There was a slight jar, and the shriek of metal torn away as easily as paper. The long-range sensors winked out; the dish had been ripped off the upper hull by a protrusion of rock. Then the needle’s eye was threaded sideways, and the Falcon was through the mountains.
Perspiration beading his face, dampening his light brown hair, Han pounded Chewbacca. “What’d I tell you? Inspiration’s my specialty!”
The starship soared over the thick jungle that began beyond the mountains. Han leveled off, wiping a gloved hand across his brow. Chewbacca emitted a sustained growl. “I agree,” Han replied soberly in the wake of his elation. “That was a stupid place to put a mountain.” He took up scanning for the next landmark and spied it almost at once: a winding river. The Falcon skimmed in low over the watery coils as the Wookiee lowered the ship’s landing gear.
In seconds they’d reached the landing area near a spectacular waterfall that dropped two hundred meters to the river in a flume like a blue-white, ghostly scrim under stars and moonlight. Han, reading the TFS, found a clearing in the heavy cover of vegetation and settled the ship slowly. The broad disks of the landing gear sank a bit in soft humus; then the hydrolics sighed briefly as the Millennium Falcon made herself comfortable.
Han and Chewbacca sat at their controls for a moment, too drained to do more. Outside the cockpit canopy, the jungle was an irregular darkness, tangles of indefatigable growth topped by a roof of fernlike plants that stretched up twenty meters and more. Gauzy ground fog rolled through the undergrowth and clearing.
The Wookiee gave a long, gusty, bass-register exhalation. “I couldn’t have said it better,” Han concurred. “Let’s get at it.” Both removed headsets and left their seats. Chewbacca picked up his crossbow weapon and a bandolier of metal ammo containers, which also supported a floppy carryall pouch at his hip. Han already wore his side arm, a custom-model blaster with rear-fitted macroscope, its front sight blade filed off to facilitate the speed draw. His holster was worn low, tied down at the thigh, cut so that it exposed the weapon’s trigger and trigger guard.
According to directories, Duroon’s atmosphere would support humanoid life without respirators. The two smugglers moved directly to the ship’s ramp. The hatch rolled up and the ramp lowered silently, letting in smells of plant growth, of rotting vegetation, of hot, humid night and animal danger. The jungle was filled with sounds, calls, clacks, and cries of prey and predator, and, over all, with the monumental spillage of the waterfall.
“Now it’s up to them to find us,” Han said. Checking the jungle, he saw no sign of life. Not surprising. The freighter’s landing had probably frightened most wildlife out of the area. He turned to his shaggy first mate/copilot/partner. “I’ll wait for them. Turn off sensors, shut down the engines, the works; kill all systems so the Authority can’t spot us. Then see how much structural damage she suffered topside when she got her back scratched.”
Chewbacca barked acknowledgement and shambled off. Han stripped off his flying gloves, tucked them in his belt, and stepped down the ramp, which stretched down and out from the ship’s starboard side, astern the cockpit. He thumbed his gun’s sights to set it for night shooting, then glanced around. A lean young man dressed in spaceman’s high boots, dark uniform trousers with red piping, and civilian shirt and vest, Han had cast aside his uniform tunic, stripped of its rank and insignia, years ago.
He ran a quick check of the Falcon’s underside, assuring himself that she had taken no damage there and that the landing gear had come to rest properly. He also made certain that the interrupter-templates had automatically slid into place along the servo-guides for the belly turret, so that the quad-mounted guns wouldn’t accidentally blow away the landing gear or ramp if he had to fire them while the ship was grounded.
Satisfied, he went back to the foot of the ramp. He gazed up at the empty sky and the stars beyond, thinking: Let the Authority look for me; this whole part of Duroon’s spotted with hot springs, thermal vents, heavy-metal magma seepages, and radiation anomalies. ltd take them a month to find me, and in an hour or three, I’ll be gone like a cool breeze.
