Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin Anderson

  The Pup started to vibrate. Bossk must be powering it up from the Hound’s bridge.

  “Much,” Tinian shouted without getting up. “Thank … y’choo!”

  “Shake yourselves,” Bossk ordered. “Turn your ventilation and filters on full. That will help.”

  Chen announced that he’d found an air intake.

  Tinian squinted. Chen contorted himself in front of the intake, sweeping every centimeter of his body across it three or four times. Then he started picking half-dried detritus off his fur.

  If he wasn’t going to stand on protocol, she wasn’t either. She skinned out of her black shipsuit and flapped it in front of the vent, then shook her hair hard. At first, her sneezing and weeping got worse instead of better. Finally, they slacked off.

  She cracked one eye open. It no longer stung. She exhaled heavily.

  Chenlambec sat at the Pup’s controls, studiously eyeing the board. Tinian slipped back into her shipsuit and then flopped down beside him. “Are you—choo!—ready?”

  Chen growled assent.

  Bossk’s voice answered out of the comm, “I will launch you in thirty seconds. All of your systems check perfectly.”

  Bossk smelled victory. After the Pup accelerated well away from the Hound, he touched a control to arm the flame carpet warhead’s detonator. Chenlambec had cocked the obah gas dispenser’s trigger by switching the Pup’s ventilators to full power.

  Now he swiveled back to his navicomputer to make final calculations for his own approach. He keyed in a course that would take him close to the Wookiee colony.

  As soon as the Pup fired and he gassed Chen and Tinian—their nasal membranes would be exquisitely sensitive, an unplanned dividend of the pollen test—he would dive. One swoop ought to draw the cocky Solo offplanet to chase him.

  He rotated his eyes inward. Here I am, Scorekeeper. Watch me.

  Chen held the Pup on course for several minutes before Tinian finally stopped sneezing. Her nose still twitched. Inside, it felt as if someone had scraped it raw.

  On second thought, she smelled explosives that shouldn’t be on board. Alarmed, she unbuckled, stood up, and leaned close to Chen’s massive head. “Something’s wrong,” she murmured into the fur on one side of his neck. “I’m going to run a systems check.”

  He wurfled soft assent.

  They spent several minutes running through the Pup’s limited board. Nothing turned up. By then, Tinian’s hands shook. Something was terribly wrong, and she couldn’t find it.

  Chen tapped his relay to Flirt, then flicked on the sideband and started transmitting again.

  His contact howled back, almost indistinguishable over sideband static. Tinian envisioned a prison compound full of Wookiees that was about to explode in violence.

  She hoped the Pup wasn’t about to explode, too. She didn’t think Bossk would sacrifice his scout ship just to kill them. What else could it be?

  As Chen called instructions into the pickup, a verbal-visual transmission appeared over the main board. DEEPEST SECURITY BREACHED—I THINK, I’M FAKING A SYSTEMS MALFUNCTION NEAR ONE MEAT LOCKER.

  It was from Flirt, still under Bossk’s navicomputer.

  Chenlambec howled.

  “Wait!” Tinian cried. “Override that program. Run a check on the Pup—now! What did Bossk do to prepare it for this mission?”

  Bossk cackled softly at Tinian’s startled cry to her partner. Too late for that, Human. He intended to watch his victims approach the Wookiee colony, but for several minutes yet, they would be too far out to fire the flame carpet.

  A danger light blinked at one end of his console. “What is it?” he asked. “Not another false alarm, I hope.”

  “Nothing wrong, no false alarm,” answered the Hound. “ExTen-Dee lives in a meat locker, inside the skinning hold.”

  What? Bossk clicked his foreclaws over his palm. It would’ve been just like that undersized human to tamper with the X10-D’s circuitry. Humans had nasty, slender fingers.

  Or was this one of the Hound’s idiot bugs?

  He confirmed that the Pup could not fire for several minutes, then slipped off his seat and trotted aft.

  • • •

  Flirt’s voice shrieked over the relay. “He’s off the bridge! Hurry—if there’s anything you need to do, you’re not monitored!”

  “You just keep running those checks.” Tinian’s eyes had stopped watering, but her nose twitched. She couldn’t identify the explosive she smelled; it must be an exotic, and that worried her. “Chen, talk to your friend down there. I’m going to start at one end of this scout and check all the circuits I can get access to. Something’s wrong, and Flirt’s not even trying to help.”

