by Greg Rucka
“Hey, Wookiee,” the woman said, pushing up on tiptoe and leaning out to wrap Chewie in a hug. Chewbacca chuffed, embracing her and lifting her off her feet, and Solo saw her cheeks color nearly the shade of her hair as she was squeezed.
“You’re gonna break Delia, Chewie,” Solo said.
Chewbacca rumbled, barked once, and set her back down. The woman steadied herself and ran fingers through her hair, catching her breath.
“Solo,” she said. She was trying not to wheeze.
“Captain Leighton.”
Delia Leighton grinned again. “I heard you were dead, Han. I heard that Greedo splattered you all over Mos Eisley or something like that. I was almost sad about it.”
“Almost?”
“You still haven’t paid your tab.”
“I’ve got the money.”
“That so?” She put her elbows on the bar, lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes as she smiled. “Let’s see it.”
“I don’t have it with me.”
“I knew you’d say that.”
“I can pay you. The money’s on the Falcon.” Solo leaned closer, putting the two of them face-to-face. “That and more if you can maybe help us out.”
“Always an angle with you.”
“No angle, just information. I’m looking for someone.”
“We’re all looking for someone, Solo.” Delia straightened, pulled the hand towel from where it hung, tail stuffed into the belt at her waist, and began wiping down the bar. An old WA-7 series droid rolled up on her single wheel and set her tray on the bar.
“Two juri, an incandescent, and one bottle of Bost,” the droid said.
Delia began filling the order.
“Delia, we’re in a bit of a hurry,” Solo said.
“And that’s new how?”
“Can you help us?”
She set a bottle on the tray and popped the cap off. “You haven’t told me who you’re looking for yet.”
“Human male, roughly twenty standard years, brown hair, brown eyes. He would’ve just arrived in Motok within the last eighteen hours or so.”
“So, maybe a third of the humans visiting Motok, that’s who you’re looking for?” She set two glasses on the waitress’s tray, then reached back for a bottle without bothering to look at it, flipped it over her head into her other hand, thumbed the stopper, and began to pour. The liquid that flowed out shimmered, turned silver, and ended up frothing clear in the glasses and smelling like sweet fruit. “You’re being uncharacteristically vague.”
“He’s looking to get off-planet. He’s expecting a lift.” Solo leaned in once more, catching the bartender’s gaze. “He’s expecting a very specific lift from some very specific friends. The kind of friends you’ve been known to be sympathetic to.”
To her credit, Delia didn’t immediately react—just finished filling the order and watched as the droid scooped the tray up and rolled quickly away. She waited, then slowly slid her eyes back to Solo. The suspicion in them was unmistakable.
“You’ve never been known to stick your neck out for anyone but yourself,” she said.
“I’m his ride, Delia.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You think I’m working for the Empire?”
She glanced at Chewbacca, who had remained silent, listening. She shook her head.
“But there are other people you’re known to work for,” Delia said. “The slugs.”
“I wouldn’t sell my worst enemy to the Hutts.”
“We both know that’s not true.”
“Okay,” Solo said. “Maybe my worst enemy. But that’s not this. I’m this guy’s lift, Delia.”
“I’m supposed to believe you’ve joined the underground?”
Solo shook his head. “No, no way, absolutely not. This is a one-time thing.”
Delia bit her lower lip. “Chewie?”
The Wookiee nodded.
“Straight-up?”
The Wookiee nodded again and huffed.
She shook her head slightly, amazed.
“They must be paying you an awful lot,” Delia said.
“Not nearly enough,” Solo said.
“EXECUTE, SIGMA FOUR,” the stormtrooper sergeant ordered. Instantly, two of the soldiers flanking either side of the promenade were in motion, a run-and-gun that they’d drilled so many times it required no thought to put into action: advancing, firing, advancing.
