Pirate's Price

by Lou Anders

  Well, the woman sounded pretty desperate. She must have wanted those rubies for something very important. And where there is great desperation, there is also great opportunity.

  So I took that moment to reveal myself.

  Emerging from my hiding place, I cried, “Hello! Friends, this is your lucky day. You need a pirate for the job! My name is Hondo Ohnaka, and I just happen to be such a pirate!”

  Well, you can imagine I made quite an entrance.

  Three jaws dropped at once. The woman’s, the man’s, and the big, furry brown creature’s—which I now recognized. Suddenly, all the growls and grunts made sense. It was a Wookiee.

  Unfortunately, I found myself looking at the business end of a blaster and a bowcaster.

  “Who the blazes are you?” the man said. He was young, with brown hair, wearing a cropped brown jacket, knee-high boots, and a thigh holster. His outfit had a kind of slapdash swashbuckling look to it that I appreciated, the connoisseur of fashion that I am.

  “Did you not listen? I am Hondo Ohnaka, here to solve your problems. But just whose blaster barrel do I have the pleasure of staring down?”

  “The name’s Solo. Han Solo. And this is Chewbacca. But wait…I’m the one asking the questions here, mister. How did you get on my ship? I don’t take kindly to stowaways.”

  “A stowaway!” I said. “Why, the very word is distasteful in my mouth, even if it is circumstantially true. But I am no mere stowaway. I am a pirate, a great pirate. And today I am the answer to your prayers.”

  “I didn’t pray any,” said Solo. Then his eyes widened in sudden realization. “A pirate, eh? You weren’t stowing away. I bet you were trying to steal my ship when we came back!”

  “See?” I said. “You’ve only just met me, and already I am demonstrating the very credentials you are looking for!”

  Well, the man made a face at that—the kind of face that says, Let’s just shoot him now and toss him out the airlock later. I thought it better to move the conversation forward. So I glanced around. “This is a very unusual freighter. May I know the name of this fine vessel?”

  “You haven’t heard of her?” said Solo, looking a little bit crestfallen. “This is the Millennium Falcon.”

  “The Millennium Falcon! What a coincidence!” I cried. “My last ship was called the Centennial Peregrine.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he objected.

  “Why not?” I said. “You can’t prove it wasn’t. Anyway, I stole it and crashed it in the same day. After that, it is a small thing to name it, too. Or do you want it to have died without a name?”

  “I’m sure whoever you stole it from had their own name for it.”

  “You raise a good point, my friend. With such clever insights, I can see this is going to be a very profitable partnership.”

  “This isn’t going to be anything.” He turned to the Wookiee. “Chewie, toss our pirate here out an airlock.”

  A furry hand grabbed me by the collar.

  Now, if a Wookiee wants to toss you out an airlock, out an airlock you go. Possibly in several pieces. So I turned to the woman, this Mahjo Reeloo. She was looking at me, overcome I assume with joy at seeing me again—but also, it must be admitted, with some confusion.

  “My dear friend, it is good to see you again so soon. Before I am unceremoniously and so rudely excluded from your expedition, will you please tell this fine Wookiee that you asked me for my help earlier this very day?”

  “I did ask for his help,” Mahjo said to Chewbacca. “After he helped me against some angry Cloddograns. But…you didn’t know I was here. You couldn’t have…you couldn’t have planned to steal the very ship I was chartering.”

  “I didn’t need to know. That’s how good I am. Things just have a way of working out when Hondo is involved.”

  At that moment, a voice came over the ship’s comm.

  “Attention, unidentified Corellian freighter, you are believed to be harboring a suspect wanted in conjunction with an incident at Imperial Garrison Bardelberan 7.”

  “What?” said Solo. “I’m not harboring any suspect.” He looked at Mahjo Reeloo.

  “I’ve never been to Bardelberan 7 in my life,” she said.

  “Never?” he asked.

  “I don’t get around much,” she replied.

  Then he looked at me.

  “It’s you, isn’t it? What did you do to get them so riled up?”

  I gave him my most endearing smile.

