[Legacy of the Jedi] - 02(10)

CHAPTER 7


“Let’s follow him,” Adi murmured. “Better to know where he is - and perhaps we’ll learn something.”

Qui-Gon nodded. They melted into the crowd in the street. It was rare that a being knew when he was being followed by a Jedi. They were able to use the Force to direct objects to move into their path if someone turned to look behind them. They were able to move before their prey could track their steps. After a short time, the Jedi were able to so absorb their quarry’s way of moving that they could predict it and easily avoid discovery.

The bounty hunter was good. He was careful. Yet he was no match for them. Adi and Qui-Gon followed him easily as he walked to the opposite edge of Settlement 5 and then struck out across the hills and rocks.

This area was even more rugged than where they’d left Obi-Wan and Siri. They trailed him through a series of small, deep canyons. The boulders offered plenty of hiding places. At last he slipped into a narrow opening and disappeared. Qui-Gon and Adi carefully moved forward. Positioning themselves behind an outcropping, they peered into the opening.

It led to a canyon that was just a cleft in the landscape. They recognized the bounty hunter’s light freighter. Next to it was a slightly larger ship. Together they took up nearly the entire width of the canyon.

The bounty hunter disappeared into the larger ship. The ramp was down, and Qui-Gon and Adi slowly made their way there. With a glance at each other, they agreed to try to observe what was going on. It was worth the risk.

They crept up the ramp and slipped inside the ship. They heard raised voices coming from the cockpit.

Good, Qui-Gon thought. If a group was arguing, they would be too distracted to stay alert.

Tall and graceful, Adi moved ahead of him down the hall, her boots soundless on the polished floor. She beckoned to him. She had found a vent at eye level, in a storage room right off the cockpit. Qui-Gon could see quite clearly into the next room.

His heart fell. There were five bounty hunters in the cockpit, including the one chasing them. Among them was one he recognized - Gorm the Dissolver. He was a formidable presence, dwarfing the others in his plated armor and helmet. Created by Arkanian Renegades, he was half-bio, half-droid. His bio parts were made up of six different aliens. His droid components allowed him to be a nearly invincible killing machine. Gorm’s tracking skill was legendary and his merciless attacks were spoken of in whispers in spaceports throughout the galaxy.

All of these bounty hunters in one place, for one assassination? Qui-Gon wondered again who the target could be.

“We’ve only got a week,” one of the bounty hunters said. It was a humanoid woman, small and compact, dressed in a leather tunic and leggings. Her fair hair was twisted in many braids that fell to her shoulders. She appeared to be completely ordinary, if you didn’t notice the firepower strapped to her waist, her wrist gauntlets with an array of weapons systems, or the armored kneepads she wore. By the look of her armor, Qui-Gon guessed she was a Mandalorian, or at least that she had somehow procured some of the warrior army’s famous weaponry. “You shouldn’t have blasted that escape pod, Magus,” she went on. “Now we don’t know for sure if you got the kid.”

The bounty hunter who had chased them on Cirrus turned slowly and rested his steely gaze on the female.

“Don’t give me that black-hole look, Magus,” she said. “You know I’m right. We need proof that the kid has been neutralized. If he’s still alive, he could compromise the mission. I don’t mind pulling this off, but I don’t want anybody to know I was involved. Those Senatorial committees can get touchy about political assassinations.”

“We’re only a week away from our hits,” another bounty hunter said. He was a tall creature with green-tinged skin and a cranial horn on top of his head. “I for one don’t relish the thought of assassinating a world leader if security is waiting for me. And we’ve got twenty targets. That’s twenty times the security.”

Qui-Gon and Adi exchanged a glance. Twenty planetary leaders?

“I told you, they won’t have their regular security,” Magus said.

“We still have no way of knowing how much this kid knows and who he’s alerted,” the female bounty hunter continued.

“You promised they wouldn’t be expecting us, that we’d have the element of surprise,” the third bounty hunter said to Magus. He wore a greasy cloak and his leggings were thick with grime. Tufts of wiry hair stood out on his head like horns. On his grimy face gills flapped open and closed with his breathing. He looked like a large, unkempt fish. A name floated into Qui-Gon’s head. Raptor. This could be the bounty hunter he’d been hearing about, the one who was willing to take any job, no matter how dangerous or cruel. “That’s one reason we agreed. Well - that and the fee. But if security gets tipped off, I’m heading back to the Core and picking up another job. What does our employer say?”