Star Wars - Han Solo Adventures

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Han Solo Adventure Trilogy

Han Solo At Stars’ End #2

Chapter 1

“IT’S a warship all fight. Damn!”

Instrument panels in the Millennium Falcon’s cock-pit were alive with

trouble lights, warning flashers, and the beeps and hoots of the

sensor package. Read-out screens were feeding combat-information

displays at high speed.

Han Solo, crouched forward in the pilot’s seat, coolly flicking his

eyes from instrument to screen, hast-fly assessed his situation. His

lean, youthful face creased in a frown of concern. Beyond the cockpit

canopy, the surface of the planet Duroon drew stead-fly nearer.

Somewhere below and astern, a heavily armed vessel had detected the

Falcon’s presence and was now homing in to challenge her. That the

warship had, in fact, picked up the Millennium Falcon first was a

matter of no small worry to Hah; the ability to come and go without

attracting notice, especially of. ficial notice, was vital to a

smuggler.

He began relaying fire-control data to the ship’s weapons systems.

“Charge main batteries, Chewie,” he said, not taking his eyes from

his part of the con-sole, “and shields-all. We’re in prohibited

space; can’t let ‘era take us or identify the ship.” Particularly, he

added to himself, with the cargo we’re hauling.

To his right, Chewbacca the Wooldee made a sound halfway between a

grunt and a bark, his furry fingers darting to his controls with sure

dexterity, his large, hairy form hunched in the oversized coptlot’s

seat. Wooldee-style, he showed his fierce fighting teeth as he

rapidly surrounded the starship wth layers of de-fensive energy. At

the same time, he brought the Fal-con’s offensive weaponry up to its

maximum charge.

Bracing his ship for battle, Han berated himseN for ever having taken

on this job. He’d known full well it could take him into conflict

with the Corporate Sector Authority, in the middle of a steer-clear

area.

The Authority ship’s approach left Han and Chew-bacca just seconds

for a clutch decision: abort the mission and head for parts unknown,

or try to pull off their delivery anyway. Hah surveyed his console,

hop-ing for a clue, or a hit off the Cosmic Deck.

The other ship wasn’t gaining. In fact, the Falcon was pulling away.

Sensors gauged the mass, arma-ments, and thrust of their pursuer and

Hah made his best guess. “Chewie, I don’t think that’s a ship of the

line; looks more like a bul~ job, with augmentative weapons. She

must’ve just lifted off when she got wind of us. Hell, don’t those

guys have anythin8 better to do?” But it figured; the one major

Authorit~ installa-tion on Duroon, the only one with a full-dress

port layout, was on the far side of the globe, where the dawn line

would just be lightening gray sky. Han had planned his landing for a

spot as far away from the port as possible, in the middle of the

night-side.

“We take her down,” he decided. If the Falcon could shake her

follower, Hah and Chewbacca could make their drop and, with the luck

of the draw, es-cape.

The Wookiee gave a grumpy growl, black nostrils flaring, tongue

curling. Han glared at him. “You got a better idea? It’s a little

late to part company, isn’t it?” He took the converted freighter into

a steep dive, throwing away altitude in return for increased veloc-

ity, heading deeper into Duroon’s umbra.

The Authority vessel, conversely, slowed even more, cllmbing through

the planet’s atmosphere, trad-ing speed for altitude in an attempt to

keep the MiUennium Falcon under sensor surveillance. Han ig-nored the

Authority’s broadcast order to halt; tele-spenders that should have

automatically given his starship’s identity in response to official

inquiry had been disconnected long ago.

“Hold deflector shields at full capacity,” he ordered. “I’m taking

her down to the deck; we don’t want our skins cooked off.” The

Wookiee complied, to shed thermal energy generated by the Falcon’s

rapid pas-sage through the atmosphere. The starship’s controls

trembled as she began to buck the denser air. Han worked to put the

planet between himseft and the Authority vessel.

This he soon accomplished, as indicators registered increased heat

from the friction of the freighter’s dive. Between watching sensors

and looking through the canopy, Han quickly found his first landmark,

a vol-canically active crevasse that ran on an east-west axis, like a

stupendous, burning scar on the flesh of Duroon. He brought the

Falcon out of her swoop, her control systems rebelling against the

immense strain. He lev-eled off only meters above the planet’s

surface.

“Let’s see them track us now,” he said, self-satisfied. Chewbacca

snorted The meaning of the snort was clearmthis was temporary cover

only. There was little danger of being detected either optically or

by instrument over this seam in Duroon’s surface, for the Falcon

would be lost against a background of fer-rons slag, infernal heat,

and radioactive discord. But neither could she remain there for long.

In the vivid orange light of the fissure that illumi-nated the

cockpit, Hah conceded that fact. At best, he’d broken trail so the

Authority ship would be una-ble to spot the Falcon should the pursuer

gain enough altitude to bring her back into sensor range. He poured

on as much airspeed as he dared in an effort to keep Duroon’s mass

between him.gelf and the vessel hunting him while he sought his

landing site. He cursed the fact that there were no proper

navigational beacons; this was seat-of-the-pants flying, and no

chance of leaning out the cockpit and stopping a pass-erby for

directions.

