There weren't many, out of the number that had gone over to the True Guild faction, that Bossk wasn't going to let back into the reconstituted Bounty Hunters Guild. He had other plans for them, and their names on a list that he kept securely locked inside his head. Before it was all done, there would be quite a few corpses showing up in places where the right creatures would find out about them. Some might get dumped in the unlit doorway of the Mos Eisley cantina, back on that hole of a planet Tatooine. The silent bodies of onetime bounty hunters would serve as an effective message to all concerned: that Bossk was in business, and in charge of that business. All the galaxy's creatures-whether they were underlings of Emperor Palpatine or criminals in league with Black Sun, Huttese independent operators or members of the Rebel Alliance-if they wanted to do business with the Bounty Hunters Guild, they would have to deal with Bossk, and on his terms. And those terms would be rough for them-all of them-and sweet, and profitable, for Bossk. He had already decided that.
But right now, he had other business to take care of. With an internal push of will, Bossk ended his idle-but pleasant-imaginings. Time enough later, he thought, for all that. After his own plans and schemes had come to glorious fulfillment. There would be a lot of bones added to Bossk's memory chamber-including those of his archrival Boba Fett. That severed skull would be a particularly fine trophy, encased in its dark-visored helmet of a Mandalorian armor. But right now, if all those plans were to bear fruit, Bossk had to attend to his present business, no matter how unpleasant the surroundings. And repellent the creature to whom he had to speak.
Kud'ar Mub'at's high-pitched voice cut through the last fragments of the Trandoshan's reverie." Please," spoke the assembler," consider yourself under no unseemly obligation to hurry. At least, do not do so for my benefit. As your humble servant, I wait upon your convenience."
"Yeah, right." Bossk focused his slit-pupiled gaze on the arachnoid squatting across from him, its spidery legs tucked around the pale globe of its abdomen. He was already wondering if there was some
way to include Kud'ar Mub'at in his plans, so that the assembler's hollowed-out exoskeleton wound up among his other trophies.
Kud'ar Mub'at watched. . . and approved.
The assembler's most trusted creation, the accountant subnode named Balancesheet, was doing a good job of handling the Trandoshan bounty hunter Bossk. Balancesheet took care of so many things now; the subnode's responsibilities had expanded far beyond those for which Kud'ar Mub'at had designed it. Simple number-crunching and tracking the ebb and flow of credits in the web's coffers-Kud'ar Mub'at should have known from the beginning, when he had just spun Balancesheet's essential brain matter from the assembler's own neurocortex, that the subnode would eventually turn out this way. It's just like me, thought Kud'ar Mub'at with an unavoidable trace of parental pride. Cold and calculating, and so nicely devious.
Deviousness was called for, when one had twice as many visitors to the web-and twice as much business to conduct-as a single entity could take care of. Even as versatile and multitasking a creature as the arachnoid assembler had its limits. Plus there were additional difficulties with this particular pair of visitors: much trouble would ensue if either one found out that Kud'ar Mub'at was engaged in talks with the other. Gleed Otondon was here representing the interests of the True Guild, the loyalist faction of the now-splintered Bounty Hunters Guild, and Bossk. . .
Bossk represents himself, thought Kud'ar Mub'at with an inward, appreciative smile. Any other claim was a useful fiction, both for the Trandoshan and any other creature doing business with him. The Guild Reform Committee's members might have been fooled, but Kud'ar Mub'at wasn't. Bossk was an ambitious and ruthless individual, much as his father Cradossk had been before advancing age had rendered the elder Trandoshan slow and gullible-and dead, at the claws of his own offspring.
Using the neural feed from the optical subnode perched in one of the web's smaller chambers, Kud'ar Mub'at viewed Bossk-and itself. The latter was also a useful fiction, though Bossk certainly wasn't aware of it. Some time ago, years or even decades of Standard Time Units, the assembler had shed its external carapace but hadn't discarded the hollow replica of itself. Kud'ar Mub'at had decided there might be other uses for the empty exoskeleton, and had even spun out from itself enough neurofiber and simple muscular tissue to turn its former shell into a controllable likeness of its own physical form. The masquerade was completed when the clever accountant subnode Balancesheet proved itself capable of crawling inside the shell, linking up to the neurofibers' synaptic receptor points, and performing a passable imitation of its creator, the original Kud'ar Mub'at. Right down to my ornate language, Kud'ar Mub'at had judged. Such an apt pupil! The assembler's own calculating nature was tinged for a moment with a warming emotional glow, a phenomenon otherwise unknown to him.
The simulated Kud'ar Mub'at, the carapace with the subnode Balancesheet inside, made its excuses to the grumbling Trandoshan. A moment later, the real Kud'ar Mub'at felt the tickle of the subnode's consciousness, like a tug on the neurofiber connecting them.
Well done. Kud'ar Mub'at directed its own thoughts toward the subnode. You have this bounty hunter completely deceived.
Balancesheet responded with appropriate and becoming modesty. Your praise is unearned. It was easy. He wishes to believe the things he hears. My speaking is but your words in another mouth.
But nevertheless-performed with meritorious acuity. Kud'ar Mub'at had never lavished such words or thoughts on any of his other subnodes; that would have been like praising one of the compound eyes in the inverted triangle of its head or one of his multi-jointed legs, or any other mere part of itself. For that was all that the subnodes were, mere created extensions of the assembler's self. To make such statements about the little accountant subnode only indicated how different Balancesheet was from the others in the web, and how much Kud'ar Mub'at had come to depend upon it.
Another emotion, that of anticipated regret, welled up inside Kud'ar Mub'at's chitin-mantled breast. I'll miss it when it's gone. That thought was carefully kept from the subnode. Kud'ar Mub'at had no intention of letting Balancesheet discover the fate planned for it. The assembler had already decided that the accountant subnode's days were numbered, no matter how useful and important it had become. The mere fact that Balancesheet had evolved and taken on such importance, becoming Kud'ar Mub'at's most valuable creation, sealed its doom. Balancesheet already had developed more intelligence and independent volition than all of the web's other subnodes combined-that was why it could handle such a task as imitating Kud'ar Mub'at, from inside the otherwise empty carapace.
In the far reaches of Kud'ar Mub'at's memory, before it had become the galaxy's leading fixer, arranger, and go-between for the various worlds' criminal and semicriminal elements, it could remember having become just as valuable for the affairs of its predecessor, the arachnoid assembler that had spawned it as a mere subnode. That predecessor had wound up making the mistake that Kud'ar Mub'at had sworn not to repeat, that of letting one of its creations become too intelligent and independent. However valuable and convenient such a node's services might be, they weren't worth the price of eventual rebellion, mutiny, and murder. Patricide might be in the natural order of things for some species, an inevitable segment of the passage from one generation to the next-that was the way it was for Trandoshans like Bossk, from all reports. Whether it was the same for assemblers such as itself, Kud'ar Mub'at had no idea. The only other member of its species that Kud'ar Mub'at had known had been the one that had created it and that it had murdered and consumed in turn.