You Can't Deny the Prize
Posted on Mon Mar 26th, 2018 @ 7:35pm by Amare
2,899 words; about a 14 minute read
Chapter:
Chapter IV: Rezer's Edge
Location: Nar Shaddaa
Timeline: Three weeks after the Battle of Jericho; follows “When the Storm Arrives”
Tags: Red Raptor, Nar Shaddaa, bounty hunter, gran, Lone Wolf
OLD:
"Call the others," Verne bellowed at Caleb. "Get backup. Tell 'em we found the mark. Shoot to kill!"
"But we have to bring her in alive, right?" Caleb asked.
"SHOOT-TO-KILL!"
ON:
Why is this happening? Coda thought while in full sprint trying to get as far away from the mercs as possible. This is insane. It was like I was an entirely different person back there. No...no! I'm not a killer! I have to run. I have to find a way off this world.
Minutes went by like hours as the prey ran like a bat out of hell from her hunters. Coda was at the limit of her lung capacity, and as badly as she wanted to press onward, she had to stop and recover for a moment. Passerby on the streets were throwing suspicious glares at her, wary of the blasters she held in each hand but not terribly bothered by it so long as the shooting didn't come their way. Shootouts and other assorted mayhem were not always the norm in the more crowded sectors of the Smuggler's Moon, but violence was expected now and then.
Coda, mindful of, and embarrassed with the attention she was drawing, quickly holstered her weapons and surveyed where she had wandered to. It looked like one of the many glamorous recreational districts she heard various patrons talk about over the years. The Red Light zone where she had been stuck in for years as a slave was only a fifteen minute brisk walk back the other way she came. There were shops, a nearby landing for skyway taxis, multi-floor upscale nightclubs that rivaled the Smoke & Hots where she had worked, and a ritzy pub around the corner that caught her attention. She took a deep breath, glanced over her shoulder to make sure she wasn't being followed, and decided to play it cool and blend in as best she could.
There was a wide diversity of faces in the pub from all walks of life along with a vast representation of many of the galaxy's species. Coda saw males in business suits, fellow slicer geeks swapping their latest HoloNet data-mining and exploit apps and games, and a table with a few humans and a rodian that were armed and armored to the teeth with a view of the front doors. She froze in place just inside the entrance as she saw them looking at a hologram of a list of faces, and one of them glanced up briefly to notice Coda. The man looked back down, and glanced up at her again in total recognition. He couldn't believe his luck that twenty thousand credits just happened to stroll right through the door. His cohorts followed his gaze, realized there was a mark right in front of them, and they all immediately went for their weapons.
"No, no, no!!" Coda cried and made a break for it. She bumped into a familiar three-eyed male gran who immediately recognized her.
"'Lone Wolf!'" he called out after her using her stage name. He had run into her earlier back at Saucy Feril's club. "You hang out here too? Hey! Where you going?"
Coda ignored him and shoved and bumped her way past the crowds that were dispersing from the open outdoor area as the storm that was falling by the dockyards had reached this part of town.
The bounty hunters leapt up from their chairs back in the pub, one of which slid over the table like a professional holo-film stuntman knocking everything down on its surface to make way after their new quarry. In that moment, a notification alarm went off in their comlinks followed by an automated computer voice indicating their incentive went up higher. An anonymous investor had just posted a co-opt attempt over the original contract and stacked an additional ten thousand credits to Coda's bounty. A full thirty thousand was now offered to take the nautolan woman, dead or alive.
Her slender legs pushed her on through the rain, calve muscles sore with overexertion. Not since she was a child on Glee Anselm had her feet raced like this. The exercise was good, but half-expecting to be shot in the back at any second made her push the past aside, pressed her beyond her physical tolerances, and made a harried beeline for the nearest parked taxi skycar. She threw open the door and dove in just as the hunters burst out of the pub.
"I'm afraid this taxi is reserved, ma'am," said the modified bronze colored protocol droid programmed to have the accented voice of a pompous Imperial from days long gone.
"Whatever your fare, I'll double it," Coda breathed anxiously.
The promise of double pay triggered a business algorithm in the droid's central processor that prompted it to say, "Destination?"
"Nearest spaceport," Coda replied just as blaster fire began to strike the back of the taxi. "Now! Go!"
"Oh dear!" the droid cabbie exclaimed. The taxi's antigrav engine fired up, and it was up and off the landing and out into the great wide Nar Shaddaa open, far, far above the surface of the moon unseen past the dense traffic and fog below.
"Given that you're clearly under extreme duress, and calculating the estimated damage to this vehicle, your fare rate has now tripled. Pay up!"
