Tales of the Bounty Hunters Read Free Page B

appears to be some damage to the complex.” The pilot paused a moment. “Er, it appears to be significant damage, sir.”
    The stormtroopers beside him in the passenger compartment fidgeted nervously.
    Gurdun sighed. “Can’t everything just go right for once? Why do I always have to deal with such problems?”
    But when the shuttle landed amidst the wreckage of the ultra-secure Holowan Laboratories—the Friendly Technology People—even Gurdun was not prepared for the devastation. His initial thought was that the Rebels had attacked. A fire had raged through the buildings. Ships were smashed on the landing grid. Some had exploded, others scored with precision blaster bolts.
    As they disembarked from the shuttle, Gurdun trudged forward, looking right and left. He was dismayed to see that his stormtrooper bodyguards hung behind him. They looked around, apparently ready to bolt the moment they heard a loud noise.
    Suddenly, two grimy and pale-faced security guards climbed from hiding places in the wreckage. They carried blaster rifles, but their expressions were transfixed with shock. “Help us!” the security guards wailed, rushing toward the Imperial shuttle. “Take us out of here before they come back!”
    “Who?” Gurdun said. He grabbed the haggard security guard by the collar, and the man dropped his weapon. The blaster rifle clattered on the pitted permacrete surface.
    The pathetic guard raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t hurt me. All the others are dead. Don’t kill us, please!”
    Gurdun said, “I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me what happened here!”
    “Assassin droids,” the guard stammered and then gestured to the burned-out shell of the laboratory complex. “They went renegade! They broke loose. Everyone’s dead—scientists, technicians, guards—except for us two. We were on perimeter search, and we heard the fighting. We raced back, but by the time we got here the battle was over. The droids had escaped, and everyone else was murdered.”
    “That is what assassin droids do, you know.” Gurdun released the security guard’s collar.
    The man stumbled, then fell to his knees. “Take us out of here, please! They might return.”
    Instead, Gurdun gestured toward the stormtrooper escort, who followed him reluctantly into the collapsing inner complex. The huge durasteel door had been completely torn from its socket and tossed across the computer-filled room. Nothing seemed to be functional. Bodies lay everywhere in darkening, drying pools of blood.
    “Escaped,” Gurdun said clenching his teeth. He found what was left of the body of Chief Technician Loruss, and he raged down at the corpse. “But they were so expensive! We had a contract. You were to deliver those droids to me, not let them escape.” He growled and turned in circles, looking for some other way to vent his frustration.
    Suddenly the reality of what had happened cracked through his dense wall of fantasies and self-preoccupation. “Oh, no—they’re loose!” he gasped.
    The stormtroopers looked at him with their blank black eye-goggles as if Gurdun had suddenly gone stupid. “I mean they’re loose !” he said. “Do you realize what those assassin droids are capable of? They’re without programming restraints, and they’re running amok through the Empire!”
    He slapped his forehead, groaning. “Somebody, find me a functional comm system. I need to send out analert to all Imperial troops. The IG assassin droids must be dismantled on sight.”
    III
    Droids of all shapes, sizes, and purposes were ubiquitous across the Empire from the deepest Core Systems to the Outer Rim. Over the centuries numerous manufacturing planets had developed to fill the ever-growing demand for gigantic construction droids, heavy laborers, mechanical servants, and minuscule surveillance droids. The most important of all such droid production centers was the grim, smoke-laden world of Mechis III.
    IG-88 decided the planet would be the