Jay snuck down the snowy ridge with Tal Wam, trying desperately not to dislodge too much snow. She didn't want to be seen sneaking into camp. And in such a well-guarded area, the most miniscule sign of intruders would raise the suspicion of the guards.
"Keep close," she muttered to Wam behind her. "And don't do anything to draw attention to yourself."
"I keep quiet," the Duros hissed in reply. "Keep quiet I."
Jay tucked the collapsible stun prod into her jacket, careful not to stun herself in the process. Once it was secure, she crouched and made her way to a hiding spot behind a large, gray-white repulsor plow, designed to push multiple tons of snow out of an area with a single pass of its rotating blade. It was currently powered down on the edge of the compound, and the hollow area between the immobile blades gave Jay a clear view to the open courtyard. She put a hand in front of her mouth to keep her breath from fogging up the air and giving away her position.
It was still freezing, but it looked like the Imperials had set up a mobile environmental shield over the base, keeping the compound heated almost ten degrees warmer than the frigid snowfields outside the base. It wasn't much help, but it was a nice comfort and it would keep Vhetin safe for longer without his suit. Jay knew they'd need every advantage if they wanted to survive here.
A group of snowtroopers paused near the other side of the plow, rifles held upright in a relaxed position. She froze, her hand hovering over her pistol. She couldn't lose her cover now, not so soon after infiltrating. If the trooper saw her…
But the commander barked an order and the patrol began their march again. She breathed a sigh of relief as they turned a corner and vanished. Even now, months after her escape from BlueSend prison, she wasn't comfortable being in such close proximity to Imperial troops. She still had bad memories of beatings at the hands of those white-armored men.
"Jay, are you in position?"
She tapped a finger against the comm unit hooked into her ear and replied, "Almost. How close are you to revealing your big distraction?"
"The tank refuels in two minutes, but I'm ready for it. Just waiting on your signal."
"Are you expecting a secret code word or something?"
"Hearing your conversation with Pollamo and Kokr will be signal enough," he replied. "Just keep your comlink activated and make sure you get them to that storage facility."
"I'm on it. Jay out."
Tal Wam took a step closer and hissed, "How you get into base? Stormtrooper guarding everywhere!"
It was a good question. Imperials were guarding virtually every entrance and exit to the courtyard. If she did anything but blend in with the rest of the personnel here, she would not only blow her own cover but Vhetin's and Tal Wam's as well. The margin for error was very small.
She suddenly saw a human slip behind another nearby repulsor plow, apparently trying to get away for a 'fresher break. He tucked a heavy industrial datapad under his arm as he worked to unzip his snow pants. She cast another glance toward the courtyard and, seeing that the coast was clear, she moved out from cover and headed towards the man.
"Excuse me." Her voice sounded far calmer than she actually felt.
"Ack! Bloody hell!" The man jumped and quickly zipped his pants up. "What? What do you want?"
She nodded toward his datapad. "I'm a few minutes behind on a manifest check. Can I see that for a second?"
"What? Fine, fine," he growled, shoving the pad towards her and turning away again. "Just leave me alone! Give me some privacy, huh?"
"Thanks," she said, then slammed the heavy 'pad across his head. He let out a sputter and crumpled to the ground in a heap.
Tal Wam clapped his large hands to his lipless mouth in surprise, letting out a coughing gasp of, "Ah-ah-ah!"
She hesitated a moment, debating whether to leave the unconscious man to freeze in Rhen Var's lethal cold. But though he was working for Pollamo and Kokr, she had no personal problem with him. After a moment, she knelt and pushed the man into the shelter of the repulsor plow, well inside the base's heat shield. No one would find him any time soon and the heat from the idling repulsor would keep him from freezing to death.
As she was preparing to leave, datapad tucked under one arm, she paused a moment and pulled a blue-black armband off the man's jacket sleeve. It looked important; it may be some kind of identification badge or symbol of rank.
