"If he tries to pull out of there," said Rozhdenst, "he'll tear that ship to pieces."
Klemp peered closer at the image in the viewport. "It looks like ... he's got another idea ..."
The Star Destroyer's thruster engines had throttled back down. There was a moment of stillness at the end of the construction docks, lit by the encroaching flames, then the ship was lit suddenly brighter by the simultane-ous flash of its arsenal of high-powered laser cannons going off. The bolts weren't aimed, but achieved an im-pressive amount of damage despite that, ripping through the weakened structure of the docks and the twisted metal of the fallen crane. Another volley of flaring white bolts followed the first.
Now the two men at the viewport could see the crane and the surrounding docks slowly disintegrate, the girder beams and great, torn masses of durasteel collapsing across one another and into a loose tangle over the Dreadnaught. Once more, thruster engines lit up; this time, the awkward forward course of the ship sent the metal fragments scattering like straws.
Rozhdenst nodded in appreciation as he watched the Star Destroyer move away from the burning wreckage of Kuat Drive Yards and into open space. "Too bad ..."
"Too bad that's not one of our guys."
19
A woman talked to a bounty hunter.
"You know," said Neelah, "you could be a hero. If that was what you wanted."
"Hardly." Boba Fett's voice was as flat and unemo-tional as it had always been. "Heroes don't get paid enough."
"Think about it, though." A thin smile raised a corner of Neelah's mouth. With one hand, she tugged higher upon her shoulder the strap of the bag she carried. "Or at least savor the irony. Your blasting your way out of the KDY construction docks did the Rebel Alliance more good than their own Scavenger Squadron was able to achieve."
She and the bounty hunter were standing in the bridge of the Star Destroyer that Fett had managed to extract from the docks' inferno. The massive ship was silent and empty, except for them.
"How do you figure that?"
"Simple," replied Neelah. "Kuat of Kuat had wired up enough sequentially linked explosives to blow up all of Kuat Drive Yards. If he couldn't have it under his con trol, he didn't want to leave anything but smoking rubble behind. But this Star Destroyer was one of the critical links in the chain; the detonator circuits ran right through its main thruster engine compartment. And when you pulled the ship out of the docks, the chain was broken. Kuat himself didn't live long enough to see what hap-pened, but the result is that over eighty percent of the KDY construction docks survived intact."
Fett shrugged. "That's not my concern."
"Perhaps not." Neelah regarded the bounty hunter. She'd had no expectation of what would come from this secret rendezvous with him. The comm message had come to her at the Scavenger Squadron's mobile com-mand post, giving the coordinates of where she was to meet up with an unnamed entity; she had known instinc-tively that the message was from Boba Fett. She hadn't told Commander Rozhdenst about that, though, but had convinced him to let her go alone and unescorted, as the comm message had directed. It was her own deci-sion to pilot the battered Hound's Tooth to the ren-dezvous. "But," she continued, "it might be my concern. If I want it to be."
"Of course." As always, Fett was way ahead of her. "Kuat of Kuat is dead. That means Kuat Drive Yards is going to need a new leader. The other ruling families can see how things stack up now—if the Rebel Alliance indi-cates that it wants you running KDY, they'll undoubt-edly fall into line."
"I'm not sure about that." Neelah shook her head in disgust. "I know the Kuatese ruling families better than you do, and a lot better than anybody in the Rebel Al-liance. I was born into those families, remember? My sis-ter Kodir isn't the only one of them for whom treachery and scheming come easily. There are plenty of ruling family members who would just as soon back the Em-pire, if they thought it would serve their purposes."
"And you don't want to do anything to oppose them?"
"I'm not sure I want to." Neelah could see her own re-flection in the dark visor of Boba Fett's helmet.
"Or that I even care what happens to Kuat Drive Yards. After all that's happened, I'm not exactly close to anyone on the planet Kuat. Kodir is the only direct blood relation I have, and she's already being shipped down to face a tri-bunal of elders from the ruling families. There's a lot of charges being made against her: conspiracy, murder, kid-napping . . ." Neelah slowly shook her head. "Loyalty doesn't seem to run thick in the Kuhlvult bloodline. I don't feel it, at least. And maybe Kuat of Kuat was right; maybe Kuat Drive Yards deserves something more than that."
"Suit yourself," said Fett. "But I have other business to take care of. That's why I told you to come here."
"All right. Let's hear it."
"I'll make you a trade." Fett gestured toward the bulkheads of the ship surrounding them. "Here's a new, completely operational Star Destroyer, fresh out of the KDY construction docks. It's yours. You can signal the Scavenger Squadron commander to come out here and pick it up. That should make you even more popular with the Rebel Alliance."
Neelah glanced around the ship's bridge. "Or maybe I could sell it to them. It's a nice piece of hardware." She looked again at Boba Fett. "So what do you want in exchange?"
"Two things. First, the Hound's Tooth—"
"The Hound's in pretty bad shape." Neelah shook her head. "Certainly not worth as much as a ship of the line like this."
"It'll get me where I need to go," said Fett. "And second—your silence."
"What about?" Neelah peered at the bounty hunter.
"Me. I take it that you didn't tell anyone from the Rebel Alliance that you've been traveling with me."
"I didn't think it was advisable. Creatures tend to judge you by the company you keep."
"Fine," said Fett. "So go on that way. And don't tell them about me."
"Why?"
"I have my reasons. Right now, it's more convenient for me if everyone goes on believing I'm dead. If any of the creatures who might've spotted me at the Mos Eisley cantina want to talk about what they saw—" Fett shrugged. "There aren't many who'll believe lowlifes like that. And if the Rebel commander back at the KDY con-struction docks has an idea about who it was that pulled out this Destroyer, I imagine that he'll keep it to himself. Why would he want to let the rest of the galaxy know that a bounty hunter was able to do what he and his squadron couldn't? So being dead—or being thought dead—is a real opportunity for me."
"As you told me—suit yourself." Neelah's gaze turned tighter and harder. "But this ship isn't enough to buy that kind of silence. I want something a little more."
Fett's spine visibly stiffened. "Like what?"
"Like some answers. I want to know why you really went down to have your little confrontation with Kuat of Kuat while the construction docks were blowing up all around you. I can't believe it was really out of any concern for me, and finding out the truth about whether there was some big conspiracy of which I was the target."
A second passed, then Boba Fett nodded. "You're right," he said. "None of that is of any consequence to me. Your life, your death—it means nothing. All that matters is my life and my business—and that's what I was taking care of when I confronted Kuat of Kuat."
"You wanted the truth from him," said Neelah. "Did you get it?"
Fett nodded. "Enough of it. Now that I'm certain that the conspiracy didn't extend any further than Kuat, I can go ahead and deliver the fabricated evidence—to those who want it."
His words puzzled Neelah. "Who would want it now? Prince Xizor is dead. Kuat fabricated the evidence against him—so what use would it be now?"
"As you say, Xizor is dead. But Black Sun isn't. And Black Sun is still a very powerful—and dangerous— organization. And since Xizor's death, the leadership of Black Sun has been a matter of some dispute. A power struggle between those who had been most loyal to Xi-zor and the others who had been plotting against him even while he was still alive."