The Han Solo Adventures (23 page)

Zlarb had the Wookiee’s attention and was motioning him to come down out of the ship, indicating with the blaster’s muzzle just what would happen to Han if Chewbacca failed to obey. Han, familiar with his shaggy first mate’s expressions, read indecision then resignation, on his face. Then the Wookiee disappeared from the cockpit.

Han muttered something, and Zlarb poked him with the blaster. “Save it; it’s lucky for you he paid attention. Just play along and both of you will come through this alive.”

Two of Zlarb’s underlings had come up and stopped near their boss. One was a human, a squat, tough looking ugly who could have come from any of 100,000 worlds. The other was a humanoid, a giant, burly creature nearly Chewbacca’s size, with tiny eyes beneath jutting, boney brows. The humanoid’s skin was a glossy brown, like some exotic, polished wood, and vestigial horns curled at his forehead. He seemed to feel the need for neither thermosuit nor facebowl.

But it was what the other man, the squat one, had brought that surprised Han most. He had a control leash fastened to his wrist; at the end of the leash was a nashtah, one of the storied hunting beasts of Dra III. The nashtah’s six powerful legs, each armed with long, curving, diamond-hard claws, shifted restlessly on the ice. It strained at its leash, tongue arcing, its steamy breath rasping between triple rows of jagged white teeth, its long barbed tail lashing. Its muscles, tensing and untensing, sent ripples along its green, sleek hide.

What in the name of the profit-motive system can they be doing with a nashtah
? Han asked himself. The creatures were bloodthirsty, tireless and impossible to shake once they scented their prey, and were among the most vicious of all attack animals. That seemed to indicate poaching of some kind, but why would a gang of poachers go to all this trouble? Han disliked moving pelts or hides and, given a choice, would not have carried them. But that surely didn’t call for this kind of extreme action on Zlarb’s part; there were plenty of smugglers who would have taken the job.

Chewbacca appeared at the ramp head. The nashtah, sighting him, gave throat to a piercing scream and lunged, dragging its handler until he dug in his heels and pressed a stud on the control leash handle. The nashtah gave a yeowl of displeasure at the mild shock that stopped its advance for the moment. Chewbacca watched impassively, his bowcaster held ready, eyes sweeping the scene below.

Zlarb started Han off with a shove, staying close behind, and the two climbed the ramp. When they were near the top, Zlarb addressed Chewbacca. “Put down the weapon. Do it now and step back or your friend here gets fried.” There was the nudge of the blaster between Han’s shoulder blades.

Chewbacca debated the variables involved, then complied, seeing no other way to save his friend’s life. Meanwhile, Han evaluated his chances for a fast move. He knew he might stand a chance of neutralizing Zlarb, but the other two gang members were backing their boss up and each had a handgun out now. And then there was the nashtah. Han elected to postpone his most desperate option for the time being.

When they reached the top of the ramp, Zlarb pushed Han hard, then stooped to take up Chewbacca’s bowcaster. The Wookiee caught his friend as Han stumbled from the shove and kept him from falling. Han removed his facebowl and threw it aside. Taking a quick look around, he noticed Bollux still standing where Han had left him. The ’droid seemed to be rooted to the spot, immobile with surprise, his circuitry struggling to absorb the bewildering rush of events.

Zlarb’s men had come in behind him along with the nashtah, whose claws scraped the deckplates. Again it had to be curbed from leaping at the Wookiee, and Han wondered for a moment what it was about Chewbacca that antagonized it so. Something about his first mate’s scent, or perhaps a resemblance to one of the beast’s natural enemies?

Zlarb turned to the hulking humanoid who had been eyeing Chewbacca with nearly as much hostility as the nashtah. “Go tell the others to start moving. We’ll get things ready here.” Then he turned to Han. “Open up your main hold; we’re going to start loading.” And finally, to the handler who still restrained the spitting nashtah, Zlarb indicated the Wookiee. “If he moves, burn him down.”

They set off aft, Zlarb being careful to stay well back from Han, watchful for any surprise move the pilot might make. Following the curve of the passageway, they came to the hatchway of the
Falcon
’s main cargo hold. Han tapped the release, and the hatch slid back to reveal a compartment of modest size, ribbed by the ship’s structural members, featureless except for air ducts, safety equipment, and the heating-refrigeration unit. A stack of panels and disassembled support posts lay there, to be erected as shelving or retaining bins if they were needed. Dunnage and padding were heaped in a pile to one side near coils of strapping and fastening tackle.

