by Chuck Wendig
The woman shoots first.
The shot takes him in the stomach. He cries out, staggering backward as he tries to raise his own blaster—but the woman shoots again, and his weapon spins out of his hand. He clutches at his seared, smoldering middle.
She steps closer to him, revealing her face under the hood. A dark-eyed, steely glare awaits. He recognizes her from the shop that day. The scowl on her face is deep. The boy’s mother thrusts the pistol under his chin.
“I’ll ask one more time: Where is my son, Temmin?”
—
The boot presses down on the back of Temmin’s neck.
His hands are pulled taut behind his back, swaddled in chains and held fast with a pair of magnetic manacles. He tastes blood and dust.
“You stole from me,” Surat says, pressing down with his boot. Temmin tries not to cry out, but it hurts, and a sound escapes his throat without him meaning—a wounded-animal sound.
He’s here in Surat’s office. It’s a spare, severe room—red walls lined with manacles. In the middle, a desk whose surface is made from some Sullustan frozen in carbonite. On that desk is a blaster, a collection of quills in a cup, a bottle of ink. The room features only one other piece of furniture: a tall black cabinet, sealed tight with a maglock.
“I…didn’t…,” Temmin says. “It was an accident. I didn’t know—”
He’s yanked up off his feet. The Herglic does the lifting. Surat stands there in front of him, pursing his lips almost as if he wants to kiss the air. The Sullustan gangster runs an index finger under his own cheek flaps, flicking dirt away with thumb and fingertip. “You are lying to me, boy. And even if you were not lying, what does it matter? You have slighted me and that slight must be repaid in kind. Otherwise, how will that look?”
“It will look merciful—”
The Sullustan grabs Temmin by the throat. He squeezes. The blood starts to pound in Temmin’s temples as he wheezes and gurgles, trying desperately to catch a breath—his whole face starts to throb. Blackness drifts in at the edges of his vision like pools of spilled oil.
“The only Mercy I have ever had was a Corellian slave girl. She was nice to me. I was nice to her. Mostly.”
Then the criminal overlord lets go. Oxygen rushes back in through Temmin’s burning throat. He gasps and coughs, spit dangling from his lip.
The Herglic kicks him in the back of the knee and Temmin falls once more. And with his arms behind his back, the best he can do is take the hit on his shoulder so his head doesn’t snap against the hard metal floor.
“Let me tell you who I am,” Surat says. “So you know what I can do. I killed my own mother for daring to speak back to me. We lived in a wind-harvest tunnel on Sullust, and I threw her into the blades. When my father found out, he of course wanted to hurt me like I hurt her, but my father? He was a soft, pliable man. He tried to hit me and I cut his throat with a piece of kitchen cutlery. It was my brother that proved the greatest challenge. We fought for years. Back and forth, from the shadows. He was ruthless. A worthy challenger, Rutar was.” The Sullustan nods sagely, as if lost in memory. Suddenly he perks his head up and nods. “That’s him there.” He points to the desk. “He’s the one frozen in carbonite. Some say I learned that trick from the Empire, but I assure you—they learned it from me.”
“Please,” Temmin says, bubbles of saliva forming and popping on his lips. “Give me a chance to make it right. I can repay you. I can be in debt—”
“The question is, what can I take right now? An ear? A hand? My brother took my eye in our final battle—” Surat cocks his head so that the Sullustan’s one milky, ruined eye is pointed right at Temmin. “And that has become my way. My foes must leave having given something vital. Not just money. Credits are so crass. But something necessary. A piece of themselves offered and taken. What do you offer?”
“Not that, not that—you can take my shop, you can have my droids, I’ll give you back the weapon, anything. Let’s just…let’s talk it out. We can talk this out. Can’t we?”
Surat sighs. “I think the time for talk has passed.” And then he thrusts his finger up in the air and a big smile parts his strange face. “Ah! Yes. You do love to talk, don’t you? I shall take your tongue.”
Temmin gets his legs underneath him, tries to stand as he cries out in anger and fear. The Herglic knees him in the side and knocks him down.
