She smiled at him sweetly. "Why, yes, growing right here off my petty-cash vine; I was saving up the harvest until I had enough to buy my own fleet. Try to be rational, will you, Solo? "
"All right, lay off. At least it won't cost us more than a few Standard timeparts. "
On the way to the reservations deck they passed travelers from dozens of worlds. There were wobbly-fleshed Coura-taines in their exoskeletal travel suits, breathing the thinnest of atmospheres through their respirators; octopedal Wodes, heavy-stepping and unused to less than two Standard gravi-ties; beautifully plumed Jastaals trilling their phrases to one another as they half-glided along, wings partially extended; and human beings in all their variety.
A hand dropped onto Han's shoulder. He started, pivoting with a blurringly fast motion that freed him of the hand, put distance between himself and the other, and brought his right hand down to where his blaster would ordinarily have been.
"Easy, Han; old reflexes die hard, I see, " laughed the man who had stopped him. Braced to confront Zlarb's busi-ness associates or a flying squad of Espos, Han felt abrupt relief not unmixed with a new worry as he recognized the man.
"Roa! What are you doing here? " Roa had put on weight, too much of it, but it didn't conceal the open, friendly fea-tures of one of the best smugglers and blockade-runners Han had ever known. Roa smiled, looking as pleasantly paternal and trustwor-thy as ever. "Passing through, just like everyone else, son, and I thought I recognized you." Roa was carrying an ex-pensive command case, a compact, self-contained business office. He wore a conservative beige suit with soft white shoes and rainbow girth-sash. "You remember Lwyll, I'm sure."
The woman introduced by Roa had been standing to one side. Now she came forward. "How's it been with you, Han? " she asked in that rich voice he recalled so well. Lwyll hadn't gone as far to flesh as her husband; she was still a striking woman with masses of wavy white-blond hair and an elegant face. Han thought that she certainly didn't look-how many Standard years older?
Seeing them brought back a surge of memory of the fast, furious time he had spent working for Roa, when he had tired of trying to be just one more honest, unassuming spacer a few credits away from poverty, like uncounted others wan-dering the stars, having abandoned a planet and a life.
It had been Roa who had taken Han on his first exhilarat-ing, harrowing Kessel Run-very nearly his last. In Roa's organization Han had risen quickly with a reputation for tak-ing mad chances, daring any odds, running fearsome risks in the pursuit of illegal profit.
But they had parted company a long time ago, and honor among thieves was a more romantic myth than a dependable institution. Han's immediate reaction on seeing Roa was pleasure, but close on its heels was suspicion that this wasn't altogether an accident. Could word be out already, carrying a price on Han's head, through the interstellar underworld?
Still, Roa showed no sign of hailing the Espos. Fiolla cleared her throat, and Han made introductions. Roa waved at Han's lack of gunbelt. "So you're out of the game, too, eh? Well, I don't blame you, Han. Bowed out myself, just after we parted company. Lwyll and I had one close call too many. And, after all, doing business isn't too unlike our old line of work. A background in felony can be a real plus. What's your new line of endeavor?"
"A collections agency. Han Solo Associates, Limited." "Ah? Sounds like your ideal; you always fought for what you had coming. How's your old sidekick, the Wook? Do you ever see any of the others? Tregga maybe, or even Von-zel? "
"Tregga's doing life at hard labor on Akrit'tar; they caught him before he could dump a load of chak-root. Sonniod's running a delivery service, living hand to mouth. The Briil twins are dead; they shot it out with a patrol cruiser out in the Tion Hegemony. And Vonzel messed up an emergency landing; most of what's left of him will be in a life-support clinic for good. He started a regular one-man run on the organ banks. "
Roa shook his head sadly. "Yes, I'd forgotten how the deck is stacked. Few make it, Han. "
He came back to the present. Squaring his shoulders, he dipped two fingers into his gaudy sash and drew out a business card. "Fifth largest import-export firm in this part of space," he boasted. "We've got some of the best tax-and-tariff men in the business. Drop around one of these days, and we'll talk over old times."
Han tucked away the card. Roa had turned to his wife. "I'll see that our baggage is transferred. You make sure our shuttle reservation's confirmed, my dear. " He looked wistful for a moment. "We're lucky to be out of it, aren't we, Han?"
"Yeah, Roa, we sure are." The older man clapped him on the shoulder, made a polite leave-taking to Fiolla, and marched away.
Lwyll, waiting until her husband was gone, gave Han a knowing, amused look. "You're not out of it at all, are you, Han? No, I can tell; not Han Solo. Thanks for not telling him. " Lwyll touched his cheek once and left.
"You've got interesting friends" was Fiolla's only com-ment, but her perspective on him had changed. Youthful looks belied the fact that he was a survivor in a calling with a very high rate of attrition.
Watching Roa's retreating back, Han thought about tax-and-tariff men and fingered the business card. "Solo, hey, wake up!" Fiolla assailed him. "It's our necks we're sup-posed to be preoccupied with here."
He sauntered off toward the interstellar reservations desks. Things could be worse, Han reflected.
