TOOTH AND CLAW
Michael Kogge
Bossk scraped his tongue across his teeth, tasting blood. His trap had worked.
Though the gunship that had emerged from hyperspace on the asteroid belt’s edge didn’t appear on the Hound’s Tooth’s scopes, he wasn’t troubled. He had visual confirmation through his cockpit canopy and could even make out the ship’s curved prow and tubular fuselage. Only a Wookiee would helm a ship shaped to resemble that most antiquated weapon, the bowcaster. And a Wookiee ship meant this had to be his long-sought quarry. This had to be Chainbreaker.
Bossk engaged the timer on his wrist chronometer, sealed his vac helmet, and hastened to the air lock, grabbing his Relby mortar rifle on the way. He’d already suited up in preparation for the next phase of his plan, since every second was precious. The Imperial flight itinerary he had altered to lure his target here afforded him approximately nine standard minutes until a dungeon ship full of Wookiee prisoners was scheduled to pass through the Rycep belt. But Bossk gauged he had even less time than that. The famed liberator known only as Chainbreaker hadn’t freed thousands of Wookiees from captivity without knowing when to run. If there were any signs that the dungeon ship was a ruse, Chainbreaker would assuredly skip to lightspeed, and Bossk doubted he’d be able to trap his prize again. For this reason, he’d deliberately chosen a more furtive approach to boarding the gunship than ambushing it in the Hound’s Tooth.
As Bossk entered the air lock, a chime alerted him to the reception of a high-level communication. It was probably another candidate holo-ad for the upcoming guild elections—he’d been swamped with those recently—so he ignored it. He was about to press the EGRESS button when he noticed on the air lock viewscreen that the communication wasn’t from the guild, but from an Imperial address. He played the message.
“This is for the bounty hunter Bossk of Trandosha,” said the pale-skinned human male in a black Imperial uniform, his hands behind his back. “I am Lieutenant Masil Veit, communications officer on the Star Destroyer Executor, and am contacting you based on the recommendation of your guild. My commander will pay a significant bounty for the capture of a Corellian freighter called the Millennium Falcon.”
Bossk drooled at the mention of the Falcon. Its pilot, the renegade known as Chewbacca, not only rivaled Chainbreaker as the most wanted Wookiee in the Empire, but was also the one being Bossk detested more than his own father.
“Lord Vader will receive you on his flagship for further instructions,” Veit said. “The rendezvous coordinates are—”
The human’s image became distorted and disappeared. Bossk prodded the viewscreen controls to continue, but there was nothing more to play. Perhaps the ionic winds that occasionally swept through the belt had interfered with the transmission, though oddly the Hound’s Tooth hadn’t picked up any since landing on the asteroid to hide. Veit’s comm address was also garbled, so Bossk couldn’t request that the coordinates be re-sent, and he didn’t dare relay his interest through the guild. Notice of a bounty offered by Darth Vader, the second most powerful being in the Empire, would attract other hunters in the guild, like bug-eyed Zuckuss or that crosswired protocol droid 4-L-something, if they didn’t know about it already. Truth be told, Bossk stood a better chance of trying to reconstruct the message with the new military-grade transceiver he’d installed. But that would take time, and his chrono presently read eight minutes, eleven seconds.
He hit the EGRESS button.
Launched into space with the pressurized air, Bossk initiated a quick burn of his jetpack to stop his spin and propel him on a path toward the Wookiee gunship. The energy emitted wouldn’t register on sensors as anything more than a blip, equivalent to the tiny collisions that were commonplace across the belt.
He navigated the outer ring of asteroids without incident and entered empty space on a trajectory that would take him to the gunship in less than three minutes. For that duration he tried to relax into semi-estivation so as to reduce his body temperature and make himself virtually undetectable. Normally, he could self-regulate without much effort, but right now he was utterly distracted.
Bossk couldn’t get his mind off Chewbacca.
The notorious Wookiee renegade had been one of the first Imperial bounties Bossk had collected more than a decade ago, when he was part of a posse of Trandoshan hunters. But Chewbacca hadn’t remained in the Empire’s custody for long, and after escaping went on to become the bane of Bossk’s bounty hunting career. Bossk had nearly caught the Wookiee and his smart-mouthed sidekick on multiple occasions, such as the time when he found the pair trawling the sewage seas of Erub II for starship parts or when he sabotaged their efforts to build a secret Wookiee colony on Gandolo IV. Then there was the breakneck chase along the plasma floes of the Zusi hypertunnel that shattered the Hound’s Tooth’s class one generator and the explosive blaster battle on the Jurzan spaceport that destroyed both Bossk’s favorite cantina and the new starship he’d just purchased, the Bitemark. It didn’t matter if he had them cornered or outnumbered; somehow the two had managed to slip through his grasp more times than a Trandoshan had digits. These failures had done more than just embarrass Bossk or damage his standing in the guild—they had caused his own father, Cradossk, to question whether Bossk had been the proper hatchling to devour the nest-eggs of his siblings and come forth as the sole survivor of his clutch.
