RIDING down in the elevator, Han concentrated furiously on his predicament.
He’d led the others into this jam thinking that, if nothing else, he’d at least get an idea of what he was up against. At worst, he’d thought, they’d be told they weren’t welcome. But this was an unanticipated twist.
That Bollux was committed to a match against a killer robot of some sort shouldn’t bother him, Han reminded himself. Bollux was, after all, only a ’droid. It wasn’t as if a living entity would die. Han had to keep repeating that because he was having a hard time selling it to himself. Anyway, he had no intention of giving Viceprex Hirken the enjoyment of seeing the superannuated ’droid taken apart.
Times like this, he wished he were the slow, careful type. But his style was the product of Han himself, defying consequences, jumping in with both feet, heedless of what he might land in. His plan, as revised in the elevator, was to do all the scouting he could. If nothing more could be accomplished, he and the others would have to wing it, withdraw from the performance and, it was to be hoped, Stars’ End, on the plea that Bollux was irreparable.
He watched floor numbers flash and kept himself from asking questions of the tech supervisor beside him. Any outsider, particularly an entertainer, would be scrupulously uncurious about an Authority installation. For Han to be otherwise would be a matter causing instant suspicion.
A few other passengers entered and left the car. Only one was an exec; all the rest were Espos and techs. Han looked them over for keys, restraint-binders, or anything else that might indicate detention-block guard duties, but saw nothing. Again he noticed that the tower seemed very lightly manned, contrary to what he’d expect if there really was a prison here.
He followed the tech supervisor out of the elevator, alighting at the general maintenance section, nearly back at ground level. Only a few techs were there, moving among gleaming machinery and dangling hoisting gear. Disassembled ’droids, robo-haulers, and other light equipment, as well as commo and computer apparatus, were to be seen everywhere.
He resettled Max’s carrying strap at his shoulder. “Do you guys have a circuit scanner?”
The tech led him to a side room with rows of booths, all of them vacant. Han set Max on a podium in one of them and lowered a scanner hood, hoping the tech would go off and take care of his normal duties. But the man remained there, and so Han found himself staring into the computer-probe’s labyrinthine interior.
The tech, watching over his shoulder, commented, “Hey, that looks like a lot more than just an auxiliary component.”
“It’s something I worked up, pretty sophisticated,” Han said. “By the way, the Viceprex said when I’m done here I could take it up to your central computer section to recalibrate it. That’s one level down, right?”
The supervisor was frowning now, trying for a better look at Blue Max’s guts. “No, computers are two levels up. But they won’t let you in unless Hirken verifies it. You’re not cleared, and you can’t go into a restricted area if you’re un-badged.” He leaned closer to the scanner. “Listen, that really looks like some kind of computer module to me.”
Han chuckled casually. “Here, look for yourself.”
He stepped aside. The tech supervisor moved closer to the scanner, reaching down to work its focus controls. Then his own focus went completely dark.
Han, rubbing the edge of his hand, stood over the unconscious tech and looked around for a place to stow him. He had noticed a supply closet at the end of the scanner room. Han fastened the man’s hands behind him with his own belt, gagged him with a dust cover off a scanner, and lugged the limp form into the closet. He paused to take the man’s security badge, then closed the door.
He went back to the little computer-probe. “All right, Max; perk up.”
Blue Max’s photoreceptor lit up. Han removed his own sash and stripped the gaudy homemade medals and braid off his outfit. He yanked the epaulets and piping away, too, and what remained was a black body suit, a fair approximation of a tech’s uniform. He placed the supervisor’s security badge prominently on his chest, took Max up again, and set out. Of course, if anyone were to stop him or compare the miniature holoshot on his badge to his real face, he’d be tubed. But he was counting on his own luck, a convincing briskness of stride, and an air of purpose.
He went up two levels without mishap. Three Espos lounging in the guard booth near the elevator bank waved him on, seeing he was badged. He fought the impulse to smile. Stars’ End was probably an uneventful tour of duty; no wonder the guards had gotten lax. After all, what could possibly happen here?
At the amphitheater, Pakka’s amazing deftness hadn’t even drawn an approving look from Viceprex Hirken. The cub had been using a hoop while rolling a balance-ball with his feet, doing flips.
“Enough of this,” Hirken proclaimed, his well-tended hand flying up. Pakka stopped, glaring at the Viceprex. “Isn’t that incompetent Marksman back yet?” The other execs, conferring among themselves, managed to reach a group decision that Han was still gone. Hirken’s breath rasped.
