“I hear you people are very good at solving problems,” said the man. He had watery blue eyes and a face that looked as if it were a sculptor’s first effort at hacking out features from a lump of granite. Not scarred: just crude, brutal, and devoid of any living warmth. He placed both gloved hands flat on the table-top, one on each side of a glass of odorless liquid. I have a problem that needs solving.”
“I’m Goran Beviin. And you are … ?”
“I thought bounty hunters were discreet.”
“Discreet, yes. Stupid, no.” Protecting client confidentiality was one thing; not knowing who you were dealing with was another entirely. “Once you’ve taken the risk of telling me what you want, it’s cither full payment up front or enough information to check that you can pay.”
“That’s ironic coming from a man who hides behind a helmet.”
“I’m Mandalorian.” Beviin was aware of movement behind him, and his helmet’s wide-angle view picked the red-armored woman walking past the booths in the direction of the refreshers, “That’s usually good enough references for most customers.”
Beviin couldn’t place his accent. He was forty, maybe forty-five, and be was clearly dissatisfied at not being able to see Beviin’s eyes. People always searched for meaning-gaze darting over
the
visor,
up-down, left-right-looking instinctively tor facial expressions that just weren’t there. Sometimes it was harder doing business with humanoids than with other species, because they just had to see a face. Where was this guy from? Not somewhere used to Mandos, that was for sure.
Sbab, he was a grim-looking piece of meat.
And then the man made the mistake of reaching below table level.
Beviin tasted the spike of adrenaline drying his mouth and instantly his hold-out blaster was in the man’s face, its indicator red with a full charge. It was pure reflex, the kind honed by years of war and assassination and just trying to stay alive. He hadn’t even thought about it. His hand just did it.
The man blinked and looked to one side, but he didn’t seem too worried that Beviin’s blaster wasn’t the only one leveled at him. The woman in red armor had drawn hers, too, and was standing frozen as if waiting for an order to open fire. The bar was-as usual at moments like this-carefully silent and totally, studiously, self-preservingly uninterested.
“Copaani gaan, burc’ya?” she asked. Need a hand, pal?
For all the revelry at her table, she was rigidly sober now: brown hair in a tight braid, hazel eyes that should have had a sparkle in them but were predator-cold. The knuckles of her right hand showed white under an intricate lacework of blue tattoos. Her target stared at them in an oddly absorbed way, as if they held some
Beviin shook his head. “Naysh a’vor’e, vod.” Thanks, sister, but no. “I’m just a little tense these days.”
She waited two beats before bolstering the blaster and going on her way. She’d backed up a brother, even if he was a total stranger. It was the Mando way. Beviin lowered his weapon and leaned back against the wall of the booth, waiting for a response.
“My name is Udelen,” said the man. Voice level, he seemed more curious about the woman, watching hex until she was out of sight: no, he didn’t scare easily. His gaze fell back on Beviin again. “I need to focus somehow well?”
“Permanently.”
“Debt? Rivalry?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“Can’t price a |ob without a few details.”
“Very well, rivalry.”
“Care to specify?”
“No.”
“That’ll be extra.”
“Are you familiar with the politics of Ter Abbes?”
Beviin activated the head-up display in his helmet with a couple of quick blinks, and icons cascaded down one side of his field of view. “Ter Abbes,” he repeated. 1 he audio feed picked up the words and chewed them over, spitting out a stream of GalaxSar images and police data he shouldn’t have had access to. A grim industrial planet off the main Perlcmian Trade Route: a few bad boys passing through now and again, but not exactly a full ten on the Hutt scale of criminality.
What was this guy’s game, then? Politics. That suddenly didn’t sound quite so attractive. Gangsters, debt-dodgers, and assorted but’uune were fair game, bur politicians were different bucket of chags.
So far, though, this had been a lean year. He had
to
cat. Bounty-hunting wasn’t the kind of business that ran on five-year plans. It was feast or famine, grabbing what you could.
“What did you have in mind?” Beviin asked.
“I need a politician removed,” said Udelen.