“I don't care what those rebels are blowing up! Howl’s old scow is in orbit, which means Twilight Company is here and that scum is–” The door burst open and Governor Magé slumped forward over her desk. The comlink she'd been shouting into slid from her now limp hand.
“Good shot, Brand.” Captain Micha “Howl” Evon ran a brown hand over his bearded chin as he strode into the opulent office. “Can’t abide anyone making fun of my ship or my people.”
He admired Brand’s efficient handiwork and decided he wanted the recipe to whatever juice was on the dart sticking out of the Imperial governor’s olive neck. The Governor’s long, dark hair had tumbled out of her tightly wound bun, and she was already drooling, as was her aide, who’d attempted to guard the door.
These backwater worlds always underestimated Twilight Company’s efficiency and resolve. Captain Evon always felt sorrow at the unnecessary losses that resulted.
The noises from the battle outside in the hallways of the Imperial Headquarters were already dying down and the luxury of the Governor’s office explained a lot about why Twilight Company hadn’t met much resistance from the locals when they’d dropped into Allst Prime to take out the Imperial outpost here.
“This’ll do nicely for the recruiting interviews.” He waved vaguely behind him with his right hand while he holstered his blaster with his left.
“Mind moving her over there?”
Not one for many words, his companion merely grunted in response, and gave the governor’s chair a shove, rolling it noiselessly away from the massive desk.
“And if Governor Magé is like every other Imperial leech with a taste for luxury...” The captain whistled as he pulled open a desk drawer. “Hope you like Nabooian whiskey. I know I do.” He splashed the amber liquid into two crystal glasses, savoring the spicy smell. “Go ahead and grab a chair for yourself, Brand. May as well knock out your official inbrief; it’s long overdue.”
Turning around, Evon found himself staring down the front sight of a blaster.
Finally.
He extended one of the glasses out as a broad smile split his black and gray-bearded face.
“We can get to you collecting my bounty in a bit, Brand. Have a drink first.” Evon took a sip from his own glass and smacked his lips in satisfaction.
Instead of taking the drink, a gloved hand reached up and tapped the release on the neck portion of the bounty hunter’s mask. Metal and mesh peeled back to reveal the face of a woman. The faintest beginnings of age lines creased the dark skin near her eyes and mouth, though there were no laughter lines. Her blaster arm remained steady.
Shrugging, the captain set the rounded glass down on the redwood desk between the two of them.
“Suit yourself.” He pulled up another chair, eased himself into the supple leather behind him, and took another sip of the amber liquid with a contented sigh. “This chair is wonderful. I think I may have to take it back to the Thunderstrike.” Evon returned his attention to Brand and indicated the plush chair next to her. “Have a seat; if you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it by now, Lauren.”
For the first time, the bounty hunter’s arm wavered and a glimmer of shock momentarily raced through her dark brown eyes. “What did you call me?”
Pulling a datapad from his vest pocket, the captain scrolled through it with calloused, brown fingers until he reached the screen he was looking for. He angled it toward Brand so she could see the photo of a youngling in a blue and orange checked dress, with colorful beaded braids framing her face, and an infant boy wrapped up at her hip.
“Lauren Mel Coelho,” Howl made sure to properly roll the R in her first name, and pronounce the “yo” sound in her last name. “Born approximately 38 years ago on Tangenine. Mother, Remba. Father, Kelvin. Brother, Julian, though you called him Ju-ju.”
“Lau! Lau, come, please.”
Lauren stood up and shaded her eyes as she looked down the row of norango bushes separating her and her father. Her basket was already half-full of sweet red berries, and she had only snuck a few to eat, so she couldn’t be in trouble. Not this early in the morning.
Her father saw her worried expression and his mouth split into a wide grin. His perfectly straight teeth gleamed like white stars against his skin, black as the night sky. It was beautiful. Lauren wished she could smile like her father.
“Don’t worry, little one, you’re not in trouble.”
