Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy Read online

  “You’ll live,” Han decided, toeing over the man he had shot and waving his recaptured blaster, “if you make some worthwhile conversation. How many guards on my ship?”

  The man licked his fear-parched lips. “Ten, maybe twelve. A few actually onboard, the rest around her.”

  “What about the ship you came in?” Hasti asked their captive. “The first one, not that big lighter.”

  Han slightly depressed the blaster trigger.

  The man gasped. “Backslope of town, below the landing area, in the rocks.”

  Badure came up, having collected the comlink dropped by the bowcaster thief. “Sonny boy, you just bought yourself a future.” Then he told them that J’uoch’s spaceboat was grounded on an expanse of flat stone, with only two men guarding her. “I’ve grown to dislike unnecessary killing,” Badure explained, setting an appropriated stun-gun for maximum dispersal. He squeezed the trigger, and blue rings of energy leaped outward. Immediately the two guards collapsed. Badure and Hasti patted them down for whatever weapons or equipment they might have, then Han climbed into the boat and moved to the pilot’s seat. “Fueled and ready!”

  Chewbacca, examining the copilot’s side of the board, woofed a question.

  “No. We won’t leave Dellalt without the Falcon; we couldn’t get out of the system with this baby carriage anyway,” Han replied. “We’ll jump out of their search locus, then work out our next move.” He began throwing switches and punching instructions into the flight computer.

  A warning sounded and the board lit up. Chewbacca threw his head back and yeowled his frustration. From the console rang J’uoch’s voice: “Attention, landing boat, attention! Why are you attempting to violate instrument lock? Guard detail, answer!”

  “I need tools; they’ve got the board locked down,” Han said urgently. Chewbacca dug long fingers around the edges of the utility locker’s door and ripped it away. Han was busy unfastening the console’s housing latches. The Wookiee grabbed some implements from the locker and handed them to Han, and soon the partners were attacking the lockdown mechanism, ignoring J’uoch’s vehement transmissions that crackled in the background.

  Chewbacca howled in triumph, neutralizing one security circuit. “Got the other,” Han crowed. But their elation disappeared as they heard the thunder of mass-lift thrusters.

  “She’s coming after us in the lighter!” Hasti yelled from the hatchway. “How soon can we lift off?”

  “She’s too close with those heavy cannons,” Han rasped. “But at least we’ll have a diversion. Get clear!”

  The others ran for it. There was a chart readout on the console; Han slipped it into his vest and, with one foot out the hatch, inserted a series of instructions into the console. Automatic sequence cycled the hatch shut, and the boat lifted off.

  Han hurdled a rock and crouched in its shelter with the others, and they watched the spaceboat rise into the night sky. The lighter was already on a close interception course; it seemed to Han a good time to get as far as possible from the liftoff site. Having distracted those on the lighter, the fugitives moved off in a ragged line. Chewbacca kept rearguard and, wielding a clump of dry red shrubbery, eradicated the few prints they’d left on the rocky terrain.

  The spaceboat picked up speed, following Han’s programming. The lighter’s heavy artillery spoke, and tremendous spears of green-white energy made a brief noon in the Dellaltian night. The first salvo missed but gave the gunners their registration. The second hit dead center, several beams converging on the small boat at once. It exploded in a fireball, leaving a few scraps of burning wreckage to flutter from the sky.

  “Capturing us wasn’t such a big priority after all,” Badure observed.

  They had barely reached the temporary shelter of a rocky outcropping and hidden themselves among the boulders when the lighter returned with a rumble of brute thrusters and settled in where the boat had lifted. In moments the area was swarming with armed searchers sweeping hand-held spots. The stunned guards were quickly discovered, the ground examined.

  “They’re buying it!” Hasti whispered with muted elation. The searchers noted the prints left by Han and the others when they had approached the boat but missed any sign of departure, thanks to Chewbacca’s painstaking work. The dozing guards were lugged aboard the lighter and the rest of J’uoch’s employees embarked. Thrusters flared again.

  Han’s mind was racing. Now that they were armed and J’uoch apparently believed them dead, they had a chance of retaking the Millennium Falcon. Han expected to see the lighter land next to his own ship, to take away the guards onboard. Instead, the larger vessel hovered above the freighter. The Falcon’s ramp was up, her ramp-bay doors closed. Han suddenly understood what was happening.