  “I am, too!” exclaimed the thin voice. “Bossk just walked into the cargo bay—he’s walking right up to the meat locker I set leaking—he’s standing in front of it—”

  Bossk located X10-D standing in his corner, obviously inactive. Next he checked his meat lockers. Fluid dribbled out of a water nipple down the inner wall of the far left unit.

  Growling, he whacked a control at mid-bulkhead. That shut down a security circuit that would normally activate the lockers’ energy gates when prey inside tripped them. He grabbed a hydrospanner and stepped in.

  “—He’s getting inside!” Flirt squeaked. “Hound, reactivate that energy gate! Hound, please? Hound—”

  Chenlambec roared at the pickup.

  “All right!” Hiccuping, Flirt switched programs. “He reinstalled your energy guns. Your torpedo launcher is operable again, on heat-seeker status—”

  Torpedo. Explosives. “What’s the warhead?” Tinian interrupted.

  Flirt answered seconds later. “It’s called a flame carpet,” she sang. “And you’ve—”

  Chenlambec’s furious roar drowned out Flirt’s next words. Tinian recoiled too. Flame carpet warheads were appalling weapons manufactured by one of I’att Armaments’ less scrupulous competitors. Bossk had sent her and Chenlambec to set air aflame, sear lungs and skin, shrivel fur—

  Flirt had kept talking. Tinian shoved gruesome imagery to the back of her mind. “What was that, Flirt? Please repeat.”

  “I said,” Flirt answered in a mincing voice, “that he also installed a dispensing canister into your vent system. It’s full of a nerve poison called obah gas. You’d better dump it.”

  “Yeah—but first we’ve got to find it!” Obah gas? Nerve poison? Tinian never would have smelled that. Bossk had triple-crossed them. Pollen, a flame carpet warhead, and now this.

  Chen leaped out of his seat. He dug his claws under the ventilation duct cover. To Tinian, the Nashtah Pup suddenly felt claustrophobic, with too little air inside.

  “Thanks, Flirt.” She breathed slowly and deliberately. “Can you still get Bossk?”

  “He’s working inside the locker. He found the leak. I can’t … quite … get Hound to cooperate. He’s very strong-willed. I’d like him if he weren’t in our way,” she added brightly.

  At least Bossk wasn’t on the bridge, watching.

  What could Tinian do with a flame carpet warhead? She’d never dreamed she would have this responsibility. She must launch and destroy it so that no one would ever use it. It was irreversibly set on heat seeker status.

  Maybe Bossk meant to gas them, then put the Pup on autopilot and flame the Wookiee compound?

  She didn’t have time to guess. She must decide what to do. She could send Bossk and his Hound’s Tooth straight to the Trandoshans’ Scorekeeper. Lacking air to co-fuel its onboard flammables, that torpedo would impact the Hound like a huge, heavy projectile.

  No. The Pup had no hyperdrive. Destroying the Hound would strand her and Chen in Imperial space.

  She knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. The answer ought to be obvious.

  The Pup’s approach vector carried them out of the planet’s shadow. Lomabu’s sun rose above the world’s blue crescent.

  The sun! She knew it was obvious.

  “Brace yourself,
Chen,” Tinian exclaimed. She rotated the Pup 120 degrees, aimed the torpedo launcher’s snout directly at Lomabu’s sun, and fired. The Pup lurched. Chen hit his head on an overhead and howled.

  Tinian held her breath and tracked the warhead. After a quick three-count, its onboard rockets kicked on. It streaked sunward. Several hundred degrees of heat wouldn’t harm anything there.

  Grandfather I’att would have smiled.

  Evidently Bossk hadn’t seen her launch the warhead, because nothing happened immediately. Tinian nosed the Pup groundward. “Chen, how’s it going in there?” They still had far too much altitude to eject. If Bossk gassed them, they were trapped.

  Chen stood with one long, hairy arm jammed up the ventilation duct. He turned his head, pushed his arm harder, and groaned.

  Tinian bit her lip. If Bossk got back to the bridge, he would know she’d fired the warhead. He would know she’d betrayed him, and warheads weren’t easy to procure. “Flirt? Are you getting close?”

  “Maybe,” chirped the little droid. “He’s still working.”