Relieved, she hefted her basket over to him, careful not to squash a single berry. Inspecting her collection, he reached out a hand and fluffed up her braids.
“Ada!” she whined, pushing his hand off. “I am not a youngling.”
Tucking a fist under his jaw, he eyed his daughter. “Hmmm, I think you’re right. You are much taller now, and you have been doing very well with your chores.” He turned to pick up a basket of berries beside him, revealing Ju-ju gurgling happily from his bound perch on their father’s back. Ju-ju’s eyes, round and green as a norango leaf, locked with Lauren’s and he gave her a smile that mirrored their father’s. Turning back to her, Lauren’s father gently poured some of his norangos into her basket, topping it off. “Take these into Ama, please.”
Lauren looked across the sprawling berry field–past the workers filling baskets of their own with berries, toward the modest farmhouse in the center of it all–her home.
“Can’t I stay here and watch Ju-ju? I promise I’m old enough now.” She stood up straight, rising onto her tip-toes.
“Why do I think you just don’t want to face what your mother has to say about your last school report?” Laughing, her father reached out to fluff her braids again, and Lauren quickly ducked under his arm.
“Ada!”
He sobered when he saw her serious expression. Reaching back, he unbound Ju-ju and set him down between them.
“My little Lau, what is the most important thing?”
“Family,” she answered, without hesitation. Any youngling knew that.
“And so you, your brother, and Ama are more precious to me than anything else.” He crouched and picked up a handful of soil before crumbling it between his fingers. “Without family, we are just dirt blowing uselessly in the wind.” Then he took Lauren’s smaller hand in his and guided it to the base of a norango bush. “Family is the root that gives the soil purpose and holds it in place. We are nothing without our families.”
He placed both hands on her shoulders. “Someday you will have your own familiy to take care of, little Lau–”
“–and I will have to make sure they are pruned and tended to. I know Ada.” Lauren forced herself not to roll her eyes as she finished her father’s proverb.
The whine of a fancy-sounding landspeeder cut off her father’s response, and Lauren followed his gaze down the dirt road that led to their farm. Even from this distance she could see the dust plume it kicked up.
“Lau, take your brother and go to your bisáma’s house.”
“But, Ada–”
“Now, Lau!”
Without sparing her or Ju-ju a second glance, he ran across the norango field to join their mother. Ama was standing in front of the house, hands in fists on her hips, tall, strong, and unyielding as always.
“Come, Ju-ju.” Lauren picked up her little brother and gently pried the black soil from his clenched fingers before he could shove the dirt in his mouth. “That is not for eating!”
Bending over, she set Ju-ju on her back and pulled his carrying wrap tight around her body, just as she’d always seen her parents do. Straightening, she could now see the landspeeder–flashy and yellow–pull up in front of her parents. All the farmhands had gathered around it, too. Lauren frowned–that green-skinned Falleen, Annaz, was the only person who ever came to the farm with hired guns.
&
nbsp; Captain Evon watched as Brand’s full lips compressed into a thin line. “Annaz and her henchmen killed your parents, and all their workers, after your mother refused to pay a protection fee to the Malandro syndicate. You managed to get out with your baby brother, and lived with your gran for a few years, until a fever took her.”
Brand narrowed her eyes and the finger on her blaster curled around the trigger, but he was still alive, so Howl pressed on. “Ju-ju took ill next. There was a cure; you just didn’t have the money to pay Malandro for it. So you took a job. Boosted a speeder. Got caught. Landed in jail. By the time you got you, your little brother was dead.”
Evon set the datapad on the desk and leaned back in his chair. “Lauren disappeared after that.” He raised an eyebrow. “Have i missed anything?”
Brand tightened the grip on her blaster; Howl ignored it.
“A few years later the Empire showed up and tried to bring their version of order to Tangenine. They just didn’t realize how deeply imbedded Malandro was. It’s not unheard of, the Empire turning to bounty hunters, but it was a desperate move, and desperation sometimes breeds opportunity. That’s about when Brand pops up; a bounty hunter who took jobs almost exclusively against Malandro.” Giving her a wry smile, Howl waved lazily at himself. “At least until recently.”