  He threw himself forward at a flat-out run, bellowing at the top of his lungs, with Chewbacca only a step behind. No one on either ship heard them, of course; the lighter, its hoisting gear making loud contact with the freighter’s upper hull and achieving tractor-lock on the smaller ship, lowered her mechanical support booms. In the same manner as she transported mining equipment, the lighter lifted off with the Millennium Falcon tucked up tightly to her underside.

  The lighter veered south, gathering speed and altitude as she went. Han slowed to a stop. In despair he and Chewbacca watched their ship being borne away across the lake and over the mountains beyond. The others caught up.

  “They think the log-recorder disk is onboard, isn’t that it, Captain?” Skynx asked, somewhat in shock. “They searched us and didn’t find it and tried to kill us, so they must assume we left it onboard the Falcon.”

  “Where are they headed?” Han asked tonelessly.

  “Straight for the mining camp,” Badure answered. “They’ll have all the time and privacy they need to tear—to search her thoroughly.”

  Han pivoted on his heel and walked off toward town. A drizzle was starting.

  “Where are you going? Where are we going?” Skynx yelped as the others hurried after.

  “I want my ship back,” said Han simply.

  VIII

  “IT’S a lamebrained scheme, even for you,” Hasti was saying. Han peered into the grayness and wished Badure would return.

  The drizzle had become a freezing-cold downpour during the night, then slackened to a drizzle again. Han and the others, awaiting the old man, had taken shelter under a tarp behind piles of cargo in a broad-eaved wooden warehouse by the docks. They were sipping sparingly from the flask, which had remained clipped to Han’s gunbelt throughout the night’s action.

  They were damp, bedraggled, and miserable. Han’s hair was plastered flat against his skull, as was Hasti’s. Drops fell from Skynx’s matted wool, and Chewbacca’s pelt had started exuding the peculiar odor of a wet Wookiee. Han reached out and patted his friend’s head in a gesture of consolation, wishing there were something he could do for Bollux and Max. The two automata, abiding patiently, were worried that their moisture-proofing would fail.

  “You haven’t got a prayer of pulling this off, Solo,” the girl finished.

  He swiped a damp strand of hair off his forehead. “Then don’t come along. There’ll be another ship through here any year now.”

  A man in a shabby cloak appeared, splashing through the puddles, bearing a bundle on his shoulder. Han, his blaster’s scope set for night shooting, identified Badure. The old man crouched with them under the tarp. Having acquired a cloak from an alley-sleeper, he had contrived to buy four more. Han and Hasti found that two fit them passably well and even Bollux could don one stiffly, unaccustomed as he was to the extraordinary feel of clothing. But the biggest cloak Badure had brought could barely contain Chewbacca; though its hood managed to cover his face from casual observation, his shaggy arms and legs stuck out.

  “Maybe we could wrap him in bunting, like mittens and leggings,” Badure suggested, then turned to Skynx. “I didn’t forget you, my dear Professor.” With a flourish he produced a shoulder bag, which he held open invitingly. />
  Skynx shrank back, antennae wobbling in dismay. “Surely you can’t mean.… This is unacceptable!”

  “Just until we’re out of town,” Han coaxed.

  “Um, about that, son,” Badure said, “maybe we should lie low awhile instead.”

  “Do what you feel like; this could be a bad hike. But they’re probably tearing the Falcon apart at that mining camp.”

  “Then what’s the point in going?” Hasti remonstrated. “It’s a couple of hundred kilometers. Your ship’ll be in pieces.”

  “Then I’ll put her back together again!” he near-hollered, then calmed. “Besides, how did J’uoch and company show up so fast, unless she’s got contacts here? We’d be sitting targets, not even to mention the average citizen’s dislike of offworlders. We could end up bunking in the local slams.”

  Badure looked resigned. “Then it’s the Heel-and-Toe Express for us.”

  The rain was letting up, the sky lightening. Han studied the chart readout he had picked up. It turned out to contain a complete survey map of the planet, dated but in exacting detail. “At least we had the good luck to get this.”

  Hasti sniffed. “You spacers and mariners and aviators are all alike: no religion, but plenty of superstition. Always ready to invoke luck.”

