Slak doubled his pace- the Meatlump Gang must have gotten pretty upset with him to subcontract Slak’s capture and/or demise to a bounty hunter that used sleep darts!

Or was it poison?

This guy isn’t so good, Slak thought, if he was, he would have tagged me. He neared the door of a building that had the words ‘Fel Swoop’ above its doorway in stylized, flowing letters, with a tiny, hand-painted swoop-bike on the sign that looked as if it had sky-written the words with its own exhaust.

Only another twenty steps until he was in the bar- would that be enough time? Would the hunter on Slak’s tail have enough time to reload before Slak could get in the door? Would he...

“Hi, Grell,” Slak said to the bouncer at the door. It was still early in the evening for the kind of clientele the Fel Swoop served, and the bouncer was looking bored at the door. Slak didn’t truly know him, but Slak had learned a long time ago that a person’s name was often the sweetest sound to their ears, and could smooth the way and shut down the part of their brain that would want to say ‘no’ to Slak.

And this was a day Slak desperately wanted everyone around him to say ‘yes’ to him, whatever he had to do to make it happen.

“Who th’-“ said Grell the bouncer. He barely knew Slak by sight, but the slightly-built youth rushing past him seemed just familiar enough that Grell paused and didn’t grab Slak by the scruff of the neck as he usually did to folks who really didn’t belong.

Slak, practiced as he was at life in the seedy Blue sector, was already too far away from Grell for the burly bouncer to make trouble for him. Not worried anymore about getting through the door, Slak ran for a table he knew would be full this time of night.

And it was full of trouble.

Several members of the local swoop-bike gang sat around the table; large males of various races who drove flying bikes for thrills, and also engaged in thefts, fights, and general attempts to out-do each other in foolish risks. Mostly human, there was always at least one member of another race wearing the stylized red shoulder pads that they wore for their uniform. Tonight, it was a shaggy looking Wookie with a pink scar over his right eye.

That was okay. It probably wouldn’t take too much to get them to take on Slak’s little problem. But he was going to have to pick just the right words, and do so very, very quickly.

“Mok!” said Slak to the largest of the swoopers, his arms outstretched and a wide smile on his face. Mok paused in his card game, only his eyes flicking up to Slak as every other muscle in his body remained perfectly still.

“And you are?” The Swooper leader’s voice was a hair’s breadth away from annoyance. Which here meant violence.

“Glad you asked me that!” Slak said, smiling and wagging his finger. “I’m the guy who’s gonna get your name on the map! I mean, it’s already on the map, but this’ll put it on the map in even bigger letters! You know the Meatlump gang? The guys who run their fortress in the sewers, and blow stuff up?”

The Swooper leader narrowed his eyes at Slak. “What of it? Those wilting little tossers won’t answer our challenges.”

“Well, now you’ve got one, Mok! He’s right behind me! A bounty hunter, pointed right at you! He said so when I gave him directions here! I’m gonna go now, but I thought you-“

The Swoopers were already cheering, ecstatic at the chance to prove themselves against an enemy with a much better reputation. Slak was relieved at the chance to escape from a bounty hunter whose reputation he didn’t know, but had been hired by said gang with a reputation for blowing up people, buildings and other sundry acts of terror against enemies real and imagined.

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Slak ran towards the back entrance while the Swoopers jumped up from the table with weapons in hand and ran towards the front, eager to take the fight to the street.

Slak smiled and waved as he backed up to the rear door.

Suddenly, something inside him went off; a warning bell, a sense that he was going the wrong way.

If I was chasing me, he thought, and saw me run through the front door of a Swooper gang bar, I wouldn’t go in through the front door; I’d perch up somewhere near the back door and wait for me to come out.

This thought, largely without words, flowed through his mind in a half second.

Instead of running outside, then, he saw a set of stairs that led upwards, and followed them instead.

They led to what looked like a storeroom. It was large, taking up most of the second floor, with perhaps half of the space in the large room taken up by crates and other storage containers. Slak, having been in this situation before, looked to see if there was...yes! They had a refrigeration platform! He stood behind one of the crates inside the frigid field. If he knew how this bounty hunter’s mind worked, he could expect him to come into the bar when Slak didn’t come out in...well, it might be hours, depending upon how patient the bounty hunter was.

Slak was lucky in that this was not, apparently, a patient bounty hunter. It was less than a half-hour before he heard footsteps on the creaking floor, and then the door slowly opened.

Slak saw the outline of a humanoid in the light of the doorway. This guy is an amateur, Slak thought. If Slak had a weapon, any kind of a shooter, then he could have taken this fellow down right away. But...it was probably for the best. What if this wasn’t the hunter who’d been chasing Slak tonight? What if this was just a table boy coming to get more supplies for the hungry Swooper gang, who Slak could hear restarting their card game (was it Sabaac? It looked a bit different- you could never tell with groups that had been together for a long time). The last thing Slak needed was an angry gang, a bounty hunter, and the CorSec police coming after him.

I am in a lot of trouble, Slak realized. He’d been moving so fast for so long that lately he’d rarely taken the time to think about his decisions. Now, he could see clearly: where many his age were finishing school and learning skills or a trade, he instead had been trying to beg and steal his way to the kind of life he wanted.

When the figure at the door started speaking, Slak knew at least the species of the person trying to kill and/or capture him.

“Slak Daggert?” The accent was Aqualish, the words in common language hissed through the giant, tusk like front teeth of the creature. Slak was glad he’d stayed hidden. These guys had four eyes, and he’d heard that the two smaller ones acted as little sounding beacons, capable of seeing their targets in the dark.

Slak stayed quiet. He also saw the silhouette of a blaster in the Aqualish creature’s right hand.

“Slak Daggart?” the Aqualish said with his chittering accent, “I know you’re here. Your friends downstairs proved very cooperative. The barkeep was also most helpful- he saw you come up here, and told me there’s no exit from this room, except through a vent right above me. You don’t have a blaster, Slak, or you’d have used it already.”

Slak found a chip of metal on the floor, and flicked it over at the Aqualish. The slight noise made him wheel around and fire blindly into the darkness, hitting the floor far away from where Slak knew the chip landed.

Now, here was something interesting...

“You’d better find easier prey, bug-face,” Slak said, quickly moving from his cold hiding place.

The hunter pointed his gun, but this time didn’t fire. “You’re my prey, monkey-boy,” he said, not moving. “and your little tricks won’t make me move. You’re coming with me back to the Meatlumps in the sewers, warm or cold.”

“You fired your weapon in a crowd, and you used another hunter’s line. Is that something a licensed bounty hunter does?”

TO BE CONTINUED...