The Mandalorian Armor by K. W. Jeter

Author:K. W. Jeter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, General, Fiction
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1998-07-15T03:47:01+00:00

14

THEN

“There’s something big coming down.” Bossk’s smile was jagged and ugly. As always. “Something really big.”

Boba Fett leaned back against the wall behind the stone bench. Nothing the Trandoshan told him ever came as a surprise; the big reptile just hadn’t learned that yet, about how far behind the curve he was always fated to be. Maybe he will find out, thought Fett, before he dies. “Go on,” said Fett. In the meantime there was some value to a pretense of ignorance on his own part. “Tell me about it.”

“Wait a second.” Bossk turned his scaly head, looking over the bleak contents of Boba Fett’s temporary quarters at the Bounty Hunters Guild’s main complex. He had already pushed the iron-hinged door shut behind himself with a push from his clawed hand. “This isn’t,” he growled in a low voice, “something everybody needs to know about.” The inspection from his slit-pupiled eyes apparently satisfied him, that there were no obvious listening devices installed in the cracks between the damp stones. “At least, they don’t need to for the moment.”

“You have a compulsion for secrecy.” Idiot, thought Boba Fett—a thousand snooping machines could have been hidden in the chamber that a mere visual scan wouldn’t have detected. “That’s commendable.”

“Gotta be careful.” Bossk sat down on the bench beside him and leaned in close. “Especially about something like this.”

“Which is?”

All around the sparsely furnished, rough-hewn space, the corridors of the Bounty Hunters Guild compound folded and coiled around each other, replicating the devious pathways of the minds contained therein. Those minds, of the bounty hunters themselves, had been getting progressively more devious since Boba Fett’s arrival in their midst. He could sense it, like being inside an infinitely replicating maze, branching through fractal progressions of paranoia and deceit. That was fine by him: it was what his plans, and those of the arachnoid assembler Kud’ar Mub’at, called for. The bounty hunters were already getting lost in that maze; some of them wouldn’t survive to find their way out.

It’s different for me, thought Fett. He was unconcerned about the maze’s exponential complexity. It didn’t matter whether he had a map, or a thread leading his way out. When the time came, he would break his way through the encircling walls, as though they were made of flimsiplast rather than the stone of other sentient creatures’ greed and malice. Soon enough …

“A big job,” said Bossk. His claws tightened reflexively, as though upon either the neck of some merchandise or the credits to be gotten for it. “The kind you like.”

Fett kept any trace of emotion out of his voice, words blank as the visor of his helmet. “How big?”

Leaning even closer, Bossk whispered hoarsely into the audio receptor at the side of Fett’s helmet. The Trandoshan’s fang-lined smile was even bigger when he drew away, the number recited.

“I see.” Boba Fett wasn’t surprised by the amount of the bounty being offered; he had his own sources of information, so much sharper and beyond those of any Guild member.

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