Bossk’s vac suit beeped a warning. His temperature was spiking. He had to be more disciplined if he wanted to remain hidden from sensor view. Just thinking of Chewbacca boiled his cold Trandoshan blood. In a concerted effort to self-regulate, he turned his full attention to the mission. Once he captured Chainbreaker, he could worry about Veit’s message and catching Chewbacca. An egg in one’s claws was always better than two in the nest, or so his father used to say.
He crossed the gulf from the asteroid belt and came in fast on the gunship. Measuring about fifty meters, it matched the length of his vessel, though size was the only attribute the two shared. While the Hound’s Tooth was a boxy freighter of all sharp edges, bringing to mind the squarish muzzle of its namesake, the Trandoshan hunting hound, the Wookiee gunship was rounded and smooth, crafted not from metal, but from wood.
Perhaps that explained why the Hound’s Tooth’s sensors had not spotted the craft. The wood acted as a natural baffler to hide the gunship’s power generator and engine signatures. No wonder Chainbreaker had been able to waylay prisoner transports and evade arrest for years. One had to be actually looking at the ship in the visual spectrum to see it.
Landing on the gunship’s underside, Bossk protracted his claws through the tips of his specially tailored gloves and sank them into the hull. The wood was thick and tough, milled from the giant wroshyr trees of the Wookiee homeworld, Kashyyyk. Wookiees cultivated the trees to build everything from armor to architecture and loved to boast how the wood could withstand the most intense energy attacks. What the braggarts never acknowledged was that their storied timber failed to repel the simplest of weapons. A Trandoshan’s claws could cut and flay wroshyr wood like Doshian jellyfish.
Claw-strike by claw-strike, Bossk pulled himself across the hull. Along the bow the word LISWARR had been carved, in both Galactic Basic and the Wookiee language of Shyriiwook. He assumed it was the name of the ship, memorializing a deceased relative or friend of the captain, as was Wookiee tradition.
Arriving at the air lock, he avoided touching the exterior controls so as not to trip any alarms in the ship and instead circumscribed a hole in the hatch. He then pried loose the wood, letting out the pressurized air. Once he’d crawled inside the air lock, he jammed the piece back into place behind him and went about slicing another hole in the opposite air lock hatch. Fortunately, he didn’t have to decompress, since his vac suit pressure matched that of the ship’s interior. When the hole was finished, he climbed through it, eager to begin his hunt.
Illumination fixtures molded from tree resin cast a dismal amber light over the ship’s main corridor, which like the hull and the air lock was made almost entirely out of wroshyr lumber. The wood’s surface had been left unsanded and unvarnished, showing off the grotesque knots and rings that Wookiees found ornamental, and there was scarcely a sign of technology to be seen. All wires and conduits were tucked behind access panels, and all controls were installed inside wall boxes.
The corridor was quiet but for the thrum of the engines. Bossk’s unconventional method of entry seemed not to have raised the intruder alarms, just as he had hoped. He got right down to business, shedding his boots, gloves, and anything that might interfere with his hunt. When he removed his helmet, he was assaulted by a stench that was so noxious, a lesser Trandoshan would have choked. Not Bossk. He pushed out his tongue, flared his nostrils, and inhaled. He wanted to take it all in, the smells and the taste. Every family unit on Kashyyyk had its own scent, and in the roil here he smelled Wookiees of the Chyakk, Koom, and Gkrur clans, along with a trace of what had to be the Kaapauku tribe—or was it Sawa? He always confused the names, but he knew that last scent like he knew his father’s rum-drenched breath. It was a hideous odor, fouler than a swarm of diseased gnathgrgs or a bunch of broken nest-eggs rotting on the Scorch.
It was clan-stink of his nemesis, Chewbacca.
Bossk knew that Chewbacca himself wasn’t aboard—the stink would’ve been much, much worse—but someone related to the Wookiee was, and that kinship could work in Bossk’s favor. He could take this cousin hostage to bait Chewbacca to come out of hiding. Though Wookiees were among the smartest and strongest species in the galaxy, they had one glaring weakness Trandoshans didn’t: They’d do anything to help their families.
Bossk unslung his Relby from his back and strode down the corridor. He was going to enjoy this hunt more than he had previously thought.
He’d gone about a hundred paces when a hydrospanner came hurtling at his head. He batted it away with his rifle and then targeted its thrower, a brown-and-white Wookiee female who was trying to run away. A well-placed shot to her spine made sure she didn’t. Tools clanked out of her satchel when she hit the floor.
Stepping over the Wookiee’s body, Bossk noticed that her eyes were open and her lips twitching while the rest of her remained still. He would bind her later. The paralytic effects of his stun bolt should last for at least fifteen minutes, more than enough time for him to complete his job. He’d purposely switched off his Relby’s lethal settings to maximize his gains, because in most instances these fugitives were worth more alive than dead. After he’d apprehended Chainbreaker, he could sort through those who might provide leverage against Chewbacca and those who might have a bounty worth claiming.
