[Bounty Hunter Wars] - 01(15)

“The thermal charges are already in place.” The point of Bossk’s claw indicated a pair of tiny bumps on the doors

of

the casino’s main accounting office.

A chameleonoid visual sheath on the charges’

casings prevented the security optics from detecting them. “When I blow them, I want you straight through those doors. Don’t bother scanning for guards, just dive in-“



“Why me?” Zuckuss turned his large-eyed gaze toward him. “Why don’t you do that bit?”



“Because,” said Bossk, grating out an unconvincing show of patience, “I’ll be covering you from behind.” He held up his blaster rifle, its stock and grip controls modified

for his talons, large even by Trandoshan standards. “I’ll draw off any fire while you’re securing the counting room. It’s a standard two-prong attack, straight out of the Guild manual for this kind of situation.”



“Oh.” Leaning his head out from the passage, Zuckuss studied the doors. “That makes sense … I suppose… .”



Idiot, thought Bossk. The actual reason was that the first one into the room was more likely to get sliced into bleeding pieces by the guards’ tight-focus lasers. Better you than me-especially since his partner’s death would mean he’d get to keep all of the bounty for himself, or at least the part that was left after the Guild took its share.



“Let’s go.” He shoved Zuckuss out ahead of himself, at the same time as he hit the trigger device mounted on the sleeve of his stalking gear. The faint sounds of music and frenetic pleasure were drowned out by the bass-heavy rumble of the thermal charges ripping open the sealed doors.



Bossk planted himself in the middle of the corridor, clawed feet spread wide, blaster rifle raised to his slit-pupiled eye. One talon squeezed onto the rifle’s trigger stud in anticipation; the cold heart in his chest sped up with excitement as he peered through the coiling smoke… .



No fire came from beyond the ripped, heat-distorted metal.



“Zuckuss!” He shouted into the comlink mike mounted near the leathery scales of his throat. “What’s going on?”



A moment passed before the other bounty hunter’s reply came. “Well,” said Zuckuss’s voice, “the good news is that we don’t have to worry about the guards… .”



Bossk charged down the corridor, rifle clutched in both sets of talons, and into the casino’s accounting room. Or what was left of it: the smoke from the thermal charges’ explosion had lifted enough that the scattered taliputer and vidlink terminals could be seen. Along with the bodies of a half-dozen casino guards-each one had had a laser hole drilled through the chest plate of his uniform with impressive accuracy. And speed,

Bossk managed to note. None of the guards had even managed to get his weapon unslung and up into firing position; whoever had taken them out had done so in a matter of sec onds.



“Look,” said Zuckuss. He bent down and touched the hole in one guard’s chest plate. “I’m getting a thermal reading here. The plastoid hasn’t cooled-they were all lasered while we were still standing out

in

the corridor!” The bounty hunter stood and pointed to the room’s far wall. A jagged hole, big enough for Bossk himself to have walked through without stooping, revealed the stacked cylinders of the power converters behind the main casino building. “Somebody beat us to it-“



“That’s impossible,” snapped Bossk. “That

wall’s monocrystal-chained; we’d have heard any blast powerful enough to get through it. Unless …” A sudden suspicion hit him; he glanced over his shoulder to the opposite wall. A sonic dissipator, the dials on its silvery ovoid surface trembling at the overload point, hung overhead by its

automatically extruded gripfeet. The indicators slowly backed away from their red zones as the impact of the

wall-breaching explosion was converted into

a harmless sibilant whisper.



The rage inside Bossk leaped up, as though it could blow out another hole, even bigger and hotter. That crossbred spawn of a … The curse died between his gritting fangs. There was only one bounty hunter who used that

kind

of sophisticated-and expensive-equipment. Either it had been smuggled into the counting room somehow, or-more likely-an access hole just big enough for the device had been drilled through the wall, followed

by the explosive charge itself when

the dissipator had been activated to soak up the noise.



There was no point in looking around for the quarry for whom he and Zuckuss had come here. Bossk gripped the edge of the hole torn in the casino’s exterior and scanned the planet’s pockmarked horizon. In the distance, the