The slick-skinned brute laughs.
Surat says, “Gor-kooda, take him to the cistern. I will get my things.” Then Surat saunters over to his cabinet. He pulls back a sleeve and reveals a bracelet, then waves the bracelet over the maglock. It pops.
As Gor-kooda the Herglic drags Temmin out of the room kicking and screaming, Surat removes a long surgical gown and begins to put it on. Humming as he does.
—
“This doesn’t seem essential.”
“It is.”
“He’s not our problem.”
“They’re going to cut out his tongue.”
“Oh, now you have a soft spot? I thought you only helped those who were—how did you put it? ‘Useful.’ ”
“The boy is useful. I believe he can furnish the repairs on my gun. Otherwise, I would leave him to his fate. Would you?”
Sinjir flinches at that. Again the questions hit him: What kind of man am I? Am I capable of walking on past? Am I different now, or the same? He changed that day on Endor. Something turned inside him. The short, sharp shock of losing everything made him a new person.
But to what end? Who is he now?
A coward, or someone bigger, someone better?
The two of them crouch down in the tunnels below the Alcazar, Surat’s cantina and criminal compound. After the bounty hunter hauled him up out of the dungeon he found himself in, they crept through this space looking for a way out—and there they happened upon voices in the other room. Surat, as he abused and threatened some young kid.
The shuffling of the Herglic’s feet approaches. With it come the boy’s grunts and bleats—plus the echoing sound of his feet kicking the floor and the walls as he struggles to escape.
“You first,” Jas hisses in Sinjir’s ear.
Then she shoves him out in front of the Herglic.
The Herglic: a huge, shiny creature. Tiny eyes in a massive head. No neck. Tiny teeth in a massive maw. No chin.
“Unnh?” the Herglic says.
Sinjir winces, then stabs out a foot to catch the beast in the knee: a common weak point among most humanoid beings. But it’s like kicking a tree. Thud. The Herglic just looks down, then snorts. The alien lets go of the boy’s bound wrists and grabs Sinjir with both hands—hands big enough to tie a speeder bike into a pretzel twist. But slippery hands, too, and Sinjir slides out of the grip and quickly goes for another weak point—the monster’s throat. He flips around, trying like hell to get his arms around the creature’s neck, but oops, no such neck exists. The Herglic chuckles, then jams his massive frame right, then left, each time smashing Sinjir into the wall—Wham! Wham!
Sinjir sees stars, his brain shook up like a cocktail.
A voice. Her voice. The Zabrak’s.
“The nose,” she says.
Then thrusts the heel of her hand forward.
Smashing it right into the Herglic’s nose.
The alien howls, his eyes squeezing shut. Some kind of saline slime-snot begins pouring out of his nasal perforations, and the poor lug slaps at his snout like it’s on fire.
“Get the boy,” she says.
Sinjir slides around the hulking bulk of the Herglic’s frame, and helps the boy stand. The kid looks like some ratty street punk. Tan skin, hair up in a messy knot. Someone here has worked him over pretty good. Blooms of bruising on his cheek. A split lip.
“Rescue party,” Sinjir says, offering a stiff smile.
Then he shoves the boy forward. Out of the range of the Herglic’s meaty, blind pawing.
The kid looks at the bounty hunter. “I know you,” he says.
&nb
sp; “We’ll get into that,” she says. “We need to go. Now.”
—
This is her life. This is the life of a bounty hunter. It never comes easy. Many try. They pretend at doing the work, but aren’t ready for what awaits. Because the job? The job never comes easy. You think the job to extract some Quarren bookie who’s been stealing from the Empire is gonna be a cakewalk, and it turns out he’s got six squid-head egg-brood brothers and sisters who look just like him. Another job comes and that one seems easy, too—all you have to do is kill some soft-handed Black Sun accountant, but then it turns out there’s a bounty on you, and next thing you know you’re trussed up in the cargo bay of a ship belonging to that slovenly leper-head, Dengar, all while your prey has hightailed it to the far corners of the Outer Rim. You think, yes, I’ll kill this spunky rebel princess-warrior like the Empire wants, but then you watch the rebels turn the tide and you realize the winning side isn’t the winning side anymore and if you wanna survive, you’d damn well better change your skin or just plain disappear.
