II IITHE Millennium Falcon seemed a ghost ship, a spectral spacecraft like the long-lost, sometimes-sighted Permondiri Explorer, or the fabled Queen of Ranroon. Trailing sheets of crackling energy, with dancing lines of brilliant discharge playing back and forth over her, she might have flown directly out of one of those legends.
Around the starship seethed the turbulent atmosphere of Lur, a planet quite close, as interstellar distances go, to the Corporate Sector. Its ionization layer was interacting with the Falcon’s screens to create eerie lightninglike displays. The shrieking of the planet’s winds could be heard through the vessel’s hull, and the fury of the storm had cut visibility virtually to zero. Han and Chewbacca paid scant attention to the uproar pounding at their canopy with rain, sleet, snow, and gale-force winds.
They lavished closest attention on their instrumentation, courting it for all the information it could provide, as if by concentration alone they could coax a clearer picture of their situation from sensors and other indicators. Chewbacca growled irritably, his clear blue eyes skipping all over his side of the console, leathery snout working and twitching.
Han was feeling just as cross. “How am I supposed to know how thick the ionization layer is? The instrumentation’s jittery from the discharges, it doesn’t show anything clearly. What do you want me to do, drop a plumb line?” He went back to closely monitoring his share of the console.
The Wookiee’s rejoinder was another growl. Behind him, in the communications officer’s seat that was usually left vacant, Bollux spoke up. “Captain Solo, one of the indicators just lit up. It appears to be a malfunction in some of the new control systems.”
Without turning from his work, Han uncorked some of his choicer curses, then calmed down somewhat. “It’s the miserable fluidics! What timing, what perfect timing! Chewie, I told you there’d be trouble, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
The Wookiee flailed a huge, hairy paw in the air by way of dismissal, wishing to be left to his tasks, rumbling loudly.
“Where’s the problem?” Han snapped back over his right shoulder.
Bollux’s photoreceptors scanned the indicators that were located next to the commo board. “Ship’s emergency systems, sir. The auto-firefighting apparatus, I believe.”
“Go back and see what you can do, will you, Bollux? That’s all we need, for the firefighting gear to cut in; we’d be up to our chins in foam and gas before you could ask the way to the exit.” As Bollux staggered off, barely staying upright on the bucking deck, Han resolutely thrust the problem out of his mind.
Chewbacca yowlped. He had gotten a positive reading. Han dragged himself halfway out of his chair for a look as another spitting globe of ball-lightning drifted out and spun off the Falcon’s bow mandibles. The ionization levels were dropping. Then he threw himself back into his seat and cut the ship’s speed back even further. He had terrible visions of the ionization level extending down, somehow, to the surface of Lur, blinding them right up to the time of collision.
Of course, the party who had hired the Millennium Falcon for this run hadn’t mentioned the ionization layer, hadn’t mentioned anything very specific for that matter. Han had put the word abroad that he and his ship were available for hire and disinclined to ask questions, and the job had come, as Sonniod had predicted it would, from unseen sources in the form of a faceless audio tape and a small cash advance.
But with creditors hounding them and their other resources exhausted in the wake of the debacle in the Kamar Badlands, Han and his partner had seen no alternative but to ignore Sonniod’s advice and accept the run.
Was I born this stupid, Han asked himself in disgust, or am I just blossoming late in life? But at that moment both the storm and the ionization layer parted. The Falcon lowered gently through a clear, calm region of Lur’s atmosphere. Far below, features of the planet’s surface could be seen, mountain peaks protruding through low-hanging, swirling clouds. Another light flashed on; the freighter’s long-range sensors had just picked up a landing beacon.
Han switched on the Terrain Following Sensors and poised over the readouts. “They picked us a decent spot to land at least,” he admitted. “A big, flat place slung between those two low peaks over there. Probably a glacial field.” He flipped the microphone on his headset over to intercom mode. “Bollux, we’re going in. Drop what you’re doing and hang on.”
Correcting his ship’s attitude of descent, he brought her in toward the landing point at very moderate speed. The TFS rig showed no obstacles or other dangers, but Han wished to take no chances with instrumentation on this stupid planet.
