[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(10)
3
It took some doing, but she found him. For the second time.
The girl crouched behind one of the Dune Sea’s rocky outcroppings as she watched the barely noticeable hole dug into the barren ground below. The twin suns bled into the horizon, the chill Tatooine night already unfolding across the sands. Around her bare shoulders, she pulled tighter a salvaged scrap of sail-barge canopy-blackened by fire and explosion along one ragged edge, stiff with dried blood along another. The delicate fabrics with which her body had been adorned in Jabba’s palace were little protection against the cold. A shiver touched her flesh as she continued to watch and wait.
She’d known that the bounty hunter, the one called Dengar, would have some hiding place away from Jabba the Hutt’s palace. What used to be his palace, she corrected herself. The monstrous slug was dead now, that had held the end of her chain and the chains of the other dancers. But when Jabba had been alive, most of the thugs and bodyguards in his employ had had little warrens out in the rocky wastes, where they could seal themselves in for a few hours’ sleep, safe from being murdered by each other-or by their boss. Jabba’s court hadn’t been easy to survive in; she knew that better than anyone. But it’s not me who died, she thought with a bitter satisfaction. Jabba got what he deserved.
In the dimming light, she put away her brooding, the little vengeful spark that kept her warm inside. She’d spotted, down below, the approaching figures for which she’d been waiting.
Two medic droids trundled across the sand; their parallel tracks headed toward the warren hole in the rocky wasteland. They were probably refugees from Jabba’s palace, just as she was; all of the medic droids there had been modified with wheels in place of the original stumpy legs so they could get around in the desert terrain. Neelah watched them for a few seconds more, then eased out of her hiding place and carefully worked her way down the farther side of the dune, where the droids wouldn’t be able to see her.
“Hold it right there.” She caught the droids just as they were transmitting the security code that would unseal the subsurface warren; a row of numbers, softly glowing red, showed on the panel embedded in
the magnetically reinforced durasteel. “Don’t move. I promise I won’t hurt you-but don’t move.”
“Are you frightened?” The taller of the two medical droids, a basic MD5 general-practitioner model, scanned her against the hole’s rough circle of evening sky. “Your pulse is quite elevated for a standard humanoid form. Plus”-a tiny grid irised open on the droid’s dark-enameled head, drawing in an air sample-“your perspiration contains significant levels of hormones indicating an emotionally agitated state.”
“Shut up. I also want you to do that.” Rocks slid loose beneath her as she scrambled down toward the droids. “Just shut up.”
“Did you hear that?” The taller droid swiveled its multilensed gaze toward its companion, a white-banded MD3 pharmaceutical model. “She’s telling us to be quiet.”
“Rudeness.” Dust sifted from the shorter one as it tucked its syringes and dispensing appendages closer to itself. “Foresight of difficulties.”
“Great-” Anger spurred her heart even faster. “Then you can’t say you didn’t know this was coming.” She grabbed a vital-signs monitor sticking out antennalike from the taller one’s head and slammed the droid against the dirt wall of the warren entrance, hard enough to send the lights dancing across its front display panel. Another pull in the opposite direction sent it crashing into the other droid; that one squealed as it toppled over, exposing the wheeled traction devices below the lower rim of its cylindrical body. “Now, how about shutting up?”
“It seems like a very good idea.” The taller droid retreated, flattening itself against the unopened secu rity hatch.
She gulped down a deep breath, trying through sheer willpower to slow down her heartbeat and still the trembling in her hands. Few violent acts had been required in her life-as far as she knew; she had no memories of any life before finding herself at Jabba’s palace-and even as something as minor as banging a little sense into the medical droids’ heads was enough to dizzy her. Get used to it, she sternly told herself. The realization had already come to her that a lot more scary things were going to happen. That was all right; at least she was alive. Others in her position hadn’t been so fortunate. The memory was still vivid inside her, of seeing the other dancing girl falling into the pit beneath Jabba’s palace. That memory ended with screams, and the slavering growls of Jabba’s pet rancor.