The Han Solo Adventures (31 page)

Bracing the muscular columns of his legs on either side of the opening, the Wookiee fought to retain his hug on Bollux and resist that flood. The giant sinew of his back and legs felt as if it were about to come apart. He clutched the ’droid to him with one arm, bracing the other on the deck, sustaining himself on a tripod of arm and legs, head thrown back with effort.

Bollux recovered somewhat, only to find that in the position in which the Wookiee was holding him, he could do little to exert any force of his own. What he could and did do was grasp the corner of the inspection plate and swing it over on its pivot, something Chewbacca hadn’t a free limb to accomplish. It almost jammed halfway, but with a final tug the ’droid cleared it. Once it was past that point the airflow caught it and hauled it shut with a ringing alarm. Fortunately none of the Wookiee’s fingers or toes were poised on the lip of the opening.

The depressurization was confined to one small compartment for the time being. How serious that was remained to be seen. Chewbacca wanted to lie on the deck and catch his breath for a moment but knew he didn’t have the time. He squirted thick, gluey sealant all around the inspection plate, then paused long enough to pat Bollux’s cranium with a gruff compliment.

“It was Max who brought the inspection plate to my attention,” said the ’droid modestly. Then he hauled himself to his feet and trailed off after Chewbacca, who had already dashed off toward the cockpit.

There, Spray was engaged in an uncertain contest with the controls. “We retain considerable guidance function,” he reported, “and I’ve put us on an approach path to the planet’s only spaceport. I was about to alert them for an emergency landing under crash conditions.”

The Wookiee loudly countermanded that plan, dropping into his outsized copilot seat. He, like Han, shunned involvement, and the consequent fuss or furor, that could possibly be avoided. He found that the controls responded adequately and thought he stood a good chance of landing the freighter without sirens, crash wagons, stop-netting, firefighting robos, and ten thousand official questions.

Already in Ammuud’s upper atmosphere, he brought the ship onto a steady approach path. Her hyperspace drive seemed to have suffered damage, but the rest of her guidance system responded within tolerance.

Bollux, who had just caught up, came up next to Chewbacca, his panels open. “I think there’s something you should know, sir. Blue Max just ran a quick check at the tech station. The damage has stabilized, but some of the filament tubing for the guidance systems has been exposed; its housing was cracked.”

“Will it blow?” Spray asked. Below them, they could make out features of the terrain quite clearly. Ammuud was a world of immense forests and oceans with rather large polar ice caps.

Max answered. “It’s not a question of blowing
out
, Spray; they’re secure, but they’re delicate low-pressure filaments. Going too deep into the planet’s atmosphere will implode them.”

“You mean we can’t land?” Spray blinked.

“No,” Bollux replied calmly. “He merely means that we can’t land too deep in Ammuud’s—”

The starship gave a convulsive shudder.

“Be careful!” squawked the skip-tracer to Chewbacca. “This vessel is still in lien to Interstellar Collections Limited!”

Chewbacca gave out a vociferous growl. One of the control filaments had imploded, the planet’s atmosphere having overcome the lesser pressure within it. The Wookiee snarled. Working to bypass the line, he had one bit of luck in that he could cut the ship’s speed back to a very gentle descent.

“—atmosphere,” Bollux finished.

“How deep is that?” Spray asked urgently. The Terrain Following Sensors had already shown them the planet’s spaceport at the foot of a high mountain range.

“Not very much lower at all, sir,” commented Bollux in neutral tones.

The Wookiee pulled the
Falcon
’s bow higher and reset the Terrain Following Sensors to display the features of the mountain range beyond Ammuud’s spaceport. His plan was clear; since he couldn’t set down in the lower atmosphere, he would find as suitable a site as he could in the higher mountains and hope that the lower air pressure there wouldn’t collapse the rest of the guidance system before he could set the ship down. He waved a shaggy paw at Bollux and Spray, indicating the passageway.

“I believe he wants us to stow all loose gear and prepare for a rough landing,” Bollux told Spray. The two turned and began working their way along the passageway together, frantically cramming loose items into storage lockers and securing their lids.

They had reached the escape pods when Spray thought of something important. “What about Captain Solo? How will he know what’s happened?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say, sir,” Bollux confessed. “I see no way in which we can safely leave word for him without compromising ourselves to port officials.”

