The Bad Batch – Sanctuary: Ecco il primo estratto

Annunciato lo scorso 5 febbraio, il romanzo The Bad Batch – Sanctuary uscirà il prossimo 5 agosto e mostrerà la squadra di cloni mentre collaborano con la cacciatrice di tesori Phee Genoa a un piano per aiutare a ricostruire il loro rifugio sull’isola dopo il devastante tsunami visto nell’episodio “Pabu” della seconda stagione. Pochi giorni fa sul sito polygon.com è stato rilasciato un estratto del romanzo insieme alle parole dell’autore Lamar Giles.

Ricordiamo che il romanzo è canonico e che non abbiamo ancora informazioni in merito per una data di uscita italiana.

Ecco le parole dell’autore:

Quando ho iniziato a lavorare a Sanctuary , volevo dare ai miei fan di Bad Batch la sensazione di un episodio bonus in cui i nostri personaggi preferiti hanno vissuto momenti emozionanti, nuovi e familiari. Volevo che desse la sensazione di rivedere vecchi amici dopo un po’ di tempo, immersi in un’intensa avventura.

PREORDINA QUI IL ROMANZO IN LINGUA ORIGINALE

Ecco l’estratto rilasciato:

Phee leaned forward in the pod, both hands on the outer edge, as eager as a shockboxing fan at a title bout. She mumbled unintelligible things Tech couldn’t make out.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Just taking mental notes. That slick-talking Falleen couple just won that fertility idol,” Phee said, thoughtful. “Gonna add them to my list of future liberations.”

The pods were relatively private, well out of earshot of the bidders on either side of them, so Tech wasn’t concerned about Phee’s openly vocal pirate plans. He was, however, concerned about the Muun whom he still hadn’t been able to find on the auction house’s most recent guest list. With an enhanced scan of the darkened chamber, he knew where the being was—two pods over and three down. The mystery being made a 250,000-credit bid on the idol Phee would steal from its buyers sometime in the near future, but otherwise . . . he was an enigma.

“Next to the dais . . .” the auctioneer announced, presenting the second lot and its starting bid. This item led to a heated four-way battle that ended at a whopping 725,000 credits. Again, the Muun made a single early bid, 400,000 credits, but backed off when the price climbed.

The excitement and competition grew through the third and fourth lots, some dynastic jewelry and the blood-crusted lightsaber, respectively, with the Muun submitting anenticing bid whenever the fervor cooled. Tech’s intuition angled toward concern.

The fifth lot, an abstract sculpture, had its bidding get off to a sluggish start, but it eventually sold for 500,000 credits, again with some nudging from the Muun.

Five items so far. Little similarity between them. Each one attracted different sets of bidders with only a single constant in the mix. The improbability was like a flare in Tech’s mind.

With a few taps on his keyboard, he stopped searching the auction house’s guest list and turned to its personnel files.

The auctioneer called the sixth lot to the dais, but Tech didn’t pay attention to the proceedings, because he knew the pattern. Once that lot sold, the item they came for rose on the column. At that moment, Tech discovered who the Muun was.

“This item stems from Carida and was used in religious ceremonies for centuries before its acquisition. This would be a handsome piece for the pious”—the auctioneer chuckled at that—“among you.”

Tech squeezed Phee’s shoulder and broadcast across their comms. “The Muun isn’t a guest. He’s an auction house employee identified as an assurance contractor.”

“A what?” Phee and Hunter asked at the same time.

“He’s a spiker,” Tech explained. “Here to artificially drive up bids to the auction house’s satisfaction. The bigger the bid, the bigger their commission.”

The auctioneer continued heaping accolades on the Caridan mortar like the salesman he was. Hunter pressed Tech for more information. “What’s that mean for us?”

The sullen look on Phee’s face told Tech she already knew, but he clarified for the others.

“There will be competition for our item. The Muun will see to it. The credits we’ve siphoned from the other attendees may not be enough to win.”

“All right,” Hunter said, sounding somewhat relieved. “If we can’t win it, we exfil and acquire the item from whoever does win. That was always our best option.”

“It was always a contingency,” Phee said, defensive, “but fine. We’ll see if we can salvage Plan A. If not, everyone begin exfiltration while me and Tech stay until the end so we won’t arouse suspicions.”

It was settled, then. Tech prepared to endure the sheer boredom of the auction as the auctioneer announced the opening bid for the item they’d probably have to steal later.

“We will start the Caridan ceremonial mortar at one hundred twenty-five thousand credits.”

