Bounty Hunted

1996 story by Andrew Dick

Three years after Episode IV – A New Hope

The door at the far end of the cantina opened and two humans entered. Imperial Intelligence, I decided. Oh sure, the disguises were quite good, but just a little too grubby to be authentic. It's true we smugglers have to spend a lot of our time in dusty holds or amongst grimy machinery, but that doesn't mean we don't take any pride in our appearance. The short alien - I could never remember his species - seated beside me at the bar gave a contemptuous snigger and turned back to his drink. As the Imperials scanned the room while still trying to look inconspicuous, I reached down to my belt to my comlink and thumbed the switch to the 'lockout' position. It's always difficult talking to people when there are spies in the room.

I gave the room a quick glance myself. None of the my fellow smugglers had been stupid enough to jump up and leave as soon as the agents had come in. Good. Actually, it wasn't strictly accurate to describe them as 'fellow smugglers', not any more. I had been a smuggler until the Empire had busted my boss' operation, but since then I had been working for a bounty hunter. I chanced a quick look over at the agents. They probably weren't after me; the Imperials seemed to be happy enough taking my old boss and his lieutenant, and letting the rest of us go. Then again, it would be stupid to take chances. I leaned over to my new employer seated beside me.

   "Hey, boss. Any chance that's for us?" I asked; trying not to sound too worried.

   "Nah." he said, taking another sip of his drink. "Don't get jumpy on me now, kid. Romar may have been stupid enough to step on the Empire's toes, but I'm just about legal enough to sneak past them every time." He shifted slightly in his seat. "No point hanging around too long, though. Those enforcers that just walked in as backup look pretty nasty."

Another ten or so minutes passed before I felt a nudge in my ribs, and I slipped off my seat and followed my boss to the door. Once outside, we put a couple of lengthy space station corridors between ourselves and the cantina before stopping.

   "Right, kid. You know what you've got to do." It was an order rather than a question. I nodded. "Good." he said. "There's a big bounty riding on this one, so let's get it right, huh? See ya later." he said, and walked off in the direction of the turbolifts. Turning towards the stairs, I made my own exit.

Two floors up was the public use console I'd scouted the previous day. As expected, nobody was using it. It was ideally located, in an area too far from the turbolifts for most folk to be bothered walking, and not close enough to any of the regular smuggler haunts for the Imperials to bother patrolling with their limited resources. The immediate area consisted of the station's main power converters, which were heavily shielded and virtually maintenance free, and garbage disposal, which nobody wanted to come near anyway. The net result was a quiet, well-powered area where a bounty hunter's assistant could get on with his day-to-day business, legal or otherwise. I set to work, entering my access code and contacting Gilkka's Maintenance Shop, the ship-repairers to whom I had entrusted my boss' beloved Octavia. Access time was poor today, so I slumped forward onto my elbows and waited.

My boss seemed to consider this kind of work demeaning, but it suited me perfectly. Basically, I was responsible for the maintenance of the ships and droids and other peripherals such as ordering supplies and clothing for long journeys, while my boss organised the contracts, met influential people, and did the actual hunting. And pretty good he was at it too. Despite his lack of height, he was fit, quick, and effective. He was also beginning to acquire a reasonably good name for himself too, to the effect that his last job had pulled in eleven thousand. He was being secretive about this latest one, though. All he would tell me was that it was well paid, and that I would probably recognise the target when they were brought aboard.

A bleep from the console got my attention: I was through. I keyed through the menus, and called up information on the progress being made on the Octavia. It had been put in to have a slight wiring fault repaired, an extra fuel tank fitted, the shields upgraded and also to be refuelled. I smiled as the report came up. All the work had been completed, and the fuel was being put in as I read the report. And only slightly behind schedule, too.

Well, so much for the legal. Now for the otherwise. I broke contact with Gilkka's place and called up the notice board. The message I was looking for was there all right, and reading it brought a smile to my face:

   ' Dear Mister Emdas, the data pad you ordered has been delivered. Please feel free to collect it at your convenience. Echo Electronics.'

            What had been delivered was of course not a data pad at all, but something far more dangerous and far more likely to get me whisked off to an Imperial detention cell. The code used was simple but effective. Emdas was my hometown on Cardooine, Echo was my contact's code name, and 'at your convenience' meant drop point C, which was in a small maintenance corridor at eight. I glanced at the clock on the console. Less than three hours away. I had better get busy. Quitting to the console's main menu, I headed for the stairs.

I cursed under my breath as I spotted the Stormtrooper. The Imperials had installed them on these levels to protect their interests situated in the belly of the station, which was more or less where I was now. I was standing at the entrance to the maintenance corridor, and it was only a few minutes to the rendezvous. I glanced around quickly. There was no one else here, and I wasn't wearing maintenance overalls.  The Stormtrooper was bound to question me. I decided that surprise was best. Reaching into my pocket, I approached him.

   "Excuse me." I said. "I seem to be lost. I wonder if you could help me?" The Stormtrooper walked up to me.

   "Lost?" he said, clearly suspicious. "You should have been given a map on a data card when you landed." he said, nodding at the data pad I had pulled from my pocket.

   "I was, but it isn't working." I explained. "I guess the card must be damaged." I handed him the data pad for inspection.

   "Idiot!" snapped the Stormtrooper upon examining the pad. "There's nothing wrong with the card, it's the pad that doesn't work."

   "Oh." I said. Something sounding vaguely like a sigh came from behind the helmet.

   "Where are you trying to get to?" asked the Stormtrooper. He had obviously had enough of talking to the disorientated cretin in front of him. I gave him the name of a restaurant ten levels up and he directed me to the stairs before stomping off up the corridor.

