Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (6 page)

The coach had lost its outermost rearview mirror post and part of the picnic lunch, and debris from the jostled dumpster was splattered across its meter-high red tail fins. Chewbacca was baying in utter exhilaration, an ages-old Wookiee war cry.

Hasti had just finished fastening a seatbelt across herself and Badure when the coach roared onto the main artery. Seeing that he was heading the wrong way on a high-speed road, the Wookiee hugged the outside wall while he assessed
his situation. He kept one finger on the horn button, sounding the first two bars of the anthem over and over. All factors considered, Chewbacca felt, things were going fairly well.

Han, back in the passenger cab, held a somewhat different opinion. The black limo had taken advantage of Chewbacca’s descent and was still on their tail. The intercom wasn’t working, so Han pushed up the cab’s forward window and shouted, “They’re still on us!”

The Wookiee growled an irritated reply, then spotted his opening. He turned the steering grips with such emphasis that the yoke groaned on its stem, threatening to snap. But the coach managed to fishtail across three lanes of oncoming traffic, and Chewbacca hung in the center lane while awaiting shifts in the configuration of the traffic.

Automatic safety systems had taken notice of the potential massacre, and suddenly sequential warning lights began to flash, cautioning other drivers where the danger lay. Overhead illumi-markers and danger panels began flashing along the way, and those vehicles operating under autocontrol were brought to a halt at the shoulder by Traffic Central Override.

Meanwhile, Han, clinging to the rear window frame, saw the limo coming on. Its driver was having an easier time, following the trail the Wookiee had blazed. Han braced his right shoulder against one side of the frame and his left hand against the other to draw a steady aim. Just as he fired, Chewbacca, having lined up another gap in the oncoming traffic, hauled at the steering grips and cut hard for the center divider. Han’s shot went wild, blowing a small hole in the tough fusionformed road.

Chewbacca came at the divider as directly as he could, aware that it was built to resist collision. He hit it with the coach’s accelerator open, keeping his enormous foot down hard on emergency-boost auxiliaries. The engine wailed. Hasti clung to Badure.

The coach burst through a double retaining rail, taking two lengths of railing with it. Chewbacca then swooped up the sloped center abutment; two lanterns fell from the coach,
and its curb feelers, he noticed, had been sheared off. Han tangled both fists into embroidered safety belting and set his feet against the cab’s front wall.

The coach shot through the fence at the top of the abutment, the durable links stretching, then bursting with a titanic jolt that sent the remainder of the picnic lunch arcing into the air. Crashing down the abutment and through a second section of railing, they bounced into the traffic lanes now headed in the appropriate direction, if at illegal velocity.

Maneuvering smartly, the Wookiee avoided any other collisions. The coach sped along, intermittently shedding trim and pieces of smashed
greel
wood. Glancing out a side window, Han found himself the object of the surprised scrutiny of a gowned senior professor, a stalk-eyed creature in a robo-hack. Chewbacca accelerated and left the hack behind.

Less than a minute later, the black limo appeared at the crest of the abutment and descended through the swath of destruction left by Chewbacca. It, too, slid into the traffic lanes. A man, holding a long needlebeam rifle in his hands, stood up and poked his head and arms through the sunroof.

Han left the cab, swung from the handrail with one foot on the running board, and dove into the driver’s compartment. “We’ve gone and made them mad,” he hollered. “Escape and evade, old buddy!”

But even as Han exhorted his partner, Chewbacca was throwing the coach through zigs and zags, ignoring lane divider illumi-strips, applying full power though a disconcerting black smoke had begun to roil from the vehicle’s engine. At last, the rifleman, his eye at his weapon’s scope, fired.

A needlebeam sizzled at one of the scarlet tail fins, setting the lacquered wood afire and shearing off its tip as taillight circuitry blew. Han stood up, one hand firmly on the windshield and blaster gripped in the other. He replied with a hurried shot of his own; the bolt splashed harmlessly onto the pavement.

