It took Qennto over four hours to find a way to shut down the runaway hyperdrive without slagging it. During that time Car’das offered his help three times, and Maris offered hers twice. All the offers were summarily refused.
Sometime during the first hour, as near as Car’das could figure from the readings tumbling across the displays, they left the relatively well-known territory of the Outer Rim, passing into a shallow section of the far less well-known territory known as Wild Space. Sometime early in the fourth hour, they left even that behind and crossed the hazy line into the Unknown Regions.
At which point, where they were or what exactly they were flying into was anyone’s guess.
But at last the wailing faded away, and a few minutes later the hyperspace sky collapsed into starlines and then into stars. “Maris?” Qennto’s voice called from the comm panel.
“We’re out,” she confirmed. “Running a location check now.”
“I’ll be right there,” Qennto said.
“Wherever we are, we’re a long way from home,”
Car’das murmured, gazing out at a small but brilliant globular star cluster in the distance. “I’ve never seen anything like that from any of the Outer Rim worlds I’ve been to.”
“Me, neither,” Maris agreed soberly. “Hopefully, the computer can sort it out.”
The computer was still sifting data when Qennto reappeared on the bridge. Car’das had made sure to be back at his own station by then. “Nice cluster,” the big man commented as he dropped into his seat. “Any systems nearby?”
“Closest one’s about a quarter light-year directly ahead,” Maris said, pointing.
Qennto grunted and punched at his board. “Let’s see if we can make it,” he said. “Backup hyperdrive should still have enough juice for a jump that short.”
“Can’t we work on the ship just as well out here?”
Car’das asked.
“I don’t like interstellar space,” Qennto said distractedly as he set up the jump. “It’s dark and cold and lonely.
Besides, that system up there might have a nice planet or two.”
“Which means a possible source of supplies, in case we end up staying longer than we expect,” Maris explained.
“Or a possible place to settle down away from the noise and fluster of the Republic for a while,” Qennto added.
Car’das felt his throat tighten. “You don’t mean—?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Maris assured him. “Rak always talks about getting away from it all whenever he’s in trouble with someone.”
“He must talk that way a lot,” Car’das muttered.
“What was that?” Qennto asked.
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t think so. Here we go.” There was a screech, more genteel than the sound from the Bargain Hunter‘s main hyper-drive, and the stars stretched out into starlines.
Silently, Car’das counted off the seconds to himself, fully expecting the backup hyperdrive to crash at any time. But it didn’t, and after a few tense minutes the starlines collapsed again to reveal a small yellow sun directly ahead.
“There we go,” Qennto said approvingly. “All the comforts of home. You figure out yet where we are, Maris?”
“Computer’s still working on it,” Maris said. “But it looks like we’re about two hundred fifty light-years into Unknown Space.” She lifted her eyebrows at him. “I’m thinking we’re going to have a stack of late-delivery penalties when we finally get to Comra.”
“Oh, you worry too much,” Qennto chided. “It won’t take more than a day or two to fix the hyperdrive. If we push it a little, we shouldn’t be more than a week overdue.”
Car’das suppressed a grimace. Pushing the hyperdrive, if he recalled correctly, was what had wrecked the thing to begin with.
There was a twitter from the comm. “We’re being hailed,” he reported, frowning as he keyed it on. He threw a look at the visual displays, searching for their unknown caller and felt his whole body go rigid. “Qennto!” he snapped. “It’s—”
He was cut off by a deep rumbling chuckle from the comm. “So, Dubrak Qennto,” an all-too-familiar voice rumbled in Huttese. “You think to escape me so easily?”
“You call that easy?” Qennto muttered as he keyed his transmitter. “Oh, hi, Progga,” he said. “Look, like I told you before, I can’t let you have these furs. I’ve already contracted with Drixo—”
“Ignore the furs,” Progga cut in. “Show me your hidden treasure hoard.”
Qennto frowned at Maris. “My what?”
“Do not play the fool,” Progga warned, his voice going an octave deeper. “I know your sort. You do not simply run from something, but run rather to something else. This is the lone star system along this vector; and behold, you are here. What could you have run to but a secret base and treasure hoard?”
Qennto muted the transmitter. “Car’das, where is he?”
“A hundred kilometers off the starboard bow,” Car’das told him, his hands shaking as he ran a full scan on the distant Hutt ship. “And he’s coming up fast.”
“Maris?”
“Whatever you did to shut down the hyperdrive, you did a great job,” she said tightly. “It’s completely locked. We’ve still got the backup, but if we try to run and he tracks us again—”
“And he will,” Qennto growled. Taking a deep breath, he switched the transmitter back on. “It wasn’t like that, Progga,” he said soothingly. “We were just trying to—”
“Enough!” the Hutt bellowed. “Lead me to this base.
Now.”
“There isn’t any base,” Qennto insisted. “This is the Unknown Regions. Why would I set up a base out here?”
A light flashed on Car’das’s proximity sensor.
“Incoming!” he snapped, his eyes darting back and forth among the displays as he searched for the source of the attack.
“Where?” Qennto snapped back.
Car’das had it now, coming from directly beneath the Bargain Hunter: a long, dark missile arrowing straight toward them. “There,” he said, pointing a finger straight down as hestared at the display.
It was only then that his brain caught up with the fact that this wasn’t the vector a missile would take from the approaching Hutt ship. He was opening his mouth to point that out when the missile burst open, its nose ejecting a wad of some kind of material. The wad began to expand as it cleared the shards of its container, opening like a fast-blooming flower into a filmy wall stretching over a kilometer across.
“Power off!” Qennto snapped, lunging across his board to the row of master power switches. “Hurry!”
“What is it?” Car’das asked, grabbing for his board’s own set of cutoffs.
“A Connor net, or something like it,” Qennto gritted out.
“What, that size?” Car’das asked in disbelief.
“Just do it,” Qennto snarled. Status lights were winking red and going out now as the three of them raced against the incoming net.
The net won. Car’das had made it through barely two-thirds of his switches when the rippling edges came into sight around the sides of the hull. They folded themselves inward, curling around toward the bridge.
“Close your eyes,” Maris warned.
Car’das squeezed his eyes shut. Even through the lids he saw a hint of the brilliant flash as the net dumped its high-voltage current into and through the ship, sending a brief coronal tingling across his skin.
And when he carefully opened his eyes again, every light that had still been glowing across the bridge had gone dark.
The Bargain Hunter was dead.
Through the canopy came a flicker of light from thedirection of the Hutt ship. “Looks like they got Progga, too,” he said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
“I doubt it,” Qennto rumbled. “His ship’s big enough to have cap drains and other stuff to protect him from tricks like this.”
“Ten to one he’ll fight, too,” Maris murmured, her voice tight.
“Oh, he’ll fight, all right,” Qennto said heavily. “He’s way too stupid to realize that anyone who can make a Connor net that big will have plenty of other tricks up his sleeve.”
A multiple blaze of green blasterfire erupted from the direction of the Hutt ship. It was answered by brilliant blue flashes vectoring in from three different directions, fired from ships too small or too dark to see at the Bargain Hunter‘s range.