Everyone dies, it's the final and only lasting justice. Evil exists, it is intelligence in the service of entropy. When the side of a mountain slides down to kill a village, this is not evil, for evil requires intent. Should a sentient being cause that landslide, there is evil; and requires justice as a consequence, so that civilization can exist. There is no greater good than Justice; and only if law serves justice is it a good law. It is said correctly that law exists not for the just but for the unjust, for the Just carry the law in their hearts, and do not need to call it from afar. I bow to no one and I give service only for cause.
--- Jaster Mereel/Boba Fett

"Excuse me," said the short skinny stranger, eyeing the seat opposite Boba Fett. "Would you mind awfully if I shared your table? The tavern is full." So saying, she waited for a second, then dropped into the seat and grinned at him.

Well.

Much later in their lives, when none of these memories really mattered anymore, except as interesting reminiscences, Fett understood that she had stood out that first day simply because she had not recognised him. That was so unusual in itself it was rare -- and intriguing. Fett, as far as he could recall, had not needed an introduction in that part of the galaxy for years. His Mandalorian armour wore an aura which had less to do with weaponry than reputation. And his name --

His name was legend.

In that crowded tavern on a sparsely populated planet, people were both attracted and repelled by his presence, but these were ambivalent reactions Fett was used to. His headquarters was on that planet, and public knowledge of it effected a situation Fett and the planet's permanent residents both found useful -- it served as a social prophylactic. No wanted person came to that planet intentionally unless specifically seeking confrontation with Boba Fett. And because many law-runners carried prices on their heads, they tended to stay away, and as such, so did the bounty hunters on their trails. Everybody present in the bar tonight was there because it/he/she knew Fett would be -- the word always went around. On a Fett-night, there were fewer bar fights, drunks left early and the bar-owner was a happier man.

Due to its celebrity patron, Sarlacc's was the most notorious and best-behaved bar on the planet.

Fett, as usual, had his regular corner all to himself. A clear space was maintained, almost unconsciously, by the jostling crowds around his table and area. He could see every other corner of the tavern from his own, and his back was wedged comfortably and significantly against the wall. No one spoke to Fett. He spoke, in return, to no one. He sat on his own at his table, and observed the social patterns whirling and fitting themselves around his invisible but potent presence in the place.

All was normal, until the stranger showed up.

Fett stared at the newcomer sitting at his table. For a moment, the roar of conversation around the bounty hunter seemed to ebb a little, as people turned to look at the stranger who had joined him. Then the decibels rose abruptly, smoothly. Regulars looked away, ignoring the two, not caring to know.

Her smile held no sign of fear. She may or may not have known it, but her life hung in the balance, literally in a dozen different ways, as she sat there and returned the gaze of the Mandalorian visor.

"Thanks for the seat," she said, holding out a hand. "If you're expecting anybody, I'll get out of your way, no worries."

Boba Fett did not take her hand, and after a while, she put it down again. For a moment the bounty hunter considered, then decided to speak. "I'm not expecting anyone," he said quietly. It was, after all, true.

"That's all right then," she rejoined, sounding vaguely relieved. She proceeded to order a large meal, and wolfed down every scrap of it within minutes. She then offered to buy them both drinks, and when Fett declined, got a palu fruit juice for herself.

She took his lack of verbal output to be amiable, and attempted to share some general galaxy news during the course of her drink. Fett's one contribution to the conversation came when she mentioned the latest gossip surrounding the rebel alliance: at that point he asked a couple of questions. Her answers were versions of rumours he was already aware of, but he listened carefully anyway.

The party-crasher eventually drained her glass and sat back. For a long minute she looked full into the impassive Mandalorian visor, oblivious to the moment. Depriving people of eye-contact, the Mandalorian helmet imbued every turn of Fett's head with deliberate and enormous menace, more so if the person speaking to him already knew who he was. No one had stared into Fett's face without some element of fear or unease in a very long time, and the moment held its breath.

"Thank you for putting up with a complete stranger," she said suddenly. "All that monologue. I bet you can tell I've just made planetfall." She got to her feet. "Well, good night. See you around?"

"Goodbye," said Fett, surprising himself.

She smiled, and was gone into the crowds.

Peace descended.

* * * * * * * * * * *

She was there again, at much the same time, the next night. Again, more from conditioning than from conviction, Fett trained his lasers on her under the table, and held them trained. Again, she asked if she might join him. And again, after eyeing the dozens of patrons resolutely ignoring them, Fett acquiesced.

She must have found a place to sleep. The tiredness around her eyes was etched somewhat less tight, and her speech was not wound as manic as the night before. With Fett slightly less silent than previously, she described the Corellis mud flats which had almost taken her ship with their glue-sticky eruptions last week.

"The hyper stalled," she said. "And the impulses were gagging from the growing coat of cement the flats were throwing at us. We managed to get the drive on line just before we sank. But I really thought we had had it."

"Transfer available power to shields," said Fett quietly. "Burn the mud off and get the impulses going within the shield bubble. Even if you sink the bubble will breathe your impulses."

She nodded. "You're right, of course. We thought of that, but only after we had stopped panicking. I guess that's the difference between experience and none." Lapsing into a thoughtful silence, she nursed her drink for a minute, lost in recent memory. It gave the bounty hunter a chance to study her. He wondered at the life she had chosen for herself. She had not said so, but she was a smuggler, and a bad one. Most commodity-runners Fett had had the dubious pleasure of meeting were suspicious, highly superstitious hard types. Han Solo was fairly typical. This novice carried no arms, nothing. And she and an equally inept crew had not even known how to shield-start impulses -- practically a mandatory literacy for a breed of pilots often caught on the hop between angry pursuers and patched ships.

Her fingers touched his arm and she was standing. "Live and learn, I guess. Good night."

Fett said nothing as she left, but he was astounded at himself. He had not seen that touch coming, nor had he been prepared for it. No one, in a long time, had touched Boba Fett without his consent. He sat dead-still, the touch tingling on his glove.

The next two days saw the pattern repeated: the smuggler would join Fett each night, order a meal, chat a while, then leave. Fett no longer trained weapons on her after the fourth evening, though he remained fully alert. He did not let her touch him again. When she got up to go, the bounty hunter made sure he was out of easy reach.

Fett was uncomfortable. The routine made him nervous -- any routine made him nervous. He had never visited the bar for more than two nights in a row before, even with it being the safest place on the planet for him other than his quarters (his fixed security scans also included the area, though the bar-owner did not know it). But now he had sat solidly at that table during the same hours for four nights, and every instinct he possessed was screaming that he was asking for trouble.

Boba Fett. Tempting fate.

Thus, on the fifth night, the newcomer arrived to find the table unoccupied amidst packed crowds. She looked around, then sat down and ordered her meal. She ate quickly and left the tavern as soon as she finished. In the gloom outside, Fett began to follow her.

She seemed in no hurry, making her way towards one of the few green areas on the planet's inhabited side: a dingy little square of gnarled stunted trees and dusty grass. The square sat apologetically next to a small collection of unmoving water. Its guest sat down with her back to a tree, facing the pond, and was still.

Fett watched her stare at the dark water for three hours. At midnight, she got up, and went behind a bush for a minute. When she came out, she looked around to check if anyone was nearby, then climbed the tallest, leafiest tree quickly. She settled near the top, well hidden by the dark leaves, and made no more sound.

Boba Fett watched her sleep till the cold dawn sun crept up. Then he stretched, left his post and went back to his own rooms.

* * * * * * * * * * *

That night Fett waited at the table, but she did not appear. When the crowds thinned at midnight, he got up and made his way down to the green square by the water. He had been standing beneath the tree for several moments before its original occupants, a pair of mangy squirrel-like rodents, realised he was there and shot up the trunk in alarm. A faint rustle sounded, much further up. A leaf floated down.

"Good evening," said Fett evenly, soliciting a muffled gasp from above. "Have you eaten at all today?"

There was astounded silence for a long moment. Then her thoughtful voice sounded, very low and polite, "I'm fine, thank you."

"Perhaps so, now. But not by tomorrow."

Another lengthy pause. "I'm sure you mean well, but I can take care of myself. Thanks."

Fett stood still under the tree, visored eyes roaming the dark shadows. He had the most unusual feeling that he was in the midst of a situation he had less control over than he would have liked. Looking around now, stretching out senses both natural and enhanced to ensure they were still unobserved, the odd feeling grew, cloaking him, closing over his instincts. Yet he perceived no threat. Adrenaline was in his bloodstream, but he was calm. The Mandalorian helmet gleamed in the twin-moonglow as the bounty hunter looked up into the dark canopy.

"There is food for you at my place," said Fett. It happened to be perfectly true. "It has already been prepared. If you choose not to come with me, I will bring it out back here."

There was the longest stretch of silence yet. Fett counted three minutes before he heard the branches creak as she began to descend. On the ground, she fixed him with a puzzled frown even as she said shortly, "You're too kind."

