Novel References

Hard Merchandise

PAGE QUOTATION COMMENTS

1 Chapter 1

3
Their time as members of the Rebel Alliance — double agents, actually, since they had kept secret their new allegiance to the Rebel cause — had been occupied with one significant operation: an attempt to snatch from Boba Fett the carbonite slab with Han Solo frozen inside it, before Fett could deliver the prize to Jabba the Hutt. The plan, using several other bounty hunters as unwitting dupes, had had disastrous results. It hadn't succeeded, and 4-LOM had needed a complete core-to-sheath rebuild to get back on his feet. And, mused Zuckuss, he wasn't the same after that. This idealism that had led 4-LOM to join the Rebel Alliance had all but evaporated, replaced by his former cold-spirited greed.

continuity: A concise explanation of the seemingly inconsistent behaviour of 4-LOM and Zuckuss in Shadows of the Empire and Tales of the Bounty Hunters.

4
Beyond it, a sloping tunnel led up to the surface of the planet and its night sky filled with a chain of pearllike moons.

location: This planet, whatever its name, has several moons. The moons are in orbits that allow several of them to be seen in the sky on the same side of the planet sometimes.

5
.... the establishment's proprietor, a stub-fingered Bergamasque named Salla C'airam.

character: Salla C'airam, proprietor of the bar.

7-8
In the darker corners of the galaxy, where surreptitiously acquired information was bought and sold, traded in whispers from one furtive creature to the next, rumours had been heard of a gathering of the Imperial forces, somewhere out near a moon called Endor — like a fist clenched together, into a hammer that would crush the Alliance forever, and end once and for all its crazy dreams of freedom.

continuity: It seems that there are many lowlife inhabitants of the galaxy, such as Zuckuss and 4-LOM, have heard about the concentration of Imperial forces that will come into action at the Battle of Endor. If they are aware of this, then why were the rebels not more prepared to face a larger Imperial presence at Endor in Return of the Jedi? Do the popular rumours include the fact that a Death Star is under construction in the Endor system? Is it known that the Emperor would be present at Endor in person? What exactly was secret, what was known, and by whom?

9
The booming voice of Drawmas Sma'Da filled the bar, like the rumble of thunder over the planet's horizon. Zuckuss looked up from his drink and saw the immense, befurred, and caparisoned form of the most notorious gambler and oddsman in five systems, spreading his arms wide. The gemstones studding Sma'Da's pinkly manicured fingers sparkled in a multicoloured constellation of wealth and extravagance; his broad, thrown-back shoulders were swathed in the soft fur pelts of a dozen worlds' rarest species. The artfully preserved heads of the animals that had died for his adornment, with black pearls for eyes, dangled over a belly of wobbling girth.

character: Drawmas Sma'Da, a gambling tycoon, apparently human.

17-18
C'airam's tentacles drew short and wrapped themselves tightly around his body. ....
C'airam's floppy, seemingly boneless appendages settled lower, a sure sign in his species of wanting to avoid a violent confrontation. ....
.... The gaze of the proprietor's gelatinous-appearing eyes, nearly as large as Zuckuss', swept menacingly across the waiters and bartenders.

character: Salla C'airam, Bergamasque, physical description.

24 Chapter 2

25
"Bumped into ya out in the Osmani system; that was a long while back. .... I was piloting a shuttle between planets — that was the cheapest gig I ever worked — and you lifted one of my passengers right off the ship."

location: Osmani system, end point of one of Bossk's previous hunts.

28
"We kinda keep an eye on interesting characters like you, when they show up in these parts. Let's face it, nobody comes to a backwater world like this, unless they got a good reason. .... Couldn't be any kind of job for Jabba the Hutt — he's dead, must be a couplea weeks now. ...."

It is interesting that the beggar remarks about Bossk's presence in connection with Jabba, because Bossk was in Jabba's throne room when Skywalker's company began to arrive. He is pictured there in Return of the Jedi publicity photos, and he appears to have arrived there at the end of the Shadows of the Empire comic series. Therefore he must have made a trip away from Tatooine in the weeks since Jabba's death, if his return is considered noteworthy. it would be interesting to study the Return of the Jedi footage closely, in order to determine whether Bossk was one of those bounty hunters brought by Jabba to Carkoon to view Skywalker's planned execution.

31
A rodent-faced Mhingxin sat himself down on the other side of the booth's table. Wobbim Figh's long-fingered hands, like collections of bone and coarse, spiky hairs, set out a multicompartmented box with an assortment of stim-enhanced snuff powers. "Good to see you." Figh's sharp-pointed nails dipped into the various powders, one after another, then to the elongated nostrils on the underside of his wetly shining snout.

character: Eobbim Figh, an information broker on Tatooine.
aliens: Mhingxin

43
Fett's own ship, Slave I, had been found abandoned by a Rebel Alliance patrol squad.

chronology: By this point in time, the rebels have acquired Slave I, as originally described in Dark Empire Sourcebook.