  “Whatever it was, I’m sure it was a misunderstanding. But there is no sense crying once the bantha milk is spilt. Perhaps now would be a good time for you to demonstrate just how fast the Millennium Falcon is.”

  “Or maybe I just hand you over to them.” Then Solo turned and ran to the cockpit. We all followed him, where we saw, making its approach toward us, a TIE/sh shuttle. With that ship, the Empire could cut its way in if we did not open an airlock.

  But I had no fear. I knew Han Solo was bluffing. After all, he was the pilot of a ship with many, many compartments for smuggling contraband. Obviously, he was a man who wanted to keep his secrets. I doubted very much that he wanted the Empire boarding the Falcon any more than I did.

  “Am I the only thing on this ship for the Empire to find?” I asked. And again I flashed him my so endearing smile. “Is there nothing else you want to keep out of their hands?”

  Surprisingly, it was Mahjo Reeloo who answered first.

  “They can’t search us,” she said. “Really, they can’t.” She sounded so very insistent. I wondered what she was carrying—and where she was carrying it.

  Solo looked from me to the woman and back. Then he turned to look at his big fuzzy friend. The Wookiee shrugged his enormous shoulders.

  “Perfect! This is just perfect!” Han Solo paused and pointed his finger at me in a most annoying fashion. “Whatever happens, I’m holding you responsible for all of this.”

  Solo activated his comm unit.

  “Negative on that boarding. We have, uh, an escaped swarm of, um, Sortuvian brain moths currently infesting our cargo hold. You wouldn’t want to board us.”

  “Corellian freighter, that is not acceptable. Please stand by and prepare to be boarded.”

  “Um, I don’t recommend it,” stalled Solo. “The brain moths haven’t been fed in several rotations. They, um, look pretty hungry. For, um, brains.”

  “That is not our concern,” said the voice on the comm. “Our boarding party will be wearing their helmets. They’re rated against Sortuvian brain moth bites. Now comply with our instructions or we will open fire.”

  “No, um, these have, uh, very big teeth.”

  Solo gave us an apologetic look.

  “Mmmmmmrrrrrr,” complained Chewbacca.

  “You want to give it a try?” he asked the Wookiee.

  “Do you think maybe they bought it?” asked Mahjo.

  And then came that delightful keeooo-keeooo sound as our pursuers fired warning shots.

  “Does that sound like they bought it to you?” said Solo. “We’re under attack.”

  Keeooo-keeooo went the laser cannons.

  They were still warning shots, but soon they would be the real thing.

  Solo was powering up the hyperdrive as fast as he could and began to input the coordinates for Dhandu.

  Meanwhile, I looked out the window and saw that the TIE shuttle was very close.

  “My friends,” I said, “now would be a good time.”

  Solo grumbled at that, but then he grinned. “I suggest you both hang on. You wanted to see what the Millennium Falcon can do? Baby, show them what you can do.”

  He flipped a switch.

  And the ship made a noise—a kind of powering down sound. It went dvvv—vvvvv—vvvvvv—dnkkk….

  And nothing happened.

  “That is…um, most impressive,” I said, trying my best to be positive in what must have been an embarrassing situation for him.

  “What?” Solo hollered. “Chewie! Where’s my hyperd
rive?”

  He began to frantically flip switches. He even banged a fist on the console. Then he turned a face to me that was almost comical it was so angry.

  “You messed with my ship! Didn’t you?”

  Keeooo-keeooo went the laser cannons.

  K-toom! K-toom!

  No more warning shots. The Falcon rocked under the blasts from the TIE’s cannons.

  “I resent your implication,” I said as I regained my balance. “And here I thought we were starting to be friends.”

  K-toom! K-toom!

  Solo frantically flipped a few more levers.

  “We’re not friends,” he said. “Now what did you do?”

  “Not friends?” I was wounded. “Companions at least? Would you say we are friendly acquaintances?”

  “No!” shouted Solo. “We aren’t anything! Now tell me what you did.”

  Keeooo-keeooo! More laser cannons.

  K-toom! K-toom! More rocking of the ship.

  “What. Did. You. Do?”

  “Now that I think of it,” I said, “I might have placed an interrupt on the conduit to the hyperdrive or something.”