He sat at the end of the ramp, wishing for a moment that he’d brought along something to drink; there was a flask of ancient, vacuum-distilled jet juice under the cockpit console. But he didn’t feel like going for it. Besides, he still had business to conduct.
Duroon’s nocturnal life forms began reappearing in the mossy clearing. Lacy white things swam through the air with ripples of their thin bodies, resembling flying doilies, while nearby fern-trees held creatures that looked like bundles of straw, making their slow way along the wide fronds. Han kept an eye on them but doubted they’d approach the alien mass of his starship.
As he watched, a smallish green sphere sailed out of the undergrowth in a high arc, landing with a boink. It appeared perfectly smooth at first, but then extruded an eyelike bump that studied the Falcon with jerky motions. But when it noticed the pilot, it flinched. The eye-bump disappeared, and the sphere-thing’s underside compressed. With another boink the thing bounced away into the jungle.
Han returned to his musing as he listened to Chewbacca tramping around on the ship’s upper hull. The unfamiliar constellations here were how many light-years from the planet of Han’s birth? He couldn’t even make a close guess.
Being a smuggler and a flyer-for-hire had its dangers, and those he accepted with a philosophical shrug. But a run into a prohibited sector with a cargo that would earn him a summary execution if caught, those were different table stakes altogether.
The Corporate Sector was one wisp off one branch at the end of one arm of the galaxy, but that wisp contained tens of thousands of star systems, and not one native, intelligent species was to be found anywhere. No one was sure why. Han had heard that neutrino research showed abnormalities in the solar convective layers of every sun hereabout, something that might have spread like a virus among the stars in this isolated sector.
In any case, the Corporate Sector Authority had been chartered to exploit—some called it plunder—the uncountable riches here. The Authority was owner, employer, landlord, government, and military. Its wealth and influence eclipsed that of all but the richest Imperial Regions, and the Authority spent much of its time and energy insulating itself from outside interference. Competition, it had none; but that didn’t make the Corporate Sector Authority any less jealous or vindictive. Any outside ship found off established trade corridors was fair game for the Authority’s warships, which were manned by its feared Security Police.
But what do you do, Han asked himself, when your back’s to the wall? How could he have said no to a nice, lucrative run when usurious Ploovo Two-For-One described the riches that were to be had.
I could always hit the beach, he thought. Find a nice planet somewhere, go native. It’s a big galaxy.
But he shook his head. No use fooling himself. If he were grounded, he might as well be dead. What could one planet, any planet, offer someone who had knocked around among the stars? The need for the boundless provinces of space was now a part of him.
And so when, broke and in debt, he and Chewbacca had been approached for a run deep into Authority steer-clear territory, they’d jumped at the job. In spite of all the perils and uncertainties, the run still let them raise ship again and experience the freedom of star-travel. Risk of death or capture had been, in their eyes, the lesser of two evils.
But that brought up another point. The Authority ship had somehow picked up the Millennium Falcon before her own sensors had detected the other. No doubt the Security Police had something new in the way of detection equipment, thereby making Han’s and Chewbacca’s lives more complicated by an order of ten. This situation would require immediate future attention.
Han kept a close watch on the jungle around him, wishing he could have left the ship’s floodlights on. So, when a voice at his side announced, “We are here,” he twisted around with a yelp, his blaster appearing in his fist as if conjured there.
A creature, barely out of arm’s reach, was calmly standing next to the ramp. It was almost Han’s height, a biped, with a downy, globular torso and short arms and legs boasting more joints than a human’s. Its head was small, but equipped with large, unblinking eyes. Its mouth and throat were a loose, pouchy affair; its scent was the scent of the jungle.
“That,” Han grumbled, recovering his composure and putting his blaster away, “is a good way to get yourself roasted.”
The creature ignored the sarcasm. “You have brought what we need?”
“I’ve got cargo for you. Beyond that, I know zero, which is the way I want it. If you came alone, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”
The creature turned and made an eerie, piping noise. Figures seemed to grow up out of the ground, dozens of them, motionless, regarding the pilot and his ship with silent gazes. They held short objects of some sort, which he assumed to be weapons.
