Star Wars - Credit Denied - Unpublished by George R. Strayton Page A

moonlight seeping into the temple she could see that he and his companions were definitely humanoid—but for all the detail she could make out they could be humans, Bith, Nikto, Duro, or any one of a thousand other humanoid species.
    Whatever he was, he was staring at her, apparently waiting for something. She gave a shrug to indicate her confusion, and he responded with a gesture toward her blaster.
    She could see that his comrades had blaster rifles or carbines slung over their shoulders, but at this point they seemed to be fairly at ease. She didn’t feel there was any harm in holstering her own weapon for the moment—besides, she could outdraw a long firearm any day.
    “I suggest we get straight to the business at hand,” the leader said finally as he slipped a hand into an interior coat pocket and extracted a datapad. With a flick of his wrist he sent it spinning through the air toward Rendra.
    The slap of her palm against the plasteel stuttered through the temple, dying to nothingness as she read over the text. Slowly, a reverent silence filled the chamber as if whatever spirits remained here had been awakened by the commotion and were now anxiously watching and waiting.
    Rendra found herself reading the document over and over again. The words simply didn’t seem to make sense in her mind. But she soon realized that they accurately and precisely conveyed the intention of their author.
    She looked up. “Are you serious?”
    “Quite,” he said without any particular inflection. “And for that sort of money, I would think you would not take the matter so lightly.”
    She glanced back to the datapad, and nodded. “Yeah, that’s a lot of credits… but I don’t know—”
    “lt is far too late for a change of heart, my dear mercenary. You will carry out the duties described there or you will… let us just say that your life will become even less pleasant.”
    She shifted the datapad into her left hand, leaving her right free to grab her blaster when the moment came. “I don’t remember agreeing to any of this.”
    “Come, Rendra. We both know you need those credits desperately. Do not pretend that such a sum would not save you from years of difficulty. You are required to accomplish a relatively simple and straightforward task. My sources say that you can handle this in your sleep.”
    “It’s not a matter of what I can and can’t do—it’s a matter of whether I want to.”
    The being laughed. “I admire your… scruples. But you speak as if you have a choice, when you do not.”
    In a blur, she whipped her blaster out and had it trained on a spot she believed was the middle of his forehead before the sibilance from his last statement had faded away. “ This gives me a choice.”
    “First of all, I don’t care how good you might think you are with that thing, but you can’t kill all three of us before you die. And second, you miss the point: I’ve already alerted GalactiCore to your presence here. If you can’t pay them, they will impound your ship and you will be completely without resources.”
    She maintained her stance as she considered his words. He was right: without her ship she’d have no livelihood whatsoever, making her far worse off than she was now. She looked to the amount listed on the datapad. The price was more than fair, and it was a onetime deal…
    “All right,” she said quickly, before she could change her mind. At the same time she lowered her blaster. “When do I get my money?”
    He reached into his coat again and threw her a credit stick. “That’s half. You get the rest when you complete the assignment.”
    “That’s not enough to pay off GalactiCore.”
    “I know.”
    You sneaky little—
    She took several long strides toward him before his companions raised their blaster rifles, stopping her in her tracks. She heard nothing, but she could see that he had started laughing by the flickering of moonlight across a crescent-shaped amulet hanging from his