  To forestall another verbal skirmish, Badure jumped in. “The first thing is to get across the lake; there are no connections south on this side. No air service anywhere, but there’s some ground transport over there somewhere. The only way across is a ferry service run by the natives, the Swimmers. They’re jealous of their territory and they charge a fee.”

  Han wasn’t sure he wanted to be transported by one of the sauropteroids, the Swimming People of Dellalt. “We could hike around the lake,” he proposed.

  “It would take us five or six extra days unless we could negotiate a vehicle or get our hands on some riding animals.”

  “Let’s check the ferry. What about food and equipment?”

  Badure looked askance. “What about lovely ladies and hot food? There’ll be settlements along the way; we’ll have to improvise.” He blew his breath out, and it crystallized.

  “Are you coming or staying?” Han asked Hasti.

  She gave him a scalding glare. “Why bother asking? You’ll lean on people until there’s no choice left.”

  The moderately safe and comfortable adventure envisioned by Skynx had become a very real struggle for survival, but this Ruurian practicality made his decision simple. “I believe I’ll remain with you, Captain,” he said. Han almost laughed, but Skynx’s simple tone of pragmatism and self-preservation lifted his opinion of the Ruurian a notch.

  “Glad to have you. All right; down to the docks and across the lake.”

  Skynx crawled unwillingly into the bag, which Chewbacca then shouldered. They proceeded in a tight group, with Badure in the lead and Hasti and Han on the flanks. The Wookiee and Bollux kept to the middle of the group in hopes that in the poor light and rain they would be mistaken for humans, one extremely tall, the other barrel-chested.

  Skynx poked his head out of the bag, feathery antennae thrashing. “Captain, it swells awful in here, and it’s cramped.” Han pushed him back down, then as an afterthought gave him the flask.

  The docks and their moored embarkation floats were already busy. Leaving the others in the partial concealment of stacks of cargo, Han and Badure went to inquire about passage.

  Though the docks had space for many of the tow-rafts used by Dellalt’s native sauropteroids, only the middle area seemed busy. Then, scanning the scene, Han saw one lonely raft off to the right. Though Badure had briefly described the Swimmers, Han still found them a startling sight.

  Men were loading cargo aboard the tow-rafts, which were tied at the embarkation floats. Tow-lines and harnesses bobbed as the rafts waited in the water. Beyond them lazed twenty or so sauropteroids, circling or treading water with flipper strokes of immense power. They ranged from ten to fifteen meters in length, their heads held high from the water on long muscular necks as they moved in the lake. Their hides varied from a light gray to a deep green-black; lacking nostrils, they had blowholes at the tops of their long skulls. They idled, waiting for the men ashore to complete the manual labor.

  One of the men, a burly individual with a jeweled ring in one ear and bits of food and droplets of breakfast nectar in his beard, was checking cargo against a manifest. As Badure explained their needs, he listened, playing with his stylus.

  “You will have to talk money with the Top Bull,” he informed them with a smirk Han didn’t like, then called out: “Ho, Kasarax! Two seeking passage here!” He returned to his work as if the two men no longer existed.

  Han and Badure went to the dock’s edge and stepped onto an embarkation float. A sauropteroid approached with a few beats of his flippers. Han surreptitiously moved his hand closer to his concealed blaster. He was ill at ease at seeing Kasarax’s size and his hard, narrow head with its fangs longer than a man’s forearm.

  Kasarax trod water next to the float. When he spoke, the blast of sound and fishy breath made both men fall back a bit. His pronunciation was distorted but intelligible. “Passage is forty driit,” the creature announced, a hefty sum in Dellaltian currency, “each. And don’t bother haggling; we don’t fancy that down here at the docks.” Kasarax blew a spout of condensing moisture out the blowhole in his head to punctuate the statement.

  “What about the others?” Han murmured to Badure, indicating the rest of the sauropteroid pack.

  But Kasarax caught Han’s query and hissed like a pressure valve. “They do as I say! And I say you cross for forty driit!” He feinted, as if he were going to strike, a snakish movement that rocked the float with turbulence. Han and Badure scrambled onto the dock as the men there guffawed.

  The man with the manifest approached. “I’m chief of Kasarax’s shore gang; you may pay me.”

