Star Wars: Scourge (21 page)

Reen sat upright and looked around the room. “Zonnos comes here?”

Again the Sullustan laughed, “A Hutt lord’s son here? No. He sends his Wookiees. He thinks he is being subtle, but who else employs Wookiees?” He laughed again.

A squat droid with a holoprojector mounting on its bulbous head lumbered into the tapcaf, taking up a position in the center of the room. It let out a soft clanging noise to draw attention. Mander felt the hairs on the back of his head bristle as the face of Zonnos the Hutt manifested in the holobeam. Mander realized now that he could see the veins at the sides of Zonnos’s head throb with anger.

“Wundara Nar Shaddaa seetazz!”
boomed Zonnos in Huttese, a melodious female voice translating in Basic simultaneously. “Attention citizens of Nar Shaddaa! Popara Anjiliac the mighty has been assassinated, cruelly slain by these creatures!” The screen changed to pictures
of Reen, Eddey, and Mander, taken in one of the turbolifts before the party. “I will pay one hundred thousand peggats for their arrest and/or destruction!” The holobeam winked off and the droid turned to leave.

Mander fought the urge to scan the other patrons to see if they had noticed them. Reen flipped up the hood of her new jacket. Eddey leaned back into the deep plush of the booth. “I don’t think it is being kept in the family anymore,” he muttered.

Min Gost laced his chubby fingers in front of him again and smiled at the three fugitives. “So, it seems I have a question for you: how much of my silence are you willing to pay for?”

“How long do you think we have?” said Reen as they left the tapcaf.

Mander was scanning the area outside for immediate threats. It was a maze of archways and bridges. He considered the remainder of his funds provided to the Sullustan, translated it into time, and divided by two. “Twenty minutes before he tells someone we were here. If we’re lucky.”

They were not lucky, and the Sullustan was greedier than they thought. It turned out they had only ten. They had descended one of the larger interior ramps and were making for one of the more fragile suspension connectors when there was a hideous screeching of metal behind them, and a thunderous, mechanical voice shouted out:
“Hagwa doopee!”
Don’t move!

Turning, Mander saw a strange form emerge from the shadows of an archway beyond the bridge. It looked like a Hutt wrapped in metal, its semi-fluid body covered with overlapping plates. Its neckless head was enshrouded in a dome of durasteel, with narrow windows cut for the eyes and ringed with sensors. The entity carried
a stun baton in its metal-shod hands. The armored Hutt barked again, and this time a translation vocoder squawked in Basic.

“Flee, you cowards!” said the translator. “Make this a good sport! For you are the prey of Parella the Hunter!”

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” said Reen, and opened up with her blaster. Eddey joined her. Their bolts ricocheted off the metallic hide and into the space between the buildings.

“Flee!” shouted the translator. “Do not make it too easy for me!” Parella the Iron Hutt lumbered onto the bridge. Its supporting wires hummed at the additional weight, and the bridge itself sagged slightly.

“Can we outrun it?” asked Reen, still firing.

“Possible,” said Eddey. Small wheels appeared at the edges of the battlesuit. “Make that unlikely.”

“I will handle this,” Mander said. “You go on, find a place to hide, and wait for me.” He unleashed his lightsaber. “Five minutes, then go on without me. Check the other tapcafs on the list, and if they don’t pan out find a ship off this moon.”

Eddey and Reen fell back, firing at the Hutt’s eye-slits as they did so, only to discover that the windows were as heavily reinforced as the rest of the suit. For his part, Mander strode back onto the bridge, lightsaber in hand.

“Oho, a challenge!” said the Hutt, and raised its one-handed stun baton in a salute.

Mander returned the salute and leapt forward in a sweeping overhand attack, his blade catching the stun baton. The lightsaber should have sliced through the baton, but instead it slid along the haft, leaving the weapon unscathed.

“Mandalorian iron,” belched the vocoder. Parella brought the baton around, its surface humming with accumulated discharge. Mander somersaulted backward, landed on his feet, and launched himself at his assailant.

Mander ran forward and the Hutt swung low, hoping to chop out his legs beneath him. The Jedi jumped at the last moment, clearing the blade and pushing off from the armored Hutt’s gauntlets. He landed on the helmeted head and drove his blade downward, between its eyes.

