Star Wars - Tales Of The Bounty Hunters

by Tales of the Bounty Hunters (edited by Kevin J Anderson)

  Bossk glanced aside. Had he seen an alarm? Maybe, but it had shut itself off, so it could have been false. There were still a few bugs in the Hound, like its lapses of idiot speech.

  Chenlambec was obviously impressed by it, though, and Bossk had enjoyed showing it off.

  He shut down the simulator circuit and put the con-trols back on line. "Back to your cabin," he growled. When the Wookiee didn't obey instantly, he touched a control that extended two fur-penetrating electrodes on the copilot's seat.

  Chenlambec sprang up, hooting. "Hurts," insisted the Hound's translator, "Hurts."

  "To the cabin." Bossk brandished the blast rifle he'd slung over his lap.

  The Wookiee shambled up the corridor, obviously stalling. But when Bossk peered into the port cabin, the human sat on the edge of her bunk. She fiddled with her thin, inadequate claws.

  "Where have you been?" he growled. Prying off bulk-heads?

  She stared up at him, looking stupidly blank. "Here," she answered. "Where else?"

  He thought he caught the scent of the skinning bay on her clothing. Backing out the hatch, he secured it. What could she have been doing back there? He walked a circuit of the main corridor, including both bays. No alarms had been tripped. Returning to his bridge, he ran an extra security check. It too came up clean.

  Maybe he'd been mistaken.

  What if he hadn't?

  He keyed for more details from the security pro-gram. Immediately after leaving the Executor, the Hound's Tooth had scanned his passengers' lockers. That scan revealed no metal except in the weapons crate. He'd told it to try the lockers again. Whatever they'd brought along, if it wasn't weaponry, it needed to be analyzed.

  The second scan came up just as blank: clothing or foodstuffs might have matched the scan's biochemical readings.

  He hadn't been presented with such an entertaining puzzle in several Standard years.

  An hour's nap would refresh him, and the Hound would wake him in time to drop back into realspace. Reactivating his alarms, he headed for his bunk.

  The moment Flirt declared that Bossk had locked him-self into his cabin, Chenlambec set off on his own re-connoiter. To his delight, when he breached the central area he'd assumed was the Hounds main en-gine, he found a sleek scout ship.

  He paused, eyeing its lines. With or without subduing Bossk first, the time would soon come to run ground-side surveillance.

  He'd better be prepared for Plan Three, and for that, he would need to unload those lockers into this scout ship. But where would he conceal something so large?

  Rounding the hull, he found two enormous empty holes on its exterior. Bossk had removed its guns. That made Chen certain that Bossk would send him and Tinian out in it. He peered into one hole.

  There was room inside to hide a Wookiee.

  Not him, but.

  He smiled bitterly. Inside his storage lockers were two of his carbon-frozen kinsmen, executed by the Em-pire. Their bodies had been dropped at a Wookiee out-post. Chenlambec had vowed to avenge their deaths by making use of those bodies. Bossk's droid, X10-D, was allegedly brainless, so Flirt could order X10-D to trans-fer the carbon freeze units into these gunnery sockets. He must also tell Flirt to make sure that the Hounds scanners still showed those lockers fully loaded.

  With Flirt's help, he sneaked next onto the bridge, carrying the data chip Tinian had retrieved. Before sit-ting down, he slipped Flirt into position under the navicomputer. Several long seconds later, she chirped, "You're secure. sort of."

  He demanded an explanation.

  "You'll be checked every two minutes. Whatever you want to do, move quickly."

  Almost instantly, she beeped a warning. He slouched over the controls, motionless, until she chirped, "Okay. I overrode without trouble."

  He growled a question.

  "No, don't pull any wires," she answered. "I'll hold off the Hound."

  Chen snatched a set of miniature tools out of his bandolier pouch. He pulled the main computer's cover, dropped it aside, then eyed internal circuitry. He almost had it figured out when Flirt beeped again. Hastily he replaced the cover.