45 Chapter 3

60 Chapter 4

68
.... it was common knowledge that high-level stormtroopers, such as he had been before his defection, were trained in self-annihilatory techniques, in case of capture by enemy forces. A self-willed shutdown of his entire autonomic cardiovascular system would render Voss'on't as unprofitable as any hot bolt from the blaster slung at Boba Fett's hip would.
Standard bounty hunter procedure in a case like this, where the suicide of the merchandise was a possiblity, would have been to render him safely unconscious with a steady-release transdermal anesthetic patch applied just above one of the main neck arteries.

Description of the suicide capability of stormtrooper officers. It is implied that they can kill themselves without tools.

70
".... The last time I heard so many structural integrity alarms going off, I was on an Imperial battle cruiser being attacked by an entire wing of Rebel Alliance starfighters."

starship: Voss'on't has been aboard a battle cruiser of some description, in the midst of a difficult battle. This must have been an interesting circumstance, considering the implication of the ANH rolling text: that the rebels had not won a major battle by this point in history. Of course "winning" can be defined in many different ways, and there are definitions of defeat that could nevertheless involve inflicting severe damage to a multi-mile enemy warship. [This part of Hard Merchandise is a recollection of events at about the time of A New Hope.]

72
"... This broken-down tub barely made it through one jump without disintegrating." voss'on't's smile indicated how much he enjoyed the dismal prospects he was describing. "You might be able to slam this thing into hyperspace — but you won't be able to get it back out." An evil glint appeared in one of the stormtrooper's eyes. "I've heard that's a real unpleasant way to go. Nobody even ever finds the pieces."
Boba Fett had heard the same. A squadron of ancient Mandalorian warriors, a suit of whose battle armour he wore as his own, was reputed to have been destroyed in just that manner by the now-vanished Jedi Knights.

Voss'on't and Fett consider an unpleasant but fundamental aspect of hyperspace physics: the transition from hyperspace to realspace is just as difficult as the transition into hyperspace. This is a reflection of the inertial nature of supralight travel in STAR WARS: the laws of inertia under special relativity apply equally in both sublight (bradyonic) and supralight (tachyonic) regimes. The magic of a hyperdrive is its violent ability to take an object from one realm to the other, somehow skipping the lightspeed barrier. This understanding of hyperspace, and the hull stresses involved in the jump of a poorly tuned vessel, was first clearly expounded in the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy, especially in the remarks of a former-Imperial military hyperphysics researcher Major Sorannan in Tyrant's Test pp.320-321.

81 Chapter 5

100 Chapter 6

140 Chapter 7

140-141
"Since you've been on Slave I, before we transferred over to this ship, you know it's in fully functional shape now. There were some incidents I heard about, though, that happened in the process of getting repaired. And redesigned, from the bulkheads to the engine core." Dengar pointed with his thumb to the cage. "Apparently, Fett decided that he needed bigger quarters for the amount of hard merchandise he was going to be ferrying around — so things had to be shifted to make room for it. Otherwise the ladder wouldn't be necessary to get to the cockpit. The whole refitting process took more than just credits, from all reports. And a few other creatures wound up getting killed. But that's not unusual with the way Boba Fett works."

starship: The redesign of Slave I between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi may cast light on discrepencies between the representations of the ship's interior in several books and comics.

151 Chapter 8

155
".... The big battle they've got shaping up between them — that's way out by Endor. That's practically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it's a long stretch from us. I don't see how it could affect what we're doing here. If anything—" He pointed to the viewport. "Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. We can do what we want, and neither the Empire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser."

Dengar's interpretation of the situation of the Galactic Civil War just prior to the Battle of Endor. It is interesting to read that preparations for the battle seem to have affected the galaxy at large (at least according to Dengar's rumours) since the entire Imperial starfleet includes over a thousand times as many star destroyers of the type most common at Endor. Either Dengar's claims are distortions or else there was a lot of peripheral activity taking place in conjunction with the Battle of Endor though not in the same system.

159
"The ID code identified the ship as one known most often as the Venesectrix. Rarely spotted anywhere close to the central sectors of the galaxy; its owner preferred operations farther out into the border territories. And of course, there was a reason for that: the owner of the Venesectrix was a certain Ree Duptom." ....
...."Ree Duptom — he's the only one who ever got booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild!" That took some doing, Dengar knew; there had been plenty of creatures in the guild whose ethical standards had been way below his own. He wasn't familiar with the exact details — Duptom had been booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild before Dengar had joined it — but there had been an unspoken legend attached to him, as being the one creature that all bounty hunters considered scum.

character: Ree Duptom, bounty hunter dead from about the time of A New Hope.

172 Chapter 9

176
An impressive scar ran in an almost perfect diagonal across Commander Gennad Rozhdenst's face, the result of surviving a previous skirmish with Imperial fighters. "And I have my orders, directly from former Senator Mon Mothma, with the Alliance fleet near Sullust."

character: Commander Gennad Rozhdenst, leader of a rebel fighter unit assigned to protect Alliance interests in the KDY shipyards in the Kuat system during the period of the Battle of Endor.
Interestingly, the general location of the rebel fleet doesn't even seem to be a secret as far as a loyal rebel pilot is concerned.