The skip-tracer accepted that. “By the way, I think there’s some welding equipment in that second pod there; you’d better bring it out so that we can secure it.”

Bollux obligingly leaned into the open pod. “I don’t see any—” He felt an abrupt push from behind. Spray had worked up just enough momentum, with a running start, so that shoving with all his might he toppled Bollux into the pod.

“Find Solo!” Spray yelled, and hit the release. Inner and outer hatches rolled down before the confused ’droid could get out another word. The pod was blown free by its separator charges.

And as the
Falcon
nosed up, driving for the high mountains of Ammuud, the dumpy escape pod began its fall toward the spaceport.

General Quarters or any call to stations can be disorderly in even a well-run military spacecraft. On a passenger liner like the
Lady of Mindor
, where runthroughs and practices were all but ignored, it was total confusion. Therefore, Han Solo paid scant attention to the garbled and frequently contradictory instructions blared by the public-address annunciators. With Fiolla in tow he plunged down the passageway as panicky passengers, frightened crew members, and indecisive officers immobilized one another with conflicting aims and actions.

“What are you going to do?” Fiolla asked as they side-stepped a mob of passengers hammering at the purser’s door.

“Get the rest of your cash from your stateroom, then find the nearest lifeboat bay.” He heard airtight doors booming shut and tried to remember the layout of these old M-class ships. It would be disastrous to be trapped by the automatic seal-up.

“Solo,
tractor in
!” Fiolla bawled, dragged her slippered feet, and finally halted him. Catching her breath, she continued. “I have my money with me. Unless you want to tip the robo-valet, we can get going.”

He was once again impressed. “Very good. We keep going aft; there should be a boat just forward of the power section.” He recalled that his macrobinoculars were back in his cabin, then wrote them off. Ahead of them an airtight door had just begun grinding shut. They made it in a sprint, though the hem of Fiolla’s shimmersilk caught in the hatchway and she had to tear a ragged edge off it to free herself.

“A month’s pay, this thing cost me,” she complained ruefully. “What’s it going to be now, fight or run?”

“A little of both. The fool captain of this can must’ve tripped every door in the ship. How does he think his crew’ll get to battle stations?” He started on.

“Maybe he doesn’t intend to fight,” she puffed, staying right at his heels. “I hardly think a liner’s crew could make a fight of it against a pirate, do you?”

“They’d better; pirates aren’t famous for their restraint with captives.” They came to a long, cylindrical lifeboat tucked into its bay. Han broke the seal on the release lever and threw it back, but the lifeboat’s hatch failed to roll open. He threw the lever forward and back again, condemning the liner’s maintenance officer for not looking after his safety equipment.

“Listen,” Fiolla stopped him.

The ship’s captain seemed to have reasserted a certain amount of self-control. “For the safety of all passengers,” his voice came from the PA, “and crew members alike, I’ve decided to accept terms of surrender offered by the vessel that disabled us. I have been assured that no one will be harmed so long as we put up no resistance and no attempt is made to launch lifeboats. With this in mind I have overridden boat and pod releases to keep them onboard. Though the ship is damaged, we are in no immediate danger. I hereby order all passengers and crew members to cooperate with the boarding parties when the pirate craft docks with ours.”

“What makes him think they’ll keep their word?” Han muttered. “He’s been larding it on passenger runs too long.” A small part of him chased after that thought. When
was
the last time a pirate raid had been made near the well-patrolled inner environs of the Authority? An attack of this sort was nearly unheard of in this part of space.

“Solo, look!” Fiolla pointed to an open hatch, this one set into the liner’s outer hull. He ran to it and found that it gave access to a gun turret. The hatch had obviously opened at the first alarm. The twin-barreled blaster cannon was unattended; either its assigned crew hadn’t made it to their station or the captain had recalled them.

Hiking himself through the hatch, Han settled into the gunner’s saddle as Fiolla lowered herself into the gunner’s mate’s place. Through the blister of transparisteel enclosing the turret they could see the pirate craft, a slender predator painted in light-absorbing black, warping in adroitly on the passenger liner. The pirate was apparently going to match up against an airlock in the
Lady
’s midsection somewhat forward of the gun turret.

The emplacement was fully charged. Setting his shoulders against the rests, Han leaned against the padded hood of the targeting scope, closing his hands on the firing grips.

