Wing Ding Jubilee Wheel

Buruk’s stomach growled as he sat motionless at the controls of his ship, the Bes’uliik, as it floated aimlessly through the Besh Gorgon system; the Pursuer-class enforcement ship was out of fuel, dead in space with its inertia taking it on an outbound vector. It seemed like such a simple job… he thought, staring blankly into the void through the transparisteel viewport.
        He’d been offered five thousand credits a week to work security for the Grand Casino, the most upscale and expensive hotel-resort on the Wheel. He was  a hardened mercenary, open warfare was his bread and butter, and this had looked like easy credits; spend a few weeks making sure the galaxy’s obscenely rich didn’t get into any trouble with the desperate and downtrodden, then collect his pay and get back on Kex’s trail before it even got cold. Just goes to show that I’m ori’buyce, kih’kovid; all helmet, no head.
        Mandalorians were always in high demand when someone needed protection, and their value had only gone up after word of what happened at Galidraan had gotten around. Of course they weren’t really as scarce as people believed but the appearance of such benefited their bargaining position, and no true Mando’ad would go and spoil things for everyone else by revealing something as trivial as the truth.
        Besh Gorgon was a mere hyperspace hop across the Mid Rim from Nar Shadaa, where Buruk had been running down penny-ante fugitives for weeks trying to finance his search for Kex. He saw the ad for freelance security and jumped on it, “acquiring” the slightly used Pursuer-class from a sleazy ship dealer who’d tried to swindle him. Upon arrival on the Wheel he was glad his helmet shielded the awestruck look on his face as he surveyed the high vaulted ceilings of the luxury hotels and casinos, their lobbies filled with lush gardens of rare plants, glistening water fountains, and gleaming onyx floors. He tried stifling a chuckle as his boot spurs clicked against those floors, undoubtedly scuffing them and leaving the staff distraught, the menacing glare of his T-shaped visor keeping them from raising a fuss.
        The job interview had been short; all Buruk had had to do was throw open his cloak and reveal the beskar’gam and two heavy blaster pistols he wore and the Wheel’s administrator hired him on the spot. Buruk almost got the impression the man was in a hurry to get him out of the office. Well, there was no accounting for taste, after all. A pair of burly guards, a Gran and a Rodian, showed him to his suite and again Buruk was surprised by its opulence. The majority of the room was sitting space with a large sofa and holoprojector, several plush chairs, a desk with a built-in datapad, and several bright glow-lamps, with the bed draped in shimmersilk sheets at the back, near a transparisteel door that opened out onto a balcony overlooking the Wheel’s high-income sector. Shab, he’d thought, High demand indeed…
        The main floor of the Grand Casino was divided into various themed rooms that catered to several species, each one a cacophony of flashing lights and ringing sirens from the multitude of gaming apparatuses, from sabaac and pazaak tables, to chance cube pits and jubilee wheels. But the vast majority of the casino’s income seemed to come from the rows upon rows of brightly lit credit games, where dozens of extremely territorial retirement-age beings sat stooped on their benches, feeding a never-ending stream of credits into their chosen bandits in hopes of matching those four precious diamonds on the holodisplays. Buruk always shook his head silently at them and continued his circuit of the hotel.
        The first few days actually had been as easy as he’d expected. Then she showed up. A female Twi’lek, violet-skinned, her intricately tattooed lekku draped casually over her shoulders where their tips writhed invitingly over the swell of her breasts, had been playing the same jubilee wheel for hours. She’d been winning far too frequently to be pure chance but apparently didn’t think the management would notice the small bets she kept placing. Buruk had been ordered to confiscate any electronics she might be carrying and kindly escort her out.
        Before walking up to her, he made sure to scan her description in his datapad; one never knew what they might find on someone. What came up not only pleased him, but nearly sent his heart leaping through his chest plate; Lynli Vairn, wanted for murdering a Black Sun vigo and grand larceny, was worth twenty thousand credits for live capture.
        Returning the datapad to a pouch on his belt, he stepped silently behind the Twi’lek and said, “Excuse me miss, but it’s time for you leave.” His voice sounded flat and cruel as it filtered through his helmet.
        Vairn straightened and turned slowly to face him; she was exceedingly attractive and the way she looked at Buruk made him blush behind his mask. She pouted and said, “Oh can’t I have just one more turn? Please?” She batted her eyelashes at him while her lekku twitched suggestively.
        Injecting a smile into his voice, he said, “You know, now that you mention it, I’d like to play a little game myself.”
        A smile spread across her face, as she stepped in close and ran a finger over the edge of his visor. “What’d you have in mind?”
        “I was thinking something involving a pair of binder cuffs and a lot of time alone together,” he answered.
