Pirate's Price

by Lou Anders

  “Let’s go see what’s happening,” she suggested. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” But when we arrived at the cockpit, we found Solo and Chewbacca in a most agitated state.

  “What’s going on?” Mahjo asked.

  “Something’s interfering with the hyperspace lane,” Solo replied. “I’m reading numerous mass shadows.”

  “Mass shadows?” Mahjo gave me a questioning look. I realized she did not know what they were. We cannot all be pilots, after all, but a self-professed scoundrel used to traveling the backwaters of the galaxy should have encountered them before. I filed my suspicions away for later.

  “Supermassive objects in realspace such as suns, enormous planets, things like that,” I explained. “They distort hyperspace. The gravity of these large objects creates these ‘mass shadows,’ which can be very dangerous. So our navicomputer plots courses to avoid them.” I turned to Solo. “So why are these here? Have you plotted the coordinates wrong?”

  “I plotted them fine,” said Solo.

  “You were in a hurry,” I pointed out.

  “I’m always in a hurry,” he snapped. “Listen, old man, the Falcon has one of the most advanced navicomputers in the galaxy. She picked the right hyperspace lane, believe me.”

  Beside him, Chewbacca nodded.

  “Really?” I asked. “How did two such scoundrels as yourselves get such a fabulous navicomputer?”

  “That’s a story for another time,” Solo replied.

  “Very well. But if this is the right hyperspace lane, then what is causing these shadows?”

  Solo gave me an exasperated look and opened his mouth to say something.

  Then the ship rocked again. All of a sudden, a most disconcerting sight met my goggled eyes. The familiar blue kaleidoscopic tunnel of hyperspace vanished as we were thrown savagely back into realspace. But strewn across the velvety blackness, there was a fury of flowing, spirally burning matter.

  And we were heading for a very big chunk of it.

  “Look out!” cried Mahjo.

  And someone screamed. Okay, perhaps it was me.

  Solo gritted his teeth as he twisted the grips on the control wheel inward.

  The ship rose in a steep climb.

  And we missed being smashed to death by mere meters.

  But we had only avoided the immediate danger. Smaller bits of the burning space gunk thunked against the Falcon’s shields. Thunk-thunk-thunk.

  “Grrrumpg grrrumpgh grrrrrgeeeer,” said Chewbacca, consulting the navicomputer to see what was going on.

  “Of all the luck,” moaned Solo. Then he explained what Chewbacca had said for Mahjo’s benefit. “It looks like the main star of the Throffdon system went supernova twelve hours ago,” he said. “That’s just two and a half parsecs from the midpoint of this hyperspace lane.”

  “Of course,” I said. “The supernova would have ejected its material in at least a ten-parsec radius. That is what threw us out of hyperspace. There are going to be a lot of bumpy rides in this region today.”

  “Just a bumpy ride?” asked Mahjo.

  “My dear,” I said, “when I said ‘bumpy,’ what I meant was, any starship fool enough to be navigating this course today may find itself smashed into a million tiny pieces and scattered across light-years.”

  “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “The smart thing,” said Solo, “would be to get clear of this debris and wait for the navicomputer to plot us an alternate route. Of course, then the trip will take longer. Maybe days longer.”

  “We can’t!” said Mahjo. Again, I was struck by the intensity of her insistence. “If we don’t make it in a standard rotation,” she continued, “we might as well not go. And we can’t not go. Do you understand me? We can’t not go!”

  “Lady,” replied Solo, “I said that was the smart thing. I didn’t say it was the only thing.”

  “Do you mean…?” I asked.

  “Strap in, everyone,” said Solo. “We’re going for the bumpiest ride of your life.”

  And with that, he pushed the control throttle of the Falcon forward, and we sped ahead into nearly certain doom.

  “We just have to get through this,” Solo explained, “and then we can get back into the quickest hyperspace lane.”

  “Getting through it is the impossible part,” I said. “Well, it’s been a good life for Hondo. I just hope you all can say the same. Because this is foolishness even for fools.”