Zlarb, looking around, nodded in approval. “This’ll do fine, Solo. Leave the hatch open and let’s get back to the others.”

Another of Zlarb’s men had arrived and was standing at the top of the ramp, a disruptor rifle leveled at Chewbacca. The nashtah handler had dragged his beast back farther toward the cockpit. The big humanoid had returned, too, carrying a small shoulder pack. Zlarb pointed to it. “You’ve got your equipment there, Wadda?”

Wadda inclined his head. Zlarb pointed to Bollux. “First I want you to stick a restraining bolt on the ’droid. We don’t want him wandering around; he might give us trouble.”

Bollux started to protest but weapons moved to cover him and Wadda closed in on him, looming over him and unlimbering the ominous pack from his shoulder. The labor ’droid’s red photoreceptors went to Han in what seemed to be an entreaty. “Captain Solo, what shall I—”

“Keep still,” Han instructed, not wanting to see Bollux destroyed and knowing Zlarb’s people would do just that if the ’droid resisted them. “It’ll only be for a while.”

Bollux looked from Han to Chewbacca, then to Wadda and back to Han again. Wadda closed in on him, fitting a restraining bolt into a hand-held applicator. The big humanoid pressed the applicator against Bollux’s chest and the ’droid gave a split-second bleep. There was a wisp of smoke as bolt fused to metal skin. Just as Bollux shuffled, resettling his changing feet as if some new posture would be of help to him, his photoreceptors went dark, the restraining bolt deactivating his control matrices.

Satisfied that the
Falcon
was his, Zlarb began issuing commands. “Let’s get busy.” Han was directed to Chewbacca’s side. The nashtah handler and the man with the disruptor rifle continued to watch them while Wadda hurried down the ramp, making it tremble under his great weight.

“Zlarb,” Han began, “don’t you think its time you told us what’s so flaming…”

He was distracted by the ramp’s vibrations and the sound of many light footfalls. A moment later he understood just what had happened to him and in how dangerous a situation he and Chewbacca had become involved.

A file of small figures trooped aboard, heads hung in fatigue and despair. These were obviously inhabitants of Lur. The tallest of them was scarcely waist-high to Han. They were erect bipeds, covered with fine white fur, their feet protected by thick pads of calluslike tissue. Their eyes were large, and ran toward green and blue; they stared around the
Falcon
’s interior in dull amazement.

Each neck was encircled by a collar of metal, the collars joined together by a thin black cable. It was a slaver’s line.

Chewbacca bellowed an enraged roar and ignored the answering scream from the nashtah. Han glared at Zlarb, who was directing the loading of slaves. One of his men held a director unit, its circuitry linked to the collars. The director, a banned device, had an unfinished, homemade look to it. Any defiance from the captives would earn them excruciating pain.

Han fixed Zlarb with his eye. “Not in my ship,” he stated, emphasizing each word.

But Zlarb only laughed. “You’re not in much of a position to object, are you, Solo?”

“
Not in my ship
,” Han repeated stubbornly. “Not slaves. Never.”

Zlarb aligned Han’s own blaster at him, sighting down the barrel. “You just think again, pilot. If you give me any trouble, you’ll end up locked in a necklace yourself. Now, you and the Wookiee go forward and get ready to lift.”

A second line of slaves was being led aboard and ushered aft to the hold. Han scowled at Zlarb for a moment, then turned toward the cockpit. Chewbacca hesitated, bared his fangs at the slavers once more, and followed his friend.

Han lowered himself unwillingly into the pilot’s seat, and Chewbacca took the copilot’s. Zlarb stood behind them watching their every move carefully. He mistrusted the two, of course, but knew that they could get more speed and better performance out of the
Falcon
than he or any of his men could. And that might well mean survival in the perilous business of slave-running.

“Solo, I want you and your partner to be smart about this. You take us to our point of delivery and you’ll both be taken care of. But if we’re halted and boarded, it’s the death sentence for all of us, you included.”

“Where are we going?” Han asked, tight-lipped.

“I’ll tell you that when the time comes. For now, you just prepare to raise ship.”

Han brought the
Falcon
’s engines to full power, warming up her shields and preparing to lift. “What are they paying you? Even
I
can’t think of enough money to get me mixed up in slaving.”

Zlarb chuckled derisively. “They told me you were a hard case, Solo. I see they were wrong. Those little beauties back there are worth four, five, maybe even six thousand apiece on the Invisible Market. They’re natural-born experts at genetic manipulation, and in great demand, my friend. Not everyone is happy with the rigid restrictions that were imposed after the Clone Wars. It seems these creatures like their own world too much, though, and wouldn’t sign out on contract labor for anything. So my associates and I rounded up a bunch. A few of them are sick or wounded, but we’ll deliver at least fifty of them. I’ll make enough off this run to keep me happy and lazy for a long time.”