She was slower than usual as she followed him. Fett clicked on his internal scanners once. She was painfully thin under the battered smuggler's jacket and layers of thermal clothing. Fett guessed that other than the meals she had consumed in the tavern, five meals in six days, she had not been eating at all.

He wasn't worried about showing her the way to his shelter. The location of his den was no secret. And the first night he had met her he had run a routine scan, and she was exactly who she had not mentioned she was: a novice smuggler, owner of a small aged trawler called the Orion. Her last two hauls had lost money, and she had paid off and dismissed her few crew after they had made planetfall last week. Her ship was presently grounded, in need of repairs she could not afford. Her name was Mil Mol Loo, she was 27 and had no family.

Thirty yards from his den, the bounty hunter performed his usual scans for intruders. His lethal alarm and security systems, which secured the surrounding area for half a mile around, were undisturbed.

His den was much larger than it seemed from the outside. The owner of the Orion stood nervously near the entrance as Fett headed towards the cooler in the utilitarian kitchen. He took out a plate of food, flicked on the heating element at the bottom of the plate, and placed it on the table. "Sit down and eat," he instructed her. "I will make us something to drink."

In a manner of speaking, he did. At least, he poured out a large mug of recombined milk for her, and a glass of water for himself.

"How do you drink with that helmet on?" she asked as only one who was used to perpetually hidden visages in her line of work might ask. She came forward and sat down, her eyes on the food. "I can't remember you drinking in the bar at all."

Nobody had asked Fett that before. "I don't drink in the bar," he said, sitting down at the table, glass of water before him. His guest gave the glass a quizzical look, and glanced back up at the expressionless visor before her. "I'll finish quickly and clear out so you can be alone," she offered. "Thanks again for the meal."

Fett chose to ignore that. "I drink like this," he said, touching something on the side of his helmet. A small section of it, from just below the nose to the chin, slid up out of sight. Fett took a sip of water and sat back.

Mil Mol Loo nodded at the section of face that was visible -- she seemed to have no idea of the significance of the moment. He was human, from what she could see, and male. She began to eat. The food was basic, but good and hot, and there was plenty of it. Her shrunken stomach objected once to the intrusion of the first food in 24 hours, then settled down. The milk was good. The food warmed her. Within 10 minutes the plate was clean and the mug drained.

"Do you want more?" Fett asked.

"No, thank you, that was more than enough." She stood and took up the plate and mug. "I will wash these," she said, looking at him a little uncertainly.

"The sink is on the left, at the end," said Fett. His natural voice was different with the section back: less metallic and sinister. It was an even voice, neither particularly warm nor cold; to the listener it sounded mostly indifferent. He continued to sit at the table as she washed and wiped her crockery, his gloved hand around the glass of water, his helmet turned in her direction. After doing the dishes she returned to the table and sat down. Now fed and watered, a certain curiosity reasserted itself in Mil Mol Loo. "Who are you?" she asked, not exactly expecting an answer.

A long second passed before her host spoke, his voice unchanged. "My name is Boba Fett."

She certainly knew the name.

She might not, incredible as it was, have recognised the bounty hunter by sight, but like every other smuggler or traveler in the galaxy she knew the name of Boba Fett. Her brown eyes remained on him, stilled and stunned. Then they flew around the den, seeing it anew, reading it differently. Finally they returned to settle on his visor, and on his body armour.

"You are Boba Fett." Her voice was dry. "The bounty hunter."

"Yes."

An incredulous pause. "Do you often feed strays?"

Fett's mouth quirked. "No," he said. "Only those stranded in trees."

A strangled sound jumped out past Mil Mol Loo's lips. Fett could not remember the last time he had heard someone giggle in response to something he said, however maniacally. His guest pulled up her legs like a thin cat and wrapped scrawny arms around her shins. Her chin rested on knees far too bony. She watched him for three silent minutes from this improvised fetal position, and Fett watched her back.

"I was quite comfortable in that tree," she said finally, apropos of nothing in particular. Then, "I was sure no one had seen me. You followed me," she accused him.

"Of course," said Fett.

"Of course," she rejoined dryly. "I forget." For several moments more, she was silent. "So this is your place."

She hugged herself into her human ball even more tightly. "So why are you doing this? Don't you have more important things to do? People to kill, Wookiees to scalp, that sort of thing?"

The sarcasm was delivered so blandly that Fett was caught by surprise. He had forgotten what it was like, to have someone displaying no concern, giving off no scent of fear. It was stimulating.

"Perhaps later," he said. "I'm feeding strays at the moment."

He received another short choked laugh. Suddenly, she asked, "Do you enjoy killing?"

"No," he said quietly, immediately. "Why would you think I do?"

"You're Boba Fett."

He said nothing to that. Perhaps there was nothing to say.

After a bit she said, "Guess I should be getting along. Thanks for the meal."

Although he already knew, Fett asked, "Why are you not sleeping in the Orion?"

"The recycling system needs repair. Bad air."

"A room somewhere then."

"A room needs to be paid for."

Fett said, "That sofa there is free. You may use it tonight."

She said, "I beg your pardon?"

"Tomorrow a place I know will be able to offer you shelter. They will ask no questions, and require no payment. And you can eat here until you find a way to get your ship back in orbit." It still came out wrong: despite the fact that he had considered making the offer for several days, it still came out as a brusque instruction rather than an invitation. It sounded like something Boba Fett the bounty hunter might say -- an order no one was expected to take issue with.

She was staring at him, knocked off her perch. "That is kind of you," she said after a moment. "But I can't accept your offer, I'm sorry. I can't repay you for such help."

"You won't need to pay me."

"Then why are you doing this?"

"You have 3.75 credits to your name," said Fett, not divulging how he came by that information. "By this time next week you will be paralysed from malnutrition. Your body-fat might support you for a week. Do you wish to die in that tree?"

"Why do you care what happens to this stray, Boba Fett? Is there something you want?" Skinny, dirty, smelly, under no delusion of vanity, Mil Mol Loo tossed the challenge to him like a dead glove.

"You are not a bounty. There is no need for you to die."

"I'm not your concern."

"I make my concerns as I wish." And this time it did sound like Boba Fett speaking, soft as his voice was.

She stood up and looked at him. Her eyes blazed. She needed to eat, certainly. But even more so, she needed to not have to beg for that privilege. To stay alive. What was she prepared to give up in return for food? What the hell was the bounty hunter playing at?

Watching her indecision, Fett was reminded of the many versions of pride he had encountered before -- misplaced emotions, mostly in the death contracts he had cornered: people who had run out of hope and of escape, and who were trying to convince themselves that facing annihilation at the hands of the most notorious bounty hunter in the galaxy was actually a form of honour. Fett considered them sadly misled. But with these people, he dealt out death, oblivion, and he never had to worry about their feelings afterwards.

This was different. She was standing ramrod straight, ragged pride on the line, utter humiliation and mortification on her face. What should he do? Fett heard himself say, "Please consider."

Her expression was almost worth the first 'please' Fett had uttered in perhaps five years. She walked up to him, where he still sat in his chair, and looked down. "Why are you doing this? What possible reason would impel you to want to feed and house a stranger? Isn't that bad bounty hunter ju-ju?" She had a second thought. "You do this often? Feed strays? On the side? Do people know?"

His response, when it came, was so fast she never saw him move. Fett was out of that chair and standing looking down at her before she managed to recoil, letting out a small startled yip. He was so close she could smell the leather and faint metal scent of his body armour. "I was a stray once," was all he said from that distance, but she felt as though he had shouted the words.

Mil Mol Loo stepped back and stared at the impassive visor. The set of his mouth revealed nothing.

"How am I going to repay you for all this?" She asked after a moment. "You obviously know I have no money, and no collateral besides a ship that doesn't run."

He said nothing, merely continued to look at her, and after a second, she understood. She would not pay him back unless she could. She would speak of this to no one. It would, in every sense, be something that did not happen; that could not happen and would not happen. No one would believe it anyway.

Something else occurred to her: she did not know it had already occurred to Fett. She was not afraid. Of death? Of the bounty hunter? Of a trap? She was simply not afraid, and even she did not know why.

Bounty hunters engaging in secret charity. It was like fiction, something you might read in popular hypertext. Not that she read all that much: who by the Force had time? The whole thing was odd, dreamlike; it was not something which happened in the course of the usual trying-to-put-food-on-the-table practice. Debt was a reality. This was not.

She stepped forward, back two steps to where she had originally stood in front of him. The retrieved steps took her too close: she could smell the leather and metal again, and the frayed lapels of her bomber jacket brushed his chest armour. He did not move back. Mil Mol Loo fastened her fingers on his arms, keeping him in place. Still he did not move. In the visor, she saw nothing but a distorted reflection, but it was the movements she needed to make. Her hands were real, they were doing something. She could feel the laser fastenings under her fingers, the hard metal weaponry encircling his gloved arms. The thought crossed her mind that she had her hands on his weapons and he was actually relaxed.

He was still waiting for her answer.

