Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [84]
Tinian tottered to her feet.
“First hatch on your left,” Bossk reminded her. “You’ll find it by feel. I left it open.”
Bossk slapped a control and opened the cabin hatch. Chenlambec sat on his bunk. If Tinian looked bad, Chenlambec’s misery was magnificent. His face, neck, and chest fur lay in a soaked, tangled mat. “Get to the Pup,” Bossk said gruffly, struggling not to laugh. “Tinian will fill you in. I’m headed for the bridge to try to fix things.”
Tinian sneezed violently, then groped on up the dark corridor. She couldn’t see, and every breath hurt. Bossk’s apology had sounded false. Trandoshans never apologized.
She heard a miserable treble howl behind her. “Chen, are you there?” she wheezed.
He howled again.
“He wants us on board the Pup. It’s got filtered air.” She sniffed hard and swallowed.
His grumble sounded closer this time.
She groped to the open hatch and stumbled through. Her footsteps clanked: This had to be the scout-ship dock. Feeling her way along one bulkhead, she closed her hand around a breath mask. She shoved it over her nose and eyes, but it leaked top and bottom. It was the wrong shape for a human face.
She gasped out a short Shyriiwook oath and dropped the useless rebreather.
Long, strong, fur-covered hands closed on her shoulders and pushed her away from the bulkhead. Chen rumbled instructions.
“Okay. Take me in.” She grabbed his big forearms and shut her eyes. Every time she cracked them open, they stung like they were full of biting insects.
Chen leaped up the ladder like a whirlwind. She let go and slumped on the Pup’s deck, trying not to wipe her eyes. Her skin and clothing—and Chen’s fur—were probably covered with the poisonous pollen.
A light came on. “Are you on board?” Bossk’s voice rasped over the Pup’s comm system. “Is it any better in there?”
The Pup started to vibrate. Bossk must be powering it up from the Hound’s bridge.
“Much,” Tinian shouted without getting up. “Thank … y’choo!”
“Shake yourselves,” Bossk ordered. “Turn your ventilation and filters on full. That will help.”
Chen announced that he’d found an air intake.
Tinian squinted. Chen contorted himself in front of the intake, sweeping every centimeter of his body across it three or four times. Then he started picking half-dried detritus off his fur.
If he wasn’t going to stand on protocol, she wasn’t either. She skinned out of her black shipsuit and flapped it in front of the vent, then shook her hair hard. At first, her sneezing and weeping got worse instead of better. Finally, they slacked off.
She cracked one eye open. It no longer stung. She exhaled heavily.
Chenlambec sat at the Pup’s controls, studiously eyeing the board. Tinian slipped back into her shipsuit and then flopped down beside him. “Are you—choo!—ready?”
Chen growled assent.
Bossk’s voice answered out of the comm, “I will launch you in thirty seconds. All of your systems check perfectly.”
Bossk smelled victory. After the Pup accelerated well away from the Hound, he touched a control to arm the flame carpet warhead’s detonator. Chenlambec had cocked the obah gas dispenser’s trigger by switching the Pup’s ventilators to full power.
Now he swiveled back to his navicomputer to make final calculations for his own approach. He keyed in a course that would take him close to the Wookiee colony.
As soon as the Pup fired and he gassed Chen and Tinian—their nasal membranes would be exquisitely sensitive, an unplanned dividend of the pollen test—he would dive. One swoop ought to draw the cocky Solo offplanet to chase him.
He rotated his eyes inward. Here I am, Scorekeeper. Watch me.
Chen held the Pup on course for several minutes before Tinian finally stopped sneezing. Her nose still twitched. Inside, it felt as if someone had scraped it raw.
On second thought, she smelled explosives that shouldn’t be on board. Alarmed, she unbuckled, stood up, and leaned close to Chen