Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters

by Kevin J. Anderson

  But Flirt had better succeed before they reached the waypost. All of their plans required being conscious after that jump.

  The ship lurched. Tinian’s feet hit the bulkhead. She’d learned to growl-bark a few words in Shyriiwook, which translated literally as “Tongue of Tree People.” It was a wonderful language for expressing disgust. She howled, then added in Basic, “He doesn’t mess around.”

  Chen snorted.

  Tinian braced one arm against the bunk’s inner bulkhead and the other against Chen’s broad back. He had taken the place of the father she had only known in her imagination, strong and fearless. She’d first saved Chen’s life back at Silver Station, where vengeful—but stupid—Ranats tried to blow out a bulkhead and send everyone aboard on the Final Jump. Tinian had tracked down the Ranats by the smell of their JL-12-F, an explosive manufactured by one of I’att Armaments’ competitors.

  She’d saved him again at Kline Colony, where a Rebel “acquisition” had resisted Chen’s unique style of rescue. They’d saved each other in Ookbat’s dank warrens, on a mission that failed.

  Acceleration became hard and steady. The aft bulkhead started to look and feel almost like a deck. Tinian rolled toward the bulkhead. It’d been days since she’d slept well. Maybe a nap would—

  Something pricked her skin through the thin mattress.

  Bossk flicked his tongue: Success! They were both unconscious. “Hound,” he called, “disarm all cabin locks.”

  “Confirmed,” answered the Hound’s baritone.

  He stalked up the corridor and touched out a code on his own cabin’s hatch, disarming several more security circuits. When he’d modified the Hound for Wookiee hunting, he’d installed features to protect him in case of onboard escapes by enraged Wookiees, including the ability to fly the Hound from inside his starboard cabin.

  Still, he preferred the broad sweep of space visible on the bridge monitors. They included near and far infrared.

  Next he checked on his passengers. Inside the port cabin, the Wookiee lay on the deck, breathing shallowly. The human did not react when he shook her shoulder.

  Pharmaceuticals made excellent equalizers.

  He drained the charges from their blasters and then rummaged through their cargo compartments. He hesitated over Chen’s bowcaster, wanting to keep it, settling for removing its loading spring, then left the pair as they lay. “Record any activity in the passages,” he instructed the Hound’s Tooth.

  “Confirmed,” it answered.

  According to the Hound, they were headed for the outskirts of the Aida system. It seemed a logical place for a Wookiee waypost. Aida was solidly Imperial but sparsely settled.

  When Tinian awoke, she felt ravenous. Chen bent over her, crooning, sounding concerned.

  “I’m awake,” she groaned. “I must’ve slept awfully hard—”

  He growled.

  “Drugged?” Tinian exclaimed. She sat up straight, glad to be alive. “Is Flirt having trouble?”

  Flirt squeaked softly, “You’re safe now.”

  Tinian slipped off her bunk. Her limbs bent stiffly. “What happened?” she asked the miniature droid.

  “Sub-q injectors in the mattress and deck. The Hound’s been programmed with both of your body weights. You were down for three and a half days.”

  No wonder Tinian had lost all sense of time.

  Chen asked Flirt if she’d gotten inside the Hound’s security.

  “Not exactly inside,” Flirt admitted softly. “He has accepted my presence, but he hasn’t let me do much. Still,” she chirped, “I’ve secured your cabin and brought up your lights. That’s something.”

  Instead of gray, the bulkheads glimmered steel-blue, and Chen’s silvery pelt shone. Now Tinian could see that the Hound had high overheads and long, narrow bunks. “Where’s Bossk?”

  “In the cargo bay, trying to scan your weapons crate.”

  Chen growled an elaborate threat.

  “It’s safe for the moment. So are you.”

  That crate was a decoy anyway. Tinian rubbed her face and slipped into the washcabin. She hoped Chen’s boxy little siren hadn’t met her match this time. If Flirt could insinuate herself inside the Hound’s main security circuits before they jumped again, she and Chen ought to be able to overpower Bossk, restrain him, and deliver him wherever they could get the best price.

  Plan One counted entirely on Flirt, though. Tinian had yet to run a bounty mission that turned out simply.

