Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (40 page)

Fett kept the Butcher down in the
Slave I
V’s holding room through most of the trip.

In the remaining minutes left before their exit from hyperspace, Fett dressed himself. The Mandalorian combat armor he dressed in was not the armor he had worn in years past;
that
armor, burned and cracked, was still somewhere deep inside the Great Pit of Carkoon, back on Tatooine. But Mandalorian combat armor, though rare, could still be acquired if you went about it right. For years Fett had been hearing about another bounty hunter who wore Mandalorian combat armor, a fellow named Jodo Kast. It had annoyed him terribly. With some frequency, during those years, Fett had found himself being blamed for, and credited with, things Kast had done.

Less than a year after his escape from the Sarlacc, Fett had hunted Jodo Kast down, via the Bounty Hunter’s Guild; he’d pretended to be a client, disguised in bandages; his own Guild had not known him. He’d requested the services of Kast, and Kast had come; by that time Fett had changed into his own spare armor, taken away the impostor’s armor, and also his life.

Before the ship left hyperspace Fett brought the Butcher up to the control room and put him in the chair nearest the airlock. Malloc was sweating heavily, fighting with his fear. He’d drunk his first five bottles early in the trip; Fett had held back the sixth bottle for this moment. Fett restrained Malloc at the ankles, and
by his right hand; he left the Devorian’s left hand unchained, so that Malloc might drink. Once he was satisfied with Malloc’s bonds Fett unsealed and handed Malloc the last bottle of Merenzane Gold. It wasn’t a matter of kindness on Fett’s part; if it kept Malloc from struggling during the transfer to the Devaronian authorities, better to let him drink.

They’d barely spoken to one another the entire trip. Malloc lifted the bottle to his lips and swallowed three, four times, before speaking. “How much longer?”

Fett glanced at his controls. “Six minutes until breakout. At least twenty before we dock with the shuttle that’ll take you downside.” He paused. “Time enough for you to finish the bottle, if you work at it.”

“Do you know what they’re going to do to me?”

“They will feed you, still alive, to a pack of starved quarra.” Fett paused. “Domesticated hunting animals—this practice is one of the things that’s kept Devaron out of the New Republic, I’ve heard.”

Malloc nodded a little convulsively and took another drink. “It’s a bad way to die. I saw it done once, when I was a boy. You were right, Fett, we Devaronians don’t die easy. The quarra go at the belly first, the soft flesh. But the condemned doesn’t die of that. They may nibble on your ears, or your eyes or horns, but that won’t kill you, either. If you’re lucky the quarra tear your throat out quickly. You arch your head back and expose your throat, and if you’re lucky—”

“The time you saw it done,” said Fett curiously, “What had the condemned done?”

Malloc stared at the golden liquid in his free hand, and took another quick drink. “I don’t think there’s a word for it, exactly, in Basic. He went hunting, during famine, and caught his prey—and fed himself, and his quarra. He didn’t bring it back to the tribe.” He looked up at Fett. “Do you know what I did?”

Fett glanced over at his instruments. Several minutes
left until breakout; best let him talk. He looked back at Malloc. “Yes.”

“I was a good servant to the Empire,” the Butcher said. “My own people rose in rebellion. They sent my command out to Hunt them down. And I did it, Fett. I Hunted them across the northlands, and I caught them in the city of Montellian Serat. We shelled them until they surrendered—”

Fett nodded. “And after taking their surrender, you executed them. Seven hundred of them.”

“The Empire ordered us to move on. To reinforce loyal troops, fighting just south of us. We were not to leave any troops behind as guards for the prisoners … and certainly we were not to leave any of them living.”

“They didn’t tell you to execute the prisoners.”

“They didn’t have to.” Malloc drank again, a huge belt, lowering the level of the bottle noticeably. “It took almost five minutes, Fett. We put them in a holding pen and started shooting at them. They screamed and screamed and screamed. We just kept shooting until the screaming had stopped.” He said almost pleadingly, “I was following orders.”

“I know.”

“They say you were Darth Vader’s favorite bounty hunter.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have any loyalty to what you were?” A touch of real anger glittered through Malloc’s despair. “I did the Empire’s work, man! Doesn’t that count for
anything?
”

Fett thought about it. “I wish,” he said finally, “that the Empire had not fallen.” He nodded, remembering, and then said softly, “Yes. I used to enjoy my work more.”

