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

further.”
    “On the contrary, once they’ve started nosing around in this sector, they may tighten their scrutiny.”
    “How can we deal with this situation?”
    “Perhaps a diversionary tactic is called for.”
    “How can we apply this diversionary tactic?”
    “We will make ourselves visible. One of us will go out and leave a plain trail, far from Mechis III. We will give them a different scent to follow. They will never come here again.”
    “And the nature of this diversionary tactic?” one asked, but all the IG-88s began to have the same idea at once.
    “We shall follow our true programming.”
    “We are assassin droids.”
    “We shall seek out work as a bounty hunter. This iswhat we were made for—and it can also further our grander purposes.”
    “We will find this most enjoyable, and no doubt our employers will be immensely pleased with our service and will recommend us highly, should we choose to continue this line of occupation.”
    All four IG-88s mulled over this change in plans and agreed.
    “Bounty hunters it is.”
V
    IG-88B was chosen for the first mission. He was pleased and elated, and his duplicates would share his experience files when he came back. It would be as if all four of them had gone out on the hunt themselves.
    The industrial facilities of Mechis III took two days to design and produce a sleek bounty hunter’s craft for IG-88B. Seeing through various portions of the spectrum, he admired the
IG-2000
’s perfect lines: powerful engines, thick armor, and every appropriate weapons system. IG-88B cruised away through the atmosphere, leaving the other three assassin droids to continue their plans for overthrowing the galaxy.
    Though IG-88 carried the ominous-sounding “dismantle on sight” Imperial order next to his name, he doubted anyone would attempt to follow it. He focused on places unlikely to be overly respectful to Imperial laws—or any other kind of laws, for that matter. He knew his capabilities were obvious, and he clomped his several-metric-ton body frame into cantinas and announced, “I am a bounty hunter. I wish to find work for a reasonable fee. I am incapable of failing in my mission.”
    Most people were afraid to talk to him—but IG-88 chose his planetary systems well. He wanted to work where he could advance his secondary agenda, and heneeded only to wait. By announcing his identity, he served the primary purpose of leaving a false trail for Imperial spies.
    His skill and strength were obvious, his morals nonexistent. IG-88 was an assassin for hire, plain and simple, and he knew he would find an assignment.
    His first choice was the backwater planet Peridon’s Folly, a little-known world that received few visitors from out of the sector. The Empire would wonder why IG-88 had chosen such a minor, irrelevant place, but he had another target to meet there if he found no legitimate work.
    Peridon’s Folly was an obsolete weapons depot run by black marketeers who sold antique arms to smugglers and crime lords. Though the weapons were far too outmoded and inefficient for regular Imperial use, the black marketeers dealt in a brisk trade.
    The planet had been carved into territories by various weapons runners, its surface a patchwork pattern of embattled commercial sectors laced with high-tech docking gear, communications systems, and defense outposts. On the fringes lay desolate “testing” zones where rediscovered weapons or uncertain designs from the stockpile were detonated to impress customers or warn rival weapons runners.
    Within a day IG-88 was hired, escorted off by two thugs working for a petty dictator named Grlubb, who was embroiled in a feud with another weapons runner.
    The thugs were brawny Abyssin cyclops creatures with green-tan skin and arms that hung down to their knees. IG-88 wasn’t sure if Grlubb was attempting to intimidate or impress him, though the assassin droid could have slaughtered both of the one-eyed monsters in less than a second. He