  My words, let me tell you, were not exaggeration. The space ahead was thick with the burning remains of the Throffdon star. And Solo and Chewbacca piloted the ship back and forth, between and around it all, swerving this way and that, that way and this.

  It was nerve-racking. It was fraught with the possibility of instant death.

  And the exploded star stuff, it wasn’t sitting still like good little blazing boulders of death for us to steer around. No, it was all moving—spinning over and over and twirling around at phenomenal speed.

  “Look out!” I said as a large fireball sped toward us.

  Solo spun the yoke to the left and worked the foot pedals in tandem, and the Falcon banked, veering away in the nick of time. Although we avoided a collision, we were not free. We heard a horrendous thunk as the aft shields of the ship were impacted.

  “That was very close,” I said.

  “I’d like to see any other pilot manage it,” said Solo with a cocky smile.

  “I wasn’t complimenting you,” I explained. “A few meters less, and we would all have been smashed apart.”

  “You don’t shut your mouth,” said Solo, “and you may find yourself smashed apart anyway. The Wookiee way.”

  I glanced at Chewbacca, who shrugged. But then Mahjo Reeloo hollered.

  “Look out!” she said, pointing. Two more masses of burning stellar matter were heading at us from opposite directions.

  Solo rolled the Falcon, tumbling over and over so the fiery masses passed under and above us, nearly touching.

  It was most disconcerting.

  But then we were clear, at least of those two immediate threats.

  “You know,” I said, “perhaps the Novian rubies are not worth this risk. If we returned to Dhandu, we could kidnap and ransom Jayyar. If his father is a weapon merchant as you say, he could probably pay us nearly the same value of the rubies.”

  “No,” said Mahjo. Perhaps a little too insistently. She saw my reaction, and she added, “I mean, the rubies are worth a lot more than any ransom.”

  “I’d pay any ransom right now if I could get you two to shut up,” said Solo as he rolled the ship again to avoid a large burning blob coming directly at us. “Or does the idea of being smeared all over space appeal to you?”

  “Technically,” I explained, “I think if we get hit, we would be pulverized, not smeared.”

  Solo muttered something rude under his breath.

  “I was just trying to be helpful,” I muttered back. “There is no need to be snippy.”

  Then we were dipping low and flying high to jump two more burning chunks of dead star. And I marveled at how the Falcon could perform such maneuvers—well, marveled and also felt a little queasy. Fortunately, we Weequay have strong stomachs. It would be embarrassing to vomit all over the cockpit at a time like that. Still, I considered finding my way to the ship’s bathroom, but no. If was about to die, I wanted to see it coming.

  Or maybe I did not.

  Because ahead of us, the exploded stellar matter was spread in a band so thick that it blotted out the stars. It was like a wall that filled our viewscreen, so much burning matter was there, with only the barest glimpse of space beyond.

  “Well,” I said, “there is no getting through that. You have done well, but we have to stop.”

  “No, wait,” said Solo. “There’s a gap.”

  I looked where he pointed, and I saw a small opening in the flow of fiery death. But it was closing rapidly as five different masses of blazing star stuff all converged to seal it off.


  “Solo,” I said, “you have done well. But not even the fastest ship in the galaxy can get through what lies ahead of us before it closes. You must stop.”

  “Grrrrrrrumph,” agreed Chewbacca.

  “I’m not giving up,” said Solo.

  “Mahjo,” I asked, “are your Novian rubies worth dying for? Because we are about to die if we continue.”

  “Some things are worth dying for, yes,” she said. And I wondered, was she really talking about the rubies? Or something else? That unique woman who did not think she was unique.

  I started to reply, but Solo cut me off.

  “No stopping now,” he said. “Trust me on this, Chewie.”

  And then he aimed the ship right for the center of the converging threats.

  The opening was getting smaller and smaller.

  It was the end.

  “Pikk Mukmuk!” I cried. “I’m sorry!”

  All five burning masses converged on our path.

  Voomph!