  It took five intervals before he located the spot to slide in that chip full of doctored data. Then he locked it in place and installed a parallel circuit around it.

  Just in time, too. They would reach Lomabu within half an hour.

  He growled a last question at Flirt.

  "Not yet," she chirruped. "Sorry."

  Then it was Plan Three. Leaving Flirt in position un-der the navicomputer in case she was close to a break-through, he retreated to the port cabin.

  Tinian crouched alongside the communication con-sole, steadying herself against the starboard bulkhead, wearing a lightweight headset. So far, she heard only static.

  Bossk took the main chair with Chen as his copilot. Chen had told her that he thought Bossk was amused to let a Wookiee sit on his bridge. Bossk had brought up the bridge lights. His greenish scales showed orange undertones where the lights caught them.

  Bossk killed the hyperdrive. The Hound cut in its sublights, and a star system appeared. According to the navicomputer readout, it had six planets in erratic orbits. They looked more like electrons' orbitals than a flat planetary ecliptic, as if the Lomabu system had been stirred by a passing stellar giant. Bossk had ori-ented the Hound's Tooth to the third planet's orbital plane. From this distance, it looked like a small blue disk with one moon: According to scanners, its surface was almost entirely covered by ocean, with long archi-pelagoes marking arcs where tectonic plates collided.

  "Excellent," Bossk hissed. "Hound, establish a mo-mentum course and cut engines."

  "Confirmed." The ship fell silent. To casual scanners it would look like an eccentric asteroid passing the planet.

  Tinian watched Bossk flick a control alongside one of his forearm troughs. He'd have to utilize shipboard scanners sparingly now. Stray transmissions would be picked up by Imperial sentries. though ^thought he was hiding from Wookiee sentinels.

  Chenlambec hooted. "Could the Falcon be in scan-ner range?" Tinian translated.

  Bossk eyed the boards. "If the Falcon is here at all," he said. "If you two have led me astray, I will sell you both to the highest bidder."

  The image of a colonial installation appeared on the Hound's main scanner. Chen had told Tinian it would correspond closely to the layout of Gandolo IV. Bossk flicked the scan once more, narrowing its search band.

  An irregular shape dropped toward the Lomabu "colony."

  "Corellian YT-1300 freighter," announced the Hound's baritone. "Modified. Heavily modified. Ille-gally modified. Crew and passengers: one Wookiee, two humans."

  Bossk snapped off the board with a left foreclaw. "We have them!" he exulted.

  Tinian thought she heard something. She touched her headphones. "Listen!"

  Bossk amplified the transmission over a bridge speaker. "Very funny," drawled a male human. "But what we want is landing clearance. You going to give it, or shall I take this stuff and sell it back to Nada Synnt?"

  "Solo," Bossk hissed. "Shut down all power."

  The bridge went dark.

  Tinian raised her tiny luma inside one hand. Red light welled through her fingers. Plan Three, then. She'd hoped not to run Plan Three. Chen, I hope you're ready. She pressed to her feet. "Let's go get them." Trying to sound cocky, she slapped her blaster. "It's time for a recharge, Bossk. And Chen needs his bow-caster."

  Bossk drew his forearms out of the troughs and rubbed them against each other. "Tinian, I want you and your Wookiee to determine Solo's likely avenues of escape. Count his allies and resources. This will be ex-cellent experience to round out your apprenticeship."

  "We don't want to use those scanners again," she objected.

  Bossk flicked his tongue. "You're right. I'm sending you out in my scout craft, the Nashtah Pup."

  The Pup was as sweet a scout ship as Chenlambec had ever crewed, despite its unfamiliar controls. and it had broadband transceivers,
including Chen's personal favorite, single sideband. Its console curved around two black leather crew seats, with scanners mounted to cre-ate the illusion of looking out two trapezoidal windows, just as on the Hound's Tooth's bridge.