His instincts compelled him to turn. A snub-nosed, short-legged Wookiee jumped out of a hidden hatch, wielding what looked like a tree branch and barking obscenities in Shyriiwook. Bossk let his rifle hang from its shoulder strap and caught the branch in midswing, engaging in a fierce tug-of-war until he landed a kick to the runt’s gut. The scrappy beast let go and fell with a yelp. A stun bolt prevented him from getting up.
Bossk dropped the branch, feeling his palm tingle. He looked to see a pincer flea scrambling around his three clawed fingers, unable to find purchase on his scales. The nasty pest must have leapt out of the Wookiee’s fur. Bossk smacked his hand against the wall a couple of times to kill the thing. The resulting stain gave the wood a decoration he much preferred.
Continuing down the corridor, he found that it terminated in a door. He bashed the controls with his fist, and the door opened.
The chamber beyond reeked of the Kashyyyk forest. It was dark inside, but that didn’t hinder Bossk since his vision extended into the infrared. In the center of the room, three wroshyr trees gave off robust heat signatures, their branches twined around one another, full of leaves and dangling moss. Rodents scampered across the boughs and insects chirruped around the chamber as if it were night in a Kashyyyk forest.
Wookiee shipwrights prided themselves on the individuality of each vessel they built, but most still adhered to a general plan, which incorporated a nursery like this. The wroshyr trees provided wood for patching the hull and repairing other areas of the ship, along with offering a place of recreation and rest where the crew could climb, leap, swing, and sleep. No matter where they went, Wookiees couldn’t be without their damn trees.
In this minuscule regard, Bossk had to give Chewbacca some respect. For years the shaggy smuggler had managed to live with a cocky human copilot on a cramped Corellian freighter absent any arboreal amenities. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t yet been caught. Chewbacca wasn’t as soft and self-indulgent as the rest of his ilk.
Bossk pointed his rifle upward and crept around the trees. He spotted the heat outlines of three Wookiees huddled together on an upper branch. From the tang of their scent, he identified them as juveniles. They must be offspring of the adults aboard. One of them dropped a handful of pellets that bounced on the ground and rolled near Bossk’s bare feet. The pellets were wasaka berries, a favorite food of the Wookiees, eaten as snacks, baked in pies, and even juiced for spirits. But for Trandoshans, wasakas were poison.
Bossk crushed the disgusting fruits under his heel and went forward.
The juveniles didn’t appear to be armed or otherwise pose a threat, so he let them be. Harming Wookiee children, even with a stun bolt, might infuriate the adults, and Bossk had learned from experience that Wookiees were much easier to capture when they weren’t raving lunatics. But there was something else he could do that might tie up some of the gunship’s crew while he searched for its captain.
Bossk flipped a tiny lever on his Relby and launched a micro-grenade at the base of a wroshyr tree. It exploded, setting the bark on fire.
He exited through a portal sliced from a tree trunk and walked down another long corridor. A set of thick wood blast doors waited at the other end, where the hallway curved right and left. He was nearing the forward arc of the ship, the ostensible bow of the bowcaster. Behind those doors lay the gunship’s bridge and most likely its captain, Chainbreaker.
Before Bossk had made it midway down the corridor, six Wookiees stomped into the intersection ahead, three coming from the left branch, three from the right. They were all armed and they were all angry. Two were browncoats, two graycoats, one had yellow stripes, and one no hair at all. They didn’t ask any questions or demand his surrender—they just bellowed and charged.
Bossk switched his rifle back to stun and fired at the foremost Wookiee. His shot sent the browncoat female tumbling backward, and she dropped her plasma torch before she could turn it on. The male browncoat behind her leapt over her body and came at Bossk swinging a makeshift wood flail. Bossk crouched, allowing the flail’s spiked head to crash into the wall above him, and then decked its wielder under the chin with the butt of his rifle. The Wookiee collapsed onto the female with a thud.
With the browncoats down, the graycoats were next, a pair of twins slashing at Bossk with vicious swords curved like scythes. In the paws of a seasoned Wookiee warrior, these ryyk blades could cleave through durasteel armor and lop off limbs with ease. Nonetheless, as much as these twins plainly wanted to be seasoned warriors, they were far from it. Bossk lunged at their legs and toppled them. As the twins fell, their blades found each other while Bossk’s stun bolts found their chests.
Bossk rolled and raised his rifle just in time to block the blow of a bronzium pipe. The striped Wookiee who held it roared. She was a muscular creature, the biggest of the group, and abandoned the pipe to heave Bossk up by his shoulders. Bossk bent his head forward and bit her nose. Howling in pain, she hurled Bossk away from her, but he caught her with two blasts before he hit the floor. Spitting out Wookiee blood, he got to his knees and added a second pair of shots. She fell like a tree.
Bossk sleeved the blood off his lips and stood, kicking the bronzium pipe. It rattled along the corridor until it stopped at the gnarled feet of his final opponent.
The last Wookiee of the six was a gaunt older male, completely shorn from head to toe. His jaundiced flesh revealed numerous scars, and his left arm dangled limply from his shoulder. When he growled, he wheezed.