Then he heard a growl from above. Stepping forward, Han looked up and saw Chewbacca standing out on one of the ship’s bow mandibles, covering the newcomers with his bowcaster. Han gave a signal. His hairy first mate put up the bowcaster and headed back inboard.
“Time’s wasting,” Han told the creature. It moved toward the Falcon, taking its companions with it. Han stopped them with upheld hands. “Not the whole choir, friend. Just you, for starters.” The first one burbled to its fellows and came on alone.
Inside the ship, Chewbacca had turned up the blackout lights to a minimal glow in strategic parts of the interior. The towering Wookiee was already drawing cover plates off the hidden compartments, concealed and shielded to be undetectable, under the deck near the ramp. Into this space, where he and Han usually hid whatever contraband they were carrying, Chewbacca lowered himself to stand with his waist at deck level. Releasing clamps and strapping, the Wookiee began lifting out heavy oblong cases, the huge muscles beneath his fur bulging with effort.
Han pulled the end of a case around and broke its seals. Within the crate weapons lay stacked. They had been so treated that no part of them reflected any of the scant light. Han took one up, checked its charge, made sure the safety was on, then handed it to the creature.
The firearm was a carbine—short, lightweight, uncomplicated. Like all the others in the shipment, this one was fitted with a simple optical scope, shoulder sling, bipod, and folding bayonet. Though the creature obviously wasn’t used to handling an energy weapon, its ready acceptance, grip, and posture showed that it had seen them often enough. It shifted the carbine in its hands, peered down the barrel, and examined the trigger carefully.
“Ten cases, two hundred rifles,” Han told it, taking up another carbine. He flipped up its butt plate, pointing out the adapters through which the weapon’s power pack could be recharged. These were obsolete weapons by current standards, but they had no internal moving parts and were extremely durable, so much so that they could safely be shipped or stored without Gel-Coat or other preservative. Any one of these carbines, left leaning against a fern in the jungle, would be fully operable ten years from now. Those advantages would be important on this world, where the carbines’ new owners would be able to provide little maintenance.
The creature nodded, understanding how the recharging worked. “We have already stolen small generators,” it told Han, “from the Authority compounds. We came here because they promised us jobs, and a good life, and we celebrated our good fortune, for our world is poor. But they worked us like slaves and would not let us leave. Many of us escaped to live in the wilds; this world is not unlike our own. Now, with these weapons, we will be able to fight back—”
“Stop!” Han snarled with a slashing gesture of his hand, and a violence that made the creature recoil. Reining in his temper, he went on, “I don’t want to hear it, get me? I don’t know you, you don’t know me. It’s none of my business, so don’t tell me!”
The large eyes were fixed on him. He looked away. “I got half my pay on account when I lifted off. The other half comes when I get out of here, so why don’t you just take your stuff and scratch gravel? And don’t forget: no firing those things until I’ve left. An Authority ship just might register the noise.”
He recalled that advance, paid in glow-pearls, fire nodes, diamonds, nova-crystals, and other precious gems smuggled off this mining planet at terrible risk by whatever sympathizers the contract-slaves had found. Rather than buy their own freedom in a quick dash aboard the Falcon, these fugitives were about to throw themselves into a doomed rebellion against the power of the Corporate Sector Authority. Morons.
He stepped out of the creature’s way. It watched him for a moment, then went and piped at the open hatch. Others of its kind came scampering up, crowding around the hatch. Their weapons could be seen now, primitive spear-throwers and blowguns. Some carried daggers of volcanic glass. They had clever hands, all three fingers of which were mutually opposable. They filed inboard, surrounding the rifle cases and straining to lift them in teams of sixes and sevens. Chewbacca looked at them in amusement. The cases, being borne away down the ramp and into the jungle, reminded Han of some bizarre funeral procession.