"I accept," she said. "Thank you -- I think." Mil let his arms go, and stepped back again, suddenly drained, almost depleted, lost. The moment hung fire: what else could she say? Then she did think of something, something which sounded stupid even to herself. She said it anyway, and almost aggressively. "I'll eat here if you want me to. But the square is all right for the nights. It'll be okay."

The visor continued to regard her for a moment, then Fett nodded. "As you wish. For tonight, you can use that sofa over there. Goodnight."

* * *

Fett had taken his glass of water with him to his room. Now, with the door closed and secured, he put it carefully down on the metal worktable beside his bed.

He had been in the Mandalorian armour for over 16 hours, and he wanted to take it off. It was perfectly comfortable -- it had to be: during bounty missions he practically lived in it. But tonight, in his own home, locked in his room, there was an inexplicable urge to feel the air on his face; the cotton sheets on his skin.

No, that wasn't it.

He wanted to take Boba Fett off.

Take off the bounty hunter and put what? who? on? Jaster Mereel?

"No," he hissed in the silence of his room. "Never again."

The armour was designed so that he could remove it within seconds. The helmet came off first; then the gloves and the rest of the uniform. He dropped it all on the bed. With all its weaponry and shielding, it still weighed only 14 pounds. Boba Fett walked into the sonic shower and removed the grime of the last day, deliberately thinking of nothing.

Clean again, he came out and stood by the bed, running a quick internal scan and test of his surgical implants. Then he set the suit to recharge its systems, and lay down on the bed. Staring up at the ceiling without the aid of the visor, with his own eyes, Fett tested the strength of that strange conviction again: it was still there. The oddity of the situation fanned the bounty hunter's jaded sense of excitement even as it made him nervous, restless. Unpredictability was the nature of his life, but somehow this was different; the options no longer the clear and simple game of the hunter and the hunted. The distinctions, if he wanted to afford them any attention at all, were no longer so clear.

His eyes, unblinking, stared unseeing at the ceiling.

Tomorrow was a new day, an unknown day, even for Boba Fett.

He closed his eyes and slept.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Boba Fett woke at dawn, but his guest had risen even earlier. He came out of his room to find her standing at the sink, scrubbing something he couldn't identify. The table was laid for one: milk, fruit, bread, cheese and creamy palu juice. There was no palu juice in the den, so she had juiced the fruit.

Apparently she had had breakfast.

The Mandalorian visor ignored the table for a bit, and took in the rest of the apartment in a slow sweep, internal scanners running. He did not really need to do this: all the instruments and equipment in the place were remoted to the suit, and would alert him at any instant of interference. She had touched nothing all night, except the fittings in the bathroom and the sofa.

She finished cleaning the something in the sink, and came towards him. There was a set to her walk and expression -- she had obviously come to some sort of conclusion during the night. "Good morning," she said. "Off to make the early kill?"

So her shields were up. Fett showed no evidence of having heard her greeting, more to give himself time to weigh the situation than anything else. With this one, belligerence seemed a defence tactic, perhaps even unconsciously so.

"I will be away for a while. You may enter and leave the den as you wish. The system has been instructed to approve your live DNA readings." Fett paused. "It will allow only you to enter. Any other intruder, whether carrying DNA specimens from you or not, will be disintegrated before reaching the inner external parameters."

She was silent.

"The food and facilities here are at your disposal. Please use them."

"Especially the shower?" she asked wryly. She stank.

"Especially the shower." Fett's voice, synthesised by his helmet, wore no trace of emotion, but its very quietness sounded amused. "There is also a sonic cleaner for your clothes and boots."

She said thanks, politely enough.

Boba Fett picked up some fruit and put it into an unseen pocket. "I will be back in a few days." There was something wickedly domestic about the moment, but he ignored it.

"Try not to take too many heads," she said, waving the dishcloth as he walked out the door. "Goodbye, Mr. Fett."

The bounty hunter, his braided Wookiee scalps hanging over his right shoulder, ignored her farewell as well.

* * *

"Would even Boba Fett kill his own guest? Answer: Keep prodding him and find out." Mil Mol Loo was in the sonic shower and it felt tremendous -- a week of grime was falling away -- so much so she had been in it for over 50 minutes. She hadn't been this clean in a long, long time.

She had cleaned her clothes and boots too, a good idea since she was going to spend the day -- again -- looking for a job. Trying to find someone who would hire her freighting services on this backwater planet was like panning for gold.

She had been trying the smuggler drinking holes without success for several days. News travels faster than light on a planet port like this, and most of the potential clients already knew of her last two failed hauls, her debts, her lack of collateral. She was inexperienced, crewless, broke, with a ship that needed repairs before any haul could even be considered -- she was the worst possible candidate for anyone needing freight.

Mil Mol Loo steadfastly refused to contemplate the additional possibility that her present run of zero-luck might also have something to do with her dinners with Boba Fett.

After a week of trying to get work, she still refused to believe, though increasingly desperately, that she would not be offered work on this planet, no matter how long or hard she searched for it. The reason was simple: she had to believe she could get her ship off the planet, or accept that she would starve, unless she chose to support herself with less principled work.

She had starved. For a day. Then she had been hauled out of her tree by the most fearsome bounty hunter in the galaxy and fed. Mil didn't know which felt more surreal: accepting Fett's inexplicable charity, or admitting she required it at present, to live.

She switched the sonic off. "Get a bounty put on your head. That way you could pay him back."

* * * * * * * * * *

Boba Fett returned three days after he had left. He entered the den to find it unoccupied, with prepared food on heating plates in the cooler.

Fett went to his room, secured it, then stripped off to examine his wound. A laser blast had caught him on the thigh. Although mostly deflected by the leg coverings, enough had burned through to require attention and treatment. He sat on the bed and dressed the thigh. The leg ached badly: laser resonance caused much of the tissue around wounds to develop microscopic haemorrhaging and fissuring -- his entire upper thigh would be blue-black by the next day, and stiff for the next few.

The Lasarian bounty would have to wait.

About to walk out of his room in the nude, Fett reconsidered, then went back and pulled on a pair of loose exercise pants. Modesty in his own den, simply because he had a guest who might walk in at any time. Face coverings were not a problem; even when he was alone in his den he often wore an improvised version of the Mandalorian helmet -- a simple blank strip of visor across the face which wrapped round the entire back of his head -- which kept him continually hooked up to his 24-hour security, alarm and information-gathering systems without keeping him tied to consoles.

The bounty hunter was vaguely surprised at himself. Hauling home a guest was a personal violation of any number of rules of self-interest and survival. The girl, if she had been so inclined, could have destroyed Fett's peace of mind in a multitude of ways during the time he had been gone. The security system was programmed to accept only her live DNA readings, but a determined person, with some clever help, could eventually have worked out a way around his codes, though probably not within the three days he was away.

No system was infallible. More crudely, orbit-based firepower might also achieve the same results -- that is, the sabotaging of his quarters -- though Fett had some doubts about that. Three years ago, when he had set up this den, he had set up shields which could, at full deployment, repel an Imperial level-7 proton torpedo -- definitely two and possibly four. The system had never been tested.

Now Fett walked around the den, looking carefully at everything, though all systems were intact and undisturbed. The place was remarkably, shockingly and unbelievably clean. Fett, who despite all his other efficiencies was a little lacking in the house-proud division, felt a little like a visitor in his sparkling den. The utilitarian setup had certainly never been designed for comfort, but now it boasted a new shine.

He went to the cooler and looked thoughtfully at the food inside. She had prepared a series of full-meals, each complete in itself on a heating plate, ready for quick choice. There were 10 plates in the cooler. He chose one with palu fruit slices on it, and put it on the table. The meaty white-veined fruit had been thickly sliced, then fried and sprinkled with herbs.

Almost automatically, he activated his implanted scanner to search for possible toxins or poisons, but the food was clean. Boba Fett had not entered anything into his system -- food, drinks, drugs, enhancers -- in the last five years without scanning it first. It was actually an additional manual step of safety he had never broken the habit of. Two years ago, for a very large sum, Fett had had a perpetually activated guardian device built into his medulla oblongata -- an uncopiable system which continuously monitored his surroundings for reactive substances within a range of 15 feet. The system was keyed only and specifically to his DNA and genome structure, providing a constant vigilance against any combination of detected substances which might pose a risk to his human neuro-physiology. The system had already saved his life 18 times. Boba Fett, understandably, had many enemies.

He ate, tasting none of the food, his thoughts on the last three days. He had just collected a payment of 90,000 credits for delivering a bounty -- dead -- to Jabba the Hutt. Particularly crafty, the deceased -- an eccentric smuggler known for his ability to construct ingenious mechanical devices for minimal cost -- had rigged an AI scope which could be triggered only by the sight of the Mandalorian armour. The scope had tracked the bounty hunter ceaselessly and intelligently with a thermal drive until he had put it out of commission, though not before it scored a hit. Fett had then toyed with the idea of delivering a live bounty -- he would receive almost double the payment -- but decided the money was worth neither the risk nor aggravation.