  “An interrupt!”

  “Or something.”

  “To my ship?”

  “In my defense, I thought you might be angry discovering me on your ship, and I might need some insurance.”

  “That doesn’t make me like you any better.”

  “But it does make you need me now,” I said.

  Keeooo-keeooo! K-toom! K-toom!

  “Will you two stop arguing,” said Mahjo, “and fix it!”

  I started to reach for the controls, but then I hesitated.

  “Not until he says that Hondo is coming with you. You all agree that I am a part of this big heist on the Undervaults of Gwongdeen? We are equal partners in this endeavor?”

  Keeooo-keeooo! K-toom! K-toom!

  I put on my best sabacc face.

  “Or we can all sit here and wait to be boarded. If we are not blown apart first.”

  Solo looked like he would prefer to shoot me. But he growled, “I’ll consider it.”

  “Well, that I can work with.”

  “Good. Now fix my ship.”

  I scooted him out of my way—“Scoot, scoot, scoot”—and set about removing the interrupt on the conduit to the hyperdrive.

  “See? Already Hondo is helping the team.”

  “We’re not a team,” said Solo.

  “Grrrrrrrraaaaaarrrrrph,” said Chewbacca.

  “You know I don’t like people touching my stuff,” said Solo, and he shoved me rudely aside. But the hyperdrive powered up correctly under his hands. It made a pleasant humming sound.

  “Grrrgaaggaa,” said Chewbacca.

  “Don’t thank him,” said Solo. “It’s his fault it was broken in the first place.”

  Keeooo-keeooo! K-toom! K-toom!

  We were shaken fiercely on our feet as the TIE shuttle fired at us at what was nearly close range.

  “Now is not the time to argue over who broke what,” I said. “You were going to show us what the Falcon can do.”

  “Hang on,” said Solo. “This time for real.”

  “Aarrr wgh ggwaaah,” said Chewbacca.

  And then we heard the wonderful ffffffffvooooom as the Millennium Falcon jumped into hyperspace.

  We had made it!

  “Oh, that gets the heart pumping,” I said as we all gazed at the welcome kaleidoscope of blue lights swirling before us. “I find last-minute escapes are always the best, don’t you agree?”

  Solo gave me another of his exaggerated stares.

  “We wouldn’t have had to make a last-minute escape if you hadn’t sneaked aboard my ship in the first place.”

  “True, true,” I said. “Fate has indeed brought us together.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Solo. “Chewie, we can still toss this joker out the airlock if we want.”

  “Awwwrrrrrrrr,” said Chewbacca with a nod. That was neither agreeing nor disagreeing, so I thought it best to move the conversation to better topics.

  “Tell us your plan, Mahjo. Tell Hondo, how are we going to get our Novian rubies, eh? You know they are quite rare and valuable. Enough to make every one of us very rich.”

  At the word rich, I saw Solo’s eyes screw up and go all far away. Greed is a wonderful thing, especially if it stops a Wookiee from tossing you out an airlock.

  “You really think you can get in the Undervaults?” he asked. And I knew that we were heading for profits.

  “I can,” she said. “If he can get our key.”

  “And I can get your key,” I said. “Acquiring things is a specialty of mine.”

  So Mahjo Reeloo told us of her plan.

  Now, this is the daring bit.

  Have you ever been to Gwongdeen? Have you seen its vast Undervaults? You must have heard their reputation for security. People come from all over the galaxy to put things there they do not want other people to have. Or in some cases, to leave things for other people to come and pick up—messages that cannot be intercepted. It is a very secure place for anything that needs to be kept safe.

  You see, the safety-deposit boxes of the Undervaults of Gwongdeen are very special. Each owner is given a unique key, and the key has a special code. As long as the owner is carrying it, the code resets once every standard rotation. But if the key is lost or stolen, well, the code will not reset the next day, and the key will no longer work. And there will be no way to open the box. Very clever. Very secure.

  Now, the owner of the box with the rubies, he almost never visited Gwongdeen. But he was right then on the third moon of Dhandu. And Dhandu was just on the very outer edge of what a fast, fast ship could fly in a day and still hope to reach Gwongdeen before the key code expired and time was up.

