by Nick Cole
The bounty hunter had killed a lot of Hools back in…
Back in…
Back in the…
Before the Savage Wars ended.
Nasty beasts.
The galaxy was a dangerous place. Always had been. Someone had once said that to him long ago. Always had been.
At the port spire, he walked through the transportation hub. Dim Altari pop trance competed with the wash of digital ads that floated along the concourse. It was like walking through a jungle of spam. The bounty hunter timed it just right and hit an elevator before it closed. That wasn’t the timing part. The timing part had been making sure there was another elevator open nearby, so the Hool could follow him down.
Inside the elevator, the helmeted bounty hunter deployed a diamond fiber chain from his utility belt and attached it to the hatch in the ceiling. He gave the chain a quick tug, and the hatch clattered loudly onto the floor. His old armor was cybernetically enhanced. They didn’t make them like that anymore. If you had a blaster, you didn’t need to be strong. But back in the day, during the Savage Wars, hand-to-hand wasn’t uncommon. In fact, it was very common.
The galaxy was a dangerous place. Always had been.
The bounty hunter stepped beneath the opening and turned on his thrusters using his wrist pad. His head was the joystick that controlled flight. He had two minutes of flight time in the jump pack, but he just needed a short burst.
A moment later he was standing on top of the speeding elevator within an immense cathedral of shadows and machinery. Hundreds of other elevators were rising and falling like some mad piston engine out of time and gone awry.
He spotted the elevator the Hool had taken, and he leapt out into the void. No thrusters. He needed to conserve thrust, and since the lift was above him and falling along a nano cable, a well-timed jump might be all that was needed. He required only a slight adjustment, a short burst from the jump pack, and he landed on top of the other elevator with a metallic clang. His armored boots smartly gripped the surface with magnetic stabilizer assist.
No doubt the Hool would be wondering what was happening on top of its elevator.
If it was a smart Hool, it’d start shooting.
Which it was.
Blaster fire melted the hatch, and three shots followed in quick succession as the elevator rapidly fell into the darkness below.
The bounty hunter switched to IR and dared a quick glance down into the plummeting car. The Hool was down there and moving like a wraith. Its cloak was thrown back, and its quills, quivering with deadly poison, were up and out.
Any sane person who’d run the length of the galaxy would think very seriously right now about not tangling with the homicidal and near-perfect murdering machine that was the average Hool. The lethal poison alone would deter even the most heavily armed. One drop was instant death. No medical treatment. No second chances. The average Hool carried about five liters. They called it blood.
But armor doesn’t care about poison.
The bounty hunter dropped down into the lift.
The Hool hissed through needle-sharp teeth and attacked. Its spines flared in anger and its poison sacs engorged, ready to flood its victim’s nervous system with mass quantities of lethal neurotoxin.
The bounty hunter smashed the alien in its snarling face with the butt of his heavy blaster.
It went down hard.
He seized the Hool’s ridged throat within his armored grip… and squeezed.
“Looking for Junga,” he said.
The thing gurgled and howled.
The bounty hunter checked the status display on the elevator. They would reach ground level in just a few moments.
“Junga,” he whispered coldly. The voice that came through his helmet sounded like the glaciers of Catabatic grinding against one another for a thousand years at a time. “Where can I find him? Now!”
“No baba gobaki, Junga!” the thrashing thing pleaded. “No baba gobaki, Junga! Hassoon,” it guaranteed.
“You’re lying,” growled the bounty hunter. He raised the heavy blaster with one hand and jammed the muzzle into the Hool’s gut.
“Aiyeeee aiyeeee…” it cried.
They were almost to the ground floor. Port security would get involved. That would not be good.
“Asssim! Assim!” the Hool bleated. “Junga gotaki-ru… Jaris Cantina. Assim! Assim! Icka hassoon. Icka hassoon.”
Software analytics assured the bounty hunter that the Hool was lying. Lying about something. But Jaris Cantina was a start. And… they were out of time.
