The Mandalorian Armor

8

He couldn't believe his good luck.

"I've got him this time," said Bossk. He had upgraded both the firepower and the tracking abilities of the Hound's Tooth since his last unfortunate encounter with Boba Fett. The other bounty hunter snatching the accountant Nil Posondum away from him had been the final irritant underneath his scales; he had sworn to himself that if he ever got the chance, he would put his rival out of commission for good. And nothing will do that, thought Bossk, savoring the words, like blowing Fett to atoms. "When I get done, there won't be enough of him left to find without an electron microscope." Beside him, Zuckuss leaned the hoses of his face mask toward the cockpit's target-acquisition screen. "I don't know. ..."

"What, you can't tell that it's Boba Fett ap proaching? Are you blind?" Bossk rapped a claw against the screen, hard enough to leave a permanent mark amid the glowing vector lines. "Of course it's him! There's all the identification data on the Slave I." A tiny column of numbers scrolled down from the triangular icon swiftly moving across the screen. "That's his ship, so he's aboard it."

"Oh, it's Boba Fett, all right." Zuckuss nodded slowly. "There's no doubt about that. I'm just not sure if you should-what's the phrase you always use?-'blow him away' right now."

Bossk angrily glared at the shorter bounty hunter.

"When's there going to be a better time?"

"Well, maybe when he's not traveling under an assurance of safe passage from your father." Zuckuss sounded even more doubtful and nervous. The breath in his air tubes rasped quicker and louder. "Boba Fett already contacted the Guild council-you know that-and Cradossk and the others gave him their word that he could dock at the perimeter station without anyone taking a shot at him."

"They gave him their word." The slits in Bossk's eyes narrowed. "They didn't give him mine."

"Still…"

You little insect, thought Bossk. When he inherited the leadership of the Bounty Hunters Guild-he had already killed, as was Trandoshan custom, all of his father Cradossk's younger spawn-he intended to review the requirements for membership. A certain amount of guts, he figured, should be a prerequisite. Which meant that this sniveling partner that had been foisted on him would be out the air lock like the gnawed bones of yesterday's lunch.

"Maybe," whined Zuckuss, "you should think about-this a little more …."

"Thinking takes too long." Bossk's claws moved across the control of the Hound's weapons systems. "Action gets things done."

"Your father isn't going to like this."

"That remains to be seen." The same blood ran in his and the old reptilian's veins; he had the comfort of knowing that his spawn-father was just as mean and vicious as himself. "For all you know, this is exactly what he and the rest of the Guild council are expecting me to do."

"Destroy another bounty hunter without warning?" Incredulity pitched Zuckuss's voice higher. "That's hardly in line with the Hunter's Creed!" Bossk always felt a simmering impatience when someone mentioned the Creed to him. "Boba Fett has violated the Creed enough times," he growled, "that he deserves no protection from it."

"But he's never been bound by the Creed! He's never been a member of the Guild!"

"Spare me your tedious legal analysis." Bossk had locked the concentric rings of the tracker sight onto the distant craft. "If Boba Fett wants to lodge a complaint against me, he'll have to do it from the other side of the grave. If enough of him can be scraped up to put into one."

He ignored the rest of Zuckuss's tiresome fretting. His index claw hit the main fire button, and a quick rumble rolled through the Hound's frame. On the screen, a brilliant white tracer shot toward the icon representing Boba Fett's ship.

"Got him!" The shot must have caught Fett completely by surprise; he'd taken no evasive action at all. What a fool, thought Bossk with contempt. That's what you get for trusting other bounty hunters. The advantage of being considered lowlife scum by most of the galaxy's inhabitants was that maintaining one's reputation was never an issue. "You know," said Bossk, "I'm almost disappointed …."

"Why?" Zuckuss turned his large-lensed gaze away from the screen. "Because he didn't put up more of a fight?"

