[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(97)

The underling remained silent, still glaring at her.

“Now that we understand each other,” continued Kodir, “you may return to your other duties. As I’ll return to mine.”

With a curt nod the underling turned and strode away.

Several other faces on the bridge had swiveled in her direction, watching and listening to the brief altercation. Kodir gestured with one hand. “Carry on,” she said. “Unless, that is, any of you wish to question my command?”

A moment passed, then the security staff returned to their various tasks.

Kodir gazed past the heads bent over the gauges and display screens. Soon, she told herself. A mere matter of time…

“You know, I’m beginning to think you’re just plain bad luck.” N’dru Suhlak glanced over his shoulder at the figure behind him in

the Headhunter’s cockpit. “Whether I’m going up against you, or whether we’re supposed to be on the same side-there’s just evil stuff that happens to me when you’re around.”

“What’s the problem?” Boba Fett grasped the back of the pilot’s chair Suhlak sat in and pulled himself forward, the better to see what was up ahead of the small craft. “I thought we had just about reached Tatooine.”

“Sure-dead ahead.” Suhlak pointed to the forward viewport. In the distance was the buff-colored orb, with little of its surface obscured by cloud cover beneath the radiance of twin suns. “Plus, I thought we’d already gotten past the worst we were going to encounter along the way. Without having to get into any running dogfights-I’d much rather sneak past anyone trying to stop me, instead of having to shoot my way through.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that with this customer.”

“You’ve spotted someone?”

“Correction-someone’s spotted us.” A red dot of light was pulsing on the control panel; Suhlak pointed to it. “I can’t see him yet, but whoever it is, he’s definitely got some kind of multifrequency scanning and lock-on device. It’s got real distance capability, too. None of my detect systems can even get a fix on his location; the signal that got bounced off us was less than a nanosecond in duration, and that’s way too small to calculate off of.”

The cockpit area of the Headhunter had been extensively modified, bubbled out to add a larger carrying capacity for Suhlak’s

paying passengers. But the space was still cramped enough that all Boba Fett would have had to do was turn away from the pilot’s chair in order to place his hands against the curved bulkhead, as though he might have been able to sense the approaching predator in that way.

On the cockpit panel, the red light began pulsing faster, at an accelerating clip. “I take it,” said Boba Fett, “that we’re picking up more of this unknown individual’s scanning signals?”

“You got it, pal. He’s obviously trying to get enough vector data on us to predict our path and speed. Which means”-Suhlak slammed the navigational controls hard to one side; the stars in the viewport blurred horizontally as the Z-95 Headhunter banked at close to a ninety-degree deflection from its original course-“we go another way.”

The sharp maneuver had slammed Boba Fett against the pilot’s chair. He braced himself, widening the stance of his boots and holding on tighter to the seat’s back.

Suhlak glanced over his shoulder at his passenger. “You better sit back and strap yourself in. This might get a little raucous.”

“And leave you running this show by yourself?” The lights from the control panel glinted on the dark visor of Boba Fett’s helmet as he shook his head. “Don’t worry-I can handle it.”

“Suit yourself. Because it seems our friend has gotten in range of us.” Suhlak pointed to the upper left quadrant of the viewport. “There he is now. And it doesn’t look like he just wants to say hello.” Boosting the Headhunter’s main engines to full throttle, Suhlak threw the small ship into a looping spiral, piling on multiple g-forces. “Hold on-“

The first shot fired from the pursuer struck the Headhunter’s exterior hull, to the rear of the expanded passenger area. A burst of hot sparks rained across Boba Fett’s back as a section of insulated circuitry overloaded and caught fire. Both he and Suhlak ignored the black smoke that started to fill the cockpit as the hunt saboteur pushed the thruster controls even farther forward, at the same time taking the craft into a wrenching counter-directional dive.

“There. That should’ve taken care of him.” Suhlak pointed to the display from the rear scanner. “See? We’ve lost him.” With one hand, Suhlak pulled back the engines’ throttle. “Kinda disappointing, actually. I was hoping for a lot more fun from-” He suddenly fell silent, leaning forward and peering at the forward viewport. “What the…”