Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [39]
“Who are you looking for?” Manaroo asked, her curiosity piqued.
“His name is Han Solo. Have you ever heard of him?”
There was a small chance that she’d ever heard of Han Solo on this backward world, but Dengar believed in taking chances. Still, he wasn’t surprised when she said, “No.”
“He’s a smuggler with a price on his head. He likes fast ships and heavy blasters. I’ve been hunting him for over a year. Twice—on Tatooine and then again on Ord Mantell—I caught up with him, just in time to see him fly off in his ship, the Millennium Falcon. I’m really tired of getting fried in his exhaust.”
“Do you think Kritkeen knew where he was?”
“No,” Dengar said. “But me and a lot of other bounty hunters set out on Solo’s trail a while back, and we haven’t found him anywhere in the galaxy.”
“So, you think he’s crashed on some unknown world, or hiding on an interdicted planet, like Aruza?”
“I heard a rumor about some hotshot Rebel pilot that blew up the Imperial Death Star. I checked the records. Solo’s ship, the Millennium Falcon, was there. He’s with the Rebellion, and he’s hiding from more than just us bounty hunters.”
“I still don’t understand. So you know where he is?”
“No,” Dengar said, and he wondered if he had revealed too much. He didn’t feel much fear anymore, not since the operations. Still, he was trained to silence, and he found that he’d been speaking perhaps too openly. But he’d already told her half his secrets, and if she revealed the rest, well, he could always kill her. “Only the Rebellion knows where he is, and they’re protecting him. So I had to find a way to join them, but I doubt they’ll take me in too easily. I am an Imperial assassin. But Kritkeen has been one of the Rebellion’s most vexing foes, and there are plenty more like him that I can take care of. Once the Empire puts a bounty on my head and the Rebellion decides that I’m the Empire’s enemy, I suspect they’ll offer me asylum. And once I’m in the Rebellion, I’ll find Han Solo.”
“You’re sowing the seeds of your own destruction,” Manaroo said, and her bright black eyes looked frightened. “The Empire will hunt you down.”
Dengar laughed. “Well, I’ve got nothing to lose. Tell you what, why don’t you lie down in that bunk, get some sleep.” Dengar yawned. He’d become accustomed to Aruza’s night cycles, and right now, his body said it was past his bedtime.
A few days later he left Manaroo on some obscure backwater world, giving her a few hundred credits to buy passage wherever, and thought little more of her for the next few months. Though he flew the skies alone, for once he did not dwell upon his loneliness. He was consumed by his search for Han Solo. He cruised the rim of the galaxy looking for tough dives where smugglers and assassins did business, but he never caught wind of Solo. Twice he sent messages back to Jabba the Hutt on Tatooine to report his progress.
Five more COMPNOR Redesign officials met brutal ends. Four assassins tried to kill Dengar, and Dengar messed them up for it. Then things got quiet. No one would risk coming after him anymore.
The name “Payback” was mentioned in hushed whispers when he entered a casino, and often, on strange dirty little worlds, he would look down a street to find some mother and child staring at him, their eyes gleaming with respect. Sometimes, someone would even call his name, cheering him, and he would look back at them blankly, in wonder.
The planet Toola was little more than a collection of mining camps, a dark place, cold, distant from its sun. The locals, a species called Whiphids, were large creatures covered with white fur in the winter which changed to brown in the summer. The huge Whiphids, with their gleaming tusks, had only the barest technology. The wilder ones still hunted with stone-bladed spears, while warriors closer to the mines sought out metal war axes and even vibroblades smuggled in from off-world. The Whiphids did most of the work in the mines