176
When he gazed out upon the construction docks, with a fleet of Destroyers and heavy cruisers nearing completion in them, he felt as though their combined mass bent his spine. And more: rising above Kuat Drive yards was the mottled green sphere of the planet Kuat itself, an entire world and people dependent upon the fate of the corporation that funneled such a large share of the galaxy's wealth into their coffers.

Note that the destroyers and cruisers are nearing completion, but are not yet complete. By the end of the story it seems that only one destroyer has been completed, but there are plenty of completed frigates.

185
"So what's the scoop?" Ott Klemp, one of the younger and less-experienced pilots in the Scavenger Squadron, matched his pace to that of his commanding officer. "Are they going to cooperate with us?"

character: Ott Klemp, one of the rebel pilots assigned to the Kuat mission coinciding with the Battle of Endor.

188 Chapter 10

200-201
... a circle, perhaps a little lopsided; understandable, given the circumstances that the man who'd made them had been in ... and a triangle inside the cirle, the three points just touching the enclosing line...
And three stylized letters, in an archaic, pre-Basic language. Three letters that only a person who had seen them since childhood, and who had been taught their meaning, would recognised. Someone such as Neelah herself, and any of her noble bloodline. A lineage that came from one of the most powerful industrial planets in the galaxy, its ancestry reaching generations back in time. Boba Fett, for all his cleverness and carefully groomed information sources, would never have been able to discern what was meant by the image — not because it was a guarded secret, but simply because it was a symbol that had fallen out of use, supplanted by a later one that could be understood by anyone in the galaxy. Only theo old traditionalists, the memory-rich families and their entourages, of the planet on which Neelah had been born would have kept it as a token of a glorious past.
for a moment, a great, calming peace descended upon Neelah, like the hand of a noble infant's nurse drawing a blanket snug upon the small, cooing form; a blanket marked with the exact same image, only embroidered with pure golden thread rather than scratched into the floor of a squalid holding cage on a bounty hunter's ship.

culture: Neelah recalls the ancient KDY logo, and its personal significance for the nobility of Kuat.
Reference to the pre-Basic language is interesting. If this logo is intended to be one of the Latinised logos invented in the STAR WARS Roleplaying Game then it hints that &#;a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" is actually our far future and perhaps our galaxy, even though the textual narrator of STAR WARS is more distant in place and time.

212
A Though she didn't know everything — such as what had happened to have brought her so far from home — she knew the name of that infant swaddled in the ancient emblem. My name, thought Neelah. My real name.
"Kateel." She whispered the name aloud, as though calling softly to that person who had been lost and now was found again. "Katell of Kuhlvult."

character: Kateel of Kuhlvult, the true name of Neela. Sister of Kodir.

217 Chapter 11

234

character: N'dru Suhlak, a hunt spoiler who has had previous encounters with Boba Fett.

238 Chapter 12

242-243
"You wouldn't have gone anywhere, pal, except up in flames." Suhlak shook his head in disgust. "None of you even knows what's sitting out there, keeping a watch on your every move. But there's a light cruiser, top of the line, from Kuat Drive Yards, keeping surveillance on this tub right now. Matter of fact, it's a KDY ship; I identified it when I snuck past it. It's the Kuat Drive Yards' main security enforcement vessel, and it's armed and very dangerous."

starship: KDY light cruiser, implicitly probably just larger than a star destroyer. Demonstrated to have sublight acceleration weaker than Hound's Tooth in later incidents.

243
"You two — get back aboard Hound's Tooth and head out, full thrusters, to open space and prepare for a hyperspace jump to the Oranessen system. ..."

location: Oranessen system, rendezvous point for Fett's eventual return from Tatooine.

247 Chapter 13

248
One of the eldest &ss;-supervisors stepped forward. Kuat recognised the man as the leader ofthe shipbuilding team that laid down the enormous central frames of the ships that took form in the KDY construction docks. The &ss;-supervisor had been a lead operator, back in the days of Kuat's father, of one of the massive cranes spanning the docks, each nearly as long — and powerful — as an Imperial battle destroyer. Through the meeting shed's overhead skylights, the outline of one of them could be seen, blotting out an entire swath of stars.

character: Beta-supervisor.
technology: KDY construction crane described; at least some KDY ships are structured around frames of some kind. This is a good hint about the general internal features of a finished starship.
starship: An "Imperial battle destroyer" is described. This presumably means a destroyer-sized ship with enhanced armour and guns, in analogy to the relationship between "battle cruisers" and "cruisers". An Imperial battle destroyer may be something like the Allegiance in Dark Empire or the hangar-lacking destroyer seen in Return of the Jedi.

