one of them just about as far as she pitch them both across the dunes with one hand. Creatures who trusted any bounty hunter usually wound up as merchandise or corpses, depending upon what was best for business.

The questions inside her head were going to be answered soon. Neelah didn't know yet what those answers were going to be, but she had already started preparing herself for them. Whatever happens, she told herself again, I'm not going to be left behind. The bigger questions were all tied up with Boba Fett; if she was going to uncover both her past and her fate, she couldn't let the bounty hunter slip away from her. Even if it meant risking her life to follow after him. Or losing her life, to find out those things.

Neelah turned and walked away from the pool of light toward the desert's surrounding darkness. The answers might not be anywhere on this planet, but the night provided enough emptiness to hold her thoughts.

"Stay right there." A man's voice. "Don't move."

She found herself gazing into a scruff-bearded face, pockmarks and scars underneath the grime of hard, exposed traveling. One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile, exposing yellow teeth. Before she could react, the man had raised the muzzle of a blaster rifle, slung by a leather strap from his shoulder. At waist height, the weapon pointed straight at her.

"Nothing to worry about," said the man. "This is just to show you that I'm serious. You be serious, too-no messing around-and nothing bad is gonna happen."

"What do you want?" Neelah kept her voice low. She wasn't sure which would be worse, alarming this person or the two bounty hunters somewhere behind her. Any one of them might start firing, just to quickly settle matters. If she was standing between the blasters and their targets, that would be just too bad. For her.

"Not you. At least, not right now." The other corner of the man's mouth lifted, slowly, as though dragged upward by an invisible hook. "Later maybe we can discuss some off-time interests. But right now I gotta go talk to your friends."

Both Boba Fett and Dengar glanced over as Neelah walked back into the worklight's circle. When they saw the man close behind her, Fett stood up, leaving the comm unit's last bolt untightened. Den-gar reached for the blaster pistol in his holster, then stayed his hand without drawing the weapon.

"Well, here's a happy little gathering." The man lowered the barrel of his blaster rifle from where it had been pressing into the small of Neelah's back. "Old friends like us really oughta try to get together more often."

"Vol Hamame," said Dengar with a sour grimace and a nod. "I thought I spotted you back there in Mos Eisley."

"You should've said hello. Then I wouldn't have had to come all the way out to this place. Not that it doesn't have its charms." The man looked around at the sloping hillsides, barely visible at the edge of the worklight's glow. Then he turned back to the two bounty hunters. "But I'm more of a city kind of guy, if you know what I mean."

"Then that's where you should stay." Boba Fett spoke up, his voice level and emotionless. "So you can mind your own business, instead of interfering with anyone else's."

Looking over her shoulder, Neelah saw the man called Hamame shake his head, feigning regret.

"Actually, this is my business." Hamame used his free hand to point toward the bounty hunters. "That's why I followed Dengar out here. Pretty easy, actually, what with that frapped-out swoop bike he was on. Just about fell asleep, it went so slow. But it was worth it, just to get here and find out that you really are alive, after all."

Boba Fett looked over at Dengar. "Seems as though you didn't do a very good job of keeping things secret."

"Don't blame him," said Hamame. "Let's just say I've got my contacts pretty well lined up in Mos Eisley. There isn't much that I don't hear about. I get the news on all the little stuff, so it wouldn't have been very likely that I'd miss out on something big like this. There's a whole galaxy out there that's heard you're dead; most creatures would figure you'd be just about digested inside the Sarlacc by now. Some creatures-I don't know who-might be happy to hear you made it out. There's a whole bunch of others who would probably be a lot less than happy when they find that you're walking around again."

"That's their problem." Fett gave a slight shrug.

"And it might be a while before they find out, anyway. Especially since you won't be telling them."

"Hold it right there." With one quick motion, Hamame pushed Neelah aside as his other hand swung the blaster rifle up into firing position. The shove was hard enough to send her sprawling onto her knees, the sand and gravel scraping her palms raw. "Get your hands up." He gestured with the rifle's muzzle. "Step away from that box."

"This?" Boba Fett's gloved hands were already level with his helmet. With the toe of his boot, he gave the comm unit a kick. "It's not even operational."