Or rather, he attempted to do so. The blade slid off the helmet as effortlessly as it did the weapon. Mander was surprised, and his surprise became literal shock as electricity raged through his body. He fell backward, holding on to his lightsaber but landing in a sprawl on the bridge, its support cables straining from the weight.

The armored Parella could have pressed the advantage, but instead let out a throaty laugh, its vocoder keeping up with it. “You cannot cut my weapon. You cannot cut my armor. Your allies have all fled. What now, little
Jeedai
?”

What now, indeed
, wondered Mander. He picked himself up and saluted the Hutt once more. The Hutt returned the salute and Mander charged again, exactly as before. The Hutt brought up his stun baton to block, but this time Mander took the parrying blow and slashed to his right, slicing through the bridge’s support cable on that side. Then he rolled to the left and, coming up, cut through the cables on the other side.

The armored Hutt spun on its wheels to face him, raising its baton to smash him off the bridge. That was when, even through his sensors, Parella could hear the sound of the bridge’s cables begin to separate, the metal peeling back as the strands gave way one at a time.

Parella the Hunter had time to let out a surprised curse as the remaining support cables separated with sharp twangs, and the bridge surface cracked apart beneath the heavy Hutt. Mander leapt for one of the hanging cables. Parella lunged forward as well, hoping to take the Jedi with him, but the Hutt’s gauntlets closed
on empty air and the great metallic slug fell, tumbling end-over-end into the canyon between the buildings.

Mander, hanging from one of the remaining cables, sheathed his lightsaber, then swung himself overhand toward the remaining stump of the bridge. Once he landed, he looked down, but all he saw were the swirling pollutants of the lower levels.

Reen and Eddey were waiting for him around the next turn. “What happened?” said Eddey, relieved to see the Jedi alive.

“We had a falling-out,” said Mander, no hint of a smile on his face. “We need to be more careful. Zonnos has decided to make this more than a clan matter, and we should see other pursuers soon.”

They made their way carefully now, their hoods up, through the lower areas. The opulence of the upper levels was far behind, and the walls were stained with blood, oil, and other fluids. The walkways were crazed with cracks, and those inhabitants they could see watched them with suspicion from doorways and storefronts.

The Dark Melody was on level 35, and most of the inhabitants were aliens, brought here to Nar Shaddaa years before for one reason or another, and who upon arrival never developed the ability or the reason to leave. Attempts to secure passage offplanet at the Melody were met with derision, and when Mander asked about Tempest, they were directed to a Trandoshan corpse propped by the front door.

“I think we found Zonnos’s connection,” said Eddey.

“Hmmm,” said Mander. “He has the pronounced dark veins of a Tempest user, but no signs of violence.”

“So?” asked Reen.

“So,” said Mander, “he probably didn’t fall victim to the rage we’ve seen elsewhere.” To the ponytailed barkeep he asked, “How did this one die?”

The barkeep shrugged his tattooed shoulders and said, “He was alive, then he was dead. That was it.”

“What are you thinking?” Eddey said to Mander.

“If we had the chance to check out the corpse,” said Mander, “I think we’d find that he was poisoned. By something he
thought
was Tempest.”

“How do you figure?” asked Reen.

“No one knows how Tempest is made, or by whom,” said Mander. “Let’s assume that the individuals responsible are advanced biochemists, since no one seems to be able to synthesize it.”

“And such a biochemist would be able to create a binary bioexplosive that could slide through a Hutt lord’s security,” said Eddey.

“And would be able to poison our friend here,” said Mander. “Someone is cleaning up his tracks. Whoever is behind this knows someone is looking for him. We have one more place on our list. Let’s go.”

The lights grew more infrequent, the corners and alleys darker. There was no sky above now, only a jagged ceiling made up of taller structures. It was impossible to determine if they were in any particular building, or if the towers of Nar Shaddaa had all broadened into one great moon-girding sprawl. The passages were little more than tunnels, broadening into larger courtyards bereft of plants or fountains. Inhabitants were now fewer, but Mander sensed they were watching, waiting for something to happen. Ahead of them was a dip in the tunnel, once perhaps part of an underpass now buried deep in the heart of the arcology that swallowed it.