The laser wound burned, stung and ached. It would ground him for at least three days before he could go after the Lasarian bounty, and three days and a good leg were worth far more than the 90,000 credits he had received. He had not limped in the Hutt's presence, but he was limping now.

Boba Fett was an individual with a terrible amount of blood on his hands. His business was bounty hunting: a bloody, dangerous, frequently ignoble profession in which proficiency at killing was a necessary prerequisite to the job and where mercy and compassion were nothing more than handicaps. Bounty hunters brought prey in for money -- either dead or alive. They were a breed of predator who usually came into their calling via a need for money, and who could ultimately stay because of a particular lack of moral inhibition. Their numbers were culled by a direct application of the law of the survival of the fittest, often crudely applied through a shot in the back. Bounty hunters were a feared community, despised and shunned by the general populace. Even amongst a violent generation of pirates, smugglers, rebel warriors and freedom-fighters who had grown up knowing only the kind of freedom they had to fight for -- and as such they fought hard -- the cult of bounty-hunting vigilantes was still considered the most ruthless of the galaxy's soldiers of death.

And Boba Fett was the best of them all.

As a bounty-hunter, he had no par. Jabba the Hutt employed him regularly, and paid him what he asked, but the crime boss was also wary of him. As Emperor Palpatine was wary of him. Fett was known for being able to get at any quarry, anytime, anywhere, through any level of protection.

No one alive had seen Fett's face. Few had heard his natural voice. And none now associated him with the forgotten name of Jaster Mereel. Boba Fett was an enigma: a deadly, silent -- and when he wished -- an undetectable killer who had a reputation for unbroken success in delivering his bounty, and nobody knew who he was. There were rumours he was human, or at least humanoid (he possessed the correct dimensions for at least five humanoid species with five-digit forelimbs), but they had never been substantiated.

The regular patrons of the safest bar on Fett's planet-base were strangely loyal to their notorious neighbour, if silence could be construed as loyalty. But their silence could also be read as self-preservation. More than a hundred people had seen the human female dine at Fett's table over the last week, and much could be drawn from that, but the news had never left the boundaries of the tavern by any verbal means. People knew, but few discussed it. The thing was, being in Fett's presence carried both privilege and price. Being in his vicinity, unless you were a bounty, meant a moment of unequaled security, but demanded an agreement of silence and privacy. You ignored Boba Fett if he was in the bar. You simply pretended he wasn't there. Most hardcore outlaws carried rewards on their heads: consequently, most stayed away from the planet. By virtue of an unspoken and bizarre understanding, the grubby little backwater planet boasted the lowest incidence, and fewest perpetrators, of serious crime in that sector of the quadrant.

Fett allowed himself to limp over to the kitchen table. Limping was a luxury in the privacy of his den -- an affectation he could not afford in the presence of most others. He had once walked on a broken leg in Jabba's presence: the Hutt had never been allowed to see Fett wounded after a bounty. No one had.

Limping felt good. The thigh stung and pulled, the large quadriceps muscle objecting. Fett limped all around the room in direct defiance of the leg's objections, stretching the bruised muscles deliberately. Exercising his leg as it healed was imperative, or fibrosis was a danger. Boba Fett, predator, hunter, killer, supercommando, could not afford a body which was not at peak operating performance.

In several days his leg should be strong enough for him to secure the Lasarian bounty. Even now, he was keeping track of where Edu Ottoman was, and what he was doing. Ottoman would be unlikely to leave the Reiser spaceport for a week -- his ship had been grounded by a bad meteorite encounter. Fett was aware other bounty hunters knew where Ottoman was, since it was a common practice of the Lasarian Brothers to contract as many bounty hunters after a quarry as possible, counting it a bonus if any were themselves eliminated in the cross fire.

But Edu Ottoman would be Fett's. Ottoman was an ex-Imperial trooper of officer rank, and he had been a personal bodyguard to the Lasarian Brothers for years, until he had decided to double-cross them. Fett calculated that other than himself and perhaps three other veteran bounty hunters -- all of whom were on the trails of other bounties at moment -- none of the available others in the quadrant would be able to bring Ottoman in alive. Dead, he was worth nothing. Brought back to the Brothers alive, he would fetch half a million credits. The trick was to get him without having him either kill you or himself in the process, for Ottoman would not, if he had the choice, allow himself to be taken alive. He was a desperate man, as any runner with Boba Fett on its tail would be -- and everyone knew Fett had accepted the contract. Since then, he had tracked Ottoman for five months, taking his time, allowing Ottoman to get more and more nervous and desperate. Fett never rushed a bounty, and he never rushed himself. He had once tracked a pair of Janiston telepathic twins for three years across half the galaxy before he had struck. During those three years, the twins had chalked up their own body-count of 15 bounty hunters.

For the twins, Fett had received a million credits, a small planet in an undisclosed section of the quadrant, and two unbreakable promises from His Imperial Highness Emperor Palpatine, ruler and dictator of the Empire. It had been a good year for Fett.

His security system beeped, alerting him to the fact that Mil Mol Loo was approaching the secured parameters of his compound 50 yards from the entrance. Fett turned and walked towards the kitchen.

A minute later, the front entrance buzzed twice and let his guest in. She saw him and stopped short for a moment. She had not yet seen him out of his Mandalorian armour. "Is that you, Fett?"

"Yes."

Mil Mol Loo relaxed. "So you're back," she said. "Welcome home, I guess." Then she caught sight of his limping progress across the floor. "And you've been injured."

"Yes," said Fett, not elaborating.

"The bounty?"

"Hm."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," said Fett. He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about discussing the matter.

"Any new Wookiee scalps?"

"No." His voice was dry. "Are you disappointed?"

"Never mind, Fett. Perhaps you could start a new collection of human kneecaps or whatever. Something equally gross."

Again, that unsolicited rudeness, disguised as humour. Fett looked at her, intrigued by her odd behaviour more than anything else. He asked, mildly, "Do you always treat your hosts this way?", and moved over to a console on the wall.

Hearing her come up behind him, he suppressed an urge conditioned by years of carefulness to turn and note her precise movements and location, and tapped a couple of buttons very deliberately.

Her voice was an odd combination of apology, defiance and bitterness. "I'm sorry, Fett, but I'm still your charity project. No one's hiring on this planet."

Fett turned and looked at her, but she was staring at the far walls. He could and would feed her -- he had voluntarily made that decision some time ago -- but he could not give her a job. And how long could he continue to play this game before his personal security was compromised? It was already compromised. Her association with him, and her access to his den, were both severe weaknesses in his line of work: chinks in the social armour leading straight to Fett. Bounty hunters had better reasons than most for staying loners.

She was a weak link in his system, and one that Fett had introduced himself.

"Time for dinner," Boba Fett said, wanting to put the problem aside for the moment.

"Great, as long as it's not Wookiee brains," said his problem, cheering up. "They give me gas."

Fett marched to the kitchen. He was getting a lot of practice in at ignoring her.

* * * * * * * * * *

Dinner, for Fett, was an interesting affair. His guest, perhaps emboldened by familiarity and recombined milk, was fully at ease and seemed to feel the need to talk. For the first time in years, the bounty hunter found himself fending off a more or less continuous stream of query. She questioned him about everything.

She could not seem to let go, for example, the issue of his Wookiee braid. "Why do you have it?" she persisted. "Why do you wear a decoration of dead Wookiee scalps over your right shoulder?"

"Not at the moment," Fett said, trying to stem a sudden rush of memory so vivid it was nearly physical. For a second it gripped him to the point of pain; it was pain.

For Fett was synesthetic, with a type of synesthesia which extended to all his senses, as well as between them. It was another of the things no one knew about him. The memory sensations rushed through him, filling every sense, setting up an adrenaline charge which tightened his muscles. It had been a night so long ago, but for Fett, it would always feel like yesterday.

His guest fixed her eyes on his right shoulder as a continuing question, and Fett was vaguely reminded that apart from the visor and his exercise pants, he had no other coverings on at all. "Is it a bounty hunter thing?" she asked curiously. "Some superstitious fetish charm voodoo ju-ju?"

Boba Fett regarded her unblinkingly for a moment, his eyes studying her through the visor. There was so much he could never say, even if she had asked a little more nicely. So much he didn't even know how to put into words.

"Nine years ago a Wookiee bounty led me to a desert planet. It had electrical fog which muffled my tracking systems. The Wookiee skip jumped me with a friend. Contact battle. Wookiees fight hand-to-hand for a chance to count coup, especially with opponents they see as equals. Perhaps they assumed two Wookiees equaled one bounty hunter--"

"One Boba Fett," his guest corrected quietly.

"--I never asked. Bounty hunters are fair game in any context." His voice was soft. "They broke my arm and leg. Internal damage. Fractured skull." The bounty hunter's voice trailed off like cooling steel. "But coup was counted anyway. Two Wookiee scalps."