He pointed to Atuarre. “Very well, Madam, you may dance. But be brief, and if your sharpshooting gaffer isn’t back soon, I may dispense with him altogether.”
Pakka had removed his props from the arena floor. Now Atuarre handed him the small whistle-flute Han had machined up for him. While the cub blew a few practice runs on it, Atuarre slipped on the finger-cymbals Han had fashioned for her and clinked them experimentally. The improvised instruments, even her anklet-chimes, all lacked the musical quality of Trianii authentics, she decided. But they would suffice, and might even convince the onlookers that they were seeing the real thing.
Pakka began playing a traditional air. Atuarre moved out onto the arena floor, following the music with a sinuous ease no human performer could quite match. Her streamers blew behind her, many-colored fans flickering from arms and legs, forehead and throat, as her finger-cymbals sounded and her anklets rang, precisely as they should.
Some of the preoccupation left Hirken’s face and the faces of the other onlookers. Trianni ritual dancing had often been touted as a primitive, uninhibited art, but the truth was that it was high artistry. Its forms were ancient, exacting, demanding all a dancer’s concentration. It required perfectionism, and a deep love of the dance itself. In spite of themselves, Hirken, his subordinates, and his wife were drawn into Atuarre’s spinning, stalking, pouncing dance. And as she performed, she wondered how long she could hold her audience, and what would happen if she couldn’t hold-them long enough.
Han, having found a computer terminal in an unoccupied room, set Max down next to it. While Max extended his adapter and entered the system, Han took a cautious look in the hall and closed the door.
He drew up a workstool by a readout screen. “You in, kid?”
“Just about, Captain. The techniques Rekkon taught me work here, too. There!” The screen lit up, flooded with symbols, diagrams, computer models, and columns of data.
“Way to go, Max. Now spot up the holding pens, or cells, or detention levels or whatever.”
Blue Max flashed layout after layout on the screen, while his search moved many times faster, skimming huge amounts of data; this was the sort of thing he’d been built for. But at last he admitted, “I can’t, Captain.”
“What d’you mean, can’t? They’re here, they’ve gotta be. Look again, you little moron!”
“There’re no cells,” Max answered indignantly. “If there were, I’d have seen them. The only living arrangements in the whole base are the employees’ housing, the Espo barracks, and the exec suites, all on the other side of the complex—and Hirken’s apartments here in the tower.”
“All right,” Han ordered, “put a floor plan of this joint up, level by level, on the screen, starting with Hirken’s amusement park.”
A floor plan of the dome, complete with the garden and amphitheater, lit the readout. The next two levels below it proved to be filled with the Viceprex’s ostentatious personal quarters. The one after that confused Han. “Max, what’re those subdivisions? Offices?”
“It doesn’t say here,” the computer answered. “The property books list medical equipment, holo-recording gear, surgical servos, operating tables, things like that.”
A thought struck Han. “Max, what’s Hirken’s title? His official corporate job-slot, I mean.”
“Vice-President in charge of Corporate Security, it says.”
Han nodded grimly. “Keep digging; we’re in the right place. That’s no clinic up there, it’s an interrogation center, probably Hirken’s idea of a rec room. What’s on the next floor down?”
“Nothing for humans. The next level is three floors high, Captain. Just heavy machinery; there’s an industrial-capacity power hookup there, and an air lock. See, here’s the floor plan and a power-routing schematic.”
Max showed it. Han leaned closer to the screen, studying the myriad lines. One, marked in a different color and located near the elevators, attracted his attention, He asked the computer what it was.
“It’s a security viewer, Captain. There’s a surveillance system in parts of the tower. I’ll patch in.”
The screen flickered, then resolved into the brightness of a visual image. Han stared. He’d found the lost ones.
The room was filled, stack upon stack, with stasis booths. Inside each, a prisoner was frozen in time, stopped between one instant and the next by the booth’s level-entropy field. That explained why there were no prisoner facilities, no arrangements for handling crowds of captive entities, and only a minimal guard complement on duty. Hirken had all his victims suspended in time; they’d require little in the way of formal accommodations. The Security Viceprex need take prisoners out only when he chose to question them, then pop them back into stasis when he was done. So he robbed his prisoners of their very lives, taking away every part of their existence except interrogation.