“What’ve you got in mind, Solo?” Fiolla queried sharply.

“If we start maneuvering the turret, they’ll pick the movement up,” he explained. “But if we wait, they will drift right across our sights. We can get off one volley, maybe even disable them.”

“Maybe even get ourselves killed,” she suggested tartly. “And everybody else into the bargain. Solo, you can’t!”

“Wrong; it’s the one thing I
can
do. Do you think they’ll keep their word about not hurting anyone? I don’t. We can’t escape, but we sure can take a swipe at them.”

Ignoring her protests, he put his shoulders to the rests and sighted through the targeting scope again. The pirate’s menacing shape came into the edge of his field of fire. He held his breath, waiting for a shot at the raider’s vitals, knowing he would get off only one salvo.

The control section didn’t quite come into his line of fire and he let the crew quarters pass; they were probably empty, with most of the crew mustered at the airlock for boarding. The pirate wouldn’t even have to put out her boats, thanks to the liner captain’s meek surrender.

Han peered through the scope at the next length of enemy hull, then pushed himself away from the twin cannon and began drawing himself headfirst out of the gunner’s saddle. “Let’s go,” he prompted Fiolla.

“What’s this, the sudden onset of senile sanity?”

“Inspiration’s my specialty,” he replied lightly. “I just hope I remember the layout of this old M-class right. It’s a long time since I shipped in one.”

She trailed him forward again as he studied engineer’s markings on the liner’s frames, talking to himself under his breath. There quickly followed the hollow, heavy concussion of the pirate making fast to the liner’s hull. Han skidded to a stop and drew Fiolla back into the temporary safety of a side passageway.

Not too far ahead a covey of passengers had foolishly gathered near a main airlock in defiance of the captain’s instructions. Among them Fiolla recognized the priest of Ninn in his green vestments, an Authority assistant supervisor of plant inoculation from an agroworld, and a dozen others she had come to know. All of them shrank back from the pneumatic sounds of the airlock’s cycling.

Then the passengers rushed away like game-avians flushed from cover as the airlock’s inner hatch swung open and armed boarders poured into the passageway. The boarders, wearing armored spacesuits, brandished blasters, force-pikes, rocket launchers, and vibro-axes. They had the look of faceless, invulnerable executioners.

There were orders from helmet speaker grilles and cries from the passengers. The latter were ignored amid a great deal of rough handling. A takeover team dashed toward the
Lady
’s bridge with shock grenades, fusion-cutters, plasma torches, and sapper charges, in case the captain changed his mind about surrendering. A few of the boarders began herding feebly objecting passengers toward the lounge while the rest split up into teams and began a rapid search outward in all directions from the airlock.

Han led Fiolla to an inboard passageway and struck out aft again, still reading frame markings, until they came to a utility locker. Inside the locker was a hatch giving access to a service core that ran the length of the ship. Normally the hatch would have been secured shut, but it could, for safety’s sake, be opened manually when the ship was on emergency status. Han undogged it and entered the service core, squatting among power conduits and thick cables. Ventilation was never good in these cores, and layers of dust had settled everywhere, deposited by the liner’s wheezy circulators.

Fiolla made a face. “What good’s hiding? We’re liable to wind up adrift in a derelict, Solo.”

“We’ve got a reservation for two on the next boat out of here. Now get in; you’re letting in a draft.”

She entered awkwardly, trailing skirt gathered in one hand, and climbed under him so that he could dog the hatch, then clumsily shifted position to let him lead the way. He noticed, in the process, that Fiolla had two very nice legs.

The trip soon had both of them dirty, hot, and irritable as they hauled themselves over, under, and between obstacles. “Why is life so complicated around you?” she panted. “The pirates would take my money and leave me in peace, but not Han Solo, oh no!”

He sniggered nastily as he loosened the clips on a grating and wrenched it out of his way. “Has it occurred to you yet that this isn’t a pirate attack?”

“I wouldn’t know; I get invited to so few of them.”

“Trust me; it’s not. And they sure could’ve found fatter, safer targets out in the fringe areas. They’re taking an awful risk hitting this close to Espo patrols. And then there’s all this nonsense about not launching the boats. They’re after someone in particular, and I think it’s us.”