"I don't care if it's as dead as you're supposed to be." A few lights had blinked on the control panel of the comm unit. Hamame raised the muzzle of the blaster rifle higher, aiming from his hip straight toward Boba Fett's helmet. "Just get away from it. You know what kind of reputation you've got, being a tricky barve and all. I don't want any surprises."

Fett moved toward where Dengar was standing with his hands raised. "Careful," said Fett. "Trust me-you won't get nearly as much for a corpse as you will for living merchandise."

"I'll take what I can get," said Hamame. "Especially since you don't have any choice about talking right now." He smiled as he kept the blaster rifle trained toward Dengar and Boba Fett. "Amazing how persuasive something as simple as this can be when you're looking down its barrel. There's a bunch of questions I'd like some answers to. Profitable answers."

"Don't be an idiot." Dengar spoke up. "If you want credits, there are easier ways of getting them than this. And less dangerous. Just let us go, and we'll make it worth your while."

"Oh, sure; I'll trust you to send the credits. You can send it care of the Mos Eisley cantina." Hamame shook his head with a grimace of disgust. "Get real. Whatever you two could pay for your hides isn't anything compared to what some others would be willing to." He looked straight toward the other bounty hunter. "There are some big players interested in Boba Fett's welfare, and I mean to make sure that they're gonna have to make me happy before they get to do whatever it is they want with you." Neelah lay on the ground where she had landed, keeping still as she listened to the exchange going on above. The man's choice of words tipped her off. Whatever you two could pay for your hides. He was exactly the sort who'd forget all about a female's presence, whenever he didn't have any specific use for her. Just as if she didn't exist ... or couldn't do something about the situation.

"You forgot something."

Her voice actually surprised him, as though it had suddenly come from nowhere. The man's startled gaze swung around and then down to her; that 1 slight movement was echoed in his torso, turning it f toward her. That opened up just enough of an angle for Neelah to dig the points of her elbows into the ground, plant one boot sole flat with her leg bent, and straighten the other leg into a kick straight to the man's crotch. The look in his eyes showed that he was fully aware of her now.

The man went down, falling heavily on his side, but managing to keep some semblance of control. He jammed the butt of the blaster rifle hard against his ribs as his knees drew up in an instinctive fetal position. His fist squeezed tight on the trigger, getting off a line of fire that coursed within inches of Neelah's head as she scrambled to her feet and ran toward the others. She had to take another dive to get out of the way as Boba Fett snatched up his own blaster from the pile of equipment he had stacked up while working on the comm unit. Without taking time to aim, Fett laid down a quick series of shots that stitched the ground close to the other figure, now rolling shoulder-first into a sandy hollow. His return fire, desperate and inaccurate, was still enough to drive Fett back toward the rocky hillside.

"In here!" Dengar grabbed Neelah's forearm and pulled her into the safety of the shallow cave. He pushed her behind himself, then grabbed the blaster rifle that had been propped against the side of the opening. He braced the weapon against himself and started firing. The covering barrage lit up the night, sending hard-edged shadows jittering across the rocks and sand dunes. The shots forced the other man's head below the lip of his shelter, giving Boba Fett enough time to break off his own fire and sprint, back hunched low, to his companions. From inside the cave, Neelah and the two bounty hunters heard the raised voice of the man outside.

"Phedroi!" He wasn't shouting to them, but to some other figure, unseen in the surrounding darkness. "Get in on this! Now!"

The command was hardly necessary; his partner, who must have been watching everything all along, now directed a hot fusillade their way from an angle that gave him a clear shot into the cave's mouth. Boba Fett fired back as all three of them retreated farther inside.

"Now what?" Neelah looked around the rough-hewn rock as the barrage of blaster fire lit up the space. All the other weapons in Boba Fett's carefully hidden stash had already been dragged outside with the other gear. Both Fett and Dengar had their spines planted against opposite walls of the cave, leaning forward just enough to get off a few quick shots before snapping their heads back from the bolts that sizzled past them. "We're stuck here-this hole doesn't go anywhere!"

"It wasn't meant to." Boba Fett didn't look back around at her. "You don't get anywhere by running away from creatures like these."

