"But. . . but look at the chance you're taking." The gears of Bossk's thoughts slowly started moving again. "I don't have what you're talking about right here on me. You think I'd carry stuff like that around? No way." Bossk shook his head vigorously. "I've got it well hid, someplace where nobody else would be able to find it."
"Whatever's been hidden can be found again."
"Maybe so," said Bossk, "but not without a lot of searching. And that would take time. Time that you don't have right now." His words started coming faster. "You said yourself, just a couple minutes ago, that you came here to Tatooine in a hurry. That must mean you've got to get your hands on that stuff real quick. You kill me now, and that's not going to happen. You'll be stuck here in Mos Eisley, rooting through every possible place I could have stashed the goods. And maybe you won't ever find it. Think about that." Bossk gave a quick nod, his own fanged muzzle almost brushing that of the blaster being held on him. "Then what'll you do? You won't be getting any help from me, if I'm already dead."
"Good point." The blaster pistol remained where it was, unwavering in Boba Fett's grip. "But not good enough. Do the math, Bossk. If I kill you now, I might in-deed have only a small chance of finding what I came here for. But all your chances will be over. What's incon-venient for me will be terminal for you." Boba Fett's fin-ger rested upon the trigger, a centimeter away from unleashing its fire. "There's nothing left to discuss. So what's it going to be?"
The darkly shining metal in the other bounty hunter's hand mesmerized Bossk. He had looked straight at death before—in the bounty hunter trade, it was a regular occurrence—but never with as much certainty as now. The pulse in his veins seemed to stop, along with time it-self; all the rest of the cantina faded away, along with its whispering voices and watching eyes. The universe seemed to have contracted, down to the width of the booth's ta-ble, holding nothing but himself and the helmeted figure across from him, with the blaster as the pivot of gravity between them.
"All right ..." Bossk's throat had gone as dry as the Dune Sea, somewhere out in that vanished world sur-rounding the booth. "I'll..." The next words caught in his throat, as though they were too big to dislodge. "I'll go ahead and ..." His hands drew into fists, claws dig-ging ragged parallel grooves in the table's surface. For a moment longer, Bossk remained paralyzed, then he found himself slowly shaking his head. "No, I won't," he said flatly. "I won't do it."
"What did you say?" The blaster didn't move, but a minute fraction of surprise sounded in Boba Fett's voice.
"You heard me." Bossk's heart was racing now; his vi-sion blurred with the increased pressure for a moment, then he managed to bring Boba Fett's image into focus again. "I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to give you the stuff I found inside that droid." He raised his hand from the marks his claws had dug into the table and spread them wide, making an additional target out of his chest. "Go ahead and fire. I don't care." A certain exhila-ration came with those words; Bossk felt absolutely free for the first time in his existence. "You know ... I just realized something. That's how you always won before," he marveled aloud. "It was because you didn't care. Whether you lived or died, or whether you won or lost. So you always wound up surviving, and you always won." Bossk slowly shook his head, admiring his own sudden insight. "That's amazing."
"Spare me." The dark-visored gaze remained as steady as the blaster in Boba Fett's hand. "I won because I had more firepower—and brainpower—than you or anyone else did. That's what matters. Nothing else."
"Yeah, well, not this time." Bossk found himself smil-ing with genuine pleasure, even though he knew he might very well be enjoying the last few seconds of his life. "You know, I really should've figured this out be-fore. I've been in plenty of tight spots, where I was look-ing death straight in the face—like when Governor Desnand was planning on peeling my skin right off me— and I always managed to fight or bribe my way out of them. I even managed to steal the Hound's Tooth back from Tinian and Chenlambec, and that took some doing, believe me. And then to have you steal the Hound away from me ..." Bossk slowly shook his head. "Crazy busi-ness, huh? Not surprising that I never figured out what it all meant. At least until now." Bossk gestured at the blaster in Boba Fett's hand. "So you got the firepower, all right, for all the good it'll do you. Go ahead. Shoot."
A shadow fell across the table. The cantina's bar-tender had pushed his way through the crowd, right up to the side of the rear booth. "Hold on, you two—" The man's lumpish face was shiny with sweat.
"We don't want any trouble here—"
"It's a little late for that." Boba Fett swung the muzzle of the blaster around toward the bartender. "Isn't it?"
"Now . . . wait a minute ..." The bartender held up his hands, palms outward, as though they were capable of stopping a blaster bolt. "I was just ... trying to help you work things out. That's all..."
"And so you can." With his free hand, Boba Fett reached into one of the pouches in his battle armor and drew out a data-transfer chip. "Does this establishment have a verify-and-transmit connection with the local banking exchange?"
"Sure—" The bartender nodded and pointed toward the opposite side of the cantina. "Back in the office. We use it for our own accounts. We get a lot of credits, from a lot of different systems, moving through here."
"Fine." With his thumb, Fett punched in a few quick commands on the chip's miniaturized input module.
"Take this and have the balance in my local cache account deposited in the name and identity scan of this individual here." He indicated Bossk with a nod of his helmet. "Keep the five-percent service fee for yourself. Got that?"
The bartender nodded again.
"Then do it."
Bearing the transfer chip in his hands like a precious relic, the bartender turned and hurried toward the can-tina office. The crowd parted before him, to let him pass. Then their wondering faces all turned back toward the scene in the booth.
"All right," said Boba Fett. He tucked the blaster back into its holster. "There. You've won."
Bossk stared at him uncomprehendingly for a mo-ment before he could speak. "What did you say?"
"You've won." A note of impatience tinged Fett's words. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
A tiny bell note sounded from a pouch on one of the straps crossing Bossk's scale-covered chest. He fumbled out the small readout card with his own account balance encoded on it. A few minutes ago, the numbers had been pitifully small. But now the transfer of funds had gone through, as Fett had instructed the cantina's bartender. The resulting change in the readout figure widened Bossk's eyes into almost perfect circles.
The crowd in the cantina had heard what Boba Fett had said. The volume and buzzing urgency of their com-ments to each other went up several notches.
"I won?" Bossk lifted his gaze from the readout to his own reflection in the dark visor of Fett's helmet.
"Look," said Boba Fett. "I don't have time to either kill you or argue with you any further. I've paid you—" He pointed to the readout in Bossk's claws. "And that's more than you would've gotten from Kuat. So that's my half of the business we're doing here. So work with me on this, all right? Your turn. Where's the stuff you took from my ship?"
Bossk still felt slightly stunned. "It's... not here ..."
"You told me that already. So where is it?"
"Back at the hovel-stack... where I've been staying..." Bossk gave him the directions, the exact route down Mos Eisley's twisting alleys. "Move the pallet... and there's a hole underneath, covered with a board ..."
"That's your hiding place?" Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. "I could have saved my credits." He slid out from the booth. "Make it last," he said, pointing to the readout in Bossk's hand. "Might be all you'll see for a while." Fett turned and strode away, the crowd quickly shifting to either side of the cantina.