You think: I’ll just take out Arsin Crassus. One shot, boom.
And then you realize: He’s sitting there in a whole nest of Imperials. High-ranking players with big bounties. And next thing you know, you’re falling, your gun breaks, and a local gangster with delusions of grandeur forces you to bust out of his prison and out of his cantina, but when you go upstairs and plan to head right for the door—
You see an Imperial officer standing there with a quartet of stormtroopers. And another cadre of Surat’s thugs—not to mention the ones that will probably be coming up behind you any second.
Because you just escaped their prison.
And because you just released another couple of prisoners, too.
The job is always complicated.
It’s never as easy as it seems. Even the hard ones always end up harder. But this is the life Jas took for herself.
And she’s learned to handle it without panic. (Or, at least, without letting that panic out of its cage. Fear can be a strong motivator, provided you control it rather than letting it control you.)
The cantina and gambling house is full, even at this hour. Fuller now than it was earlier. A haze of smoke hovers in the air, so thick you could you grab a handful and form it into a ball. The sound of the room is a low roar: a din of voices yelling, cards shuffling, knuckle-dice clattering against tables.
There—off to the side. A small doorway out. Probably into an alley. The shame door, they call it. You get too drunk on ’skee, you lose your pants in a game of Kessel Wheel, you meet a new friend and don’t want anybody to see you leave…you head out the shame door. Or maybe you’re ushered out quietly by Surat’s men—no good to just throw those people out on the street. That tends to have a chilling effect on anybody wanting to come in through the door and spend their credits.
Thing is, the shame door is always guarded.
Tonight, by an Ithorian with one side of his hammerhead swaddled in a bandage. The wrapping covering one eye.
Jas doesn’t tell the others the plan.
She just points and moves. They follow after.
The Ithorian grunts as he sees them come up. The alien gurgles at them in the Ithorian tongue, waving them off—
But then his one good eye widens. He recognizes them.
In Basic he says, “Hey!”
Jas hooks the inside of her leg around his tree-trunk limb, spins around him like he’s a pole, and uses the momentum to smash the side of his head into the wall. His other eye shuts and he topples like a felled ashsap tree.
Sinjir goes to open the door, then curses under his breath. “Bug-hugging piece of star-burned flog-waste.” He kicks the door.
At first she doesn’t see what he’s going on about but then—
The door is locked. The Ithorian was standing in front of the wheel-lock: three colored metal plates inside a circle, like wide, flat spokes. Hit the three plates in the right combination, then spin the wheel? The door will open. Problem is: They don’t have the right combination.
Her planet for an astromech droid.
She senses movement—
Across the room, at the fore of the cantina, a stormtrooper is tapping the Imperial officer on the shoulder with one hand. And with the other?
He’s pointing right at them.
“We’re spotted,” she hisses.
She gives a quick kick to the Ithorian’s hip, catching his blaster holster with the tip of her boot. The gun juggles out and she punts it up into the air, where she catches it.
Behind them, from the door they just fled, come another trio of Surat’s men. “There!” a thin-necked Rodian cries. “Kill them!”
He raises his pistol—a little BlasTech bolt-thrower—and fires.
Jas grabs Temmin, pirouettes, and moves him out of the way.
Just as the blaster bolt sizzles past, and hits the wheel-lock panel. The panel pops in a rain of sparks, and hops off the wall like a framed painting during a groundquake. Jas grits her teeth—can’t get out that way.
But then the door shudders and whips open, sparking. The whole system malfunctioning in their favor.
“Out!” she says, moving the boy and the ex-Imperial out through the door and into the hammering rain. She sidesteps more incoming fire, then pivots and hops out the door—
A storm rages overhead. Water runs down the crooked alley: neon light trapped in it, moving like hot pink and glowslime snakes. The rain is coming down so hard and so fast it’s hard to see. Then the sky flashes—blue pulses of lightning followed swiftly by ground-shaking thunder—and it forces the eyes to readjust.
