The guard kicked Tyrus off the sled, his hands and feet still bound by ener-chains.
For a free-falling moment Rechs was helpless.
Of course, that was all part of the plan.
She hadn’t really been able to hack into his armor, but it was important that Rechs made her think she had. Because the one piece of the plan Rechs couldn’t achieve without her was making the cartel head believe he was safe around the armored bounty hunter. So Rechs gave her access, but with so many restrictions that she had no idea how insignificant her journey into the system truly was. The armor was powered down, that much was true… but it was totally under his control. As it had been all along.
The bounty hunter’s immediate goal was to control the fall. Because he had to stick the landing… or the swallow, as it were.
Instantly the armor powered itself up. Jump jets came online and Tyrus bumped them as he fell toward the monster’s gnashing jaws. The thing was looking to snag him with a bite and then cut him in pieces with razor-sharp teeth more akin to a shark’s than to those of a carnivorous dinosaur. Rows upon rows of massive bone triangles working up and down in anticipation as he fell.
But at the last second, he bumped the jump jets and shot past the toothy centurions drooling with caustic saliva. And faster than he could realize he was well beyond the vicious mouth and stuck in the thing’s throat. Clinging to the slimy flesh as the beast gave undulating shudders—what passed for coughs—to try and dislodge the bounty hunter.
The monster then apparently decided to swallow rather than keep trying to regurgitate him—and its powerful throat muscles sucked Tyrus Rechs down into its belly.
Down he went into a deep, dark hole, alive and seething with digestive acids.
06
Tyrus Rechs had sold the little Nubarian gunnery bot in the Bot Pits of Suracaõ. This was during Tyrus’s brief stay on the planet during the early days of the hunt, when he concocted his plan to draw out Gat Hathor. The bot had once served on ships of the line for the Republic Navy, making it a very valuable piece of equipment, highly sought after in any bot bazaar.
That was also why Tyrus had acquired it in the first place: it could operate the omni-cannon aboard the Obsidian Crow.
The little bot had whooped and hectored Rechs angrily for daring to enter the Bot Pits with him in tow. Hadn’t Captain Rechs set the bot free upon purchase? And then offered the bot a crew position aboard his ship?
Had the bot displeased “Boss Captain Rechs”?
“Yes,” Tyrus had said stoically as they entered the shadowy bazaar. A place of pleasure bots in various stages of assembly offering themselves from the shadows while the sweet incense of lotus hash mixed with the smells of a hundred races come to sell and acquire the galaxy’s version of a slave. “You’re your own machine. I’m not your owner.”
The bot whistled angrily at the inconsistency between words and actions.
“Because this is a mission,” Rechs told the murderous little thing. “And I need you… to go undercover.”
The bot bounded up and down on its small motivator ball and rolled around in a circle cackling digitally.
“It’s not a secret kill mission,” began Tyrus patiently.
The bot beeped stridently, alerting Tyrus that it would indeed be much better if it were a secret kill mission instead of just a plain old secret mission. Kill missions were more effective in dealing with problems, as far as the bot was concerned.
The bot was patently homicidal. G232 never ceased to warn Rechs of its concerns about the angry little thing. And in turn, the little Nubarian bot complained that G232 constantly plotted against it. It knew this as sure as anything could be known. Let the Nubarian kill the mincing admin bot and all would be well. Just give it weapons. Sweet, beautiful weapons and it would burn the galaxy down around G232 and everyone else that opposed Captain Rechs.
Rechs knew all this. And was fine with it. With the infighting. And the homicidal tendencies. The little bot’s programming had somehow been altered, that was all. Usually there were patches and updates to keep a bot’s core programming whatever it needed to be. But this bot hadn’t experienced that in a long time. And it had taken to thinking of itself as a war bot.
“Okay,” said Tyrus, giving in. “Let’s call it a secret kill mission. But not until a very specific thing happens. Then, yes… you can start shooting everything.”
The bot gave a small slow whine of either gratification… or amazement. It was unclear which.
An hour later the bot had been sold three different times as each purchaser/seller took the valuable little piece of equipment up the chain of acquisition until it inevitably reached Gat Hathor’s personal buyer.
Spindo.
Spindo promptly shipped the Nubarian bot off to Gat’s fortress, where the little machine was assigned to man the most secure gun emplacements—as Rechs knew it would be, due to the nature of the bot’s valuable target-acquisition programming. And so, within Gat’s central fortress, high atop the Azure Tower that loomed above the sprawl of lagoons, grottos, and gardens, the Nubarian gunnery bot now operated the main defensive gun that watched over the palace. While not quite an ion cannon, it was capable of disabling an incoming capital ship should the need arise. It rapid-fired phased energy bolts of such power that standard defensive shielding, already degraded by atmospheric conditions, would collapse rapidly. It could do this only once—then it was out of juice—but should any Republic vessel show up, it would be little work to shoot it down within fifty-eight point nine seconds of target acquisition. The Obsidian Crow would have stood little chance against such a weapon system if caught unawares.
Or so the