255-256
"Osss-10," said Suhlak, shoulders slumping. "Now I'm sure you're bad luck."
"Never heard of him."
"You wouldn't have." Disgust sounded in Suhlak's voice. "That's because you're an old story, and he's the latest thing. Don't you get it? This is all because of what you did when you broke up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. The old rule book's been thrown out, and there's enough chaos in the bounty-hunting environment for totally new ones to start up. New — and better." Suhlak pointed his thumb at the viewport. "I've never even seen this Osss-10 guy face to face, don't know where he comes from, but I've already had some real unpleasant encounters with him. Somebody with a lot of credits must be bankrolling him: he's got all the state-of-the-art equipment, plus he's a real genius at programming his onboard computers. He's got some kind of predictive algorithms wired into his gear that I've never encountered before. The more confrontations you have with him, the bigger operational database he has to extrapolate from to be able to know what I'm going to do before I know!" environment

character: Osss-10

259 Chapter 14

262
Boss leaned across the table, letting his eyes narrow to slits.

TYPO: The name "Bossk" without the "k".

268
A drunken harf, with shining red, gogglelike eyes and an elongated snout, put a massive arm around Bossk's shoulders.

aliens: harf

270 Chapter 15

270
They had dropped out of hyperspace and into the Oranessan system, followed by the KDY security cruiser, just as Boba Fett's scheme had predicted. Since then, Dengar had kept the Hound's Tooth at the precise speed that their strategy called for: just fast enough to stay out of reach of the pursuing cruiser. The mottled orb of Oran-µ, the system's largest planet, filled the forward viewport as the chase continued.

location: Oran-µ, the largest world in the Oranessan system.

283 Chapter 16

289
".... Both Rozhdenst and this attaché Uzalg appear to be waiting for the arrival of another person, with whom they'll be having some kind of meeting."

character: Uzalg, some kind of official or diplomat for the Rebel Alliance.

292 Chapter 17

301 Chapter 18

308
Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up fromn the angular masses of equipment below. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks' central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane's framework crumpled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several metres thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys.
...
"It's not the ships—" Rozhdenst laid a broad fingertip on the closest display screen. "The fleet isn't what's going up." The elongated shapes of the cruisers and destroyers could be seen through the smoke, harshly lit by flames and the hard-shadowed light of another series of explosions. "It's the docks and all of the major shipbuilding equipment."

The self-destruct explosions of the KDY shipyards at Kuat.

312
....

starship: Lancer-class frigate, one of the punier anti-fighter screening vessels introduced for use in sector fleets and first described in The Imperial Sourcebook.

319
"How did you know I'd be here?" Kuat of Kuat turned and regarded the figure that had entered the bridge of the moored Star Destroyer."
"Where else would you be?" Boba Fett's battle armour was blackened with ash from the fires consuming the construction docks' wreckage. "It suits you; this is the biggest ship in the fleet. That makes for a suitably grandiose coffin. Plus — the construction shroud had been obviously torn away before the explosions started. So there wouldn't be any risk of the Rebel Alliance pilots dropping in."

It is interesting to observe that this destroyer is the biggest ship left at this stage of the destruction, in some sense. Obviously the cruisers mentioned earlier must have been unavailable for use. Perhaps their placement meant that they were destroyed too soon for Kuat's use; or (more likely) none of the cruisers was complete enough to serve as Kuat's final habitation.

325
"How many did we get out?" Commander Rozhdenst stood at the mobile base's largest viewports, gazing at the conflagration sweeping across the distant construction docks.
"Four of the Lancer-class frigates, sir." From the centre of the room, Ott Klemp made his report. "Those were our top priority. The rest that we extracted were Zebulon-B frigates."
"And how many men did we lose?" The Commander glanced over his shoulder.
"Only two. One in the frigate that got caught in the explosions, and another still in his Y-wing, going in."

The rebel shipjackers at Kuat only managed to steal frigates, not destroyers, cruisers or anything heavier. Presumably the medium and large ships were inaccessible due to explosions, or were off the priority list because of being too complex for a single pilot to control.
starship: Zebulon-B frigate; is this a relative of the stolen Nebulon-B frigates used by rebels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi? Or is it a proper, dagger-shaped warship built to a frigate size?

328 Chapter 19

328-329
"Kuat of Kuat had wired up enough sequentially linked explosives to blow up all of Kuat Drive Yards. If he couldn't have it under his control, he didn't want to leave anything but smoking rubble behind. But this Star Destroyer was one of the critical links in the chain; the detonator circuits ran right through its main engine compartment. And when you pulled the ship out of the docks, the chain was broken. Kuat himself didn't live long enough to see what happened, but the result is that over eighty percent of the KDY construction docks survived intact."

