"That was how he got kicked out of the old Bounty Hunters Guild." Dengar gave a slow nod. "He got a cou-ple of other bounty hunters killed by circulating stories that they had been the ones responsible for certain double crosses that went down. They weren't scams that he'd run, but shifting the blame let some other well-paying, weaselly creature get away."
"A time-honored tradition," said Boba Fett drily. "And one which Ree Duptom had been making a good part of his living at. Given his reputation for being able to do that sort of thing, someone had obviously engaged his services in some kind of scheme to falsely link Prince Xizor with the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine in which Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle were killed. But two other deaths put an end to that plot: Duptom's own, when he was fried by the meltdown of his ship's engine core, and Xizor's. Whatever the intent had been in trying to link Xizor with the stormtrooper raid, it was hardly worth following through on it once he had been killed as well. The only thing left from the plot was the fabricated evidence contained in the cargo droid, and that was in my possession once I came across Duptom's ship drifting in space."
"For which, I'm sure, you'd find some good use." Un-folding an arm, Neelah held up two fingers. "But you said there was something else you found on that ship. What was the other item?"
"Perhaps this one will compel more of your attention. Ree Duptom might have been dead—" Boba Fett shrugged. "No great loss; but there was still another creature alive aboard the Venesectrix. In the cargo hold's cages, I found a young female human. Not in the best of physical condition—Duptom wasn't as careful about maintaining his merchandise as I am—but at least still breathing. She was still unconscious, the aftereffect of a rather thorough memory wipe that she had received ..."
Dengar heard a sudden gasp come from Neelah. He looked over at her, standing next to him, and saw that her eyes had gone wide with surprise.
"Good," said Boba Fett. "I see that I have managed to pique your interest. That moment aboard Ree Duptom's Venesectrix was indeed our first encounter. One that still remains as mystifying to me as it undoubtedly is to you. I could only assume that a memory-wiped female human had been in Duptom's possession as part of his various business enterprises—though not, of course, as an item of hard merchandise for which a bounty had been posted. While it was possible that Ree Duptom might have got-ten wind of some paying gig before I had, enough time had passed—as was indicated by the advanced state of decomposition of his corpse—so that I would have heard of anyone offering a bounty for the return of a person matching your physical description. That was not the case, so obviously Duptom had been involved in some other, probably less savory, type of business. But what that would have been, I had no clue—when you regained consciousness, you couldn't even tell me your name."
"I remember ..." Neelah's eyes were even wider than before. She nodded slowly. "Not my name ... that's still lost... but I remember now, that was the first time I laid eyes on you. Not in Jabba the Hutt's palace, but in a ship out in space." Neelah touched the side of her head with trembling fingertips. "It was like I woke up there ... and there were the bars of the cage, and I felt so cold ..."
"That was because you were dying. Whoever had done the memory-wipe job on you had been both thor-ough and brutal." Boba Fett's voice was flat and unemo-tional. "They didn't leave you in good shape. Plus you had been unconscious for some time, without food or water, after Ree Duptom had managed to get himself killed. If I hadn't taken care of you and nursed you back to a reasonable semblance of health, you would have died there aboard the Venesectrix—or on Slave I after I had brought you over to my ship. So you might want to regard whatever you did for me, back in the Dune Sea on Tatooine, as just repayment in kind."
"But you didn't save me ... because you felt sorry for me..."
"And pity didn't motivate you either, when you found me near death." Boba Fett regarded her coldly, but with no tone of accusation in his voice. "It was a simple busi-ness matter for both of us. You thought I might be of some use to you, just as long before that, I calculated the potential for turning a profit from you. And"—he turned his head slightly, as though studying her from another angle—"we both might be correct yet. But at the time I found you, that was an unknown quantity, just as it re-mains now. I have my standards, though; no piece of possibly valuable merchandise has ever died while in my keeping, other than when they've managed to commit suicide. That, I could tell, wasn't going to happen in your case; even starving and dehydrated, suffering from a trau-matic memory wipe, enough of your inner spirit remained, fighting to survive. Once you were out of physiological danger, it was just a matter of stowing you someplace where you'd be out of danger while I determined the best way of profiting from your situation."
"So you put her in Jabba the Hutt's palace?" The notion astonished Dengar. He stared at Boba Fett, eyes wide as Neelah's had gone. "That hellhole? She could've gotten thrown to Jabba's pet rancor!"
"The dangers of Jabba's palace were well known to me," said Boba Fett. "While substantial, they were nevertheless limited and predictable. And I would be on hand to circumvent them, in case Neelah had aroused any of Jabba's crueler desires—the Hutt, like all of his greedy species, might have been averse to meeting my price, but he valued my services enough to have made a standing offer for me to stay on at his palace for as long as I cared to."
"So you could keep an eye on me," said Neelah. Her gaze narrowed as she slowly nodded. "But more than that—you had already come to a dead end, trying to find out anything about me, who I really was, why somebody had done all those things to me. So you passed me off as a mere dancing girl, bringing me there to Jabba's palace while I was still too confused to even know what you were doing. But what you were really hoping for was that someone in that crowd of thugs and criminals in Jabba's court would recognize me for who I really was— and that would be how you'd find out how to turn a profit from me!"
"That possibility had occurred to me. Jabba's palace was a crossroads for all sorts of the galaxy's lowlife; some of them had even been in business with Ree Duptom be-fore. There was always a chance that one of them might have had an inkling about what kind of scheme he had been engaged upon when he met his death—who he was working for, and what they were trying to accomplish."
The corner of Neelah's mouth twisted in a sneer. "I guess it's too bad for both of us, then, that you didn't find out anything."
"Ah." A trace of amusement filtered into Boba Fett's voice. "But that's where you're wrong. I did discover something. Perhaps not the whole truth—your real name and where you came from—but enough to follow up on.
Enough that might lead us to that mutually profitable truth."
Standing beside Neelah, Dengar could see her hands tightening into fists.
"Tell me," commanded Neelah. "Now."
"I'll tell you because it suits my own purposes, and not for any other reason." The amused tone evaporated from Boba Fett's words. "There was a former business associate of Ree Duptom at Jabba's palace—his name doesn't matter—but what is important is that the two of them had been working together until just before Dup-tom's death. As a matter of fact, they'd had a falling out, the sort of thing that happens with low criminal mentali-ties like that. It was also the sort of thing that would lead one of them to do a delayed-effect sabotage on the en-gines of the other's ship, resulting in a lethal core melt-down." Fett shook his head. "No great loss—just as it wasn't any great loss when I had to sneak out of Jabba's court for a second, while the other dancing girl, the one named Oola, was giving her final performance. That was just long enough to set up a rendezvous later with my in-formant. It wasn't until after Princess Leia, disguised as an Ubese bounty hunter, had brought the Wookiee Chew-bacca into the court that I had enough time to obtain the data that this certain creature had—and then I made sure that he wouldn't be informing anyone else that I had been asking questions about your real identity."