She quickly slipped the armband over her own suit, then motioned to Tal Wam. "Come on. Let's go before someone spies us."
Wam nodded and stepped in front of her to lead the way. "Pollamo and Kokr are probably in command center. I show you, yes? Yes, I show you?"
"Go ahead. But don't get us caught."
"No caught." The alien's scarlet eyes narrowed. "I sneaky."
"I'm sure you are." Jay sighed and glanced over her shoulder, looking for some sign of her partner. She couldn't find one.
She didn't have time to search for him further. Tal Wam set off into the courtyard, wringing his hands and muttering to himself, and Jay was forced to head after him. Noticing that everyone seemed to be involved in some job or another, she tapped some random commands into her stolen datapad, trying to look busy. She barely looked up as she passed by the snowtrooper garrison, not even when she passed into the turret's field of fire. She just kept walking, trying to project the outward appearance of a busy employee.
"Rule number one about infiltration," Vhetin had once told her during training, "is to look like you belong. Nine times out of ten the majority of people won't even spare you a second glance so long as you look like you're where you're meant to be."
Wam cast a glance around himself and scurried toward the command center door. The snowtrooper standing looked at him and grunted, "It's about time you showed up again, blue-skin. The bosses are waiting for a report."
Tal Wam nodded and slipped inside, Jay following right behind him. When the guard looked at her with his helmet tipped curiously, she waved her datapad as if that explained everything. The guard sniffed and turned his gaze back out to the courtyard, tucking his rifle closer to the pristine white plastoid of his chest plate.
Once the door slid shut and sealed her inside, she let out a low breath and willed her heart to quit thudding so loudly in her ears. Her hands were shaking from adrenaline and she quickly clenched them into tight fists lest they give her away.
"Come, come!" Tal Wam said, waving for her to catch up. "Come, come!"
Jay nodded and fell into step next to him. Inside the command center was a large room with windows facing all the directions of the compass. Snowtroopers and bundled-up Imperial officers marched about the interior, carrying datapads, weapons, or crates of supplies as their station demanded. The entire area was dominated by a large hollow console tower swarming with electronic security readouts showing the complex from all kinds of different angles. She saw with relief that the view behind the plows was not among them.
A tall, skinny Rodian with only one compound eye and a bright yellow headband was tapping away at a holographic command console in the hollow center of the tower, surrounded by holographic readouts that spun around him in dizzyingly fast orbits. The alien's compound eye was probably able to take in all the information with no trouble at all.
Pollamo... she thought, her body tensing at the sight. One of their targets was here, right where he was supposed to be. Now where was the other?
A rough voice suddenly barked out orders at a passing snowtrooper patrol. In one corner a heavily-muscled and tattooed human with a long black beard was shouting and gesturing at the offending patrol. As the snowtroopers moved on at a sharper pace, he returned to a terse conversation with two officers wearing thick winter jackets. The bearded man had a large blaster rifle slung over his back and a short vibroblade on each hip. When Tal Wam saw him, he flushed to a paler shade of aqua and let out a fearful whimper.
...and there's Kokr, Jay thought. Good. They're both here.
Pollamo must have heard the sound. He glanced up at them and his tube-like proboscis squeezed shut in the Rodian imitation of a frown. He tapped a button on the command console and stepped out from between the console tower's walls. He hopped down the small flight of stairs and approached them with short, jerky movements.
"Tal Wam?" he said in reedy, nasaly Basic. "What are you doing here? Did you find out what Sekha wanted with that bounty hunter?"
Tal Wam was already sweating and his foggy red eyes darted around the room in near-blind panic. At Pollamo's questioning, he let out a little whine and his knees all but buckled. That wasn't good. Jay had to do something quick or risk the Duros blowing their cover. Nothing especially brilliant came quickly to mind, so she decided to chance it.
