"He knew ... he knew who I am?" Neelah leaned for-ward. "My real name?"
"Unfortunately, the creature knew nothing of that. And you can rest assured that I used every means of per-suasion at my disposal to make sure he told me every-thing that he did know. I didn't have to worry about leaving traces of those techniques; in Jabba's palace, a corpse turning up in that kind of condition was pretty much a daily occurrence. What he did tell me, though, before I returned to Jabba's court, was that his former business associate Ree Duptom had accepted two new jobs just before they had had their falling out with each other, and that one client would be paying for both jobs. But he didn't know who that client was; Duptom hadn't told him that much."
"Then the information's worthless!" A look of furi-ous despair sparked in Neelah's gaze. "It still doesn't tell us who I really am, or what happened to me!"
"Calm yourself. You've waited this long for the an-swers you want; you can wait a little while longer. Be-cause that may be all that it takes."
"What... what do you mean?"
"Did you forget," said the bounty hunter, "that I brought you to this point in space for a reason? Those answers, if they're to be found anywhere, are here." Boba Fett pointed to the cockpit's viewport and its unset-tling vista of dead arachnoid subnodes. "My late contact inside Jabba the Hurt's palace wasn't able to tell me your name—he had never even laid eyes on you before coming there—but he was able to provide the clue I needed."
Dengar spoke up this time. "So what was that?"
"Simple. The two last jobs that Ree Duptom had taken on were obviously the ones I found aboard his ship Venesectrix—whoever the person was who had hired him to do something with the fabricated evidence about Prince Xizor's involvement in the stormtrooper raid on Tatooine, that person must also have been the one that had arranged for the abduction and memory wipe of Neelah. But what my contact in the palace told me was that the person who paid for those jobs hadn't hired Ree Duptom directly. He had used an intermediary—a go-between."
"A go-between . . ." Suddenly, Dengar understood. "It must have been Kud'ar Mub'at! The assembler was the only creature who would have arranged that kind of job for Ree Duptom. But—"
"But it's dead," Neelah said flatly. "Kud'ar Mub'at is dead, remember? You were here when it happened." She shook her head in disgust. "You've brought us all the way out here for nothing. The dead can't tell us any secrets."
"That's where you're wrong." Boba Fett turned in the pilot's chair and pointed to the viewport behind him. "Look."
The Hound's Tooth had slowly moved farther into the tethered constellation of dead subnodes. Until it had at last come to the center of the torn strands of neural tissue.
In the scan of space visible outside the ship, a spider-like corpse larger than all the others drifted, jointed legs tucked up beneath what was left of its globular abdomen. The hollow, blind eyes of Kud'ar Mub'at gazed back at the visitors to the cold vacuum of its tomb.
"We only need to bring the dead back to life." Boba Fett spoke with calm assurance, just as though nothing would be easier. "And then listen ..."
9
A woman talked to a traitor.
"You got what you wanted." The traitor's name was Fenald; in the dim, smoky light of the underground wa-tering hole, his smile was both unpleasant and knowing, like an animal toying with its prey. "That's what it's all about, isn't it?"
Kodir of Kuhlvult tried to keep her cloak from touch-ing the damp walls of the establishment. She had known there were such places on the world of Kuat, but she had never been in one before. Her life had been spent in an-other world, one that was on the same planet but that might as well have been light-years away. That world contained all the luxury and power of Kuat's ruling fami-lies; this one contained the planet's human dregs.
A candle stub's inadequate light flickered from a rough niche carved in the wall, merging her shadow and Fenald's with the darkness in which other figures sat hunched and brooding over squat mugs of intoxicants. Even the air seeped rankly into Kodir's lungs, every molecule laden with the soot that lined the low, crouch-inducing stone ceiling.
"I've got some of what I wanted." Kodir leaned for-ward, arms on the sticky-wet table, so that Fenald would be able to make out her hushed words. "There's always more."
Fenald was a little drunk; he had obviously been wait-ing for her to show up for some time. '"Fraid I can't help you much with the rest. I'm not exactly in an influential position these days, am I? I sort of spent all that on the last part of your plans."
"Yes—" Kodir nodded inside the cloak's loose hood that she had put on to conceal her identity from any pry-ing scrutiny. "You're quite an actor. Everybody was fooled. And they still are. So you did a very good job for me. I appreciate that."
"Good," said Fenald thickly. He regarded her from heavy-lidded eyes. "Because I need you to show that ap-preciation. I'm a little short on credits these days . . . what with having lost my job and all. And since you've got that job now—just what you wanted, huh?—then I think it's only fair if you pay a little more than what you did up front. Like on a continuing basis. So I wouldn't be tempted into talking to anybody about our little ... per-formance, shall we say. It'd be a shame to spoil the show, while it's still going on."
"You're right. It would be." Kodir reached across the table and laid her hand on top of his. "But you know—there's more than one way for me to show my appreciation."
In his present state, it took Fenald a few seconds to understand what she meant. Then his smile grew wider and uglier. "Fine," he said. "But that'll have to be in ad-dition to the credits."
She didn't say anything in reply, but leaned farther across the table, bringing her face closer to his. Just be-fore their lips met, her other hand emerged from inside the cloak with something bright and glittering in her grip. Fenald's eyes went round with shock as he felt the object move across his throat.
"No," said Kodir softly. She dropped the vibroblade onto the table, next to where Fenald had collapsed face-down in a widening pool of his own blood. "It's instead."
Drawing the cloak's hood forward, Kodir turned and looked back across the watering hole's dim space. None of its clientele appeared to have noticed that anything at all had happened. She slid a few coins onto the table's corner, then got up and walked unhurriedly toward the steps leading back up to the surface level.
A woman talked to a gambler.
A different woman, and far from the planet of Kuat. But she too had wrapped herself in a hooded cloak to prevent anyone from prying into her affairs.
"Business is still a little slow for me right now," said the gambler. His name was Drawmas Sma'Da, and he sat at a table in a glittering, brightly lit pleasure den. The laughter of the galaxy's rich and foolish denizens sounded from all sides of the establishment. "You have to under-stand, I'm not yet at the level where I used to be—I had a little, um, embarrassment a few weeks ago. I had to spend most of my operating capital getting out of that mess; you know, the usual bribes and payoffs and stuff. Believe me, Palpatine's not the only greedy creature inside the Empire." Lacing his hands together across his expansive belly, he leaned back in his chair. "So I can't cover any big bets at the moment. None of that Alliance versus the Empire stuff."
"That's fine." The woman kept her voice low. "I want to place a different kind of wager. On a bounty hunter."