The Han Solo Adventures (37 page)

Gallandro put out his own right hand willingly. It had occurred to him that Han might take advantage of the brief distraction and go for his blaster while Gallandro’s right hand was on the case. He was more than happy to let Han try it if he wanted to. But while both men’s right hands were still on the security case, Han simply moved his finger off the safety.

The two cried out as a surge of neuro-paralysis washed up their arms like an absolute-zero lightning bolt. The security case clattered to the deck as they both clutched numb, useless arms to their sides.

Gallandro gritted his teeth and glared at Han, who slowly and cautiously flicked open the tie-down of his holster. Gallandro’s own left hand started for his holstered weapon but he realized what an awkward move it was and that Han hadn’t gone for his blaster yet.

Han tugged at his gunbelt until his blaster sat, butt-forward, on his left hip. Gallandro, smile gone, did the same with his own tooled holster. Their hands were close to their weapons now.

“Had to change the odds a bit,” Han grinned amiably. “Hope you don’t mind. Whenever you’re ready, Gallandro. The stage is yours.”

The gunfighter’s upper lip now held beads of sweat among the strands of his mustache. His hand began to tense, fingers preparing for the unfamiliar task. Han almost went for his gun then, but curbed himself sharply. Gallandro would have to be the one to decide.

The gunman’s left hand drooped loosely, as he abandoned the effort. Chewbacca, unable to ignore the outcries he’d heard, appeared at the hatch. Han snatched the blaster from Gallandro’s tooled holster and pressed it into his first mate’s midsection as he dodged past him. “Hold onto him! I’m getting us out of here if I can!”

He was reading instrumentation from the moment he entered the cockpit at a full run. He stopped himself with the heel of his left hand against the console and vaulted into his seat. The engines were hot but, as per Gallandro’s orders, guns, shields, and everything else but commo were cold.

The neuro-charge hadn’t been crippling; the feeling in his right arm was already coming back.
For all the good it’ll do me
, he frowned to himself. He was shocked at how little time had passed since he’d entered the ship; Spray and Fiolla had only now finished the long walk back to the cage.

He smashed his fist against the console. “Look at this! If I had firepower I’d have two perfect hostages under the guns. Or if I had tractors, I could haul ’em back here.”

“There’re other ways to handle cargo besides tractors,” said a high-pitched vocoder. “Isn’t that right, Bollux?”

“Blue Max is quite correct, sir,” drawled the labor ’droid from the navigator’s seat, from which he’d been keeping a photoreceptor on things, his plastron open. “As a general labor ’droid, I might point out—”

Han cut him off with a bloodcurdling war whoop and screamed back over his shoulder, hoping his copilot would hear, “Chewie! Hold onto your pelt; we’re taking the long shot!”

He brought up full engine power. Giving the
Millennium Falcon
entirely too much acceleration, he tore off from a dead standstill to scream along under the belly of the destroyer, retracting landing gear as he went. Even with full braking thrusters he barely made a tight bank, throwing himself against the console as Bollux floundered for a handhold. Lining up his shot, he applied more power.

The safety cage, suspended halfway up to the access lock on its utility tractor, was before him with unbelievable speed. With more instinct than skill, Han made microscopic, split-second corrections in his course and hit braking thrusters again. The starboard bow mandible slipped through the cage’s sling-arm.

Han accelerated again, carefully but extremely quickly, tearing the cage out of the utility tractor’s grasp. “Go ahead, go ahead,” he taunted the mountainous destroyer, whose weapons still tracked him. “Shoot me; you’ll blow your territorial manager to
particles
!”

But no fire came. The
Falcon
shrieked out from under the Espo warship’s belly; everything had happened with such suddenness that Han had snagged the cage before fire-control officers could decide what to do. Now they were powerless to intervene without endangering their superior. But the destroyer rose majestically and fell in behind the freighter in close pursuit.