Ground floor.
He broke the Hool’s neck, hit the button for the topmost floor, and exited. Some freighter jockey tried to push his way in. The bounty hunter pushed him back out onto the concourse and continued forward as the elevator door closed and the carcass of the Hool was carried skyward.
Then everyone around the bounty hunter started to scream. The first Republican assault corvette had appeared over Ackabar. Already, landing transports were descending toward the port tower. Then two more appeared. Sirens began to wail.
It was like the end of the world. All over again.
06
The bright green flash of the Republican MBT’s main cannon lit up the cockpit an instant before the weapon boomed. The Indelible VI shuddered as its shield absorbed the blast, causing the comm relay wires in Keel’s fingers to fall back into their panel, twisted together like a ghunnah’s nest.
“It’s never easy,” Keel mumbled to himself. “Why can’t it ever be easy?”
Ravi turned around in the navigator’s chair. “It is very likely because you yourself are the cause of all these complications.”
“That was rhetorical!” Keel found the striped white-and-marigold wire he’d been searching for and jammed it into the comm port, causing a brief spark and subsequent pop. The comm display went from steady red to pulsing blue. Keel gave a half grin.
BOOM!
The ship rocked from another blast. Keel hopped into his chair. “How much more of this can she take, Ravi?”
“At the current rate of bombardment, there is a seventy-five percent chance of shield failure within the next two direct hits. However, they are clearly shooting under the ship, at the rebels, so a shield failure would likely only mean damage to our landing struts.”
“Well, at least there’s that.” Keel punched open the comm. “This is Captain Keel. Stop shooting at my ship!”
“Captain!” It was the princess. “Captain, thank you for increasing the airflow. Did you know the comms went out? The general and I—”
“Not to cut you off, Your Highness,” Keel’s voice took on the delicate and sophisticated airs of a courtesan, “but I need you—desperately need you—to get off the channel so I can ask the Republicans outside to stop shooting at my ship.”
“Republicans? Did they follow us?”
Keel muted the comm. “Gah! Get off the channel, lady!” He looked to Ravi, who only shrugged.
Composing himself, Keel spoke gently into the dashboard input. “No, Your Highness. I don’t think they know you’re here. We’re caught up in the middle of some sort of local skirmish and I need to let the Republic know we’re not involved.”
There was a pause. Keel could sense the princess and her general conferring through the static.
“Very well, Captain.”
The blue faded to the soft green glow of standby. “Finally. Ravi, punch up all the Republican comms you’ve got. Except legionnaire. We don’t want them to get curious.”
“Okay, you are good to transmit.”
“This is Captain Keel of the freighter Loose Dutchman. Stop shooting at me!”
“How did you get this comm clearance?” The voice belonged to a woman. Its icy firmness made clear that she was not the sort who took well to orders from civilians.
“It came with the cargo upon tender of freight.”
“And what—”
Boom!
The thunderous cannon drow
ned out her voice and rocked the ship.
“Hold fire!” she snapped. “And what cargo might that be?”
“The rebels under my ship that your legionnaires were too sloppy to secure after the prisoner transfer. And that’s not my fault!”
“I was under the impression Wraith himself would make the delivery.”
Keel rolled his eyes. “Probably had more important things to do. He subcontracted it to me.”
“Indeed.” The voice on the other side of the comm was deliberate, pensive. “Your freighter’s shields are quite remarkable to have absorbed four direct hits from a Republican Armorworks main battle tank.”
With a devilish grin, Keel said, “You don’t take a job in a war zone without a little extra padding, Officer…”
“Lieutenant Lynn Pratell. We’ll have those rebels soon. Then we will impound your ship until your subcontracting claims are verified by the bounty hunter.”
Keel glanced at his navigator. “I didn’t think this through fully, Ravi.”
