Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters (26 page)

She hoped the
Pup
wasn’t about to explode, too. She didn’t think Bossk would sacrifice his scout ship just to kill them. What else could it be?

As Chen called instructions into the pickup, a verbal-visual transmission appeared over the main board.
DEEPEST SECURITY BREACHED—I THINK, I’M FAKING A SYSTEMS MALFUNCTION NEAR ONE MEAT LOCKER
.

It was from Flirt, still under Bossk’s navicomputer.

Chenlambec howled.

“Wait!” Tinian cried. “Override that program. Run a check on the
Pup
—now! What did Bossk do to prepare it for this mission?”

Bossk cackled softly at Tinian’s startled cry to her partner.
Too late for that, Human
. He intended to watch his victims approach the Wookiee colony, but for several minutes yet, they would be too far out to fire the flame carpet.

A danger light blinked at one end of his console. “What is it?” he asked. “Not another false alarm, I hope.”

“Nothing wrong, no false alarm,” answered the
Hound
. “ExTen-Dee lives in a meat locker, inside the skinning hold.”

What?
Bossk clicked his foreclaws over his palm. It would’ve been just like that undersized human to tamper with the X10-D’s circuitry. Humans had nasty, slender fingers.

Or was this one of the
Hound’s
idiot bugs?

He confirmed that the
Pup
could not fire for several minutes, then slipped off his seat and trotted aft.

•   •   •

Flirt’s voice shrieked over the relay. “He’s off the bridge! Hurry—if there’s anything you need to do, you’re not monitored!”

“You just keep running those checks.” Tinian’s eyes had stopped watering, but her nose twitched. She couldn’t identify the explosive she smelled; it must be an exotic, and that worried her. “Chen, talk to your friend down there. I’m going to start at one end of this scout and check all the circuits I can get access to. Something’s wrong, and Flirt’s not even trying to help.”

“I am, too!” exclaimed the thin voice. “Bossk just walked into the cargo bay—he’s walking right up to the meat locker I set leaking—he’s standing in front of it—”

Bossk located X10-D standing in his corner, obviously inactive. Next he checked his meat lockers. Fluid dribbled out of a water nipple down the inner wall of the far left unit.

Growling, he whacked a control at mid-bulkhead. That shut down a security circuit that would normally activate the lockers’ energy gates when prey inside tripped them. He grabbed a hydrospanner and stepped in.

“—He’s getting inside!” Flirt squeaked. “
Hound
, reactivate that energy gate!
Hound
, please?
Hound
—”

Chenlambec roared at the pickup.

“All right!” Hiccuping, Flirt switched programs. “He reinstalled your energy guns. Your torpedo launcher is operable again, on heat-seeker status—”

Torpedo. Explosives. “What’s the warhead?” Tinian interrupted.

Flirt answered seconds later. “It’s called a flame carpet,” she sang. “And you’ve—”

Chenlambec’s furious roar drowned out Flirt’s next words. Tinian recoiled too. Flame carpet warheads were appalling weapons manufactured by one of I’att Armaments’ less scrupulous competitors. Bossk had sent her and Chenlambec to set air aflame, sear lungs and skin, shrivel fur—

Flirt had kept talking. Tinian shoved gruesome imagery to the back of her mind. “What was that, Flirt? Please repeat.”

“I
said
,” Flirt answered in a mincing voice, “that he also installed a dispensing canister into your vent system. It’s full of a nerve poison called obah gas. You’d better dump it.”

“Yeah—but first we’ve got to find it!” Obah gas? Nerve poison? Tinian never would have smelled that. Bossk had triple-crossed them. Pollen, a flame carpet warhead, and now this.

Chen leaped out of his seat. He dug his claws under the ventilation duct cover. To Tinian, the
Nashtah Pup
suddenly felt claustrophobic, with too little air inside.

“Thanks, Flirt.” She breathed slowly and deliberately. “Can you still get Bossk?”

“He’s working inside the locker. He found the leak. I can’t … quite … get
Hound
to cooperate. He’s very strong-willed. I’d like him if he weren’t in our way,” she added brightly.

At least Bossk wasn’t on the bridge, watching.

What could Tinian do with a flame carpet warhead? She’d never dreamed she would have this responsibility. She must launch and destroy it so that no one would ever use it. It was irreversibly set on heat seeker status.

Maybe Bossk meant to gas them, then put the
Pup
on autopilot and flame the Wookiee compound?

