The crystal swamps were no place to ride swoops, much less race them. Yet they tore through the underbrush, over the scalding water. In places, they had cruelly jockeyed for position, shoving and kicking at one another, as if they were both immortals. Dengar had heard the screams of applause from the crowds, and for a few brief minutes he felt invincible, racing beside the great Han Solo, a man who like himself had never been beaten.
On the last stretch of the race, both men had opted to take low approaches through the brush over the water, hoping to boost their speed. Dengar had hunched down, smokey-white crystal blades ripping past him in a blur, the water before him bubbling and steaming, the smell of sulfur rising to his nostrils, hoping that no geysers would spout open before him to boil him alive. He dodged one crystalline blade too late, and it pricked his ear, slicing off the tip so that blood dribbled down his neck.
Then Dengar came screaming out of the underbrush and saw that Han Solo was neither in front of him nor to either side, and Dengar’s heart soared with elation in the hopes of winning—just as Han Solo’s swoop dropped from above, slamming the stabilizer fin into the back of Dengar’s head, washing Dengar’s face in the flames of Solo’s engines.
Dengar’s own swoop dove nose first into the water, throwing Dengar free. His last memory of the incident was watching himself, gliding over the blue steaming waters, head-first toward the blades of a crystal tree.
I’m dead, he’d realized too late.
The doctors said that his helmet had saved him. It had snapped off most of the crystal blades that otherwise would have skewed him through the brain. As it was, only one blade had made that fateful entrance. The health corp workers had pulled him from the brush, punctured with a dozen wounds.
They had operated. His wounds were so grievous, that only the Empire could have restored him so well. But they judged the risky operations to be a good investment. Dengar had superb reflexes, which could well be put to the service of the Empire.
So they closed his brain, removing those parts that he would no longer need. They’d sewn the punctures closed in his torso, inserting new neural nets in the arms and legs. They grew new skin to cover what he’d lost on his face. They gave him new eyes to see with, new ears to hear. All of the news nets proclaimed his recovery “miraculous.”
And after he’d healed, they began training him to become an assassin, using dangerous mnemiotic drugs that left him with a flawless memory while being susceptible to hallucinations.
Dengar shook the frightened little man over his head, shouted, “You call that fair? You call this fair?”
“No!” Solo shouted, but Dengar didn’t believe that he’d had a change of heart. “No, please!”
“Shut your mouth!” Dengar growled, then carried the man a hundred meters to a steeper embankment. He pulled a concussion grenade from the clip at his belt, shoved it in Solo’s gaping mouth, and pressed the detonate button.
For ten seconds, he held Solo, frozen.
Then he ran and tossed him over the cliff, thinking, I want you to see how it feels, to go flying helplessly to your death.
He pulled his blaster, shot Solo twice in midair.
The concussion grenade exploded before Solo hit the ground, and if anyone from the valleys saw it, they would have thought it was only the light from a farrow bird as it swooped on its prey.
Dengar stood for a long moment, breathing the air, letting his head clear. It seemed to him that a fog was lifting, that confusion was draining from him. For a moment he’d been dazed. For a moment he thought he’d killed Han Solo, but now he realized that no, it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been Solo—just another imposter.
A landspeeder crested a hill, its engines suddenly growling loud. Either Dengar hadn’t been paying attention or the sound of the landspeeder’s engines had been almost completely cut off by the mountains.
Dengar suddenly realized that he must have lost track of time. He must have been standing there for at least half an hour. That often happened to him after assassinations. In any case, the two stormtroopers had returned, bringing the dancer.
Before the speeder could stop, one of the stormtroopers jumped out, reaching for his sidearm as he watched Dengar.
Dengar pulled his own heavy blaster and aimed at the stormtrooper. “I wouldn’t try that—not if I wanted to live.”
“Identify yourself!” the stormtrooper said, his voice comm making it sound as if he were talking into a box. His hand remained near his weapon.
“They call me Payback,” Dengar said, using the nickname he thought would be most familiar around here. “Imperial Assassin, Grade One. Now put your hands on your head.”
