Suhlak's smile split open, emitting a harsh laugh." You can say that again."
He turned his own gaze back toward the viewport. The churning light from the explosion was just beginning to fade, but it was still bright enough to have tripped the protective glare shields lining the curving transparisteel. Without those shields, both he and his fare-paying cargo would have been blinded. It would have been worth it, thought Suhlak. Almost. The glare from what had been Boba Fett's ship Slave I, now being consumed by the unleashed fusion of its impact-shattered engines, was almost tangible, a warm thermal glow across the intervening vacuum and onto Suhlak's smiling face.
"How did you do it?" Wonderment had filtered into Ob Fortuna's voice as well." It's impossible. . ."
"Nothing's impossible," said N'dru Suhlak. He let his smile curdle into a sneer." Unless you start believing your own mythology. Then everything starts to get a little difficult-at least if I'm around." He nodded toward the viewport." I had this Boba Fett
character figured out from the beginning. Somebody like that always figures he's the only one with brains. Real brains, that is. So if he falls into a trap and gets out of it, he figures that's the only trick you had up your sleeve."
"But. . ." Ob Fortuna's brow creased as he labored to comprehend. The heavy, fleshy masses of a male Twi'lek's double head-tails rolled across his shoulder as he tilted his head." He hit that optic-filterable transparisteel you set up. And he managed to hit his reverse thrusters in time, so his ship wasn't damaged. . ."
"Exactly." Suhlak shook his own head in disgust. These Twi'leks had a knack for simpleminded skulduggery and flattering more powerful sentient creatures, but anything else was a stretch for them." You just don't get it, do you? That wasn't the only piece of armor-grade transparisteel I set out there for him to run into. Look, Boba Fett's dead now, but that doesn't mean I underestimated him. I knew he had the kind of smarts and reflexes that would keep him from a fatal crash-the first time, that is. So I put out a second piece of transparisteel, only I didn't set up any optical filtering on it; that way, Fett would see us just sitting here, waiting for him to come and get us. He wouldn't be able to resist gunning his engines and coming right for us-and he didn't. At that kind of speed, the mass of the second piece of transparisteel was more than enough to crumple that ship of his into scrap metal and blow his thruster cores into fusion overload. There probably aren't two atoms of the great Boba Fett left connected to each other by now."
"That's. . . that's very clever." Ob Fortuna gazed wide-eyed at him." I would never have come up with something so. . . final."
"Yeah, right." The last thing Suhlak wanted was to hear any oily Twi'lek flattery turned his way." You
just keep remembering that. Then you won't mind paying me."
"Ah, but it's a pleasure to do so. Even if all I bargained for was to just get past Boba Fett. Not have him eliminated totally."
"Whatever works." Suhlak shrugged." Sometimes speed does the job. . . and sometimes you gotta do a little extra. Besides. . . knocking off somebody like Boba Fett is good advertising for a person in my trade. It never hurts for creatures to know that you're the best." In the viewport, the fiery, roiling glow from the crash was almost gone. Nothing was visible of the wreckage of the late Boba Fett's ship; the explosion had vaporized every fragment." Enough of this," said Suhlak, reaching for the Z-95's controls." Let's get out of here. I've got other business to take care of."
Times like this, he wished his craft were as big as Boba Fett's ship had been, something with enough space aboard that he could have stowed his fare-paying merchandise somewhere else. Most bounty hunters had cages in the cargo areas of their ships, where they kept their hard merchandise safely out of the way until delivery. To outrun a bounty hunter ship, though, required something much lighter and faster. The old Z-95s weren't so tightly designed as the T-65 X-wing starfighters that had replaced them, and thus had more modification possibilities. For his hunt sabotage purposes, he had stripped out all the heavy armament and weapons systems, and had bubbled out the passenger space-not all hard merchandise was as compact as humanoid life-forms.
Even with the extra space gained from those modifications, the net result was that passengers-or merchandise; Suhlak was beginning to use the same language as bounty hunters-still wound up right in the already cramped cockpit area of the Z-95. And
this Twi'lek, thought Suhlak, is really getting on my nerves. All those oily, unctuous mannerisms, plus Ob Fortuna's ratlike smile and weaseling words, were right in his face. Suhlak felt the impulse to take the Twi'lek's floppy head-tails and pressure-tape them to the far bulkhead, just to keep from seeing them all the time he was trying to navigate. Well, he won't be on my hands much longer. . .
Suhlak readied the Z-95's main thruster engine, then reached for the vector-align controls. Once the headhunter was safely away from this sector, with all its drifting transport debris, he'd be able to make a clean jump into hyperspace.
His hand froze above the controls as he looked up to the viewport. Inside Suhlak's throat, his breath was stilled as well.
"What's that?" From behind him, Ob Fortuna's voice was a terrified squeak. The Twi'lek's pale hand reached past the side of Suhlak's face, pointing to what was now revealed, floating in space before the Z-95.
"It's. . . Boba Fett's ship." Suhlak spoke the words, a simple statement of fact. But one that sent his heart plummeting down toward his boot soles, at the same time his spine contracted in apprehension." He's not dead."
There was more proof of that as the image of Slave I, the ship that was as much the emblem of Boba Fett as the dark-visored Mandalorian helmet he wore, turned slightly in the viewport. It seemed to loom upright in the vacuum, the large curve of its cockpit centered in the elongated oval of its hull. And between its two main laser cannons-their dark, menacing apertures swung directly toward the Z-95, and locked on to their target.
Two bolts of coruscating energy struck the Headhunter. The viewport filled with the white glare of their impact; their force sent the smaller craft tumbling. Blinded, N'dru Suhlak felt himself tumbling backward, out of the pilot's chair and landing heavily against the insufficient cushioning of his passenger.
"Don't do anything stupid." Another voice spoke, from the comm unit mounted on the cockpit's control panel. Boba Fett's voice, unmistakably so, even on a tight-beam relay from his ship." You've got something I want. I'm coming over to get it." The voice's lack of perceptible emotion made it all the more intimidating." Right now."
Dazed, but with his vision slowly coming back, Suhlak placed a hand against Ob Fortuna's muscleless chest and pushed himself upright. He grabbed hold of the back of the pilot's chair and dragged himself toward the Z-95's controls.
"What. . . what are you going to do?" The Twi'lek sounded close to panic.
"Like the man said." Suhlak damped the main thruster engine. And prepared for a visitor." Nothing stupid."
The hunt saboteur looked just as Boba Fett had expected. On the dark and lean side, wearing Tierfon Fighter Base fatigues with all identifying insignia stripped off. Suhlak's sharp-angled face was both avaricious and-at the moment-sullen.
"I make it a rule," said Boba Fett," not to interfere with other creatures' business. Except" -he stood in the opening of the transfer hatchway extending from his own Slave I, not wanting to step into the already crowded quarters of Suhlak's Z-95-" when they interfere with mine."
"Really." N'dru Suhlak gave an ostentatiously weary sigh." I don't need a lecture on operating practices from you."