Beware of everyone. If Kud'ar Mub'at's empty husk could speak, that was what it would have said. In this universe, there are no friends . . . only enemies. The assembler's gaping mouth was a small black vacuum, surrounded by the greater one of interstellar space. No trust... only betrayal...
He didn't require advice such as that, even from one whose withered corpse testified to the truth of the silent words. Boba Fett knew all those things already. That was why he was alive, and the assembler was dead.
All his remaining concerns—for the moment—were technical ones. Boba Fett turned toward the cockpit's navicomputer. He began accessing and inputting Slave I's astrogational coordinates, at the same time scrolling through the onboard computer's database of the sur-rounding systems and planets. What he needed now was an advanced-technology shipyard, one without too many entanglements with either the Empire or the Rebel Alliance, or scruples about working for payments made under the table, as it were. Some of the weapons and tracking modules aboard Slave I were technically re-stricted; a good deal of his profits from past jobs had gone into the bribery or commissioned theft necessary for getting top-secret beta-development tech out of the Imperial Navy's hidden research-and-development labs. Only a shipyard remote from the galaxy's center, and away from the prying scrutiny of Palpatine's spy agents, would have enough nerve—and greed—to do the kind of work that ordinarily had the death penalty attached to it.
A list of possibilities appeared on the computer's read-out screen. He was already familiar with most of the shipyards; his line of work was hard on his tools, from personal weapons to navigable craft. Not those, Fett de-cided, eliminating with a few strokes of his fingertip all of the planet-based yards. In its present fragile condition, Slave I wouldn't survive a hard-gravity landing.
The remoter possibilities, those on the other side of the galaxy, were similarly eliminated. Even if Boba Fett tried to make it that far—and if a hyperspace jump didn't wind up disintegrating Slave I—the longer he took to reach his destination, the greater the chances of attract-ing the attention of any number of his enemies. They'd be able to pick him off without much of a struggle. He had already decided that speed of service was as impor-tant a consideration as the quality. I need to get up and running, thought Boba Fett as he studied the remaining short list on the computer's readout screen. And fast.
Before he could finish his calculations, a voice came over the comm unit.
"It was a pleasure doing business with you." The voice of the distant Balancesheet was not quite as obsequiously formal as its parent Kud'ar Mub'at's had been. "We'll do it again."
The control panel's proximity monitors registered the presence of another ship in the sector; from the ID pro-file, Boba Fett could see that it wasn't Prince Xizor's Vendetta. He scanned the viewport and spotted it, near the drifting wreckage of Kud'ar Mub'at's web. Hitting the viewport's long-range mag function brought up a clear image of a standard bulk freighter. Its registration was clear, but showed former ownership by one of Xizor's— and Black Sun's—holding companies.
Boba Fett thumbed his own comm unit's transmit button. "I thought you were going independent, Balance-sheet."
"I am," replied the voice from the comm unit speaker. "This freighter, however humble, is mine alone. But then, my needs are not elaborate. And Prince Xizor did give me a good deal on it—virtually free."
"Nothing's free with him. You'll pay for it, eventually."
"I suspect you're correct in that." Balancesheet did not sound overly concerned. "But in the meantime, it gives me a base of operations that is many degrees more suitable than Kud'ar Mub'at's shabby old web. A ship such as this already has the required operational systems built in; I won't have to create and extrude as many subnodes as my parent did in order to make it serve my needs. Thus the chances of a mutiny, such as the one by which I came to power, are greatly lessened."
"Smart." Boba Fett made a mental note that dealings with this new go-between assembler were likely to be more dangerous than they had been with its predecessor.
"It is, however, little more than a large empty space, with a set of thruster engines attached to an autonomic navigational system. I suspect that it was used for some of Black Sun's simpler smuggling operations, out in the edge systems, and it's become too outmoded and slow for the organization's current needs." The voice of the small assembler creature, alone in the vacated freighter, seemed to echo off the bulkheads around it. "I'll have to spend a considerable amount to equip it the way I wish."
"Save up your credits, then." Boba Fett looked back down to the list of shipyard possibilities on the computer readout. "That kind of work doesn't come cheap."
"Oh, I've got the credits already." Balancesheet's voice turned subtly smug. "More than enough."
Something about the way the assembler's words had been spoken piqued Boba Fett's interest. "What are you talking about?"
"You might want to check the status of your transfer accounts on Coruscant." The smile in Balancesheet's voice was almost audible. "You forget that I do a lot more financial business than you do; that's what I was created to do. And I inherited, so to speak, all of my cre-ator's old friends and associates—especially the ones will-ing to be bribed in exchange for certain small favors."
" 'Favors'... what kind of favors?"
"Merely the kind that involves splitting a transfer of credits from an escrow account, and very quietly divert-ing one half into my receipt account rather than yours." Balancesheet's voice turned pitying. "You really should have checked your own accounts after seeing that the transfer had been made; if you had, you would have seen that you wound up with half the bounty that had been posted for Voss'on't."
Boba Fett pushed himself back from the control panel. His gaze locked upon the empty freighter visible in the distance. "That was a mistake," he said grimly. Without even checking further, he knew that what the assembler had said was true. It wasn't the kind of thing a sentient creature would joke about; not with him. "A big mis-take, on your part."
"I don't think so." No apprehension sounded in the voice coming from the speaker. "The way I see it, you owed me at least that much. If it hadn't been for me, Prince Xizor would have gone ahead and eliminated you. Permanently. You might not care to show any gratitude for that—I don't expect it, either. So let's just call this an-other little business deal."
"Let's call it theft." Boba Fett rasped out the words. "I'm the wrong creature to steal from."
"Perhaps so," replied Balancesheet. "But it's in your interest for my go-between business to be up and run-ning. There's a lot of potential clients out in the galaxy, who will only deal with someone like you at an arm's-length basis. You need me, Boba Fett. So you can go on hunting down more hard merchandise and collecting the bounties for it. Without a go-between to hold the credits, a lot of this business breaks down; it doesn't work anymore."
The analysis didn't sway Boba Fett. "I can take care of my own business."
"Good for you. But I'm still keeping half the Voss'on't bounty. I've got expenses as well."
"You don't have to worry about meeting them. You won't live that long. Nobody does who steals from me."
"Get serious, Fett." The assembler's mocking words slid out of the comm unit speaker; Balancesheet had given up any semblance of maintaining the formalities and sly fawning in which Kud'ar Mub'at had indulged. "What are you going to do about it? The condition your ship is in, you're not able to blow away a midge-fly. Not without blowing yourself up. And as slow as this freighter might be, it's still faster than you at the moment."
"I'll catch up with you," promised Boba Fett. "Sooner or later."