"Brian Daley "Han Solo at Stars' End"" - читать интересную книгу автора
"Hold fire, hold fire," Han chanted under his breath. "We'll train all batteries aft and kick him go_ ing away." The controls vibrated and fought in their hands as the Falcon's engines gave every erg of effort. Deflector shields struggled under a salvo of long-range blaster-cannon fire, lances of yellow-green annihila-tion. The Falcon ascended on a column of blue energy as if she lusted for a fiery double death in collision with her antagonist. Rather than fight the tractor beam, she threw herself toward its source. The Au-thority ship came into visual range and, a moment later, filled the Falcon's canopy.
At the last instant, the warship's captain's nerve gave. The tractor faded as the lighter began a desper-ate evasion maneuver. With reflexes that were more like precoguition, Han threw everything he had into an equally frantic bank. The two ships' shields couldn't have left more than a meter or two between them in that blindingly fast near miss.
Chewbacca was already shifting all shields aft. The Falcon's main baReties, trained astern, hammered at the Authority vessel at close range. Han scored two hits on the lighter, perhaps no more than superficial damage, but a moral victory after a long, bad night.
The Authority ship rocked. Chewbacca howled, and
Han exulted, "Last licksl"
The lighter plunged downward, unable to halt her steep dive quickly. The freighter bolted out of Duroon's atmospheric envelope, out into the void where she belonged. Far below her, the Authority ves-sel was just beginning to pull out of her dive, all chance of pursuit lost.
Hah fed jump data into the navicomputer as Chew-bacca ran damage checks. Nothing irreparable, the Wookiee decided, but everything would have to have a thorough going-over. But Hah Solo and Chewbacca the Weeklee had their money, their freedom, and, for a wonder, their lives. And that, Han thought, should be enough for anyone, shouldn't it?
The starship's raving engines carved a line of blue fire across infinity. Han engaged the hyperdrive. Stars seemed to fall away in all directions as the ship out-raced sluggard Light. The Millennium Falcon's main drive boomed, and she disappeared as if she'd never been there.
THEY knew they'd be watched, of course, from the moment they docked their battered freighter.
Etti IV was a planet open to general trade, a world where dry winds swept amber, moss-covered plains and shallow, saline seas beneath vermilion skies. It had no remarkable resources in and of itself, but was hospitable to humans and humanolds and occupied a strategic spot on star-routes.
On Etti IV, great wealth had been gathered by lords of the Corporate Sector, and with this wealth had come its universal corollary, a thriving criminal ele-ment. Now, Hah and Chewbacca made their way down a street of fusion-formed soil, between low build-ings of press-bonded minerals and tall ones of perma-cite and shaped formex. They wove through the spaceport toward the Authority Currency Exchange, with the Wooldee guiding a rented repulser-lift hand-truck. On the handtruck were cases resembling strong-boxes, and it was for that reason that the two assumed they'd be watched. The boxes were just the sort of thing to pique the curiosities of assorted criminal types.
But the duo also knew that any watchers would weigh risk against revenue. In the risk column would be Hall's gunman's rig and his loose, confident gait, plus Chewbacca's looming presence and ready bow-caster, not to mention the strength and ferocity to twist any attacker's body into new and different shapes.
So they went their way in confidence, knowing that, as targets, they would appeal to neither the good busi-ness sense nor the survival instincts of any would-be stickup artist.
The Authority Currency Exchange had no idea it was abetting a transaction involving gunrunning and insurrection. Han and Chewbacca had already man-aged to unload the gems with which they'd been paid, exchanging them for precious metals and rare crystal-line vertexes. In a Corporate Sector encompassing tens of thousands of star systems, the kind of record-keeping that could keep track of every debt and pay-ment was beyond even the most sophisticated data system. So, without a hitch, Hah Solo, tramp freighter captain, smuggler, and freelance law-bender, had con-vetted most of his payment into a nice neat Authority Cash Voucher. If he'd had a hat, he'd have tipped it to the chirping disbursements auto-clerk that spat the voucher at him. He tucked the little plastic chit into a vest pocket.
When they'd left the Exchange, the Wooldee let out one of his long, hooting barks. Han answered, "Yeah, yeah, we'll pay Ploovo Two-For-One, but first we've got one stop to make."
His sidekick growled loudly, startling bystanders with his displeasure and inviting a dangerous sort of attention. A detachment of Security Police appeared out of the swirl of humans, 'droids, and nonhumans moving along the street.
"Hey, lighten up, pal!" Han murmured out of the side of his mouth. The brown-uniformed Security Po-lice, their suspicious eyes darting beneath battle hel-mets, sauntered along four abreast, their weapons held ready, as pedestrians moved quickl!'s out of their way. Han saw two of the black batfie helmets bob, and knew they'd heard the Wookiee's outburst. But the disturbance apparenfiy didn't merit their attention, and the detachment went its way.
Han stared after them, shaking his head. There were all kinds of cops in the galaxy, some of them good, some not. But the Authority's private Security Police- -"Espos," in slangtalk-were among the worst. Their enforcements had nothing to do with law or jus-tice, but only with the edicts of the Corporate Sector Authority. Hah had never been able to figure out what turned a man into an unquestioning Espo bully-boy; he merely tried to insure that he didn't cross trails with any of them.
Remembering Chewbacca, he resumed their conver-sation. "Like I say, we'll pay Ploovo. This stop-off won't take a minute. We'll meet him right after, like we planned, square things, and go our way free and clear."