“There must be thousands of them,” Han breathed. “Hirken can move them in and out of that air lock like freight. Power consumption up there must be terrific. Max, where’s their plant?”
“We’re sitting on it,” Max answered, though that anthropomorphism couldn’t really apply to him. He filled the screen with a basic diagram of the tower. Han whistled softly. Beneath Stars’ End was a power-generating plant large enough to service a battle fortress, or a capital-class warship.
“And here are the primary defense designs,” Max added. There were force fields on all sides of the tower, and one overhead, ready to spring into existence instantly. Stars’ End itself was, as Han had already noticed, made of enhanced-bonding armor plate. According to specs, it was equipped with an anticoncussion field as well, so that no amount of high explosives could damage its occupants. The Authority had spared no expense to make its security arrangements complete.
But that helped only if the enemy were outside, and Han was as inside as he could get. “Is there a prisoner roster?”
“Got it! They had it filed: Transient Persons.”
Han swore under his breath at bureaucratic euphemisms. “Okay, is Chewie’s name on it?”
There was the briefest of pauses. “No, Captain. But I found Atuarre’s mate! And Jessa’s father!” He flashed two more images on the screen, arrest mugshots. Atuarre’s mate’s coloring was redder than hers, it turned out, and Doc’s grizzled features hadn’t changed. “And here’s Rekkon’s nephew,” Max added. The mug was of a young black face with broad, strong lines that promised a resemblance to the boy’s uncle.
“Jackpot!” Max squealed a moment later, a very uncomputerish exclamation. Chewbacca’s big hairy face flashed on the readout. He hadn’t been in a very good mood for the mugshot; he was disheveled, but his snarl promised death to the photographer. The Wookiee’s eyes looked glassy, and Han assumed that the Espos had tranquilized him as soon as they’d taken him.
“Is he okay?” Han demanded. Max put up the arrest record. No, Chewbacca hadn’t been badly injured, but three officers had been killed in apprehending him, the forms said. He hadn’t given a name, which explained why it had been difficult for Max to locate him. The list of charges nearly ran off the screen, with a final, ominous, handwritten notation at the bottom listing time of scheduled interrogation. Han glanced at a wall clock; it was no more than hours before Chewbacca was due to enter Viceprex Hirken’s torture mill.
“Max, we’re up against it. We have to do something right now; I’m not going to let them take Chewie’s mind apart. Can we deactivate defensive systems?”
The computer replied: “Sorry, Captain. All the primaries are controlled through that belt unit Hirken carries.”
“What about secondaries?”
Max sounded dubious. “I can get to the standby, but how will you deactivate the Viceprex’s belt unit?”
“I dunno; how’s he wired up? There must be ancillary equipment; the damn box is too small to be self-contained and still control this whole tower.”
Max gave the answer. Receptor circuitry ran through Stars’ End, built into the walls on each level.
“Show me the top-level circuitry diagrams.” Han studied them carefully, memorizing points of reference—doors, elevators, and support girders.
“Okay, Max, now I want you to cut into the secondary control systems and rearrange power-flow priorities. When the secondaries cut in, I want that umbrella shield, the deflector directly overhead, to start load-shedding its power back to the plant, but I want you to prejudice the systems’ safeguards, so that they notice the deflector droppage but not the feedback.”
“Captain Solo, that’ll start an overload spiral. You could blow the whole tower up.”
“Only if I get to Hirken’s primaries,” Han said, half to himself, half to Max. “Get crackin’.”
High above, Viceprex Hirken had realized that he was being played for a fool.
As fascinated as he’d been by Atuarre’s dance, he’d recognized in a fundamental, ever-suspicious part of his mind that he was being diverted. What he desired was to see mechanized combat. This dance artistry, though pretty enough, was no substitute.
He stood, fingering a button on his belt unit. Lights came up, and Pakka stopped playing. Atuarre looked around her, as if awakening from a dream. “What—”
“Enough of this,” Hirken decreed. Uul-Rha-Shan, his reptilian gunman, stood at his side, hoping for the order to slay. But instead, Hirken said, “I’ve seen enough, Trianii. You’re clearly stalling. You think me an imbecile?” Then he motioned to Bollux. “You ridiculous excuses for entertainers brought this obsolete ’droid to me purely as a fraud, never planning to give me value for my money. You’d hoped to plead mechanical failure and get me to reimburse you for your trip, or even reward you for your efforts. Isn’t that so?”