In minutes the ship had neared the western end of the fissure. Han

was compelled to dump some veloc-ity; it was time to look for road

signs. He reviewed the instructions given him; instructions he’d

committed to memory alone. Off to the south a gigantic mountain range

loomed. He banked the Falcon sharply to port, slapped a pair of

switches, and bore straight for the mountains.

The ship’s special Terrain Following Sensors came on. Han kept the

freighter’s bow close above a surface of cooled lava and occasional

active rifts, minor off-spring of the great fissure. For whatever

small edge it might give against detection, he trimmed the Falcon off

at virtual landing altitude, screaming over eddied volcanic

fiatlands. “Anybody down there better duck,” he advised, keeping one

eye pinned to the Terrain Following Sensors. They bleeped, having

located the mountain pass for which he’d been searching. He ad-justed

course.

Funny. His information said the break in the moun-tains was plenty

wide for the Falcon, but it looked mighty narrow on the TFS. For a

second he debated going for altitude fast, hurdling the high peaks,

but that just might put him back onto the Authority’s scopes. He was

too close to his delivery point, and a payday, to risk having to cut

and run. The moment of option passed. He shed more airspeed,

committed now to taking the pass at low level.

Sweat collected on his forehead and dampened his shirt and vest.

Chewbacca uttered his low rumble of utmost concentration as both

partners synched to the running of the Millennium Falcon. The image

of the pass on the TFS grew no more encouraging.

Han tightened his grip on the controls, feeling the press of his

flying gloves against them. “Pass, nothing ---that thing’s a slot!

Hold your breath, Chewie; we’ll have to skin through.”

He threw himself into a grim battle with his ship. Chewbacca

caterwauled his dislike for all unconven-tional maneuvers as he cut

in braking thrusters, but even those would not be enough to avert

disaster. The slot began to take on shape, a slightly lighter area of

sky lit by bright stars and one of Duroon’s three moons, set off by

the silhouette of the mountains. It was, just barely, too narrow.

The starship took some altitude, and her speed slackened. Those extra

seconds gave Han time to pi-lot for his life, calling on razor-edge

reflexes and in-stincfive skills that had seen him through scrapes

all across the galaxy. He killed all shields, since they’d have

struck rock and overloaded, and wrenched his controls, standing the

Millennium Falcon on her port-side. Sheer crags closed in on either

side, so that the roar of the freighter’s engines rebounded from the

cliffs. He made minute corrections, staring at rock walls that seemed

to be coming at him through the canopy, and rattled off a string of

expletives having nothing whatsoever to do with piloting.

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, Hah pounded Chewbacca. “What’d I tell

you? Inspiration’s my specialtyV’

The starship soared over the thick jungle that be-gan 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 land-mark 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 mo-ment, 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 ex-halation. “I

couldn’t have said it better,” Han con-curred. “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 hol-

ster 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 pred-ator, and, over all, with

the monumental spillage of the waterfall.

“Now it’s up to them to find us,” Han said. Check-ing 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 sys-tems so the

Authority can’t spot us. Then see how much structural damage she

suffered topside when she got her back scratched.”

Chewbacca barked acknowledgment 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, as-suring him.self

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 wsnt 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 o! Duroon’s spotted with hot springs, thermal

vents, heavy-metal magma seepages, and radiation anomalies. lt’d 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 mo-ment that he’d

brought along something to drink; there was a flask of ancient,

vacuum-distilled jet juice un-der 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 perfecfiy 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 Chew-baeca tramping

around on the ship’s upper hull. The unfamiliar constellations here

were how many light-years from the planet of Hafts birth? He couldn’t

even make a close guess.

Being a smuggler and a flyer-for-hire had its dan-gers, 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 any-

where. 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 out-side interference. Competition, it had

none; but that didn’t make the Corporate Sector Authority any less

jealous or vindictive. Any outside ship found off es-tablished trade

corridors was fair game for the Au-thority’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 Chew-bacca had been approached

for a run deep into Au-thority 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

ap-pearing in his fist as if conjured there.

A creature, barely out of ann’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 for-ward, 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

bur-bled 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 Wooldee

was already draw-ing cover plates off the hidden compartments, con-

cealed and shielded to be undetectable, under the deck near the ramp.

Into this space, where he and Han usually hid whatever contraband

they were car-rying, Chewbacca lowered himself to stand with his

waist at deck level. Releasing clamps and strapping, the Wooldee

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, un-complicated. 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, a thousand rifles,” Han told it, taking up another

carbine. He flipped up its butt plate, point-ing out the adapters

through which the weapon’s power pack could be recharged. These were

obsolete weapons by current standards, but they had no inter-hal

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 lit-fie maintenance.

The creature nodded, understanding how the re-charging worked. “We

have already stolen small gen-eratom,” it told Hah, “from the

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HanSoloAdventureTrilogyHanSoloAtStars’End#2Chapter1“IT’Sawarshipallfight.Damn!”InstrumentpanelsintheMillenniumFalcon’scock-pitwerealivewithtroublelights,warningflashers,andthebeepsandhootsofthesensorpackage.Read-outscreenswerefeedingcombat-informationdisplaysathighspeed.HanSolo,crouchedforwardinthep...

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Star Wars - Han Solo Adventures

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