Shit, she thought, preparing herself to make a very bad decision. Here goes nothing…
"Sir," she interrupted, stepping in front of Tal Wam. She tapped another random command into the datapad — which wasn't even powered on — and said, "I have the daily import manifest here and I've noticed some odd anomalies that I thought you might want to see. If you could just-"
"I don't need to see that," Pollamo said, waving his sucker-tipped fingers in dismissal. "Give it to the manifest officer if it's so important."
"I-I realize that, sir," Jay said, frantically grabbing for an excuse, "but this is really, really-"
KA-THOOM!
She was cut off as a colossal explosion ripped through the facility, making the ground tremble beneath their feet. Jay glanced out one of the windows just in time to see a thick plume of fire arc into the cloud-mottled sky. Stormtroopers shouted and ran in all directions and blaster fire instantly lit up the courtyard.
"What the stang?" Kokr growled, stepping up next to Pollamo. The two stormtroopers to which he'd been speaking wasted no time in drawing their weapons and dashing through the door in search as the commotion. Jay tried to look just as incredulous as the others and thought she pulled it off pretty well.
Damn, she thought. Vhetin doesn't waste any time does he?
"What the hell was that?" Kokr said, pulling the rifle from his back. It charged with a sharp whine. "It sounded like the perimeter surveillance post. That thing was crammed with explosives."
Jay's gaze flew wildly around her surroundings, waiting for the inevitable second explosion. And sure enough, seconds later there was a deep rumble and another ground-shaking explosion, followed by another thick arcing cloud of brilliant yellow-white fire. Jay head screams in the distance and troopers frantically calling out orders.
"I-it sounds like someone's attacking the base!" Pollamo stammered, pulling off his headband and wringing it in his hands. "W-what are we going to do?"
Kokr took a step forward, "I'm gonna go out there and kick some ass, is what I'm going to do."
"No!" Jay said, stepping in front of him. When Pollamo and Kokr glanced at her, she frantically thought for an excuse. An excuse suddenly came to her right in time, surprising even her.
"Sirs," she said, masking her surprise as breathless fear, "you're too important to this organization. We need to get you somewhere safe until we find out what's going on."
"Screw that," Kokr snarled. "I don't need no-"
"I think," Pollamo interrupted as another explosion rocked the complex, "that we should listen to the human. The stormtroopers can probably handle this."
He cast a wide-eyed glance around the shaking building and the Imperials sprinting about preparing for battle, then turned to Jay. "Where can we go that's safe from this?"
Jay held back a triumphant grin and pretended to think hard. She clapped her hands and cried, "The storage building! The walls are thick enough to withstand a rocket blast. Whoever is attacking won't be able to get in there. We can hunker down and wait for reinforcements."
Kokr glared at her for a long moment, then grudgingly nodded. "Fine. I'll lead the way."
He shoved her aside as he passed and she stumbled back a few steps. He cursed at her as he passed and continued muttering as he cleared the doorway with his rifle and gestured for them to follow close behind him. As she, Pollamo, and Tal Wam followed him, she thought, I won't feel bad about turning him over to Sekha.
Only two steps out the door was chaos; Vhetin seemed to be taking great pleasure in his job. Smugglers and employees ran in all directions as chunks of molten metal rained from the sky. Stormtroopers were gathering together and preparing for an all-out assault. As she watched, the angular tank floated around the corner like a predatory razorfin shark. Troopers sprinted away from it, firing their weapons ineffectually at its thick hull. The tank came to a jarring halt, bouncing in midair as its repulsors warbled loudly. The large missile turrets swiveled to face Jay and her group.
Her heart skipped a beat before she remembered that her partner was piloting the tank and it therefore posed no threat to her. After a moment, the tank swiveled away and targeted the huge receiver dish on top of the listening post.
With a massive ca-thunk, the tank fired at the dish. There was a flash of light and the tank rocked back on its repulsorlit engines from the force of the shot. The ensuing explosion melted through the bowl of the dish, carving out a red-hot hole the size of the tank itself. Another missile hit and the edges twisted and warped in on themselves. After a third tank round, the dish itself collapsed into the outpost, and the whole building went up in flames. Those inside quickly sprinted out into the cold, shouting aimlessly and scattering in all directions.