In just seconds, the fare meter screen on the dash spiked over 1000 credits. "What a ripoff! Fine. Better than getting shot." Coda swiped her credit chip through the scanner, and took a deep breath confident that she gave those bad guys the slip.
A sudden rapid barrage of blaster fire shattered her relief and the rear glass. Coda shrieked and ducked down behind her bench seat for cover.
"Not good!" the cabbie exclaimed with a simulated fright as it turned the flight control wheel to bob and weave through traffic to evade their pursuers.
"Can't this thing go any faster?" Coda asked worriedly.
"I'm driving at my programmed limits, ma'am!" the droid snapped back.
Coda started searching and feeling around for an access point as more shots rang out, but instead missed and hit other skycars speeding by in the opposite direction. A catastrophic explosion was heard from behind indicating a terrible mid-air collision. Coda felt a shock of horror and guilt knowing that she was partly responsible for the potential deaths of innocents because of this chase. She started to feel her anger from the dockyard return again and she drew Retaliator. She spotted the hijacked skycar that was chasing her, took aim and popped off a few shots, two that missed, and one that struck their front windshield smashing its glass, but doing no harm to the armored men inside. It did at least accomplish the rain getting in their faces. It didn't seem to have much effect, however, as she ducked in the nick of time to avoid the bounty hunters' returned favor, a bolt having streaked right over her head tendrils doing the same to her cab's windshield. Shards of glass slashed across the back of her exposed right shoulder and part of one of her tendrils.
"Ahh!" she cried in pain just as her free hand found a connection node under the seat. She squeezed a few more quick shots and pulled a connection line from her arm computer and sliced in to the cab's control system. She couldn't get her credits back, but she could assume the flight controls and bypass the engine limits. She had no idea how to pilot any kind of craft except the fake digital kind in free-to-play HoloNet arcade shooters. The D-pad and Z-axis elevation controls displayed on her computer resembled the ones in those childish games. How hard could it possible be?
She looked up just in time to see a red targeting laser from a rifle in the pursuing car and ducked down, but the target wasn't her; it was the droid.
"This just will not do!" The droid protested. That would be its last complaint.
The shot instantly fried the cab droid's head, sparks and flames sputtering from its chrome dome. The car itself started drifting off-course just as the spaceport landing was barely in sight beyond the low-visibility haze. Heavy rain splashed against Coda's face as she hunkered down, furiously pressed on the directional controls to steer the car away from oncoming traffic, lowered the car's elevation, and reduced speed. The hunters flew their car alongside her and pulled their sidearms to fire at the taxi's canopy, but she stopped them by ramming the cab against their side. They rammed back just as emergency proximity alarms signaled the fast approaching spaceport landing zone.
Coda rammed the hunters one last time knocking them clear off course, and she furiously dialed back the cab's speed and descent trajectory on her computer sending the taxi into a dive for the landing. The cab swooped low over the landing zone, gliding over the heads of the stunned onlookers. The engines suddenly cut out and the cab struck the platform and grinded metal-on-metal spinning and slowing down, as people narrowly got out of the way of the path of destruction. Automated crash safeties kicked in preventing the taxi from flipping over when the laws of physics would have otherwise forced it to do so, and safety cushions deployed preventing trauma to Coda.
Moments later, the passenger door opened to the smoldering junk remains of the taxi, and Coda fell out onto the ground on her side unsure if she was even still alive. She wasn't terribly hurt, but she was dizzy and thoroughly jostled.
She groaned slowly forcing herself onto her hands and knees, and as her spinning vision started to clear she looked up and saw the entrance to the spaceport close by. She turned and, to her incredulous surprise, that same hunters' skycar she just tangled with was making its own emergency landing some distance away on the platform. She shook her head at near her wit's end. She didn't think she could keep this up for much longer. One more sprint. One last hope for salvation...
Minutes later...
The hangar lift came to a grinding halt, and she was presented with a choice of three landing bays. She never had a chance to look at the manifests, and so had no idea which bay led to what. She knew that if she made the wrong choice, and went into a bay that was empty or had all its craft sealed that the hunters would surely catch her.
Facing three paths leading to three very different destinies, she closed her eyes and thought of only one word: Father.
Turn left.
Her large black nautolan eyes snapped open, and she immediately followed that strange yet welcome inner guidance that kept her alive so far. There was no reason to ignore it now.
She was back in the rainy outdoors again, but this particular landing area had two separate walkways leading to two neighboring platforms each with a ship occupying them. The first to her right was an old gunmetal colored junker that was partially deconstructed and completely shutdown for repairs. The other was a remarkable craft that stood in stark gleaming contrast to its beat up neighbor. She ran up to it through the gale as fast as she could, stumbling halfway on the walkway as she tried to get a closer look.