His eyes, staring into the distant past, refocused to find Mil Mol Loo looking at him silently. "You asked," he said simply.

"Yes," she said. "I did."

"Any other questions?"

"Just one." But she seemed to struggle with it for a moment. "If I saw your face, would you kill me?"

Fett had been expecting the question throughout dinner, but still it unsettled him for some reason. "Yes."

"I see. Fair enough, I suppose, considering what's at stake."

"If I had said no?"

"What do you think? I want to see what you look like, obviously." Her voice was sarcastic.

"I am human. You know that much." This confirmation, so casually given, would have been worth planets to Mil Mol Loo had she but known. She had no idea that as of that moment she was only the second person in the galaxy who knew Boba Fett was human.

"Yes, but--" Mil was wishing she had never brought the subject up. "Never mind. Forget it."

Fett, for whatever reason, found himself saying, "It's a bounty hunter thing."

She suddenly grinned, and a tension Fett had not known was there, abruptly lifted, surprising him. "I knew it. And my dear mother always specifically told me not to get involved with one of those bounty-hunting types."

"I see."

"And here I am taking food, drink and blankets from one."

"I gather you would not be mentioning it."

"Well, she's dead, but I guess not," Mil said, not knowing Fett was fully aware she had no family.

"Ah."

The conversation dragged there for a bit.

"So as long as I don't rip your mask off, I'm safe?"

"Even bounty-hunters have certain principles."

His guest suddenly yawned and stood up. "What do you know. I think I'll call it a night. It's been a long and un-productive day -- maybe I should take up bounty hunting. Seems to pay."

She had made it all the way across the wide room to the entrance -- she wasn't going very fast -- before Fett made up his mind. "Use the sofa," he said.

Genuine surprise in her face. "That's not necessary."

"You cannot continue to sleep in that tree."

"There's nothing wrong with that tree."

He said deliberately, "I have been thinking of cutting it down."

A gasp. "You do that and I will shred your sofa, but good."

"Use it."

"How do you know it's more comfortable than the tree?"

"It's safer."

"Some might argue that." She was standing in front of him now, pulling extraordinary facial grimaces of apparent outrage, her delivery deadpan. Fett was not laughing, but he was close. Mil Mol Loo turned and eyed the sofa critically. "Gotta be better than sleeping on a Wookiee's back," she allowed, "though that's got to be seen."

"Whatever," growled Fett, well aware of the old sofa's condition. "Just use it. I'll get another."

She had turned away, so he never saw the look of surprise on her face. Mil didn't say anything more.

Only later, in his room and sufficiently calmed down to review the situation, did Fett realise that he had asked her to stay.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mil Mol Loo woke in the morning to the sounds of dishes clinking and to the smell of both recombined milk and coffee. "Coffee!" she shouted, leaping off the sofa and hurrying to the kitchen area.

"Good morning," Fett said serenely as he eyed her. "Did I hear a request?"

"You have coffee? I didn't find any! I haven't had coffee in years!"

"I believe I hear an addict speaking."

"Damn right you do. But it costs more than gold now." There was sorrow in her voice.

It did, but Fett decided against telling her that he got the rare grounds at no cost, and in any quantity he wanted, from Emperor Palpatine himself. "I have plenty. Make and drink as much as you want."

"I'll take you up on that. Be warned -- I might drink you into the poorhouse."

Fett's mouth quirked. Palpatine, maybe, but not Boba Fett. "I doubt that."

Halfway through breakfast, a thought occurred to her. "Not hunting today?" She cocked a curious eye at him. "Wookiees extinct?"

"They're breeding fast and piloting ships," Fett said calmly. "I have a sore leg. You'll have to put up with me for a few more days."

"You're asking a lot, even for coffee."

"I believe you'll survive."

Mil looked thoughtfully at the bounty hunter. "I don't know how I'm going to repay you for all this. Seriously. Isn't there anything I can do around the place? I feel like an extra booster drive."

"What would you like to do?"

"I don't know -- I've cleaned the place. That should cover you for another year or two." A small twinkle in her brown eye. "I was thinking I might be able to help you with repair work or something -- on ordinary stuff, of course."

"I may not have any... ordinary stuff. But perhaps there is something you can do. How good are you at repairing laser scanners?"

"All right, I guess. Ship stuff, fine. Manuals, less good. I never had that much use for them -- never needed to kill anyone, you know. It's a joke," she added hastily as the visor turned towards her.

"I know. But you might give it a rest." There was a hint of something in his otherwise light tone that Mil Mol Loo had not, up till then, heard. Only a hint, but it rendered her silent. She had glimpsed what bounty runners were unfortunate enough to experience in entirety.

"Can you repair scanners of the DE-2 variety?" Fett asked evenly, as if nothing had happened. "Y-wing class ship scanners?"

"Sure. They're mostly outmoded. Like the four-flaps. What would you use them for?"

"An experiment."

Mil Mol Loo looked uncomfortable. "Anything that's going to be used to hurt people?"

"No. You won't have to be accomplice to any murders," he said dryly. "I want to see if I can use them in a certain form of security protection."

She looked relieved. "What would you like me to do? They're pretty easy to fiddle around with." A pause, then she suddenly added, "About the joke. I didn't think you'd care."

"Do you mind if we didn't discuss it?" His voice seemed suddenly tired. "The scanners are waiting."

Getting up, Fett went to his room. He was glad to be out of her sight for those few minutes. Taking up the tissue-regenerating device from its charger on the wall (a machine that was often used), he strapped it around his thigh. Immediately the leg began to tingle and ache, and his limp was noticeably more pronounced when he left the room. Mil watched him limp out into the main working area.

"A nasty one," she observed quietly.

"Could have been worse," Fett replied, and his guest had to agree. This morning, as he had the night before, Fett wore only the visor and the loose pants, and Mil was again witness to the evidence of many past battles etched on his body. Boba Fett carried numerous scars, several of which she could not bear imagining as wounds. She had shuddered at a long, raised white welt which began at the left upper hip and looped jaggedly across his abdomen to end just under his left lung. Sometime in the past, somebody had tried to disembowel him. Mil wondered if that person was still alive.

Fett was beckoning to her -- he had stopped before a large pile of what looked like metal junk in the far corner of the den. "See what you can do with these," he said. "There're four incomplete scanners here. I want to see if we can set two up with an extra thermal each, but without the mechanical drive."

"But it won't work without the drive," Mil Mol Loo objected. "It won't even start."

"We can start it with this," Boba Fett said, holding up a small crystal-powered ignition device.

Mil stared at the gadget in his hand for a second, and her voice was tight when she answered. "That's a Jedi light-sabre igniter. Did you kill a Jedi to get it?"

His reply, when it came, was strangely calm, almost resigned. "Do you always have to assume that?"

"I'm sorry. But if that device came from someone you.. dispatched, I can't help you with this."

He gazed at her for what seemed a very long time. "The person this came from is not dead. Are you satisfied?"

Mil stared back at him, then nodded. "Yes," she said softly, then sat down on the floor. She began sorting through the metal parts.

Boba Fett watched her for a minute, then went back to his room.

* * *

Fett was trembling, his synesthesia sweeping through him with the force and crash of a violent memory storm. His senses reeled under the onslaught: ColourSmellTasteTextureSound of blood all interchanging with each other as each sense fought to express an inexpressible memory. Fett's synesthesia was one reason why he was so good at what he did: while he had a remarkable visual memory -- he was an eideteker -- it was coupled with an unparalleled intuitive feel for the prey's moves. Fett could not only plan for, and thus see, the way a game might be played, but also feel, hear, taste, smell and experience what approximated to each moment's physicality and dimensions -- its textures, colours and fullness.

Sitting on his bed now, Fett could hear the textural description of the rumpled cotton sheets; eyes closed, he felt the sheets as a light, bright sound, its wavelength as a crisp and bitter flat taste.

For Fett, past memories had textures all their own. And Jaster Mereel tasted of old blood. Mereel was the colour of dark greenish black eruptions, and also, sometimes, blinding red. He sounded like Pain -- a long, unremitting scream -- and felt like ice cold Death.

Fett sighed as the sensations subsided.

He raised a hand and saw that the trembling had stopped. Trying to think of nothing -- nothing felt like pale cream and smelt like sunshine -- he re-adjusted the tissue re-generator and set it to a higher charge, frowning as he did so. The leg tingled.

He lay back on the bed. The cool sheets felt good against his hot skin, and he waited till his senses had returned to a more settled state of affairs before he opened his eyes.

Then he got up and went out to find Mil Mol Loo.

* * *

Mil worked doggedly at the tangle of wires before her. Like Fett, she was trying not to think of anything either, except for the task in front. She separated several wire cores from the fused drive and with one hard tug, pulled them out. She had separated three thermals from their organic casings already, and was working on the fourth. Quickly and surely her fingers pried semi-hard artificial tissue aside, and divested the casing of their polyp-like thermal biobuds. Then she began dismantling the main frame of the DE-2 itself.