Han was beside himself, laughing, howling, stomping his boots on the deck, but still piloting with utmost care; if anything happened to Spray and Fiolla now, the warship would surely eradicate the
Falcon
. He was relieved to find that the cage’s sling-arm appeared to be firmly seated across the bow mandible.

Chewbacca appeared, pushing a ruffled Gallandro along before him. The Wookiee thrust the gunman into the commo officer’s seat, then took his own. Gallandro was smoothing his mustache and straightening his clothes. “Solo, was it necessary to have this behemoth body-press me to the safety cushioning?” Then he noticed what had happened. Grudging admiration crept into his voice. “You seem to have gained the advantage, Solo. Congratulations, but please control yourself; the territorial manager is an extremely reasonable fellow and I’m sure he’ll agree to any sane terms. I don’t suppose that your unconditional release would be too much to ask. Oh, and perhaps afterward we can try that draw, for curiosity’s sake. You may drain my pistol’s charge first if you like; I’d just like to know what would’ve happened.”

Han spared him a quick, disdainful look from the touchy business of guiding the
Falcon
smoothly and levelly through the hard, rocky peaks of Ammuud. “You
pay
to see the cards Gallandro; you folded.”

The gunfighter nodded politely. “Of course; what could I have been thinking of? There will be other occasions, Captain. These circumstances were unique.”

They both knew that was true; Han swallowed his next taunt. “If your arm’s coming around, you can warm up the commo board and contact the commander of that gunboat back there. Tell him I want time and room to finish repairs on the
Falcon
and a little more on the side for a head start. No stunts now, or they’ll be picking Spray up with blotters.”

“Arrangements will be satisfactory,” Gallandro assured him calmly, “with adequate safeguards for both sides.” He set to work at the commo board.

Han cut his speed back, satisfied that there would be no fire from the Espos. He knuckled his copilot’s arm. “That was a cute move. What made you rig up the security case’s clip?”

The Wookiee answered with a string of the honks and grunts of his own language. Han turned his face back front, so his expression wouldn’t show. It was highly unlikely that Gallandro understood any Wookiee, and he wouldn’t know, unless he saw the pilot’s face, how Chewbacca’s reply had bewildered him.

Because Chewbacca hadn’t connected the security case’s clip. And that left only one other person who had known where the case was. Han half-stood, half-leaned forward to look down through the canopy at the gently swaying safety cage. Spray was huddled miserably in the lowest corner of the dangling cage, webbed fingers clutched at the guardrail and its meshwork. He was making a courageous effort, it seemed, not to become airsick as he pondered the sudden reversals of fate. Han figured that even with this turnabout, it had been a good day for the territorial manager; he resolved to trade grips with Spray before they again parted company.

Fiolla, unlike her superior, was braced more or less upright, clinging to the sling-arm and staring up at the cockpit. When she saw Han gazing down, a slow and secret smile crossed her face.

Knowing how well she could read the slightest kinetic movement, he mouthed.
You are one very, very sharp future Senior Board Member
. He saw a laugh escape her then and she made a small, mocking bow of the head.

He pulled back down into his seat. Gallandro had raised the destroyer and was remonstrating with her skipper.

“I might just have to hang onto one of my hostages a little longer,” Han interrupted. “To make sure you keep your end of the deal.” Gallandro swiveled his chair around in surprise. “And don’t get yourself in a lather, Gallandro; you’ll get her back if your word’s good.” He went back to flying, checking sensors for a suitable landing spot. One more thought occurred to him.

“By the way, Gallandro, find out how much cash the pursuer has in his vault.” He snickered at Chewbacca’s questioning bark. “What d’you mean, ‘what for?’
Somebody
owes you and me ten thousand for services rendered. Or did you forget?”

Gallandro, teeth clenched, went back to his argument with the Espo captain. Chewbacca’s happy guffaws rang as the Wookiee pounded his armrest, the vibrations traveling through the deck. Han leaned forward again and blew Fiolla a heartfelt kiss.