They settled into the clouds as precipitation was driven at the canopy, only to slide away when it met the Falcon’s defensive screens. Sensors had begun functioning normally, giving precise information on altitude. Visibility, even in the storm, was sufficient for a cautious landing. Lur materialized below them as a plain where winds hurried along endlessly, aimlessly.
Han eased the vessel down warily; he had no desire to find himself buried in an ice chasm. But the ship’s landing gear found solid support, and instrumentation showed that Han’s guess had been correct; they had landed on a glacial ice field. Off to starboard some forty meters or so was the landing beacon.
Han removed his headset, stripped off the flying gloves he had been wearing, and unbuckled his seatbelt. He turned to his Wookiee copilot. “You stay here and keep a sharp watch. I’ll go let the ramp down and see what the deal is.” The unoccupied navigator’s seat behind him held a bundle that he snagged and carried along as he left the cockpit.
On his way aft to the ship’s ramp he found Bollux. The ’droid was stooping down by an open inspection plate set in the bulkhead at deck level. Bollux’s chest plastron was open, and Blue Max was assisting him in his examination of the problem at hand.
“What’s the routine?” Han inquired. “Is it fixed?”
Bollux stood up. “I’m afraid not, Captain Solo. But Max and I caught it just before the last safety went. We shut down the entire system, but repair is beyond the capability of either of us.”
“You don’t need a tech for those fluidics, Captain,” Max chirped. “You need a damn plumber.” His voice held a note of moral outrage at the inferior design.
“Tell me about it. And watch your language, Max. Just because I talk that way is no sign you should. All right, boys, just leave things the way they are. This trip should make us enough to have all those waterworks replaced with good old shielded circuitry. Bollux, I want you to close up your fruit stand; we’ve got cargo to pick up and I don’t want you making the clients jumpy. Sorry, Max, but you do that to people sometimes.”
“No problem, Captain,” Blue Max replied as the halves of Bollux’s chest swung shut to the hum of servomotors. Han reflected that, while he still didn’t care much for automata, Bollux and Max weren’t too bad. He decided, though, that he would never understand how the pseudo-personalities of an ancient labor ’droid and a precocious computer module could hit it off so well.
Han opened the bundle he had brought from the cockpit—a bulky thermosuit—and began pulling it on over his ship’s clothes. Before fitting his hands into the thermosuit’s attached gloves, he adjusted his gun-belt, rebuckling it over the suit, then removing the weapon’s trigger guard so that he’d be able to fire it with his thermoglove on. He wouldn’t have dreamed of going out unarmed; he was always wary when the Millennium Falcon was grounded in unfamiliar surroundings, but especially so when he was doing business on the shady side of the street.
He donned protective headgear, a transparent facebowl with insulated ear cups. Touching a button on the control unit set in his thermosuit’s sleeve, he brought its heating unit to life.
“Stand by,” he ordered Bollux, “in case I need a hand with the cargo.”
“May I inquire what it is we’re to carry, Captain?” Bollux asked as he drew aside the covers of the special compartments hidden under the deckplates.
“You may guess, Bollux; that’s about all I can do right now myself.” Han prodded at the hatch control with a gloved finger. “Nobody mentioned what it’s going to be, and I was in no position to ask. Couldn’t be anything too massive, I guess.”
The hatch rolled up and a blast of frigid wind invaded the passageway. Han shouted over the wail of the storm. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to be heat rash salve though, does it?”
He started down the ramp, leaning into the force of the gale. The cold in his lungs was sharp enough to make him think about going back for a respirator, but he judged that he wouldn’t be outside long enough to need one. His facebowl polarized somewhat against the ice glare as snow hissed against it. Specific gravity here on Lur was slightly over Standard, but not enough to cause any inconvenience.
At the foot of the ramp he found that the wind was moving a light dusting of snow across the blue-white glacier. Miniature drifts were already accumulating against the Falcon’s landing gear. He spied the beacon, a cluster of blinking caution lights atop a globular transponder package, anchored to glacial ice by a tripod. There was no one to be seen, but visibility was so low that Han couldn’t have made out much beyond the landing marker.
He walked over to it, inspecting it and finding it to be nothing more than a standard model, designed for use in places lacking sophisticated navigational and tracking equipment.