The stormtrooper put his hands on his head, while the other shut down the speeder and got out. Dengar motioned them both to stand together.
The stormtroopers seemed calm even while surrendering, and Dengar wondered if their faces would look so calm if they were unmasked.
The dancing girl, Manaroo, was indeed lovely. In the console lights of the speeder, he could see her well. She wore a silky outfit of silver over her light blue skin, and luminous tattoos of moons and stars glowed on her wrists and ankles. Her eyes shone in the darkness.
“Who is your target?” one of the stormtroopers asked, obviously thinking that this was an Imperially sanctioned hit.
Dengar wanted them to keep that impression. “Kritkeen. The hit has already been carried out, so there’s nothing you can do to save him.”
“Kritkeen is a COMPNOR officer!” one of the stormtroopers protested. “The Empire wouldn’t sanction such a hit! Where did you get your orders?”
“This isn’t an Imperially sanctioned hit,” Dengar admitted, since the stormtrooper had asked. “I took this job freelance. My employer said he represented a consortium of free beings who wanted to put a stop to the COMPNOR Redesign efforts. I’ve been hired to eradicate ten of your COMPNOR officers.”
The stormtroopers looked at one another, and Dengar saw them tense, ready to spring. He wondered if his threat sounded as ludicrous to them as it did to him. If he really had planned to kill ten COMPNOR officers, he never would have let them know of the threat, but now that he’d spoken the lie, Dengar saw that it would make the Empire worry. They’d have to put some effort into hunting Dengar down. Just as he wanted.
“Now, remove your helmets and toss them into the speeder, then throw in your weapons.”
Both stormtroopers complied. Once they were disarmed and could no longer call for backup, Dengar waved his blaster at them, urging them toward the steep-sided valley below. “Go over the edge, down there, and keep running!”
The stormtroopers hesitated, perhaps fearing that he’d shoot them in the back, so he fired at their feet, sent them running.
He went to the speeder. The dancing girl, Manaroo, watched him with terrified eyes. Her hands were cuffed in front of her. Dengar lifted her hands in the air, held his blaster to the crude chain links, and fired.
“You killed him? You killed Kritkeen?” Manaroo asked. Her voice was strong and gravelly, and seemed strange coming from a woman with such delicate grace.
“He’s dead,” Dengar said, hopping into the driver’s seat of the speeder. He fired the engines, swung the speeder around, and headed back toward the city.
“Then COMPNOR will leave? Abandon their Redesign efforts?” she sounded hopeful.
“No,” Dengar said. He realized that the peaceful people of Aruza had no experience with armies or war. “It doesn’t work that way. When the Empire learns of Kritkeen’s assassination, the next man in line for command will assume his duties, until the Empire sends a new officer. You’ll have another general, harder than Kritkeen, here within a few weeks.”
“Then what can we do?” she asked.
Dengar considered. These people had no weapons, no skill in fighting. “Flee the planet. You’re scheduled for processing tomorrow. Flee the planet tonight.”
“But the Empire has destroyed our ships! There’s no escape!”
He looked back, saw her watching him. There was a look of awe in her eyes, a look of respect for him that he hadn’t seen in anyone’s face for years. “You could save me,” she said. “You could take me where you are going.” She studied his face. “Are you a good man?”
It was an odd question, one Dengar had never been asked before. There was a time in his life when he would have said yes. But the Empire had cut away part of his brain, the part that let him distinguish good from evil, and he wondered … He reached up, unconsciously pulling the wraps up above his neck—not to hide the scars from his burns, but to make sure that his cybernetic links were covered. “Ma’am, how could I be a good man? I’m not even sure if I’m a man anymore.”
Dengar crested the hill, hit the next valley, turned off the road toward a stand of trees. His own ship was secreted ahead, up through the brush. He’d known he’d have to evacuate quickly.
He’d planned to just drop this woman off in the brush. To do anything more would be inconvenient. But his ship—an old Corellian JumpMaster 5000—did have some extra space. He could drop her off somewhere, if it was worth the effort.