Remembering something, he took the solemn leader aside, “Does the Authority have a warship stationed here? Big-big ship, with lots of guns?”
The creature thought for a moment. “One big ship, which carries cargo, carries passengers. It has big guns on it, and meets other ships up in the sky, to load and unload them, sometimes.”
Just as Han had thought. He hadn’t encountered a true combat vessel, but rather a heavily armed lighter. Bad, but not as bad as he’d thought. But the creature wasn’t finished. “We will need more,” it said; “more weapons, more help.”
“Consult your clergyman,” Han suggested dryly, helping Chewie replace the deckplates. “Or fix up a deal through your own channels, like this run. I’m out; you won’t see me again. I’m just doing business.”
The creature cocked its head at him, as if trying to understand. Han thrust aside the thought of what life must be like in a forced-labor camp, a driven, joyless existence if ever there was one. That was a common pattern in the Corporate Sector, naive outworlders lured by false promises, signing on only to become prisoners once they reached the compounds. And what could these few fugitives hope to accomplish?
The luck of the draw, he reminded himself. Hits off the Cosmic Deck didn’t always make things Right, but Right wouldn’t fill an egg timer on Tatooine. You played the cards you got, and Han Solo liked to be on that end of things with the largest profit margin.
But Chewie was staring down at him. Han sighed; the big lug was a good first mate, but a soft touch. Well, the tip about the Authority ship was worth something—a hint, maybe, a useful lesson. Han snatched the carbine from the leader irritably.
“Just remember this, you’re prey. Got me? You’ve got to think like prey, and use your brains.”
The creature understood and moved closer, standing on tiptoe to see what Han was doing with the carbine.
“It’s got three settings, see? Safety, single shot, and constant fire. Now, the Security Police here use those riot guns, right? Sawed-off, two-handers? They’re real fond of using constant fire, because they can afford to waste power, just hosing it around. You can’t. What you do is, lock all your carbines on single shot. And if you get into a firefight at night or in the deep jungle where visibility’s poor, shoot at the constant-fire sources. You’ll know it’s none of your people, so it must be Security Police. You’ve got to start using your brain.”
The creature looked from the man to the carbine and back again. “Yes,” it assured him, retrieving the weapon, “we will remember. Thank you.”
Han sniffed, knowing how much they still had to learn. And they’d have to learn it on their own, or the Authority would grind them under its vast heel. And on how many worlds, he asked himself, was the Authority doing just that?
His thoughts were interrupted by distant sounds of blaster fire off in th
e jungle. The creature had moved to the hatch, with its carbine leveled at them. “I am sorry,” it told them, “but we had to test some of the weapons here, now, to make certain they work.”
It lowered the carbine and fled down the ramp, heading for the jungle. So much for world-saving. “I take it all back,” Han said to Chewie as they leaned on the open hatch. “They might do all right at that.”
Their long-range sensors had been knocked out by the destruction of the Falcon’s dish antenna on the approach run. The ship would have to make a blind lift-off, taking her chances on running into trouble.
Han and Chewbacca stood atop the Falcon for nearly an hour, straining to patch the damaged antenna mount. Han didn’t begrudge the time; it had been a worthwhile effort and, if nothing else, had given the fugitives time to leave the rendezvous area. Because, sure as stink in a spacesuit, the Falcon’s lift-off would be plotted and its point of origin thoroughly searched.
They could wait no longer. The first lightening of the sky would bring every flitter, skimmer, and armed gig the local Authority officials could lay hands on, in a tight visual search grid. Chewbacca, sensing Han’s mood, made a snarling comment in his own language.
Han lowered his macrobinoculars. “Correct. Let’s raise ship.”
They adjourned below, buckled in, and ran through a pre-flight—warming up engines, guns, shields. Han declared, “I’m betting that lighter will be holding low, where his sensors will do him the most good. If we come up any distance away from him, we can outrun him and dive for hyperspace.”
Star Wars - Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu Page 18