Fair Prey - Star Wars Gamer #1 Read online

  A furred, mud-encrusted foot stomped down and snapped the rod cleanly in two.

  Noone blinked and a shape swam into focus. "Dawson!" he roared, infuriated. "You broke my stick!"

  The Tynnan looked down at his feet, opened his mouth in a silent "O" of surprise, and said something muffled and distant. Noone could no longer hear anything save the thundering of blood through his eardrums. An indistinct pale figure moved behind Dawson and pointed a blaster, and the activator vanished in a soundless flash of light.

  Blessed relief inundated his flattened body and he willingly slipped into oblivion.

  Noone came to with a spastic twitch and an involuntary gasp. His hands slapped at his face as he batted away the small vial Kels held beneath his nose. "Enough!" he croaked. "What is that stuff?"

  Kels shrugged. "Chemical smelling salts, looks like. From the medkit. We've got to keep moving if we want to stay ahead of your friend, and I'm not abound drag you."

  "You might have to," Noone said gravely. "That grav field did a number on everything except my hairstyle." He looked back at the deactivated man trap. "How did you find me?"

  "Take the shortest distance and run it in a beeline, that looked to be about your style. We had our own adventures along the way."

  Noone looked around. "Where'd Dawson go?"

  "He's hoping he can set up an ambush, but his explosives are useless without a detonator. Noone - what happened to the Gun of Command?"

  "Kid, if I still had the Gun, Viveca would be here right now massaging my toes. I doubt we'll ever see it again."

  Cold fury was evident in the set of her eyes, though she bit back the angry retort that formed in her brain. "I see," she managed instead, her voice icy.

  Noone watched her carefully. There was a chance they could eventually recover the weapon if Viveca put it back into circulation on the arms market. They could even put together a plan for robbing the manor. But there was no sense going into detail when a more pressing concern was headed their way.

  "We'd better make tracks," Kels finally conceded, consulting her datapad. "Sonax made a rough estimate of the Krish's position by tracing a drone signal back to his handheld transmitter. He's less than ten minutes away."

  Noone groaned as his young accomplice helped him to his feet. Somehow, he'd have to find a bacta tank.

  Dawson emerged from the dense thicket a bit farther up the trail.

  "Let's move," he announced. "It's unstable, but it's the best I could do since somebody slagged the circuits in the man trap."

  "What did you -"

  "C'mon! This thing's motion-sensitive and l don't know how long it'll last!"

  "Dawson -"

  "Go! Go! Go!" The Tynnan broke into a run.

  Tyro Viveca strode purposely forward, a creature of pure rage. That preposterous human had humiliated him, robbed him of a valued servant, and nearly gotten him killed. And the irony was that, without a doubt, the little dunce had no idea what he had truly done.

  An intelligent opponent would have formulated a plan for turning the lamproid against his pursuer; Noone had just opened the door and uncorked a bottle of random lightning. Viveca spat at the ground with manifest contempt. That Noone hadn't been killed himself was a miracle, and Viveca had no tolerance for "lucky" dunces. Each footfall took him one step closer to his rightful prize.

  The nashtah sniffed the ground around the bambooi stalks. Though its leash had been ruined in the attack and subsequently discarded, the loss of its middle right leg seemed to have cured the beast of its overanxious tendency to run ahead. Dravian hounds were known for their rugged constitutions and this one had recovered from its partial dismemberment in minutes. Before it would continue, however, the animal had viciously disemboweled the six-meter carcass of its attacker. Despite the wasted seconds, Viveca had allowed it. He could think of no aesthetic use for lamproid skin without ahead to accompany it.

  The limping nashtah followed the scent onto the main trail. Viveca smiled. Had his prey fallen into the tiger pit? It would be delicious to see Noone impaled on a bed of vibro-stakes, but Viveca rather hoped the human had landed safely and pulled loose one of the spikes to use as a hand weapon. He pictured himself snatching the spike out of his opponent's hands, then gutting his astonished foe from belly to neck.

  Surprisingly, however, the scent quickly led off the track and back into the thicket. The nashtah disappeared among the stalks and Viveca followed with measured steps. This could be even more delightful, he thought, as he recognized the overgrown and nearly nonexistent run. Now he would gauge Noone's true worth. It would be a pity if the human had already expired from gravitic distress, but Viveca could live with that. Such a death was invariably lingering and painful.

  It occurred to him to call back the nashtah lest it be injured by the man trap, but as he rounded a bend he realized his caution was unnecessary. The durasteel activation plate lay on the ground, inactive and unoccupied. The hound was busily pawing at the reeds on the opposite side. Puzzled, Viveca stepped forward to examine the remote activator. Nothing remained of the device save a burnt fistful of dull melted alloy.

  A blaster shot! Noone had accomplices! Cursing, he shouldered his rifle and scanned the trail for a surprise ambush. Nothing happened, and Viveca realized that the fugitives would have fled in panic at the earliest opportunity.

  His opponent had cheated! The thought ran through his mind with such palpable disgust it approached physical nausea. Lack of ability he could understand. Stupidity even, in a pitying way. But poor sportsmanship? Never. He would find everyone involved and flay their hides with a high-intensity laser.

  The nashtah, yapping feverishly at him, appeared to have picked up a scent. It pressed through the growth until only its rear set of legs were visible, trembling with anticipation and shaking the pale shoots violently. Viveca thought he heard nearby voices.

  Fools. His lips curled in a triumphant sneer as he crept closer. Sad fools.