A second rifle beam hissed through the cab. “Get us out
of here before they cut us in half!” Han yelled to his first mate.

Smoke from the hood now roiled more thickly. The Wookiee spun the steering-grip yoke, veering and putting an enormous robo-freighthauler between the coach and the limo. Another needlebeam, missing them, burned across the freighthauler’s rear end. The last view Han had of the limo was of its driver trying to maneuver for another clear shot. He shouted to Chewbacca, “Pump your braking thrusters!” The Wookiee did so without question, accustomed to his friend’s mad inspirations. When the freighthauler outstripped the coach, they found themselves even with the limo.

The surprised rifleman started to bring his weapon up, but Han fired first. The marksman, clutching his smoldering forearm, dropped back through the sunroof. Han’s second shot blew out a piece of the limo’s door. Two or three beings were trying to elbow their way up through the sunroof to set up a rocket launcher. If they couldn’t stop the coach, they’d settle for blowing it all over the landscape.

Han felt the coach surge and looked around. Directly in front of them was the freighthauler, its long rear gate bouncing on the road. Its bed was half empty, a pile of construction rubble heaped against the front wall. An overpass loomed in the distance; Han quickly grasped his first mate’s plan, holstered his weapon, and clung to Badure and Hasti for his life.

The coach jumped up the hanging rear gate, engine pouring black smoke, auxiliary thrusters overloading. Chewbacca pumped braking thrusters once to time his maneuver, then hit full power and the front-lift thrusters designed to help the coach negotiate low obstacles. The coach shot up the pile of rubble at the front of the cargo bed and soared into the air, the Wookiee plying his controls frantically.

Then the overpass was beneath them, and through some miracle it was unoccupied just then. The coach hit with an impact that collapsed its shock-absorption system, burned out its power routing, broke all the remaining lanterns, and shattered the cab windows. It slid, then ground to a halt
against the overpass sidewall, crumpling its hood and popping its doors.

Coughing, Han and his first mate pulled Hasti and Badure from the wreckage. The black limo was already far down the road, forced along by the flow of traffic. Chewbacca, surveying the demolished groundcoach sorrowfully, sniffled and moaned to himself.

Wiping her eyes and choking, Hasti wanted to know: “Who ever told you two morons you could drive?” Then, noticing Chewbacca’s gloomy look, asked, “What’s wrong with him?”

“He figures he’ll have a hard time getting his deposit back,” Han explained.

Police groundcruisers and aircraft, converging under Traffic Control’s direction, were already beginning to gather farther down the highway. Since Chewbacca had elected to leave the road in a unique manner, it would probably take the local authorities some time to piece together what had happened.

V

“QUIET down and sit still.” Han took a firmer grip on his first mate’s head.

The Wookiee, seated in a rump-sprung, sweat-stained acceleration chair in the
Millennium Falcon
’s forward compartment, stopped squirming but couldn’t stifle his whimpers. He knew his neck injury had to be tended right away. Han, standing behind him, shuffling for a better stance, held his friend’s chin clamped in one elbow. He pushed the palm of his hand against the Wookiee’s skull.

“How many times have I done this now? Stop complaining!” Han began to apply pressure again, twisting Chewbacca’s head up and to the left. The Wookiee dutifully fought the urge to rise, crimping his long fingers on the arms of the acceleration chair.

Meeting resistance, Han drew a deep breath and, without warning, yanked the thick-maned skull with all his might. There was a cracking and popping; Chewbacca yipped and snuffled pitifully. But when Han ruffled his friend’s fur compassionately and stepped back, the Wookiee rubbed his neck and moved his head without pain. He immediately went off to prepare the starship for liftoff.

“If you’re through ministering to the afflicted, Doctor,” Hasti said from her seat by the gameboard, “it’s time we got a few things settled.”

Leaning against the tech station, Han agreed. “Let’s put them on the table and see what we’ve got.”