Her quiet “No, Viceprex” was ignored.
Hirken was not convinced. “Prepare that ’droid for combat, and bring out my Mark X,” he ordered the techs and Espos around him.
Atuarre drew herself up, enraged, and afraid for Bollux. But she could see Hirken was adamant, and she had her cub to think of. Furthermore she could do Han and her mate little good here. “With your permission, Excellency, I will return to my ship.” Onboard the Falcon, at least, more options would be available.
Hirken waved her away, preoccupied with his Executioner, laughing his humorless laugh. “Go, go. And if you see that worthless liar of a Marksman of yours, you’d be wise to take him with you. And don’t think I won’t lodge a complaint. I’ll have your Guild membership revoked.”
She glanced to where Bollux was being ushered down to the arena, helpless to aid him. “Lord Hirken, surely this is illegal. That is our ’droid—”
“Brought here to defraud me,” he finished for her, “but I’ll have my value from it. Now leave, if you’re going to, or watch if you wish.” He wagged a finger, and an Espo sergeant barked an order. Tall, stern guards fell in, one to either side of the two Trianii.
Atuarre couldn’t restrain her hiss. She grabbed Pakka’s paw and stormed toward the elevator, the cub bouncing along behind. Uul-Rha-Shan’s dry laugh was like a stab of hatred.
Down in the computer center, the readout screen, which had been showing a small part of the modification Blue Max was making, went blank for a moment.
“Max? You all right?” Han asked worriedly.
“Captain Solo, they’re activating that combat machine, the Mark X. They’re putting it in with Bollux!” Even as the computer-probe spoke, the rapid-fire images of the Mark-X Executioner’s engineering details replaced one another on the screen. Max’s voice was filled with alarm. “The Mark X’s controls and power are independent of this system; I can’t touch it! Captain, we have to get back upstairs right now. Bollux needs me!”
“What about Atuarre?”
“They’re summoning an elevator and notifying security that she’s leaving. We’ve got to get up there!”
Han was shaking his head, unmindful that Max’s photoreceptor was off. “Sorry, Max, there’re too many other things I need to do here. Besides, we couldn’t help Bollux now.”
The readout went blank and the photoreceptor came on. Blue Max’s voice trembled. “Captain Solo, I’m not doing anything else for you until you take me to Bollux. I can help him.”
Han struck the probe, not gently, with the heel of his hand. “Get back to work, Max. I’m serious.” For answer, Max withdrew his adapter from the network. Han, infuriated, snatched the little computer up and held it high overhead.
“Do what I told you, or I’ll leave you here in pieces!”
Max’s reply was somber. “Go ahead, then, Captain. Bollux would do whatever he had to if I were in trouble.”
Han paused in the midst of dashing the computer to the floor. It occurred to him that Max’s concern for his friend was no different from Han’s own for Chewbacca. He lowered the probe, looking at it as if for the first time. “I’ll be damned. You sure you can help Bollux?”
“Just get me there, Captain; you’ll see!”
“I hope. Which car was going to the dome?”
Max told him, and he set out for the elevators at once, slinging the probe over his shoulder. When he got there, he removed the security badge and punched for a downward ride. The wrong car stopped; he let it wait and go on, and punched the descent button again.
He lucked out. The car containing Atuarre, Pakka, and their two guards had stopped a number of times on its way down. She saw Han and pulled her cub off the car with her. The Espos had to hurry to avoid being left behind.
Han took the two Trianii aside a pace or two, but the Espos made it plain that they were keeping an eye on all three.
“We were going to the ship,” Atuarre told him in low tones. “I didn’t know what else to do. Solo-Captain, Hirken is putting Bollux in with that Executioner machine of his!”
“I know. Max has some kind of angle on that.” He saw one of the Espos speaking on a com-link. “Listen, the lost ones are here, thousands of ’em. Max rigged the tower; Hirken’ll have to let everybody go if he wants to keep breathing. Go get the ship ready. If I can just get my hands on a blaster, the fix is in, sister.”
“Captain, I meant to tell you,” Max interrupted. “I was rechecking the figures. I think you should know—”
“Not now, Max!” Han pulled Atuarre and Pakka back toward the elevator, hitting both the up and the down buttons. One of the Espos fell in with the Trianii again, but the other stationed himself with Han, explaining, “The Viceprex says it’s all right for you to come up. You can take home what’s left of your ’droid after the fight.”
