[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(2)

Plus there was one factor that both of them hadn’t counted on when they had joined the Alliance. A factor that made all the difference in the universe—

Being a Rebel didn’t pay.

At least not in credits. And there were still so many tempting targets all through the galaxy, the kind of hard merchandise that a smart, fast bounty hunter could get rich from. Like the one that Zuckuss and 4-LOM had come here to get.

Zuckuss took another sip of his drink. Triple agents, he thought. That must be what we are now. Neither he nor 4-LOM had ever formally renounced allegiance to the Rebel Alliance, but they had both been taking care of their own business for some time now.

Moodily, he shook his head. He’d have to think about all the rest of those things some other time; right now, there were more pressing matters at hand.

Zuckuss did as he’d been instructed by 4-LOM. The entrance to the bar was the one direction, in back of 4-LOM, that the droid bounty hunter couldn’t scan without cranking around his head unit. Bright laughter, some of it as high-pitched and sharp-edged as breaking glass, and a tangled whirl of gossiping conversations sounded in Zuckuss’s ears as he lifted his gaze toward the entrance’s fluttering circumference. Beyond it, a sloping tunnel led up to the surface of the planet and its night sky filled with a chain of pearllike moons. Smaller and more avid orbs dotted the length of the entrance tunnel; those were the eyes of the tiny ergovore creatures that scuttled and darted in and out of the soft, trembling crevices.

As a way of keeping weapons out of the establishment, metal detector units would have been both useless and insulting; the bar catered to a clientele that not only included independent droids such as 4-LOM, who could pay their way handsomely enough, but also any number of the galaxy’s most aristocratic and stiff-necked bloodlines. From the rims of his own large, insectoid eyes, Zuckuss could spot some of the galaxy’s richest and most glittering denizens, devoted to spending their vast inherited wealth in as ostentatious a manner as possible. For many of them, their weapons were ceremonial ornaments, dictated by fierce custom and the privileges given to their rank; to have asked them to divest of even the smallest dagger or low-penetration blaster would have been an insult, expiable only by the death of the establishment’s proprietor, a stub-fingered Bergamasque named Salla C’airam. The only acceptable alternative, preserving their honor and the bar’s decorum, was to ask them to hand over the power sources for their blasters and similar high-tech weapons, thus limiting the damage and potential loss of life to what could be achieved with inert metal. C’airam kept the ergovores in the entrance tunnel hungry enough that their sensitive antennae were at constant quivering alert for the emanations from even the smallest power cell, no matter how well hidden; their flocking and chittering toward any they detected was a sure giveaway of anyone trying to violate the house rules.

All of which meant that the blaster holstered at Zuckuss’s hip was useless at the moment; that was an uncomfortable feeling for him. It was little consolation that everyone else in the bar was similarly disarmed. He would have preferred the usual setup that he encountered in the watering holes in which he more often hung out, where everyone including the bartenders was armed to the teeth. Then you know where you stand, thought Zuckuss. This other stuff’s too tricky.

“How much longer?” He leaned forward to ask the question of 4-LOM. “Until the merchandise is supposed to show up?” He didn’t have much patience for waiting, either. He hadn’t become a bounty hunter in order to sit around waiting.

“His arrival is precisely fixed,” replied 4-LOM. “Such precision of movement and timing is nearly the equal of my own; in that, I admire the creature. Especially given that there is a price on his head, a bounty that it is our intention to collect. Many other sentient creatures, given those circumstances, would try to make their comings and goings erratic, to vary them in such a way as to frustrate pursuers in determining their target’s patterns of behavior. But he has confidence in the precautions that he has taken, including the limiting of his public recreational activities to this establishment.” 4-LOM rested his hands unmoving on the table. “We shall soon determine if the merchandise’s confidence is rewarded with a continuing freedom.”

There was no point in arguing with a droid such as 4-LOM. One might as well have had a conversation with the tracking systems aboard a standard pursuit ship. Even worse, Zuckuss knew that 4-LOM was correct; there had been a good reason for arriving at this place so far ahead of their quarry, getting set up and letting the minutes pass until the moment of action came. He knew all that; he just didn’t care for what he knew.