  “Keep Bossk off the bridge, or it’s our lives.”

  “I’m trying!” Flirt insisted. “If you’d leave me alone—”

  “Will do,” Tinian answered. As Chenlambec twisted a piece of metal off one console and shoved it up the ventilation duct, Tinian steered toward colonial space.

  This time they approached from the east, over water. Scanning a shimmery blue horizon, Tinian spotted the four looming guard towers.

  The Imperials would be on intruder watch this time. As if to confirm Tinian’s thought, a blast of turbolaser fire flashed from one tower. It barely missed the Pup.

  Tinian hated being shot at. Gulping, she swept both hands over its board. “Chen, where are our shields?”

  He howled.

  “None?” she cried.

  A grizzled Wookiee spotted the tower guards firing. Whispers inside the compound had told him to watch for an attack. He sprinted toward the southeast guard tower. All around him, Wookiee slaves dropped their loads and attacked their overseers.

  A human arm flew. Approval thundered from a hundred Wookiee throats.

  The prisoners drove their guards into the tower. The Empire may have found the Wookiees of Kashyyyk defenseless, but it had taught them to fight back.

  A louder roar swept in from over the sea. Imperial lasers tracked it for several blasts. Then the gunners swiveled their turbolasers inward. A long metal snout pointed into the compound.

  At this range, the gunners didn’t miss. Soil, sand, and duracrete—and a dozen prisoners—vaporized in a fiery flash. The shock wave knocked the ancient Wookiee to his knees.

  He scrambled around the raw new crater toward the guard tower. The turbolaser could not track him there. Other surviving Wookiees grappled with Imperials along its duracrete wall.

  “Surrender,” boomed a voice out of the guard tower. “Surrender now, and you will not be harmed.”

  The Wookiee slaves answered with angry, hopeless roars and kept fighting.

  A sortie of heavily armed troopers spilled out of the tower’s main door. They drove the enraged Wookiees out into the open. Craning his neck to look up at the tower, the old Wookiee stared down a turbolaser’s muzzle.

  A human in a black officer’s uniform stood beside it. “Send off a distress signal!” he screeched at an underling wearing khaki. “Get help—get Desnand—immediately!”

  Chenlambec still stood groping inside the ventilator, utterly stymied. He could not disengage the gas dispenser; Flirt had not managed to trap Bossk; and his shoulder throbbed as if he had torn the rotator cuff trying to squeeze one more centimeter of length into his reach.

  “They’re transmitting!” Tinian leaned against a throttle rod. The scout ship tilted. Chen braced himself to pull g’s standing up, but he did not pull his arm out of the ventilator.

  He roared a question at Flirt.

  “Easily,” Flirt chirped. “Hound likes jamming transmissions. He told me—”

  “Have you got Bossk?” Tinian interrupted.

  “Still working on it,” Flirt sang. “Leave me alo-one.”

  “Forget jamming, then,” exclaimed Tinian. “We’ll—”

  “Oops!” chirruped Flirt’s voice.

  Chen snatched out his arm.

  Flirt sounded sheepish. “We’ve got alarms going off all over the ship!”

  Chen pounded the bulkhead, beyond frustration. There was nothing he could do now. Bossk would leap out of the locker and run to the bridge. Then Chen and Tinian would start breathing obah gas. He shouted at her to steer the Pup inland and prepare to eject. They’d be stranded but alive.

  “They’ve still got six hundred Wookiees pinned down by that turbolaser,” exclaimed Tinian. “I could blow out the main gun before Bossk got us.” The Pup lurched as she positioned it to make another pass.

  For such a small thing, she surprised him with her courage. Chen sank into his chair.

  Another alarm? Startled, Bossk dropped his hydrospanner. “ExTen-Dee,” he shouted, “get over here!”

  As the big droid rolled toward him, a white security light near the top of the locker blinked back on.

  Bossk lunged for the locker’s edge. Energy sizzled around him. It threw him back inside with scorched scales and a bruised forehead.

  “Deactivate that force lock!” he shouted.

  X10-D rolled one more meter forward. He hesitated as if listening to another voice, and then swiveled in place. He made a full turn. Then another.

  Then he returned to his spot near the bulkhead.

  “Wait!” Flirt exclaimed.

  “What?” Tinian held course. In five more seconds, she’d have that guard tower in range.