"No." Bossk peered at the red numbers that had flashed on. "Because there's anything left of him." He clawed in the command for a damage assessment on the laser cannon's most recent target, then studied the result. "That ship of Fett's had some serious armor on it. It's still holding together." The glowing triangle had stopped in the middle of the screen, but hadn't disappeared. To have taken that kind of a hit, enough to punch a hole through the main deck of an Imperial battle cruiser, and still be in one piece, however badly damaged, was amazing. It didn't correspond with the velocities that the Slave I's engines-high-thrust but low-mass-capable units from Mandal Motors-could attain. Like most bounty hunters, Boba Fett had always prized speed and maneuverability over protection. Right now, though, Bossk didn't have time to puzzle over the discrepancy. "Let's go finish him off." The distinctive half-rounded shape of the Slave I filled the viewports as Bossk piloted his own craft toward it. He kept his claws on the controls for the emergency reverse thrusters in case Boba Fett, like the devious scoundrel he was known to be, was lying low inside the other ship, waiting for his own chance to take a shot at his attacker.

"Looks like a clean kill to me." Zuckuss pointed to the cockpit's forward viewport. "Right through the center and out the other side. There couldn't be anyone left alive on that ship."

"I'll believe that," said Bossk, "when I see Boba Fett's .charred corpse." He started moving the Hound's Tooth in toward the drifting wreckage. "I'm going inside."

"Well, if you need that kind of proof…" Zuckuss gave a shrug. "I suppose you'll have to." He didn't even glance over at Zuckuss. "You're going, too."

"Oh."

They managed to establish a transfer connection between the Hound's Tooth and what was left of the Slave I. No atmosphere support was needed; enough of the Slave I's systems were still operating to have sealed off the central interior sections.

"Something's wrong," said Zuckuss as he looked about the Slave I's empty hold.

"Something's always wrong, as far as you're con cerned." This time, though, Bossk wondered whether his partner might be right. A sense of unease crawled across his scales; he drew his blaster and slowly scanned across the open hatchways.

Zuckuss reached over and poked a gloved finger at one of the bulkheads. The thin material wobbled back and forth; another poke, and Zuckuss's finger went right through it.

"It's a decoy." Zuckuss gave a few more exploratory proddings to the hold's confines, with similar results.

"That's why there's nothing here-it's just a shell!" He turned toward Bossk. "No wonder your shot went right through. There's no real mass to have taken the hit. It's like shooting through flimsiplast."

Rage boiled up inside Bossk, nearly blinding him.

"That slimy ..." Words failed him. He stomped toward the dummy ship's aft section, shoulders smashing apart the sides of the flimsy hatches.

"This is why we got a positive identification." Zuckuss had followed behind, into what would have been the cockpit if they had been aboard a real ship. He pointed to a beacon transmitter mounted to one of the space's curved walls. "Look-you can see that it's been programmed with the Slave I's ID profile." Zuckuss nodded in admiration. "Setting up something like this takes a lot of work; you have to force through overrides almost down to the subatomic level. And then to build it back up with the false data…" He stepped back from the unit.

"Fett must have had this decoy already prepared, just keeping it for sometime when he'd need it." Even behind Zuckuss's face mask, there was a hint of amusement as he glanced over at Bossk. "Like when he might be heading into some territory where creatures might have a grudge against him."

"I'll kill him." The words seethed out through Bossk's clenched fangs. "I swear it. I'll find him and I'll kill him so hard…"

"Chances are pretty good, I'd say, that Fett's al ready slipped by us. We're wasting our time here." Zuckuss peered at another device, a cylinder of black metal studded with biosensors. "Now, this is interesting. I wouldn't have expected something like this aboard a simple decoy vessel."

Bossk knew his partner had more of an interest in technological matters; right now all that moved inside his own head were grim fantasies of cracking bone and spurting blood. He didn't even bother to look around, but kept on brooding at the mocking stars visible through the port. "What is it?"

"Offhand ... I'd say it's a bomb …."

"You fool!" Bossk whirled on his clawed heel, in time to see a row of lights flash into fiery life along the cylinder's casing. The device emitted a faint hum, already gaining in pitch and volume. "We've triggered'it!

The thing's going to blow!"

He dived for the false cockpit's hatchway; a fraction of a second later Zuckuss landed on top of him. Both bounty hunters scrambled to their feet. Through the hatch, Bossk could see the bomb detach itself from its mountings on the flimsy bulkhead; with slow, ominous grace, the bomb's miniaturized antigrav repulsors swiveled it about, bringing the scrutiny of its blind gaze toward them.