Past the cover of the half-destroyed landspeeder, Beck watched as one of their four opponents went down—the Kubaz, hit twice in quick succession by stun blasts. The remaining three seemed to hesitate, as if stunned by the precision and speed of the attack, and the second team of stormtroopers opened fire then, downing the Gran. The human, his clothing a mixture of salvaged military and refugee, all bundled beneath a filthy cloak, turned and tried to run.
“Stop him,” Beck said.
She needn’t have spoken at all. The human hadn’t made it four strides before he was shot in the back twice in quick succession. His body lit a sudden blue, suffusing him with charged particles that overloaded his nervous system all at once. Through her cybernetic eye, she watched as the human’s biosigns went wild for an instant, then collapsed to baseline as the electrical impulses that drove his brain were suddenly and savagely forced into reset by the shock to his system. It was the same process that allowed medical anesthetics to do their job, Beck knew, but somehow, watching it happen to a fleeing rebel made it that much more satisfying.
That left the droid, some leftover model from before the Clone Wars from the looks of it, and it was crab-stepping out of its cover and raising its weapons in some mockery of surrender.
“Do not shoot,” the droid said.
The stormtrooper sergeant brought up the short-barreled DEMP gun from its strap over his arm and shot. The electromagnetic pulse hit the droid and the machine locked, trembled, sparks flying in all directions as the ionized charge raced over its housing and through its circuits. The droid made a pathetic, almost childlike whine, then collapsed with a loud clank.
“Efficient,” Beck said. It was quite possibly the highest praise she could imagine giving.
The stormtrooper sergeant, designation TX-828, inclined his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment of the compliment. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Beck slid her duty blaster back into its holster on her thigh and strode forward. On either side of the promenade, shapes began to appear, those people who had exercised the better part of valor and gone into hiding when the firefight had begun. Shutters slid back on the shops, one after the other, and the whir and whine of droids going into motion melted into background noise as, slowly, communication and then commerce resumed. People stared at her and the stormtroopers as they advanced, the sergeant directing his troopers to disarm and bind the prisoners. Beck ignored them all, focused on the slumped, motionless form of the human lying on the ground, his body now almost entirely concealed by his cloak.
She stopped, standing over him, then used the toe of her boot to nudge his body. For an instant she saw, instead, the Rodian woman who had taken her own life. The anger returned, and it made Beck push harder, forcing the unconscious human onto his back.
“I’ve been waiting for this a long time, Ematt,” Beck said.
The man she was looking at wasn’t Ematt.
She looked him over, assessing. The hodgepodge of salvaged military gear and pieces of body armor was recognizable as late-era clone trooper and mock Mandalorian. The weapon in his hand had been dropped, but her cybernetic eye immediately matched it to a schematic—a Merr-Sonn 4, normally used by police for its ability to switch between automatic blaster fire and semiautomatic stun. The hilt of a vibro-blade hung from his belt and a second weapon—a BlasTech HSB-200 holdout, her eye told her—rested in a holster beneath his arm. Three grenades on the belt, two of them stunners.
Beck bent, took hold of the unconscious human by his collar, and searched him with her free hand. He had a pouch beneath
his shirt, sensor shielded. She snapped it free from its cord, dropped the man, opened it, and dumped the contents into her palm. Credits, a holoprint, and an ID card. She glared at the card, then threw it down before striding back in the direction she’d come.
“Bounty hunters.” She said the words as though each was toxic. “They’re bounty hunters, not rebels.”
She stopped short, glaring down the once-again bustling promenade.
“The other two, the human and the Wookiee, where’d they go?”
TX-828, the sergeant, said, “I don’t see them. They must have run off when we moved on the targets.”
“We were just played.” Beck felt the fury racing along her spine and fought to control it. “They played us. Those two, those two were the rebels. They’re here to rescue Ematt—I’d bet anything on it.”
Behind her, she heard the droid grinding back onto its feet. It whirred, clicked, then spoke as she turned to face it.
“This unit is designated Captivator,” the droid said. “This unit carries an authorized Imperial certification to hunt bounties. You have interfered with this unit and its partners.”
