told her.
"There will be no shooting," Kast assured him.
"Glad to hear it," Maranne said. "You don't mind if I cover him
anyway?"
Kast's invisible eyes seemed to bore into hers through the helmet
visor. "As you wish," he said. "All of you: move."
Wordlessly, the others filed out into the crowd, Kast bringing up the
rear. Trell gave them a count of fifty to find their positions, then
followed.
The curio shop was easy to find: a small, somewhat dilapidated open-air
booth with an enclosed back room that had been inexpertly added on long
enough ago to look almost as moldering as the booth itself. A
lizardine creature of an unfamiliar species was leaning on the counter,
watching the crowds passing by. Taking a deep breath, Trell stepped
over to him.
The lizard looked up as Trell approached, his alien expression
unreadable. "Good day, good sir," he said in adequate Basic. "I am
Sajsh, proprietor of this humble establishment. May I be of
assistance?"
"I hope so," Trell said. "I have a cargo for someone named Borbor
Crisk. I was told you could give me delivery instructions."
A three-forked tongue darted briefly from the scaled mouth. "You have
been misinformed," he said. "I know no one by that name."
"Oh?" Trell said, taken aback. "Are you sure?"
The tongue flicked again. "Do you doubt my word?" the alien spat.
"Or merely my memory or intelligence?"
"No, no," Trell said hastily. "Not at all. I just . . . my source
seemed so sure this was the place."
Sajsh opened his mouth wide. "Perhaps he was only slightly
incorrect.
Perhaps he meant the shop to my kill-hand."
He pointed to his right, to an equally dilapidated booth that was
currently closed up. "The proprietor will return at the seven-hour.
You can return then and ask him."
"I'll do that," Trell promised. "Thank you."
The lizard snapped his jaws together twice. Nodding, Trell turned and
pushed his way back into the stream of pedestrians, face hot with
embarrassment and annoyance.
"Well?" Maranne demanded, sidling up beside him.
"Kast had the wrong place," Trell growled, glancing around. But the
bounty hunter was nowhere to be seen.
"Where are the others?"
"We're right here," Riij said, coming up through the crowd behind
him.
"Kast said to head back down the street and he'd meet us."
"Good," Trell said tartly. "I've got a few things to say to our
esteemed bounty hunter. Let's go."
ajsh and the unknown man finished their conversation, and the latter
moved away back into the mass of browsers and shoppers. Two booths
over, Corran Horn set down the melon he'd been examining and eased into
the flow behind him.
The stranger didn't seem to be trying to lose himself in
the crowd.
Though any such effort would have been quickly negated by the company
he linked up with: a hard-eyed, competent-looking woman, a young man
about Corran's own age, and a yellow-skinned alien with several short
horns protruding from his chin. For a moment the four of them
conversed; then, with the contact man leading the way, they continued
on down the street.
At the edge of Corran's vision, a heavyset figure stepped to his
side.
"Trouble?"
"I don't know, Dad," Corran said. "You see that foursome up there?
Tooled brown jacket, blondish woman, white-spiked collar,
yellow-skinned alien?"
"Yes," Hal Horn nodded. "The alien's a Tunroth, by the way.
Fairly rare outside their home system; most of the ones you run into
these days work with high-stakes safaris, mercenaries, or bounty
hunters."
"Interesting," Corran said. "Possibly significant, too.
Brown Jacket just waltzed up to Sajsh's booth and tried to make a
delivery to Borbor Crisk."
"Did he, now," Hal said thoughtfully. "Have Crisk and Zekka Thyne
patched up their differences while I wasn't looking?"
"If they did, I wasn't looking either," Corran told him.
"Either Brown Jacket and his pals are incredibly stupid, or else
something very odd is going on."
"Either way, I doubt Thyne will simply pass on it," Hal said.
"Did Brown Jacket happen to mention where they could be contacted?"
"No, but Sajsh has that covered," Corran said. "He said they might
want the owner of the booth next to his and suggested they come back
about seven."
"Where they'll be asked to have a quiet conversation with a group of
Black Sun heavies." Hal stretched his neck to peer over the crowd.
"Well, well--the plot thickens.
Look who our innocents have hooked up with."
Corran rose up on tiptoes. There was Brown Jacket and his friends; and
with them-
"I'll be shragged," he breathed. "Is that Boba Fett?"
