Star Wars_ Rebel Force 04_ Firefight - Alex Wheeler [12]
Div froze midstep. The telltale click of the blaster was almost too soft to hear, but it was unmistakable. He whirled around, weapon raised, and came face to face with a blaster carbine.
"Div, right? My leader? " The woman holding the rifle was one of the pilots on his team, a hard-edged mercenary who'd said no more than two or three words to anyone.
Clea Sook, he remembered. From Galidraan. It'd be hard to forget the black tattoos covering her face and hands—hands that were aiming a blaster at his head, without trembling. Div was pretty sure she could easily shoot him and never look back. "Any good orders you'd like to hand out now?"
"How about: Drop the blaster?" Div said, without much hope it would have an effect.
"We could work together, find our way out of here twice as fast."
Clea's lips curled up in a mirthless smile.
"You really don't want to aim that at me," Div added.
"Let's see…With you alive, I split the reward four ways. With you dead, I split it three ways. Why wouldn't I want to aim this at you?" She laughed. "You think I can't survive on this rock without your help?"
"Maybe you can; maybe you can't," Div allowed. "But there's one thing you won't survive."
"What's that?"
"This." He struck out before she had a chance to react. His arm slashed across hers in a blur of motion. The blasterflew from her hand. In seconds, he had her on the ground, his knee on her chest, his blaster jabbing her forehead. Div tilted his head. "You sure you don't want to reconsider working together?"
She scowled at him. "Why not just kill me now, up your share of the reward?"
"Because no one's getting anything until we blast off this planet," Div said.
"Besides…" Without taking his attention off her, he widened his focus to include the cityscape. It was perfectly still and silent. No signs of life. And yet he couldn't shake the feeling that something was out there. Something wrong. "Besides, no point in working alone when we can work together."
"And if I don't agree to buddy up?" she asked flatly, clearly already knowing the answer.
"Leave you out here, knowing you want me dead?" he asked. "Would you do that?"
Clea smiled, genuinely this time. "Not if I wanted to live." She nodded. "Fine. We work together." She raised a hand, and he shook it, then pulled her to her feet. He was pretty sure she'd strike the moment his back was turned. So he returned her blaster, but not before deactivating it with a subtle, practiced motion. She'd never know, unless she tried to shoot.
Div let Clea lead the way to the research station, devoting most of his attention to the dark corners of the silent city. Her reflexes were slow, her motions obvious. Her face was a transparent mask that announced her every impulse as soon as she had it. She was a known quantity, and that meant she wasn't a threat.
It was the unknown that bothered him. Not scared him, not yet. But something was out there, in the shadows flickering in the abandoned streets. Come and get me, Div thought. I'll be ready. He always was.
Almost always, he thought bitterly, brushing away the memory as soon as it arose.
He'd let his guard down one time and someone else had paid the price. It wasn't going to happen again.
Ever.
Fallon Pollo lurched down the narrow street, blood seeping from a gash in his leg. All his equipment—his food, comlink, weapons, map—had gone down with his ship. He had crashed at the edge of the city, his Preybird smashing through the roof of an abandoned barracks. The driving rains had blotted out the fire, and Fallon had escaped. No amount of money was worth this kind of grief. But then, he didn't fly for money, did he? Not anymore. All his life, he'd chased the big score, the one last job that would let him retire in style.