Ravi paused, and Keel sensed his navigator was biting his tongue. “The legionnaires you… dispatched… were clearly only an attachment assigned to a Repub-Army force, if this R-A lieutenant is giving the orders. Perhaps the rebels could be directed to become more of a threat? As you know, unlike the Legion, R-A officers are typically more interested in avoiding failure than achieving success. If this could be done, there is a probability, meeting your typical risk threshold of sixty percent, that the Republic will be more receptive to your requests. Or perhaps they will blow us up.”
Keel stared blankly at Ravi. “What’d you have in mind?”
Ravi keyed the ship’s exterior speaker, the one used as a final warning to docking crews prior to takeoff, and spoke to the rebels. “You will have a better chance—thirteen percent—if you move away from the landing strut you are now using for cover. Please to be setting up behind the boulder at mark six. You will be able to fire without interference from the shields, and still have a sufficient barrier to protect you from the MBT. Target all of your fire on the third hover sled. That is typically the command sled in non-legionnaire Republican battle formations.”
Watching the exterior cams from the cockpit monitor, Keel saw the rebels hesitate. Then they rolled out from behind the rock and unleashed a volley. The overwhelming fire of their stolen legionnaires’ N-6 rifles slammed into the lightly armored Republican command sled, vivid orange-red blaster bolts peppering the hull. One shot penetrated the front windshield and struck the driver square in the chest. Another cut down the sled’s roof gunner as he swiveled his turret toward the incoming fire. The black-and-tan-camoed soldier slumped onto the long twin barrels of his weapon.
A small blast blossomed from beneath the sled—one of its twin-drive repulsor engines had failed and ignited. The nose of the hovering vehicle crashed down hard into the rocky ground as the rear repulsor whined in an attempt to keep its half of the transport craft off the ground.
A stream of crew members, including a red-haired woman in the smart black uniform of a Republican lieutenant, jumped from the vehicle, dodging blaster fire as they ran for cover.
As the command sled’s drooping nose skidded into the jagged stones of the landing zone, the other Republican sleds fixed their sights on the newly effective rebels and returned fire. The air crackled with energy and filled with the smell of ozone as blaster fire thickened. The remaining members of the attached squad of legionnaires moved to the downed command sled, returning fire with their own N-6s while two of them searched inside for survivors too injured to escape.
A rebel found a firing position on top of the boulder, and shot until the barrel of his rifle began to glow a hot orange. Try as they might, the Republic forces were unable to respond with effective fire thanks to the natural cover Ravi had maneuvered the rebels to. Turret gunners dropped back inside their sleds, and legionnaires frog-hopped one another in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. Two of the dreaded commandos ran for high crag, looking to fire down at the rebel attacker from an elevated position.
Their efforts weren’t needed.
The MBT’s 300mm main cannon slowly turned, leveled itself, and fired. The tank rocked backward as a bright green energy shell hurtled forward at twenty-five hundred meters per second.
“Whoa!” Keel shouted, his eyes fixed on the monitor. It was a direct hit, vaporizing half of the rebel, leaving only his legs on the rock. “Ravi, did you see that?”
Ravi just frowned at the monitors, no doubt calculating the swaying odds as he saw them from Indelible VI’s external cams.
The rebels took cover, pressing their backs against the rock, careful not to leave a centimeter of themselves exposed to the tank. Blasters bolts scorched the ground around the rock as the turret gunners and legionnaires resumed their fire.
One rebel, younger than the rest, practically a boy—his face covered in dirt, but free of stubble—panicked. His eyes wide and white with fear, he ran from the field of battle. His companions threw out their hands, imploring him to stop before he triggered the ener-chains’ paralyzing surge of electricity. But when the soldier ran past the shackle’s maximum allowed distance, nothing happened.
“I thought you said they were fitted with paralysis shackles?” Ravi said.
Keel shrugged. “Lookalikes. Cheaper. Besides, as long as they thought they were in them, they weren’t going to try anything.”