"No, I don't think so," Hal said. "Possibly Jodo Kast, though I'd have
to get a closer look at the armor to be sure."
"Well, whoever it is, we've definitely moved into the big time," Corran
pointed out. "Mandalorian armor doesn't come cheap."
"When you can find it at all," the elder Horn agreed.
"This is getting odder by the minute. I take it you've had some
thoughts already?"
"Only one, really," Corran said. The group was moving off again, and
he and his father set off to follow. "Thyne wouldn't be stupid enough
to kill them out of hand, certainly not until he knows who they are and
what their connection is to Crisk. That probably means bringing them
to the fortress."
"And you think you might be able to invite yourself along?"
"I know it's risky--" "'Risky' isn't exactly the word I had in mind,"
Hal interrupted. "Getting into the fortress is only the first step,
you know. You think you'll be able to simply march up to Thyne, slap
the restraints on him in the name of Corellian Security, and march him
out?"
"We do have the legal authority to do that, you know," Corran reminded
him.
"Which means nothing at all inside his stronghold," Hal countered.
"You have any idea how many CorSec agents have gone after top Black Sun
lieutenants like Thyne and simply vanished?"
Corran grimaced. "I know," he said. "But that's not going to happen
this time. And if getting into the fortress is only the first step, it
still is the first step."
The elder Horn shook his head. "'Risky' still doesn't begin to cover
it. For starters, we don't even know what game Brown Jacket and his
Mandalorian friend are playing."
"Then it's time we found out," Corran said. "Let's stay close and see
if we can find an opportunity to introduce ourselves."
They had gone perhaps two blocks--though where Kast was leading them
Trell hadn't the faintest idea--when they heard the shout.
"What was that?" Riij demanded, looking around.
"There," Pairor rumbled, pointing his thick central finger to the
left.
"Argument starting."
Trell craned his neck. There was an open-air tapcafe that direct
ion,
with a long serving bar at the rear and perhaps twenty small tables
spread out in the open space in front of it beneath a wide,
Karvrish-style woven-leaf canopy. A slightly built man wearing a
proprietor's apron was standing in the middle of the dining area, a
half dozen large and rough-looking men wearing mercenary shoulder
patches looming in a threatening circle around him. The chairs from a
nearby table were scattered back or lying on the ground, indicating a
quick and unruly departure from them. "I think the argument's over,"
he said. "It's gone straight to trouble now."
"Come on," Riij said, angling that direction. "Let's check it out."
"Leave it alone," Kast ordered. "It's none of our business."
But Riij and Pairor were already heading off through the crowd.
"Blast," Trell growled. Stupid idealistic gornt-brained Rebels--"Come
on, Maranne."
A line of onlookers had started to form at the edge of the tapcafe by
the time he and Maranne broke through the stream of pedestrians.
Riij and Pairor were already to the mercenaries, who had opened their
circle around the tapcafe proprietor in order to face this new
distraction.
And now Trell could see something he hadn't been able to before.
Standing beside the proprietor, clinging
tightly to his waist in terror, was a young girl. Probably his daughter; certainly no more
than seven years old.
Trell hissed a curse between his teeth. It took a particularly vile
form of low-life to threaten a child. But that didn't mean he was
going to follow Riij's lead and charge in blindly like a mad Jedi
Knight on Cracian thumper-back.
"Backup left," he murmured to Maranne. "I'll take right."
"Right," she murmured back. Dropping his hand casually onto the grip
of his blaster, Trell started drifting behind the ring of onlookers to
the rightw And with a suddenness that startled him, the fight
started.
Not with blasters, which had been his main fear, but 'with hands and
feet as the two closest mercenaries lashed out at Riij and Pairor.
With three-to-one odds on their side, the mercs must have felt weapons
to be unnecessary.
They got a shock. Riij had clearly had some good training in unarmed
combat, and Pairor was a lot faster than Trell would have guessed from
the alien's bulk. Riij's counterattack sent his opponent reeling back;
Palror's threw his merc slamming back with a horrendous crash into one
of the other tables, sending it spinning and scattering its chairs
across the floor.
Someone swore viciously. The downed merc scrambled to his feet and
rejoined his comrades, their former casual semicircle now reformed into
a deadly, no-nonsense combat line facing their attackers. The
proprietor had taken advantage of the distraction to hustle his
daughter back across to the bar; heaving her up and over to the
relative safety behind it, he turned back to watch.
