"Oh, you'll get paid, all right." Voss'on't's smile widened, showing more of his yellowed ivory and steel-capped teeth. "But maybe not in the way you're expecting."
"I'll take my chances."
"Of course—there's nothing else you can do. But if you're wrong about what's waiting for you ..." Voss'on't slowly nodded. "Then your options are even more limited than they are now."
Boba Fett calmly regarded the other man. "How do you mean?"
"Come on. Don't be naive. You have a reputation for smarts, Fett. Try earning it. You've got no maneuvering ability in this ship, not in the condition it's in now. All your weaponry won't do you any good if you can't bring it to bear on a target. And if that target is firing at you instead— if there's a lot of targets with you in their gunsights—then there isn't going to be anything you can do, except take it, for as long as you think you can hold out."
"Hardly my only option," said Fett. "I can always jump back into hyperspace."
"Sure—if that's your preferred method of dying. This broken-down tub barely made it through one jump with-out disintegrating." Voss'on't's smile indicated how much he enjoyed the dismal prospects he was describing. "You might be able to slam this thing into hyperspace—but you won't be able to get it back out." An evil glint ap-peared in one of the stormtrooper's eyes. "I've heard that's a real unpleasant way to go. Nobody even ever finds the pieces."
Boba Fett had heard the same. A squadron of the an-cient Mandalorian warriors, a suit of whose battle armor he wore as his own, was reputed to have been destroyed in just that manner by the now-vanished Jedi Knights. "You sound as if you've been analyzing this for a while."
Voss'on't shrugged. "It didn't take long. Just like it didn't take long to figure out your only other option. The one that leaves you alive afterward."
"Which is?"
"Surrender," said the smiling stormtrooper.
Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. "That's some-thing I don't have a reputation for doing."
"Too bad," replied Voss'on't. "Too bad for you and your chances of getting out of this mess alive. You can either be smart and survive, Fett, or carry on with what you're doing, and wind up as a toasted corpse. Your choice."
Another chime signal sounded from Slave I's cockpit. He had already wasted too much time with this creature. Boba Fett made a mental note that in the future he should remember that all merchandise was the same, given to trying to talk its way out of a jam.
He allowed himself one more question before he re-turned to the cockpit and began the final preparations for emerging from hyperspace. "Just who do you think it is that I should surrender to?"
"Why mess around any further?" Trhin Voss'on't gripped two of the durasteel bars and brought his hardangled face closer to Fett's. "I'm the only one who can get you out of this. I know what's waiting for you on the other side. And believe me, Fett, they're not your friends." The stormtrooper's fingers tightened on the cage's bars as his voice dropped lower. "Let me out of here, Fett, and I'll cut you a deal."
"I don't deal, Voss'on't."
"You better start—because it's your life that's on the bargaining table, whether you like it or not. Let me out, and turn the ship over to me, and I might just be able to keep you from being blasted into atoms."
"And what would be in it for you?"
Voss'on't leaned back and shrugged. "Hey—I don't want to go up in smoke with you, pal. Your stupidity is endangering me as well. All things being equal, I'd just as soon stay alive. If I've got control of the ship and its comm units—in other words, let me do the talking—I'd have a chance of getting the ones who aren't so well dis-posed to you to stand down."
The other's words provoked an instinctive response from Boba Fett. Inside the suit of Mandalorian battle ar-mor, he could feel his spine stiffen. "Nobody," he said, "commands this ship but me."
"Have it your way." Voss'on't let go of the bars and took a step back into the center of the holding cage.
"I've at least got a chance of making it through. You don't."
The chime signal sounded again in Boba Fett's helmet, louder and more urgent. "I have to congratulate you," he said. "I thought I'd heard all the scams, all the wheed-ling and begging and bribery attempts, that creatures were capable of. But you came up with something new." He started to turn away from the holding cage and its oc-cupant. "I've never been threatened by my merchandise before."
Voss'on't's taunting voice followed after Fett as he strode toward the metal ladder leading back up to the cockpit. "I'm not your usual run of merchandise, pal." A note of mocking triumph sounded in Voss'on't's words. "And if you don't think so now—believe me, you will. Real soon."
All the way up to the cockpit, Boba Fett could hear the stormtrooper's laughter. Pulling the hatchway shut behind him only cut off the distant, irritating sound, not the memory of it.
Boba Fett sat down in the pilot's chair, letting the work of his hands moving across and adjusting the navi-gation controls fill his consciousness. Victory in any combat, fought with weapons or words, depended upon a clear mind. The former stormtrooper Voss'on't had done his best to mire Boba Fett's thoughts with his sly in-sinuations of conspiracy and predictions of violence. Boba Fett was afraid of neither of those; he had proved himself a master of them on many occasions.
At the same time, Voss'on't's lies and mental tricks had evoked a deeper sense of unease inside Boba Fett. His survival in the dangerous game of bounty hunting hadn't been based on coldly rational strategizing alone. There were elements of instinct that he depended upon as well. Danger had a scent all its own that required no trace molecules in the atmosphere to be detected by his senses.
His gloved hand hesitated for a second above the con-trols. What if Voss'on't wasn't lying...
Perhaps the stormtrooper hadn't been playing mind games with him. Perhaps the offer to save Boba Fett's life from whatever might be waiting for him in realspace had been genuine, even if motivated by Voss'on't's own self-interest.
Or—Boba Fett's thoughts pried at the puzzle inside his skull—the game was even subtler than it first had ap-peared. Voss'on't might not have wanted him to surren-der control of the ship at all. What if, mused Fett, he knew I would refuse? And that was what he'd been banking on. In which case, Voss'on't also would have been angling for Boba Fett to disregard all doubts, suspi-cions, even his own instinctive caution, as having been planted in his head by Voss'on't. The game might not have been to change Boba Fett's course of action—but to make sure that he didn't abandon it.
He needn't have bothered, thought Boba Fett. A fa-miliar calm settled over him, which he recognized and re-membered from other times, moments when he'd set his fate in the balance. Between the thought and the deed, between the action and its consequences, between the roll of the ancient bone dice and the coming up of the number that would indicate whether one lived or died...
Lay infinity.
Bounty hunters held no faith, religions, creeds—those were for other, deluded creatures. Emperor Palpatine could immerse himself in the shadows of some Force that the Jedi had believed in—but Boba Fett didn't need to. For him, that moment, expanding to the limits of the uni-verse both inside and outside him, was all the unspoken knowledge of the infinite, risk balanced against power, that he required. What more could there be? All else was illusion, as far as he was concerned.
That simple truth had kept him alive so far. His prof-its, the counters in the game he played, meant more to him than his own life. You can't gamble, Fett reminded himself, what you're not prepared to lose...
All other considerations fell away, like the dying sparks of dead suns. Only the holding cage below held the former Imperial stormtrooper now; Boba Fett had dismissed even the image of Trhin Voss'on't from his mind.