  “I’ve got him!” cried Flirt. “The Hound just gave me security clear—”

  “Don’t talk!” Tinian exclaimed. “Hold him!” The little droid must’ve finally hit the right code permutation. “Use ExTen-Dee to keep that locker secure!”

  “I will!”

  Tinian squeezed a firing stud as Chen put a Wookiee’s strength into the control yoke. An energy flash lit the Pup’s cabin.

  “Yes!” Flirt squeaked. Then her voice dropped in pitch. She almost purred. “Hound, you are magnificent. You are wonderful. Full command recognition,” she reported to Chen and Tinian. “Hound,” she purred again, “double-seal that locker and keep ExTen-Dee on guard.”

  Chen swooped several hundred meters skyward. Wookiees scattered out of the fresh crater dug by the guards’ turbolaser blast. Imperials stood along the fences, raining small arms fire on their maddened slaves.

  The remaining turbolaser cannon tracked the Pup. Chenlambec jinked in all three dimensions, looping back. Closer … closer … Tinian held her breath …

  He fired. The tower exploded in a hail of gleaming fragments.

  Chenlambec pushed the throttle fully forward, toward open space and the Hound’s Tooth.

  Tinian concentrated on breathing slowly. Just a little farther … just a little longer. If Bossk escaped, he’d gas them in an instant. Even a malfunction could still paralyze or kill her.

  Wait. Wasn’t she unafraid of dying?

  She searched her feelings. She had missed Daye so deeply and desperately for so long that no other emotion began to fill her heart-emptiness. But she mattered to Chenlambec. She wanted to protect him in return.

  And she mattered to herself. She had talents and skills to contribute to the galactic struggle. The Rebels had lost Daye; if she fought on, she might help compensate for that loss.

  I’m sorry, Daye, she murmured as his face sprang into her mind. I want to be with you—but I’d like to live. You understand, don’t you?

  The Hound grew on the fore sensor screen.

  If she wanted to live, she’d better think through the next few minutes. That allergen, whatever it’d been, still floated all over the Hound’s Tooth. “Flirt,” she called, “something in the Hound’s air made Chen and me sick. Can you hold Bossk
and still do anything about counteracting it?”

  Flirt hesitated a moment, then called back, “It’s mekebve pollen. Strong histamine reaction in mammals but not reptiles. Hound just locked on his full air filtration for me. If you can wait a few hours, it’ll clear out.”

  “Not on your life,” muttered Tinian. She looked around the Nashtah Pup. “Chen, what could we use for breath masks?”

  He wurfled soft amusement.

  “Not for the nerve gas.” She punched his shoulder. “But we’re going back to a ship full of pollen.”

  He held up one arm and flicked its long underfur. His suggestion was long and complex.

  “Yeah,” she exclaimed. “Your fur attracts it like crazy—”

  By the time Flirt popped the Hound’s docking hatch, Chen and Tinian wore makeshift masks knotted from Tinian’s black shipsuit sleeves stuffed with Chen’s fur. Chen landed the Pup inside the Hound’s docking bay. Instantly, Tinian dove out. Her eyes streamed, but she could breathe. Chen pushed past her and sprinted up the corridor.

  Blinking hard, she locked down and sealed the Pup, leaving the obah gas canister for later. Then she followed Chen at a mad dash.

  Bossk struggled inside one meat locker, bouncing off the energy field and thrashing against interior walls with a Trandoshan’s tremendous strength. Chen stood outside the locker, one fist on his hip and the other hand holding his breath mask, laughing hysterically. The huge drone droid had stationed itself at a control board with one arm extended, anchoring the energy field’s activation switch “on.” The field was transparent, except when Bossk’s touch turned it to glimmering sparks.

  Chenlambec threw back his head. Tinian covered her ears and grinned as his victory cry rattled bulkheads.

  “Nice work, Flirt,” Tinian said aloud.

  A throaty feminine voice answered. “You’re welcome, Tinian.”

  “Flirt?” Incredulous, she turned a circle in place. Who was this?

  “What would you like next?” The voice sounded sultry enough to steam Bakuran butter newts.

  “It doesn’t sound like you.”

  The bulkhead laughed in a sexy contralto. “I’m using Hound’s voice simulator. Isn’t he wonderful?”