  “So that’s why you needed the Falcon,” said Solo.

  “That’s right,” said Mahjo. “She’s the only ship that can get me from Dhandu to Gwongdeen in time to use the key. That is, if she’s as fast as you say she is.”

  “She’s fast, all right,” said Solo.

  “Arrrrggggg,” said Chewbacca.

  “Good point, Chewie. We can get you there, but how do you lift the key without its owner knowing it’s been taken?”

  “That, my friends, is where Hondo comes in. If I am part of your venture and promised a fair and equal share of the profits.”

  “I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you,” said Solo.

  “You said you would think about it,” I reminded him.

  “I’m still thinking,” said Solo. “And I don’t like it any better.”

  “I vote we let him in,” said Mahjo. “He helped me before, and I believe he can do what he says he can.”

  “Thank you, my dear,” I said to her. Then I turned to the Wookiee.

  And I surprised everyone once again when I said, “Grroooogrrraaaawrrrrrrrrmph.”

  You may not know it, but Hondo can speak Shyriiwook, the language of the Wookiees. I am good with guttural tongues, though I confess I speak Ugnaught with a slight accent. I “oink” when I should “groink.” But what I said then to Chewbacca was an old Wookiee proverb. It is hard to express in Basic, but it goes something like this: “People often mistakenly judge a tree by its branches, but a wise Wookiee knows its strength is in its roots.”

  Well, that surprised Chewbacca. He looked at me differently after that. Perhaps he realized there was more to old Hondo than he’d at first thought. Then he turned to Han Solo and shrugged.

  “Fine,” said Solo, “side with him if you want to. I don’t care. I just hope we don’t all come to regret this.”

  “Then it’s settled,” I said, slapping my hands together with enthusiasm. “So on to Dhandu we go, and to profits!”

  “There better be profits,” said Solo. “Now get out of my cockpit.”

  I clucked my tongue at his rudeness, but Chewbacca offered to show us to the main hold, where we would be more comfortable anyway, and
where he had a holochess table we could play to pass the time.

  “Thank you for your hospitality, my friend,” I said to the Wookiee. Chewbacca shrugged. “You are nicer than some.”

  “Grrrrraaaarrrrr,” said Chewbacca. It is hard to translate, but essentially he was apologizing for his companion’s behavior. Wookiees are actually very polite, in their Wookiee way. You have to be polite when a misunderstanding can easily result in someone getting their arms pulled from their sockets.

  “There is no need to apologize,” I continued. “I see there is a depth of friendship between the two of you, one which will only grow.”

  “Mmmmmmrrrrr,” agreed Chewbacca.

  “You misunderstand,” I said. “If I may give you some advice, I would warn you against such attachments, which can only lead to heartache, or the destruction of your base on Florrum.”

  You see, I had a strange feeling—a kind of hole in my chest that I thought could only be filled with the Millennium Falcon, or perhaps some Novian rubies.

  Chewbacca responded with another Wookiee proverb. It was about a type of native tree that joins roots with others underground. I knew what he was doing. He was implying that my status as a loner was a weakness. But, alas, that was a truth I was not yet ready to hear.

  So I thanked him, and I sat down for a game of holochess with Mahjo.

  She, of course, could not understand anything Chewbacca said.

  “What was all that about?” she asked.

  “He was just looking forward to our enormous profits,” I lied as I sent my Ghhhk to attack her Grimtaash.

  “You know,” said Mahjo, “there is more to life than profits.”

  “Oh, that is a good one,” I said, nearly busting my side with laughter. But then I noticed she wasn’t smiling.

  “Oh,” I said, “you were being serious.”

  “I just mean, sometimes you have to do things for a higher reason.”

  I studied her then.

  “My dear, there is the Empire. And there are those who live under the boot of the Empire’s rules. Then there are those few brave souls, like myself, who make their own rules.”

  “And no other path?” she said. “Nothing that would make a difference for those under the boot?”

  “What an interesting thing for a fellow ‘scoundrel’ to say. You are certainly unique, Mahjo Reeloo.”