Bossk caught a whiff of the Wookiee’s odor beneath the stink of disease and instantly knew who the wretch was, as Bossk had been the one to apprehend him over a decade ago. This was the once august Rutallaroo, renowned war engineer of Torukiko, who had rigged a fleet of catamarans into assault craft and masterminded a three-year covert campaign to drive the Imperial invaders off Kashyyyk. After Bossk had turned the renegade over to the Imperials for a hefty fee, Rutallaroo had supposedly apologized for his crimes and “volunteered” to design equipment for the Empire’s ever-growing military presence on Kashyyyk. The Empire had plastered his image across the HoloNet as an example of a “good Wookiee” who was doing his duty for the peace and security of the galaxy. It was a lie well told. Bossk knew that Rutallaroo would never turn on his own people—few Wookiees did—and his scars showed that he’d been cruelly punished for his refusal. Yet with all the torture his Imperial taskmasters had inflicted, they had clearly not broken his fighting spirit. Rutallaroo bared his fangs at Bossk, lifted his right arm, and protracted his cracked, discolored claws.
Meeting Rutallaroo’s fierce stare, Bossk wished they could tussle like old times, Wookiee and Trandoshan, tooth and claw. Sadly, however, these weren’t old times. When Rutallaroo charged, Bossk shot him with a stun bolt.
The Wookiee didn’t stumble or even waver. He kept coming.
Bossk blasted him a second time, and a third. Rutallaroo absorbed the stun bolts as if they were nothing at all. His former captors must have electroshocked him so much they had fried his nerves. Stun bolts weren’t going to work on him.
Having no time to change his rifle’s settings, Bossk dropped it, readied his own claws, and bared his teeth with a menacing hiss of his tongue. If this Wookiee wanted to tussle, tussle they would.
Rutallaroo swung first, but Bossk ducked and came up to slash the Wookiee from behind. Black blood tainted the tips of Bossk’s claws, but Rutallaroo didn’t howl or cry in pain. He turned his head and gave Bossk a twisted smile.
Bossk read the expression as any skilled hunter would: Rutallaroo had been subjected to so much pain that pain was all he knew. This made him highly dangerous, for he had nothing to lose.
Rutallaroo attacked again, a swipe Bossk quickly sidestepped. What he didn’t anticipate was that the Wookiee’s dangling left arm would reach out, grapple Bossk’s elbow, and stab those cracked claws through his scales.
Bossk hissed. He’d been duped—Rutallaroo’s limp arm hadn’t been limp at all, just a ploy. But the deception came as no real surprise. Despite their reputation as creatures of the highest honor, Wookiees always played dirty. It was one of the thousand reasons why Trandoshans hated them.
Kneeing Rutallaroo in the abdomen, Bossk wriggled his arm loose from the Wookiee’s grip. With both hands freed, he seized the engineer’s neck and squeezed. Ending the creature’s misery would be the merciful thing to do, but mercy never applied to Wookiees, particularly when it impacted Bossk’s bottom line.
Bossk flung Rutallaroo against the corridor wall. There was a thud, and the Wookiee slid to the floor. This time he didn’t move, nor did his expression. It remained fixed in that same mad smile. Bossk returned one of his own, a toothy smirk of victory. Old times, indeed.
He picked up his rifle and looked at his defeated adversaries, lying unconscious or immobile across the corridor. He found it strange that none of the Wookiees he’d faced had been armed with a blaster or even a bowcaster. It almost seemed that they had put up just enough of a fight to mount a convincing defense, without having to risk gravely injuring or killing him.
And then, adding to the mystery, the blast doors at the end of the corridor opened, as if inviting him to enter.
Bossk stayed put, aiming his rifle at the doorway. No one stepped into view, but out drifted the most pungent of odors, the very rankness that had enraged him when he first came aboard. Whoever was behind that doorway was a member of Chewbacca’s clan.
There was also something else to the stench, a burnt musk, of dirt and sand and the hot sun. For some reason, Bossk was reminded of the Scorch, the sunbaked plains of his homeworld where Trandoshans enjoyed basking in the rays and mothers routinely laid their nest-eggs.
The Scorch was also the place where Bossk had scored his first kills, consuming the rest of the clutch. While he had no direct recollection of that first triumph—no hatchling did—he could imagine it in vivid detail, down to the smells and the tastes, since it was a story his father used to tell with pride—the only story Craddosk ever told about him with pride.
Bossk’s chrono dinged. He had less than two minutes left before the dungeon ship’s purported arrival, though given the extent of the last brawl, he wouldn’t be surprised if Chainbreaker had seen through his trap and was calculating a route to hyperspace. He had to secure his target before the gunship fled from the asteroid belt with him in it.
Alert for any signs of further opposition, Bossk pressed the stock of his Relby under his arm, notched his central digit on the trigger, and walked carefully through the open doorway.