She was trying not to think, but she wasn't being successful. Every now and then, Mil Mol Loo was graced with (an often unwanted) flash of sudden insight, and she had just had one. When Boba Fett had assured her that the owner of the igniter was still alive, she had instantly known, with absolute and incontestable certainty, that he had meant himself.

She did not in the least like having this information.

"Fett," she said without looking up as soon as she heard his footsteps approach, "You were that Jedi."

She glanced up then, into his visored face. He didn't look particularly surprised at her statement.

"That was a lifetime ago," he said, quite calmly. "And I was never officially one of the Jedi."

Mil Mol Loo gazed at him, and pursed her lips. Then she pointed to the floor beside her and watched as he gingerly lowered himself on his good leg and stretched the other one out before him.

"Why did you let on that you know?" he asked her.

"You know I know. You practically told me," she returned, and it was true. "Why are you letting on all these secrets of yours?" She suddenly grinned, and it was a strangely unconcerned smile. "Maybe it's because you've already decided on my scalp? You need some colour contrast in that braid."

"You realise death is always a consideration with me."

"Sure."

"But you're not afraid."

An unreadable brown eye regarded him. "You will or you won't. Kill me, that is. Your reasons may not be the same as mine. And if you decided your braid needed a companion scalp, what can I do about it? How does one go about eluding Boba Fett?" As she talked, her hands continued to work, steadily and surely. The second DE-2 frame was already open, on her lap, being efficiently gutted. "So can I ask about the Jedi thing, or is that really, you know, personal and I should butt out?"

"You should butt out." His voice held a trace of genuine humour. "Not that you ever have before."

He was surprised to see a mild flush spread over her face. "Touché," she said after a moment.

Fett considered saying more, but decided that a hired killer extolling social niceties would be ludicrous. "It doesn't matter," he said deliberately. "Does it?"

She smiled briefly. "Not really." Then she held up a skeletal DE-2 frame, picked clean. "Ready to be re-made into Fett's monster-mauling moolah machine! What do we do next?"

"This is very well done," said Fett, casting a careful eye over the casing. He took it from her. "Excellent, in fact. Thank you."

Neither of them commented, as they continued to work, on the bizarre incongruity of the scene: a professional killer and his guest stray, exchanging polite courtesies over remnants of laser weaponry. Perhaps to comment on it would be to re-focus it as reality, and neither was particularly enamoured of the larger reality at moment. For Mil Mol Loo, the last several days had the quality of a dream, a fragile other dimension to life which might burst like a soap bubble at any moment, and she did not care to hasten the process.

For Fett, it was more complicated. He did not really appreciate the emotional and professional maze he had gotten himself into, but neither, if he had to admit it, did he really seem to mind. That intrigued him perhaps most of all. He was well aware that whatever game he was playing, whatever tangle he was weaving himself into, it was a dangerous one, yet he didn't really care. That worried him a little. His self-survival and self-interest had always been paramount to who he was. You do not become or stay Boba Fett through anything less.

Mil Mol Loo broke into his thoughts. "Where will you be setting these up, if they work?"

"I'm not sure yet. There is a high possibility they probably won't. Thermals are jealous security systems -- double them, and they tend to rebel and pack up simultaneously."

"But you're going to try anyway. Why?"

"Because a twin-thermal organ in an outmoded surveillance system won't be expected. It isn't reproducible or copiable, so it isn't viable." Fett felt as if he were giving a lecture.

"But it may not work."

"If it does work the advantage is its very paradox. Jealous systems, if you can get them to support rather than compete with each other, are crack-proof unless you know the bio-code."

"But if you can get them to grow together at all -- and no one's succeeded that I know of -- only the thermals themselves will know what code they literally grow."

"Precisely."

"It means no one will be able to shut down the system once the final approval is given. Not even the programmer."

"That's right." He sounded patient.

"But--" Try as she might, she couldn't stop herself asking, "Why?"

"Would you want to set up a self-destruct countdown system which could conceivably be turned off, given time and opportunity, by someone?"

Her eyes went wide. "You're talking of a suicide-system."

"Of course."

A suicide-system. Total and simultaneous destruction of a system and all its nodes across the galaxy. Mil Mol Loo was reminded, yet again, with a small shock, that the man in front of her was Boba Fett. The information this bounty hunter would have in his data banks would be second to none; the secrets stored could hold the galaxy to ransom. Certainly he would require a complete and infallible system suicide, in the event of -- of --

"Fett, why?"

"I believe this is when I say 'butt out' again." But there was no anger in his voice. "Not that I'm really expecting compliance. You realise that the less you know, the safer you'll be?"

"From you or others?" she returned immediately. Then she looked away. "Don't answer that."

Fett didn't.

As he sat on the floor, working besides his guest, friend and possible future kill, Fett considered the extraordinary irony of the situation. And its injustice, if he cared to use the word. Quite simply, she was in the position she was in because he had placed her in it. Her life teetered in uncertain balance in his hands because he had brought her into his life, his home and exposed her to things she had never wanted to know in the first place. Was he actually considering extinguishing her life once he had worked out his problems? Played out his game, whatever that was?

What right?

He could have fed her in any number of ways without bringing her here to the den. What she posed today, as a threat and weak point within his security procedures, was a direct consequence of that decision and all the others he had chosen to make.

Even bounty-hunters have principles.

What had he wanted from her? Had he really only been joking?

Despite this most unreasonable of predicaments, despite the fact that she was probably fully aware of its injustice, she had not yet once accused him of bad form, and hardly from the lack of a sharp tongue. No pointing out that it was all, you know, rather unfair from her end of the dice in the game they were playing?

The game he was playing.

Boba Fett, taker of life, killer of many, was surprised at how keenly this stung.

Even bounty-hunters have principles.

Which bounty-hunters?

All of a sudden, the bounty hunter made up his mind. For the second time in his life, he would choose to trust another person. And this time, perhaps, his future would be the price he would pay if he was wrong once more.

He put down the Lucas screwdriver he was using, and something in the finality of the movement drew her attention. She looked straight at him.

"You have nothing to fear from me," said Fett, and snapped back the clasps on both sides of the visor. He removed it. "I cannot take your life."

His guest looked at him for a long while, studying the face and the eyes which now held her own without an artificial barrier between them.

He was indeed human. She judged him to be somewhere in his mid thirties or older. He had pale skin from living under a mask for years, and the lightness of his skin made a startling contrast with his hair, which was extremely dark. His eyes, ice-gray, bore the hardness of those decades: there was a terrible coldness about them, and an even more disturbing mercilessness -- ironic, Mil thought, having just spared my life. Boba Fett did not blink often, and his gaze was like a vise. Unless he smiled, you could not look into those eyes for any extended length of time. It was a face which would be impossible to forget. "What made you decide on this?" she asked, softly. "This is no small matter."

"Perhaps it was the only way to avoid cutting that tree of yours down." For some reason he did not wish to examine too closely as yet, Fett avoided her question.

"Right. And your sofa is why I'm still hanging around."

For perhaps the third time since she had met him, Mil saw the hint of a smile from the bounty hunter. "Isn't it?" he asked.

"Sure. Your sofa and your coffee. What more does a smuggler need?"

"A ship in orbit, perhaps."

"By the force. How could I forget?"

"I have been thinking about that, and there may be a way."

"To get my ship back into space? I have no money. And as far as I can tell, this was the worst port a failed smuggler could land on. No happy anonymity, no job. No job, no money. Simple logistics, Fett."

"You get that ship back into orbit, that gets you to another planet. Start afresh."

"I've taken enough charity." There was a note of warning in her voice Fett wanted to applaud. "If you treat all strangers you meet like you've treated this one, it's a wonder you're not broke and buried. Food. Shelter. Access to fantastic Fett secrets. Coffee. You were not going to suggest a loan."

"No."

"That's all right then." Thrown a little off balance, Mil Mol Loo was never one to admit it. Adrenaline and endorphins were running through her now. There was no precedent to the excitement of the morning. Boba Fett's face. She, a galaxy nobody, knew what the most famous bounty hunter in the galaxy looked like. And he wasn't going to charge her her life for that knowledge. The dream was taking on a life of its own, and Mil was afraid she was about to lose herself in it. Dreams were just, sometimes, a step from nightmares, though. Did she want to wake up? Could she?

She didn't know. For now, all she wanted to do was stare. It was hard correlating the face with the visor. For her, the blank visor had taken on a personality of its own over the last few days which she had grown comfortable with; it seemed to present a character she had almost begun to know. With the face, she would be starting again; and yet not. Everything seemed different all of a sudden.

"I'm sorry," she said suddenly, on impulse. "I need to look at you for a minute."

And so she did -- carefully, thoroughly. Fett could feel the intensity of her examination through his other senses -- the exercise filled him with the colours of hot, heaty reds and yellows, occasional moments of tangy, sharp blues, and the sound and feel of a low, comfortable bass hum. Mil Mol Loo's sensorial textures.