Contract labor. That sounded like the Corporate Sector Authority was involved. But though the Authority had been known to use contract hoaxes and deceptive recruitment, Han found it hard to believe that it would be so bold as to practice out-and-out slavery, particularly raiding a planet outside its own boundaries. That was something even the Empire couldn’t afford to ignore.

“Your board looks good to me, Solo,” Zlarb commented, studying the console. “Raise ship.”

As Han, Chewbacca, and the slavers left the passageway, Bollux still stood precisely where he had been deactivated near the ramp’s head. The restraining bolt had interdicted all his control centers, immobilizing him.

But hidden within the labor ’droid’s thorax, still functioning off his own independent power supply, Blue Max was assessing his situation. Though he realized that the emergency might mean disaster for the
Falcon
’s entire complement, the undersized computer probe could see little he could do to change the situation. He had no motor capability of his own and contained no communications equipment except his vocoder and various computer-tap adaptors. Moreover, Max’s own power source was minuscule in comparison to Bollux’s, and he couldn’t possibly move the labor ’droid’s body far enough or fast enough to do any good before exhausting himself.

Blue Max wished he could at least talk to his friend, but the restraining bolt’s interdiction extended to all of Bollux’s brain functions. The computer, who had seldom been separated from Bollux’s host body, felt very much alone.

Then he remembered the short bleep emitted by Bollux just before he’d been immobilized. Max ran the bleep back, slowing it by a high factor and finding, as he had thought, that it was a squirt, a burst transmission. It was garbled; Bollux had been dealing with a number of things at the time. But at length Max made sense of it and saw what the labor ’droid had been trying to do.

Blue Max linked himself in carefully with some of Bollux’s motor circuitry, prepared to withdraw and close off instantly if the bolt’s influence threatened to impair him.

But it didn’t. The restraining bolt worked against Bollux’s command and control centers, not his actual circuitry and servomotors. Still, Max knew he had a very difficult task, one that would have been impossible if Bollux hadn’t repositioned his feet at the last instant before being paralyzed.

The computer lacked the power to make Bollux’s body take more than a few steps but he did have enough to effect a single servo. Though it drained him dangerously, Max fed all the power he could into the knee joint of his companion’s left leg. The knee flexed and the labor ’droid’s body tilted. Max, trying desperately to gauge the unfamiliar leverages and angles, stopped for a moment and redirected his efforts toward the central torsion hookup in Bollux’s midsection, turning him a little to the left. That demanded so much of his scant power that Max had to pause for a moment and let his reserves build a bit.

He shut down all nonvital parts of himself to hoard the energy he needed, then addressed himself to the knee joint once more as the roar of the
Millennium Falcon
’s warming engines made the deckplates chatter and filled the passageway with a hollow rumble.

The ’droid’s balance passed the critical point; he tottered, then toppled to the left, landing with a clamorous din. Bollux’s body ended up resting on its left arm and side, barely stabilized by its right foot, which also touched the deck.

Max found that, with the body in this position, he couldn’t get both chest panels open, but that hardly mattered since he lacked the power to do so anyway. As it was, he had to stop twice in working the right panel outward, wait for his reserves to build up, then channel power into the panel servo. He stopped when the right panel was open sufficiently for him to see his objective.

The last move was the hardest. Max extended an adaptor to the exposed fluidics systems on which he and Bollux had been working prior to planetfall. The fluidics were fitted with standard couplings, but that still left the problem of making a connection with them. Extending his rodlike adaptor arm as far as it would go, Max found his goal just out of reach. The coupling waited beyond and below his adaptor. In desperation Max tried to push his adaptor arm out even farther and nearly damaged himself. It availed nothing.

The computer saw he had only one chance left. That it involved risk of personal damage to him didn’t make him hesitate for an instant. He shifted power back to Bollux’s midsection, turning the torsion hookup again in an all-out effort that nearly overloaded him. The labor ’droid’s body twisted slowly, then rolled over.

But in the last moment, the roll brought Max’s adaptor close enough to make contact with the fluidics coupling. He linked up with the systems and had time to send out a single command. Then the torso’s descending weight bent his fragile adaptor arm, breaking the connection, and sending feedback washing into Blue Max with a computer analogue of blinding pain.