"Get out of my way!" Bossk shoved his partner aside and sprinted for the transfer port fastened to the decoy ship's central hold. He could hear Zuckuss right behind him as he furiously grappled his way through the tube's flexing pleats and back aboard the Hound's Tooth. The first explosion ripped the transfer away from both ships, sending ragged strips of plastex spiraling across the Hound's midsection viewports. With his stomach across the back of the pilot's chair, Bossk slapped at the hull integrity controls, sealing off his own ship before any significant amount of ak could escape.

"We ... we should be okay now …." Panting, Zuckuss supported himself against the cockpit's naviputer displays. "That wasn't…much of a bomb …." There wasn't even time for Bossk to tell the other bounty hunter not to be an idiot. The second explosion, larger than the first, struck the Hound's Tooth. Roiling thermic fire filled the viewports as the impact of Bossk's spine with the bulkhead above stunned him into barely conscious silence. Blood swirled across the scales of his face as the ship's artificial-gravity generators struggled to catch up with its end-over-end tumbling. Bossk smashed his fist against as many of the thruster controls as he could reach; the resulting force had him digging a hold into the pilot's chair to keep from being flung through the open hatchway behind him.

A stern-mounted scanner showed the bomb, smaller now but even deadlier, trailing in the erratic wake of the Hound's Tooth. "It's…it's locked onto us …." Zuckuss clawed his way up beside Bossk. He pointed to the screen above the controls. "Here it comes …." Bossk knew how incremental-sequence bombs functioned. The first two charges work you over, he told himself. The third one kills you. His voice grated in his throat "Not…this time ..."

He hit the rest of the thrusters, at the same time throwing the Hound into a suicide arc. Stars blurred across the viewport as the angle of the ship's turn deepened. A deep basso groan sounded as increasing vectors tore in different directions across the hull. Sharper cracking noises signaled the navigation modules ripping away from the exterior.

The third and final explosion completed the partial disassembly of the Hound's Tooth. Bossk's desperate maneuver had put enough distance between the ship and the bomb; the hull shook with the impact but remained intact. Zuckuss was knocked onto his face mask by the bulkhead deforming behind him, the blast's force warping the section from concave to convex. The pilot's chair broke in two, sending Bossk sprawling across the cockpit's floor, claws holding the padded back of the seat tight against his chest. A rain of sparks, bursting out of the access ports, sizzled across both bounty hunters. A few seconds later silence filled the Hound's Tooth. The smell of burning circuitry hung acrid in the air, mixed with the steam of the ship's automatic fire-dousing units. A few last sparks stung Zuckuss, and he slapped at them with his heavily gloved hands.

"We'll be here awhile." Bossk didn't need to do a preliminary damage assessment on the Hound to know that. Until the navigation modules were rigged back into some kind of operating order, he and Zuckuss were stuck in this remote sector of space. If Trandoshans had any capacity for the emotion of gratitude, he would have been glad that the sequential bomb hadn't torn the Hound's Tooth into bits. He and Zuckuss would have been dead instead of merely adrift. As it was, he just felt a deep irritation over how much work it was going to take to put his ship back together again, with the tools and probes that were now undoubtedly scattered all over the en gineering lockers.

"Look there-" Zuckuss pointed to the one viewport still functioning, set at an angle from the Hound's midsection.

Sitting in the middle of the cockpit floor, Bossk looked over his shoulder at the screen. A fiery course of light, with a too-familiar shape at its head, shot across the field of stars.

"That's the Slave I," said Zuckuss. Unnecessarily-any fool would have known that much. "The real ship."

"Of course it is, you idiot." If Bossk had had a wrench in his claws, he would have been torn between throwing it at his partner or at the screen, as though he could somehow hit Boba Fett's ship with it. "That was the whole point, with the decoy and the bomb." The Slave I was already dwindling away, heading for the perimeter station of the Bounty Hunters Guild. "Fett knew somebody would be waiting for him."

"Apparently so." Zuckuss gave a slow nod of his head.

"Somebody like him…he's got a lot of enemies."

"He doesn't have any fewer now." Bossk glared at the empty screen. You made one mistake, he told the vanished Boba Fett. You should've used a bigger bomb. One that would have killed instead of merely humiliated. Bossk-and his hunger for revenge-was still alive.

Another quick burst of sparks shot from behind the screen. A knot of tangled circuits, welded together and emitting smoke, dangled bobbing from one of the overhead panels. The image of the stars blanked out and was gone.

"Come on," said Bossk. He stood up, then reached down to pull Zuckuss to his feet. "We've got work to do."