  Chen steered it back toward the Hound to get the feel of maneuvering. The bigger ship had popped a dorsal hatch to launch the Pup; slowly it dropped shut behind them. Now it was easy to see that the oval Hound % pri-mary engines lay under its main deck, with exhaust ports across its aft quarter.

  "Watch it," said Bossk's voice in his headphones. "I'm tracking you with a quad gun."

  "Why bother?" snapped Tinian. "We're practically unarmed."

  Chen ordered her to take the Pup down out of range, then pointed to one of his ears and over his shoulder toward the Hound's Tooth: Bossk was undoubtedly moni-toring.

  She nodded and reached for the steering rods. The console wrapped around their crew chairs so neatly that either could fly the Pup comfortably.

  Tinian stroked a control rod. "I like this little scout."

  Homesick for the Wroshyr, Chen barked.

  "I didn't ask to be born rich," she argued. "I just wish this were mine."

  Chenlambec kept digging in his tool pouch. He had left Flirt under the Hound's navicomputer and brought a remote relay. Now, he wired the remote-which was bigger than Flirt herself-into the Pup's main commu-nication line. Then he tapped out a code message to Flirt: power down Hound's audio recf.ivfrs for two min-utes, THEN HIS TRANSLATOR FOR TFN MINUTES. His remote beeped twice, for "message received." A minute later, it beeped twice, then repeated, indicating that she'd succeeded.

  "I heard that," said Tinian. "Bossk'll be deaf to us for two minutes?"

  Howling assent, Chen closed his hands around the throttle rods. Lomabu III loomed closer on the visual screen. They were approaching the daylight side at high noon, out of the orange sun. The Imperials must not see them.

  Tinian talked rapidly into her headphone. "This message is for Governor Desnand, repeat, Governor Io Desnand of the Aida System. We wish to report that the bounty hunter Bossk of Trandosha, repeat bounty hunter, repeat Bossk, is encroaching on your prison world Lomabu HI. He is engaged in unauthorized pelt-baiting and means to abduct many of your laborers. This is another bounty hunter speaking. I have Bossk under observation, but he is also observing me. Can you make it worth my while to intercept him for you? Please reply on this frequency so that I may receive at. 1435 Standard hours."

  That transmission was headed for Aida, not Lomabu. There'd be some subspace delay. Chen pointed at the chrono to warn Tinian that her two minutes were up. His ten were about to begin. She switched off the trans-mitter. He let go of the throttle rods, and she took them.

  With the Imperial Governor alerted, now he must close the other side of their net: He must make a con-tact below. Even if Flirt failed him, the Wookiee prison-ers must be alerted and freed. Chen switched the transmitter to a local frequency.

  Eerie howling noises filled the cabin. Single sideband was excellent for transmitting Wookiee speech, but dif-ficult to tune for in Basic. Bossk could listen to this all day and not understand a word. Maybe his translator would choke on it too.

  He called groundside.

  At first, nothing happened. There was always the chance that no illicit transmitter had been set up inside the prison camp, but Chenlambec was willing to bet otherwise.

  "Try again," Tinian suggested. "We just dropped un-der the ionized atmospheric layer."

  Chen howled at the transceiver again. As Tinian brought the Pup toward the target archipelago, the an-swering howl from his transceiver abruptly modulated.

  Chen grinned aside at Tinian, then answered. His mission took considerable explaining, particularly the part about landing and staging a firefight. The target island grew on the fore screen.

  "Explain about getting Bossk's confidence," Tinian hissed, steering out to sea on the island's west side. The prison compound was on the east shore.

  Chenlambec tried again. Evidently his contact was an elderly male using amateur equipment, desperately afraid that guards would return soon.

  Chen didn't ask what threat the Imperials used to control his people. The Pup's scanners had shown him heavy artillery: two turbolaser emplacements plus plenty of unidentified metal technology.

  He needed to get those weapons into his people's hands.