"Bugging your eyes out at them won't help," said Fiolla, referring to the gambling tables and other games of chance in the swank wagering compartment just off the passenger liner's main salon. She was wearing a sheer, clinging gown and soft evening slippers of polychromatic shimmersilk. She had brought the outfit with her, packed away in her upper-right thigh pouch and lower-left calf stuffpocket, on the assumption that her coveralls would do for all but the most formal places. She wore it now for a change of pace and a morale booster. Han still wore his ship clothes, but had closed his collar.
"We could go over what we know so far," she proposed. "That's all we've been doing since we came onboard," he grimaced.
That wasn't entirely true. They had spoken of any number of things during the trip; he found her a spirited and amusing companion, much more so than any of the other passengers, aside from a frustrating tendency to keep her stateroom door locked during the liner's "night." But they had exchanged stories.
For instance, Fiolla had explained to him how she and her assistant, Magg, had been doing an audit on Bonadan when her portable command-retrieval computer terminal malfunc-tioned. She had turned to Magg's, which, having a more comprehensive cybernetic background, was a more compli-cated instrument with a number of keyboard differences. Some miskeying or accident had opened up a restricted in-formational pocket in Bonadan's system. There she had found records of the slavery ring's activities and the notation of Zlarb's impending payoff.
Han's eyes were still riveted to players trying their luck or skill at Point Five, Bounce, Liar's Cut, Vector, and a half-dozen other games. For two Standard timeparts, ever since coming aboard the passenger liner Lady of Mindor, he had been trying to come up with a way to get into a game. Now that he was completely rested, inactivity was nearly intolerable.
Fiolla had absolutely refused to back him, though Han had promised bountiful returns on her investment. He then pointed out that if she hadn't squandered money on separate accommodations, she would have had plenty to loan him.
I "I didn't have time to brush up on my hand-to-hand" had been her retort. "And besides, if you're such a good gam-bler, how come you're flying around in that cookie-box freighter instead of a star yacht?"
He changed the subject. "We've been on this mud cart for two Standard timeparts. To get to Ammuud! No wonder I'm going crazy; the Falcon could've gotten us there in the tune it took these idiots to clear port."
He rose from the little table- where they had eaten an in-different meal. "At least we'll make planetfall soon. Maybe I'll go run my clothes through the robo-valet one more time for fun."
She caught his
wrist. "Don't be so depressed. And please don't leave me here alone; I'm afraid that priest of Ninn will corner me for another lecture on the virtues of formalistic abstinence. And no comments! Come on; I'll play you a game of Starfight. That we can afford."
Not many passengers remained in the lounge, for the Lady of Mindor was due to reenter normal space shortly; most of them were packing or making other last-minute preparations. He gave in and they crossed to the bank of coin games.
She mimicked his rangy walk, swaggering along next to him, arms dangling a bit and shoulders slumped back. There was an exaggerated sway to her hips as she swept the room arrogantly with narrowed eyes and an invisible blaster weighting her side, right in step with him. When he noticed, he recognized himself at once. He glared around the salon in case anyone was inclined to laugh. "Will you quit that?" he said out of the side of his mouth. "Some-body's liable to call you out."
She chuckled. "Then they'll stop a blaster bolt, hand-some; I've been studying with the master." He found himself laughing, as she'd intended.
The Starfight game consisted of two curved banks of mon-itors and controls, almost surrounding each of the two play-ing stations. Between them was a large holotank with detailed star charts. With the stacks and stacks of controls, each player sent his myriad ships out to do battle in computer modeled deepspace.
He stopped her as she was about to drop a coin into the game. "I've never been too partial to Starfight," he ex-plained. "It's too much like work."
"What about a last stroll through the promenade?"
It was as good a diversion as any. They ascended the curved staircase to find they had the promenade to themselves. The novelty of the place must have worn off for the other passen-gers. A single pane of transparisteel ten meters long and five high curved to follow the ship's hull, showing them the tan-gled luminosity of hyperspace. They stared with the age-old fascination, their human minds and eyes trying to impose order on the chaos beyond the transparisteel so that, at times, they believed they saw shapes, surfaces, or fluxes.
She noticed he was still distracted: "You're thinking about Chewie, aren't you?"
A shrug. "He'll be all right. I just hope the big lug didn't worry himself sick when we were overdue and start shedding or something."
The ship's public-address system announced final warning of transition, though it was for crew members rather than passengers. Shortly thereafter Fiolla pointed and breathed a soft exclamation as the distortions and discord of hyperspace melted away and they gazed out at a field of stars. Due to the liner's position they could see neither Ammuud nor its pri-mary.
"How long to-" Fiolla was saying, when emergency klaxons began hooting all through the ship. The lighting flickered and died and was replaced by far dimmer emer-gency illumination. The outcries of frightened passengers could be heard as distant echoes in the passageways.
"What's happening?" Fiolla yelled over the din. "A drill?"
"It's no drill," he said. "They've shut down everything but emergency systems; they must be channeling power into their shields."
He grabbed her hand and started back for the staircase. "Where are we going?" she hollered:
"The nearest escape-pod station or lifeboat bay" was his shouted answer.