It was a perfect spot for an ambush, Mander realized, just before the first blaster bolts erupted around them.

There were two attackers, hunkered down behind some trash compactors at the far end of the tunnel, their green trumpet-like antennae visible only when they
popped up and shot. Bomu Rodians, laying down quick, random bursts, not risking their safety by poking their heads too far into view.

Mander pulled his lightsaber out, but too slowly, and the stresscrete around them fractured and chipped from the blaster shot. He had the blade up soon enough, though, and deflected the most accurate of the shots. Reen and Eddey had their blasters out now as well.

“Back up!” shouted Eddey. “We can try another route.”

Mander started to shout that this would be impossible, that the Rodians ahead were not trying to kill them, but rather to herd them. But then the barrage came from behind them as the larger force of Bomus set up more withering, accurate fire and his observation was rendered moot.

Reen and Eddey both returned fire on the more exposed pursuers, but Mander found himself torn in two directions, trying to deflect charged energy bolts from the front and rear, protecting the others while not getting in their way. Following the course of the bolts by mere feeling as opposed to careful thought, he felt his control slipping, and one bolt passed deadly close to the side of his head.

“We go forward!” shouted Mander. “Take the two at the compactors and use them as cover!”

The Jedi now backed away from the more numerous pursuers, deflecting the beams as Reen and Eddey laid down a steady set of blasts forward, stitching carbonized scars across the front of the compactors. The Bomu ahead of them were now popping up, trying to make accurate shots. Mander, dealing with an avalanche of fire from behind, could feel the sweat trickling down the back of his neck from the strain, and could feel his concentration fray against the onslaught. Each shot seemed to live in its own particular moment, and he had to
strike at them all lest any hit the Pantoran and the Bothan in the back.

Reen let out a shout as one of her shots potted a Bomu just as the raider stood up to lay down fire. The other kept up a steady barrage. “We’ve one left,” shouted Eddey.

“Rush him!” shouted Mander, and turned to urge the pair forward into the random fire. He spun as he ran, deflecting bolts as best he could, but was now counting on Rodian timidity in combat more than his own abilities.

Eddey and Reen dived over the first compactor, spun about, and started firing back at their pursuers from cover. Mander jumped over the second. As the Rodian raised his blaster rifle, Mander cut through the barrel, intending to cut down his attacker with the backhand recovery. This Rodian did not fall back, however, but rather lunged forward, driving the melted barrel of his weapon into Mander’s belly.

The blow caught Mander by surprise, and he rolled to one side, the breath driven from his body. His lightsaber dropped from his hand and went spinning down the alleyway. He managed to twist, and landed on his back on the side of the compactor away from the rest of the fire. But now the Rodian was straddled over him, wielding his rifle like a club. Mander tried to squirm out of the path of the blow, but the heavy rifle stock caught him in the side of the head. The Rodian raised his weapon again to deliver a deathblow.

And then there came a staccato of blasterfire, and the Rodian pitched over, his head a smoking ruin. Mander thought it was Reen or Eddey who had saved him, but no, the blasts had come from the wrong direction. Mander’s head was spinning from the blow, and the outside world was reduced to a narrow tunnel. He could hear
himself struggling to draw breath, and the distant blasterfire, and Reen and Eddey shouting.

Someone was kneeling next to him. Someone with red hair and corporate sector civvies, who now crouched over him and joined the others in repelling the Bomu attackers.

“I swear,” said Angela Krin, “you are not like any Jedi I have ever met.”

“I am officially on detached duty,” said Lieutenant Commander Angela Krin. “While you were my guests on the
Resolute
, I started investigating the Tempest trade, and convinced my superiors that the trail led to Nar Shaddaa.”

The Bomu ambushers had fallen back once Angela had joined them—not outnumbered, but now facing three blasters operating from behind cover. Angela half led, half carried Mander to a nearby courtyard with a defensible entrance. Reen had recovered Mander’s now-deactivated lightsaber and handed it to him. Mander looked at it hard and long before he took it back. He had made an apprentice’s mistake, thinking the Rodian who had cut him down would just fall back in the face of the lightsaber’s power.