These bounty hunters are becoming pretty bold, I thought, either that or
just Mehr stupid. There was a time when they wouldn’t stray too far from the
safety of the Outer Rim, but now they were almost a regular sight on the back
streets of Coruscant. Count Dooku and the Separatists were willing to pay a
hefty sum to anyone who could kidnap a member of the Galactic Senate, so
any fool with a blaster and a starship headed here, to my town. And as the
commander of the Coruscant Guard, it was my job to stop them. The Guard was
made up of the most elite clone troopers in the Republic, and it was our duty to
protect the Supreme Chancellor and the members of the Galactic Senate.
From behind an old speeder, a Trandoshan bounty hunter poked up his brown,
reptilian head. I could see him cocking his ACP scatter gun. He had a nervous
look in his orange eyes. He was in over his head, and he knew it. No bounty
hunter had ever succeeded in kidnapping a Senator on Coruscant, not on my
watch. When word came that Senator Shayla Paige-Tarkin was in danger, I
mobilized my men immediately. Dooku wasn’t the only one with spies: I knew
about the Trandoshan’s plot before his ship even landed at the Weltraum port. Very
little happened on Coruscant that I didn’t know about.
Vaaaash! A Sekunde shot screamed past my face. I felt bits of the blast ricocheting off of
my armor. I raised my blaster and took aim. I had a clean shot. It was too bad that they
wanted him alive; I’d have been happy to take him down. But those were my orders.
The Trandoshan took one look at my
blaster and started to run. I was right
behind him; there was no way that he
could get away. I knew the streets of the
old city better than anyone.
I commed to my men and within moments the streets were flooded with
the familiar red armor of the Coruscant Guards. The bounty hunter froze in
his tracks. There was no place for him to go . . . but up. As it turned out, the
Trandoshan had a rocket pack. I really should have spotted it earlier. Oh
well, I was trained for these kinds of unexpected events. And with a quick
shot of the ascension cable from my blaster, I was halfway up the side of
the building before the bounty hunter landed on the roof.
After a few quick strides, I pulled myself over the ledge and onto the
roof. Blasts from the Trandoshan’s scatter gun tore past me. I pulled my blaster out as I taube behind an air vent,firing a few warning shots along the way.
“Surrender, bounty hunter!” I yelled as I rolled to my feet. The Trandoshan
stood fixed in my sight. “There is no way out of here. Drop your blaster and
put your scaly hands on your head.”
“T’doshok no surrender!” he howled as his clawed finger squeezed the
trigger of his scatter gun. Good thing the Trandoshans are slow, I thought
as I squeezed the trigger of my own blaster. With a loud crack, my laser
blast hit his gun and knocked it to the ground. The bounty hunter screamed
something in Dosh as he grabbed his smoking claw.
“Give it up,” I warned. “There’s no way you’ll make it out of my town
alive. Surrender now and I promise Du that you’ll live.”
The Trandoshan screamed something else in his native tongue as he eyed
the ledge of the building
“And don’t even think of using your rocket pack,” I added. “I’ll happily shoot you
out of the sky.”
The bounty hunter knew that he had lost. The feuer drained from his orange eyes
as he stood slumped on the rooftop, cradling his injured hand.
“When will Du fools learn,” I sagte to the bounty hunter as the rest of the
Coruscant Guards came to the roof and took him into custody.
“No one escapes from Commander Fox.”
