"You are an idiot." She laughed and pushed him back to where she could look at him full in the face.
"None of that matters as long as you're alive."
"That's sweet of you to say so."
"No, really; I mean it." Manaroo's expression turned earnest. "You don't realize what you've done just by re-maining alive. You've won; we've won."
He looked at her in puzzlement. "What do you mean?"
"Before I came to find you," said Manaroo, "I wa-gered on you. Every credit I could scrape up, every one I could borrow—I took us even deeper into debt in order to get the stake together. Then I went to the gambler Drawmas Sma'Da; he agreed to cover the wager I pro-posed. A wager on the survival of a bounty hunter. Your survival." Her smile brightened her face. "Believe me, I got great odds on you. Nobody expected you to be able to live through being partners with Boba Fett. But you did!"
"But that would mean ... you and I..."
"Yes!" Manaroo grabbed him by both shoulders. "I've already contacted Drawmas Sma'Da and claimed my winnings—our winnings. I only made the bet; you won it for us. The credits have been transferred into our holding account. It's more than enough to pay off your debt load. Pay it off, and start us in whatever business we want." She leaned forward and kissed him, long and happily, then looked into his eyes again. "It's our new life together. It's come at last."
"Yes . . ." Dengar nodded slowly. "You're right.. ." An unbidden chill touched his heart as a shadow fell across the joy he knew he should feel. "If only ... every-thing else works out..." He could hear the echoes of the dire warnings that Boba Fett had given him. "There's still the Empire to worry about. How can anyone in the galaxy be happy with that looming over us?"
Manaroo kissed him on the brow this time, then leaned back and shook her head, still smiling. "You don't know," she said, "what I heard. Just a few minutes ago. I intercepted a comm unit transmission from the Rebel Alliance headquarters out at Sullust to the Scav-enger Squadron's commander here. The battle's over." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "And the Rebels won. It's the Empire that was crushed ... to a billion pieces ..." She wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest.
"Everything will be different now."
He could hardly believe it, yet he knew it was true. Everything, thought Dengar. All their plans and hopes— those could come true now. And he wouldn't be a bounty hunter anymore ...
In the midst of his happiness, there was a thread of re-gret. It seemed a shame, after having survived and even profited from a partnership with Boba Fett—how many other creatures could say the same?—for him to turn his back on all that. Plus, there had been a certain excite-ment to all that had happened, from the moment when he first stumbled upon an almost lifeless Boba Fett, lying on the hot sands of Tatooine's Dune Sea.
Maybe, thought Dengar, I could still keep my hand in. Just a little. His business enterprise with Manaroo might not be immediately successful; it might require a fresh in-fusion of credit now and then. Right at the beginning...
He'd have to think about that some more. But for the moment, Dengar wrapped his arms around his betrothed. He turned his face away from hers and looked out the cockpit's viewport at all the stars cascading in stately progression to the galaxy's edge.
Everything ...
The stars were so bright, even as he closed his eyes and held his betrothed closer to himself.