The Falleen jerked her head up in surprise. “Who let you in here?”
Brand raised her blaster. “Hands where I can see them.”
“Wait!” Annaz froze in the act of pressing the comm button under her desk. “This is a place of business; you can’t just barge in here–”
Brand lunged forward and jerked Annaz’s arm out from under the desk. Holstering her blaster, the bounty hunter pulled out a long, black, serrated blade and buried it up to the hilt in the Falleen’s green hand, pinning it to the desk.
She wasn’t being needlessly cruel–which would be no less than Annaz deserved; Brand knew that the surge of pain would overwhelm any attempt the Falleen could make to release pheromones in an attempt to subdue her attacker.
Annaz shrieked and tried to pull out the knife with her free hand, but Brand’s blaster was back out and trainer on her. “Move, and you’ll lose that arm for good.”
“Who sent you?” Blood oozed from the Falleen’s pinned hand, and she was gasping between her words. “What do you want?”
Brand tugged off her hood.
She regarded Annaz carefully, wanting to savor this moment. The Falleen stared up at Brand, her flint black eyes holding no hint of recognition.
“You don’t know who I am.”
“Should I?” The Falleen hissed through gritted teeth.
“I remember the families of everyone I kill.” Brand fired a shot into Annaz’s knee. The Falleen wailed incoherently as Brand aimed her blaster between the woman’s eyes.
“No!” Annaz held up a shaking hand between the blaster and her face. “What do you want? Credits?”
Brand’s gloved finger curled around the blaster’s trigger.
“Please! Don’t! I can give you anything! A new life even!”
“You already gave me that.”
Captain Evon took another sip. Brand still had the blaster pointed at him, but if he was going to die, it might as well be with the taste of good whiskey in his mouth.
“If you wouldn’t mind humoring me a bit longer before you shoot me, I’ve been wondering, once you got your revenge on Annaz, why did you keep picking up bounties?” He swirled the liquid in his glass before taking another sip. “Not to come off as maudlin, but why me?” Evon eyed the woman before him as she furrowed her brows, quietly considering his words.
To a casual bystander, Brand would have been mistaken for a vagrant on any world. Her gray trousers were loose and worn, with assorted bulging cargo pockets. But beneath her tattered old cloak, the simple black blouse under a maroon, hip length jacket in pristine condition gave the lie to Brand’s carefully cultivated shabby appearance.
Brand spoke, drawing his attention back to her carefully neutral face.
“Things were turning sour with the Empire. I needed off planet, and this was my ticket.” She shrugged, meeting his gaze fully. “It’s just business; nothing personal.”
“Well, you’ll excuse me if I do take it at least slightly personally.” Angling his face up, Evon gazed at the vaulted, marbled, ceiling. “You know what’s amazing? Office like this for an Imp administrator,” he jutted his chin at the snowing Governor, “on a back-world planet lie Allst Prime, and there’s a city full of half-naked kids just outside the gates, digging through trash heaps for junk to sell or trade so they can get a bite to eat.
“If you shoot me, Brand, you’re siding with that system. And you know as well as I do the Empire is, at heart, no different than Malandro.”
“You saying the Rebellion is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t speak for the Alliance as a whole.” The captain laced his fingers together in front of him, resting them comfortably on his stomach. “But you know Twilight Company is different. Besides, if you kill me, who’ll take care of the new recruits?”
“Fresh meat’s not my problem.”
A large belly laugh rumbled from Evon as he swept his booted feet atop the desk.
The bounty hunter furrowed her brows together and the blaster wavered, just a little.
“I’ve been watching you ever since you joined us at Veron. Oh sure, you tried to keep your distance–at least at first–but when we picked up that load of recruits off Dorvalla, I noticed you hovered.”