        “Mmm, my kind of game.” She stepped in even closer, pressing her body against his, and Buruk was able to slap the binder cuffs securely around her wrists. “Hey! What’s the big idea?” she demanded.
        “Twenty thousand credits,” he replied evenly. “You’re my kind of woman, Lynli Vairn.” She made a sharp intake of breath at the mention of her name and her eyes went hard, like a caged animal looking for the way out. Putting a hand on her shoulder he spun her roughly around and began leading her toward the casino exit, several patrons looking up from their tables to stare at the spectacle. Even out where they were more common, bounty hunters were rarely a welcome sight.
        As he marched her past a sabaac table, she took her one, desperate, chance. Lurching over the table, Lynli grabbed a double handful of credit chips in her bound hands and spun around, hurling them in Buruk’s face in an explosion of colored plast, and took off running. Giving chase, he shouldered his way through the crowds of clientele that scrambled for the spilled credits as the Twi’lek vaulted over a railing and ducked low between two rows of credit games.
        Buruk growled a curse and dove over the railing, in hot pursuit of his quarry. He followed her through a side door that led to a staircase—Who even uses stairs anymore? he wondered as he thundered up after her. He hadn’t memorized the casino’s layout, but he thought she was leading him toward the gantries over one of the large performance halls… maybe.
        He was close. The stairwell opened up into a series of catwalks far above an arena surrounding a sunken pit with an earthen floor. Dozens of spotlights and holocameras mounted on robotic arms snaked around the scaffolds, attaining the optimum viewing angle of the fighting beasts below and turning the catwalks into a constantly shifting obstacle course. Lynli Vairn was nowhere in sight.
        Buruk cautiously crept forward, cape thrown back and one hand resting on the butt of a blaster, scanning for any sign of movement aside from the booms. A flicker at his peripherals caught his attention and he turned to see her swinging straight toward him, the chain of her binder cuffs looped around the arm of a holocam. Catching him completely by surprise, she planted both feet squarely in his chest and kicked him off the walkway to plummet to the ground.
        As he fell, Buruk mentally berated himself for leaving his jetpack aboard his ship. Osik! he thought, before hitting the dirt hard, his armor doing little to cushion the fall. He ignored the pain, leapt to his feet, and quickly caught his bearings. His situation had not improved at all.
        Inside the pit, a wampa was battling a Tatooine Howler, to the crowd’s thunderous applause. Pit fighting had always been a lucrative opportunity for gambling, and from the frantic waving of markers in the spectators’ hands, this particular match was no exception. The two creatures looked nearly identical, shaggy coats, sharp claws, and long curving tusks, that they could have been the same, save the howler’s thinner, brown fur. Even their reaction to the intruder in their midst was the same. They turned their massive furry heads, small black eyes gleaming with hate behind mops of dirty, matted fur.
        The Mandalorian backed steadily away, hands slowly moving toward his blasters. As the beasts lunged so too did he, tumbling forward while drawing each weapon and firing on both attackers simultaneously. Rolling into a crouch, he peered back to see the howler lying dead in a pool of blood, a gaping wound in its throat. The wampa, however, staggered upright, a patch of blood spreading from its left side; he’d only grazed it. Bringing both weapons to bear, he finished the beast off with a pair of rapid shots to its chest. The crowd howled its approval and began applauding as he stalked out of the arena.
        Making his way through the pens below, Buruk wracked his brain to think where Vairn would go now. She had to be heading for the docks; it was the only place she could find a way off the Wheel. Presently, he broke into a full run. The throngs of passersby parted around him, wary of being trampled by a charging Mandalorian.
        The docking bays were even more crowded than the main causeways and Buruk found himself nearly swept away in the sea of life, shouldering his way past several beings who were more reluctant the get out of his way, menacing T-shaped visor or not. His head turned at each glimpse he caught of a pair of brain tails, but with no luck.
        A crash several meters away caught his attention; turning his head he spotted a row of swoop bikes in front of a pub off the main causeway, the source of the commotion. Making his way closer, he heard a familiar voice cry, “I said get your hands off, you Hutt slime!” It was her!
        Buruk cautiously peered through the doorway into the dimly lit cantina and spotted Vairn being harassed by a group of punks who all wore the same red leather leggings, clearly an overt sign of gang affiliation. One of them appeared to be making good use of Buruk’s binders, grabbing the chain and pulling the Twi’lek in close to him. “Come on doll-face, how about a little kiss?” he sneered, yanking her into his arms and puckering his lips. She rewarded him with a pair of binder cuffs across the mouth. Buruk snickered.
