Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [85]
He wurfled soft assent.
They spent several minutes running through the Pup’s limited board. Nothing turned up. By then, Tinian’s hands shook. Something was terribly wrong, and she couldn’t find it.
Chen tapped his relay to Flirt, then flicked on the sideband and started transmitting again.
His contact howled back, almost indistinguishable over sideband static. Tinian envisioned a prison compound full of Wookiees that was about to explode in violence.
She hoped the Pup wasn’t about to explode, too. She didn’t think Bossk would sacrifice his scout ship just to kill them. What else could it be?
As Chen called instructions into the pickup, a verbal-visual transmission appeared over the main board. DEEPEST SECURITY BREACHED—I THINK, I’M FAKING A SYSTEMS MALFUNCTION NEAR ONE MEAT LOCKER.
It was from Flirt, still under Bossk’s navicomputer.
Chenlambec howled.
“Wait!” Tinian cried. “Override that program. Run a check on the Pup—now! What did Bossk do to prepare it for this mission?”
Bossk cackled softly at Tinian’s startled cry to her partner. Too late for that, Human. He intended to watch his victims approach the Wookiee colony, but for several minutes yet, they would be too far out to fire the flame carpet.
A danger light blinked at one end of his console. “What is it?” he asked. “Not another false alarm, I hope.”
“Nothing wrong, no false alarm,” answered the Hound. “ExTen-Dee lives in a meat locker, inside the skinning hold.”
What? Bossk clicked his foreclaws over his palm. It would’ve been just like that undersized human to tamper with the X10-D’s circuitry. Humans had nasty, slender fingers.
Or was this one of the Hound’s idiot bugs?
He confirmed that the Pup could not fire for several minutes, then slipped off his seat and trotted aft.
• • •
Flirt’s voice shrieked over the relay. “He’s off the bridge! Hurry—if there’s anything you need to do, you’re not monitored!”
“You just keep running those checks.” Tinian’s eyes had stopped watering, but her nose twitched. She couldn’t identify the explosive she smelled; it must be an exotic, and that worried her. “Chen, talk to your friend down there. I’m going to start at one end of this scout and check all the circuits I can get access to. Something’s wrong, and Flirt’s not even trying to help.”
“I am, too!” exclaimed the thin voice. “Bossk just walked into the cargo bay—he’s walking right up to the meat locker I set leaking—he’s standing in front of it—”
Bossk located X10-D standing in his corner, obviously inactive. Next he checked his meat lockers. Fluid dribbled out of a water nipple down the inner wall of the far left unit.
Growling, he whacked a control at mid-bulkhead. That shut down a security circuit that would normally activate the lockers’ energy gates when prey inside tripped them. He grabbed a hydrospanner and stepped in.
“—He’s getting inside!” Flirt squeaked. “Hound, reactivate that energy gate! Hound, please? Hound—”
Chenlambec roared at the pickup.
“All right!” Hiccuping, Flirt switched programs. “He reinstalled your energy guns. Your torpedo launcher is operable again, on heat-seeker status—”
Torpedo. Explosives. “What’s the warhead?” Tinian interrupted.
Flirt answered seconds later. “It’s called a flame carpet,” she sang. “And you’ve—”
Chenlambec’s furious roar drowned out Flirt’s next words. Tinian recoiled too. Flame carpet warheads were appalling weapons manufactured by one of I’att Armaments’ less scrupulous competitors. Bossk had sent her and Chenlambec to set air aflame, sear lungs and skin, shrivel fur—
Flirt had kept talking. Tinian shoved gruesome imagery to the back of her mind. “What was that, Flirt? Please repeat.”
“I said,” Flirt answered in a mincing voice, “that he also installed a dispensing canister into your vent system. It’s full of a nerve poison called obah gas. You’d better dump it.”
“Yeah—but first we’ve got to find it!” Obah gas? Nerve poison? Tinian never would have smelled that. Bossk