She didn’t have time to guess. She must decide what to do. She could send Bossk and his
Hound’s Tooth
straight to the Trandoshans’ Scorekeeper. Lacking air
to co-fuel its onboard flammables, that torpedo would impact the
Hound
like a huge, heavy projectile.

No. The
Pup
had no hyperdrive. Destroying the
Hound
would strand her and Chen in Imperial space.

She knew she wasn’t thinking clearly. The answer ought to be obvious.

The
Pup’s
approach vector carried them out of the planet’s shadow. Lomabu’s sun rose above the world’s blue crescent.

The sun! She
knew
it was obvious.

“Brace yourself, Chen,” Tinian exclaimed. She rotated the
Pup
120 degrees, aimed the torpedo launcher’s snout directly at Lomabu’s sun, and fired. The
Pup
lurched. Chen hit his head on an overhead and howled.

Tinian held her breath and tracked the warhead. After a quick three-count, its onboard rockets kicked on. It streaked sunward. Several hundred degrees of heat wouldn’t harm anything there.

Grandfather I’att would have smiled.

Evidently Bossk hadn’t seen her launch the warhead, because nothing happened immediately. Tinian nosed the
Pup
groundward. “Chen, how’s it going in there?” They still had far too much altitude to eject. If Bossk gassed them, they were trapped.

Chen stood with one long, hairy arm jammed up the ventilation duct. He turned his head, pushed his arm harder, and groaned.

Tinian bit her lip. If Bossk got back to the bridge, he would know she’d fired the warhead. He would know she’d betrayed him, and warheads weren’t easy to procure. “Flirt? Are you getting close?”

“Maybe,” chirped the little droid. “He’s still working.”

“Keep Bossk off the bridge, or it’s our lives.”

“I’m trying!” Flirt insisted. “If you’d leave me alone—”

“Will do,” Tinian answered. As Chenlambec twisted
a piece of metal off one console and shoved it up the ventilation duct, Tinian steered toward colonial space.

This time they approached from the east, over water. Scanning a shimmery blue horizon, Tinian spotted the four looming guard towers.

The Imperials would be on intruder watch this time. As if to confirm Tinian’s thought, a blast of turbolaser fire flashed from one tower. It barely missed the
Pup
.

Tinian hated being shot at. Gulping, she swept both hands over its board. “Chen, where are our shields?”

He howled.

“None?” she cried.

A grizzled Wookiee spotted the tower guards firing. Whispers inside the compound had told him to watch for an attack. He sprinted toward the southeast guard tower. All around him, Wookiee slaves dropped their loads and attacked their overseers.

A human arm flew. Approval thundered from a hundred Wookiee throats.

The prisoners drove their guards into the tower. The Empire may have found the Wookiees of Kashyyyk defenseless, but it had taught them to fight back.

A louder roar swept in from over the sea. Imperial lasers tracked it for several blasts. Then the gunners swiveled their turbolasers inward. A long metal snout pointed into the compound.

At this range, the gunners didn’t miss. Soil, sand, and duracrete—and a dozen prisoners—vaporized in a fiery flash. The shock wave knocked the ancient Wookiee to his knees.

He scrambled around the raw new crater toward the guard tower. The turbolaser could not track him there. Other surviving Wookiees grappled with Imperials along its duracrete wall.

“Surrender,” boomed a voice out of the guard tower. “Surrender now, and you will not be harmed.”

The Wookiee slaves answered with angry, hopeless roars and kept fighting.

A sortie of heavily armed troopers spilled out of the tower’s main door. They drove the enraged Wookiees out into the open. Craning his neck to look up at the tower, the old Wookiee stared down a turbolaser’s muzzle.

A human in a black officer’s uniform stood beside it. “Send off a distress signal!” he screeched at an underling wearing khaki. “Get help—get Desnand—immediately!”

Chenlambec still stood groping inside the ventilator, utterly stymied. He could not disengage the gas dispenser; Flirt had not managed to trap Bossk; and his shoulder throbbed as if he had torn the rotator cuff trying to squeeze one more centimeter of length into his reach.

“They’re transmitting!” Tinian leaned against a throttle rod. The scout ship tilted. Chen braced himself to pull g’s standing up, but he did not pull his arm out of the ventilator.

He roared a question at Flirt.