Just pick a direction, she thinks.
She takes a step one way—
“There!” comes a shout. White shapes that direction. Stormtroopers. Coming around from the front side of the Alcazar. Jas takes a few shots, then pushes Sinjir and the boy in the other direction.
They bolt down the alley. Feet splashing. Rain threatening to push them to the cracked plastocrete and drown them like unwanted cats. The three of them turn a sharp corner—
Lightning flashes again, revealing a dead end.
Voices behind them. More splashing.
The alley was supposed to be their way out. Now it’s just a murder chute. “We’re trapped,” Sinjir says.
Temmin shoulders into her. “My cuffs. Shoot ’em off!”
He turns his back toward her and cranes his arms. Jas holds one of his wrists, then puts the end of the stolen blaster against the cuffs—
A red glow and rain of embers as she pulls the trigger. The bolt shrieks through the middle of the shackles, and Temmin yelps, staggering forward, shaking both hands as if they’re bee-stung.
“C’mon,” he says. “Look—a storm ladder.” He points and she follows his finger. At the end of the alley, sure enough, there’s a ladder—a jointed ladder made of chains bundled up at the top of a narrow roof. Storm ladders. Right. During bad storms, they get you off the ground quickly in case a flash flood comes churning through. A lot of rooftops have them here.
The three of them hurry to the end. Temmin slams up against the wall, feeling around until he finds the button.
He slams it with the heel of his hand. Above his head, a clicking as the ladder is released from its mooring—a rattle-clatter as it drops and smacks down against the wall.
Footsteps. Shouts. Coming around the corner, now—not even fifteen meters away. A blaster bolt hisses through the rain, hits the wall. Temmin begins to clamber up the ladder—
But up above, a metal squeak. Then a reverberating groan.
The ladder above becomes suddenly unmoored, the brackets holding the chains in place popping free. Temmin falls a meter, lands on his back, gasping. Jas yells at him to move, and he does—rolling out of the way just in time, as the ladder mechanism comes crashing down where his head was only a second before.
Jas helps him stand.
Their one way up and out of this dead end is gone.
They await no more incoming fire. Because their enemies have them. What approaches is a curious mix of the Imperial and the criminal. Surat’s thugs at the edges, and the Imperials—one officer, four stormtroopers—coming down the middle. The officer is a beak-nosed prig, grinning like he gets first bite of the bird on Founder’s Day.
“Drop that blaster,” he calls over the roar of the rain.
Jas sucks in a breath, ponders on the way out. Shove the boy and the ex-Imperial forward. Leap on their heads, use the stormtrooper helmets as stepping-stones—hoping she can use the cover of night and the bad weather to escape. Hoping they’ll be content with their prize of Sinjir and the boy.
It won’t work. Too risky.
She growls, and lets the blaster drop into the water streaming around their feet. Lightning flashes again.
And that’s when she sees it.
—
That thing almost just crushed my head, Temmin thinks as the water gurgles past his ears. Above, storm clouds glow pregnant with lightning before discharging forked bolts across the sky. The woman—a bounty hunter, if he remembers her right—reaches down, helps him up.
He’s still dazed when he realizes, the gig is up. Show’s over. They’re like droids on the sundering table: about to be ripped up for scrap.
They tell Jas to drop the blaster.
She hesitates, but then does it.
Temmin’s heart sinks. So close. Surat will take more than his tongue for this. But then, another pulse of lightning.
And a smile spreads across his face.
The light illuminates a figure. The figure stands on a rooftop above and behind the pack of Imperials and thugs. When the lightning flash is gone again, once more the figure merges with the darkness. But to Temmin’s eyes, the shape of the thing remains emblazoned upon his vision like an X-ray—he knows that skeletal shape. That beaked head. The knobby joints.
Mister Bones is here.
The next lightning flash—
There he is. In midair. Claw arms around his knees. Spiraling through open space, captured in the strobe-light pulse of the storm, gone again once darkness resumes—