The salon was deserted. As they got into the passageway the entire liner rocked under them. Han recovered with the agility of a seasoned spacer, keeping his balance and stop-ping Fiolla just before she collided with a bulkhead.
"We've been hit! " he called. As if to underscore what he said, they heard massive airtight doors sliding into place au-tomatically throughout the ship. The Lady of Mindor had taken hull damage of some sort and been breached.
A steward came running down the passageway with a medipack under one arm. When Han saw he wasn't about to stop, he grabbed a double handful of the man's heavily braided jacket.
"Let go," the steward said, trying to twist free. "You're supposed to proceed to your quarters. All passengers pro-ceed to quarters."
Han shook him. "First tell me what's going on! " "Pirates! They shot out the main drive as soon as we made transition from hyperspace! " The news shocked Han so much that he released his grip.
As he ran off on his way, the steward shouted back at them. "Return to your quarters, you fools! We're being boarded!"
Part 7
"THIS vessel is a fraud, " Spray announced, keying his next move into the gameboard in the Millennium Falcon's forward compartment.
Chewbacca took just enough time from what he was do-ing-analyzing Spray's unorthodox stratagem-to snarl threateningly.
Spray, who had grown more used to the Wookiee's out-bursts, didn't flinch much at all. He was dividing his time between the compartment's technical station and the game-, board, giving the Falcon's first mate a very difficult match. while running a combination inventory and inspection of the ship out of a sense of duty to Interstellar Collections Limited. Chewbacca permitted it more to keep the skip-tracer busy than anything else, but this slandering of the Falcon, if un-checked, could only lead to retribution.
Come to think of it, the Wookiee reflected, the Tynnan wasn't a bad technical pilot. He had even assisted on the liftoff from Bonadan, once Chewbacca had judged that Han and Fiolla had won enough time to get offworld. Spray had copi-loted and aided in hyperspace transition with a fussy profi-ciency, though he'd been startled to learn that Han and Chewbacca habitually spaced by themselves, Han reaching back to his left to carry out navigator's chores and the Wookiee leaning to his right to run the commo board when needed.
"The exterior is a deception," Spray was continuing. "Why, some of the equipment you've installed is restricted to military use; are you aware of that? And her armament rating's way too high, as is her lift/mass ratio. How did Cap-tain Solo ever get a Waiver to operate within the Authority?" ,
The Wookiee, cupping his hirsute chin in both hands, leaned down even closer to the gameboard, ignoring the question. Even if he had been able to communicate elo-quently with Spray, he wouldn't have explained about the Waiver, which had involved an amazing variety of lawbreak-ing and the total destruction of the covert Authority facility known as Stars' End.
Miniature holomonsters waited on the circular game-board, throwing challenges to one another. Chewbacca's de-fenses had been penetrated by a lone combatant from Spray's forces. The question of external versus internal threat was a very subtle one; involving closely matched win/lose param-eters. The Wookiee's nose scrunched in thought. He reached a hairy finger out very slowly and punched his next move up on the game's keyboard, then reclined on the curving accel-eration couch, arm pillowing his head, his long legs crossed. With his free hand he scratched his other arm, which the somatigenerative effect of the flaking synth-flesh had made itchy.
"Uh-oh," blurted Blue Max, who was following the con-test from his habitual place in Bollux's open thorax. The 'droid sat on a pressure keg among the other clutter to one side of the compartment, amid plastic pallets, hoisting tog-gles and a rebuilt fuel enricher that Han hadn't gotten around to installing yet. The computer probe's photoreceptor swiv-eled to track on Spray as the Tynnan returned to the board and made his next move without hesitation.
Spray's lone combatant had been a decoy. Now one of his supporting monsters slithered across the board and, after a brief battle, threw Chewbacca's defenses wide open.
"It's the Eighth Ilthmar gambit; he drew you out with that loner. He's got you," Blue Max observed helpfully. Chewbacca was filling his lungs for a vituperative outpour-
ing and levering himself up to the board again when the navi-computer clamored for attention. The starship's first mate forgot his ire and scrambled up from the acceleration couch, but not before he cleared the board of his humiliating defeat. He has-tened off to prepare for the reversion to normal space.
"And just look at this; some of these systems are fluidic!" Spray squeaked after him, whiskers aquiver, waving a tech readout screen. "What is this, a starship or a distillery?"
; The Wookiee paid him no heed. "Good game, Spray," attested Max, who was himself a fair player.
"He held me for three extra moves," admitted the skip= tracer. "I wish things were going as well with this technical survey. Everything's so modified that I can't trace the basic specifications. "
"Maybe we can help," Max piped brightly.
"Mar is conversant with ship's systems," Bollux said. "He might be able to dig out the information you require. " "Just what I need! Please, step over to the tech station! "
Spray was behind the 'droid, webbed feet scrabbling on the deckplates, pushing him to a seat at the station. As Bollux sat heavily into the acceleration chair, Max extended an adaptor, the one Chewbacca had repaired after the encounter with the slavers.
"I'm in," Max announced as technical readouts began marching across scopes and screens at high speed. "What d'you want to know, Spray?"
Star Wars - Han Solo's Revenge Page 10
