Star Wars Missions 005 - The Hunt for Han Solo

by Dave Wolverton

  If your confront# is lower than your roll#, subtract the difference from your MP total and repeat this confront until you defeat both dragons.

  The dragons are gone, yet from time to time as you battle your way across the sands, you hear them roaring. They are so big and fierce, you fear that if they make a concerted attack, you’ll just be another meal. Worse, with all that roaring, they might attract friends.

  You worm your way back and forth through the sands for awhile, lost.

  Suddenly, you hear a weak voice on your communicator!

  “We’ve got your locator coming in strong! What’s your report? Was that Solo’s ship?”

  “Affirmative,” you reply.

  There is a long silence. The voice on the communicator says, “Don’t tell me he got away!”

  “For now,” you reply. “But I know how to get him back.” You pat the saddlebag, where Grubba the Hutt has gone limp.

  From the bag, Grubba roars. “You wait until Jabba finds out what you’ve done!”

  The voice on the communicator tells you, “All right. Angle thirty degrees to your right. We’ll guide you on in.”

  Hot, sandy, and weary to the bone, you reach the biosphere with the nasty child still shouting curses from inside the saddlebag.

  This has been a difficult Mission. You have not captured Solo, but you have captured something that Solo desperately needs. Award yourself 110 MP (140 for Advanced Level players).

  Aboard the Millennium Falcon, Han Solo was backed against a wall. A good dozen of Jabba’s Gamorrean henchmen were aboard ship, and Solo and his friends were weaponless.

  The Gamorreans had Chewbacca cornered, and another held Leia back. Luke, too, was shoved against a far wall.

  At that moment, Han suspected that the only ones who would get out of this alive were the droids. And working as slaves for Jabba would hardly be much better than a quick termination.

  Bib Fortuna, Jabba’s majordomo, was outraged to find that the young Grubba had been kidnapped again. Jabba wasn’t here. The crime lord who had kidnapped young Grubba in the first place, a Whiphid named “Black Tongue,” had just been captured. Jabba was now teaching the Whiphid a serious lesson of his own devising.

  So he had sent Bib Fortuna to retrieve his beloved Ur-Damin.

  “Death for you, Han Solo, for this,” Bib Fortuna hissed, his Twi’lek head tail’s lashing. He put a long blue finger against Han’s jugular vein, and poked with a pointed nail until a drop of blood flowed.

  “But it’s not my fault!” Han objected. Certainly Bib Fortuna knew that. He’d seen the images captured by the ship’s security system. If anyone was to blame for losing the child, it was Jabba’s own guards.

  “Still, Jabba’s anger must be assuaged…” Bib Fortuna hissed. To his guards, he said, “Take them now.”

  “Wait,” Luke Skywalker said, looking earnestly into Bib Fortuna’s red eyes. “Jabba is not angry with Han, nor will he be.” Desperately, Luke hoped the Force would work. He had seen Obi-Wan Kenobi use the Force to persuade others, but Luke had to persuade so many of these guards at once.

  Slowly, as if in a daze, Bib Fortuna cocked his head as if listening to distant music, and said, “Jabba… will not be angry.”

  “Han and Jabba are old friends,” Luke said.

  “Old friends,” Bib Fortuna repeated. The Force was working!

  “You should let Han and his friends go, so that they may quickly pursue the men who stole Jabba’s Ur-Damin. Only this course of action will please Jabba.”

  Luke stared hard at Bib Fortuna, and after a moment, the Twi’lek turned away, his head tail going limp as it relaxed. “Let them go. Let them all go,” Bib Fortuna ordered the Gamorrean guards. “Quickly!”

  “You are wise,” Luke said, “and your master will praise you.”

  In their biosphere, the bounty hunters gathered around the young Grubba.

  “You are all dead for this!” Grubba shouted. He pointed a stubby finger at each bounty hunter in turn. “You! You! And you!”

  “I don’t think so,” Dengar said. “Jabba knows what we’re fishing for. And a little worm of a Hutt like you is the perfect bait”

  Eron had been listening over the biosphere’s communicators. “The news is all over the air. Jabba is doubling the reward for the return of Grubba. Apparently he feels that the family honor has been doubly spotted.”

  Her glance passed over to Udin.

  “I’m not completely sure I like this idea,” Udin said. “How do we know Han Solo will come for the child?”

  “Because,” Eron Stonefield said, “at the same time that he increased the reward for young Grubba, he also increased the bounty on Han Solo. Now, if Han wants to pay off his death price, he’ll be much more desperate to get the kid back.”

  Outside, the storm was quieting. With the rising of the suns, the lowlying Dune Sea would heat up again, and the storms would abate for another sizzling day.

  “Okay,” young Grubba groaned. “I’ll come with you, as long as you take me someplace fun. And if Jabba pays a reward for me, I get half.”

  Udin the Kubaz wrinkled his short trunk, and the translator said, “Do you like bugs?”

  “I like to pull their legs off, and then eat them,” Grubba said.

  “On my world,” Udin said, “the bugs are big enough to pull the legs off you, before they eat you.”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Grubba laughed. “Then I’m glad I don’t have legs.”

  “The bugs there like to eat worms, too,” Udin replied. After a long moment of thought he added, “I’ll leave a few clues for Han with one of my hive-mates at Mos Eisley. Then we’ll lead Han into our trap. He’ll get a warm reception on my home world — Kubindi. Once he comes there, I promise, he will never return…”

  NEXT MISSION: THE SEARCH FOR GRUBBA THE HUTT

  11.6.18.15.14.5-1