"Give me some answers," said Dengar, "and you can have another one."
She crumpled the foil into a shining ball inside her small fist.
I'm getting soft, thought Dengar. There had been a time when he wouldn't have bothered asking questions. He wouldn't have lowered the blaster, either, until there had been a corpse lying in front of him, with a hole burned through its brain. That was what letting himself fall in love-not with this female, but with his betrothed, Manaroo-had done for him. That was always a fatal mistake for a bounty hunter. Somebody like Boba Fett survived at this game for as long as he had by stripping those useless emotions out of his heart. To look at Fett, even when he was unconscious on the pallet in the other chamber, was to look at a weapon, an assault rifle fully primed and charged for maximum destruction.
Peel away that Mandalorian battle armor of his, and something equally hard and deadly was found beneath. And that, Dengar knew, was the difference-one of them, at least-between himself and the galaxy's most feared bounty hunter. There was still something human inside Dengar, despite his having worked the bounty-hunter trade, with all its spirit-eroding capabilities. That was the part that had looked upon Manaroo, and had decided, despite all the rest of his scrabbling, callused nature, to twine his fate with hers. Manaroo had asked him to marry her, and he had said yes; that human part had wanted to stay human, like a dwindling flame that struggles to keep from being snuffed out. He didn't want to wind up like Boba Fett, a killing machine with a blind, unfathomable mask for a face.
It was that human part that had also decided to send Manaroo away, once she had helped him get Boba Fett into this hiding place. Their separation from each other would continue at least until this business with Boba Fett was over. Dengar knew the risks in getting involved with someone who had as many grudge-bearing enemies as Fett; there were plenty of diehards from the old Bounty Hunters Guild who had good reason to hate his guts. If they found out that Boba Fett was still alive, they'd be swooping down on Tatooine en masse to finish him off. And me, Dengar had told himself. That hot-tempered Trandoshan Bossk would naturally assume that anyone befriending his longtime rival Boba Fett was an enemy to be killed with quick dispatch. This little hiding place would get filled up with corpses pretty quickly.
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?"