Risks meant profits, though, in the bounty-hunter trade. And profits were what Dengar needed if he was going to have any chance of paying off the massive debt load he was carrying and then have any kind of life with Manaroo. He wanted out of this game, and the only way to accomplish that was to keep on playing it, for at least a few more rounds. And the best way to do that, he'd decided, was with a partner like Boba Fett. And that's what he offered me-when Dengar had discovered him, half- digested by the gullet of the Sarlacc, lying in the suns- baked wasteland, Fett had had enough remaining strength to speak, but not to protect himself. Dengar could have put him out of his misery right then and there, but had stayed his hand when Fett had spoken of a partnership between the two of them. The only card he'd had left to play ...
And a good one. We could clean up, Dengar had decided. Him and me. A real good team. It all depended on just one thing.
Whether Fett had been lying to him.
He could have been just playing for time. Time enough for his wounds to heal, and for him to get his act back together. Dengar had been mulling it over ever since he had carried Fett down here. There was no history of Boba Fett ever working with a partner before; he had always been a lone operator. Why should he want a partnership now? What there was a history of was playing it fast and loose with the truth. In that, Boba Fett was no different from any other bounty hunter; it was that kind of a business. Fett was just better at it, was all. What had happened to the Bounty Hunters Guild was proof of that.
Things might be different, Dengar knew, when Boba Fett got his strength back. Fett might not want to repay Dengar with a partnership, for all that he'd done to keep him alive and safe. Dengar's reward might be a blaster charge right into his chest, leaving a scorched hole big enough to put a humanoid's fist through. Fett's obsession with secrecy was notorious in all the scummy dives and watering holes across the galaxy; his past was largely unknown, and was likely to stay that way, given how those who poked into his affairs had a way of turning up dead.
That was the real reason Dengar had sent Manaroo away. It was one thing for him to risk Fett's lethal treachery; he didn't want the female he loved to wind up facing a blaster muzzle.
"So what did you want to know?"
Dengar pulled himself back from his grim meditations to the hard-eyed female regarding him from the other side of the chamber.
"Same thing I wanted to know before." He nodded toward the entrance to the subchamber. "What's your connection with Boba Fett?"
Neelah shook her head. "I don't know."
"Oh, that's a good one." Dengar gave a quick, derisive laugh. "You come sneaking in here-not exactly the smartest thing to do-and you don't even know why."
"That's what I came here to find out. That's why I wanted to talk to him." Neelah glanced toward the subchamber, then back toward Dengar. "That's why I left him where you would be sure to find him-"
"Wait a minute," said Dengar. "You left him?"
She nodded. "I found him before you did. But I knew there was nothing I could do for him, not with what the Sarlacc had done. He needed medical attention-more than anything I could do. I took a chance that you'd take care of him. That you'd keep him alive."
"And why's that so important to you? He's a bounty hunter, and you were a dancing girl in Jabba's palace."
Dengar peered more closely at her. "What's he got to do with you?"
"I told you before-" Neelah's voice rose to a fierce shout. "I don't know! I just know that there is a connection-some kind of connection-between the two of us.
I knew that back when I first saw him. In the palace, in Jabba's court. When that fat slug had poor Oola killed... when she was tugging against the chain, and the trapdoor in front of the throne was opening ..." Both of Neelah's fists were trembling and white-knuckled. "All of the other girls were watching from the passageway... and there was nothing any of us could do... ."
"There never is," said Dengar. He could taste his own bitterness in his mouth. "That's how things happen in this universe."
She wasn't here in this chamber with him; she was lost in her own memory. "And then we could hear her screaming ... and I couldn't look anymore. That was when I saw him. Just standing there at the side of the court ... and watching. ..."
"Bounty hunters," said Dengar dryly, "make it a habit to stay out of other creatures' business. Unless they're paid to do something about it."
"And when the screaming was over, and Jabba and the others were still laughing ... he was still there. Just as before. And still watching." Neelah closed her eyes for a moment as a shudder ran through her slight body.
"And then ... the strangest thing ... he turned and looked at me. Right into my eyes." Her voice filled with both fear and wonder. "All the way across Jabba's court .
. . and it was like there was nobody else there at all.
That was how it felt. And that was when I knew. That there was something between the two of us." She refocused her gaze on Dengar. " 'Connection' isn't the right word.
It's something else. Something from the past. I even knew his name, without asking anyone else." Neelah slowly shook her head. "But that was all I knew."
"All right." The story intrigued Dengar. A matter of practical interest as well If this female meant something to Boba Fett, then knowing just what it was might give him an additional bargaining chip. "You said it was something from the past. Your past?"
She nodded.
"Well, that's a start. But nothing you can remember, I take it?"
Another nod.
"So how did you wind up at Jabba's palace?"
"I don't know that, either." Neelah's fists uncurled, empty and trembling. "I don't know how I got there. All I remember is Oola ... and the other girls. They helped me. They showed me ..." Her voice ebbed softer. "What I was to do ..."
Her memory had been wiped; Dengar recognized the signs. The confusion and welling fear, and the little bits and pieces, scraps of another existence, leaking through. No wipe was ever complete; memory was stored in too many places throughout the humanoid brain. To go after every bit, eradicating them all, would probably be fatal, a reduction beyond basic life-maintenance processes. There were easier, and less expensive, ways of killing a sentient being. So someone, thought Dengar, wanted her alive. Fett?
"What about your name?" Dengar nodded toward her. "
'Neelah'-was that something you remembered?"
"No; Jabba called me that. I don't know why. But I knew ..." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "I knew it wasn't my real name. My true name. Somebody took that from me ... and I couldn't get it back. No matter how hard I tried ..."
What she told Dengar coincided with his own suspicions. Neelah was a slave name-it didn't fit her.
The aristocratic bearing she possessed was too obvious, even in the ill-fitting, scavenged outfit she wore now.
She wouldn't be alive now-the Dune Sea's loping predators would be cracking her bones-if there weren't some tough fighting spirit inside her. Things would have gone differently if Jabba had tried to throw her, instead of the other girl, Oola, to his pet rancor. It would've been Neelah rather than Princess Leia wrapping the chain around Jabba's immense throat and choking the life out of him.
Dengar had more suspicions, which he didn't feel like voicing right at the moment. Fett must've done it. The other bounty hunter must've brought her to Jabba's palace; he'd probably also been the one who'd performed the memory wipe on her. The big question was why. Dengar couldn't believe it had been done on Jabba's orders; the Hutt had enjoyed young and beautiful objects, but he'd also been too tight with his credits to have commissioned the kidnapping of the daughter of one of the galaxy's noble houses. The only reason Leia Organa had wound up on the end of one of Jabba's chains was that she had come into Jabba's lair of her own accord, seeking to rescue the carbonite-encased Han Solo. A captured noblewoman, with a blanked-out memory, wasn't exactly the same kind of a bargain.