The bridge was like nothing he’d ever seen on a Wookiee vessel. Technology superseded carpentry. Computer consoles ringed the deck. Display screens covered the walls. Everything from security cam feeds and newsnet streams to sensor scans and telemetry readings was being monitored. Data even hung in the air, shimmering above projection tables as holographic maps, personnel profiles, and hyperspatial coordinates. Silhouetted in this ghostly light, his long-sought quarry sat on a mechno-chair.
“Chainbreaker,” Bossk growled.
“Bossk’wassak’Cradossk,” the figure replied in Bossk’s native tongue, leaning into the light.
Bossk didn’t question his instincts, but he did briefly question his senses. He blinked and took a breath to decipher whether or not the silhouette before him was an aberration or apparition. The figure did not disappear, nor did the stench evaporate. His senses had not led him astray.
This was Chainbreaker.
But it was not the Chainbreaker he—or anyone else in the galaxy—would have ever expected. For the infamous Wookiee outlaw wasn’t a Wookiee at all, but a female Trandoshan.
Bossk stood there, finger on the trigger, itching to pull it, itching to know more. One of his own ferrying fugitive Wookiees to freedom was outrageous, unimaginable, a profane violation of the collective beliefs of their culture. From the moment of hatching it was ingrained in Trandoshan broods that Wookiees were their mortal enemies, the perpetrators of countless crimes against their species over the centuries. That a fellow Trandoshan would actively aid their foes in escaping long-deserved retribution—never in a thousand molts could Bossk have conceived of such a sacrilege.
Yet the most formidable of hunts often revealed the most obvious of truths. Chainbreaker’s identity explained why there had never been a confirmed image of her. No hologram, no snapshot, not even a witness’s description. Every bounty hunter in the business had assumed Chainbreaker was a Wookiee while marveling at how this enigmatic outlaw knew the intricate details of Wookiee trafficking, the flight paths of dungeon ships, the points of sale and transfer, the Trandoshan hunters involved, and the secret locations of Imperial detention facilities. The truth was so plain, so simple, that no one could have seen it, not even Bossk. Chainbreaker knew those secrets because she herself was a Trandoshan and was communicating with other Trandoshan hunters. She had conned them all.
Bossk then did something he hadn’t done in many, many hunts. He laughed, a curt, throaty chortle at the sheer absurdity of it all.
“You do know that by laughing at me,” Chainbreaker said in lisping Dosh, “you laugh at yourself.”
His laugh died when she bent her head further into the light. Hers was a face with which he was eerily acquainted. She had the same yellow-green cast to her scales as he did, the same beady orange eyes, the same sharp-toothed underbite, even the same pattern of cranial ridges. Looking at her was like gazing into a mirror and seeing a reflection of himself. For two Trandoshans to share all these traits was highly unusual. There had to be a reason.
Bossk flared his nostrils and sniffed out that burnt musk from the stench. Once more he was reminded of his hatching place, the Scorch, and the smells and tastes his father used to conjure when describing how Bossk broke the leathery shells of the other eggs and ate what swirled inside. Were Bossk’s instincts tying Chainbreaker to that event? Might she be more than just one of his species? Could she possibly be one of his clutch?
“It’s good to finally meet you again, brother,” she said.
Bossk flicked out his tongue. “How can that be? I devoured you.”
“Not enough of me, fortunately.” She clattered forward on the spidery ambulators of her mechno-chair. The red light of a holographic projection illuminated the rest of her body—or what remained of it. Of her four limbs, three were stumps. The single arm she did possess was short and small, with three clawed digits on a tiny hand. An adult Trandoshan would have been able to regenerate lost limbs, so she must have lost hers as a juvenile, before she’d developed her full regenerative capabilities.
Her presence—her existence—unsettled Bossk. His father had always told him he’d consumed all the other eggs, but Cradossk was also an inveterate liar. Why should Bossk have believed this story when Cradossk had repeatedly deceived him throughout his life? How many times had Cradossk given Bossk false leads to push Bossk off a trail so he could bag the bounty for himself? Bossk shouldn’t allow one instance of paternal pride to cloud his judgment. The most accomplished hunters accepted reality—that’s how they caught their prey. Perhaps his sister’s egg had been the last in the nest he’d pecked, after he’d gorged on the others and his fetal hunger had been sated. He could have left just enough of her to grow and survive like this.
“If you are who you say you are, then you should be grateful to me for your life,” he said.
She scoffed at the suggestion. “I thank the Wookiees.”
It took him a moment to realize her answer was not in jest. “The Wookiees?”
“The Wookiees,” she repeated. “Kind old Liswarr’arindoo, who couldn’t have a cub of her own, exchanged a bottle of Kowakian rum for my puny cracked egg, and saved me and suckled me and raised me like a daughter in her clan. She even gave me a name, since I was never given one by those who conceived me. Doshanalawook I am called.”
“Doshanala—” Bossk laughed again, unable to finish saying the ridiculous name. “I might’ve left you a body and an arm, but I must’ve nibbled much of your brain. Everyone in the galaxy knows those brutes don’t raise ’Doshan hatchlings. They eat our eggs for dessert.”
She stared at him without blinking. “Have you ever seen a Wookiee eat a Trandoshan egg?”