"The visor was like.. someone else," she said. "Odd, isn't it."

Fett got his good leg under him, and with one effortless movement, stood up. Stretching the sore limb, he eyed the re-generator for a moment but did not increase its level of output. "I think we'll take our work over to the table," he said. "Easier on me."

His guest began to laugh. "Those Hutts would donate kingdoms to know you're only mortal, like the rest of livingkind." She grinned at him. "How do you feel now?"

"What do you mean?"

"How does it feel knowing I could sell you for a trillion credits to old Jabba?"

"How does it feel knowing you wouldn't live long after you did?"

"Would you?"

"It would be considered a breach of contract, would it not?"

"You're a stickler for legalities, you know that, Fett?"

She helped him gather and deposit the scanner-makings on the large metal work top which dominated the centre of the den. Fett was quiet until they had got everything onto the table. "You are aware that your association with me has put you in danger from others. That was not--"

She interrupted him. "It took two," she cut in bluntly. "I didn't have to accept your offers of food or shelter. I didn't have to stay after I found out you were Boba Fett. I don't have to stick around now, but here I am. So hush up about blame. It's been done."

His eyes held hers for a long moment. "You'll have to take new precautions from now on. Nothing can be taken for granted until we have established how much damage being seen with me has caused you. Until then we assume my enemies are yours. I'm sorry."

She raised her eyebrows mockingly. "Man. That's what, four, five billion-gazillion people who might want me dead then? Plus two Wookiee clans."

"Eighteen." Fett sounded guarded.

"What's that?"

"Eighteen clans. The scalps were coups -- the families do not seek retaliation."

"You mean you've killed twenty Wookiees?"

"Twenty Wookiee runners." And suddenly, by making the distinction, he looked like Boba Fett, somehow.

She stared at him. The world clicked into another version of the reality it had been playing with for several days, and once more, Mil Mol Loo lost her footing.

It had never been a game, but somehow she had never quite seen that, even with his face in front of hers. Or perhaps because.

They say you never saw right when you got too close. Whoever they were, they were right. It had been frighteningly easy, shockingly easy, to forget that this quietly-spoken individual before her, so fluid and precise with his movements, was the galaxy's most efficient killing-machine. What were his true bounty numbers like? Not twenty. Hundreds? Thousands? And she had forgotten, and she kept forgetting, because it was convenient, and because, because--

This person who had just spared her life, and had housed her and fed her -- he was a terrible paradox. A deadly paradox.

She said in an odd voice. "I forgot."

"You forgot." His tone was flat, emotionless. His eyes asked, how can you forget?

"I forgot. I didn't know how many -- I mean, how much -- I had no idea. I didn't -- don't know squat. You here, and the other you -- out there." She could say no more for the moment.

As a matter of distinction she was wrong. There was not one Boba Fett within the calmness of the den, and another persona outside: they were one. She had spoken about his profession; had teased him relentlessly about it, but his job was not out there: the job was in the man; what he did was in here, with him, part of him.

This sudden effacement between the glamour of the myth and its coldbloodedness rocked her; it appalled her that she had not understood. How often had she heard herself saying, "But you kill for a living," and never listened to her own words?

It had never been a game, but somehow, like a fool, she had managed to forget that.

And looking up into eyes as hard and bleak as the uninhabitable ice planet Hoth, she read his reply in them: are you finally judging me? There was a sardonic glint to his eyes. Who are you to do so?

Mil Mol Loo's stomach heaved then, a retch which nearly threw breakfast out. As she had told him barely ten minutes earlier: it took two to land her in the situation she was in at the moment. But she had not understood even then, that you couldn't simply walk in or out of Boba Fett's life. This was not an ordinary man, and he did not lead an ordinary life. Choice was a luxury with him and all associated with him, and she had not seen that.

And now she might really have five billion-gazillion Fett-haters after her. It had never been a game, girl, but she had only just woken up to it.

To head off the black pit looming before her, Mil sought tangibility -- she clawed for it. Her life, as she had known it, whosoever she might want to blame for its demise, was now over. There was a lump of ice where her stomach was. They were both fools. Both fools, to even think that there might have been a happy ending to all this.

"Let's get back to the scanners," she said. She didn't really hear what she was saying, only that she was speaking. "I guess we really do need to work on security and surveillance after all."

And in the infinite bleakness of his eyes, she could now recognise sorrow.

She presumed it was for her.

* * * * * * * * * *

The difficulty with the scanners' construction lay, as Fett had said, in the thermals' jealous construction -- originally a safety procedure. Because the lifespan and efficacy of the device were dependent upon the thermal's own, any introduction of foreign variables -- even another thermal -- made the system break down. Thermal environments were geared for maximum as well as economic efficiency -- growth, nutrition, recycling processes, energy consumption etc. were all designed to maintain a single endocentric thermal capacity. Both environment and its thermal occupier, as it were, were grown as one symbiotic unit from the start.

Mil was working on a data-station Fett had cleared security for. She was intimate with the structure of the DE-2s, as she had told Fett, but she had never tried twin-thermal installation before. The obvious first step, of course, was to clone a conjoined system, but all obvious steps had already been attempted, unsuccessfully, in the past. A graft, then. No. That had also been tried. Mol Loo's eyes scanned the realms of data Fett had collected on all past DE-2 designs and modifications, both official and illicit, and her head reeled.

She was no bio-engineer. Her knowledge was mostly mechanical, restricted to installing, repairing, disassembling and re-assembling the scanners. She looked over to Fett. The bounty hunter was busy looking through the same data on his screen, but every now and then, unconsciously, his right hand would move to the sore thigh to massage it. It was not recovering as quickly as he hoped it might. Something was not as it should be.

Mil sighed. She felt like a doomed person, an unreal entity and someone very unlike Mil Mol Loo. She got up and walked over to Fett, feeling the steel eyes on her. "Come on," she said. "Let's have a look at that leg."

He said nothing, but moved the thigh two inches in her direction. Taking that as permission, she unstrapped the re-generator and took it off. "You'll have to change," she said.

Fett looked at her, then got up and went to his room. When he came back, he was wearing shorts. Mil gasped, a cold pit in her stomach. His thigh was blue-black from deep within the cuff of the shorts to just above the knee. It looked terrible, and around the bandage the flesh was red, angry and inflamed. Cellulitis.

Mil removed the dressing and sucked in a breath. Advanced cellulitis, pre-gangrenous stage.

"It's been what, almost three days?" she asked.

"Yes."

"How are you at healing, normally?"

"Fast." There was a distinct note of amusement in his voice, and she looked at him sharply.

"Any idea why this is going bad?"

He seemed to hesitate. "Perhaps." When she did not speak, he continued. "I think the AI scope was programmed to dispense racially-specific cellular readings. Very clever. I've not heard of it being successful before, not within genotypic narrowness. If this is it, then he must have set the AI to target all of the half-dozen humanoid genome structures in this quadrant."

"How would you know for certain, whether it is what you say?"

Her anxious gaze was returned by calm gray eyes. "The tissue re-generator is set to human DNA. Theoretically, that aggravates the cellular readings even more, since it re-specifies the identification to the toxin remnants. Red flag to the bull. The wound gets worse instead of better."

Mol Loo stared at him. "And yet you kept using it."

"I wasn't sure till today, really. I'm not sure still."

With her foot, Mil pushed the re-generator away. "You're not putting his back on till you figure out how to fix the problem," she said. And added, after a second thought, "You can't die just yet. We have a zillion of your enemies after us and you need to live to get rid of them so they don't kill me."

"I wondered if there was another reason," Fett said mildly.

"For now," she continued, raising her eyebrows, "you need to figure out if you're right about this DNA toxin. I gather being AI laser it can't be an actual poison."

"No. More like a semi-intelligent particle microwave -- programmed to break down only DNA readings within a fairly specific racial range, but only if that member of the race happens to be wearing my armour."

"Aye-ee cook only your meat, buster."

"Yes. Extremely clever." His voice was admiring, and Mil grinned.

"You're being barbequed slowly, cell by cell, and you think it's great. Well, that's nice. We'll serve up your leg for dinner tomorrow, Fett -- you'll be ecstatic. So how do you go about stopping this clever microwave? Before your leg falls off?"

"I'm not sure." His voice was unruffled.

"What do you mean, you're not sure? What does the theory say?"

"It doesn't. Even the possibility of such a weapon was speculative at best." He looked slightly annoyed. "The man who built this never made any blueprints or kept records. And both the laser and its creator have been.. put out of commission." Fett, despite having being aware of the runner's eccentricities about not keeping records, had still meticulously gone through the dead man's ship, lodgings and workshops. And as much of the man's communication records as he could dig up. What Fett had merely confirmed was that the fellow had never bothered to keep blueprints of any of his unique creations. Like Fett, he had been an eideteker, with a photographic memory.

A pity. A weapon like that, one of its kind, would have been worth planets.