It was the opening bid they’d anticipated. And someone went for it immediately: Phee.

Or rather, her datapad bid on her behalf. She never touched it.

Tech and Phee stiffened in their seats as the pad flashed green in time with the display on the front of their pod, signaling the auctioneer that they were in the competition.

“I have one twenty-five. Can I get one fifty?”

The Muun did his job and raised the bid to 150. Almost instantly, Phee’s datapad flashed green and raised the bid to 175. Still, neither she nor Tech had touched it.

Tech massaged his temple as if staving off a headache. “Mel, you added an automation routine to the code sometime after I reviewed it.” It was not a question.

MEL-222 booped. A drawn out, shameful sound.

Phee pinched her lips into a thin line, perhaps feeling secondhand embarrassment on behalf of her droid.

“Ohhhh, we have a battle here!” the auctioneer taunted. “Can I get two hundred?”

A third bidder leaped in, likely caught in the moment, but instantly Phee’s datapad catapulted the bid up to 250.

“Well, that was quick,” the auctioneer noted with a raised eyebrow.

Sure was. As quick as that faulty code MEL-222 put together.

Phee touched her comlink. “Mel, shut it down.”

The droid chortled sheepishly.

“What do you mean you can’t?” Phee said.

Tech exposed his forearm computer, snatched the datapad, and sliced into it.

“What’s happening?” Hunter asked.

Wrecker said, “Convor just shabbed on an AV-15. The owner’s going to be mad.”

“Not you! Tech?”

Tech swiped through screens and typed commands while detailing the suddenly perilous circumstance. “Mel’s code contained several subroutines geared to siphon credits from our unsuspecting benefactors and help us defeat them in the case of a few competing bids from known attendees. It seems the spiker’s absence from our initial intel has exposed a bug in the code.”

“What kind of bug?”

“I’m hesitant to guess,” Tech said, not being truthful. There was no need to rile Hunter over what was inevitable. Tech knew full well where this was going, and despite his best efforts to purge the droid’s shoddy code from the auction house’s system, he knew there was only a 4 percent chance of abating what came next.

The Muun raised the bid to 300. Just 50,000 credits shy of their predetermined limit.

Tech said, “High alert, everyone. Things are about to get frenetic.”

Sinossi

Di seguito vi proponiamo nuovamente la sinossi dell’opera da noi tradotta:

Un buon soldato sa che la vita è fatta di cambiamenti, sia sul campo di battaglia che fuori. Sopravvivere, vivere, significa adattarsi. Hunter conosce bene questa lezione. È in fuga dall’Impero, Echo è in missione con il Capitano Rex, e Crosshair è… sempre Crosshair. Ma nonostante tutti questi cambiamenti, Hunter ha ancora al suo fianco Tech, Wrecker e Omega.

E sembra che la sua piccola famiglia abbia finalmente trovato un posto sicuro in cui fermarsi, lontano dagli occhi sempre più vigili dell’Impero: Pabu. Ma la loro potenziale nuova casa sull’isola ha disperatamente bisogno di risorse per poter sperare di riprendersi dal devastante maremoto. Ed è qui che entra in gioco Phee Genoa, autoproclamata liberatrice di tesori, con un paio di lavori che, a suo dire, procureranno loro i fondi necessari. Nonostante le preoccupazioni di Hunter per i piani precari di Phee, il resto della squadra è disposto a seguirla.

Le cose iniziano subito a complicarsi quando il droide di Phee compromette la copertura della squadra durante un’asta ad alto rischio, e a stento riescono a fuggire con il manufatto che dovevano recuperare. Hunter insiste per completare la prima missione e consegnare il manufatto prima di accettare un altro lavoro, ma Phee e gli altri decidono di andare avanti con un secondo incarico: trasportare una coppia in fuga, di cui una in procinto di partorire da un momento all’altro. Hunter teme i rischi che stanno correndo, soprattutto perché i loro misteriosi nuovi passeggeri si aggrappano a menzogne e segreti che li collegano a un ufficiale dell’Ufficio di Sicurezza Imperiale, deciso a rintracciarli.

Mentre Hunter cerca disperatamente di riportare la squadra su un percorso stabile e sicuro, lontano dagli agenti dell’Impero, le loro missioni sovrapposte attirano solo più pericoli e caos. Prossimi al fallimento sia con i loro passeggeri disperati che con la comunità di Pabu, la Bad Batch dovrà ricordare che l’unico modo per avere successo, l’unico modo per sopravvivere e combattere ancora un giorno, è fidarsi l’uno dell’altro.

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