  Bossk’s gruff voice spoke from the bulkhead. “Chenlambec, Tinian. I’m on my way to speak with you.”

  “How about dinner?” Tinian called back.

  No reply. Chen wurfled concern. “I won’t faint,” she answered, “but you must be starved.”

  Flirt spoke up. “Bossk just programmed the galley to deliver a big meal.”

  “You’d better dim our lights,” Tinian suggested. “He’ll get suspicious if you don’t.”

  The bulkheads faded to gray again.

  “Do we dare eat?” Tinian asked Flirt. “And where are we?”

  “Just a few degrees out from the waypost,” Flirt answered. “He hasn’t doped your food.”

  Tinian checked the charge on her blaster. “Uh, oh,” she said. It had been drained. “Is yours zeroed, too?”

  Chen fingered his blaster, then examined his bowcaster. He yipped and pointed. Its loading spring had been removed.

  The hatch slid open. “Come out and eat,” said Bossk’s voice, but Bossk didn’t appear. The passageway was even darker than their cabin.

  She marched up the murky corridor, following her nose toward the galley. Bossk sat at a table, bending over a bowl full of wriggling red worms. He no longer wore his blast rifle. By this dim light, he looked drab brown. “Eat.” He waved a forelimb at two plates set far from his own. “Your food disgusts me.”

  “It’s mutual,” Tinian muttered, but whatever Bossk had prepared for her, it smelled splendid.

  On the other hand, raw plasboard with groundcar-fuel sauce would have been difficult to push away. She shoved in a mouthful before Chen sat down. Bossk flicked his tongue at his bowl. A worm vanished into his mouth with his tongue. She decided not to watch him any more.

  Several minutes and half a plateful later, she asked, “Where are we?”

  “Near the Aida system and your waypost. Now I need your hairy master-Hunter’s help.”

  Chenlambec muttered at her for a while, questioning Bossk’s competence, his taste in food, and the keeping quality of the egg he had hatched from. Tinian pretended to translate: “Why didn’t we drop out of hyperspace at the coordinates he gave you?”

  “In case he was trying to trap me, of course.” Bossk shot out his tongue again.

  Chenlambec rumbled on. Tinian waited a reasonable time, then said, “He says that you and I must take cover inside a sensor-screened hold while he makes contact.”

  Bossk snarled. “You will be my hostage in case he tries anything.”

  This time, Chen said something that actually needed translating. Tinian repeated, “You’ll have to show him how to operate your ship’s controls.”

  “No, I won’t. My personal cabin is fully shielded, and I can run the Hound from inside it.”

  Tinian turned to Chen. “Will that work?” She didn’t relish the idea of being held hostage inside a shielded cabin.

  Chen told her it would. Several minutes later, he sat alone on the Hound’s bridge. Bossk had locked down all controls, but Chen laid his forearms in deep troughs on the console and studied carefully. Evidently Bossk used pressure against the trough surfaces to control thrusters in several directions. Main guns must be the right-hand claw hooks. He didn’t see shield controls yet, but finding them would be Flirt’s job.

  He had installed her under the navicomputer. By now she should be absorbing data, dumping old memory to make room.

  A fuzzy object loomed ahead on the scanners.

  That must be the waypost. His contacts back on Kashyyyk had fel
t it wise not to tell him where to find Lomabu III—a delaying tactic, to give Flirt time to conquer the Hound’s command circuits.

  Chen hoped to hear Flirt’s announcement of success at any moment. Plan One was elegantly simple.

  The fuzzy object grew and resolved on twin trapezoidal forescreens. A drifting hunk of metal, it looked like a derelict ship. Sparkling microscopic debris swirled around it in rapid, furious orbits. The object seemed to invite scanner probing.

  Before he could touch any controls, his scanner screen lit. Up close, it still looked like a derelict ship. This was no waypost: A dim but distinct dance of tiny colored lights would have identified it as genuine. He should have known that Kashyyyk would never risk letting a Trandoshan see the coding ID of the network.

  But he had been promised something he would be able to read.

  He growled at the bridge’s main microphone: Bossk must focus the scanners into the orbiting cloud and vary scan depth until something readable appeared.