"The receiver dish is down," Vhetin reported in her earpiece. "Repeat, the receiver dish is down. Jay, I need you to hurry up and get Pollamo and Kokr to safety. I can't pass up an easy target like you forever."
"I'm working on it," she muttered under her breath and broke into a run, following Kokr to the storage facility. The bearded man was charging ahead, looking back only to ensure his Rodian brother was keeping up with them. He couldn't care less for Jay or Wam.
Suddenly, a missile round exploded behind her, driving her to her knees in the snow. She cursed and spun back towards the tank. It swiveled and its cannons charged up again, preparing to fire.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" she cried furiously. She didn't care if the bounties heard her.
"I have to pretend to fire at you," Vhetin replied calmly, "or they'll catch on to us. Sorry, but no special treatment."
"Just watch your aim." She scowled and clambered to her feet again, running towards the storage facility. The rest of the group was pulling further ahead of her with every passing second. She doubted Kokr would wait for her. "I don't want to die out here in this frozen hellhole from friendly fire."
"You have so little faith in me," Vhetin's tone almost sounded hurt.
Ahead of her, Kokr skidded to a halt next to the storage building, his boots spraying snow in all directions. He punched in a security code and the huge loading dock door slid open with a rusty scream. He fired off a few vain rounds at the tank pursuing Jay, then motioned to the rest of them.
"Come on!" he said, motioning them in. "Come on! We haven't got all day here!"
A tank round impacted the building just meters over his head and he cursed, diving into the building's dark interior. As another missile exploded nearby, Pollamo screamed – a high-pitched screech that made Jay wince – and scrambled after him. Tal Wam simply stared at the tank with wide eyes, quivering with fear. He seemed to have forgotten that Vhetin was deliberately missing them.
Jay gritted her teeth and dashed toward him, tackling him around the waist and pushing them both into the building. A missile round impacted the ground right where the Duros had stood, sending up a plume of snow and grit that splashed over them.
She covered her head and shouted, "Someone shut the damn door!"
Kokr roared with rage and hit the door controls. The heavily reinforced barriers slammed shut with a tremendous boom, plunging them all into darkness. A half-second later another missile exploded harmlessly against the barrier. The floor shook and dust rained down from the ceiling, but the door held. They were safe.
There was quiet now, save for the muffled explosions outside and Tal Wam's terrified wheezing muffled against Jay's coat. Another explosion rocked the complex and Jay could distantly hear stormtroopers screaming and shooting at the runaway tank. Jay pushed herself up onto her knees, shaking dirt and snow from her hair. She coughed, sucking frigid air into her lungs. "Okay," she gasped. "I think we're safe in here."
Pollamo shook his head, his proboscis waving wildly. "W-what now?"
Jay brushed snow off her jacket and rose to her feet. "I think we should wait here until that psycho in the tank-"
"I don't think so," Kokr growled, raising his rifle and aiming it squarely at her chest. The weapon charged up with a series of dangerous clicks and whines. She stared at it, putting on an uncomprehending and fearful face. Her heart was racing once again, her face going pale.
Does he know? If so, how much does he know?
"K-Kokr?" Pollamo stammered. "What are you doing?"
"What the hell are you doing?" Jay echoed indignantly, her hand drifting toward her own blaster. Kokr saw the motion and shot the ground at her feet, making her jump back in surprise. A rain of grit and vaporized duracrete pattered down around her. Her hands quickly shot up in surrender; she couldn't do anything with that gun pointed straight at her.
"Did you think you were being clever, girly?" Kokr growled. "I saw through your little disguise the moment you walked through the command center door."
