Excerpt from Hunter's Song. A work in progress

Foreword

       It had been a dry dusty trip into town. It would have been faster and easier to fly the hauler and land it at the village limits, but the noise of the thrusters would also have announced to the entire community that she had arrived.
It was not much of a town, she pondered, but this is where the trail of her target led. A few unpaved streets divided the settlement into rough blocks of prefab shelters and recycled storage units. The only reason it existed was the recent discoveries of iridium in the nearby mountains. Dozens of these towns dotted the foothills catering to the needs of the prospectors.  The tracking unit indicated that she was within 50 meters of the fugitive and the directional indicator pointed straight towards one of the reclaimed storage units.
A sign on the door read “The Dusty Rose” and the music coming from within marked this as some sort of saloon.
As she entered she swept the room sizing it up and looking for an open seat. A rough bar ran down the left wall and a line of small tables lined the right. It was a small makeshift joint for an equally makeshift town.  A beat-up jukebox poured forth music from a set of shrill speakers. The songs it played older than any of the patrons. All the tables were taken but she saw a stool about half way down the bar and headed for it.
Conversations muted as she strode down the bar. While Felinar were a common sight on the star lanes, in a settlement like this she stood out like a sore thumb Her ears laid back to protect her from the shrill sounds of the jukebox and her tail flexed as strode to her seat.. Her nose stung with the strong smell of stale beer and tobacco that hung in the room. She knew that Humanity’s olfactory systems were tuned much lower than hers but she still could not understand how they willingly could bear to sit in this stench.
She sat at the empty stool and gestured to the server for some vodka. She took the offered glass and pushed two bills across the bar signaling the tender to keep the difference. Breathing deeply she took in the scent of the clear liquid. Jonathon swore he could not detect the subtle differences in the different brands of the spirit but to her they were as different as red and green. He often told her that he thought she made up her descriptions of the differences but after losing 600 creds to her on a blind tasting he kept that opinion mostly to himself. Her tail twitched as she concentrated. Hmmm some sort of wheat, potatoes, rice, and something she couldn’t quite recognize; definitely the product of someone’s back room distillery, but enjoyable nonetheless.
Suddenly, she was moving up and away from the stool, kicking off the edge of the bar as she rose. Behind her she could hear the crash of her stool as something heavy destroyed it. She caught one of the storage unit’s upper cross members with one hand and drew her stunner trying to draw a bead on whoever had tried to kill her. As she came down she could tell she had pulled the wrong weapon.
        He was a good 2 ½ meters and 300 kilos if he was a gram. Her stunner would do little more than annoy him; Rothians were bred to be resistant to pain. She needed to change her tactics if she wanted to come out of this alive.
Her foot came down on the edge of the bar. She dropped into a deep crouch and prepared to leap. His left hand was surrounded by a blue nimbus as it started towards her. She didn’t have the room to evade him so she would have to rely on her training and speed. Time seemed to slow down as her implants finally kicked in and boosted her reactions. She pushed off the bar reaching forward and hooking her fingers into the hollows under the massive alien’s jaw. His power glove slid through the space she had just left leaving the scent of ozone in its wake. As she continued her leap she set her grip and flipped pulling him backward and into a throw that sent him crashing into the far wall. His body slid boneless down the wall leaving a noticeable dent as evidence of the force with which he had hit.
The only sound to be heard was the music coming from the jukebox, but she could almost feel the patrons trying to decide whether she was a threat to them or not. Holding one hand up she reached into her duster and produced her license. “Imperial marshal,” she called out, “please either return to your seats or vacate the premises.” There was a rush as many of the patrons decided there were safer places to be right now.
She slapped a neural lockdown on the Rothian, while keeping one eye on the patrons as they passed. He was one of the last ones to go past her, trying to look as nondescript as possible, but her scanner wasn’t fooled. With a smooth motion she brought the stunner up into the face of a mousey looking human. With a thin smile she said, “Randel Jackson, you have a 12000 credit bounty on you for embezzling funds from the planetary government of Friar’s Peace. I am not sure who this fool is but you are my customer today. Shall we do this the easy way or would you like to take a nap as well?” With a shrug of resignation he put his hands out and allowed her to place the proximity cuffs on him.
“Stay close and those cuffs will be no more than heavy bracelets” she said. “Stray more than 20 meters and you will get a jolt that will put you in muscle lock until I release the switch.” She gestured at an empty seat and pulled out her scanning unit.
        “Now who are you and why did you decide to attack me today?” she asked the unconscious alien. She swept the unit over the body looking for the identity chip most citizens of the Empire had implanted at birth. After a few minutes it beeped and she grinned as she read the display. Her dancing partner was in the system with a hefty bounty on his head. He was worth 150,000 credits for murder and destruction of Imperial property. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad trip after all.