  Yes indeed. A deep male voice was distinctly emanating from the copse just ahead, though he couldn't quite make out what it was saying. Viveca readied his weapon and parted the pliant shoots separating him from his trophy.

  His eyes took in the tableau in an instant.

  A white plastic ball, a child's toy, nestled in a bambooi cradle.

  "OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD."

  Two copper wires snaking into the toy's exposed innards, glued in place against a sound chip with what looked like orange maraffa sap.

  "OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD."

  Both golden filaments spilling to the ground and running up against -

  "OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD."

  - A melon-sized wad of detonite tape.

  The nashtah whined. Viveca grimaced.

  The explosion neatly flattened four hectares of bambooi.

  Bacta was a miraculous panacea. It had cured plagues. It had healed the nearly dead. It had changed the face of modern medicine. Trouble was, it was almost criminally expensive.

  Military goons took quality medical care for granted, Hass Sonax hissed to herself. For a no-name thief with uncertain credit and nonexistent insurance, the medcenters of Kabal might as well be impregnable castle keeps. Well, there was no other way they'd have to create a false admissions record in the city's central computer and skip out on the bill. Sighing, the Sluissi keyed up her cyborg interface band and prepared for some data slicing.

  Across the yacht's opulent cabin, Noone lay stretched on an overstuffed acceleration couch, decorative throw pillows supporting his head and feet. Dawson sat on the floor next to him, reading the instruction manual that came with the ship's emergency medkit.

  "And I'm saying that now's the perfect time to go for the Gun." Kels stopped pacing along the vessel's midline and tapped her foot anxiously. "If the Krish is dead, he manor's either in total chaos or quiet as the grave. let's make a smash-and-grab now, before some local yeggs beat us to it."

  Dawson quietly indicated Noone's makeshift pallet. "Have some respect, will yo
u? He's still breathing, and I'm trying to keep it that way."

  "A medkit will keep him stable -"

  "A medkit will not!" Dawson shot to his feet in an uncharacteristic display of anger. "How am I supposed to stop internal bleeding with synthflesh and gauze?"

  Sonax unplugged her computer jack from the tech station and looked at them testily. "Forgive me, but I ran across an interesssting entry in the law-enforcement database. We have to raise ssship, now. The authorities are halting all outgoing flights until passengers can be quessstioned."

  Kels swore and sprinted for the cockpit. "The looting will have to wait," Sonax called after her. "And we'll have to find an off-planet bacta facility." Dawson nodded and secured Noone to the couch with crash webbing. As he hustled aft to jump-start the rear converters, he abruptly skidded to a stop on the polished deck plates.

  "Sonax!" he cried. "We forgot about the landing shackle!"

  Kea Ki Trang strode confidently up the ramp of the star yacht berthed at Docking Pad P13. The ship was a beauty, all right, though her defensive cannons were far too large for a vessel of her size. He'd be sure to have a few words with the captain about proper commercial lift/mass ratios. And, while he was at it, it wouldn't hurt to see a waiver for that military turbolaser.

  Two handpicked members of his security detail took position behind him as he rapped on the hatch. "This is Palisade Starport Control, requesting to speak to the captain of the..." he consulted his clipboard, "Spiraling Shape. Open the hatch immediately."

  Trang had no idea the owners of this craft were involved in that odd explosion at Viveca's place, but the mayor had demanded a full security crackdown. Fortunately, Tabor and Kilgore had a crudely effective way of loosening tongues. He knocked again.

  "I repeat, this is Palisade Starport Control. Open the hatch or we will do it for you." He nodded to Tabor, who moved toward the portal with an electronic lock breaker. In response, the ship shivered and whined with the familiar sounds of startup.

  The three officers stepped back onto the sizzling tarmac, throwing each other amused grins. The vessel couldn't go anywhere with the docking pad's heavy durasteel security shackle still affixed to its landing gear strut. By starting their engines anyway, they were tacitly admitting their own guilt. Trang shook his head and signaled the control tower. A squad of armored soldiers trooped forth, each carrying a heavy blaster rifle.

  The yacht floated forward on its repulsorlifts a few scant centimeters, but the shackle's chain caught and held fast. In his thirteen years on the job, Trang had never seen one break. He stood well back and folded his arms to watch the fun.

  The landing skids bounced up and down against the permacrete as the ship futilely bucked the chain. The soldiers marched closer, readying their weapons for a disabling shot.

  Without warning, the yacht's huge bank of sublight engines came online with an earsplitting roar. The troopers halted in their tracks, and Trang's mouth dropped open in astonishment. What in the galaxy were they doing?

  The tether shuddered as the ship strained forward, whipping furiously from side to side. The manacled landing-gear strut bent backward sickeningly. Suddenly realizing what would happen next, Trang waved his arms frantically at the oncoming soldiers. "Shoot them!" he shouted, but his words were lost in the thunderous rumble.

  In a single horrible instant, the strut wrenched free from the body of the yacht, tearing loose a structural girder, numerous hull plates, the other rear landing strut, and the entire aft repulsorlift assembly. Trang hit the ground as the chain snapped backward. The twisted mass of jagged starship parts sailed safely over his head.

  The crippled vessel blasted out to sea, bouncing against the breakers like a skipping stone. Pointing its nose skyward, the yacht ignited its ion engines, vaporizing a cone of saltwater that left a swelling spray of white mist. Moments later, the fugitive ship vanished into the thick gray clouds.