Soaked with sweat, Kels disappeared into the shadow of the formidably armed luxury yacht berthed at Docking Pad P13. When they'd stolen the ship from a gangster, it had been known as the Amari Wind. In the month since, it had quickly run through Hieroglyph, Tailchaser, and Voona 's Dream II. Currently the transponder identified it as the pleasure boat Spiraling Shape.
Kels clomped up the entry ramp and eased a satchel off one shoulder. A glance at the swollen clouds assured her another shower was imminent, and she rapidly punched today's keycode into the lock controlling the access hatch. The lock deliberated a moment, accepted the new numbers, and rolled the portal open with a hydraulic whine.
A billow of cool, dry air washed across her face as she stepped inside, but she winced at a tenacious stench reminiscent of putrefying groat cheese. Despite days of oxy recycling, they'd been unable to remove the last traces of Kothlis' peculiar atmosphere from the main cabin's air supply. Kels strode to the far wall and punched the vent fans up to full.
Sonax looked up from her spot at the tech station. "What took ssso long?" she hissed over the roar of the fans. A Sluissi, she possessed a sinuous serpentine tail in place of legs. Her BioTech AY6 cyborg headband also made her a capable computer slicer. "And where isss Dawson?"
"Nice to see you too, Sunshine," Kels quipped, flopping into an acceleration couch. "You know, do you come in any other style besides 'irked and bothered?'"
"Look who isss talking," Sonax muttered as she slithered to the wall and tapped the fans back down to their original setting. "We have a problem."
The hatch whirred open once more and Dawson padded into the cabin, panting. "Gah!" he exclaimed as he sniffed the air with his damp black nose. "We didn't get rid of that yet?"
"What took you?" Kels asked. "l though tyou were right behind me."
Dawson paused. "I picked up a sack of maraffa twigs." He fumbled through one duffel and removed a bundle of thin sticks packed in an oil-stained paper bag. "See?" he declared, holding the white sack up for inspection. He shook loose one of the smooth twigs as he crossed the room and turned the fans up to maximum. Sonax threw up both hands with irritation.
"Lisssten, both of you," she announced. "Noone was due to check in thirty minutesss ago. According to my receiver, his com link isn't jussst inactive - it's been dessstroyed."
"Destroyed?" Kels echoed with alarm.
"Jussst so. Ye tI do not think he is dead. I am monitoring the estate's EM emissions. Viveca has activated his hunting grounds and placed perimeter defenses on ssstandby. I sussspect the deal went bad and Noone made the poor decision to escape on foot. If he is ssstill alive, he will not be for long."
Kels cursed. "The fool. Hoofing it through the forest with a famous hunter trying to take him down. Noone better still have the Gun, or a rescue won't be worth our time."
Dawson, leaning against the bulkhead, appeared to be deep in thought. "Here's what we should do," he suggested, biting the tip off the maraffa twig with his long incisors and sucking out a dollop of sticky orange sap. "Power up the weapons and take the ship in high, parking it just above the manor -"
"Negative," Sonax interrupted. "Viveca isss a paranoid. The 'perimeter defenses' I mentioned consist of two automated turbolasersss and a miniaturized energy ssshield. Lf we do anything, it has got to be sssneaky."
Kels closed her eyes and sighed through gritted teeth. "Well, that is what thieves do best."
Noone crashed through a bramble thicket, wet branches slapping his face. A steep slope loomed through the bracken; he misjudged his footing and skidded halfway down the muddy bank before breaking his fall against the thick bole of an arboray tree. Shaken, he rested for a moment, chest heaving, head down between his knees.
Viveca's property was divided into distinct terrain zones. Upon leaving the estate Noone had plowed through an interminable stretch of grassland before reaching the relative cover of this deciduous forest. His path thus far was an approximate straight line from the mansion to the nearest edge of the hunting grounds, a length he'd studied on a public map the previous evening and estimated at fifteen kilometers.
The shortest distance was guaranteed to be the most perilous distance, and would undoubtedly be the first place Viveca would come looking for him. But Noone knew when he was playing with a stacked deck. He wasn't about to play hide and seek on the enemy's home turf, and besides, if the Krish was on his way...