  And suddenly, we were jumping to hyperspace.

  “Abort! Abort!” I cried. I knew that the mass cast by all that matter would pull us right back into realspace, where we would die a fiery death as we smashed into the burning wall.

  But we did not die. We made the jump!

  And suddenly, the Falcon was flying smoothly along in that kaleidoscope tunnel of swirling lights.

  Mahjo and I looked at each other, blinking in confusion.

  I touched my chest. Everything was where it was supposed to be. My head on top. My feet on bottom. All my middle bits in place.

  “I am in one piece,” I said in amazement. “All of our pieces are where they belong. At least I think so.”

  Chewbacca started to laugh quietly.

  Solo sat back in his chair with the smuggest of all smug grins.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mahjo. “How could we make the jump? Why didn’t that wall of stellar matter create mass shadows?”

  “Oh, it did, lady,” said Solo.

  And suddenly, I understood.

  “Han Solo, you are a gambler of insane proportion!”

  “What did he do?” said Mahjo.

  “What did he do? What did he do? He picked the exact point where the gravity of all those burning objects was in perfect balance. We were able to enter hyperspace and stay there, even though it was full of mass shadows, because he found the one spot where they canceled each other out.”

  I looked at Solo. He was still grinning like the proverbial tooka cat that had eaten the bulabird.

  “You had to time that exactly right,” I said. “One meter off in any direction and we would not have jumped, and then we would not have had the speed to make it through the gap before it closed. We would have been pulverized into a million little pieces.”

  “Hey,” said Solo, “I got us here, didn’t I?”

  “Did you?” I asked.

  In answer, Solo dropped us out of hyperspace.

  And there in front of us hung a radiant red orb—the planet Gwongdeen.

  “We made it!” said Mahjo. “We made it to the Undervaults in time!” She started to give Solo a hug, but then she turned and hugged the Wookiee instead.

  “Hey, what about me?” said Solo. He looked slightly stung.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “It may hurt you to hear this, my friend,” I said, “but you are less huggable than a Wookiee.”

  Solo’s mouth began to make funny shapes. But in my years leading the Ohnaka Gang, I had learned that a good leader needs to move things along.

  “Well, my friends,” I said, clapping my hands, “it looks like profits are on the horizon.”

  But as we made our approach to that new world, the horizon and everything before it began to look very strange. The uniform red of the planet, glimpsed at a distance, did not seem to change as we got closer and closer. Amazingly, the surface of Gwongdeen was featureless and smooth.

  “It’s like a giant red pearl,” I said. “And somebody has been polishing it.”

  “A big crimson ball,” said Mahjo.

  “Grrrrumppprrr,” added Chewbacca.

  “Or a drop of blood,” said Solo.

  “I like my metaphor better,” I said. “Still, that is not cloud cover we are seeing. That is the planet’s surface. But I see no mountains, no hills, no rivers, no cities.”

  “There aren’t any topological features at all,” said Solo. “What kind of place have you brought us to now, Mahjo?”

  “Just fly to the coordinates I gave you,” she said. “You’ll see.”

  “But what is it?” I asked. “Is this a vast ocean? If so, where are the waves, the ripples, the happy sea creatures bobbing up and down in watery joy?”

  Mahjo gave me a look.

  “I thought you at least would have been to the Undervaults before,” she said.

  “No,” I explained, “this is my first time to Gwongdeen.”

  “But you knew about it, about the vaults?”

  “I knew how hard they were to get into,” I said. “That does not mean I had visited them. My dear, you do not get to be a successful pirate by stealing things that are hard to get. No, you steal the easy pickings. As my sweet mother used to say, the easier something is to steal, the more it is asking to be stolen.”

  Mahjo shook her head, making me wonder again about her past, that woman who could fight, who had been to Gwongdeen but not Dhandu, and who knew some surprising things but not others—and who seemed to have more virtue than her declared profession would suggest. What was she hiding? What was she not telling us? But then we saw other ships on the approach. They were all heading, as we were, to a spot near the equator of that strange world. We fell in a growing line, and then we saw another odd sight.