He pulled up behind a screen of trees. His ship, Punishing One, sat in the dark under the limbs, sheltered by a camouflage net. The JumpMaster had been built as a scouting and service vehicle for untamed worlds. It was small—designed for a single pilot, with enough room for a passenger or a bit of freight. The U-shaped vessel had some decent weaponry—proton torpedoes, a quad blaster, and a mini ion cannon. Dengar had been flying it for ten years. For a long time he had imagined that he was used to being alone, and he often defended his solitary tendencies by claiming to himself that he was not fit company anyway. But right now he ached, and he realized that he would appreciate company.
“Let’s go,” Dengar said. “You’re coming with me.”
“Where?” she asked, looking for his ship, unable to spot it in the dark.
“Anywhere but here. We’ll figure it out later.”
He grabbed her wrist, hurried to the Punishing One. He didn’t bother ripping off the camouflage netting. Instead he dodged under it, opened a door, pulled the girl in with him. In a moment, he was at the controls. He had to break free of this planet’s gravity well with-getting shot down. He hoped that no one knew of the assassination yet.
He fired his engines, screamed low over the trees, building speed. He checked the heads-up holo display. A single Star Destroyer sat in orbit, and he could see it up ahead over the horizon on his left. He accelerated away from it at full speed, ordered his navicomputer to set a course for his first jump.
“Better get back to the stateroom and buckle in,” Dengar said over his shoulder. “We could be in for a rough ride.”
The Star Destroyer sent a squadron of TIE interceptors scrambling after him, and Dengar raised his rear deflectors. But the Punishing One had more speed than outside appearances could account for, and he accelerated into the blue-white depths of hyperspace just as the TIE interceptors broke into firing range.
Then they were soaring free. Dengar went to the stateroom, found Manaroo on her knees, slumped halfway into her bunk. She was weeping.
Dengar stood watching her, testing himself for feeling, trying to remember why people cried. “There’s food and drink if you want them.” He waved toward the food unit and beverage dispenser.
“Can we call my parents? Tell them where I’ve gone?”
“Yes,” Dengar said.
He stood for a minute, thinking he should say more.
“Dengar,” she said, looking up at him curiously. Her face was round, and in the lights he saw that her skin and hair were a paler blue than most Aruzans’. Her tattoos still glittered, and she was lightly perfumed. Her body was a dancer’s body, lithe and strong. “Why did you kill Kritkeen tonight? If the Empire will keep on destroying our people, then what does this avail? It changes nothing.”
Dengar could think of a dozen reasons: He did it for the money he’d been paid. He did it because Kritkeen was scum who deserved to die. He did it because the man looked like Han Solo. He chose to tell part of the truth, perhaps because he was so seldom free to do so. In his line of business, lying was a way of life. “I did it because I’m looking for a man, and this is the only way I know how to get close to him.”
“Who are you looking for?” Manaroo asked, her curiosity piqued.
“His name is Han Solo. Have you ever heard of him?”
There was a small chance that she’d ever heard of Han Solo on this backward world, but Dengar believed in taking chances. Still, he wasn’t surprised when she said, “No.”
“He’s a smuggler with a price on his head. He likes fast ships and heavy blasters. I’ve been hunting him for over a year. Twice—on Tatooine and then again on Ord Mantell—I caught up with him, just in time to see him fly off in his ship, the Millennium Falcon. I’m really tired of getting fried in his exhaust.”
“Do you think Kritkeen knew where he was?”
“No,” Dengar said. “But me and a lot of other bounty hunters set out on Solo’s trail a while back, and we haven’t found him anywhere in the galaxy.”
“So, you think he’s crashed on some unknown world, or hiding on an interdicted planet, like Aruza?”
“I heard a rumor about some hotshot Rebel pilot that blew up the Imperial Death Star. I checked the records. Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, was there. He’s with the Rebellion, and he’s hiding from more than just us bounty hunters.”
“I still don’t understand. So you know where he is?”