The techs and Espos hurried Bollux down into the arena as the transparisteel slabs raised from their hidden slots in the floor. Hirken knew now that this was no gladiator ’droid, and so gave the command that Bollux be equipped with a blast shield, to make things more interesting. The shield, an oblong of dura-armor plate fitted with grips, weighed down the old ’droid’s long arm as he tried to adjust to what was happening.
Bollux knew he would never escape so many armed men. He had known many humans in his long years of function and could recognize hatred by now. That was what he saw on the Viceprex’s face. But Bollux had come through a number of seemingly terminal situations and had no intention of being demolished now if he could avoid it.
A door panel slid up in the far wall forming one arc of the arena. There was a squeal of drive wheels, the rattling of treads. The Mark-X Executioner rolled out into the light.
It was half again as tall as Bollux and far broader, though it moved on two thick caterpillar tracks instead of legs. From the treads and support housing rose a thick trunk, armored in gray alloy plate. The Executioner’s many arms were folded close to it now, inactive, each one furnished with a different weapon.
Bollux employed a trick he had learned from one of his first human owners, and simply omitted from computations the logical conclusion that his destruction was now a high order of probability. Among humans, he knew, this tactic was called ignoring certain death. Bollux thought of it as excluding counterproductive data. He’d been doing it for a long time now, which was why he was still functional.
The Executioner’s cranial turret swung, its sensors locking in on the ’droid. The Mark X was the latest word in combat automata, an extremely successful, highly specialized killing machine. It could have zeroed in on the unarmed, general-purpose labor ’droid and vaporized him right then and there, but was, naturally, programmed to give its owner a more enjoyable show than that. The Executioner was also a machine with a purpose.
The Mark X began rolling, moving with quick precision, maneuvering toward Bollux. The ’droid backed away clumsily, contending with the unfamiliar task of holding and manipulating his blast shield. The Executioner circled, studying Bollux from all sides, gauging his reactions, while the ’droid watched from behind his shield.
“Commence!” called Viceprex Hirken through the arena’s amplifiers. The Mark X, voice-keyed to him, changed to attack mode. It came directly to bear on Bollux, rushing at him at top speed. The ’droid dodged one way, then another, but his efforts were all anticipated by the Executioner. It compensated for his every move, rumbling to crush him under its tread.
“Cancel!” rasped Hirken over the amplifiers. The Mark X stopped just short of Bollux, allowing the old ’droid to totter awkwardly back from it.
“Resume!” ordered the Viceprex. The Executioner cranked into motion again, selecting another destructive option from its arsenal. Servos hummed and a weapon arm came up, its end supporting a flame projector. Bollux saw it and brought his shield up just in time.
A gush of fire arced from the nozzle of the flame gun, splashing against the walls of the arena, throwing a burning stream across Bollux’s shield. The Mark X brought the nozzle of its weapon back for another pass at low angle, to cut the ’droid’s legs out from under him. Bollux barely managed to crash clumsily to his knees and ground his shield before flame washed across it, making puddles of fire on the floor around him. The Mark X was rolling again, preparing for a clearer shot, when Hirken canceled that mode, too.
Bollux struggled to his feet, using the shield for leverage. He could feel his internal mechanisms overheating, his bearings especially. His gyro-balance circuitry hadn’t been built with this sort of constant punishment in mind.
Then the Mark X was coming in again. Bollux ignored the inevitable, making his sluggish parts respond, moving with some mechanical equivalent of pain, but still functional.
Han came out of the elevator at a run. The Espos there, aware that the Viceprex wished him to see the spectacle, let him pass.
He skidded to a stop at the top row of the little amphitheater. Hirken was seated below with his wife and subordinates, cheering their champion and laughing at the ludicrous Bollux as the Executioner raised another weapon arm. This one was provided with a bracket of flechette-missile pods.
Bollux saw it, too, and used a trick, or, as he thought of it, a last variable. Crouching, still holding his shield, he loosed the heavy-duty suspension in his legs and jumped out of the Mark X’s cross hairs like some giant red insect. Miniature missiles exploded against the clear arena walls in a cloud, filling the amphitheater with crashing eruptions in spite of the sound-suppression system out in the seating area.