Beck moved closer. “If you have a complaint, droid, file it with the Guild.”
“The Imperial officer misunderstands.” Something inside the droid’s head made a whizzing noise, then settled into a hum that, Beck suspected, was designed to be exactly as annoying as it sounded. “The individuals are not rebels. The individuals are smugglers. The human is designated Solo, Han. The Wookiee is designated Chewbacca. The reward for their acquisition is…significant.”
“Acquisition.”
“It is more significant if they are acquired alive.”
Beck looked the droid over, then at the others, the Kubaz and the Gran and the human, all of whom had reached various stages in their return to consciousness. The Gran, she noted, had been wounded, but it didn’t look serious.
“Captivator,” Beck said. “Let’s talk.”
“This unit operates under self-actualization programming.” Captivator rotated on its central axis, turning its torso in a full three-sixty while its legs and head remained motionless. Its eyes, such as they were, flickered between yellow and white. Beck felt like the machine was staring at her. “This unit has a self-improvement directive. This unit has acquired programming and modifications to make it the most efficient hunter in the galaxy.”
“And an ego modification, I see,” Beck said.
“This unit has no ego. This unit relays facts.”
“So you’re saying you can track those two, Solo and the Wookiee?”
“That is correct.”
Beck looked over the rest of Captivator’s crew. Now that they had recovered, she didn’t know what to make of them. The Kubaz, his long snout dangling from within his hood, whispered something to the human and the Gran, neither of whom had stopped staring at her since the discussion began. The droid was clearly the leader of the team, and knowing what she did about bounty hunters and how they worked, Beck suspected that there was some truth to what Captivator was telling her.
She had ordered the whole group pulled into the relative privacy of one of the small shops lining the promenade, then directed the sergeant to clear the space. It had been a restaurant, alien-focused fast food, and the smell of grease was heavy, mixing with spices from worlds Beck had likely never heard of, let alone visited. The human proprietor watched them suspiciously from the far corner, under guard of another two stormtroopers. Beck considered what she knew.
“You can identify their ship?” she asked the droid.
“Confirmed.”
“Do you know where it is?”
“Negative.” Captivator clicked. A line of lights on its torso flashed. “But it will be a simple matter for myself and my partners to locate it.”
“I want a description of that ship,” Beck said. “Its name. Its real name, not whatever alias it may have used to land.”
The bounty hunters, arrayed behind Captivator, shifted uncertainly, exchanging glances.
“Cannot comply,” Captivator said.
“Not only can you comply, you will comply,” Beck said. “Or your next job will be on Kessel, and your partners will find themselves toiling in an Imperial penal colony. Name, description. Now.”
A new light flashed on the droid’s torso, followed by a gentle hydraulic whine as it rotated its head this time, turning it in a one-eighty to view its partners. The move, Beck suspected, was for show; Captivator sported almost a dozen cameras and lenses on its head. She was certain the droid could see in every direction at once, with the processing power to assess and analyze the information acquired from its sensors near instantly. It was stalling for time.
“Sergeant,” Beck said. “Take them into custody on a charge of obstruction and suspicion of aiding and abetting terrorists.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The stormtrooper raised his right hand, signaling the rest of the squad.
“Wait,” Captivator said. Its head swiveled back to face her. “We are loyal to the Empire. We will comply.”
The sergeant glanced at Beck, and she nodded, barely. He motioned the squad back.
“I’m waiting.”
“The vessel is a KLT-Kuat light freighter,” Captivator said. “Vessel is named Roundabout Right.”
Beck smiled. “Anything else?”
“The vessel is easily identifiable by the depiction of a deep-space Angel painted on its port hull.”
Beck stared into the droid’s visual sensors. The bounty hunters shifted; she saw the Kubaz creeping one hand ever so slowly toward the blaster holstered at his hip.
“You and your partners are free to go,” Beck said.
The droid buzzed. The bounty hunters at its back relaxed. The Kubaz’s hand went back to rest at his side.
