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Slave I's ID profile." Zuckuss nodded in admiration. "Setting up something
like this takes a lot of work; you have to force through overrides almost down
to the subatomic level. And then to build it back up with the false data . .
." He stepped back from the unit.
"Fett must have had this decoy already prepared, just keeping it for sometime
when he'd need it." Even behind
Zuckuss's face mask, there was a hint of amusement as he glanced over at
Bossk. "Like when he might be heading into some territory where creatures
might have a grudge against him."
"I'll kill him." The words seethed out through
Bossk's clenched fangs. "I swear it. I'll find him and
I'll kill him so hard . . ."
"Chances are pretty good, I'd say, that Fett's al ready slipped by us. We're
wasting our time here."
Zuckuss peered at another device, a cylinder of black
metal studded with biosensors. "Now, this is interesting.
I wouldn't have expected something like this aboard a simple decoy vessel."
Bossk knew his partner had more of an interest in technological matters; right
now all that moved inside his own head were grim fantasies of cracking bone
and spurting blood. He didn't even bother to look around, but kept on brooding
at the mocking stars visible through the port. "What is it?"
"Offhand ... I'd say it's a bomb. . . ."
"You fool!" Bossk whirled on his clawed heel, in time to see a row of lights
flash into fiery life along the cylinder's casing. The device emitted a faint
hum, already gaining in pitch and volume. "We've triggered'it!
The thing's going to blow!"
He dived for the false cockpit's hatchway; a fraction of a second later
Zuckuss landed on top of him. Both bounty hunters scrambled to their feet.
Through the hatch, Bossk could see the bomb detach itself from its mountings
on the flimsy bulkhead; with slow, ominous grace, the bomb's miniaturized
antigrav repulsors swiveled it about, bringing the scrutiny of its blind gaze
toward them.
"Get out of my way!" Bossk shoved his partner aside and sprinted for the
transfer port fastened to the decoy ship's central hold. He could hear Zuckuss
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right behind him as he furiously grappled his way through the tube's flexing
pleats and back aboard the Hound's Tooth.
The first explosion ripped the transfer away from both ships, sending ragged
strips of plastex spiraling across the Hound's midsection viewports. With his
stomach across the back of the pilot's chair, Bossk slapped at the hull
integrity controls, sealing off his own ship before any significant amount of
ak could escape.
"We ... we should be okay now. . . ." Panting, Zuckuss supported himself
against the cockpit's naviputer displays. "That wasn't . . . much of a bomb. .
. ."
There wasn't even time for Bossk to tell the other bounty hunter not to be an
idiot. The second explosion, larger than the first, struck the Hound's Tooth.
Roiling thermic fire filled the viewports as the impact of
Bossk's spine with the bulkhead above stunned him into barely conscious
silence. Blood swirled across the scales of his face as the ship's
artificial-gravity generators struggled to catch up with its end-over-end
tumbling.
Bossk smashed his fist against as many of the thruster controls as he could
reach; the resulting force had him digging a hold into the pilot's chair to
keep from being flung through the open hatchway behind him.
A stern-mounted scanner showed the bomb, smaller now but even deadlier,
trailing in the erratic wake of the
Hound's Tooth. "It's . . . it's locked onto us. . . ."
Zuckuss clawed his way up beside Bossk. He pointed to the screen above the
controls. "Here it comes. . . ."
Bossk knew how incremental-sequence bombs functioned.
The first two charges work you over, he told himself. The third one kills you.
His voice grated in his throat "Not
. . . this time ..."
He hit the rest of the thrusters, at the same time throwing the Hound into a
suicide arc. Stars blurred across the viewport as the angle of the ship's turn
deepened. A deep basso groan sounded as increasing vectors tore in different
directions across the hull.
Sharper cracking noises signaled the navigation modules ripping away from the
exterior.
The third and final explosion completed the partial disassembly of the Hound's
Tooth. Bossk's desperate maneuver had put enough distance between the ship and
the bomb; the hull shook with the impact but remained intact.
Zuckuss was knocked onto his face mask by the bulkhead deforming behind him,
the blast's force warping the section from concave to convex. The pilot's
chair broke in two, sending Bossk sprawling across the cockpit's floor, claws
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