He was leading her in a strained, squatting progress over ducts and power routing, bumping heads on the occasional low-hanging conduit. There were only intermittent emergency lights, nodes that only slightly relieved the darkness. After what seemed like an eternity he found the hatch he had been searching for, just aft of a major reinforced frame.

“Where are we?” Fiolla asked.

“Just under and aft of the portside airlock,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the deck overhead. “The
Lady
’s probably swarming with boarders by now.”

“Then what’re we doing here? Has anyone ever criticized your leadership, Solo?”

“Never ever.” He ascended a short ladder and she followed dubiously. But when he tried the hatch at the top he found its valve frozen in place. Setting his shoulder to its wheel and nearly losing his footing did no more good.

“Here,” Fiolla said, handing up a short length of metal. He saw that she had pulled loose one of the ladder rungs from beneath her.

“You’re wasting your time doing honest work,” he told her frankly, and set the rung through the wheel’s spokes. The second try elicited a creaking of metal and the wheel turned, then spun. He cracked the hatch a fraction to have a look around and saw, as he’d hoped he would, the interior of the utility locker just off the airlock’s inner hatch. In it hung the maintenance ready-crew’s spacesuits and tool harnesses, waiting to be donned on a moment’s notice.

Drawing Fiolla up after him, he swung the core hatch shut as silently as he could. “There shouldn’t be more than a guard or two out there at the airlock,” he explained. “I doubt that they’re worried about counterattack very much; there won’t be more than two or three firearms onboard the
Lady
all told.”

“Then what’re we doing here?” She imitated his unconscious whisper.

“We can’t hide for very long. If they have to, they’ll sweep the whole ship with sensors, and I doubt that there are any shielded areas. There’s only one place where we’ll get an escape boat now.”

She caught her breath as she realized what he meant and opened her mouth to object. But he put a finger across her lips. “They’re slavers, not pirates, and they’re not going through all this trouble just to let us live. They want to find out how much we know, then wipe our tapes for good. I’m not sure how this will work out, but if you get to the
Falcon
without me you can have Zlarb’s data plaque. Tell Chewie it’s in the breast pocket of my thermosuit and he’ll know it’s all right.”

She started to say something, but he put her off. “Fight
and
run, remember? Here’s what you do.”

The guard watching the main airlock had been following the boarding via helmet comlink. The ship was fairly well secured and search parties were going through their assigned areas.

A noise from the utility locker attracted his attention. Though difficult to identify through the sound-dampening helmet, it sounded like metal striking metal.

Holding his launcher ready, the guard hit the hatch release. It swung the hatch out of the way and he entered the utility locker. At first he thought the room was empty; it had been searched earlier. But then he noticed the figure crouching in a futile attempt to hide behind one of the ready-crew’s suits. It was a terrified young woman wearing a torn evening gown.

The guard swung his weapon up at once and checked out the rest of the locker, but it contained only tools and hanging spacesuits. He stepped into the locker, motioning with the launcher, switching to external address mode. “Come out of there right now and I won’t hurt you.”

That turned out to be true in a way the guard hadn’t foreseen. A weighty power prybar caught him across the helmet and shoulder, driving him to his knees. Despite his armor the guard was stunned for a moment and his shoulder and arm went numb. He fumbled for his comlink controls, but the blow had smashed the transceiver on the side of his helmet.

The woman dashed up to try to wrench the launcher away from him, but the guard fought to retain it. A scrabbling sound from behind him and another clout made the guard forget all about his weapon. Much of the impact was absorbed by armor and helmet padding, but the blow had been so severe that even the amount that penetrated knocked him out flat on his face, dazed, with a huge dent in his helmet.

Han Solo, still in the spacesuit by which he’d dangled from a hook in ambush, threw himself on the raider and quickly slipped a tool harness around him, drawing it tight to pin his arms. With another he bound the man’s legs. Fiolla watched the entire process nervously, gazing at the shoulder-fired rocket launcher she held as if it had materialized out of thin air.

Han rose and gently took the weapon from her. He found it to be loaded with anti-personnel rounds, flechette canisters. Those wouldn’t hurt a boarder inside his armored spacesuit, but they’d be graphically effective against unprotected passengers and crew members. Han would have preferred a blaster, but the old-fashioned launcher would suffice for now.

His voice was muted by the helmet he wore. “We don’t know whether he’s supposed to check in or what. All we can do is go. Ready?”