—
Hours later, the bounty hunter lies flat on his belly and brings the quadnocs up—he stares through them, flicking the zoom forward click by click until his view is zeroed in enough to make out just enough detail. The roof of the foundry is flat and, like everything else here, broken. A vent stack tower from the next factory over fell across the foundry, connecting the two ruined buildings—and Mercurial decides that will serve as his extraction point if everything goes sideways. Though he’s hard-pressed to imagine how collecting this simple bounty could go wrong…
He spies sudden movement on the roof. Swift focuses in on it, and sees a small sheet of tin move aside—and a brush of pink hair catches the fading light of day.
Target acquired.
A little part of him is thrilled to find her, but at the same time, his heart sinks. The future plays out in his mind, and at its end waits a worthless payout. He’ll nab her. He’ll take her to the Gindar prigs. They’ll give him a meager stash of chits—not Imperial credits, not anymore, but chits that he can take to certain merchants on certain worlds and cash in for gear or ammo or a meal, but of course they won’t work everywhere, and what one chit is worth now will fluctuate wildly depending on who owns the currency. In this case, the Gindars are owned by the Frillian Confederacy, and the Frillians are owned by Black Sun. And nobody owns Black Sun. Not yet. But that day may be coming—with the Empire waning and the New Republic rising, the syndicates know that opportunity waits for those willing to seize the galaxy during this time of chaos. But who? Who gets to exploit that opportunity first? It’s led to infighting. The syndicates are aiming to one-up each other, trying to establish supremacy. A shadow war is just getting started. They want to own the currency and set the criminal destiny for the entirety of the galaxy. Black Sun. Shadow Syndicate. The Hutts. Red Key. The Crymorah. The Sovereign Latitudes of Maracavanya. What a bloody mess.
Eventually, Mercurial knows that someone will try to own him, too. But he has no intention of being a kept boy.
The bounty hunter stands and emerges from the bent, dented hull of an old freighter—one that must’ve crashed on the habitation roof eons ago and is now just a sculpture of rusted beams. Swift pulls his batons and moves fast: He runs and leaps off the lip of the building, giving his jetpack two quick pulses. The crackle of energy fills the air behind him, propelling him forward as the foundry roof comes up fast. Swift tucks and rolls, and when he returns to his feet, he spins his batons and runs straight to the ramshackle lean-to where Vazeen has been hiding.
She steps out. She sees him. He sees that she sees him, and yet his target stands there, unmoving. At first Swift thinks, The girl knows the game is over, but that doesn’t track. This is a girl on the run. This is her planet. She should spook. She should run. Everyone runs.
And yet she remains, staring right at him.
The realization sticks Mercurial like a knife:
She’s not running. Because she’s bait.
Damnit!
He drops down again into a roll just as the stun blast fills the air above his head in a warbling scream. Swift leaps to his feet and expects to see someone he knows coming for him: an old enemy, a betrayed friend, an ex-girlfriend with a broken heart and a blaster rifle. But instead, he sees some other woman coming for him. Older. Silver hair moved by the wind. Whoever she is, she looks familiar to him, but he doesn’t have time to sort through all the faces he’s met, because she’s got a pistol pointed right at him and another stun bolt comes—
But he’s fast: a coiled spring, suddenly unsprung. He deftly pivots on the ball of his right foot, and as he spins around he has one of his batons up and flung—it leaves his fingers and whistles through open air.
Clack! His baton clips the front of her blaster. She cries out as the gun tumbles away, clattering onto the rooftop. The woman shakes her hand—the vibration surely stung her mitt, and now she’s trying to soothe it—but still she keeps on coming, her face a grim rictus of determination.
Good for her. But she’s still not going to get him.
He flexes his hand, fingers pressing into the button in the center of his palm. The extensor pads at the tips of his fingers suddenly buzz, and his one flung baton jumps up off the ground—