And Nolaa Tarkona was getting quite desperate for the information he carried.
Zekk himself had been face-to-face with the hunted man. On Borgo Prime, Bornan had hired him to send a secret message to his family and also to find his brother Tyko, who had supposedly been kidnapped by the assassin droid IG-88.
But Zekk had discovered that Tyko Thul was in no danger and had merely concocted a hoax to lure his brother into the open. But Bornan had outwitted Tyko and even Zekk.
Zekk still wanted to be the best bounty hunter in the galaxy, yet he could not trust Nolaa Tarkona’s motives.
Bornan Thul had told him some disturbing things, enough that Zekk knew he could never stomach the consequences of delivering him into the clutches of the Diversity Alliance—no matter how huge a reward she offered.
But few other bounty hunters felt the same moral compunctions.
Now Zekk drifted out in an empty galactic desert between star systems.
He had come here following his instincts, not knowing why. As a streetscamp back on Coruscant, Zekk had always been good at finding things … and he used those skills now.
The Lightning Rod’s sensors were fully alert, tuned in such a way that his entire ship became a listening device, scanning for clues. His computer filtered out trivial hyperwave transmissions, searching for something that would require his attention among the drone of all the other subspace chatter. All directions around him were quiet and still.
He had newly installed scanners and voice identification correlators in his ship, sifters and subject classifiers—the best tracking equipment he could afford. He found it ironic that Bornan Thul himself had made it possible for him to pay for many of the Lightning Rod’s upgrades.
After leaving the droid manufacturing world and exposing Tyko Thul’s ruse for what it was, Zekk had found an unmarked deposit in his credit account—payment in full for his services as a bounty hunter. Bornan Thul had been true to his word, and Zekk’s obligation to his former employer had ended.
According to the bounty hunter’s code of ethics, Zekk was now free to capture the man and bring him in for the reward. Zekk’s conscience and his personal sense of ethics, however, would not allow it.
It seemed so unfair to Zekk that the code of honor in his chosen profession would force him to make one decision while his newly regained personal honor dictated a completely different course. And then there was his friendship with Jaina, her brother Jacen, and—though he hated to admit it—even Raynar. He could not betray them.
Zekk eased back in his pilot’s seat. The dingy cockpit was familiar and felt like home. He liked being alone and self-sufficient, with no one to remember his past. He let his thoughts wander, thinking of Jaina Solo, especially the last time they had said goodbye when he’d left Mechis III.
Jaina wanted badly for him to come back to the Jedi academy, and deep in his heart Zekk wanted the same thing—but he still bore the tremendous guilt of having led the Dark Jedi of the Second Imperium in their attack on Luke Skywalker’s Jedi training center. Zekk had been the darkest knight at the Shadow Academy, and he took personal responsibility for all of the death and destruction.
Honor and friendship, Zekk mused. He had given up both when he’d fought for the Shadow Academy. He shook his head. Never again.
Despite Master Luke Skywalker’s assurances, Zekk couldn’t just walk back in and believe he would be welcomed without reservations. He had to rebuild his confidence first, to decide in his own mind that he truly wanted to be a Jedi Knight after all. And that he was worthy of trust and friendship.
Still, it would be very nice to be back with Jaina … and with Jacen, of course.
Just then one of his numerous sensors triggered an alarm that brought him to full awareness.
Thrusting aside all thoughts of Jaina and Yavin 4, he focused his attention down to a laser-sharp point, quickly scanned the control panels, and flicked on the comm system.
The intercepted transmissions were doused with static, warbling and fading as if snatched from a vast distance. The power levels in one of the ships seemed to be rapidly fading. It was a distress signal, but encoded. Why would anyone encrypt a distress signal?
Then he recognized the code—he could not translate it, but he recognized its origin from when he had sent similar signals in the name of Bornan Thul. That was the special encryption used by the Bornaryn fleet!
Zekk knew the identity of the sender even without translating the words. Who else would send a distress beacon directly to the Bornaryn fleet but the man Zekk had seen in disguise on Borgo Prime?
The answer was obvious: “Master Wary,” who had hired him to go save his brother Tyko.
Now it seemed Bornan Thul was in need of rescue himself.
The second transmission was a gruff warning.
“This is Dengar. I claim bounty hunter’s right. Bornan Thul is my quarry. I will tolerate no interference.”
Previously, Zekk had led Dengar on a merry chase by sending his tracker buoy high out of the galaxy in a fast message pod. The sallow-faced, bandaged human should have gone on a long and fruitless pursuit to nowhere … but Dengar apparently hadn’t been fooled for long. The cybernetically enhanced bounty hunter thought fast, reacted fast, and proved entirely relentless on the hunt.
He had already found Bornan Thul.
Zekk didn’t bother to ponder the bounty hunter’s threat. Instead, he punched in coordinates after tracing the signal to its source, powered up his engines, and launched the Lightning Rod on a brief hyperspace jump. His instincts had brought him close to Bornan Thul, but not close enough.
Dengar, with his cadaverous face and sunken eyes, had fired upon Zekk without warning on the abandoned ice planet of Ziost. And again, he had destroyed everything in sight on Mechis III—emotionless, relentless, blasting anything in his way.
Zekk’s lips formed a thin, cold smile. Dengar needed to be taught a lesson, all right—and he was just the one to do it.
Homing in on the distress signal, Zekk powered up the Lightning Rod’s weapons systems.
The last time he’d fought Dengar, Jaina had done the shooting while he did the flying. This time Zekk would have to do both. But he still had the advantage, given both his Jedi instincts and the element of surprise.
If he did this right, Dengar would never know what hit him.
He watched the navicomputer, counting down the seconds until he emerged from hyperspace.
He kept his hands on the firing controls, intent.
In his mind he brought up an image of Dengar’s ship, a modified Corellian JumpMaster 5000, imagined its hot engines and every minuscule weak point in its U-shaped configuration.
Zekk cued an ion torpedo as the swirling starlines of hyperspace faded and his ship lurched out into the starfield—and instantly saw the two ships engaged in a dogfight. Dengar’s vessel, Punishing One, pummeled a crippled and heavily damaged craft that must have been Bornan Thul’s.
Even now Dengar’s sensors would be sounding an alarm at Zekk’s appearance. He had no time to hesitate. Without wasting a heartbeat, Zekk fired his ion torpedo, powered up a second, and launched it.
Both torpedoes flew true—the first exploded beside Punishing One’s port stardrive, while his second neutralized the starboard engine.
He opened up the comm channel. “Hello, Dengar—it’s me, Zekk. I just wanted to make sure you’d remember who I am.”
Dengar’s voice, normally gruff and flat, was heated by the fires of outrage. The enhancements to his brain had stripped him of most emotions, but Dengar could still experience rage. “You have broken the Bounty Hunter’s Creed. You fired upon me as I pursued another target.”