Though it wasn't all just junk, Boba Fett knew; that was merely what Kud'ar Mub'at let show on the surface of the web, perhaps as a matter of protective camouflage. Not everyone had done as well in their encounters with the assembler as he had; the few times that Fett had actually gone into the web, he'd spotted some not inconsiderable treasures, bits and pieces that the less fortunate had been obliged to leave behind, to discharge their debts to Kud'ar Mub'at. It would probably be better to leave one's skin behind than try to cheat the spidery entity.
Faint greenish lights showed in a rough circle, indicating the docking section of the web. One of Kud'ar Mub'at's subassemblies-Signaler was what it was called, if Fett remembered correctly-was a phosphorescent herpetoid node, long enough to encircle one end of the web with its glowing, snakelike form. Kud'ar Mub'at had let enough intelligence develop in the node so that it could blink out a simple directional landing pattern for any ship making a rendezvous with the web. Another group of subassemblies, arrayed just inside the pulsing circle, were devoid of even that much brainpower; they could sense the proximity of a spacecraft and, like the ten tacles of a Threndrian snareflower, grab hold and bring it in tight and secure to the web's entry port. Boba Fett loathed the idiot appendages, with their flexing vacuumresistant scales like rust-pitted armor plate. He'd told Kud'ar Mub'at before, that if he ever found any scraps from the tentacles still clinging to the Slave I after he'd left the web, he'd turn around and pluck the nodes one by one from the web with a short-range tractor beam. That'd be a painful process for Kud'ar Mub'at; every piece of the living web was connected to the assembler by a skein of neurofibers.
He cut the Slave I's approach engines, leaving the craft with enough momentum to keep it on a slow and steady course toward the web's dock. Inside the ring of light, the tips of the grappling nodes had already begun to ease into position as the subassemblies woke from their dreaming half sleep.
"Ah, my dear Fett." A high-pitched voice greeted him as he clambered down from the docking port into the narrow confines of the web's interior. "How truly a delight it is to see you once more. After how horribly such a long time it has been-"
"Stow it." Boba Fett looked up and saw by the top of his helmet one of Kud'ar Mub'at's mobile vocal appendages, a subassembly that was little more than a rudimentary mouth tethered by a glistening cord. This one must have been just recently extruded by the assembler, the neural silk was still white and unmarked by the web's centuries of accumulated filth. "I'm here for business, not conversation."
The little voice box scurried along the tunnel's fibrous ceiling, a pair of tiny claws reeling in its con necting line as it kept pace with Fett. "Ah , that is truly indeed the bounty hunter of my long acquaintance, so bold and vivid he is in my remembering! How sadly long I have been without the pleasure of your succinct and charming wit."
Fett made no reply as he clambered through the tunnel, its interwoven tissues yielding beneath the weight of his boots. Wherever his thick gloves grabbed hold, ripples of firing synapses sparked in fading concentric circles, as though from a stone dropped in an ocean filled with phosphorescent plankton. A few light nodes, the smaller brethren of Signaler on the web's exterior, glowed before him and dropped back into darkness after he had passed by. Fett supposed that when Kud'ar Mub'at had no visitor, the web remained unlit. The assembler required no light to move around inside an artifact constructed of its own spun-out cortex.
"There you are in your entirety!" The same voice, like sheet metal being torn in half, sounded from in front of Boba Fett as he ducked beneath a ridge of hardened silk. "I knew you'd return, crowned with the eminence of success." The words were louder, coming from Kud'ar Mub'at's own mouth rather than the little voicebox node. "And of undeniable punctuality you are as well, indeed."
Boba Fett stepped into the web's central chamber, a space large enough for him to stand upright in. It was more than a matter of simile that it seemed to Fett as though he had walked into the center of the assembler's brain. That was the reality of Kud'ar Mub'at's nest and body, an interconnected unity, one and the same thing. It lives inside its armor, thought Fett, as I live inside mine.