Maybe he could do a little card-skifting of his own.
Noone hadn't been boasting back in the game hall - he had seen this scenario before, in countless permutations from hackjob holoflicks to beautifully operatic Rodian dramas. And in every version, he reassured himself, the pursued successfully turned the tables on his pursuer.
Well, Noone remembered with a swallow, not in the Rodian plays...
He knew just what he had to do. Viveca might possess the finest beast-blasters money could buy, but Noone wagered the "seasoned tracker" drivel had been half bluff and half bravado. ln fact, he chuckled, when the chips were down the Krish probably had the survival skills of an adolescent nature scout. With new confidence, Noone removed his multitool - the only useful item still on his person - and bent back a tree's firm green branch, testing its springiness and tension.
Never done this before, but how hard can it be? He scanned the snarled undergrowth for a fallen limb and unearthed a solid knot of hardwood, dead but not rotten. Flicking the stud that activated the vibro-edge on the multitool's main blade, he carved the knot into six pieces of roughly equal size. Picking up the first segment, he whittled it down to a sharp point.
The multitool made short work of the task at hand, and Noone began lashing each skewer to the end of the branch with sinewy stalks of cordgrass. Guileless, he said! I'll ram six chunks of pointed guile right down his fat throat.
The muddy slope would be perfect - Viveca would be watching his feet and wouldn't notice the trap until it was too late. Noone secured the last stake with a double hitch. Surveying the area with a satisfied sigh, he looped a length of cordgrass around his right arm, grasped the spike-studded tree limb, and bent it back away from the hill at nearly a ninety-degree angle. Holding the quivering bough with his left hand, he tried to shake the cordgrass loose from his bicep and failed. Switching tactics, he grabbed the rough bark in his right hand, reached for the cord with his left
- and was knocked flat on his back as the branch whipped forward, glanced against his shoulder, and disappeared behind him with a scream of torn air. Lying on the embankment, Noone blinked up stupidly at the mottled gray sky. That's not good. Struggling to a sitting position, he looked behind him to discover the limb was cracked, dangling limply by a light twist of fibers. Three of the six spikes were gone. Slag it! I don't have time to make another one!
Then he noticed the blood.
The three missing spikes hadn't gone far at all - they were firmly impaled in his left shoulder. Now this, Noone thought, gritting his teeth, this is much worse. With an agonized cry audible through clamped lips, he wrenched the points loose and staggered weakly to his feet. Okay Junior Woodsman, you just blew your one chance. Clapping his right hand over the wound to staunch the dark flow, Noone jogged off into the thickening trees.
BRZZZZZT! Kels rapped her comlink against the hard metal frame of the data pad with equal measures of frustration and desperation. "Try it again, Sonax." Through the hissing and sputtering of her fritzing audio pickup came a faint, faraway voice: "Tessst..."
Kels pursed her lips. "Now would be a great time to knock off the sibilants. I can hardly tell what's you and what's the static. Dawson!" she called back over her shoulder. "Kick it into gear, would you?"
The Tynnan trotted up to join her, two lumpy duffels slung about his neck and one hold-out blaster strapped to his leg. Kels had insisted that he carry a sidearm for their foray into Viveca's turf, even though Dawson's mastery of lethal devices was limited to explosives containing unpronounceable chemical compounds.
Her boot sank into a
shallow peat bog and she pulled it free with a wet sucking gurgle. They'd chosen the shortest stretch of territory - fifteen klicks from the edge to the mansion - but the outer terrain zone was a sodden, brackish, rot-stinking swamp. Her hand cleaved a path through a cobweb barricade strung between two stunted trees and a dark shadow scurried out of sight. The stagnant waters were crawling with furry gray spiders about the size of her hand. She hoped they weren't poisonous.
Kels glanced at the screen of her datapad - still blank. "Sonax," she called into the comlink, "where's that location fix?"
"Working on it," came the distant reply. "Viveca owns a Rodian HT training sssystem - it has sssix independently-controlled repulsorlift drones that are used as targets in tracking exercises. He has ordered them to hunt down Noone and make sssure he remains in the field of play."
"Any good news?"
"I think I can ssslice into the drones' live data feed. When they know where Noone isss, I'll know
where he isss, meaning you'll know where he isss."