“Easily,” Flirt chirped. “
Hound
likes jamming transmissions. He told me—”

“Have you got Bossk?” Tinian interrupted.

“Still working on it,” Flirt sang. “Leave me alo-one.”

“Forget jamming, then,” exclaimed Tinian. “We’ll—”

“Oops!” chirruped Flirt’s voice.

Chen snatched out his arm.

Flirt sounded sheepish. “We’ve got alarms going off all over the ship!”

Chen pounded the bulkhead, beyond frustration. There was nothing he could do now. Bossk would leap out of the locker and run to the bridge. Then Chen and Tinian would start breathing obah gas. He shouted
at her to steer the
Pup
inland and prepare to eject. They’d be stranded but alive.

“They’ve still got six hundred Wookiees pinned down by that turbolaser,” exclaimed Tinian. “I could blow out the main gun before Bossk got us.” The
Pup
lurched as she positioned it to make another pass.

For such a small thing, she surprised him with her courage. Chen sank into his chair.

Another alarm? Startled, Bossk dropped his hydrospanner. “ExTen-Dee,” he shouted, “get over here!”

As the big droid rolled toward him, a white security light near the top of the locker blinked back on.

Bossk lunged for the locker’s edge. Energy sizzled around him. It threw him back inside with scorched scales and a bruised forehead.

“Deactivate that force lock!” he shouted.

X10-D rolled one more meter forward. He hesitated as if listening to another voice, and then swiveled in place. He made a full turn. Then another.

Then he returned to his spot near the bulkhead.

“Wait!” Flirt exclaimed.

“What?” Tinian held course. In five more seconds, she’d have that guard tower in range.

“I’ve got him!” cried Flirt. “The
Hound
just gave me security clear—”

“Don’t talk!” Tinian exclaimed. “Hold him!” The little droid must’ve finally hit the right code permutation. “Use ExTen-Dee to keep that locker secure!”

“I will!”

Tinian squeezed a firing stud as Chen put a Wookiee’s strength into the control yoke. An energy flash lit the
Pup’s
cabin.

“Yes!” Flirt squeaked. Then her voice dropped in pitch. She almost purred. “
Hound
, you are magnificent.
You are wonderful. Full command recognition,” she reported to Chen and Tinian. “
Hound
,” she purred again, “double-seal that locker and keep ExTen-Dee on guard.”

Chen swooped several hundred meters skyward. Wookiees scattered out of the fresh crater dug by the guards’ turbolaser blast. Imperials stood along the fences, raining small arms fire on their maddened slaves.

The remaining turbolaser cannon tracked the
Pup
. Chenlambec jinked in all three dimensions, looping back. Closer … closer … Tinian held her breath …

He fired. The tower exploded in a hail of gleaming fragments.

Chenlambec pushed the throttle fully forward, toward open space and the
Hound’s Tooth
.

Tinian concentrated on breathing slowly. Just a little farther … just a little longer. If Bossk escaped, he’d gas them in an instant. Even a malfunction could still paralyze or kill her.

Wait. Wasn’t she unafraid of dying?

She searched her feelings. She had missed Daye so deeply and desperately for so long that no other emotion began to fill her heart-emptiness. But she mattered to Chenlambec. She wanted to protect him in return.

And she mattered to herself. She had talents and skills to contribute to the galactic struggle. The Rebels had lost Daye; if she fought on, she might help compensate for that loss.

I’m sorry, Daye
, she murmured as his face sprang into her mind.
I want to be with you—but I’d like to live. You understand, don’t you?

The
Hound
grew on the fore sensor screen.

If she wanted to live, she’d better think through the next few minutes. That allergen, whatever it’d been, still floated all over the
Hound’s Tooth
. “Flirt,” she called, “something in the
Hound’s
air made Chen and
me sick. Can you hold Bossk and still do anything about counteracting it?”

Flirt hesitated a moment, then called back, “It’s mekebve pollen. Strong histamine reaction in mammals but not reptiles.
Hound
just locked on his full air filtration for me. If you can wait a few hours, it’ll clear out.”

“Not on your life,” muttered Tinian. She looked around the
Nashtah Pup
. “Chen, what could we use for breath masks?”

He wurfled soft amusement.

“Not for the nerve gas.” She punched his shoulder. “But we’re going back to a ship full of pollen.”

He held up one arm and flicked its long underfur. His suggestion was long and complex.

“Yeah,” she exclaimed. “Your fur attracts it like crazy—”