Bossk hadn’t, but that was beside the point. “I know they find them more delicious than those rancid wasaka berries.”
“A lie. Like all the other lies Trandoshans tell about them. Distortions and fabrications to incite a war between our species. Excuses so you can commit genocide.”
“Jilt me a jagganath—you really did drink their milk, didn’t you?”
“I merely speak the truth and work to rescue those who rescued me.”
As if to lend legitimacy to her lies, a cloud of an all-too-familiar clan-stink wafted over Bossk. Unlike when he’d smelled it in the ship’s corridor, on the bridge here it was so potent he nearly gagged. “You,” he said and gasped, “you were with Chewbacca’s kind.”
“For many years. His father, the wise Attichitcuk himself, mentored me.”
Bossk wasn’t one who often had doubts or misgivings. Life for him was easy, and he liked it that way. It was hunt or be hunted, shoot first, and never, never ask questions. Yet now his head was full of questions—questions about his father and his supposed sister, questions about his place in all this mess. He found himself in a state he rarely experienced. He was totally and utterly confused.
Regaining his breath, Bossk suppressed his bewilderment and reverted to what always worked for him. He stepped toward her, rifle out. Whether she was really his sister or whether she was telling him truths or half-truths, he wasn’t going to indulge her treasonous fancies any longer. “Make this easy, for both of us. Put this ship on a course to Asteroid X342 in the outer ring.”
“I already have.”
“What?”
“I thought you would want a ride back to your vessel,” she said.
“How do you know where I hid my…” A beep interrupted him.
“Your chrono,” she said.
Bossk glanced at his wrist. The timer had zeroed. The fact that at this moment Chainbreaker wasn’t looking for the Imperial ship meant one thing. “You knew I’d be here.”
“I did. I wanted to meet you, and this seemed like the best opportunity.”
“The Wookiee prison transport—”
“Appears on the timetable you sent, but not on the hundreds of other schedules and reports I receive,” she said. “A good trick, I’ll admit, better than anyone else who’s tried to stop me. But I’ve played this game for far too long to fall for something like that.”
Bossk eyed the consoles and projections around her. “Hundreds of schedules?”
“Sometimes thousands. It’s hard to keep track.” She gestured at her surroundings with her small hand. “Go. See for yourself.”
While keeping his Relby trained on her, Bossk toured the bridge, glancing at the monitors, screens, and holographic maps. Most of the consoles tracked Wookiee outlaws like Maromaka, Tossonnu, and Wullffwarro, who were part of the clandestine network that ferried fugitive Wookiees to freedom. All big names, all big bounties.
“This is impressive.”
“I’ll tell Rutallaroo,” she said. “He built most of it.”
Bossk snuffed. “Won’t be building much more after the beatdown I gave him.”
A projection table near the center caught Bossk’s notice. He walked over to examine miniature holograms of himself and his ship rotating above the table. “So you keep tabs on me too.”
“I watch all those who threaten the cause.”
“Hate to break it to you, but aiding Wookiees is no great cause—it’s treason of the worst kind.”
“According to you,” she said.
“According to any Trandoshan,” Bossk said, but he didn’t press the argument, so astonished was he by what he saw on the projector console. It displayed not only a log of his recent whereabouts, but a comprehensive personal history as well. There was record of him joining a Rodian posse on Goroth Prime, assisting a Quor’sav narcotics agent on Uaua, silencing the Mad Monks of Xo, collecting bounties on Taldorrah, Lothal, and the Silver Moon of Acomber, and even a reference to that disastrous incident on Gandolo IV.
He slitted his eyes at his sister. “How do you know all this? Did you put a homing beacon on my ship?”
“Please, brother, that’s not my way,” she said. “Let’s just say I have my sources.”
Bossk discovered a potential source in the console data when he opened a cache of messages, all addressed to him. “You’re intercepting my private communications!”
“I intercept everything,” she said.
“That’s impossible—the Hound’s Tooth has an ex-four transceiver with the latest encryption codes, the model used on Star Destroyers.”
“Who do you think designed it for the Empire?”
Bossk snarled, wanting never to hear Rutallaroo’s name uttered again. But if Chainbreaker had obtained all his communications, could it be possible that she had intercepted the most recent message he’d received and blocked its full reception?
He activated playback of the last message in the cache. A hologram of an Imperial naval officer replaced Bossk’s above the projection table. “This is for the bounty hunter Bossk of Trandosha. I am Lieutenant Masil Veit, communications officer on the Star Destroyer Executor, and am contacting you based on the recommendation of your guild—”
Chainbreaker flipped toggles on her mechno-chair and the hologram vanished.
Bossk banged on the console screen to resume the message, but the playback controls wouldn’t reappear. “Why’d you do that? Replay the message!”
She gave him a sharp-toothed smile. “Only if you do me a favor.”
“I don’t do favors,” he snapped, nearly setting his Relby to kill and pulling the trigger right then and there. But he knew if he did, not only would he lose the massive bounty for capturing her alive, but he might also never hear the rest of the message.
