"Bounty hunters, huh?" Sma'Da's face darkened into a scowl. "I'll give you a good bet on a couple of 'em. You can bet that if I ever get my hands on a pair named Zuckuss and 4-LOM, they're both dead meat. They're the ones who dragged me out of here, not too long ago. She shook her head. "I'm not interested in them."
"All right." Sma'Da gave her a jowly, cajoling smile. "Who do you want to bet on?"
The woman told the gambler.
"You got to be joking." He looked at her in amaze-ment. "Him?"
"Will you cover the bet?"
"Oh, I'll cover it all right." Sma'Da's shoulders lifted in a shrug. "Hey, that's my business. And I'll give you great odds, too. Because frankly—he's not going to make it. I know just what kind of trouble he's in. It doesn't get any worse."
The woman's gaze turned cold. "All the better for you, then."
When the wager was recorded and the stakes trans-ferred to a holding account at one of the galaxy's bank-ing worlds, Sma'Da offered to buy her a drink. "You should get something for your money," he said. "I hate to take credits from a pretty female, and not give them something in return."
"There is something you can do for me." The woman rose from the table.
Sma'Da looked at her. "What's that?"
"Just be ready to pay up when the time comes." She turned and strode toward the establishment's ornately framed exit, the edge of the cloak trailing across the gold-specked floor.
Near the planet Kuat, other conversations were taking place.
"Believe me," said the leader of the Scavenger Squad-ron, "I don't like being here, either. I'd rather be out near Sullust right now, getting ready for the real battle."
Kuat of Kuat turned from his lab bench and looked over his shoulder at the figure standing, flight helmet in the crook of one arm, in the middle of Kuat's own private quarters. To one side of the space, a high, arching bank of transparisteel panes revealed stars and the immense, intricate shapes of Kuat Drive Yards' construction docks. Against Kuat's ankles, the felinx rubbed its silk-furred flank; glancing down at it for a moment, Kuat saw the creature turn a hostile, slit-pupiled glare at the intruder.
"Then you should feel free to leave," Kuat of Kuat said mildly. "The presence of your squadron here is en-tirely unnecessary."
"The Rebel Alliance feels otherwise." An impressive scar ran in an almost perfect diagonal across Commander Gennad Rozhdenst's face, the result of surviving a previ-ous skirmish with Imperial fighters.
"And I have my or-ders, directly from former Senator Mon Mothma, with the Alliance fleet near Sullust."
"So I understand." Kuat had bent down and picked up the felinx; the animal now lay cradled in the safety of his arms. Its yellow eyes closed in contentment as he scratched behind its ears. "But you must also bear in mind, Commander, that I have my duties to perform as well."
Right now, those duties weighed heavily on Kuat of Kuat's shoulders. Everything depends upon me, he mused. The felinx might very well consider its comfort to be the most pressing concern of its master, but there was far more than that in his thoughts. The fate of Kuat Drive Yards itself, the corporation whose ships and armaments spanned the galaxy and formed the bulk of the Imperial Navy—the leadership of that enterprise was Kuat's hereditary legacy, just as it had been for his father and grandfather, and to generations before them. When he gazed out upon the construction docks, with a fleet of Destroyers and heavy cruisers nearing completion in them, he felt as though their combined mass bent his spine. And more: rising above Kuat Drive Yards was the mottled green sphere of the planet Kuat itself, an entire world and people dependent upon the fate of the corpo-ration that funneled such a large share of the galaxy's wealth into their coffers.
And I fought for this. Kuat's fingertips continued their instinctive caress of the felinx's silken fur. I fought to keep this burden mine, rather than let others usurp it from me. At times such as this, when the weight of his re-sponsibilities translated into bone-weary fatigue, he be-gan to question the wisdom of such a struggle. There had been plenty of others in the ruling families of the planet Kuat, nobles whose bloodlines were by custom pre-vented from taking over the leadership of Kuat Drive Yards, who had been eager to conspire against him, over-throw their world's ancient wisdom, and place them-selves in this seat of power. As much as Kuat of Kuat might have been willing to let them have their chance, he had found himself unable to let go of his tight grasp upon the corporation. Because I know—he closed his eyes as he stroked the felinx—that they would never have been able to prevail. Not against me, but against all our other enemies. Kuat found it cruelly ironic that when death had removed the threat posed by Prince Xizor, another potential opponent should arise, in the form of the Rebel Alliance.
"There's no conflict," said Commander Rozhdenst, "between your duties and mine." The wintry blue eyes in the hard-angled face seemed to have peered into and dis-cerned the careful workings inside Kuat's heart. "The Rebel Alliance has no designs upon Kuat Drive Yards. We would just as soon have the corporation remain in your hands."
"I wish I could believe that, Commander." Kuat's hand froze in its gentle motions upon the felinx's neck. He could hear his own voice turning cold. "But station-ing a squadron of armed Rebel spacecraft—even one that so justly merits its 'scavenger' descriptor—is hardly the action of those who seek friendship with Kuat Drive Yards."
"The Rebel Alliance would be satisfied with main-taining a neutral relationship with you. We seek no more than that."
"Ah." Kuat of Kuat managed a wry smile before slowly shaking his head. "But you see, Commander—that's what everybody says. Everybody who has ever done business with Kuat Drive Yards, back to my father's and my grand-father's times before me, has always assured us that they had the corporation's welfare—and independence—at heart. And if we had trusted them on that point, I doubt if Kuat Drive Yards would even exist now. So you'll have to excuse my skepticism; I know it's unseemly in even an unwilling host such as myself. But I assure you that Em-peror Palpatine himself has informed me that he has no 'designs,' as you put it, upon us. Don't be offended if I state that the reliance I place upon his words is just about the same as I put upon those from a representative of the Rebel Alliance."
The commander regarded him for a moment, then spoke. "You have a way of putting things very bluntly, Kuat."
"Ascribe it to my training as an engineer. I prefer to think of it as exactitude, rather than bluntness."
"Then I'll speak to you just as ... exactly." Rozh-denst's voice grew even icier, like durasteel exposed to the vacuum of space. "My squadron and I were sent here on a mission, and we intend to carry that mission out. But you're correct in assuming that there's something that the Rebel Alliance wants from you. I've been quite thoroughly briefed on the political and strategic analysis that's been made by our leadership concerning the value of Kuat Drive Yards. Not just to ourselves, but to Palpa-tine as well. When I say that your neutrality is something that we value, I don't mean just toward the Alliance; I mean toward the Empire."
"Kuat Drive Yards does business with the Empire. Nothing more than that. The armaments and fleet pro-curement authorities of the Imperial Navy value what we do here—as they should; we have no rivals when it comes to our military shipbuilding expertise—and they are capable of meeting our prices." The felinx shifted lazily in the crook of Kuat's arm as his shoulders lifted in a shrug. "We sell to others as well, if they can pay for the goods they desire. That, in fact, is the only distinction we make between our customers and potential customers: whether or not they've got the credits in their accounts, for us to take an order from them." Kuat displayed a thin, humorless smile. "Believe me, Commander, if the Rebel Alliance was capable of paying, Kuat Drive Yards would be happy to take your credits. From the look of that motley collection of patched-together Y-wings you've got stationed around our construction docks, they could certainly use a little maintenance and retrofitting work."