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He wondered whether he should just cut his losses

and head back for Imperial space. At the very least, it was probably time to head out and look for some action (translation: profit) here in the Corporate Sector. True, he’d promised Jessa to help her and Doc in their campaign against the Authority. But that might be risky. And it wasn’t as though he owed Jessa anything. He’d rescued her father, hadn’t he? At great risk to his own precious hide? A tiny honest corner of his mind reminded him that he’d mostly gone on that rescue mission for Chewie’s sake. No way he was letting his pal languish in an Authority prison.…

And yet … things were very pleasant here for the moment, though he knew it couldn’t last. Right now, things were going well with Jessa. They were having a good time. Maybe he’d just postpone leaving for another month … or two … or three.…

“Han?” came a sleepy murmur from the bedroom.

“I’m here, honey. Just watchin’ the news,” Han said. He flicked off the vid and went out to the tiny kitchen. He’d make Jessa a hot cup of imported stim-tea that she’d come to be very fond of, and take it to her.…

Boba Fett stood in the queue waiting to board the luxury liner Queen of Empire, for her voyage to Velga Prime and points in between. The liner was the sister ship to Haj Shipping Lines’ Star of Empire and was fully as large and opulent.

Boba Fett was boarding the liner from an orbiting space docking platform, but there were nearly a thousand sentients waiting to board, so each line was several hundred beings long. The bounty hunter gauged the slow progress of the line, and figured it would be at least ten minutes before he’d be free to carry his large, heavy traveling case to his cabin.

The line moved forward a few paces, and the bounty hunter shoved his heavy case along with his foot, as he moved with it. For just a moment he indulged himself in imagining what would happen were he suddenly to appear as his real self, as Boba Fett in his Mandalorian armor, instead of as he currently was, disguised as an Anomid.

It was necessary from time to time, he’d discovered, to appear as a being other than himself. Anomids were perfect beings to assume as disguises, since hardly any of their bodies showed in their ordinary street garb. They were willowy humanoids native to the Yablari system, and typically dressed in oversized robes that covered them from their hooded heads to their six-toed feet. They also wore gloves and vocalizer-masks, so hardly any of their translucent, whitish skin showed. Anomids had wispy grayish hair, leaf-shaped ears, and large silvery blue eyes.

Boba Fett of course wore a head-mask beneath his vocalizer-mask, but it was a very good one, custom-made to fit over his own features so that it would move quite naturally on his face. Silver-blue “eyes” were built into the mask, and were specially engineered so he could see nearly as well as he could with his unaided eyes.

Still, he felt somewhat naked without his armor and its extended senses. With his armor on he had a range of visual modes available to him, enhanced audio pickups, and a host of other sensor data displayed on the telltales inside his helmet. With nothing but the Anomid robes, hooded cloak, mask and gloves on, he felt light and vulnerable—too vulnerable.

But it was necessary. If Boba Fett had attempted to book passage on the Queen as his true self, panic would have ensued. Each passenger aboard and much of the crew would have been convinced that he, she or it was the bounty hunter’s intended quarry.

Citizens, Fett had discovered long ago, all had guilty consciences. Virtually every sentient in the galaxy had done something in his past that he, she or it could flash back on and imagine was a reason for having a bounty placed on their heads. The being who had once been Journeyman Protector Jaster Mereel, and was now Boba Fett, the galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter, had watched the reactions of the citizens around him for years, as he hunted bounties of one sort or