  The ships descended as they reached their destination. But as each vessel was about to touch down, an enormous hole opened in the surface of the world. It was smooth, without any sign of a hinge or a seam. The hole just grew in the red ground, like the gap a bubble might make as it was rising out of a thick liquid, or a tear in a band of rubber that had been stretched too thin.

  Then as each ship passed below, the sides of the hole would rush in and close. Glop! Glop! It looked too uncomfortably as if the planet were eating them.

  “This is not ground, is it?” I observed.

  “No,” said Mahjo. “It’s biological.”

  “Don’t tell me the planet is alive,” said Solo. “I hate living planets. I don’t want to go to a living planet.”

  “No, it’s nothing like that,” said Mahjo. “At least not exactly. You see, Gwongdeen is entirely covered in a biological sea. It’s composed of trillions of tiny organisms working together to create a whole. They stretch across the entire world, forming a dense, viscous liquid. It’s like the planet is wrapped in a membrane.”

  More ships disappeared into the sea. Glop! Glop! Glop!

  “And we’re putting down in that?” said Solo. “I just got the ship cleaned.”

  “You did?” I said. “Because I cannot tell.”

  Solo harrumphed, but Mahjo spoke before he could respond further.

  “You don’t need to worry,” she said. “The core of the planet is rock. The force fields push the sea back so we can get to the Undervaults beneath. They act as a barrier, both shielding the Undervaults from stellar radiation and making Gwongdeen very hard to visit without permission.”

  “And we have permission?” asked Solo.

  “We do now,” said Mahjo, lifting the key. “If we weren’t carrying this, we’d never even get inside.” She tapped Solo on the shoulder. “Take us down.”

  “You’re the boss, lady.”

  And then we were descending toward this great expanse of red pudding.

  Are you sure you have never been to Gwongdeen? No? That surprises me, it does. Well, let me tell you, it is an experience. As the membrane pulled apart, we could see up close that it was not as uniform as it looked. There were colors and shapes, all the l
ittle creatures working together. Like the coral of some oceans—only stickier. And we were descending through it.

  But it was not very deep. And then the walls around us changed to the black of a shaft carved into rock. Blinking, winking lights guided us into a vast cavern where we saw an enormous underground spaceport.

  Solo and Chewbacca set the Falcon down, and we assembled in the starboard airlock, preparing to disembark. Untold riches awaited us, just sitting there for the taking. Or so we thought.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “One moment before we go,” said Mahjo. “I want you to know you’ve all been wonderful. Really. I guess I thought that a band of smugglers and pirates wouldn’t be so likable. But you’ve all been really great. I’ll never forget you for your help.”

  “You sound as if you are saying good-bye?” I said. And although I did not say it aloud, I also thought that once again she did not sound like a person who was experienced in living outside the law. Then I saw her reach a forefinger to tap a slender black band she wore on her opposite wrist.

  I had a flash of suspicion. I realized that Mahjo had touched each one of us in the past few minutes. Did she put something on us? I had less than an instant to react. My hand went to my shoulder. My fingers just brushed something small and round, adhered to the fabric of my shirt. What had she stuck on me? I gripped it and pulled, trying to rip away whatever she had placed on me.

  “I am,” she said. “And I want you to know that I am truly sorry for this.”

  Mahjo Reeloo’s finger depressed the wristband.

  I felt a shock like a hundred lightning bolts coursing through my body. I was aware that Han Solo and Chewbacca were also doing the electricity dance beside me.

  We dropped to the floor, every muscle in our bodies convulsing.

  From my new position on the ground, I could only see the furry back of a Wookiee in front of me, but I heard Mahjo lower the boarding ramp. Then her boots stopped in front of my face.

  “I thought if I worked with terrible people,” she said, “I wouldn’t feel so guilty about double-crossing them. I guess I was wrong.”

  And then she walked down the ramp and away, leaving us utterly incapacitated and totally betrayed.