Hard Merchandise
PAGE	QUOTATION	COMMENTS
1	Chapter 1
3	Their time as members of the Rebel Alliance — double agents, actually, since they had kept secret their new allegiance to the Rebel cause — had been occupied with one significant operation: an attempt to snatch from Boba Fett the carbonite slab with Han Solo frozen inside it, before Fett could deliver the prize to Jabba the Hutt. The plan, using several other bounty hunters as unwitting dupes, had had disastrous results. It hadn't succeeded, and 4-LOM had needed a complete core-to-sheath rebuild to get back on his feet. And, mused Zuckuss, he wasn't the same after that. This idealism that had led 4-LOM to join the Rebel Alliance had all but evaporated, replaced by his former cold-spirited greed.	continuity: A concise explanation of the seemingly inconsistent behaviour of 4-LOM and Zuckuss in Shadows of the Empire and Tales of the Bounty Hunters.
4	Beyond it, a sloping tunnel led up to the surface of the planet and its night sky filled with a chain of pearllike moons.	location: This planet, whatever its name, has several moons. The moons are in orbits that allow several of them to be seen in the sky on the same side of the planet sometimes.
5	.... the establishment's proprietor, a stub-fingered Bergamasque named Salla C'airam.	character: Salla C'airam, proprietor of the bar.
7-8	In the darker corners of the galaxy, where surreptitiously acquired information was bought and sold, traded in whispers from one furtive creature to the next, rumours had been heard of a gathering of the Imperial forces, somewhere out near a moon called Endor — like a fist clenched together, into a hammer that would crush the Alliance forever, and end once and for all its crazy dreams of freedom.	continuity: It seems that there are many lowlife inhabitants of the galaxy, such as Zuckuss and 4-LOM, have heard about the concentration of Imperial forces that will come into action at the Battle of Endor. If they are aware of this, then why were the rebels not more prepared to face a larger Imperial presence at Endor in Return of the Jedi? Do the popular rumours include the fact that a Death Star is under construction in the Endor system? Is it known that the Emperor would be present at Endor in person? What exactly was secret, what was known, and by whom?
9	The booming voice of Drawmas Sma'Da filled the bar, like the rumble of thunder over the planet's horizon. Zuckuss looked up from his drink and saw the immense, befurred, and caparisoned form of the most notorious gambler and oddsman in five systems, spreading his arms wide. The gemstones studding Sma'Da's pinkly manicured fingers sparkled in a multicoloured constellation of wealth and extravagance; his broad, thrown-back shoulders were swathed in the soft fur pelts of a dozen worlds' rarest species. The artfully preserved heads of the animals that had died for his adornment, with black pearls for eyes, dangled over a belly of wobbling girth.	character: Drawmas Sma'Da, a gambling tycoon, apparently human.
17-18	C'airam's tentacles drew short and wrapped themselves tightly around his body. .... C'airam's floppy, seemingly boneless appendages settled lower, a sure sign in his species of wanting to avoid a violent confrontation. .... .... The gaze of the proprietor's gelatinous-appearing eyes, nearly as large as Zuckuss', swept menacingly across the waiters and bartenders.	character: Salla C'airam, Bergamasque, physical description.
24	Chapter 2
25	"Bumped into ya out in the Osmani system; that was a long while back. .... I was piloting a shuttle between planets — that was the cheapest gig I ever worked — and you lifted one of my passengers right off the ship."	location: Osmani system, end point of one of Bossk's previous hunts.
28	"We kinda keep an eye on interesting characters like you, when they show up in these parts. Let's face it, nobody comes to a backwater world like this, unless they got a good reason. .... Couldn't be any kind of job for Jabba the Hutt — he's dead, must be a couplea weeks now. ...."	It is interesting that the beggar remarks about Bossk's presence in connection with Jabba, because Bossk was in Jabba's throne room when Skywalker's company began to arrive. He is pictured there in Return of the Jedi publicity photos, and he appears to have arrived there at the end of the Shadows of the Empire comic series. Therefore he must have made a trip away from Tatooine in the weeks since Jabba's death, if his return is considered noteworthy. it would be interesting to study the Return of the Jedi footage closely, in order to determine whether Bossk was one of those bounty hunters brought by Jabba to Carkoon to view Skywalker's planned execution.
31	A rodent-faced Mhingxin sat himself down on the other side of the booth's table. Wobbim Figh's long-fingered hands, like collections of bone and coarse, spiky hairs, set out a multicompartmented box with an assortment of stim-enhanced snuff powers. "Good to see you." Figh's sharp-pointed nails dipped into the various powders, one after another, then to the elongated nostrils on the underside of his wetly shining snout.	character: Eobbim Figh, an information broker on Tatooine. aliens: Mhingxin
43	Fett's own ship, Slave I, had been found abandoned by a Rebel Alliance patrol squad.	chronology: By this point in time, the rebels have acquired Slave I, as originally described in Dark Empire Sourcebook.
45	Chapter 3
60	Chapter 4
68	.... it was common knowledge that high-level stormtroopers, such as he had been before his defection, were trained in self-annihilatory techniques, in case of capture by enemy forces. A self-willed shutdown of his entire autonomic cardiovascular system would render Voss'on't as unprofitable as any hot bolt from the blaster slung at Boba Fett's hip would. Standard bounty hunter procedure in a case like this, where the suicide of the merchandise was a possiblity, would have been to render him safely unconscious with a steady-release transdermal anesthetic patch applied just above one of the main neck arteries.	Description of the suicide capability of stormtrooper officers. It is implied that they can kill themselves without tools.