A legionnaire with master sergeant chevrons dropped to a knee and fired a single bolt that struck the runner between his shoulder blades. The rebel fell forward onto the rocky terrain. Other rebels peeked from cover and lit into the exposed master sergeant, dropping him with a flurry of blaster rifle fire. The MBT’s main gun hammered the rebels’ boulder, but the dense stone was impervious.
“I’m sorry,” Ravi said, “but I do not understand why you freed the rebels and killed those legionnaires. I have seen you talk your way out of much worse.”
Keel didn’t respond. He watched the battle with the expressionless face of a professional poke-jack player examining his cards.
The two lead sleds separated from the disabled command sled, leaving it burning behind them, clogging the narrow road to the landing zone.
Keel snapped his fingers. “There.” He looked at the comm display. Ravi did the same, raising an eyebrow as it went from green to blue, signaling an incoming transmission. Keel punched open the audio channel. “Keel here.”
“Captain Keel.” It was the voice of the same lieutenant. She’d escaped from the slagged command sled. “Your freighter is in the path of seditious operatives hostile to the Republic. I’m ordering you to move it, or you will be fired upon in accordance with the Bikaine Act.”
“Listen, sweetheart.” Keel paused with a lopsided grin on his face, hoping to hear a hiss of disdain from the comm speaker. When the lieutenant remained stolidly professional, Keel continued. “The shields on this baby aren’t the only things modified to handle a war zone.”
Ravi pressed a button, causing two quad-burst turrets to drop from Indelible’s belly with a hydraulic whine. The turrets swiveled and took aim at the two sleds. The hovering vehicles, which had been moving slowly toward the Six, lurched to a stop.
“Here’s the deal, Lieutenant Pratell. My shields are a long way from broken, but the concussion impact brought down my repulsors, and there are too many giant rocks around for me to take off at full throttle. So if you’re thinking of opening fire before my maintenance bot can finish emergency repairs, understand now that while your MBT will eventually punch through, it’ll be long after I tear you and your hover sleds apart. Fathom?”
Keel laced his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, utterly content with himself. “Watch, Ravi. Watch.”
Ravi furrowed his brow. “Six is reporting that repulsors are fully operational.”
“I’m lying, Ravi.”
The comm box squawked. “Very well, Captain. We will hold our position until you are able to take off. Pr
atell out.”
Keel leaned forward. “Not so fast, Lieutenant. I said emergency repairs, not full repairs. I expect Republic compensation for damages incurred.”
“Captain Keel, the Republic paid Wraith for this operation in advance. I assume you were amply compensated as well. If not, perhaps you should better negotiate your next contract with the bounty hunter.”
Speaking through a smile, Keel said, “You paying me for any damages sustained in transit is in my contract. A hundred thousand credits for repairs. Due now. Pay the bill and I’m out of your hair, Lieutenant.”
There was anger and incredulity in Lieutenant Pratell’s voice. “One hundred thousand credits. Which happens to be the ceiling of what I’m authorized to release at my rank?”
“How ’bout that.” Keel eased back into his chair and looked at Ravi, who was stroking his beard with interest. An extra hundred grand would go a long way toward setting them up for whatever came next. Maybe Keel would spring for something next-gen when it came to the TT-3 bots that rendered Ravi off-ship. See what a code slicer could do with something smuggled out of Revolution Robotics.
The Republican lieutenant hesitated. “I… I’ll need confirmation from Wraith.”
“Unbelievable!” Keel threw his hands into the air. “Ravi, blow her sled up.”
Ravi gave the captain a look, his finger hovering over the fire button.
Keel waved him off. “No, don’t. Why is it that I have to deal with the only Republican officer concerned with saving tax dollars?” He keyed the comm. “Stand by for Wraith.”
Rising from his chair, Keel pounded a fist on the top of the cockpit. “I’ll have Wraith make contact. The trouble is worth an extra hundred grand. Transmission should come from somewhere in the Arogas system.”
Ravi nodded as Keel left the cockpit.
As the captain reached the rumpled wool blanket, he shouted back down the corridor, “And why has every woman I’ve talked to today made my life so difficult?”
