[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(124)

chamber was a tripod-mounted

holographic playback unit with a full assortment of auto-adaptive connectors and data channels. Bossk sorted through the connectors until he found the one that matched up with the recorder. Both units lit up; after a few seconds of format scanning, a miniaturized, fuzzy-edged landscape formed in front of Bossk.



Someplace on Tatooine; Bossk could tell that much just from the quality of light, the mingled shadows that came with the planet’s twin suns. Bossk leaned in closer to the holo image, trying to make out the details. It looked like one of those miserable, dreary moisture farms that eked out a low-profit existence on the edges of the Dune Sea.



Parallel lines from the segmented treads of a ground transport were embedded in the gravelly terrain. Even at the holo image’s low resolution, Bossk could tell that they dated from at least a day before the recording had been made; the tracks were blurred by windblown sand. He figured they were from the sandcrawler of the Jawas who had dumped off this droid when they had been tricked into believing that it was contaminated with lethal radiation. Probably some farther distance away from the moisture farm so its autonomic spy circuits could kick in and it could find a surreptitious vantage point by which it could observe and record whatever happened.



And whatever happened hadn’t been good. Bossk could see ugly black smoke rising to the top of the holo image as the shot’s point of view moved in closer. The spy circuits in the droid must have felt it was all right to come out in the open-since every creature at the moisture farm was obviously dead. With clinical detachment, Bossk studied the charred, skeletal remains strewn in front of what was left of the farm’s low, rounded structures. Looks like a standard stormtrooper hit, he judged. All the markings, unsubtle even by Bossk’s standards, were there. The Empire’s white-uniformed killers always left a clear signature on their grisly work, to intimidate anyone who stumbled upon it later.



The silence of the recorded image was broken by the rising whir of a speeder approaching from somewhere in the distance. For a moment the image’s point of view tilted and bounced; obviously, the spying droid had scrambled back to someplace in the surrounding dunes where it wouldn’t have been spotted.



The shot steadied at long distance, then zoomed forward as the spy circuits switched to a powerful telephoto lens. That enabled Bossk to recognize at least the figure that had scrambled out of the speeder when it had come to a bobbing halt. That’s Luke Skywalker, he thought; there was no mistaking that youthful human face and tousled blond hair.



He leaned closer to the image, suddenly fascinated by it. This must be the stortntrooper raid-Bossk slowly nodded. On that moisture farm, where Skywalker grew up. He knew more about it than most creatures in the galaxy did; in a spaceport watering hole considerably grungier and more disreputable than even the Mos Eisley cantina, B6ssk had bought drinks for and pried information out of a twitching human wreck, a former stormtrooper cashiered from

the

Imperial Navy for various

psychological problems. Guilt, Bossk had supposed at the time; it wasn’t an emotion he’d ever personally experienced. The ex-stormtrooper hadn’t been involved in any action on Tatooine, but had heard grisly bits and pieces from some of his barracks mates. In typical bounty-hunter fashion, Bossk had filed away the data-and the Luke Skywalker connection-inside his head, against the day when it might prove useful. Now he wondered if that time might have come at last.



Bossk drew back from the floating image, watching as the image of Skywalker discovered the charred skeletons of the aunt and uncle who had raised him from childhood. He knew how much tighter those bonds of sentiment were for other species. He also knew about Luke Skywalker’s ties to the Rebel Alliance; rumors and stories had already spread throughout the galaxy, along with ID holos and other tracking data. This mere youngster, from an obscure



backwater

planet,

had



somehow



become overwhelmingly important to Emperor Palpatine and-perhaps even more so-to Lord Vader, the Empire’s black-gloved fist. Vader’s creatures, his personal legions of spies and informers, were still scouring all the inhabited worlds for leads on Skywalker. Why, though, was still a carefully guarded secret.



The deactivated droid and its contents were now even more

intriguing

to Bossk. It might

not

provide Skywalker’s current location-which would’ve been worth credits; Vader would pay for that kind of data-but there might be some kind of clue as to just why both the Emperor and the Dark Lord of the Sith were so interested in him. And to a smart barve like Bossk, that could be worth even more.