Oh kark it all. This wasn't good. But Jay couldn't drop her cover for even a moment. There was a slight chance that Kokr was overly paranoid or bluffing. So she put her hands on her hips and said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
Kokr nodded to her armband. "You thought I wouldn't recognize the armband of my own second-in-command? And what did you do with Relpo, huh? Is he dead?"
So Kokr had seen right through her disguise. There was no chance that he was bluffing now. She needed help, and clicked her hidden comlink three times, paused, then twice more. It was a secret code Vhetin had taught her long ago, and would inform him that she was in trouble.
Static washed over her hidden comlink.
Shit, she thought. This place must be shielded against comm signals. That or Vhetin's too preoccupied outside.
"All right," she said, holding her hands up in a placating gesture. "What exactly do you want me to do? Apologize?"
Kokr grinned widely, revealing a crooked maw filled with yellow-black teeth. "No. Turn around and get down on your knees."
Slowly, Jay did so, putting her hands behind her head. Her heart was pounding in her ears as she listened to Kokr yank back the charging rod on his rifle. The blaster emitted a high-pitched whine as it powered up, preparing to fire. A moment later, she felt the cold metal of the blaster's barrel press against the back of her head.
She frantically clicked the SOS signal again and thought, Vhetin if you can hear me, I need help. Now!
Suddenly, she heard a sizzling pow behind her, and the blaster barrel's pressure eased. A second later the rifle clattered heavily to the ground next to her.
"What the-" Kokr choked out, then there was another snapping sizzle, and he fell silent. Jay whipped around to see Pollamo and Kokr on the ground, twitching and unconscious. Tal Wam was standing over them with his activated stun prod, which was throwing showers of sparks to the duracrete floor. The alien's hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the prod.
"I…" Wam gasped for breath, taking a step away from them. "I… I…"
Tal Wam shrank away from her, whimpering, as she got back to her feet again. He dropped the stun prod and it died with a loud crackling pop, throwing them into darkness. Jay pulled a flare from the pack on her snowsuit's belt and dropped it to the floor. The flickering red light threw enough illumination to see passably well. The two targets remained sprawled on the floor, oblivious to the world.
Now that was unexpected, she thought. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she could swear she could still feel the barrel of the blaster pressed against the back of her head. She let out a long, relieved breath and stared at Tal Wam with newfound respect.
"You know," she said, kneeling and grabbing Kokr's rifle, "maybe I'll keep you around after all. That was a pretty brave thing to do. Thanks."
Pollamo shivered. "Are you kidding? Kidding? My just killed my bosses!"
"Yeah you almost did." She smiled and patted him on the shoulder as she passed, slinging the rifle over her shoulder. "Keep it up, and you may grow into a good bounty hunter."
"N-n-no thanks. Thanks no."
She turned back to the door, readying herself to head out into the chaos of battle once more. "Until I get back, stay here and guard these schmucks. Make sure they don't wake up and try to make a run for it, okay?"
Tal Wam tentatively grabbed the stun prod again and whispered, "Okay."
Jay nodded and jogged back to the door. She hit the controls, took a deep breath, then ducked outside into absolute pandemonium.
At least four blaster bolts popped against the wall above her head as soon as she emerged into the frozen battlefield. She cursed and fell to her knees in the snow, tucking her stole rifle tight against her chest. The troopers must be shooting at everything that moved! She raised up sighted in with a scowl at the Imperial that had fired at her. The rifle kicked twice in her arms and the charging snowtrooper sprawled into the snow, clutching at his chest.
She clambered to her feet, unleashing a volley of rounds at two other troopers who were cowering behind an icicle-encrusted plastoid water container. The barrel heated red-hot as four bolts hit it in the side. A loud groaning came from the barrel before it exploded, spilling half-frozen water over the two troopers. In the sub-zero temperature, the water froze almost instantly, anchoring the troopers to the ground. They screamed and began hitting at the rock-hard ice covering their boots, to no avail. They wouldn't be going anywhere for a very long time.
Jay grinned and ran on.