Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [45]
“Not for sale. It’s your guarantee,” Ratua said. “I’ll let you embed me and set the implant to your name.”
Brun looked thoughtful. With a spy-killer installed, Brun didn’t need to worry much about Ratua ratting him out if he was caught. The embed unit, about the size of a baby’s fingernail, would sit harmlessly in Ratua’s skull for the rest of his life. But it would be tuned to a certain word, and if that word was spoken by Ratua, and only Ratua, the device would explode. Not much of an explosion—just enough to fry his brain up nice and crispy.
“So what do I get out of it?”
Ratua waved at the interior of the shack. “I’ve got some prime stuff here—food, drink, electronics, death sticks. And I’ll give you a list of my dealers. I’m gone, they’ll talk to you; there’s nobody else. It’s worth a lot.”
“All that’ll happen is you’ll freeze to death up there.”
“That’s my worry. Do we have a deal?”
Brun sat there, his short, thick legs barely reaching the floor, wine cup in one hand and embedder in the other. Ratua knew he was weighing the risks. There were some, yes—but if Ratua was dead, he wouldn’t be pointing fingers. Greed fought with worry, and Ratua watched the battle play out on Brun’s face.
Greed won.
“All right. South Gate, midnight, and keep out of sight until you see me. You see anybody else with me, stay away.”
Ratua let out the breath he’d been holding. “Done.”
“Don’t pack a big bag,” Brun added. “Now turn around.”
Ratua took the last drink of his wine and did as he was told. Brun put the embedder’s muzzle against the back of Ratua’s head; he could feel the cold pressure, and then a moment of mild pain as Brun injected the unit into his skull.
“So,” Brun said, pocketing the embedder, “how do you know I won’t just kill you anyway?”
“Because you’re not a killer,” Ratua replied. “One reasonably civilized being can usually recognize another.”
Brun grunted. “Lem’ scan th’ fiddymon,” he said. Let me see the goods. He didn’t reply to Ratua’s evaluation of him, but Ratua knew it was the truth. He didn’t have to worry about the device going off and painting whatever room he was in with his brains. Even if Brun was a killer, it still wasn’t a worry, because the device wasn’t properly armed. That little bit of reprogramming, and the part needed so that the embedder showed that the chip was armed when it wasn’t, had cost him a small fortune in trade goods, and would have been cheap at twice the price. He could jump up and down and yell “Brun!” until his lips fell off and nothing would happen—at least not as far as that bogus implant was concerned. No way was he going to walk around the rest of his life with a bomb in his head, waiting for a slip of the tongue. Brun wasn’t a killer, true enough. He also wasn’t the brightest star in the cluster, not by several orders of magnitude.
If they captured Ratua, he’d give Brun up in a Jawa’s heartbeat. As much as the little humanoid was going to make on this deal, he could stand a little risk for it.
As long as he didn’t know about it.
18
J BLOCK BARRACKS, GUARD POST 19, GRID 4349, SECTOR 547, QUADRANT 3, DESPAYRE
Sergeant Nova Stihl had slept badly. A dream had troubled him; he could not recall the full substance of it, only that he had been in danger, his weapons empty and his fighting art useless. That was all it took to qualify as a nightmare for a soldier.
Likely it was the heat. Even this late, near midnight, the air outside was near body temperature, and the barracks’ air exchangers were malfunctioning yet again. There was something wrong with the transformer, apparently; the techs had not been able to keep the coils harmonized properly. When they fluctuated, the coolers couldn’t keep up, and it quickly grew hot inside the windowless rooms. Probably hotter in here now than outside.
For a moment, he considered his holos—he was