"I returned here when I said I would." Fett turned his masked gaze upon the assembler. "It was a simple enough job."
"Ah, for one of your exceedingly multifarious talents, yes, I imagine it was." Kud'ar Mub'at's compound eyes focused on his visitor. One of its jointed, spikehaired forelegs inscribed a graceful acknowledging gesture in the chamber's thick air. "No complications, I take it?"
"The usual." He folded his arms across the front of his battle-gear. "There were a couple of other bounty hunters who were hoping to nab him before I did."
"Ooh." The eyes, like dark black cabochons, glittered with anticipation. "And you took care of them?"
"I didn't have to." Fett knew how much the assembler enjoyed war stories, the more violence-filled the better. He didn't feel like indulging the arachnoid creature's taste. "They were just the usual feckless types that the Bounty Hunters Guild sends out. It's easier to walk around a pile of nerf dung than step right into it."
"How very droll! You amuse me greatly!" Kud'ar Mub'at reached up to the chamber's ceiling with several of its hind legs, lifting itself up from where it had been resting its pale abdomen. "It is a savory bonus of our relationship that I am privileged to hear your scintillating repartee." The bed node wheezed as it reinflated its cushiony pneumatic bladders. Kud'ar Mub'at worked his way across the chamber's ceiling, finally dangling its mandibled face directly in front of the bounty hunter. "Have we not more than a mere business relationship, my dear Fett? Please say yes. Say that we are friends, you and I."
"Friends," said Boba Fett coldly, "are a liability in my trade." He drew the visor of his helmet back from the assembler's glittering eyes and V-shaped smile. "I'm not here to amuse you. Pay me the bounty you're holding in escrow, I'll hand the merchandise over to you, and I'll go."
"Until the next time." Kud'ar Mub'at turned its head, regarding him with another set of gemlike eyes. "Which cannot be anytime too soon, for my preference." Maybe it's this part of the job, Boba Fett thought to himself, that's the worst. Tracking someone down, pursuing him the width of the galaxy, capturing, transporting, killing anyone who had to be killed in order to get the job done-those things were all cold pleasures, to be savored as tests and confirmations of his own skills. Dealing with any of the clients, whether it was a matter of direct negotiation such as with the Empire's Lord Vader or a sleaze mountain such as Jabba the Hutt, or a third-party negotiation with a middle entity such as Kud'ar Mub'at, was more repellent than satisfying. It always turned out to be the same thing, every time. They never want to pay up, brooded Fett. They always want the merchandise; they just never want to pan with their credits in exchange. With Hutts, it was always an emotional issue, at least at the start. Their megalomaniacal rages at any perceived sign of disloyalty led them to post huge, eye-popping bounties; later, when they had simmered down a bit, the Hutts' natural cold-blooded greed kicked in and they tried to take the prices down. The members of the so-called Bounty Hunters Guild would accept a fraction of an original bounty, sometimes as low as ten percent. That was one of the reasons that Boba Fett despised them he had never taken a credit less than the agreed-upon sum, and had no intention of starting.
"I have other business to take care of," said Boba Fett. That was true. The galaxy was wide, with lots of dark nooks and crannies, remote worlds and even entire planetary systems that could serve as hiding places. And there were always those entities with reasons to hide, either to save their epidermis from Emperor Palpatine's coruscating wrath or to clutch in their sweating hands the meager piles of credits they had managed to pry out of Jabba's coffers. Even with as much "business" as Boba Fett handled, there were still plenty of scraps left for the Guild to dole out to its members, the small stuff that he couldn't be bothered with. But the longer that Kud'ar Mub'at needlessly detained him here, cackling and wheezing at him inside the tangled corridors of its own expanded brain, the greater the chance that some hustling Guild member would be able to snatch some prize bounty away from him. That notion would have infuriated Fett, if any such word of passion could have been applied to the coldly unfeeling logic that dictated his actions. As it was, he let his masked gaze rest upon Kud'ar Mub'at's insectile face like the sharp point of a bladed weapon.