A book for Linda Kuehl
and, with particular gratitude,
for John A. Kearney

Han Solo nearly had the control-stem leads hooked up, a sweaty job that had him stuck under the low-slung airspeeder for almost an hour, when there was a kick at his foot. “What’s holding things up?”

The leads, now gathered together in precise order, sprang free of his fingers, going every which way. With a scalding Corellian malediction, Han shoved against the machine’s undercarriage, and his repulsor-lift mechanic’s creeper slid out from under the airspeeder.

Han leaped up instantly to confront Grigmin, his temporary employer, the color on his face changing from the red of frustration to a darker and more dangerous hue. Han was lean, of medium height, and appeared younger than his actual age. His eyes were guarded, intense.

Grigmin, tall, broad shouldered, handsomely blond, and some years younger than Han, either didn’t notice his pit-crewman’s anger or chose not to acknowledge it. “Well? What about it? That airspeeder’s an important part of my show.”

Han attempted not to lose his scant temper. Working as pit-crewman to Grigmin’s one-man airshow on a circuit of fifth-rate worlds had been the only job he and his partner, Chewbacca, had been able to get when they found they needed work, but Grigmin’s unrelenting arrogance made the task of keeping his outmoded aircraft running nearly unbearable.

“Grigmin,” Han said, “I’ve warned you before. You put too much strain on your hardware. You could stay well within performance tolerances and still complete every maneuver in your routines. But instead you showboat, with junk heaps that were obsolete when the Clone Wars were news.”

Grigmin’s grin grew even wider. “Save the excuses, Solo. Will my airspeeder be ready for my afternoon show, or have you and your Wookiee sidekick decided you don’t like working for me?”

Masterpiece of understatement!
Han thought to himself, but mumbled, “She’ll be in the air again if Fadoop gets here with the replacement parts.”

Now Grigmin frowned. “You should have gone for them yourself. I never trust these useless locals; it’s a rule I have.”

“If you want me to use a starship for a crummy surface-to-surface skip, you’ll have to pay the expenses—up front.” Han would sooner trust a local like the amiable, gregarious Fadoop than a shifty deadbeat like Grigmin.

Grigmin ignored the invitation to part with some cash. “I want my airspeeder ready,” he concluded and left to prepare for the next part of his performance, an exhibition of maneuvers with a one-man jetpack.
Maneuvers any academy greenie could do
, Han thought.
These backwater worlds are the only place anyone would pay to see a feeble act like Grigmin’s
.

Still, if it hadn’t been for Grigmin’s needing a pitcrew, Han Solo and the Wookiee, Chewbacca, freelance smugglers, would have been on the Hurt Vector. He adjusted his sweatband, toed the mechanic’s creeper over to him, settled onto it, and pulled himself back under the airspeeder.

Groping half-heartedly for the control leads, Han wondered just what it was that made his luck so erratic. He had had strokes of good fortune that rivaled anything he had ever heard of, but at other times.…

He barked his knuckles, swore a mighty oath, and mulled over the fact that only a short time ago he and his Wookiee partner had held the galaxy by the tail. They had defied a slavery ring in the Corporate Sector, held the Authority’s dreaded Security Police at bay with a Territorial Manager as hostage, and come out of the deal ten thousand credits richer.

But since then there had been needed repairs for their starship, the
Millennium Falcon
, and monumental celebrations on a dozen worlds as they put the Corporate Sector behind them. Then there had been ill-fated smuggling ventures: a ruinous try at clotheslegging in the Cron Drift; a failed Military Script-exchange plot in the Lesser Plooriod Cluster; and more, each adventure bringing a little closer that day when they would find themselves among the needy.

So they had ended up here in the Tion Hegemony, so far out among the lesser star systems of the vast Empire that the Imperials didn’t even bother to exert direct control over it. In the Tion tended to congregate the petty grifters, unsuccessful con-artists, and unprosperous crooks of the galaxy. They ran
Chak
-root, picked up R’alla mineral water for the smuggling run to Rampa, swiped, ambushed, connived, and attempted in a thousand ways to fuel careers temporarily at a standstill.