"Good theory." Across the cave, Dengar held his blaster rifle close against his chest, watching the shifting shadows in the darkness outside, waiting for another chance at a well-aimed shot. "Gets a little tight when you try to put it into practice."

Boba Fett gave a small shrug, his shoulders scraping against the rock behind him. "Don't worry about it." His voice remained as calm and drained of apparent emotion as before. "Everything's under control."

"What are you talking about?" From the back of the cave, Neelah stared at the bounty hunter in dismay. She had already come to the limit of the space, no more than a few meters from the opening in the hillside's rocky slope. "There's no way out of here! They've got us pinned down-they can either wait us out, till your blasters are exhausted, or they can call in more of their friends." A couple more shots blazed through the middle of the cave, striking the roof above her and showering down a rain of scorched rock shards. "Either way, they've got us!"

"As I said, don't worry."

The bounty hunter's calm response infuriated Neelah. The thought of dying in this hole-or worse, being dragged out of it after the pair outside had finished off Boba Fett and Dengar-infuriated her. I didn't escape from Jabba's palace to wind up like this. There were still too many things she didn't know, too many questions without answers-her real name, where she had come from, how she had gotten here-to let bleed away into the sand. If there had been any chance of pulling it off, she would have grabbed one of the blasters out of the others' hands and made a break, firing and charging headlong at the two-man siege force outside. Anything would be better than waiting here for the inevitable.

Dengar turned his face away from the cave opening.

"If you've got some kind of plan-" The blaster rifle's muzzle touched his chin as he held the weapon in a diagonal line across his chest. "I'd appreciate being let in on it, too."

"If there was anything you could do about it, one way or the other, I might tell you." Boba Fett fired a quick couple of bursts outside, before glancing over at Dengar.

"But there isn't. All you have to do is wait. And you'll see."

"That's great," said Neelah sourly. She had to raise her voice over the noise of another fusillade streaking through the dark and carving the back of the cave out in sparks. Her disgust had reached the point where nothing, not even laser bolts, could make her flinch. "All this time I thought you were recovering from what happened to you-only it turns out that your brains are still fried." Boba Fett made no reply. "Hold your fire," he instructed Dengar.

"But they've come in closer." Dengar used the rifle muzzle to point outside. "The one that was out in the dunes-he's moved up. He's got an even better angle now."

"That's all right. I want the two of them together. Or close enough."

"Why?" Dengar looked puzzled. "You think you can take both of them out? I can cover you if you want to take a shot at it."

"That won't be necessary."

The flashes from the weapons outside were enough for Neelah to tell that Dengar was correct; the two besiegers were now within a couple of meters of each other, crouching down behind a shallow lip of rock. From there, they would be able to fire straight into the cave.

"Don't bother trying to talk to him." Neelah nodded toward Boba Fett. "He's so far gone he can't tell when there's no way-"

A sudden noise interrupted her. From above, as though the night itself had split open; the sound grew from a distant shriek to a roar that spanned the audible frequencies. The cave itself-vibrated, as had the one containing the Sarlacc's still-living segment; dust sifted from cracks spidering overhead, then pebbles and finally broken rocks large enough to cut Nee-lah's arm as she shielded her brow. From underneath her forearm, she could see Dengar leaning forward, blaster rifle lowered, gazing outside in wonderment.

His shadow leaped toward her, as did that of Boba Fett; both bounty hunters were silhouetted by the fiery glare that had banished what was left of the night. The encircled sand dunes were lit up as though by the fall of Tatooine's twin suns. Beyond the cave's mouth, the two other figures were visible, turning onto their sides and raising their outspread hands, trying to ward off the weight rushing down toward them.

All that happened in a few seconds, from the first whisper and bare glow, to the half-rounded shape that appeared just above the desert floor, balanced on the fiery column of its landing engines. One of the two men was able to scramble to his feet and run, making a final dive headlong that took him beyond the quickly braked impact of the ship. The other managed only to get to his knees, blaster rifle pressed into the sand beneath his palm; then the tail of the craft, nozzles blackened and still hot, crushed him flat.