"Dandy," Kels remarked. "Let us know when you've struck crystalline." She thumbed off the comlink. "Dawson, do you think you could -"
"PORTENTS VAGUE, ASK AGAIN LATER."
Kels had her gun in her hand in an instant and dropped into a fighting crouch, holding the weapon steady on the source of the unfamiliar voice. The next moment she lowered her arm, got to her feet, and exploded.
"What in space do you think you're doing? I could have blown a flaming crater right through your tiny speck of a brain!"
Dawson poked his head out from behind the Quay, which he'd thrust out in front of him as an ineffectual shield. "Hey, what's with the hair trigger, here?" he shouted with anger born of fear. "I was just fiddling with it!"
Kels holstered her blaster with a growl. "Now you know why I tossed that thing back in the market. Don't tell me you bought another one."
Dawson shook his head. "It's the same Quay," he sniffed, patting down his ruffled fur. "I got it back from the Squib for three blasting caps and a copper spindle."
"And you could have stolen it for nothing," she countered. "You've got to learn the value of a credit if you want to win in this business." The comlink buzzed. "That's Sonax. Put that thing away if you don't want to fish it out of a bog."
She switched on the speaker and caught Sonax in mid-sentence. "- broken into the visssual data feed of one drone. It isss a passive link only - I cannot influence the drone's flight path. Ssstandby."
Kels whistled with surprise. "Not bad. Let's hold this position. Looks like we might get lucky and save ourselves a lot of pointless legwork."
The intermittent bubbling of the soggy mire seemed to grow louder in the sudden stillness. A few of the largest water-spiders hopped closer, broad footpads supporting their weight atop the swamp's grimy film. A sweeping splash from Kels' foot sent them scattering into the tangled shadows beneath the trees' shadowy roots. Dawson tapped his short claws rhythmically against the metal clasp of his satchel strap and stared absently into the vaporous mist. After several minutes passed without incident, the abrupt crackle of the active comlink made them both jump. "Kelsss..."
"I'm here. What've you got?"
"The drone hasss picked up two targets - a human and an alien - and is moving to intercept."
"A human and an alien," Kels repeated, looking hopefully at Dawson. "That's gotta be Noone and the Krish. Where are they?"
"They cannot be far from your current posssition. The drone is accelerating and powering up its blassster. It is currently less than three hundred meters to the northeassst."
"Three hundred?" Dawson said, surprised. "Why, that's practically nothing. We can be there in a flash."
"Hold on...it isss two hundred." Kels and Dawson glanced at each other, puzzled.
"Or less than two hundred," Sonax continued. "More like one-fifty. No, wait. Use one-twenty. Ninety. Sssixty. Thirty. Oh, ssskrank-"
The bullet-bodied HT drone burst into the clearing amid a shower of loose leaves, firing madly as it raced through its initial pass. Kels instinctively dived head-first toward the mud, drawing her blaster as she fell and managing to snap off a few shots in the direction of the silver-plated killer, all of which went wide. The drone's furious spray of scarlet energy converged on Dawson. Several bolts impacted one of the satchels slung over his chest, burning three dark holes in the canvas and sending the Tynnan skidding through the water and into a fen-rotted log with a wet crunch. The drone continued its flight through the clearing, disappearing into the mist at the far side.
Kels, face down in the sludge, could still hear the whine of its compact repulsorlift as she pulled herself into a crouch. The sound faded, but shrieked suddenly as the high-boost engine came back online for round two. Kels spared a quick glance over at Dawson - not moving - and brought her blaster to bear as the machine zipped back into view. The drone spat red darts at her position and she squeezed the trigger. Her weapon wheezed and dislodged a glop of doughy clay.
Crying out in frustration, Kels kicked both feet with frantic strength, launching herself backward as a volley of bolts sizzled into the watery murk where she had been crouching a moment before. She readied her arm to throw her useless blaster at the oncoming hunter, knowing it would buy her little more than a second.