“Then call it a trade.”
“I think you’ve forgotten who’s in charge here.”
“No need to get testy,” she said. “We’re family, remember?”
Bossk was done with her games. Striding to within a meter of her chair, he flipped the lever of his Relby to its most painful setting—the slow burn. “I don’t care who you claim to be. For all I know, you’ve concocted your story from all this intel you’ve gathered about me. Sister or not, if you don’t replay that message, I’ll make you and everyone on this ship feel what this weapon can do. Even the juveniles.”
She met his stare without a blink. “You’re as sensitive as a Saurin, Bossk. But because I want you to see the truth, I’ll let you reconsider your threat.”
Bossk instinctively pivoted toward the entrance even before he heard the thump-thumps amid the whir of machinery. He couldn’t see out the doorway from his vantage point, but Wookiee footfalls were unmistakable to his ears.
He flipped the lever again on his Relby and fired a short burst at the blast door controls. The box melted, the blast doors started to close, and then stopped as a flight of ryyk throwing spikes whizzed through the doorway, spinning for Bossk’s head. He ducked behind Chainbreaker’s mechno-chair, and the spikes buried themselves in consoles behind him, shattering monitors and scopes.
“Now before this becomes nasty, everyone hold their fire,” Chainbreaker ordered. “You, too, Bossk.”
“That’s not how this works,” Bossk said. But when he lifted his head above the chair and saw what was arrayed against him, he heeded her advice.
The Wookiees he’d fought minutes before and thought incapacitated swept onto the bridge. There was the female who had thrown the hydrospanner, the tenacious branch-swinging runt and blade-wielding twins, the muscular yellowstripe and pair of browncoats with the plasma torch and flail, and finally Rutallaroo, his claws retracted but his lunatic grin wider than before. In place of their previous weapons, all were armed with bowcasters—cocked and aimed at Bossk.
“Gut my gizzard,” Bossk muttered. It was a stretch that Rutallaroo might be resistant to stun bolts, but all of them? “My shots would’ve knocked out a ronto!”
“My friends endured far worse treatment under the Imperials than what you delivered,” said Chainbreaker.
Bossk wedged the muzzle of his rifle into her skull. “Even waggle a paw on those triggers,” he said, knowing any Wookiee worth its pelt understood Dosh, “and she’s brainmush.”
The fugitives growled, but Chainbreaker was the one to speak. “You do know I’m the only one who can replay the message.”
Bossk surveyed the bridge and his assailants, assessing how he could shoot his way out. If he slithered from console to console, using them as cover, he might be able to neutralize most of the Wookiees. But all they needed was for one of their quarrels to explode in his vicinity. And since there were eight of them and only one of him, the chances of dodging that many bowcaster bolts seemed nil.
“This ‘favor’ you mentioned,” he said to Chainbreaker. “What is it? You want someone captured? Killed?”
She turned her head slightly so one mischievous orange eye peered up at him. “Spoken like a true Trandoshan.”
“That’s what I am. That’s what you are.”
“I’ve never said I was anything but.” Her three claws clicked on the arm of her mechno-chair. “My favor is simple. I want you to promise to stop what you’re doing.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop hunting Wookiees.”
Bossk’s laughter came involuntarily this time, a convulsion of hisses, snuffs, and croaks. “You can’t be serious,” he said, between snorts. “You want me, of all beings, to quit?”
“I’m not suggesting you change your career. I’m only requesting you end your pursuit of Wookiee bounties.”
“That’s like asking a Trandoshan to stop shedding his scales,” he said, trying to recover some composure.
“I haven’t shed my scales in years,” she said.
“No wonder you smell so bad.”
She ignored his barb. “The galaxy is replete with bounties for criminals, swindlers, and murderers. Why not choose to hunt them instead of Wookiees?”
“Trandoshans hunt Wookiees. Even you know that. It’s the way things are.”
“But it’s not the way things have to be, especially when it’s based on lies. We can change it.”
“I’m not changing, I can tell you that.”
“Really?” She arched an eye ridge at him. “Maybe I was wrong about you. Maybe you’re too afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what?”
“Going after those other bounties.”
Anger stifled the last convulsion of his laughter. “My bounties go far beyond your filthy Wookiees. I collected on the Gibbering Gran of Gibraal—”
“Respected by no one, least of all the Gran themselves.”
“Durgaagoo, Ploovo’s right-hand thug—”
“But not Two-For-One himself.”
“The masked monarch of Qotile, whose title I assumed—”
“Meaningless, unless you want to rule over a desolate wasteland.”
It took all his will not to pull the trigger. “Insults won’t convince me.”
Chainbreaker’s voice remained steady and calm, as it had during their entire conversation. “And I mean no insult, but these are lowlifes compared with the bounties you should be going after. You’re primarily known for catching Wookiees, yet given your exceptional skills, you could become more than that, a hunter of great renown.”
“I am a hunter of great renown, more talented than that Mandalorian pretender or that walking human bandage Dengar—”
“And you can rise even higher than them, if you pledge to forgo hunting Wookiees and instead go after bigger prizes.”