I walked towards the stairs until he was out of sight, before doubling back. I smiled to myself. I had, of course, known fine well that the data pad didn't work, and I kept it for precisely that reason. I had used this trick many times before, and had even used it in the presence of my contact. It was for this reason that 'Echo', alias Lieutenant Fedris of the Imperial Army, had put it in his message, as a little private joke. I reached the maintenance corridor and slipped inside.

   "You're late, Alkorta."

I froze. The voice wasn't Fedris', but it had called me by name. I turned. A young man stood there, dressed in the uniform of an Imperial troop sergeant.

   "Echo couldn't make it, so he sent me." explained the young man. I considered the facts. Fedris had used a substitute once before, and the deal had gone okay. It was entirely feasible that Fedris was too busy to slip away. The young man knew Fedris' code name. He was carrying the long bundle that I was due to collect.

   "Okay." I said, breathing out heavily as a new wave of courage came to assist me.

   "Good." smiled the young man. "You have the money, I trust?"

   "Of course." I said, pulling a pouch from inside my jacket. He opened the pouch and counted the credits. Fifteen hundred. All there. He handed over the bundle. I opened it, gave the contents the once over, and tied it back up again.

   "There now, that wasn't so bad, was it?" he smiled, backing off up the corridor and disappearing. I stepped out into the main corridor, half expecting a squad of Imperials to be waiting. There were none. Hefting the bundle under my arm, I set off back to the Octavia at speed.

   "Any problems?" asked my boss as he fired up the engines. I shook my head. "Good." he continued, reaching for the comm. "Station control, this is Octavia. Request take-off slot."

   "Ten minutes, Octavia." crackled the voice from the other end. I resisted the urge to let out a sigh of relief, lest my boss think I was a wimp.

Half an hour later, the Octavia had docked with the Iron Bantha, and we were safely inside the larger ship, heading away from the station. My boss had shrewdly stationed the Iron Bantha, his long-range transport, outside the station under the control of his most useful droid, AP-161, in case we ran into trouble. With this backup, my boss and I had taken his assault shuttle Octavia down to the station to conduct our business.

   "Check those now." ordered my boss, indicating the bundle as I carried it towards the equipment room. "I'll send Wunsixwun down from the cockpit to help."  Sure enough, I had only been in the equipment room three minutes when the tarnished-silver form of Wunsixwun appeared through the doorway. The AP (All-Purpose) droids were humanoid in shape and as their name suggested, could turn their hands to just about anything thanks to the extensive banks of extra coprocessors they were fitted with. This also made them perfectly capable of intelligent conversation.

   "The master has taken over the controls." he announced. "Now that we are all safe again," the hint of sarcasm in the droid's voice made me smile, "I am instructed to assist you, sir."

   "Sit down, Wunsixwun, and take a look at this." I handed him one of the two items I had extracted from the cloth of the bundle.

   "Ah, a mark three Ryeli hunt-gun." remarked the droid. "An improvement on the mark two the master usually carries."

   "It could be he'll need it, if this target is as valuable as he says." I suggested. "Big bounties don't come without dangerous targets."

Wunsixwun nodded. "Perhaps if the bounty is as big as he has hinted at, he will be able to afford some more help." I grinned at the droid's irritation. He was right, of course. Just me, him and three small astromech maintenance droids to look after two ships and an operation of this size. It was lunacy, and but for myself and Wunsixwun's hard work and ingenuity, it would have failed a while ago. I had only been part of the operation five months, and I really couldn't understand how anything got done under the guidance of the boss' previous assistant, who according to Wunsixwun wasn't even a quarter as useful as me.

I got on with checking over the gun. The Ryeli mark three was only manufactured by the Imperials nowadays, so I'd had to get them from Fedris. Where he got them from, I didn't want to know. The mark three wasn't all that different from the mark two, just more reliable and with a bigger kick. It consisted of a long barrel for accuracy, and a propellant device at the grip for firing the tranquilliser nets. Other hunters used the Stokhli spray gun, but my boss preferred the Ryeli. 'Less messy', he explained. The manufacturers boasted that it could take down a krayt dragon, and the boss had professed himself happy with my purchases, saying that it should be perfect for the job he had in mind.

Wunsixwun's comlink suddenly issued forth a stream of binary. He set his gun down on the table.

   "Excuse me, sir." he got to his feet. "Arthree has discovered a problem with the power supply in the rear of the ship. I will have to assist her."

   "Sure, sure." I waved a hand at the door. "You go, I'll finish this." The three astromechs were fine up to a point, but Wunsixwun was the only droid capable of making a decision of any magnitude. I finished my own gun quickly and reached for his. This was getting boring.

Six days later, the Iron Bantha sat in orbit around Sullust. The landing bay was busy, as five of us flitted about getting things ready. The personnel door opened and the boss walked in wearing his battle armour, helmet under one arm.

   "How goes it?" he asked.

   "Almost there, sir." replied Wunsixwun. "Octavia fully fuelled and checked."

   "Same goes for the weaponry." I said. "Guns, charges, ammo, all in the cabinet as per usual." The memory of the strange young man rose to the surface momentarily before sinking again. It had all gone okay.

   "Good." said the boss. "Guess I'll get on board and warm 'er up, then."

A further half hour after that, Wunsixwun and myself sat in the cockpit of the Iron Bantha. The landing bay was now clear apart from the Octavia.

   "Ready to launch." announced the boss.

   "Good luck sir." said Wunsixwun.

   "I don't need luck!" came the chuckling reply. Wunsixwun and I exchanged glances. The boss had informed us of the target's identity yesterday, and the droid and myself felt he was being overconfident. There was a muffled roar, and the Octavia appeared off the starboard flank, nose pointing down towards the planet's surface.

   "Later, boys." came the boss' voice over the comm. "And don't worry, that Wookie will be no problem. Boushh out."