“No,” Dengar said, and he wondered if he had revealed too much. He didn’t feel much fear anymore, not since the operations. Still, he was trained to silence, and he found that he’d been speaking perhaps too openly. But he’d already told her half his secrets, and if she revealed the rest, well, he could always kill her. “Only the Rebellion knows where he is, and they’re protecting him. So I had to find a way to join them, but I doubt they’ll take me in too easily. I am an Imperial assassin. But Kritkeen has been one of the Rebellion’s most vexing foes, and there are plenty more like him that I can take care of. Once the Empire puts a bounty on my head and the Rebellion decides that I’m the Empire’s enemy, I suspect they’ll offer me asylum. And once I’m in the Rebellion, I’ll find Han Solo.”
“You’re sowing the seeds of your own destruction,” Manaroo said, and her bright black eyes looked frightened. “The Empire will hunt you down.”
Dengar laughed. “Well, I’ve got nothing to lose. Tell you what, why don’t you lie down in that bunk, get some sleep.” Dengar yawned. He’d become accustomed to Aruza’s night cycles, and right now, his body said it was past his bedtime.
A few days later he left Manaroo on some obscure backwater world, giving her a few hundred credits to buy passage wherever, and thought little more of her for the next few months. Though he flew the skies alone, for once he did not dwell upon his loneliness. He was consumed by his search for Han Solo. He cruised the rim of the galaxy looking for tough dives where smugglers and assassins did business, but he never caught wind of Solo. Twice he sent messages back to Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine to report his progress.
Five more COMPNOR Redesign officials met brutal ends. Four assassins tried to kill Dengar, and Dengar messed them up for it. Then things got quiet. No one would risk coming after him anymore.
The name “Payback” was mentioned in hushed whispers when he entered a casino, and often, on strange dirty little worlds, he would look down a street to find some mother and child staring at him, their eyes gleaming with respect. Sometimes, someone would even call his name, cheering him, and he would look back at them blankly, in wonder.
The planet Toola was little more than a collection of mining camps, a dark place, cold, distant from its sun. The locals, a species called Whiphids, were large creatures covered with white fur in the winter which changed to brown in the summer. The huge Whiphids, with their gleaming tusks, had only the barest technology. The
wilder ones still hunted with stone-bladed spears, while warriors closer to the mines sought out metal war axes and even vibroblades smuggled in from off-world. The Whiphids did most of the work in the mines by hand. They were a tough, independent, barbaric people. Dengar liked them.
So it was that Dengar found himself in a card game with a clean woman (a rarity in the mining camp), dressed in a nice jumpsuit.
They sat in a Whiphid hut made of leather sewn over the rib cage of some giant beast. The female Whiphids were singing around a roaring fire, while the smaller males were roasting snow demons, basting them with some sweet-smelling sauce made from lichen. The oily smoke hung overhead like clouds.
Dengar’s card partner, a sharp-faced woman with blond hair and searching eyes, leaned forward during the game and whispered, “I don’t understand, Payback. You’re an Imperially trained assassin, so why have you turned against the Empire, knowing that they’ll kill you?”
Dengar sighed, as he had a hundred times in the past few months. “It’s the right thing to do. I have to stand against the Empire, even if I do it alone.
“I think …” Dengar said, embellishing his tale for the first time, “that I decided I had to quit when they asked me to kill the holy children at Asrat.”
“And they are …?”
“Orphans who live in a temple, their lives dedicated to good. They denounced the Emperor, and vowed to ‘deny him love and sustenance,’ as they put it. They were trying to formally withdraw from the Empire. And in the Empire, rebellion—even from children—is not tolerated.
“So, I had to either kill the children or leave the Empire. I chose to leave.”
“And what of COMPNOR Redesign. Why do you fight it?” the woman asked.
“Because they are the most thoroughly evil branch of the Empire. Few men deserve a brutal end at an assassin’s hands, but many such deserving individuals can be found in Redesign.”
Tales of the Bounty Hunters Page 9