  At every depth, it looked like spinning garbage. An eerie howling filled the cabin.

  Abruptly, he wurfled soft amusement. Some brilliant underground operative had programmed the whirling debris to give an audible scanner reading. It sounded like hundreds of Wookiees singing simultaneously, each following the others in a spectacularly complex canon. Each voice repeated a series of numbers. Chen isolated one voice and followed it through the series. They were definitely coordinates; but where did the series break and start again?

  His young apprentice had worked as a musician during a brief undercover job. He growled at her.

  After several seconds, she answered in the language of his people. “Start,” she woofed in an odd soprano. She paused a moment, then barked, “now.”

  Chen punched digits into the Hound’s navicomputer. The moment he completed a navigational sequence, its screen lit with a course. A very short course.

  The Lomabu system was Aida’s near neighbor.

  He whispered to Flirt. Had she …?

  “Not yet,” she signaled. “Sorry.”

  On to Plan Two, then. According to Kashyyyk’s transmission, Imperial forces were scheming to entrap the Rebel fleet, using several hundred Wookiee slaves as bait. The Wookiees had been shipped to Lomabu III, a world recently depopulated for sedition against the Empire, and imprisoned there. Aida’s Imperial Governor, Io Desnand, intended to ship in dozens of females and cubs and then stage an attack. Rebel ships would probably try to rescue the Wookiees, and Governor Desnand could offer the Empire a mass entrapment. Obviously Desnand was after a fat promotion.

  Plan Two involved liberating the Wookiee prisoners at Lomabu III and bringing down Bossk, one task at a time. In Plan Two, Chen (backed by Flirt and Tinian) would still have a clear advantage over Bossk (deserted by the Hound’s Tooth). As soon as Flirt announced success, he and Tinian would subdue the big Trandoshan. Then Chen could attack the Lomabuan prison guards without having to watch his back.

  Plan Three was more complicated, of course. It pitted Bossk against Imperial Governor Io Desnand, and timing would be crucial.

  Chen’s Alliance contacts who had created the “waypost” probably weren’t far off. Their scanners might be trained on the Hound at this moment.

  He raised a hand in greeting.

  Tinian sat where she’d been told to sit, several meters away from Bossk in the large starboard sleeping cabin. Bossk sat in front of a recessed console. His orange flightsuit fit him better when he sat down; when he’d stood, it had bunched up on his back. His long greenish forearms lay in two deep, rounded grooves. He barely moved, but he seemed remarkably busy for someone who only needed to set a course. He must be feverishly probing that “waypost.”

  She already guessed it was false. Bossk must be bitterly disappointed … but in his mind, the Millennium Falcon would be almost in reach. He would probably recheck this waypost after he completed this mission.

  By then, it probably wouldn’t exist. She chuckled.

  “What is it?” Bossk demanded. “What is funny?”

  “The fact that we’re almost there,” she lied. “Those Wookiees are trying to set up their safe world right under an Imperial governor’s nose.”

  “Oh. Get back to your cabin,” gargled Bossk. “We will discuss strategy once I probe the Lomabu system.”

  “No drugs this time,” she said sternly.

  Acceleration made it hard to turn the corner into their cabin. She braced against a bulkhead until Chen slipped in behind her.

  “Quick!” she urged. Chen was already unclipping Flirt from his bandolier. He plugged her in on the bulkhead.

  “Security,” Tinian scolded the miniature droid. “Hurry.”

  Extra g-forces darkened Tinian’s vision at the edges before Flirt sang, “You’re secure!”

  Tinian struggled onto her bunk and braced her feet against the aft bulkhead. Chen reached down over her and secured her webbing. “Thanks,” Tinian managed. Then she shut her eyes and waited for the lurch into hyperspace.

  Bossk frowned at his monitors. The Hound had jumped successfully—this would be a two-hour hop—but one internal monitor had suddenly blanked. Had he lost power to the port cabin?

  “Restore restraint systems inside the passenger cabin,” he ordered.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the Hound’s baritone answered, “The port cabin is fully secured. Would you like imagery from the starboard cabin?”

  For a superintelligent computer, it occasionally communicated like a prize idiot. That was one disadvantage of flying a new ship. Bossk exhaled sharply. “Cancel request,” he snarled.

