Another link, then: personal, not professional.
Time. He didn't have time for this.
"Seen him since?"
"No."
"Want to tell me who the Twi'leks were?"
"Why do you want this man so badly? It has to be something big for you to be hunting him." Fraig examined his manicured nails. "Or perhaps some of my associates regret Cherit's passing, so they've hired you to come after me."
"Not for hire right now." Fett could never understand why they didn't listen. They never heard what he said. He played it straight, and they always looked for a second meaning. "I want the Mando in one piece.
I need him to do something for me."
Fraig had missed his chance. Fett switched to the helmet corn-link and got
Mirta's attention, which was fixed on him—and the Hamadryas—anyway. "I'm just going to help our friend remember a few things."
Useful stuff, fibercord.
Fett shot out the line in a loop from his backpack and whipped it around Fraig, jammed the grappling hook between the bars, and shoved him over the railing. It took two seconds. Fraig screamed, clinging to the top rail, but a good hard whack on the knuckles with the butt of the blaster made the scumbag let go. Fraig plummeted and Fett braced for the inevitable thump into the rail when the rope ran out. It nearly winded him. Fraig bounced and twisted in the line's
strangling grip, still shrieking. Fett kept a few meters of line secured in reserve in the winch assembly.
Mirta was taking good care of the Hamadryas. She'd half closed the transparisteel doors on him, but the bodyguard wedged his body in the gap and tried to get a blaster shot through the opening. His arm was trapped.
Fett watched, impressed, as Mirta head-butted the guard a second time, shoved the vibroblade into his thigh, and forced him—shrieking in pain, nice touch—back through the doors so that they crashed shut. Then she fired a few rounds into the controls.
"Make it quick, Ba'buir?" She flexed her shoulders as if easing torn neck muscles. "The doors might be blasterproof, but they'll get them open sooner or later."
Fett peered over the side. Fraig was twisting helplessly like a devee hooked on a fishing line, making gasping sounds. The line was tight around his waist and chest. He was dangling fifteen meters below the rail.
"Don't struggle, and think calm thoughts," Fett called. "It helps you remember. And it'll stop you from slipping out of the loop."
"You're crazy—I'll have your throat cut for this—"
"You're on the end of a line. I'm on solid ground. Think about it."
"You're a dead man."
"Perceptive to the last. Give me names, vermin."
"I tell you I didn't pay the Mando. I'm glad he whacked Cherit, but I never paid him to do it—"
"Try again."
Fraig's voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the waterfall behind him. "The Twi'leks were from some family called Himar."
"Good start." Fett paid out another meter of line with a jolt.
Fraig shrieked as he slipped farther toward the permacrete, stone, and raging water a hundred meters below. "Is that helping? Memory often needs a trigger."
Himar. Any Mando who pitched in hard to play the hero for a couple of dancers would be known in the Twi'lek community. It didn't happen that often; nobody else cared what happened to Twi'lek girls. Fett had his lead. He'd have a contact somewhere—and if he didn't, Beviin would.
Beviin wouldn't press him to find out why.
"Anything else you want to get off your chest?"
"I don't know the guy, Fett. But I know you're going to regret this."
Fett could hear the dull rhythmic thuds of Fraig's bodyguards trying to smash the doors apart. "If I find you've given me a load of garbage, I'll be back to finish the job."
He braced his boot on the bottom rail and began winching in the gangster. Mirta stood next to him with her blaster trained on the doors.
"You're going soft. Why are you reeling him back in?"
"I want the fibercord back. It's my favorite Ultra-fine."
"When you get him on the balcony, I'll tranquilize him . . ."
"Then back to Slave I. Scenic route."
"You're lucky we've got jets."
"I wouldn't have come up here if I hadn't." Fett felt the sweat breaking out and running down his spine. This would have been an easier task a few years ago. "And I wouldn't have gone much above thirty floors anyway."
"Why?"
"Hundred-meter line. In case I had to rappel down."
Fraig's face was two meters away now. He'd stopped yelling and settled for labored breathing.
"I haven't got a hundred-meter line," Mirta said.
"Lucky you've got jets, then." He heaved Fraig over the rail in a tangled heap, and Mirta delivered a roundhouse punch that laid the man out. If that was her tranquilizer treatment, she was a born medic. "Time to go."
Mirta shot off at an awkward angle and crashed through the sheet of water ahead of him; there was no force field up here to part the falls.
When Fett looked down, he could see speeders crisscrossing the plaza on either side of the boulevard. He needed to land and find the speeder bike: jets were great for fast exits, but the flame made both of them conspicuous targets in the night sky.
The speeder was still where he'd left it, primed with a detonator and hidden in bushes on the edge of a park. Both the painkiller and the adrenaline were wearing off at the same time, and Fett had never been more
conscious of the reason for his search. He set off for the landing strip at top speed down freight lanes that had the lightest traffic, noting that Mirta was happily fixing a grenade launcher attachment to her blaster with both hands and gripping the saddle of the speeder with her knees. She looked like she was used to fast getaways.
"You're doing okay for a dead man, Ba'buir.'"
"Your dad trained you well, too."
"Most of that I learned from Mama."
"Well . . . she did a good job of it."
Fett took one hand off the bars and activated Slave Ps remote controls. Her drives would be primed: he could drop the speeder into the cargo hold and get off this planet inside a minute. In his HUD display, he was already scanning databases for that Twi'lek family name.
This was the one time he felt truly, thrillingly alive: when he was winning, being the best, surviving. Is that it? Is that all I can do? He almost envied the Beviins and Carids of this world, who delighted in simple things like good food and family. But there was a clean, uncomplicated satisfaction in danger. It erased worries and fears and memories. There was only the moment, and surviving it.
Fett concentrated on feeling good and ignoring the pain right up to the time his rearview caught speeder headlights closing fast and Mirta turned to level her blaster.
"They must be calling in our course," she said. "You think it's Fraig's grunts, or security?"
"We won't get the police's attention until you fire that blaster."
His motion sensors showed two speeders in pursuit, and two coming at them from the right on the crossroads ahead. Another single speeder was approaching from the left. They might have been ordinary citizens unlucky
enough to be on the same route, or they might have been rushing to intercept him. If he timed it right, he could slip between them and give Mirta a clean shot at the speeders behind. He gunned the drive.
Fett counted down the seconds. He was almost at the crossroads, but he wasn't going to make it. From the right, one shot in front of him, and he raised his arm to give it a burst of flamethrower, but the rider suddenly fell sideways and crashed to the ground without a shot being fired. Two speeders heading the other way soared to avoid it.