Hopelessness settled on the Butcher—he sagged, looking as though someone had just doubled the artificial gravity in the
Slave IV
. They always thought they
could bargain, or plead, right up to the last moment. Malloc hadn’t had a chance to ask the next question; he asked it now. Virtually all of Fett’s bounties, given the chance, did—

“How did you catch me?”

A minute left to breakout. Fett nodded toward the bottle Malloc held. “I traced sales of Merenzane Gold across the entire sector Tatooine is in. They said, at the bar you frequented on Tatooine, that it was your favorite drink.”

Malloc stared at him. “That crap I drank on Tatooine? That wasn’t Merenzane Gold, you idiot, they don’t
serve
Merenzane Gold in bars like that, they just pour it out of bottles that once, eons ago, were looked at hard by a man who
heard
of Merenzane! Don’t you know
anything
about liquor?” he asked in despair. “Haven’t you a single civilized vice?”

Fett shook his head. “No. I do not drink, nor indulge in other drugs. They are an insult to the flesh.”

“So you Hunted me down because you thought I was drinking Merenzane Gold, all those years on Tatooine. Fett, I had
one
glass of real Gold the entire time I was on that miserable excuse for a world.” Malloc shook his head in disbelief, took another swig from the bottle. “By the Cold. I can’t believe I got caught by a nerf herder like you.”

The hyperspace tunnel fragmented around them; Fett turned away from Malloc, to his controls.

“Reality,” said Fett, “doesn’t care if you believe it.”

Malloc threw the bottle, of course. The security system shot it out of the air with a single blaster bolt. The bottle blew apart into shards that rattled against the back of Fett’s helmet; the liquid splashed against Fett’s armor.

“You should have drunk it,” Fett said. He did not have to look at Malloc to know the gray despair that crossed his features. He’d seen it before, a thousand times.

•   •   •

Fett docked with the shuttle, in orbit about Devaron.

The Guild representative came across first. Fett stood in the main entryway, rifle in hand, pointing it at the representative as he entered.

The representative was Bilman Dowd, a human, tall and thin and elderly, with a severe bearing and no discernible sense of humor; he had been in the Guild even longer than Fett, which was a remarkable accomplishment in this day and age. “Hunter Fett,” he said, courteously enough.

“Dowd.”

Dowd looked the Butcher over. Kardue’sai’Malloc sat motionlessly, staring straight ahead. He did not seem to be aware of Dowd’s presence. “This is the Butcher, is it?”

“I believe so.”

Dowd nodded. He carried with him a small slate, with various controls on it; he touched one now, and spoke. “Come across.”

The
Slave IV’s
lock cycled again; four Devaronians entered, two of them in military dress, bearing rifles that they carried pointed at the
Slave IV’s
deck. The third was a female Devaronian, young, in gold robes and a gold headdress; the fourth, wearing robes of a cut similar to the woman’s, except in black, was an older Devaronian, perhaps the Butcher’s age.

All four hesitated at the sight of Fett, aiming his rifle at them—

Dowd gestured to the woman and said something in Devaronian. Fett had never actually heard the language spoken before; it was low and guttural and full of snarling consonants. It sounded like an invitation to a fight.

The woman’s expression did not change. She crossed to the spot where Malloc sat—Fett had restrained his left hand prior to allowing anyone else on
board. She kneeled in front of Malloc, looking the shivering prisoner over as though she were inspecting a carcass in the marketplace. Malloc’s skin had acquired a blue tinge; Fett supposed it was something that happened to Devaronians when they were deathly afraid.

The woman stood up and nodded abruptly. She spoke in Devaronian—

Dowd said, “She says it’s her father.”

Fett nodded; it was the reason the bounty had been “Alive,” rather than “Dead or Alive.” It had only changed a few years back; the Devaronians had no longer been certain that the Butcher would be recognizable, dead.

The older Devaronian said grimly, in rather poor Basic, “We pay him now.”

Dowd handed his tablet over to the Devaronian. The Devaronian laid his hand flat against the tablet, and spoke several words in Devaronian. Dowd took the panel back, tapped two of the controls in succession, and turned to Fett.

