Neelah looked up to the forward viewport, and saw the web disintegrating into chaos and flame.
Barely a second passed before she was able to spot the source of the destruction. In the distance, another ship had appeared, firing its laser cannon. Another coruscat-ing bolt tore through the web, even as she watched.
Instinctively, she grabbed for the navigational con-trols on the panel in front of her. Piloting the ship, even a cumbersomely fitted-out one such as the Hound's Tooth, was within her abilities; manning its weaponry and firing back at the attacking ship were impossible, though.
She shoved forward the main thruster engine control; its responding force shoved her back into the pilot's chair. Another few quick adjustments brought the Hound about, away from the web and the unknown ship, still firing its laser cannon as it rocketed closer. Through the ship's frame, Neelah had heard the conducted noise of the transfer hatch ripping away from where it had been sealed to the web.
Another push on the thruster control would send the Hound's Tooth on a full-power, blazing arc away from this sector of space. An emergency escape vector was al-ready programmed into the hyperspace navicomputer; she would only have to punch a couple of buttons to reach safety.
And then what? Neelah sat frozen at the ship's con-trols, mind racing. Maybe I've found out enough, she told herself. Her name, her true name; there had been many times, all the way back to the palace of Jabba the Hurt, that she had despaired of ever discovering even that much. She should be satisfied with that...
More words escaped her lips that came from the past and the memories she had found within herself. They were a string of expletives in one of the planet Kuat's an-cient, pre-Basic tongues.
She slammed on the Hound's side jets, and was imme-diately swiveled about in the pilot's chair as the ship swung back toward the web and its attacker.
This is just like the story I told, thought Dengar. About all those things that happened back then...
He struggled to remain conscious, knowing that death was on the other side of the blackness threatening to engulf him. The swirling dark spots that signaled ter-minal oxygen starvation had coalesced into one annihi-lating wave, roaring down the length of the web's central tunnel. Any further drop in atmospheric pressure would be enough to kill both him and Boba Fett; the murderous vacuum of space would boil the blood right out of their ruptured flesh and viscera. Dragging in as much fiery breath as he could, Dengar saw the web clear and partly come into focus; once more, he saw the image from the story he had related to Neelah, of the Black Sun cleanup crew tearing apart the living web of Kud'ar Mub'at. Only this time, there weren't any henchmen of Prince Xizor going about their destructive business; the web seemed almost to be ripping itself apart before his red-misted eyes.
Then the image changed. Now that, he thought deliri-ously, wasn't in the story. The prow of a bounty hunter ship, the one called Hound's Tooth, tore through the exterior of the web. Great tangles of structural fibers rolled across the curve of the cockpit's forward viewport; through the mired transparisteel, Dengar just barely rec-ognized Neelah at the control panel. Braking jets spat flame, slowing the ship down before it could barrel over him and crush his form to the web's tangled floor.
It's too late. That was his last thought as the blackness exploded from inside his skull. I'll neverSomething grabbed him around his bursting chest, picking him up bodily and diving with him toward the hull of the Hound's Tooth. But he didn't strike the ship's exterior; instead, he felt himself land skidding across the level flooring of the ship's open airlock.
A rush of oxygen filled his aching lungs, and he was able to see a blurred vision of Boba Fett standing just in-side the airlock door, smashing his gloved fist upon the small control pad at its edge. The door sealed shut and the enclosed space repressurized itself.
Dengar pushed himself up onto his knees and col-lapsed against the curved metal behind him. He wiped a trembling hand across his face, then looked at his palm and saw it reddened with the blood leaking from his nose and mouth.
The airlock's interior door hissed open. Boba Fett didn't bother to reach down and help Dengar stand upright, but instead just stumbled into the ship's cargo hold. Even weaker, Dengar crawled after the other bounty hunter, then used the bars of one of the empty cages to pull him-self to his feet. He stood clutching the bars as his heart slowly stopped hammering in his chest.
"All right..." Dengar managed to wheeze out a few painful words. "Now... we're even..."
Boba Fett didn't seem to hear him. As Dengar watched, the other bounty hunter started climbing the ladder up to the ship's cockpit.
11
The thruster engine controls were under Neelah's palm, ready for her to shove them forward and send the Hound's Tooth bursting out of the remains of the entangling web. Before she could move, she heard something from the hatchway behind her; she turned and saw Boba Fett stand-ing there. The only time she had seen him looking worse had been back on Tatooine when he had been lying on the desert sands, half-dead from the Sarlacc's digestive secretions.
Strands of Kud'ar Mub'at's extruded neural fibers were draped and twisted about Boba Fett's battle armor as he pushed himself from the hatchway and shoved Nee-lah away from the control panel. Pressing herself back into the pilot's chair, keeping out of his way, she watched as he slapped row after row of weapons systems controls; their bright red lights pulsed on like bright, fiery jewels.
Once the Hound's own laser cannons had all been brought operational, Boba Fett hit the thruster control on which Neelah's hand had been poised only a few sec-onds before. One quick flare from the main thruster en-gines, and the tattered fragments of the web broke apart and swirled away from the ship's forward viewport. He quickly hit the braking jets, slamming the Hound to a dead stop in empty space. The attacking vessel was cen-tered in the cannon's targeting systems.
Fett snapped on the comm unit. "You can fire or you can try to run." The indicator light on the control panel showed that the ship he had hailed was receiving the transmission. "Either one won't do you much good."
Leaning past him, Neelah peered through the view-port. From this close, the other ship didn't appear to be much of a threat. Instead of the sleek, threatening lines of a fighting craft, it looked more like a slow and bulky freighter vessel.
"What a surprise," came the voice over the comm unit speaker. It sounded amused rather than angry—or fright-ened. "I did not know it was you, Boba Fett. Believe me, if I had, I wouldn't have fired upon you."
"Wait a minute." Neelah looked up at the comm unit in amazement, then over to Boba Fett. "This creature ... knows you}"
Boba Fett gave an acknowledging nod. "We go back a bit, with each other. And you already know about it."
That last remark puzzled her even more. "Who is it? And does everybody who knows you just open fire when they see you?"
"It happens often enough." He shrugged. "Just an oc-cupational hazard. Especially in this line of business." Turning from her, Boba Fett hit the comm unit button again. "Balancesheet—I could blow you away right now, and I'd be justified in doing that."
"How fortunate for me then that you're so capable of controlling your wrath."
Another sound came from the cockpit hatchway. Nee-lah turned and saw Dengar—looking even worse for his experiences aboard the reconstructed web—standing there.
"Balancesheet?" Dengar stared up at the comm unit speaker, then glanced over at Neelah. "You mean the lit-tle assembler that used to be Kud'ar Mub'at's accountant subnode? That's who fired on us?"
"I guess so," replied Neelah. "I mean—how would I know for sure? You're the one who told me about it."