  Almost immediately, Chenlambec appeared in at the bridge hatch. He woofled and pointed at the control troughs.

  Bossk would fix that short circuit later. The translation circuit echoed Chenlambec’s hooting before Bossk could shut it off and deny its existence. Translating into pidgin Basic, it said, “Want sit bridge. You made us sleep before. You need me up here. At Lomabu we outnumbered.”

  Bossk eyed the Wookiee’s magnificent pelt. “The Hound’s Tooth is my copilot. I don’t need you.”

  Chenlambec growled. The Hound offered, “You don’t need. But I fly under you. I want assist.”

  Bossk kept his tongue behind his teeth. It would be entertaining to share the bridge with a Wookiee whose pelt he would soon peel. “Sit,” he directed Chenlambec. “But the Hound can immobilize you faster than you can touch me. And I can still kill your partner.” He flipped his surveillance switch. The port cabin appeared on-screen. Tinian crouched beside a bulkhead, trying to pry off a sheet of metal paneling with her fingernails. Bossk pointed at her image. “If I find it necessary to immobilize you,” he told Chenlambec, “I will kill her instantly.”

  Chenlambec muttered. “Too dark up here,” translated the Hound.

  “It’s light enough,” said Bossk. “Sit.”

  Chenlambec sat.

  “You’re back on watch,” squeaked Flirt, “or Bossk thinks so.”

  Tinian slipped off her bunk. “About time,” she exclaimed. “That must be one nasty computer.”

  “Not nasty.” Flirt sounded prim. “Just standoffish. I like a challenge.”

  “As long as you don’t get us killed while we wait for you, sweet thing.” Tinian smoothed her shipsuit. “Is it safe to explore the aft bays?”

  “If you take me along. Bossk thinks you’re trying to take sheet metal off the bulkheads.”

  “That’s creative.” Tinian settled her belt over her hips. Besides a blaster, it held several tools that she’d need for exploring. “This is a short jump. We’d better move fast. Open the hatch.”

  It slid upward. “I’ve put a loop into his surveillance program,” Flirt explained. “He’ll see you try several bulkheads with your fingernails.”

  Tinian kept her nails short, but that image would make sense to a clawed alien. “How are you progressing with the Hound?”

  “Oh,” Flirt said evasively, “not as well as I’d like. He’
s one of those true-blue incorruptible types. He was more vulnerable from the bridge. I had to concentrate on this cabin while I was there, or maybe I could’ve accomplished something.”

  Chen had left Flirt with Tinian to protect her. Tinian had better make this trip aft worthwhile. “Thanks,” she said. “Just don’t let him see what I’m up to.”

  “Not me!”

  Tinian grasped the small cube and twisted slightly. Flirt popped off the bulkhead onto her palm. Tinian waited a few seconds in case an alarm rang.

  “Don’t you trust me?” Flirt asked.

  “I don’t trust anybody.” Tinian stuck Flirt into a belt pouch, then slipped into the corridor.

  It was totally dark. Obviously the infrared-competent Bossk wanted to keep his passengers as blind as possible. Tinian pulled a tiny luma out of one belt pocket and held it overhead. Riveted bulkheads curved in both directions, with inverted pyramidal fixtures along the ceiling. They looked like heat lamps.

  “Stop me if we approach anything dangerous,” she whispered.

  She had barely reached the first side hatch when Flirt beeped. Tinian froze. Cautiously she pulled Flirt out of the pouch. She held the little droid up to her mouth. “What is it?” she whispered.

  Flirt’s voice was almost imperceptible. “Motion sensor,” the droid answered. “One more step and you’ll walk into its range.”

  “Can I go backward?”

  “I think so.”

  Tinian slid one foot backward, then the other.

  “Stop,” said Flirt.

  Tinian froze again. “Now what?”

  “I think there’s a pressure trap in the deck just behind you. Don’t move either foot.”

  Tinian held her position and swept Flirt in all directions. She sniffed the air cautiously. Her uncanny nose for explosives would be no help if the Hound’s security features were electronic.

  “Okay,” murmured Flirt. “The sensor’s looking away.”