"Oh." Dengar's voice broke the sil ence, the thrusting roar replaced by the glassy crackle of the molten sand cooling. "It's your ship. It's the Slave I." Neelah realized what had happened. He got through, she thought. On the comm unit. The link between the gear inside his helmet, the small transceiver antenna mounted at the side, and the equipment that Dengar had fetched back from the Mos Eisley spaceport-Boba Fett must have gotten that up and running just before the other two men had shown up. And all the time that the one named Hamame had been talking, and then when he had swung the blaster rifle up onto his hip, Fett had been sending a signal straight to his ship, outside Tatooine's atmosphere. Giving Slave I, as Dengar had called the craft, the exact coordinates of this location-exact enough to bring it right down on the heads of the two men. One of them was still partly visible underneath the ship, a leg and an arm showing, his weapon lying on the sand just a few inches away from his fingers. He wouldn't be making any deals anytime soon.

"Come on." Boba Fett moved toward the cave's opening.

"Let's get going. There's no reason to hang around here." She didn't know whether he had been speaking to both of them or just to Dengar. But she wasn't taking any chances. Neelah let the two men go before, at a quick sprint toward the Slave I ship. From the darkness of the surrounding dunes, a volley of laser bolts scorched the sand at their feet; the other besieger hadn't given up yet. Neelah didn't let that stop her from following after Boba Fett and Dengar, and quickly scooping up the dead man's blaster rifle as she ran.

"Hold it." At the hatchway of the ship, Neelah raised the weapon, her thumb at its firing stud. "Stop right there."

Dengar was already inside; with one gloved hand grasping the side of the hatch, Boba Fett turned and looked over his shoulder, his visored gaze meeting that of the blaster rifle's muzzle.

"You're not going anywhere without me," said Neelah coldly.

Boba Fett's hand shot out before she could react, the motion faster than her eye could perceive. His fist locked onto the rifle barrel; with a quick twist of his arm,. he had wrenched it out of her grasp. The weapon went spinning through the air as he flung it away, landing within inches of the corpse's unmov-ing arm. They stood looking at each other for a moment. Then Boba Fett reached down and grabbed Neelah's wrist, and pulled her up toward the hatchway.

"Don't be stupid." Fett's grasp lightened, squeezing the bones together. "I'm the one who decides who goes and who stays. And right now you're too valuable a piece of merchandise to leave behind."

A second later she was inside the ship, with the hatchway door sliding shut behind herself. "Brace yourself," said Fett as he headed for a metal ladder at the side of the space. "We're leaving now." Neelah rubbed her aching wrist. As she looked about herself, at the bleak metal bars of the cages, she realized-though she didn't know when, in what part of her shrouded past-that she had been here before.

"That is just so entirely typical." SHS1-B tilted his head unit back, watching the ship ascend swiftly into the night sky. "You go to all that trouble fixing them up, putting them back together, and they don't even bother to thank you."

"Ingratitude." le-XE stood next to the taller medical droid. They had both come creeping out of their hiding places when the shooting had finally stopped. By now, even the human out in the dunes had presumably left, heading back to whatever den of iniquity he had come from; at least, there was no longer any indication of his presence. That was a further disappointment to both droids; after an encounter with Boba Fett, the man might have had some interesting wounds to take care of.

"Thoughtlessness."

"But of course, what else can you expect?" The ship's glowing trail had already dwindled to a speck of light among the stars. The hope had formed inside SHSl-B's circuits-to the degree that a droid could hope-that it and le-XE would have been taken along with the humans, particularly the one they had nursed back to health, the one named Boba Fett. They would have certainly been able to earn their energy sources, what with the considerable amount of tissue damage he had the knack for creating.

"It's their nature, I suppose. All flesh thinks it's immortal." SHSl-B brought its gaze down from the sky to the surrounding empty desert. "Now what?"

"Unemployment," squeaked le-XE's voice.

"Needlessness."

SHSl-B looked at its companion for a moment. Then it extruded one of its scalpel-tipped arms and scraped a spot of rust from le-XE's dented carapace. "You know"-SHSl-B's voice spoke with measured consideration-"you could use a little maintenance …."