70	".... The last time I heard so many structural integrity alarms going off, I was on an Imperial battle cruiser being attacked by an entire wing of Rebel Alliance starfighters."	starship: Voss'on't has been aboard a battle cruiser of some description, in the midst of a difficult battle. This must have been an interesting circumstance, considering the implication of the ANH rolling text: that the rebels had not won a major battle by this point in history. Of course "winning" can be defined in many different ways, and there are definitions of defeat that could nevertheless involve inflicting severe damage to a multi-mile enemy warship. [This part of Hard Merchandise is a recollection of events at about the time of A New Hope.]
72	"... This broken-down tub barely made it through one jump without disintegrating." voss'on't's smile indicated how much he enjoyed the dismal prospects he was describing. "You might be able to slam this thing into hyperspace — but you won't be able to get it back out." An evil glint appeared in one of the stormtrooper's eyes. "I've heard that's a real unpleasant way to go. Nobody even ever finds the pieces." Boba Fett had heard the same. A squadron of ancient Mandalorian warriors, a suit of whose battle armour he wore as his own, was reputed to have been destroyed in just that manner by the now-vanished Jedi Knights.	Voss'on't and Fett consider an unpleasant but fundamental aspect of hyperspace physics: the transition from hyperspace to realspace is just as difficult as the transition into hyperspace. This is a reflection of the inertial nature of supralight travel in STAR WARS: the laws of inertia under special relativity apply equally in both sublight (bradyonic) and supralight (tachyonic) regimes. The magic of a hyperdrive is its violent ability to take an object from one realm to the other, somehow skipping the lightspeed barrier. This understanding of hyperspace, and the hull stresses involved in the jump of a poorly tuned vessel, was first clearly expounded in the Black Fleet Crisis trilogy, especially in the remarks of a former-Imperial military hyperphysics researcher Major Sorannan in Tyrant's Test pp.320-321.
81	Chapter 5
100	Chapter 6
140	Chapter 7
140-141	"Since you've been on Slave I, before we transferred over to this ship, you know it's in fully functional shape now. There were some incidents I heard about, though, that happened in the process of getting repaired. And redesigned, from the bulkheads to the engine core." Dengar pointed with his thumb to the cage. "Apparently, Fett decided that he needed bigger quarters for the amount of hard merchandise he was going to be ferrying around — so things had to be shifted to make room for it. Otherwise the ladder wouldn't be necessary to get to the cockpit. The whole refitting process took more than just credits, from all reports. And a few other creatures wound up getting killed. But that's not unusual with the way Boba Fett works."	starship: The redesign of Slave I between A New Hope and Return of the Jedi may cast light on discrepencies between the representations of the ship's interior in several books and comics.
151	Chapter 8
155	".... The big battle they've got shaping up between them — that's way out by Endor. That's practically the other side of the galaxy; in any event, it's a long stretch from us. I don't see how it could affect what we're doing here. If anything—" He pointed to the viewport. "Their problems should make it easier for us to take care of whatever dispersed locales they were in before, to get ready for the confrontation between them. We can do what we want, and neither the Empire nor the Rebels will be any the wiser."	Dengar's interpretation of the situation of the Galactic Civil War just prior to the Battle of Endor. It is interesting to read that preparations for the battle seem to have affected the galaxy at large (at least according to Dengar's rumours) since the entire Imperial starfleet includes over a thousand times as many star destroyers of the type most common at Endor. Either Dengar's claims are distortions or else there was a lot of peripheral activity taking place in conjunction with the Battle of Endor though not in the same system.
159	"The ID code identified the ship as one known most often as the Venesectrix. Rarely spotted anywhere close to the central sectors of the galaxy; its owner preferred operations farther out into the border territories. And of course, there was a reason for that: the owner of the Venesectrix was a certain Ree Duptom." .... ...."Ree Duptom — he's the only one who ever got booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild!" That took some doing, Dengar knew; there had been plenty of creatures in the guild whose ethical standards had been way below his own. He wasn't familiar with the exact details — Duptom had been booted out of the Bounty Hunters Guild before Dengar had joined it — but there had been an unspoken legend attached to him, as being the one creature that all bounty hunters considered scum.	character: Ree Duptom, bounty hunter dead from about the time of A New Hope.
172	Chapter 9
176	An impressive scar ran in an almost perfect diagonal across Commander Gennad Rozhdenst's face, the result of surviving a previous skirmish with Imperial fighters. "And I have my orders, directly from former Senator Mon Mothma, with the Alliance fleet near Sullust."	character: Commander Gennad Rozhdenst, leader of a rebel fighter unit assigned to protect Alliance interests in the KDY shipyards in the Kuat system during the period of the Battle of Endor. Interestingly, the general location of the rebel fleet doesn't even seem to be a secret as far as a loyal rebel pilot is concerned.
