Facing Zekk’s unexpected and relentless pursuit, Dengar made a logical choice. He set course for escape, and with an angry roar, his ship careened into the sky.
Standing beside Tenel Ka, Jacen watched the bounty hunter’s craft jet upward at high speed until it was swallowed by the swirling black smoke. Dengar disappeared into orbit, leaving behind the smoldering wreckage of his devastating attack.
Planting one fist on each of his hips, Raynar observed the bounty hunter’s departure with defiant satisfaction. “That’ll teach him not to tangle with young Jedi Knights!”
21
In the aftermath of Dengar’s attack, Zekk brooded, trying to find answers to the question that now haunted him: how had the bounty hunter found him? Despite this worry, Zekk was delighted when Jaina offered to spend two days helping him recalibrate the Lightning Rod’s systems. As they worked, he told Jaina about his encounter with Dengar on Ziost, and mentioned his subsequent stops on Mos Eisley, Kuar, and Borgo Prime before coming to Mechis III. Zekk didn’t give her many details, but hoped she could help him figure out how the other bounty hunter had found him.
“Odd. Why would Dengar think you were here?” Jaina mused aloud.
“I guess it’s possible that he discovered the droid debris on Kuar and made the same assumptions I did about the CPU chips. The trail would’ve led him to Mechis III….” Zekk shook his head. “But I just can’t swallow that much of a coincidence. Dengar knew I was here.”
“You think maybe he managed to mark the Lightning Rod, assuming you’d eventually lead him to Bornan Thul?” Jaina asked. “He might’ve thought you worked for Raynar’s father. After all, you were sending messages to the Bornaryn fleet.”
Zekk smiled at the irony. “If Dengar was tracking me, then he followed me to the wrong Thul. If he’d gone to Borgo Prime instead, he might have caught Bornan.”
Jaina frowned at the thought. “He probably figured you were just stopping for messages or supplies and he didn’t want you to suspect that he was on your trail,” she guessed.
“If there’s some sort of tracer on my ship, I want to know about it,” Zekk said through gritted teeth. It gave him the creeps to think that someone could have been tracking his every movement.
Jaina grinned. “Well, then, what are we waiting for?”
Together, Zekk and Jaina carefully inspected the outer hull of the battered transport ship. Zekk couldn’t imagine how many times his old friend Peckhum had been in tight situations with this craft. After the Second Imperium’s attack on the Jedi academy, when the brutal TIE pilot Norys had nearly destroyed the Lightning Rod, Peckhum had made certain the ship got a complete overhaul.
Noting the carbon scoring, Zekk thought back on some of the skirmishes he himself had been through. Dengar had fired on him at the ice world of Ziost, and before that Boba Fett had fought him in the rubble field of Alderaan. It was a good thing that Jaina could help him check the ship over. They found countless patches, spot-welded armor plates, and external systems that had been jury-rigged so many times Zekk couldn’t fathom how they managed to remain functional.
As soon as Zekk spotted it, he knew what was wrong. Surrounded by a starburst of slag, a small object had attached itself to the Lightning Rod’s hull. He showed it to Jaina.
“Limpet mine,” she said. “Perfect for planting a tracer.”
“So … that ‘concussion grenade’ Dengar fired at me wasn’t a dud, after all,” Zekk said, tapping it with a fingertip. “A tracer, huh?”
He pried off the limpet mine and held it in his hand, considering what to do with it. Finally, a sly grin crossed his face….
At one of Mechis Ill’s shipping platforms, Zekk and Jaina found a tiny courier pod. The high-speed drone was only large enough to carry small emergency-repair parts or hardcopy messages that were too sensitive to be transmitted with normal encoding over hyperwaves.
Jaina gleefully assured Zekk the limpet’s transmitting beacon still functioned properly before they sealed it inside the courier pod. Next, he programmed a course that would take the drone high above the galactic plane—far away from any inhabited star systems. The tracer’s journey would take it on a one-way trip to nowhere, still winking its insidious message … luring Dengar to follow.
They launched the courier pod out of the receiving bay and watched it dwindle to a pinprick and vanish into the vast gulf of distance.
Zekk stared after it with a fiery satisfaction burning in his emerald-green eyes. “Happy hunting, Dengar,” he murmured.
Tyko Thul kept himself busy by programming armies of construction droids and cleanup crews to work on the damaged towers. He had reluctantly accepted Raynar’s offer of temporary assistance, and together the two discussed the damage.
“You know, those structures have needed upgrading for some time now, anyway,” Tyko said. “Never got around to it.” Somewhat disheartened, he called up the intricate designs for the facilities.
Raynar studied the diagrams. Then, letting his eyes fall half closed, he said, “I think I might have a few modifications to suggest.” With calm assurance, he began altering the schematics. He worked for nearly an hour before stopping.
Perplexed, Tyko stared at the screen. “I don’t understand. Why should I want to make these changes?”
Raynar shrugged. “By combining those two operations, you can run the systems in parallel. If one assembly line breaks down, you have the capacity to speed up production on the first line, make your repairs to the second one, and still meet delivery schedules.”
“Yes!” Tyko crowed. “I see it now. It’s nothing short of brilliant!”
Raynar blinked in bemusement and blushed at the praise. “I wonder if there’s such a thing as a merchant Jedi,” he mumbled.
Jaina, taking a break from her repairs to the Lightning Rod, turned back to her work on the assassin droid IG-88, while Em Teedee hovered overhead like a practice remote. “This is most interesting,” he said. After repairing a few scrambled circuits, the modified translating droid now functioned like a new machine. Dangling diagnostic leads hung down, connecting the translating droid to IG-88’s main memory core.
Tenel Ka, Jacen, and Raynar crowded around Jaina, watching the additional alterations with interest. Jaina glanced over at Raynar. “You’re sure your uncle’s going to let us do this?”
“He will,” Raynar answered. “In return for his cooperation, I promised not to reveal his 'little hoax’ to my mother. My message to her will just say that we rescued Uncle Tyko and he’s unharmed.” The young man smiled.
Scrutinizing the inner mechanisms of the once-lethal droid, Jaina nodded. “All right. When I’m finished here, we’ll be able to turn IG-88 loose to continue the search for your father.”
“It is a good idea,” Tenel Ka said. “This droid was built to track down people who do not wish to be found. We could not ask for a better ally.”
“Yeah,” Jacen said, “and we’ve got the perfect job for him.”
Em Teedee piped up. “I’ve tapped directly into IG-88’s memory area reserved for storing information about current bounty assignments.”
“And you input all of the data about my father?” Raynar prodded.
“Just as you requested, Master Raynar,” Em Teedee said. “Everything from the file. IG-88 knows all about Bornan Thul’s business affiliations, old friends, favorite haunts, familial connections—”
“Thanks, Em Teedee,” Raynar broke in. “There’s not another bounty hunter in the galaxy who knows as much about my father as IG-88 does now.”
“He will be a fine seeker—relentless,” Tenel Ka said, clapping a hand on Raynar’s back. Her rustic warrior appearance made an interesting contrast with the gleaming mechanized facility populated by droids. But Tenel Ka seemed perfectly at ease. She was who she was, regardless of her location, and she never let circumstances diminish her self-confidence.