The placated Wooldee carped noncommittally but fell in beside his parmer again.
Because Etti IV's monied classes required conspicu-ous means of demonstrating their wealth, the spaceport harbored several exotic pet stores, featuring rare or unique stock from the immeasurable expanses of the Empire. Sabodor's was, by general consensus, the best of them. It was there that Han went.
The store's muting system, expensive as it was, couldn't mask all the scents and sounds of the curious life forms somewhat loosely collected there under the dubious classification: Pets. Among the species on dis-play were such premium specimens as the spidery night-gliders of Altarrn, the iridescent-feathered song serpents from the deserts of Proxima Dibal's single planet, and the tiny, tubby, clownish marsupials from Kimanan that were commonly called furballs. Cages and cases, tanks and environmental bubbles, teemed with glowing eyes, restless tentacles, clicking chelae, and wobbling pseudopodia.
The proprietor instanfiy appeared, Sabodor himself, a denizen of Rakrir. His short, segmented, tubular body scuttled along on five pairs of versatile limbs, his two long eyestalks moving and rotating constantly. Seeing the pair, Sabodor rose up on his last two sets of limbs, his uplifted eyestalks reaching nearly to the level of Han's chest, inspecting him from all angles.
"Ever so sorry," Sabodor's voice twittered from the cantilevered vocal organ located at the center of his midsection. "I don't deal in Wookiees. They're a sen-tient species; can't use them as pets. Illegal. I've got no use for a Wooldee."
"Chewy, easyl He didn't mean it," Han soothed, blocking the Wooldee from a violent laying of hands upon the quivering shopkeeper.
Sabodor's trembling eyestalks appeared, one to ei-ther side of Han's knees. "Tell the Wookiee no offense. An honest mistake, was it not? No insult intended."
Chewbacca quieted somewhat. Han, remembering all the Security Police in port, was grateful. "We came in to buy something," he told Sabodor as the proprie-tor rippled away from him in reverse gear. "Hear me? Buy."
"Buy? Buy! Oh, come, sir, and see-see-see! Any pet
worth having is to be had at Sabodor's, best in the
Sector. We have---"
Hah had waved him to silence. He laid a friendly hand on the spot where the overwrought little shop-keeper's shoulder would have been, if he'd had one. "Sabodor, I'm going to make this transaction easy.
What I want is a Dinko. You have one?"
"Dinko?" Sabodor's tiny mouth and olfactory cluster somehow cooperated with his recoiling eyestalks to convey disgust. "What for? A Dinko? Revolting, ugh?
Han's mouth tugged in a wry smile. He produced a handful of cash, riffling it invitingly. "Got one for me?"
"Can doI Wait right here!" Sabodor, undulating ex-citedly, flowed away into a back room. Han and Chewbacca barely had time to gaze around before the proprietor was back. In his upper two pairs of append-ages he held a clear case. Inside was the Dinko.
Few creatures enjoyed the dubious notoriety ac-corded to Dinkoes, whose temperament came quite close to pure psychopathy. One of the mysteries of the zoological world was how the little terrors tolerated one another long enough to reproduce. Small enough to fit in a man's palm if that man were indiscreet enough to pick it up-the Dinko glowered out at them. Its powerful rear legs moved constantly, and the twin pairs of grasping extremities on its chest pinched the air, longing for something upon which to fasten. Its long tongue flickered in and out between wicked, glit-tery fangs.
"Is it de-scented?" Han asked.
"Oh, nol And it's been in rut ever since it was trans-shipped. But it's been de-venomed." Chewbacca grinned, his black nose wrinkling.
Han asked, "How much?"
Sabodor named an exorbitant sum. Han counted through his sheaf of cash. "I'11 give you exactly one half that, agreed?"
The eyestalks, flopping about in distress, seemed close to tears. The Wookiee, snorting, leaned down at Sobodor, who shrank again behind the dubious safety of Han's knees. "Admit it, Sabodor," Han invited cheerfully, "it's a good deal."
"You win," waded the proprietor. He proffered the case. The Dinko threw itself from side to side of its container, foaming at the chops.
"One more thing," Han added blithely. "I want you to give it a light sedation dosage so I can handle it for a moment. Then you can give it to me in a different box, something opaque."
That was really two things, but Sabodor agreed de-jectedly, eager to have the Wookiee, the human, and the Dinko all out of his establishment as soon as pos-sible.
Ploovo Two-For-One, loan shark and former rob-ber, smash-and-grab man, and bunko-steerer out of the Cron Drift, looked forward with pleasure to collect-ing the outstanding debt from Han Solo.
He was elated, not only because the original loan would reap a splendid profit for himself and his backers, but also because he thoroughly hated Solo, and an interesting form of revenge had materialized.
The message from Solo, promising repayment, had stipulated a meeting here on Etfi IV, in the spaeeport's most elegant bistro. That had been all right with Ploovo Two-For-One; his creed was that toil and en-joyment should be combined whenever feasible. The Free-Flight Dance Dome was more than satisfactory; it was opulent. Ploovo himself was far from charming, a bad-tempered hulk of a man whose face was subject to a nervous tic; but his income gave him a certain con-spicuous social viability.
He sprawled onto a conform-lounger at a corner table, joined by the three retainers he'd brought along. Two of these were humans, hard-batten men with a number of weapons concealed on and about their per-sons. The third was a Iong-snouted, scaly-skinned bi-ped, native of Davnar II, who possessed a true flair for execution.
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