Star Wars: Tales of the Bounty Hunters Read Online Free PDF

something. I wouldn’t expect assassin droids to lay low and slink around unseen.”
    Imperial Supervisor Gurdun looked at the clutter on his desk, cleared a spot for his elbows and rested his chin in his hands. “Ah, but these machines are devilishly smart, Relsted. They were designed to my specifications—and you know how relentless I can be at times. I would not underestimate them.”
    “Certainly not, sir,” Relsted said. “We have spies deployed in every nook and cranny—uh, to the best of our abilities. Our resources are limited, you know. There’s a rebellion going on.”
    “Oh, I forgot about the war,” Gurdun said. “What a bother.” He fingered his enormous nose that blocked his view of the files on his desk. Gurdun knocked aside the stacked message cubes, the electronic forms waiting to be filled out, the requisition orders, transfer requests, and letters of condolence to be written to the families of those lost in unfortunate accidents during training with old, malfunctioning equipment.
    Minor Relsted shuffled his feet as he hovered by the door.
    “Is there anything else?” Gurdun snapped.
    “A question, sir. Might I ask why it is so incrediblyimportant to find these four droids? They’re just machines, after all, and the amount of resources we are putting behind this ‘dismantle on sight’ order seems out of all proportion to their intrinsic value. Why are these droids so desirable?”
    Gurdun snorted and looked at the flickering glowpanel again. “Because, Minor Relsted, I
know
what they can do.”
    On Mechis III the administrative droid Threedee-Fourex scuttled about, searching for the first IG-88 counterpart he could find. He needed to report his distressing news. He came upon IG-88C in one of the shipping areas, supervising the loading of a thousand program-modified transport droids to be shipped off to Coruscant.
    “IG-88,” Fourex reported, gaining the assassin droid’s attention. In a rapid burst of binary, he sent a summary file to the IG’s computer core.
    Through their own intelligence channels the IG-88s were aware of the bumbling Imperial spies searching for them in all corners of the galaxy. So far, the spies had been without a clue, but earlier this morning a surreptitious inquiry had been directed toward Mechis III.
    The probe scow was a barely functional conglomeration of obsolete parts and scavenged engines. Due to budget limitations, the Imperials’ spies were often the cheapest, such as this Ranat—not the most intelligent of creatures. As she approached Mechis III in her sputtering ship, the Ranat beamed a recorded set of questions down to the last known supervisor on the planet, Hekis Durumm Perdo Kolokk Baldikarr Thun.
    Threedee-Fourex, with the superior foresight allotted him by his new sentience programming, had played appropriate snatches of doctored video images showing Administrator Hekis brusquely answering all questions.No, they had not seen any assassin droids. No, they had no knowledge of any IG-88 series machines. No, they had heard nothing of rampaging renegades in this portion of the system—and, by the way, they were too busy on Mechis III to continue answering stupid questions. Unsuspecting, the Ranat had continued on her way to the next system, where she would no doubt play the same set of prerecorded questions.
    IG-88C assimilated this report and commended Threedee-Fourex’s ingenuity in the unexpected situation, but the encounter raised serious questions. The trail had accidentally led an Imperial investigator here. What if the next one were a more suspicious or more tenacious intelligence operative?
    IG-88C initiated a spontaneous uplink with his three counterparts, and they engaged in a lightspeed interlinked conference. “We cannot allow ourselves to be detected. Our plans are at too crucial a stage right now.”
    “Perhaps this was only a fluke. Perhaps we need not worry. The Imperials will listen to the report from the spy and not investigate