Badure, fully recovered from the stun charge, was sitting
next to Hasti. To avoid conflict, he took over. “I met Hasti and her sister, Lanni, at a mining camp on a planet named Dellalt, here in the Tion Hegemony. It was a small plunder operation; I was contract labor there.”

He ignored Han’s surprise.
Things have been worse than I thought for him
, the pilot realized.

“And things weren’t too much better for them,” Badure went on. “You know how those camps can be, and this one was about the worst I’ve seen. We three sort of watched out for one another.

“Lanni had a Pilot’s Guild book and flew a lot of work runs, surface-to-surface stuff. Somewhere she had picked up a log-recorder, one of the ancient disk types. No ship has used one in centuries. She couldn’t read the characters, of course, but there was a figure most beings in this part of space know, the
Queen of Ranroon
.”

“How’d a log-recorder get to Dellalt?”

“That’s where the vaults are,” Badure said, and that brought some history back to Han. Xim the Despot had left behind legends of whole planets despoiled, of mass spacings of prisoners and other atrocities. And Xim the Despot had ordered that stupendous treasure vaults be built for the tribute to be sent him by his conquering armies. The treasure never arrived, and the vacant vaults, all that remained from Xim’s reign, were a minor curiosity generally ignored by the big, busy galaxy.

“Are you telling me the
Queen
made it to Dellalt after all?”

Badure shook his head. “But somebody made it there with the log-recorder disk.”

“The disk is in a lockbox in the public storage facility that set up operations in the old vaults,” Hasti told him. “My sister was afraid it would be taken from her, for the mining company runs surprise inspections, barracks searches, and sensor frisks. So she diverted course on a freight run and made the deposit.”

“How’d she get it in the first place? And where is she
now?” Han saw the sobering answer on both their faces and wasn’t surprised. The opposition, he had already learned, was in deadly earnest. He abandoned the subject.

“So, off to Dellalt before that rental agent comes looking for his groundcoach.”

But Badure, slapping his ample belly, announced, “We have one more crewman coming. He’s on his way now. I canceled our public-carrier reservations so the line will refer him directly here.”

“Who? What do we need him for?” Han was reluctant to involve too many in this treasure hunt.

“His name is Skynx; he’s a ranking expert on pre-Republic times in this part of space. And he reads ancient languages; he’s already deciphered some characters Lanni had copied from the log-recorder disk. Good enough for you?”

Conditionally. Somebody, Han saw, would have to decipher the disk to find out what had happened to the
Queen
. Removing his vest, Han began disencumbering himself of the shoulder holster. “Next question: who’s the opposition?”

“The mine operators. You know how the Tion works. Somebody pays someone in the Ministry of Industry and gets a permit. The mining outfit carves up the terrain any which way, grabs what it can, and gets out long before any inspectors or legal paperwork catch up with them. They usually get their financing from some crime boss.

“This outfit’s run by twins. The woman’s name is J’uoch and her brother’s R’all. They have a partner, Egome Fass, their enforcer. He’s a big, mean humanoid, a
Houk
, even taller than Chewie there. All three came up the hard way, and that’s how they play.”

Han had buckled on his gunbelt and holster and transferred his blaster. “So I saw. And all you want is for us to get you to Dellalt and get you off?”

Just then the intercom carried the Wookiee’s news that someone was signaling for permission to board. “That’ll be
Skynx,” Badure told him. Han passed word to admit the academician.

“If you’ll get us to the vaults and off Dellalt again,” Badure resumed, “I’ll pay you twice your usual first-asking price, out of the treasure. But if you throw in with us, you and the Wook can split a full share of the take.”

Hasti cried, “Half-share!” just as Han protested, “Full share each!” They glared at each other. “Wound up a little too tight are we, sweetheart?” Han asked. “How’re you going to get there without us, flap your arms?” He heard Chewbacca’s footsteps moving toward the main hatch.

Hasti’s temper flared. “For one hop, you and that furball want a full cut?”