  Tinian came in low over a dense green jungle, sweep-ing overland toward the island's east coast. Abruptly, Bossk's voice echoed in the cabin. "What's that? What are you doing?"

  His time was up. If Flirt silenced the Pup any longer, Bossk might suspect her existence.

  Tinian leaned toward the pickup. "We're going to singe a little fur," she answered. "Shall we bring some back?"

  "If you know how," said Bossk. It sounded like a challenge.

  "Brace yourself, Chen," Tinian muttered. "We'll land in about one minute."

  She wasn't confident of her landing skills, and this was an unfamiliar ship, even though she liked it. Chen flipped her small hands off the controls and grasped the rods. He feathered the main engine and set down the Pup near a cliff along the waterside. The compound would lie on a peninsula just north of that rocky prom-ontory.

  "Impressive," Tinian said wistfully.

  He cuffed her shoulder and ordered her to thaw the lockers. They must be blood-warm before returning to the Hound.

  She gripped his forearm. "Be careful, Chen."

  He crooned a soft good-bye. Her concern pleased and honored him.

  He popped the hatch and climbed down onto Lomabu III. A cool damp wind blew across his nose, and he felt its chill in his furless palms. Its salty smell had an organic overlay of dead fish and floating plants. Beneath a brilliant blue sky, close to the site where the Pup sat grounded, waves lapped at the jagged line of a long, broken wall. Green algae almost obscured a tracework of filigree just above waterline. Farther out in sapphire-blue water, other ruined walls formed a right-angled maze. The ruins barely broke the water, topped with broken stone and steel.

  He and Tinian had landed near an abandoned city. Within a few years, decades at the most, the vast sea would dissolve these remaining walls and wash them away, and all evidence of the Lomabuans' civilization would vanish.

  Chenlambec wondered what the Lomabuans had looked like, and what crime they had committed that drove the Empire to depopulate the entire world. Were the Lomabuans slaves, like his own people. or dead?

  He checked his bowcaster. Each piece fit again. It bothered him to know that Bossk was so familiar with Kashyyyk's weaponry.

  The rocky promontory that shielded the prison com-pound from his view would also keep prison guards from spotting the Pup. He strode forward, staying in-side a narrow grove of twiggy brown trees that grew between the cliffs foot and a pale, sandy strand.

  Once he rounded the promontory, the prison com-pound became visible. Its gray walls rose in straight, perfect lines, freshly built and maintained by slave la-bor. It hunched at the other end of a slender penin-sula, surrounded by a high metal fence. Four tall blocky towers loomed at the corners of its perimeter, and pale sand covered the peninsula's narrows between com-pound and mainland.

  Only one turbolaser emplacement was in bowcaster range. Destroying that weapon would help set the stage for an uprising. He crawled forward, staying low. Rocky soil scratched his palms.

  As he began to set his right palm on the sand, he realized that the sand was also crawling. He bent down to peer closer. What he had taken for a sandy beach was a vast colony of tiny creatures. Each was no larger than a grain of true sand, with legs or flagella so small he could only guess that they existed. The colony roiled as creatures climbed over each other and were climbed in turn.

  He judged from the damp rocky soil above the crawl-ing sand that the tide was going out. Although the crea-tures' movement seemed random, the colony slowly retreated, following the tide.

  He dangled a bit of fur over the colony. It vanished where it touched dow
n.

  Ravenous little beasts! Chen groped behind him into the glade, found a leaf-covered stick, and tossed it onto the crawling sand.

  It dissolved from beneath.

  This explained why the Imperials had selected this peninsula for a prison colony. Surrounded by voracious sand-even at low tide, he guessed-it could cage Wookiees who laughed at most weapons. Chen won-dered if the Imperials had allowed one prisoner to "es-cape" in order to demonstrate the sand's appetite-

  But that was idle speculation. Now to create some heat for Bossk to see, so it would look as if there'd been a firefight. so he could realistically lead Bossk on with those bodies.