Bossk looked at the fugitives, the sneers on their mugs, their bowcasters primed. He glanced down at Chainbreaker, whose head was tilted so that her beady orange eyes, so much like his own, continued to focus on him. Maybe she really was his sister. He couldn’t deny his senses. Yet, her offer seemed too preposterous to be plausible. Did she really believe he wouldn’t break his promise once he was out of this situation? Surely someone like her would know that a Trandoshan’s word was worth little more than the breath from which it was rasped.
“You have the full message from the Imperials, not some partial intercept?” he asked.
She nodded. “I blocked the end of the transmission to guarantee you weren’t distracted and came aboard.”
“So let me see it.”
“Will you take my pledge?”
“Will you let me get back to my ship?”
“What good would your promise be if I didn’t allow you to honor it? Do not worry, you will be released unharmed,” she said.
He scratched a toe-claw along the wroshyr floor. She was trying to trick him, he just couldn’t figure out how. But under the present circumstances he saw saw no other alternative to her proposal.
“Fine,” he snarled.
“You promise to stop hunting Wookiees?”
He snarled again, making his assent inaudible.
Her calm voice turned forceful. “Say it.”
Bossk coiled his tongue in contempt. His toe-claw dug so deep into the floor it chipped, and pain coursed through his foot. He grunted.
“Say it,” Chainbreaker repeated. “I want these Wookiees to hear it.”
He let out a breath and looked at his feet, not dignifying the Wookiees with his gaze. “I…promise.” He spit out the last word.
“Very good. You will help make a new galaxy, Bossk,” she said, sounding almost optimistic, a rare tone for a Trandoshan. “As agreed, I will play the full message—”
“Just the very end.” He wanted to get the coordinates and leave this odious ship as soon as possible.
She flipped more toggles on the arm of her mechno-chair, and the lieutenant’s hologram reappeared over the projection table. “The rendezvous site is at eight-four-two-point-three in the Anoat system,” Veit said. “Be aboard in seven Imperial standard hours from the timestamp of this message. We will see you there.” The hologram vanished once again.
Bossk knew the Anoat system was a short jump from the Rycep asteroid belt. If he went back to the Hound’s Tooth now, he could push its hyperdrive and make the appointed time with a bit of luck.
“Before you go, take this.” Chainbreaker manipulated the keypad on the arm of her mechno-chair, and a datacube popped out of a slot. “It contains the full message and some other information.”
He snatched the cube with his free hand. “Other information?”
“Evidence that proves how baseless claims and outright lies have divided our species for centuries,” she said.
“Propaganda. Conspiracies.”
“Take a look at it for yourself and you can decide,” she said. “But ask yourself why we must forever be at each other’s throats. Reconciliation between Wookiees and Trandoshans is possible.”
“Whatever you say ‘sister’.” Bossk shoved the datacube into a belt pouch and then carefully walked away from Chainbreaker, continuing to hold his rifle in a firing position. The Wookiees continued to do the same with their bowcasters, but they parted to the side as he approached the doorway.
Halfway to the exit, he turned back to Chainbreaker, sensing he was missing something. He had to know what it was, what trick she was playing on him. And while honesty was always the least of his inclinations, right now it felt appropriate.
“The job in the message,” he said. “You know who the Empire wants me to catch?”
Chainbreaker nodded, seated as he had first found her, a specter in the electronic light of holograms and glowing consoles. “Is there any better test than to preclude you from going after the one you perceive to be your nemesis?”
Bossk eyed the bowcasters aimed at him. “And what if I fail your test? What if I break this inane promise and pursue Chewbacca or another Wookiee?”
“You will be hunted down like no other quarry in the galaxy and suffer a wrath unlike anything you can conceive,” she said. “But that won’t happen. I have faith you will keep your word. We must trust each other if there is ever to be reconciliation. And I trust you.”
“Why? Why would you ever trust me? You know what I am.”
“Of course I do.” Her orange eyes blinked at him. “You’re my brother.”
As his jetpack took him through the outer asteroid ring, Bossk shivered in his vac suit. He was cold, colder than he’d ever been, and needed his body temperature to rise else he might lose consciousness. But he couldn’t stop thinking of what had just happened. He couldn’t stop thinking of his sister, if that was who she truly was, and why he was suddenly a part of her strange agenda.
“Doshanalawook,” he said, over and over, to keep himself awake. He wanted to despise her, but couldn’t muster the hate. And he didn’t know why. He was still confused.
When he made it to the air lock of the Hound’s Tooth, he grabbed the hatch-hold and looked back to where the Liswarr had been. There was only the void of space, without even the scatter-light trace of a ship having just jumped to hyperspace.
Maybe he’d been stricken with a spell of space fever. Maybe he had imagined the encounter just like he had imagined his hatching day from the lies his father had told.
Or maybe the galaxy was indeed changing, and he was swept up in it.
Bossk grunted and entered through the hatch. His blood began to boil as his thoughts mercifully returned to Chewbacca.