“I did no–”
Captain Evon raised a hand. “I don’t mean like a momma bird with her chicks. That’d be too obvious for your liking. More like a nexy supervising her cubs on their first hunt. You only stepped in to keep someone from getting hurt. And before you say it was just part of your cover to get at me, why don’t you explain what happened out there today?”
Brand tackled the Mirialan boy to the ground just as the All Terrain Scout Transport’s bolt sizzled into the tree behind them, blasting it to pieces.
“Hey Brand! I’ve been looking for you.” Lylee Anaraku grinned as a showed of wood splinters rained over them.
Brand rolled off him with a grunt. “Seems to me like you should have been looking out for the walker.”
“Pshhh.” Lylee waved his blaster dismissively toward the maneuvering AT-ST. “That stalker doesn’t have a chance with you around.” The gleeful curved of his lips made the young man’s black diamond cheek markings spread out across his yellow-green skin.
“That what we’re calling scout walkers now? Stalkers?” Brand gazed back across the heavily forested battlefield before them, trying to reacquire her target. “What happens if I’m not around?”
“I heard Briala call them that.” Peering up over the log, Lylee aimed his blaster at an approaching Imperial. “And of course, you’ll be around. You always survive!” He aimed at another Imp and squeezed the trigger. “Speaking of Bria, she’s got a card deck, and once we mop up here, we’re going to play a game of Lifters back on the Thunderstrike–”
Brand jerked him back down as another blaster bolt singed by where his head had been just a moment before.
Lylee’s eyes, green as a norango leaf, glinted with barely contained mischief. “Want to join us for a game?”
Grunting, Brand pushed past him and crawled farther down the log. She’d found her target.
“Come on, Brand, it’ll be fun! We can be partners–work out hand signals to tell each other what other suits we have, how many tricks we can take...”
The boy’s voice and the rest of the battle faded to the background. She raised her blaster and lined it up squarely on the backlit profile of Captain Evon, not twenty meters from her. He was bent over the body of Twilight Company’s Forward Air Controller, Cait, yelling into the receiver as he called for fire, directing the X-wings to their target. The FAC stared back at Brand with lifeless eyes; a dry smear of blood across her ashen lips was the only evidence
of her trauma.
“Brand!” Lylee’s strangled shout was followed by a meaty thud. Brand whirled around, and shot the Imp towering over the boy.
Not another one...
She dropped to Lylee’s side.
“You better not die on me, kid.” She pulled off his cloth head covering to get a look at the blood oozing from the back of his head. “You owe me a game of Lifters.”
Howl’s boots thudded back onto the floor as he sat up.
“You’re making me tired. Please sit.” He indicated the soft chair next to Brand once again. “We need to discuss your position in Twilight Company. Now I was thinking–”
“I’m not joining the Rebellion.” Brand’s frown deepened.
“I’m not asking you to.” Howl leaned over the desk. “I’m asking you to actually join Twilight Company.”
Brand straightened her finger off the trigger.
“Of course, you’ll have to renege on that contract the Empire’s got on my head.” Evon grabbed his datapad again, swiped the screen, and pointed at his own bounty.
“Ignore a payout and make an enemy of the Imps, just so I could be one of your subordinate commanders?” Brand shook her head. “You must be crazy.”
“I would never ask that.” He waved his hand before him as if the very idea was preposterous. “That’s not who you are. I don’t want you to change for us, Brand. We need you as you are. All I want is unswerving loyalty–not to the Alliance, and not even to me–but to the people out there, the ones you saved today. The ones you’re gonna play cards with when we get back to the ship.” Howl punctuated his words with a nod toward the door. “The ones who already think you’re one of them. And in return we’ll give you the same.”
He could see her weighing the words and the offer, and what it must have meant to someone who’d been a hired blaster for so long–
Brand suddenly picked up the drink before her and stared at it for a long moment, mumbling inaudibly “and I will have to make sure they are pruned and tended to,” before downing it in one gulp.
“Don’t think this means I won’t collect your bounty.” Holstering her blaster, she took a seat, and held her glass out for more. “It’s just not high enough yet.”
Inbrief Page 1