“Long live the Emperor,” Captivator said, then pivoted and headed out of the little café, the other bounty hunters in tow.
The sergeant waited until the door had closed before he said, “Ma’am, I believe they were lying.”
“I know they were lying.” She faced the proprietor, who hadn’t moved. He was roughly the right height, a little overweight, but he would do. “Vehement recorded no KLTs landing since they arrived. We’re looking for a YT-1300. You, the Empire requires your clothes.”
The proprietor opened his mouth to protest, then remembered the two stormtroopers guarding him. He unfastened his apron and began pulling off his tunic.
“Get out of your armor and put those on,” Beck told the sergeant. “Take a comlink and follow them. Stay in contact.”
“At once, ma’am.” It sounded to her like the sergeant was smiling.
“I’ll take the rest of the squad and we’ll locate their ship. With luck, we’ll ambush them as they try to board.” She turned back to the proprietor, now standing in his undergarments, and took the bundle of clothes being presented to her by one of the stormtroopers. She set them down on one of the small tabletops. The sergeant was already out of his helmet and gloves, quickly working the fasteners on his breastplate. He was older than she’d have suspected, perhaps nearing forty, gray beginning to color his black hair. With some surprise Beck realized that he was a clone, perhaps one of the last still in service based on the original Kamino-produced template. That confirmed her suspicions about his age. There were only a few of his kind left. In fact, Beck couldn’t remember having ever served alongside one before.
“TX-828,” Beck said.
“Yes, Commander?” He was out of his armor, now, pulling on the shirt. His voice sounded strange without the modulation of his helmet.
“What do they call you?”
“Ma’am?” he tucked in his shirt and took the comlink one of his troopers handed him.
“You have a nickname. In the barracks. What do they call you?”
“Torrent, ma’am.”
“You’ll use that as your call sign.” She knelt, pulled the cuff free from her right boot, and detached the small holster and holdo
ut blaster she wore there. She rose again and put the holster with the weapon in Torrent’s hand. “For the Empire.”
“For the Empire, ma’am.”
She watched as he stepped out of the café, checked the street briefly, then disappeared into the bustle of traffic, moving quickly to catch up with Captivator and the rest of the bounty hunters. She turned to one of the troopers, already gathering Torrent’s things.
“Let’s find that ship,” she told him.
DELIA LEIGHTON knew trouble when she saw it, a necessary skill as a starship captain and arguably more important as a bartender.
Trouble was on the cargo ramp right now, in the form of four individuals—one droid and three humanoids—arguing with her partner, copilot, and bouncer, Curtis. She reached under her side of the bar top, beside the sink, and put her hand on the grip of the sawed-off Scattermaster she kept hidden there.
“Let them in, Curtis,” she called.
The Shistavanen looked at her unhappily, lips curling back along the sides of his muzzle, baring his teeth. She smiled. She always smiled when she could manage it. She’d learned the trick back before she’d acquired the ship, while working as a barmaid in a cantina on Lothal. That had been a rough crowd: spacers and smugglers and pirates, all the different species the galaxy seemed to have to offer coming through at one point or another, including one old Duro who always drank by himself in the corner and told her stories when things got quiet. She’d learned the smile, the friendly demeanor, how to spend hours on her feet—and how to deal with trouble, how to know when it was time to stand your ground, time to hide behind a table, and time to run.
Miss Fortune had been that Duro’s ship. He’d left it to her in his will, much to her surprise. Its original name, in Durese, translated to “serendipity,” but since Delia could hardly pronounce the Durese and nobody else could pronounce it at all, she’d rechristened it. Suddenly a captain and still a barmaid, she’d combined the two professions. It let her travel, and it let her meet people. Curtis had joined her early. Curtis, who had more sympathy than sense when it came to things like the Rebellion against the Empire. Curtis, who convinced Delia to sometimes let Miss Fortune be used to pass messages between rebel cells.