Hirken and his people roared their frustration. Han flung himself down the steps to the arena, three at a time. Bollux had landed badly; the strain on his mechanisms was becoming insuperable. The Viceprex changed his combat-automaton’s programming once more.
The Executioner retracted its missile-arm. Articulated catch-cables extended from ports in its sides, like metallic tentacles, and two circular saws swung out, their arms locking into position. The sawblades spun, creating a peculiar sound, the molecules of their cutting edges vibrating in a way that would shear through metal as easily as through air. The Mark X moved toward Bollux, its cables weaving, for a terminal embrace.
Hirken spied Han reaching the arena’s edge. “Fraud! Now, watch a true combat-automaton at work!” He shook with gruesome laughter, all the affected charms of corporate board rooms stripped from him now. His wife and subordinates followed suit dutifully.
Han ignored them and held up the computer. “Max, tell him!” Blue Max sent burst-signals at top volume, concentrated pulses of information. Bollux turned his red photoreceptors to home in on the probe. He listened for a moment, then returned his attention to the onrushing Mark X. Han, knowing it was crazy, still found himself holding his breath.
As the Executioner bore down on him, Bollux made no move to avoid it or raise his shield. The Executioner recognized that as only logical. The ’droid had no hope. Questing catch-cables spread wide to seize Bollux; circular saws swung close.
Bollux hefted his shield and threw it at the Mark X. Cables and cutters changed course; the shield was easily intercepted, caught, and sliced to pieces. But in the moment’s reprieve, Bollux had thrown himself, stiffly—with a huge metallic bong—down between the crushing treads of the Executioner.
The combat-automaton ground to a halt, but not in time. Bollux, lying beneath it, fastened one hand to its undercarriage and locked his servo-grip there. The other hand reached in among the components of the Mark X, ripping at its cooling circuitry.
The Executioner emitted an electronic scream. If it had sat there and pondered for an age, the killing machine would still never have considered the possibility that a general-labor ’droid could have learned how to do the irrational.
The Mark X broke into motion, rolling this way and that, randomly. It had no way to get at Bollux, who clung beneath it. No one had ever programmed the Executioner to shoot at itself, or cut at itself, or to crush something it couldn’t reach. Bollux was in the single safe place in the entire arena.
The Mark X’s internal temperature began rising at once; the killing machine produced enormous amounts of heat.
Hirken was on his feet now, screaming: “Cancel! Cancel! Executioner, I order you to cancel!” Techs began running around, bumping into one another, but the Mark X was no longer receiving orders. Its complicated voice-keyed command circuitry had been among the first things to go out of whack. Now it charged aimlessly around the arena, discharging blasters, flame guns, and missile pods at random, threatening to overload the noise-suppression system.
The arena’s transparisteel walls became a window into an inferno as the Executioner roamed, its trunk rotating, its weapons blazing, its malfunctioning guidance system seeking an enemy that it could confront. It was hit by shrapnel from its own missiles. Smoke and fire could be seen pouring from its ventilators. Bollux hung on to the Mark X’s undercarriage with both hands now, being dragged back and forth, wondering calmly if his grip would fail.
The Executioner rebounded from one of the arena’s walls. Surviving targeting circuits thought the killing machine had found its enemy at last. It backed up, preparing for another charge, its engine revving.
Bollux decided correctly that it was time to part company. He simply let go. The Executioner howled off again, all its remaining attention focused on the unoffending wall. The ’droid began to drag himself, squeaking laboriously, toward the exit.
The Executioner crashed head-on into the arena wall, bouncing back with a mighty concussion. Frustrated, it fired all weapons at close range and was engulfed in the backwash of blaster beams, flechette fragments, and acid spray. Then, as Hirken cried a last “No-ooo!”, the Mark X’s internal heat reached critical, compounded by external damage.
The Mark-X Executioner, latest word in combat automata, was ruptured open by a spectacular explosion just as Bollux, semiobsolete general-labor ’droid, got his tired chassis out of the arena.
Han knelt by him, pounding the old ’droid on the back while Blue Max somehow produced a cheer from his vocoder. The pilot threw his head back and laughed, forgetting everything else in the absurdity of the moment.
“Give me a minute, please,” Bollux begged, his drawl even slower now. “I must try to bring my mechanisms into some sort of order.”
“I can help!” Max squeaked. “Link me through to your brain circuits, Bollux, and I’ll handle all the bypasses. That’ll leave you free to deal with the cybero-stasis problems.”
