free See-Three unit and an astromech with nobody's name on them."
He fished in his sporran again, and brought out a red-burnished
twenty-credit cylinder, which he dropped into the half-full basket of
credits on top of Artoo's cap. "Buy your tickets in a human name--Igpek
Droon really is a small-time trader, if you want to use his--and get
yourselves out of here. Good luck. Thanks for the music."
There was another crescendo of mayhem, closer this time, and with it the
bass roar of ion cannons. Yarbolk Yemm shifted to the front of his belt the
small recording devices he wore, and scampered off across the bridge in the
direction of the noise, a bright, wet little form of pink-and-blue silk and
matted fur. A moment later combatants came pouring out of the narrow street
visible some twenty meters farther down the canal, a knot of uniformed
Drovians, a couple of humans, and a Ho'Din all defending themselves against
a much larger contingent of
differently uniformed Drovians, whose shaved crania bore long topknots in
which random shapes of colored plastic and rubber had been braided--animal
totems, Threepio's programming informed him, and a lively trade item from
the larger interplanetary corporations seeking to purchase the bulk protein
from the Gopso'o slug ranches.
"Good gracious!" exclaimed the protocol droid. "Artoo, that's Captain Solo!"
Heavily armed and aided by strategic betrayals of the outlying guard
stations, the Gopso'o clansmen poured into the town. In the enclaves within
Bagsho itself where the Gopso'o lived in low-paid, ill-educated obscurity,
they emerged from their foul-water tenements with new weapons in their
hands, shouting the names of their murdered ancestors and of the Twenty-Five
Personifications of Virtue and firing on their oppressors and anyone they
associated with their oppressors.
"Stinkin' scumtoes," growled Sergeant Hral Piksoar, voice nasal and bubbly
around the zwil plug because its pincers were fully occupied with the ion
cannon it was trying to site. "Well, you better be proud of your handiwork,
Solo . . ."
"Me proud?" yelped Solo, and flattened behind the corner of an alley wall to
return fire. "I never even heard of Nim Drovis until last week!" Down in
this district the canals hadn't been disinfected for weeks. At the sound of
voices and the trample of feet, the scummy, rain-pocked waters bulged and
surged, and Han could see the molds beginning to emerge, glistening vilely
in the dim reflection of street-lamps blocks away.
"Republic'll send us troops, they said. No need to have big standing armies.
The festerin' Republic will help out if there's need. Well, we sent for
troops, pal . . ."
"Captain Solo had nothing to do with the dispatch of emergency forces," put
in Dr. Oolos severely. He leaned a long viridian arm around the corner and
popped off four or five shots at almost complete ran-dom--Han guessed the
physician had never had a weapon in his hands in his life--and ducked back
under a storm of return fire. "There is a prague in the military bases of
this sector . . ."
"All I know is your festerin' Republic said they'd be here, and they
festerin' ain't." Hral Piksoar cursed as laser fire clipped the back of its
rearmost tentacle. "And where have your patrols been that that kind of
armament's gettin' through, hanh? Those maggot suckers got canister guns,
for the love of Truth and Beauty!" It spit a yellowish stream of zwil.
"Lando!" Han thumbed the toggle on the comlink, keeping a worried eye on the
molds creeping toward them in a slobbering orange line.
"We're on our way back. The Gopso'o are overrunning this whole sector.
Alert the port guards if they don't know already and tell 'em we're coming
through. Have the Falcon ready for liftoff the minute we're on board."
"What the blue blazes is goin' on." yelled Lando's distracted voice back.
"We already know about the Gopso'o, old buddy, we just got done drivin' 'em
off the docking pads. You better get here in the next ten minutes or there
ain't gonna be liftoff."
Solo cursed, and fired a blast of hot plasma at the oncoming molds, which
melted in an unbelievably foul-smelling sizzle under the blast itself and
kept right on coming. At the head of the alley, Hral Piksoar and its fellow
troopers were holding their own, though two were down, Dr. Oolos plastering
in synthflesh and cauterizing arteries with grim speed. It would be fairly
simple, thought Han, for himself or the long-legged Ho'Din to dash, jump,
and spring through the mottled field of advancing molds--they moved in
clumps, and an agile human could get through between them if he or she kept
moving--leaving the bottom-heavy Drovians behind. By the same token, once
they were through the molds and across the canal--there was a ramshackle
plank bridge about ten meters farther down--the oncoming Gopso'o would be
too slow and heavyset to pursue through the molds.
His eyes went immediately to the high walls that hemmed them in.
Since from time immemorial there had never been a day on Nim Drovis without
torrential rain, the architecture of Bagsho was of a solid order, heavy
stone walls broken by lines of the thick timbers that supported additional
floors. Even in these shoddy tenement districts by the Thousand Stinking
Ditches, this type of building prevailed, the residents using the round,
projecting ends of the floor timbers as fastening points for balconies,
plank gardens, and bird traps. Han tore the length of emergency cable from
his belt, primed the stubby firing tube, and shot
the cable hook upward, to lodge in a timber some five meters down the alley
and nearly that distance above the mold-crawling pavement.
