[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 03(98)

“Something wrong?”

“Yeah … you could say that…” Suhlak slowly nodded, then raised his hand and pointed to the curved transparisteel in front of the control panel. “There he is …”

At the center of the viewport, the pursuing ship sat waiting in the distance, engines dropped to standby as though its pilot was confident of there being no escape for its prey.

“Oh, great.” Suhlak looked down at a smaller readout on the control panel. “We finally got an ID code from this guy. Believe me, he’s the last one I wanted to run into.”

Boba Fett peered at the small bright image of the ship ahead. “Who is it?”

“Osss-10,” said Suhlak, shoulders slumping. “Now I’m sure you’re bad luck.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Disgust sounded in Suhlak’s voice. “That’s because you’re an old story, and he’s the latest thing. Don’t you get it? This is all because of what you did when you broke up the old Bounty Hunters Guild. The old rule book’s been thrown out, and there’s enough chaos in the bounty-hunting environment for totally new ones to start up. New-and better.” Suhlak pointed his thumb at the viewport. “I’ve never even seen this Osss-10 guy face-to-face, don’t know where he comes from, but I’ve already had some real unpleasant encounters with him. Somebody with a lot of credits must be bankrolling him: he’s got all the

state-of-the-art equipment, plus he’s a real genius at programming his onboard computers. He’s got some kind of predictive algorithms wired into his gear that I’ve never encountered before. The more confrontations you have with him, the bigger operational database he has to extrapolate from about what your next moves are going to be-just like he did right now. If he gets much smarter, next he’s going to be able to know what I’m going to do before I know!”

“So what are your plans?”

“What difference does it make?” Suhlak slumped down in defeat. “I already threw my best stuff at this guy. The only thing I can think of to do is … give up.”

“Right-” Boba Fett leaned past Suhlak and shoved the main thruster engine controls forward. The Z-95 Headhunter shot

forward,

rapidly accelerating toward the other craft in the distance.

“What’re you doing?” Suhlak struggled against the forearm restraining him in the seat. “You’ll get us killed!”

Fett said nothing, but pushed the thruster controls all the way to their limits.

The pursuer craft loomed larger in the center of the viewport as the Headhunter sped straight toward it. Suddenly, the prow-mounted laser cannons began firing. Bolt after coruscating bolt struck the Headhunter, buffeting the craft from side to side, as more sparks and smoke filled its interior as though it were in the middle of a planetary lightning storm. Boba Fett kept his grip locked upon the thruster controls. Shock and the force of acceleration were enough to keep Suhlak pinned where he was, watching helplessly as Boba Fett made quick navigational corrections with his other hand, maintaining their fiery course toward their opponent.

A final volley of laser-cannon fire burst across the viewport, blinding in its white-hot glare. The Headhunter burst through it, finding the other craft now directly ahead. They were close enough to each other that Suhlak, opening his squeezed-shut eyes, had a momentary glimpse of a grimly intent face behind a curve of transparisteel-That was all he saw of Osss-10. Suhlak braced himself for the annihilating impact of the two ships crashing together. Then suddenly he could see the rear of the other craft encircled with the flare from its own engines at full throttle. The cockpit through which he had glimpsed the pursuer’s face swept upward and out of his vision; the bottom of the other ship’s hull filled the viewport, near enough that Suhlak could have counted the thermal weld seams in the durasteel panels if they hadn’t gone by so fast.

A scraping noise, metal against metal, sounded through the smoke roiling in the cockpit area as the underside of Osss-10’s ship tore off one of the Z-95 Headhunter’s sensor arrays. Then silence filled the space, broken only by the hissing of the

automatic

fire-control

systems extinguishing the burning circuitry.

Trembling, Suhlak leaned forward and checked the angle from his ship’s rear scanner. The other ship was nowhere to be seen. He punched up the rest of his detection monitors. They all told the same story: Osss-10 had vanished from the sector as quickly as he had appeared.

Boba Fett had pushed himself back from the control panel, leaving the Headhunter at cruising speed. In the forward viewport loomed the planet Tatooine, closer now.