And surfs the air currents back into his grip.
The older woman skids to a halt, throwing a punch as she does—it’s a good punch, solid, but the bounty hunter knows it’s coming because her body language telegraphs the attack. Mercurial sidesteps, her fist catching open air, and it gives him an opportunity to jab his baton up under her arm. Electricity courses through her. Her teeth clamp together and her eyes open wide as every centimeter of her seizes up. When she drops, he hears the scuff of a boot behind him, and he thinks: I’m too damn distracted. This job made him too comfortable, too complacent, and now someone’s hammering a fist into his kidneys, dropping him down to one knee.
He cries out and goes low with the next attack—his baton whips around, catching the second attacker behind the knee. His foe, a tall man with a hawk’s-beak nose and dark eyes, curses and drops hard on his tailbone. He recognizes this one, doesn’t he? Imperial. No. Ex-Imperial. Working for the New Republic now—now he wonders, Is this about the Perwin Gedde job? It’s coming back to him now. He stole their target right out from under them. What do they want? Credits? Revenge? Is he on their list?
Doesn’t matter. I have no time for whatever this is. The girl isn’t worth it. The payout is garbage. It’s time to go. The fallen vent stack tower is his escape route, so he leaps to his feet and bolts fast across the rooftop. Another stun blast warps the air around him (the older woman reclaimed her weapon), but he leaps and slides onto the crumpled tower now serving as a bridge. He rights himself and runs, feet banging on the metal. The vented durasteel provides texture that helps him keep his footing, and he charges down the bridge and toward a break in the factory wall next door. Nobody follows. His assailants are slow, too slow. Because, he reminds himself, nobody is as fast as me. Mercurial Swift, triumphant again.
He leaps across the gap—
And an arm extends across the open space and slams hard across his trachea. His heels skid out and Mercurial drops onto his back, the air blasting out of his chest as his lungs collapse like clapped hands.
“Hi,” says a voice. Another woman. This voice, he knows.
A fellow hunter, a bounty killer and skip-tracer like him: the Zabrak, Jas Emari. She steps over him, and as his eyes adjust he sees her juggling a toothpick on her tongue and between her teeth. She cocks her head, a flip of hair going from one side of her spike-laden scalp to the other.
“Emari,” he wheezes, air finally returning to his reinflating lungs.
He wastes no time. He brings one of his batons up fast—
But she is faster. A small blaster in her hand screams.
And all goes dark.
—
It has taken them months to capture Swift.
Months to set up a false sting—months to steal ID cards from the Gindar Gang, to pin it on a young woman (who blessedly was happy to do her part in seeing the Empire take its licks), to falsify a bounty on behalf of the Gindars (one they had no choice but to pretend they initiated when hunters came knocking at their door to accept the bounty). They had to make it look good, make it look tantalizing to a bounty hunter like Swift—but not too tantalizing, because Jas assured them that when a job looked too good, too easy, it set one’s teeth on edge. Nobody wanted to spook him, so it had to be done gently, slowly, with great caution and care. And all the while, Norra’s guts twisted in her belly like a breeding knot of Akivan vipers, the nasty thought haunting her head again and again: While we waste time, Rae Sloane drifts farther and farther away. And so did their chance at justice.
It feels good to have caught Mercurial Swift in their little trap—he’s the one bounty hunter known to interface exclusively with Sloane. But it’s bitter candy, because they have bigger prey. He’s just one rung in the ladder.
Please, Norra thinks. Let it be the final rung.
She’s tired, and she’s coasting on the fumes of anger. It’s burning her out, stripping her down, leaving her feeling raw inside her heart.
But at least they have him.
Mercurial Swift hangs from a bent pipe here in the old munitions factory, his arms extended above him, his wrists cuffed. Night has fallen on Taris. Outside, vapor lightning colors the dark clouds ocher, while down below snorting scutjumpers click and scurry amid the wreckage of this world, hunting for bugs to eat.
“I hate him,” Sinjir Rath Velus says, leaning in and staring at their prey. His nose wrinkles as if he’s smelling something foul. “Even unconscious the man looks so bloody smug. And trust me: I know smugness well.”
Jas twirls one of Swift’s batons in her hand. She jabs it in the air. “He’s smug but crafty. These batons are practically art. One end is concussive. The other end, electric. Kill or stun. And the second baton can be modified with a hypoinjector for poison.”