Han considered all this as he carefully gathered the leads, once again separating them delicately. At least with Grigmin, Han and Chewbacca were paid, once in a while.

But that didn’t make it any easier to take Grigmin’s highhandedness. What particularly irritated Han was that Grigmin considered himself the hottest stunt pilot in space. Han had entertained the idea of taking a swing at the younger man, but Grigmin was a former heavyweight unarmed combat champion.…

His musings were interrupted by another kick that jolted his boot. The control leads sprang from his hands again. Furious, he pushed off against the airspeeder’s undercarriage, jumped off the mechanic’s creeper, and, combat champion or no, launched himself at his tormentor…

… and was caught up instantly against a wide shaggy chest in a frightfully strong but restrained hug and held a half-meter or so off the ground.

“Chewie! Let go, you big… all right; I’m sorry.”

Thick arms muscled like loops of steel released him. The Wookiee Chewbacca glared down from his towering height, growling a denunciation of Han’s manners, his reddish-brown brows lowered, his fangs showing. He shook a long, hairy finger at his partner for emphasis and tried straightening the Authority Security Police admiral’s hat perched rakishly on his head, his lush mane escaping from beneath it.

The admiral’s hat was just about the only thing the two still had from their adventures in the Corporate Sector. Chewbacca had taken a fancy to its bright braid, snowy-white material, glossy black brim, and ornate insignia during an exchange of hostages just before their hasty departure from that region of space. In his people’s tradition of counting coup on their enemies, the Wookiee had demanded the hat as part of the ransom. Han, pressed by events, had indulged him.

Now the pilot threw up his hands. “Enough! I
said
I was sorry. I thought you were that vapor-brain Grigmin again. Now what?”

Han’s giant copilot informed him that Fadoop had arrived. Fadoop stood nearby on her feet and knuckles, an unusually fat and outgoing native of the planet Saheelindeel. A short, bandy-legged, and densely green-furred primate, she was a local wheeler-dealer who flew an aircraft of sorts, an informal assemblage of parts and components from various scrapped fliers, a craft which she called
Skybarge
.

Pulling off his sweatband, Han walked toward Fadoop. “You scrounged the parts? Good gal!”

Fadoop, scratching behind one ear with a big toe, removed a malodorous black cigar from her mouth and blew a smoke ring. “Anything for Solo-my-friend. Are we not soulsealed buddies, you, me, and the Big One here, this Wookiee? But, ahh, there is a matter—”

Fadoop looked away somewhat embarrassed. Working the quid of
Chak
-root that swelled her cheek, she spat a stream of red liquid into the dust. “I trust Solo-my-friend, but not Grigmin-the-blowhard. I hate to bring up money.”

“No apologies; you earned it.” Han dug into a coverall pocket for the cash he had gotten in advance for the airspeeder parts. Fadoop tucked the money away swiftly into her belly pouch, then brightened; a twinkle sparkled in her close-set, golden eyes.

“And there’s a surprise, Solo-my-friend. At the spaceport, when I picked up the parts, two new arrivals were looking for you and the Big One. I had room in my ship, and so brought them with me. They wait.”

Han reached back under the airspeeder and drew out his coiled gunbelt, which he always kept at arm’s length. “Who are they? Imperials? Did they look like skip-tracers or Guild muscle?” He buckled the custom-model blaster around his hips, fastening the tiedown at his right thigh, and snapped open his holster’s retaining strap.

Fadoop objected. “Negatron! Nice, peaceful fellows, a little nervous.” She scratched her verdant, bulging midsection, making a sandpaper sound. “They want to hire you. No weapons on them, at least.”

That sounded reassuring. “What do you think?” Han asked Chewbacca.

The Wookiee resettled his admiral’s hat, pulling the gleaming brim down low over his eyes, and stared across the airfield. After a few seconds, he barked a syllable of affirmation, and the three started off for Fadoop’s ship.