The front of the ship was facing her, and she took notice of its distinctive forward cockpit window, but there were no visible interior lights active. Nevertheless, there were droids conducting routine maintenance on the exterior hull plating and umbilical lines connected that were resupplying the vessel and keeping it powered in preparation for departure. The best part was that its loading ramp was lowered and not a single organic being was in sight.
She stopped at a terminal near the ship and viewed its publicly available registration info. The database indicated it was a Corellian freighter/transport model YX-1980 with a very interesting name. Ooo, that's a mean and edgy name, she thought. "Red Raptor", she read to herself in a whisper. It rolled off her tongue rather easily. She would've giggled at how it sounded coming from her lips if she wasn't under so much stress.
She skipped over the technical details that were way beyond her level of comprehension and checked for owner names, but they were redacted to protect client privacy. Very shady, and was almost enough cause for concern for her to consider turning back and going to the other bay, but then she heard a lift descending from where she arrived and knew she had little choice. It was this ship, or a fight she likely wouldn't survive.
She bounded up the ramp and up to the entry door. It was maglocked, but it had a command code panel and a poorly hidden emergency override port she could slice into. Hurriedly, she dug her fingertips into the edges of the thin protective panel that covered the port and popped it open. She felt her time was running short as it sounded like that lift was slowing its descent. She was relieved that the command access lock didn't have military-level security protocols, but the panel and the ship's computer weren't exactly being particularly responsive to her access attempt either.
"C'mon...c'mon..." she plead softly to the technology gods as her arm computer--which had already saved her life during the skycar chase--was doing its best to bail her out of one more sticky situation.
The seconds ticked by faster as she heard in the distance modulated voices talking to another man, possibly the harbormaster of the spaceport.
"Don't play games with me, mister. She's an escaped slave that already attacked two good men from our company. The bounty is certified. See? Right here. Legitimate criminal in your spaceport. Let us in there right now, or we're adding you to our hit list!"
"Fine, fine! Whatever. Just please don't do any damage to the customer vessels. Insurance rates are already high enough as it is."
A hard mechanical click was heard from the Raptor's door, and the panel gave up entry to the ship's latest uninvited guest. The door slid open, Coda quickly withdrew her network line, shut the override panel as she found it, and anxiously stepped into the dark interior and locked the door behind her. The first thing she noticed was that she was in the cockpit area itself and looked out the front window just in time as the bounty hunters appeared at the other end of the two walkways. She ducked down out of sight and moved away from the window hoping they didn't see her. She looked down to dim her arm computer so its ambient light didn't give her away, but she noticed that it felt very warm against her skin, almost to an intolerable temperature, and its control buttons and holo-projector were completely dark. She smelled something burning from it and she quickly took it off and realized that that last slice attempt most likely pushed the processor to its limit and fried the thing completely.
"Thank you, friend," she whispered with a frown to the busted computer. Saucy's parting gift got her far enough to a hiding spot on someone else's ship. Now she had to hope whomever the owner of the ship was was receptive to taking on unexpected stowaways. The other idea she had was to find a place to hide and hope she could sneak off the next time it landed somewhere else. Either way, she had to try.
Her eyes gradually adjusted to the dark interior, and her natural low-light vision was granting her a view of the central corridor, and larger side rooms as well. She quietly tiptoed her way towards the starboard side and saw two doors that both led to cargo holds. She chose the one further aft and saw an assortment of cargo boxes, one of which was large enough for her to hide behind.
She waited there anticipating the bounty hunters would try to force their way into the Raptor at any moment, but no attempt occurred. Minutes passed, and still nothing. She decided to close her eyes and enjoy the respite while she still could, but after fifteen minutes of continued silence, she began to slip into a tenuous, but much needed light sleep.
Two hours later...
The silence in the cargo hold was broken as the door swished open. Coda's eyes snapped open from her rest and she held her breath, completely on edge wondering if she had been discovered by the mercenaries. But there was something different about this presence that eclipsed those armored goons...something extrasensory. Something that assaulted her senses with such intensity and purpose that it felt like the very texture of the air itself was altered to make it harder to breathe. It was something heavy and imperious...something, or someone innately powerful.
Hidden behind the container, she closed her eyes, tightened her grip on her blasters, and mentally prayed to her ancestor spirits that she would survive this terrible night. She tensed her burning muscles and made ready to make her move.
TBC in "Quid Habes"
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