Fire flashed in her eyes for a second, then just as quickly dimmed. "Let's face it," she said. The metal bar clanged on the hold's floor as she tossed it away. "He ran a number on both of us. Just so he could have as much peace and quiet as he wanted while he navigated the ship."
"Well, yeah, I'm willing to let him have it, if that's what he wants." Dengar slowly straightened from his de-fensive crouch, ready to drop back into it if this female showed any more signs of her murderous temper. There was a big difference between her and Manaroo, it struck him. His betrothed could be just as tough if necessary, but so far she hadn't ever given any indications that she wanted to kill him. That might change after they were married—if that ever happened—but he was willing to take the chance.
"He's not just the head bounty hunter around here. He's also the pilot of the ship. I can wait un-til he gets us to where he wants to go."
"Your waiting's over," said Neelah. With her thumb, she pointed toward the cockpit above them.
"We've arrived."
"Yeah?" Dengar rubbed his chin, warily regarding the female. A hard knot of apprehension coalesced in his stomach. It was one thing to travel toward an unknown destination, but quite another thing to reach that myste-rious point. Whatever else Boba Fett might have filled him in on—it didn't amount to much—there hadn't been any talk about the events that would go down once they got there. "Now what?"
"That's the big question. But our intrepid captain has decided to break his silence, at least. So get a move on— Fett wants us both up in the cockpit for a briefing."
Dengar nodded, then managed a half smile. "That oughta improve your disposition, at least."
He followed Neelah up the ladder. But even as he mounted the metal treads, his mind slipped back to the last fading vestiges of the dream he had been enjoying be-fore being so violently awoken. It had been all about the same fantasy in which he indulged even when awake, during those relatively quieter times when he wasn't try-ing to keep from getting killed. The partnership with Boba Fett had to pay off, figured Dengar. Big time. Fett had to have something major cooking, or he wouldn't have bothered taking on a partner—gratitude wasn't a sufficient motivation with a hard character like that. Save a guy's life, brooded Dengar, and what do you get for it? Not much, except for a chance to get killed in some scheme of his. That was the easy part; the harder one would be turning this partnership gig into cold, hard credits, the kind that would pay off his debt load and set him and Manaroo up in a new life. Something like bro-kering the galaxy's high technologies to underdeveloped backwater planets, like that dump of a world Tatooine. That was where the real profits were to be made, and a lot more safely besides. Even with paying out the bribes to keep a commercial operation going, either to the Em-pire or, if the wildest imaginable possibilities came true, to whatever was put together by the Rebel Alliance, there would still be the chance of him and Manaroo do-ing well together. All it took were the connections—I've got those already, Dengar told himself—and a little bit of operating capital. Actually, a lot of capital; that was why he'd agreed to hook up with Boba Fett in the first place.
As he stepped from the ladder and through the cock-pit hatchway, Dengar slowly shook his head. Whatever was next on Boba Fett's agenda, he had the feeling it might not lead to that pile of credits he needed, and the new life they could buy.
"Let's get right to business," said Boba Fett, turning around in the pilot's chair to face Dengar and Neelah. "I don't care to waste any more time than we already have." He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. "This is what's left of Kud'ar Mub'at's web—"
Dengar leaned forward, peering toward the viewport behind the other bounty hunter. "You're right," he said after a moment. The drifting corpses of the assembler's subnodes, tangled in ropelike strands of neural tissue, were both eerie and impressive. "It must be ..."
"I hardly need to be told when I'm correct about something." A trace of irritation sounded in Boba Fett's otherwise emotionless voice. "I rarely am not. And when I say that there is a considerable amount of time pressure upon our actions here, you should believe it."
"You mean what's going on with the Empire and the Rebels?" Dengar shrugged, then shook his head. "I don't see what the worry is. The big battle they've got shaping up between them—that's way out by Endor. That's prac-tically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it's a long stretch from us. I don't see how it could affect what we're doing here. If anything—" He pointed to the view-port. "Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever you brought us here for. Both the Empire and the Rebel Alliance have pulled out most of their forces from whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. That leaves a lot of systems and space just about empty of them. We can do what we want, and neither the Em-pire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser."
"That kind of simplistic analysis is why you're the one taking orders, and I'm the one giving them." Boba Fett laid his gloved hands flat on the arms of the pilot's chair. "The battle that's likely to take place near Endor might be over, once it's begun, in less than a few minutes. And it will have a decisive impact on the fate of the ongoing struggle between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance. They've been building up to this confrontation for a long time. And it does matter which side wins, to creatures like us. Palpatine wishes to make absolute his control over the galaxy, and everything in it. Such a grasp would extend to you, Dengar, as well as to myself. Our own ambitions, and what we do to pursue them, might no longer be possible if Palpatine were to achieve all that he desires."
"And what about mine?" Standing beside Dengar, the female Neelah spoke up. "What happens to me, and what I want?"
"You don't even know what that is," replied Boba Fett. "But you can believe me about it—or not, just as you choose. The past and the world that was stolen from you will be lost forever if Palpatine wins this struggle with the Rebel Alliance. There will be no way for you to get it back then."
"And if the Rebels win?"
"There's no way they can." Boba Fett gave a flat, hard shake of his head. "My own career as a bounty hunter should be proof enough that cunning and ruthlessness inevitably triumph over all the high-minded ideals that the universe can generate." The bounty hunter's scorn for the Rebels, for any creature motivated by some-thing beyond profits, was evident. "But if the impossible should happen—the galaxy has seen stranger events come about—then that would be bad for our business as well. The Rebels' pretenses to a higher morality would prevent them from paying the established rates for our services, and they would also at the same time seek to ex-terminate those criminal operations which have been some of my best customers. Let's face it—the best out-come, as far as bounty hunters are concerned, would be for this battle near Endor to wind up being a draw some-how, with neither force eliminating the other, and the struggle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire con tinuing. We can hope for that to happen—but we can't count on it."
Dengar had felt his own hopes falling as he had lis-tened to Boba Fett's bleak prognosis. What a universe, he thought glumly. Whether the war was won by the forces of good or by the greatest evil the galaxy had ever known, somehow the results were the same, at least for him. I wind up losing, no matter what. That longed-for future, with him and Manaroo and nothing to do with the bounty hunter trade, seemed to recede at a light-speed pace. The only way for him to make the kind of credits he needed was as a bounty hunter, hooked up with the notorious Boba Fett, but that same Boba Fett made it sound as if it was soon going to be impossible to even be a bounty hunter. Where was the fairness in an arrangement like that?