Bollux opened his plastron. “Captain, if you’d be so kind?” Han put the little computer back into place.
“Touching, whoever you are,” said a smooth, dry voice behind Han, “but pointless. We’ll pick them both apart for the information we want. What happened to all your pretty braid and medals, by the way?”
Han turned and stood fast. Uul-Rha-Shan was waiting there, gun in hand. Han’s holstered blaster hung over the reptilian gunman’s shoulder.
Hirken came up behind Uul-Rha-Shan, followed by the major and the other Espos, his execs, and his wife, all the trappings of his corporate importance. The air was filled with the smell of charred circuitry and molten metal, all that remained of the precious Mark X. Hirken’s face held inexpressible rage.
He pointed a quivering finger at Han. “I should’ve known you’re part of the conspiracy! Trianii, ’droids, the Entertainers’ Guild—they’re all in on it. No one on the Board will be able to deny it now; this conspiracy against the Authority and against me personally involves everyone!”
Han shook his head, amazed. Hirken was sweating, bellowing, with a maniacal look on his face. “I don’t know your real name, Marksman, but you’ve come to the end of this plot. What I need to know, I’ll dig out of your ’droid, and the Trianii. But since you’ve spoiled my entertainment, you’ll make up for it.”
He went with the rest of his entourage and stood just inside the arena, safe behind the transparisteel slabs. Uul-Rha-Shan took Han’s gunbelt from his shoulder and held it out to him. “Come, trick shooter. Let’s see if you have any tricks left.”
Han moved warily and collected the belt. He checked his holstered blaster by eye, and saw that it had been drained of all but a microcharge, not enough to damage the primary-control circuitry. His gaze went to Hirken, who stood gloating behind invulnerable transparisteel. The belt control unit was out of the question. Han climbed the amphitheater stairs slowly, buckling the gunbelt around his hips, tying down the holster.
Uul-Rha-Shan came after, returning his disrupter to its forearm holster. The two stepped out onto the open area overlooking the arena; the gathered Authority officials looked up at them.
It had been a good try, Han told himself, just a touch shy of success. But now Hirken meant to see him dead, and Chewbacca and Atuarre and Pakka in his interrogation chambers. The Viceprex held all the cards but one. Han made up his mind on the spot that if he was going to die anyway, he’d take all these warped minds of Corporate Security with him.
He went, carefully, and stood by the wall, unsnapping the retaining strap of his holster. His opponent, squared off a few paces away, wasn’t through taunting.
“Uul-Rha-Shan likes to know whom he kills. Who are you, imposter?”
Drawing himself up, Han let his hands dangle loosely at his sides, fingers working. “Solo. Han Solo.”
The reptile registered surprise. “I have heard your name, Solo. You are, at least, worthy of the killing.”
Han’s mouth tugged, in amusement. “Think you can bring it off, lizard?”
Uul-Rha-Shan hissed anger. Han cleared his mind of everything but what lay before him.
“Farewell, Solo,” Uul-Rha-Shan bade him, tensing.
Han moved with a dipping motion of the right shoulder, a half turn, all done with the blinding abruptness of the gunfighter. But his hand never closed on the grip of his blaster.
Instead, feigning his draw, he hurled himself out on the floor. As he fell, he felt Uul-Rha-Shan’s disrupter beam lash over him, striking the wall. It set off a belching explosion that caught the reptile full in the face, flinging him backward. His shot had blown apart the ancillary circuitry for Hirken’s belt unit, freeing swirls of energy. Secondary explosions told of the destruction of power-management routers.
Han had hit the floor rolling, surviving the blast with little more than singed hair. His blaster was in his hand now, the cautionary pulser in its grip tingling his palm in silent, invisible warning that the gun was nearly empty. As if he needed to be reminded. Uul-Rha-Shan, somewhere in the din and smoke, was shrilling, “Solo-ooo!” in furious challenge. Han couldn’t pick him out.
A far-off vibration reached him, the overload spiral he’d had Blue Max build into the secondary defense program. Now that the primaries had been damaged and Hirken’s belt unit circumvented, the power-rerouting had taken over. Won’t be long now, he told himself.
Everyone in Stars’ End suddenly felt as if he were being immersed in thick mud, as the weight of a planet seemed to be pressing down. The anticoncussion field—Han had forgotten about it, but it didn’t matter.
Then, with an explosion beyond words, the power plant blew.