An unexpected shot erupted from the side, burning past her ear. Dawson stood unsteadily on both feet, clutching his blaster pistol in both paws and discharging a sloppy spray of fire that wasn't even close to its target. The drone made a few simple attitude jigs in its flight, spinning into a tight barrel roll and easily avoiding the clumsy threat. Once again its course took it to the edge of the clearing and it disappeared behind the gray curtain.
Dawson blinked frantically in a vain attempt to clear his head. His chest flashed with stabbing pain as he sucked in a shredded breath. Cocking his ears - for his treacherous vision appeared to be serving up doubles of everything - Dawson shakily held the blaster on the approximate point where he guessed the HT drone would reappear. The weapon was much heavier than he'd remembered, and seemed to deliver more of a kick, too. He deployed his thick tail behind himself as a brace.
Once more the drone tore through the treeline, at a higher angle this time, not at all where Dawson was aiming. His panicked answering shot, however, was so woefully off-target that it nearly succeeded in grazing the droid's durasteel casing through perverse luck alone. The tracker unit plunged to evade the salvo, getting off a few potshots of its own as Dawson poured more awkward fire in the direction of the destroyer. If it had been equipped with a vocabulator, the drone would have issued a contemptuous snort as it launched into a nimble zigzag and lined up a shot that would bore a hole in the Tynnan's left eye socket. Its starboard maneuvering jet hissed as the droid lurched in for the kill.
With an inarticulate scream, Kels swung her scavenged stick like a smashball mallet. The droid's sensor-studded nose impacted the flattest surface of the knotty branch with a force of 20 kilograms per square centimeter. With an agonized electronic squeal audible even above the reverberating CLANG of rattled metal, the HT drone sailed back the way it had come in a graceful ten-meter arc. The weak splashdown seemed rather vulgar by comparison.
Gasping, Kels approached Dawson, pulled the blaster from his unprotesting fingers, and strode over to the spot where the silver droid lay twitching in the mire. Its servos whined as it madly flailed its limbs in an attempt to right itself. Kels made an adjustment to the blaster's power setting, took deliberate aim at her target, and blasted the drone to superheated shrapnel at point-blank range.
She looked back at her companion. "You're welcome, by the way," she managed, panting. "What's the damage?"
Dawson poked his head inside his newly-perforated satchel and let out a horrified squeal. "Oh
Fates! This is awful!"
"I didn't mean the bag, I meant you. I thought the drone had punctured you for sure." She walked up to Dawson and reached behind the ruined neck satchel, carefully running her
fingers through his chest fur. The Tynnan cheeped with pain and pulled his face from the sack. "Take it easy!"
Kels nodded. "Bruised ribs. I'd guess these lower two are broken. The fur's burnt away here, here, and here. If it weren't for that satchel, you'd be breathing through your ribcage."
"But look!" Dawson wailed, holding out the sack. "One bolt fused the comp-timer and another popped the ionizer! These were all my triggers and detonators, and now they're circuit wiped!"
"That's all your detonators? What's in the other sack?"
"Putty, thermite gel, shaped detonite, raw baradium, a few vials of nergon, all the explosives. But I can't set 'em off without an electronic trigger!"
Kels snorted as she broke open a field medkit and peeled the protective backing from a strip of synthflesh. "You're not good for much then, are you? Maybe if another HT drone shows up you can catch it in that sack, tie off the end, and bring it back to the ship as a pet."
She handed the synthflesh to Dawson, who grudgingly took it. Both thieves headed back into the thick of the swamp to continue their search-and-rescue.
"Dawson - by any chance, did those laser blasts slag the Great and Powerful Quay?"
"Nope. It's in the other bag."
"Stang."
Rocks. First grassland, then forest, now a vast tumble of ruddy boulders, some the size of a cargo freighter. Scrub vegetation peeked out between the sheltered cracks and occasionally a hardshelled arthropod flashed from a tiny bore-hole. Noone had long since given up estimating how much money it would take to terraform a region to such a degree. One point three million was loose change, he fumed. The cheapskate.
The makeshift bandages wrapped around his shoulder, hastily crafted from the ragged strips of his jacket sleeves, were black with encrusted blood. His boot soles scraped against the stony surface as he tried to summit a gargantuan slab, a task made all the more difficult with only a single functional arm.
Fair Prey - Star Wars Gamer #1 Page 2