176	When he gazed out upon the construction docks, with a fleet of Destroyers and heavy cruisers nearing completion in them, he felt as though their combined mass bent his spine. And more: rising above Kuat Drive yards was the mottled green sphere of the planet Kuat itself, an entire world and people dependent upon the fate of the corporation that funneled such a large share of the galaxy's wealth into their coffers.	Note that the destroyers and cruisers are nearing completion, but are not yet complete. By the end of the story it seems that only one destroyer has been completed, but there are plenty of completed frigates.
185	"So what's the scoop?" Ott Klemp, one of the younger and less-experienced pilots in the Scavenger Squadron, matched his pace to that of his commanding officer. "Are they going to cooperate with us?"	character: Ott Klemp, one of the rebel pilots assigned to the Kuat mission coinciding with the Battle of Endor.
188	Chapter 10
200-201	... a circle, perhaps a little lopsided; understandable, given the circumstances that the man who'd made them had been in ... and a triangle inside the cirle, the three points just touching the enclosing line... And three stylized letters, in an archaic, pre-Basic language. Three letters that only a person who had seen them since childhood, and who had been taught their meaning, would recognised. Someone such as Neelah herself, and any of her noble bloodline. A lineage that came from one of the most powerful industrial planets in the galaxy, its ancestry reaching generations back in time. Boba Fett, for all his cleverness and carefully groomed information sources, would never have been able to discern what was meant by the image — not because it was a guarded secret, but simply because it was a symbol that had fallen out of use, supplanted by a later one that could be understood by anyone in the galaxy. Only theo old traditionalists, the memory-rich families and their entourages, of the planet on which Neelah had been born would have kept it as a token of a glorious past. for a moment, a great, calming peace descended upon Neelah, like the hand of a noble infant's nurse drawing a blanket snug upon the small, cooing form; a blanket marked with the exact same image, only embroidered with pure golden thread rather than scratched into the floor of a squalid holding cage on a bounty hunter's ship.	culture: Neelah recalls the ancient KDY logo, and its personal significance for the nobility of Kuat. Reference to the pre-Basic language is interesting. If this logo is intended to be one of the Latinised logos invented in the STAR WARS Roleplaying Game then it hints that &#;a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" is actually our far future and perhaps our galaxy, even though the textual narrator of STAR WARS is more distant in place and time.
212	A Though she didn't know everything — such as what had happened to have brought her so far from home — she knew the name of that infant swaddled in the ancient emblem. My name, thought Neelah. My real name. "Kateel." She whispered the name aloud, as though calling softly to that person who had been lost and now was found again. "Katell of Kuhlvult."	character: Kateel of Kuhlvult, the true name of Neela. Sister of Kodir.
217	Chapter 11
234		character: N'dru Suhlak, a hunt spoiler who has had previous encounters with Boba Fett.
238	Chapter 12
242-243	"You wouldn't have gone anywhere, pal, except up in flames." Suhlak shook his head in disgust. "None of you even knows what's sitting out there, keeping a watch on your every move. But there's a light cruiser, top of the line, from Kuat Drive Yards, keeping surveillance on this tub right now. Matter of fact, it's a KDY ship; I identified it when I snuck past it. It's the Kuat Drive Yards' main security enforcement vessel, and it's armed and very dangerous."	starship: KDY light cruiser, implicitly probably just larger than a star destroyer. Demonstrated to have sublight acceleration weaker than Hound's Tooth in later incidents.
243	"You two — get back aboard Hound's Tooth and head out, full thrusters, to open space and prepare for a hyperspace jump to the Oranessen system. ..."	location: Oranessen system, rendezvous point for Fett's eventual return from Tatooine.
247	Chapter 13
248	One of the eldest &ss;-supervisors stepped forward. Kuat recognised the man as the leader ofthe shipbuilding team that laid down the enormous central frames of the ships that took form in the KDY construction docks. The &ss;-supervisor had been a lead operator, back in the days of Kuat's father, of one of the massive cranes spanning the docks, each nearly as long — and powerful — as an Imperial battle destroyer. Through the meeting shed's overhead skylights, the outline of one of them could be seen, blotting out an entire swath of stars.	character: Beta-supervisor. technology: KDY construction crane described; at least some KDY ships are structured around frames of some kind. This is a good hint about the general internal features of a finished starship. starship: An "Imperial battle destroyer" is described. This presumably means a destroyer-sized ship with enhanced armour and guns, in analogy to the relationship between "battle cruisers" and "cruisers". An Imperial battle destroyer may be something like the Allegiance in Dark Empire or the hangar-lacking destroyer seen in Return of the Jedi.