“You’ve been paid.”

It was not the sort of thing Fett took anyone’s word for; he took several steps backward, rifle still pointed at the group, and glanced slightly to the side. In a holofield at the edge of the control panel, a live link to the Guild Bank showed the current balance in Fett’s numbered account—

C:4,507,303
.

Five million credits, less the Guild’s handling fee of 10%, plus the seven thousand, three hundred and three credits Fett had had in the account—business had been bad, recent years.

The relief that washed over Fett at the sight was the strongest emotion other than anger that he’d felt in at least a decade. He could afford to have a replacement clone for his lower right leg; he could afford the cancer treatments that had been bankrupting him. Fett barely heard himself say, “Take him. He’s yours.”

They hauled the Butcher up out of the chair he was restrained in, being none too gentle with him. As they pulled him to his feet, he yelled at Fett, in Basic: “You do what you promised!” The glare in his eyes was perfectly mad, as they dragged him toward the airlock. “
You take care of my music!
”

After the Devaronians had gone, Dowd stood with his tablet, looking at Fett with plain curiosity. Fett sat in the pilot’s seat, still holding his rifle, pointed rather generally in Dowd’s direction.

Dowd said, “You’ll be retiring, I presume.”

Fett shrugged. “I haven’t thought about it.”

Dowd nodded. “What did he mean—about the music?”

“He had a music collection. Music the Empire suppressed, apparently. He asked me to deliver it to a woman who would see that the music was published.”

Dowd lifted an eyebrow. “Are you going to?”

“I said I would.”

Dowd nodded. “You’re a strange one.” The comment didn’t offend Fett; Dowd had made the observation before, and more than once, over the course of the decades they had known one another. Dowd reached into the pocket of his coat, and Fett stirred, bringing the rifle up slightly.

Dowd’s smile was thin. “I’ve a message chip for you. Message that arrived at Guild headquarters. Do you want it?”

“Leave it on the deck,” said Fett, “and leave. I’m very tired.”

The message was amazing.

The encryption code was so old that Fett had to dig into his computer’s archives to find the key for it. He’d made the practice, over the years, of giving his informants
encryption codes in a numbered sequence; the first five digits of this message were 00802, which made it at least twenty-five years old—Fett’s current encryption identification numbers started well upwards of 12,000.

He unarchived the encryption key for the 802 protocol, and decoded the message.

It was short. It said:

Han Solo is on Jubilar—Incavi Larado
.

In a lifetime of bounty hunting, Boba Fett had rarely, in conversation with others, said two words when one would do. He didn’t talk to himself, not
ever
—

Boba Fett said out loud, “One from the vaults.”

On his way to Jubilar, Boba Fett played the music that the Butcher of Montellian Serat had thought more important than his own life.

There were over five hundred infochips in the carrying case the Butcher had buried; each chip had the capacity to hold almost a day’s worth of music Fett opened the case, pulled one free at random, and plugged it in.

The sounds that surrounded him were—different, he had to admit. Atonal, crashing, and thoroughly unpleasant to the ear. He shook his head, pulled the chip free, and decided to try one more.

A long silence after the chip was inserted. Fett waited, and finally, impatiently, reached for it—

The sound tugged at the limits of audibility. Fett froze in the motion of reaching for the chip, straining to hear. The whisper grew into the faintest sound of a woodwind, and then a high horn joined it, playing counterpoint—

Fett’s hand dropped, and he leaned back in his chair, listening.

A voice that sounded female to Fett, but might have been a human male or an alien of any of a dozen sexes,
for all Fett would have sworn to, joined in, weaving in and among the instruments, singing beautifully in a language that meant nothing to Fett, a language he had never heard before.

After a bit he reached up and pulled his helmet off.

“Lights off,” he said a while later.

He sat there in the cool cabin, on his way to Jubilar to kill Han Solo, listening in the darkness to the only copy, anywhere in the galaxy, of the legendary Brullian Dyll’s last concert.

In the icy Devaronian northlands, beneath the dark blue skies that had haunted Kardue’sai’Malloc’s dreams for over two decades, some ten thousand Devaronians had converged in the Judgment Field outside the ruins of the ancient holy city of Montellian Serat, the city Malloc had shelled into its current state.