For a long moment the combatants stood motionless facing each other.
Trell kept drifting toward his chosen backup position, his eyes on the
mercs, his hand tightening on his blaster. Would they draw now, in
which case Riij and Pairor were probably dead? Or would sheer pride
dictate they beat such insolent opponents bloody with their bare
hands?
The watching crowd was obviously wondering the same thing. Trell
could feel their tension, their excitement, their bloodlust . . .
And then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement to his
left. The mercs caught it, too, anger-filled eyes shifting that
direction-Their expressions changed, just slightly. Frowning, Trell
risked a look of his own.
Jodo Kast had stepped forward out of the ring of onlookers.
For a moment the bounty hunter just stood there, gazing silently at the
scene. Then, stepping to one of the tables at the edge of the tapcafe,
he pulled out a chair and sat down. Crossing his legs casually beneath
the table, he folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head
slightly to one side. "Well?" he asked mildly.
And with that one word the decision was made. No mercenary with a
speck's worth of professional pride was going to use weapons against
outnumbered opponents who hadn't themselves drawn. Not with a bounty
hunter like Jodo Kast watching.
Roaring obscure and probably obscene battle cries, the mercs waded
in.
At that first exchange Riij and Palror had had the element of
surprise.
This time they didn't. They did their best, certainly--and still
better than Trell would have expected given the odds--but in the end
they really had no chance. Less than ninety seconds after that battle
roar, both Riij and Pairor were on the floor, along with two of the
mercs. The remaining four, not all of them looking all that steady on
their feet, were grouped around them.
One of them looked around, jabbed a finger toward the proprietor
cowering at the bar. "Them first," he snarled, breathing heavily.
"You next."
"No," Kast said.
The merc spun around to face him, almost losing his balance in the
process as a damaged knee tried to buckle under him. "No what?" he
demanded.
"I said no," Kast told him. His hands were in his lap now, concealed
under the table, but his legs were still casually crossed.
"You've had your fun; but I need them alive."
"Yeah?" the mere snarled. "What, you got a bounty to collect on
them?"
"You've had your fun," Kast repeated, but this time there was frosty
metal glittering in his voice. "Leave it and go. Now."
"You think so, huh?" the mere spat. "And who do you think's gonna
stop---?"
And abruptly, right in the middle of his sentence, he dropped his hand
to his blaster and yanked it from its holster.
It was an old trick, and one that had probably given the mere the
desired edge in many a facedown. Unfortunately for him, it was a trick
Trell had seen used countless times before; and even before the other's
hand had reached his blaster grip Trell was hauling out his own
weapon.
At the other side of the ring of bystanders he spotted Maranne also
drawing-The mere had good reflexes, all right. In that split second he
froze, his weapon not quite cleared of its holster; staring from
beneath thick eyebrows at the four blasters suddenly pointed at him
from the circle of people around the tapcafe.
Trell blinked as it suddenly registered. Four blasters?
Four. Two people down from Maranne, a bulky middle-aged man also had a
blaster trained steadily on the mercs. . . and out of the corner of
his eye, Trell could see the fourth blaster sticking out from his side
of the crowd. Held with equal steadiness.
The merc spat. "So that's how you want to play it, huh?"
"We're not playing," Kast said icily. "As I said: leave it and go. If
you don't--" Trell never saw the warning twitch he was watching for.
But Kast obviously did. Even as the merc started to haul his blaster
the rest of the way free of it
s holster there was the brilliant flash
of a blaster bolt from the direction of the bounty hunter's table, and
a roar of rage from the merc as his holster and the blaster muzzle
behind it shattered.
"--I promise you will regret it," Kast finished calmly.
"This is your final chance."
The merc looked like he was about two seconds short of a complete
berserk rage. But even furious and with a burned gun hand, he was in
control enough to know when the odds were stacked too high against
him.
"I'll be watching for you, bounty hunter," he breathed, straightening
up from his combat crouch. "We'll finish this some other time."
Kast bowed his head slightly. "Whenever you're tired of life,
mercenary."
The merc gave a hand signal. The others helped their two casualties to
their feet--one groggily starting to come to, the other still in need
Tales From The Empire Page 32