        “Damn it!” the gang member yelled, throwing her back and leaping to his feet, a vibroblade appearing in his hand. “I’m gonna make you pay for that, girlie!” He brandished the blade, inexpertly by Buruk’s estimation, and came at her. He was thrown sideways by the Mandalorian gauntlet that slammed into his temple.
        At least the di’kut managed to hold onto the knife, Buruk thought as the bar went still. Aloud, he said, “I’m afraid she’s out of spare creds, mir’osik.” Stepping between Vairn and the other punks, he put a hand on the butt of a blaster pistol, ready to draw, and began backing her toward the exit.
        “You made a big mistake, Mando,” the gang’s spokesman warned, sitting up and rubbing his face. “You just made enemies with Captain Tyrrel’s Redlegs.”
        Buruk snorted; these pirates just loved their military titles. Once he and the girl passed the threshold, he turned and guided her toward one of the swoop bikes. “Get on,” he ordered.
        “Are you crazy?” she demanded. “You think I’m just going to let you take me in?”
        Throwing one leg over the saddle, he looked at her and replied, “Either you come with me, or you stay and chat with our new friends.” For a moment she actually seemed to weigh her options. Then she hopped on the bike with him and he gunned the accelerator. Less than a second later, the whole gang poured out of the pub and took off in pursuit.
        The Wheel didn’t offer much space for high speed chases the way Coruscant or Nar Shadaa did, but there were still plenty of twists and turns to throw their stomachs into their throats. The Redlegs soon opened fire on them, taking potshots with hand blasters, hoping to hit one of the two riders. I should have had her sit in front, Buruk thought as he yanked the handlebars hard to the right, screaming down a narrow alleyway. My armor would at least absorb a shot or two. Luckily these punks couldn’t seem to shoot straight.
        As they hurtled through the traffic lanes, sentients dove for cover in all directions. At last they came to a loading dock inhabited almost entirely by droids. “Take the controls!” Buruk shouted back at Lynli and leaned to the side, pointing his left gauntlet at the oncoming gang members.
        “What!” she screamed back in astonishment, grabbing frantically for the handlebars as he released them.
        With help from his helmet’s built in rangefinder, he took careful aim on the lead swoop and fired the missile launcher mounted on his gauntlet. The projectile shrieked toward its target so fast, the rider barely had time to widen his eyes before it struck his vehicle and detonated. The swoop blossomed into an expanding fireball that peppered the rest with shrapnel as they flew through the resulting debris cloud and veered off crazily from their course. Satisfied, Buruk returned to the controls and let a big grin spread across his face.
        After a few more twists, turns, and switchbacks to shake off any remaining pursuers, they eventually returned to the docking bay. Safely aboard the Bes’uliik with the stolen swoop bike in the hold, Buruk set the ship for departure while Vairn sulked in the copilot’s seat, still cuffed. Removing his helmet, he flung his long braided ponytail from around his neck where it had been wrapped like a scarf, and looked over at her. “Well, that was fun,” he said, getting up. “Now, allow me to show you to your cell, madam.”
        Looking up at him appealingly, she twitched her lekku over her breasts and said, “I can’t thank you enough for saving me from that swoop gang… And here we are, just you and me, and a pair of binders…” She smiled up at him and he couldn’t help but feel tempted. “Why let jail spoil a potentially romantic evening?”
        She stood and pressed herself against him, her head-tails curling up over his shoulders, and he could feel her breath on his neck. Buruk drank in her perfume; he couldn’t smell it before with his helmet on, but it was intoxicating. He hadn’t smelled a woman this good in a long time. The last thing he recalled as she kissed him were her hands reaching up from around her back and encircling him, no longer held in the binder cuffs.
        He’d awoken an hour later on the cockpit deck with a splitting headache. She’d dumped all the fuel, set the ship on an outbound course from the system, and emptied all the credits from his safe. All she’d left him was a note written on flimsiplast and pinned to the control panel that said, “Thanks for the great time, ‘heart’ Lynli”. With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Buruk just stared through the viewport at the open reaches of space slowly heading his way.
        He was shaken out of his stupor by a voice coming from the comlink. “Pursuer enforcement ship Bes’uliik, this is the Stellar Rescue tug Tow Truck Seven; please respond.”
        Confused, Buruk blinked and then keyed the comm and answered, “This is Bes’uliik, Tow Truck Seven; boy, am I glad to see you!”
        “Roger Bes’uliik, we got an anonymous tip there was a ship in trouble out here. Can we offer you a hand?”
        Not caring that he had no way to pay for the towing service, Buruk answered in the affirmative. Folding up the note, he stashed it in one of his belt pouches and thought, This is so not over, aruetii... not by a long shot.