"That's wonderful. I only have some basic medico-tech training, even if you didn't. Beyond field dressings I won't be any use to you. What are you going to do?"

He looked at her for a moment, and she was unable to read the weight behind his gaze. "Get some palu fruit juice," he said abruptly, suddenly getting out of the chair, taking his weight entirely on the left leg. "Do you want some?"

She looked at him wonderingly. "No," she said.

Fett went about preparing the juice before he answered her earlier question. "The leg will be fine -- eventually. The wound shouldn't get much worse now that the re-generator is off -- if I'm right about what it is. It will heal, but extremely slowly. The tissue is badly haemorrhaged. It is just the length of time I'm worried about."

"So your leg's not really going to fall off."

"Probably not, though anti-gangrene treatment is necessary at this stage. But it'll be a while before things are back to normal."

"Normal being able to swat seven Wookiees with one blow and all that?" The words were out of her mouth even as an appalled look clapped itself onto her face: she had not meant to say anything like that. Relief and sarcasm; passion and denial: Mil could not separate them if she wanted to. She didn't know how, this orphan bred of empty spaceways and rough space-ports. Mil Mol Loo's insolence was a defence mechanism she had very little say over: time would have taught Fett that the more vulnerable she felt, the harder she parried.

But perhaps he already knew.

Gray eyes locked on her, his expression was unreadable.

Unable to stop her treacherous tongue, Mil Mol Loo said nervously: "It might be a good idea having you home, in that case."

He looked away.

"You won't be in the way as long as you--"

Despite the bad leg, the bounty hunter could, when he wanted, move blindingly fast. Fett was beside her before she could finish, "--help with the dishes--" and his eyes were suddenly dangerous.

"Do you ever stop?" Fett asked. Mil looked up at him. Not smiling, the cold gray eyes were too close; he was entirely too close. Her mouth was already open, forming the inevitable comeback, "Stop? What are you saying--"

He kissed her. A hard, firm kiss which tottered her backwards just a bit, and she put out a hand to take hold of his shoulder. His skin was warm, his muscles taut under her fingers. Her hand slid over his back, feeling him tense. Mil Mol Loo kissed him back, once, fiercely, and then the kiss was over.

Well.

"That's that," said Mil Mol Loo, but softly.

Fett, who had turned away, looked back. The storm was still in his eyes. "Do you want more?" he asked, voice and tone far too quiet.

"No," she said shakily. "That will do for today."

He looked at her a moment longer, then went to his room and got into the shower.

* * *

He didn't really need a shower, but he let the minute sonic bursts try to rub out the heat and memory of her hand from his skin. Fett stood there for ten minutes, thinking of nothing, trying not to feel. He was moderately successful.

Had it been a mistake? How many mistakes had Fett made in his entire life? Two that counted. He switched off the sonic and stepped back into the main part of him room, and looked at the locked door. The feel and press of her mouth was still upon his own, the synesthetic others a fierce, bright orange and the healing hot of medico energy wound-wraps. She smelt like roast bran; tasted like a comfort he had long forgotten. The depth of his wanting her made him shudder.

He shook off the feeling impatiently; disbelievingly.

If he had not walked away he could not have promised what he might have done. Boba Fett possessed a steel will: yet it had taken every ounce of it to break off the kiss. She had kissed him back; responded. He could think of nothing else.

It was an unexpected turn of events. He had not meant to do what he had -- it had been an impulsive response triggered by the almost constant irritation he was goaded into by her, and by the accompanying ambivalent emotions he knew lay beneath.

One certainty remained. A distinct lack of control, which no one else had been able to generate in him.

He pulled on his exercise pants and a loose top. Unsealing the door, he walked out. "We need to talk," he said.

* * *

"Sure," Mil said, turning her head slowly, noting the fully dressed figure. "Are you regretting you kissed the stray?"

They stood on either side of an imaginary line which had nevertheless suddenly appeared, she and the bounty hunter, and regarded each other from across a chasm.

"I apologise for overstepping my bounds."

"You're Boba Fett. What bounds are you speaking of?" Her voice was incredulous with disbelief. "Those that state you won't kiss and kill at the same time?"

Perhaps she had gone too far, this time. His silence was funereal. "I'm sorry," she said straight away. "That was completely out of line."

He said nothing, only nodded once.

"Fett, it's just a kiss. Unless you're concerned about catching germs from the stray or something, it's forgotten. There."

He remained silent, and his face remained expressionless. You don't need a mask, Mil thought. The den suddenly seemed alien, foreign, unwelcoming. There was lead in her feet, in her legs, in her chest: she found it hard to breathe or move. For some unaccountable reason Mil suddenly remembered she was an orphan with no family and not all that many friends. Home had been the Orion. But for a very short while, home had seemed like this den.

It was time to go.

"I think I've overstayed my welcome," she said. "I should get going, clear out of your life." It sounded ridiculously sanctimonious to her own ears, and her anger flared. Against herself, against him, against the whole damn situation. "Would that make it all better?"

To her greatest astonishment, he said, "No."

"No? It's the security thing." She said it like death.

There was a pause. "Not exactly."

"Not exactly." Mil looked around, saw that the floor was right beneath her, and sat down. "Fett. I can't read your mind. You wanted to talk, let's talk. You'll get rid of me faster that way."

Mol Loo was tired, emotionally and mentally, and she was sick of her own voice. She had no idea what she was to do next. She had had enough of feeling, with nowhere to go in this vacuum of a crazy situation which got more impossible by the minute. Her emotions were on a high one moment, and crashing back to hard ground the next. It was getting hard to think, because all she could do was feel.

And what was she feeling?

In the last few days she had been privy to secrets about Boba Fett the galaxy would sell its mother to know -- and he was letting her live. But the ransom for those secrets might very well be a life spent keeping a step ahead of Fett's enemies. That was no way to live. That was no life at all.

She stared at him.

What was the alternative? Kiss the bounty hunter and make everybody cry? Leave and walk back out into an existence which, for some reason, seemed absurdly colourless now? Could one really expect to find out what Boba Fett looks like -- and tastes like -- and go back to hauling illicit goods at discount prices without feeling somewhat let down?

She was dreaming if she thought life could ever be the same again.

And, by the force, what was she to do?

And so Mil Mol Loo sat down on the floor, suddenly inordinately and mutely weary with overwhelming indecision, uncertainty and an overload of life and loss. She could not have moved if her life depended on it. Staring blankly at the wall to her right, she realised, to her horror, that her cheeks were wet. Don't brush them away -- that only draws attention to them.

Fett started, and came closer. "You're crying." There was a distinct note of incredulity in his voice. It was the first time she had heard him state the obvious.

"What did you want to talk about, Fett?" she asked tiredly, not looking at him.

"It can wait."

"No. Let's get it over with. I can't leave until we work out a way around these problems."

Can't leave.

"No," Fett said.

A pair of almost-defiant brown eyes looked at him, then back at the wall.

"I'm not letting you go," Fett whispered. Surrendering at last to an impulse over which he had little decision, he took two more steps to Mil and picked her up in his arms. She was feather light -- still far too thin despite the regular feeding -- and not much more than skin and bones. He had expected resistance, but she was quiet in his arms as he walked to his room, looking at him with brown eyes held carefully in check.

He reached the room, sealed the door and placed her on the bed. Then he sat down beside her and they looked at each other. She reached out and gently tugged at his cotton top; obeying, he drew it off. Then she touched the leg of his pants. A little slower, favouring his leg as much as he was attempting to disregard a vague, surprisingly contented shyness at finally disrobing before her, Fett removed his pants. He sat down on the bed again, eyes never leaving her face.

Mil Mol Loo sighed then; a soft, private sigh which he was unable to read. Then she came over, let him draw her onto his lap, and kissed him. Fett, who had waited far too long to hold her, for this first real contact, could not make a sound.

They sat that way for the longest time, she tightly wrapped in his arms, their mouths locked gently in the sweetest kiss either could recall. The ache in Mil's heart -- which she had not realised was there -- lifted and went away as the bounty hunter's taste and scent and breathing filled her senses. For Fett, the synesthetic explosion of pleasure temporarily took away any possibility of speech or coherent thought: her touch smelt/tasted/sounded/felt right -- like the right of home or a truly safe place. Holding her, kissing her, was like returning home; only it was no home Fett had ever known, a place he had never been to -- yet to which he knew he belonged.

As for Mil Mol Loo... well. A jumble of contradictory emotions ranged through her, but for the moment all that mattered was the bounty hunter's presence: his arms around her, his skin beneath her, his dark hair between her fingers. He was Boba Fett, a bounty hunter, the bounty hunter, but for now he was just Fett.

As his hands began to move over her clothes, fingers undoing the fastenings, she gave him a shaky last kiss and said, "You realise after this I'll feel guilty every time I was mean to you."

"But it isn't going to stop you," Fett murmured, taking long pulls of the scent of her skin, her hair, her throat. He could not get enough of the imaginations she produced in all of his senses.

"Well. Probably not."

He didn't think so.