"Can you swing?" he yelled to Hral Piksoar, pointing to the low balcony
above the canal bank beyond the advancing molds and close to the plank
bridge.
The sergeant regarded the thin cable with extreme doubt--Drovi-ans averaged
twice the weight of moderately sized adult humansbut Han said, "It's tested
at a thousand."
"What about my pals?" Hral Piksoar nodded back to the two downed troopers.
"Are you kidding, Sarge." said the larger of the two, struggling to sit up.
"Between the slime-festering Gopso'o and them molds, believe me, I'll try
it. I got one good tentacle still."
At their weight, Drovians are not good acrobats, but by scrambling up a
makeshift heap of boards, broken doors, and furniture looted from the ground
floor of one of the buildings opening into the alleyway, they could get
enough height to make the swing to a low balcony, and thence clamber down
and across the plank bridge. There was no problem of them throwing back the
weighted end of the cable to the next swinger--Drovian tentacles are like
mechanical pistons and with that many different sensory devices on their
bodies, their aim is exceptional.
Han and Dr. Oolos went last, maintaining cover fire against the Gopso'o who
maneuvered, crouching, everywhere on the street outside and on the balconies
of the various tenements above street level. It would only be a matter of
time, Han knew, before they made their way through the mazes of alleys and
tenements to surround the retreating party; only a matter of time, he
reflected dourly, before the masses of advancing molds grew too thick and
too insistent to be driven back.
Since their first run-in with the Gopso'o, every summons Hral Piksoar had
sent out for reinforcements had been met with, "We'll be there when we can."
A polite euphemism, Han knew, for "You're on your own, pal."
Laser fire skinned the wall above him, tearing his face with burning chips
of rock. He aimed for the muzzle flash but didn't know whether he scored. No
body fell from the balcony where it had originated, but no return fire came,
either. Behind him, Dr. Oolos yelled, "Solo!"
The last Drovian had swung to safety. The molds were thick over the street
now, churning sluggishly, the whole enclosed seam of the alley rank with
oozing digestive acids and with the smoke of charring where the Drovians
were forcing them to keep their distance. "Can you make it?" yelled Solo.
After the physician had volunteered to escort him back to the docking
bay--Solo suspected out of a very real fear that the Drovian troops would
abandon him in the event of an attack--he'd hate to see the Ho'Din miss his
grip and have the flesh burned off his bones by carnivorous fungi.
Dr. Oolos fired off a last shot at the molds that were now,, only fractions
of a meter from his and Solo's boots. He caught the end of the cable the
waiting Drovians had flung to him, clambered up the pile of broken
furnishings. "I can but try."
"This way!" insisted Threepio, pausing in the mouth of one of the warren of
noisome, unpaved alleyways between the end of the bridge where they had
parted from Yarbolk, and the spot where they had last seen Solo and his
party duck around a corner. "I can hear the shooting!"
Artoo made no reply. He could have remarked that there was shooting all over
the district now--the shrill, zapping whine of hand blasters, the
unmistakable crunch of Caspel cannister shot, the vibrant roar of ion
cannons and blaster rifles--but did not. He only set off determinedly across
a small, muddy square.
"Artoo, don't be foolish!" cried the protocol droid, deeply distressed.
"Oh, dear, I'm afraid those circuits we couldn't get out of you on the Pure
Sabacc have disrupted your directional system! That alley won't take you
anywhere near where we last saw`' Captain Solo!"
Nevertheless, he toddled in pursuit of the determined astromech, well aware
that on his own he did not possess the information necessary to facilitate
Her Excellency's rescue. It was his responsibility to deliver Artoo safe and
sound to Captain Solo whether Artoo cooperated or not.
And to his great surprise, the next corner they rounded showed them Solo,
the tall Ho'Din, and the Drovian troops, just pelting across a plank bridge
while a much larger force of Gopso'o fired at them futilely from the other
side of an alleyway choked with slobbering, aggressive
orange and yellow fungi, like a knee-deep river of mucus between the
confining alley walls.
Unfortunately, Artoo had led them out of the maze several meters too far up
the alley, so that the Gopso'o, the molds, and the width of the canal lay
between the two droids and the fleeing Drovians. Amid a welter of blaster
fire Threepio called out, "Captain Solo! Captain Solo!"
but such were the vocal volume modulations necessary for a protocol droid,
his words did not carry over the razor-wire shriek of the blasters.
Even as Threepio was trying to ascertain how to get through the Gopso'o and
the molds--which though they could not digest the two droids they would
certainly gum up their means of locomotion--Solo, who was in the rear, made
it across the plank bridge and turned the cutting ray of his blaster on the
jerry-built catwalk, exploding it in a dazzle of flame and dropping it into
the canal.