  Han, red in the face, was growing more furious by the moment at this high-handed treatment. But Badure, glancing toward the lone raft they had noticed earlier, asked, “What about him?”

  A lone Swimmer was down there, a big, battle-torn old bull, watching events silently. The shore-gang chief forgot his laughter. “If you enjoy living, ignore him. Only Kasarax’s pack plies this part of the lake!”

  Still fuming, Han strode down the dock. Badure followed after a moment’s indecision. The shore-gang chief called, “I give you fair warning, strangers!”

  The old bull reared up a bit as they approached. He was the size of Kasarax, his hide a near-black, net-worked with scars. His left eye was gone, lost in a long-ago battle, and his flippers were notched and bitten. But when he opened his mouth his tremendous fangs gleamed like honed weapons. “You’re new faces to the docks,” he said in a whistling voice.

  “We want to get across the lake,” Han began. “But we can’t meet Kasarax’s price.”

  “Once, human, I’d have towed you across as quickly as you please and carefully, too, for eight driit each.” Han was about to accept when the creature cut him off. “But today I tow for free.”

  “Why?” Ham and Badure asked together.

  The bull made a burbling sound that they took to be a laugh, and shot a blast from his blowhole. “I, Shazeen, have vowed to show Kasarax that any of the Swimming People are free to work this dock, like any other. But I need passengers, and Kasarax’s shore gang keeps those away.”

  The shore gang was gathered in conference, grouped in a knot of perhaps twenty, and shooting murderous looks at Han, Badure, and Shazeen. “Can you meet us somewhere farther down the shore?” Han asked the native Dellaltian.

  Shazeen reared, water streaming from his black back, looking like some primitive’s war god. “Boarding here at the dock is the whole point! Do that and I will do the rest, nor will any of the Swimming People meddle with you; it’s Shazeen they must deal with, that is our Law, which not even Kasarax dares ignore!”

  Badure pulled thoughtfully at his lower lip. “We m
ight go around the lake.”

  Han shook his head. “In how many days?” He turned to Shazeen. “There are a couple more passengers. We’ll be right back.”

  “If they menace you on the docks, I cannot interfere,” Shazeen warned. “That is the Law. But they won’t dare use weapons unless you do for fear the other humans, the ones who’ve been driven from their jobs, will have cause to intercede.”

  Badure clapped Han’s shoulder. “I could stand a little cruise right now, Slick.” Han gave him a wicked grin; they started back.

  The others were standing where they had been left. Hasti held a large cone of plasform that contained a mass of lumpy, pasty dough, which she and Chewbacca were eating with their fingers. She offered some to Badure and Han. “We were starving; I picked this up from a vendor. What’s the plan?”

  Badure explained as they shared the doughy stuff. It was thick and gluey but had a pleasing flavor, like nutmeat. “So,” finished Han, “no shooting unless we have to. How’s Skynx?”

  The Wookiee chortled and held open the shoulder bag. The Ruurian lay in a near-circle, clutching the flask. When he saw Han, his faceted red eyes, which were somewhat glazed, grew wider. Skynx hiccupped, then chirped, “You old pirate! Where’ve you been?” He flicked an antenna across Han’s nose, then collapsed in chittering laughter.

  “Oh, great,” said Han, “he’s tight as a scalp tick.” Han tried to recapture the flask, but Skynx curled into a ball and was gripping it with four limb-sets.

  “He said he’s never metabolized that much ethanol before,” said Hasti, looking slightly amused. “That’s exactly how he said it.”

  “Keep it then,” Han told Skynx. “But stay down; we’re going for a ride.”

  Skynx’s muffled voice came from the shoulder bag, “Perfect idea!”

  They made their way back to the dock. Men from Kasarax’s shore gang blocked their way to the embarkation float. Others, not of the gang, had appeared and leaned against walls or stacked cargo, carrying spring-guns, firearms, and makeshift weapons. Han remembered what Shazeen had said: these people had been forced out of a living by Kasarax’s racket. None had been willing to risk riding with Shazeen, but they would see to it no weapons were used to keep Han’s party from doing so. The rest of the shore gang was scattered around the docks, holding weapons of their own. As Han understood it, any shooting would trigger a general bloodbath, but anything short of that was allowable.