255-256	"Osss-10," said Suhlak, shoulders slumping. "Now I'm sure you're bad luck." "Never heard of him." "You wouldn't have." Disgust sounded in Suhlak's voice. "That's because you're an old story, and he's the latest thing. Don't you get it? This is all because of what you did when you broke up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. The old rule book's been thrown out, and there's enough chaos in the bounty-hunting environment for totally new ones to start up. New — and better." Suhlak pointed his thumb at the viewport. "I've never even seen this Osss-10 guy face to face, don't know where he comes from, but I've already had some real unpleasant encounters with him. Somebody with a lot of credits must be bankrolling him: he's got all the state-of-the-art equipment, plus he's a real genius at programming his onboard computers. He's got some kind of predictive algorithms wired into his gear that I've never encountered before. The more confrontations you have with him, the bigger operational database he has to extrapolate from to be able to know what I'm going to do before I know!" environment	character: Osss-10
259	Chapter 14
262	Boss leaned across the table, letting his eyes narrow to slits.	TYPO: The name "Bossk" without the "k".
268	A drunken harf, with shining red, gogglelike eyes and an elongated snout, put a massive arm around Bossk's shoulders.	aliens: harf
270	Chapter 15
270	They had dropped out of hyperspace and into the Oranessan system, followed by the KDY security cruiser, just as Boba Fett's scheme had predicted. Since then, Dengar had kept the Hound's Tooth at the precise speed that their strategy called for: just fast enough to stay out of reach of the pursuing cruiser. The mottled orb of Oran-µ, the system's largest planet, filled the forward viewport as the chase continued.	location: Oran-µ, the largest world in the Oranessan system.
283	Chapter 16
289	".... Both Rozhdenst and this attaché Uzalg appear to be waiting for the arrival of another person, with whom they'll be having some kind of meeting."	character: Uzalg, some kind of official or diplomat for the Rebel Alliance.
292	Chapter 17
301	Chapter 18
308	Across a row of display screens, from multiple angles, flame and churning smoke billowed up fromn the angular masses of equipment below. As both he and Klemp leaned toward the screens, another explosion was suddenly visible, uprooting one of the gigantic cranes at its base and sending it toppling down across the docks' central access corridor. The crossed durasteel struts of the crane's framework crumpled and bent upon one another with the force of their crashing impact; cables several metres thick snapped like string, their broken ends whipping through ranks of load shifters and rail trucks, scattering them as though they were toys. ... "It's not the ships—" Rozhdenst laid a broad fingertip on the closest display screen. "The fleet isn't what's going up." The elongated shapes of the cruisers and destroyers could be seen through the smoke, harshly lit by flames and the hard-shadowed light of another series of explosions. "It's the docks and all of the major shipbuilding equipment."	The self-destruct explosions of the KDY shipyards at Kuat.
312	....	starship: Lancer-class frigate, one of the punier anti-fighter screening vessels introduced for use in sector fleets and first described in The Imperial Sourcebook.
319	"How did you know I'd be here?" Kuat of Kuat turned and regarded the figure that had entered the bridge of the moored Star Destroyer." "Where else would you be?" Boba Fett's battle armour was blackened with ash from the fires consuming the construction docks' wreckage. "It suits you; this is the biggest ship in the fleet. That makes for a suitably grandiose coffin. Plus — the construction shroud had been obviously torn away before the explosions started. So there wouldn't be any risk of the Rebel Alliance pilots dropping in."	It is interesting to observe that this destroyer is the biggest ship left at this stage of the destruction, in some sense. Obviously the cruisers mentioned earlier must have been unavailable for use. Perhaps their placement meant that they were destroyed too soon for Kuat's use; or (more likely) none of the cruisers was complete enough to serve as Kuat's final habitation.
325	"How many did we get out?" Commander Rozhdenst stood at the mobile base's largest viewports, gazing at the conflagration sweeping across the distant construction docks. "Four of the Lancer-class frigates, sir." From the centre of the room, Ott Klemp made his report. "Those were our top priority. The rest that we extracted were Zebulon-B frigates." "And how many men did we lose?" The Commander glanced over his shoulder. "Only two. One in the frigate that got caught in the explosions, and another still in his Y-wing, going in."	The rebel shipjackers at Kuat only managed to steal frigates, not destroyers, cruisers or anything heavier. Presumably the medium and large ships were inaccessible due to explosions, or were off the priority list because of being too complex for a single pilot to control. starship: Zebulon-B frigate; is this a relative of the stolen Nebulon-B frigates used by rebels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi? Or is it a proper, dagger-shaped warship built to a frigate size?
328	Chapter 19
328-329	"Kuat of Kuat had wired up enough sequentially linked explosives to blow up all of Kuat Drive Yards. If he couldn't have it under his control, he didn't want to leave anything but smoking rubble behind. But this Star Destroyer was one of the critical links in the chain; the detonator circuits ran right through its main engine compartment. And when you pulled the ship out of the docks, the chain was broken. Kuat himself didn't live long enough to see what happened, but the result is that over eighty percent of the KDY construction docks survived intact."

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