Solo, the Ho'Din, and the Drovians disappeared at a run down the narrow
street beyond.
What ensued reminded Threepio of nothing so much as an obstacle course of
the sort invented by military computers to test the reflexes of humans and
droids--such droids as were specially fitted for military usage, he
reflected bitterly. Artoo, who seemed to know where he was going or to think
he did, led the way' around corners, across tiny squares where recent shell
holes from grenades or cannister shot were rapidly filling with muddy
rainwater, down narrow walkways above canals oozing with purulent, creeping
life. And everywhere there was shooting, small bands of topknotted or
nontopknotted natives of Nim Drovis firing at one another from doorways and
balconies, groups of them looting burning stores and houses with the oily
smoke thick in the air.
Bodies lay in the street, soaked with rain and half-covered, some of them,
with slowly feeding molds. In places the narrow streets were so torn up by
blaster shot and grenades that the underlying dirt, soaked with the pouring
gray' rain, made an impassable soup of muck. In others, barricades had been
erected of furniture, broken paving stones, and timbers, sometimes occupied
by combatants of one side or the other locked in deadly blaster duels,
sometimes festooned only with the dead.
"We have to find Captain Solo," nattered Threepio, catching his balance on
the wall of a narrow through-passage where the flooded goo came up to his
precisely articulated knees. "He will be here in search of Her Excellency,
of course. The Council must know by this time that something has befallen
her. Even without free communication, he'll be searching the sector."
Artoo, brown as if painted with a slurry of mud, tweeted in response.
"The docking bays!" cried Threepio. "Artoo! You're a genius! Of course
that's where they'll be going!"
They reached the docking bays only moments after the advancing Gopso'o
closed in around the spaceport facilities. Blaster fire splattered hot and
vicious among the wide, sheltered permacrete pads. In places the Drovian
troops had set up ion cannons, driving the Gopso'o back or holding them to
the few pads they'd managed to take over. Artoo stolidly led the way along
walls scorched by waves of smoking plasma, through baggage tunnels, and
under temporary plastic shelters burning in clouds of stinking smoke.
Threepio cried, "There!" as they emerged into the sheltered cargo porch
fronting the wide permacrete space of a bay, where the familiar shape of the
Millennium Falcon crouched, entry ramp down, like a great gray-and-rust heap
of junk in the streaming rain.
A spattering of blaster fire tore up the pavement before them. Two troops of
natives--one the uniformed Drovian troopers, the other a band of
Gopso'o--held the two entrances to the bay. Those under the same porch as
Artoo and Threepio were, unfortunately, the Gopso'o, a ragged assemblage of
ill-clad guerrilla fighters armed to the teeth with the finest of weaponry.
The Drovians under the other porch, which lay at ninety degrees, were fewer
in number, but Threepio could distinguish the red-and-vi
olet headstalks of
the Ho'Din who'd been with Solo, and, crouched behind a barricade, Captain
Han Solo himself.
"Captain Solo!" cried Threepio. "It's us! Don't leave us!"
More laser fire drowned his well-modulated voice. Solo broke cover, dashed
across the open pavement in a lightstorm of covering fire.
The Gopso'o in the porch fell back--Threepio could not but observe
that most of them were far inferior shots when compared with the
Drovians--he said to Artoo, "Now!" and called out to the sergeant of the
Drovians, "Let us through! We're friends!"
He called out--for better understanding--in Drovian, a language used chiefly
by Gopso'o; the ruling Drovians tended to speak Basic, even to one another.
A storm of shot drove them back.
Han Solo made a long rolling dive and plunged up the boarding ramp.
Someone within the ship was surely watching, for the ramp started to lift
the moment the captain's body touched its end. It almost literally gulped
him up, like a steel monster slurping up a treat.
Threepio made a despairing try at stepping out into the bay and retreated
hastily with a scorch mark across his stained and muddy chest perilously
close to his power-supply jacks.
"Don't leave us!"
White fire poured from the Millennium Falcon's vents.
Artoo let out a despairing wail.
The souped-up freighter tore a hole in the rain-black clouds and was gone.
Luke was still sufficiently furious the following evening to consider
telling Gerney Caslo to pick up his own smuggler drop and take it to
perdition in his pocket, but something Arvid said to him changed his mind.
It was only a chance remark, when Luke met the young farmer the following
day, to the effect that Caslo was Ashgad's business agent in Hweg Shul, but
it caused Luke to think. Ashgad had clearly been doing everything he could
to rouse the local Rationalists to fury. It didn't take many data to figure
out that it was to Ashgad's benefit to have a private army ready to drive
the Therans out of the gun stations and open the planet to trade. As the
wealthiest man Luke had so far encountered, heir to the crime boss
Beldorion, Ashgad would be in a position to act as middleman for the
community once trade started coming in.
Only for a few years, true, thought Luke. Did he think he could control the
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