Suddenly a muffled voice behind him called out. “Solo?” He spun, right hand dropping automatically to the grip of his blaster. A man stepped out of the swirl of the storm. He, too, wore a thermosuit and a facebowl that had muted his voice, but the thermosuit was white and the facebowl reflective, making him nearly invisible there on the glacier.
He moved forward with hands empty and held high. Han, squinting past him, saw the vague outlines of other figures moving just at the edge of his range of vision.
“I’m him,” Han responded, his own words muffled somewhat by his facebowl. “You’re, uh, Zlarb?”
The other nodded. Zlarb was a tall, broadly built man with extremely fair skin, white-blond beard and clear gray eyes with creases at their corners that gave him an intense, threatening look. But he showed his teeth in a wide smile. “That’s right, Captain. And I’m ready to go, too. We can load up right away.”
Han tried to peer through the curtain of snow behind Zlarb. “Are there enough of you to bring up the cargo? I brought along a repulsorlift handtruck in case you need it to haul your load. Want me to run it out for you?”
Zlarb gave him a look Han couldn’t quite read, then smiled again. “No. I think we can get our shipment onboard without any problems.”
Something about the man’s behavior, the hint of a private joke or the sardonic tone to his reply, made Han suspicious. He had long since learned to listen to inner alarms. He looked back at the blurry outline of the Falcon and hoped Chewbacca was alert and that the Wookiee had the starship’s main batteries primed and aimed. The two seldom encountered trouble from their pickup contacts. Usually at the other end, the drop-off and payment end of things, trouble tended to occur. But this just might be the exception.
Han backed away a step, eyes meeting Zlarb’s. “All right then, I’ll go get ready to raise ship.” He had more questions to ask this man, but wanted to move the proceedings to a more auspicious spot, say, next to the freighter’s belly turret. “You drag your shipment to the ramp head and we’ll take it from there.”
Zlarb’s grin was wider now. “No, Solo. I think we’ll both go onboard your ship. Right now.”
Han was about to tell Zlarb that it was against his and Chewbacca’s policy to let smuggling contacts onboard when he noticed that the man had turned his hand over. In it he held a tiny weapon, a short-range palmgun that, like a conjuror, he must have held hidden between gloved fingers. Han thought about going for his blaster but realized that at best he could probably manage no more than a tie, in which case both of them would die.
The blinking lights of the landing beacon, gleaming off Zlarb’s facebowl, gave the man’s smirk an even more sinister look. “Hand the blaster over butt-first, Solo, and keep your back to the ship so your partner can’t see. Carefully now; I’ve been warned about you and that speeddraw, and I’d rather shoot than take a chance.”
He tucked Han’s sidearm into his belt. “Now let’s get aboard. Keep both hands at your sides and don’t try to warn the Wookiee.”
He turned for a moment and motioned to unseen companions, then indicated the Falcon with the palmgun. From a distance, Han thought, it probably looked like a polite you-first gesture.
As they walked Han tried to sort through the situation, his mind roiling. These people knew exactly what they were doing; the whole job had been a setup. Zlarb’s frank willingness to use his weapon was proof that he and his accomplices were playing for very high stakes. The question of being cheated of payment or even of having his vessel hijacked suddenly bothered Han less than the thought of not surviving the encounter.
The bulk of the Millennium Falcon became more distinct as they approached her. “No bright stunts now, Solo,” Zlarb warned. “Don’t even twitch your nose at the Wookiee or you’ll die for it.”
Han had to admit that Zlarb thought in advance, but he hadn’t covered everything. Han and Chewbacca had a signal system for pickups and dropoffs, whereby Han didn’t need to communicate that something was wrong; all he had to do was approach the ship and fail to give the subtle all’s-well.
Over the moan of the gale they heard the whine of servomotors. The quad-guns in the Falcon’s belly turret traversed, elevated, and came to bear on them.
But Zlarb had already stepped behind Han, pulling the captured gun from his belt and holding its muzzle up close to Han’s temple. They could see Chewbacca now, his hairy face pressed close to the canopy, gazing down apprehensively. The Wookiee’s left arm was stretched behind him, down near the console. Han knew his friend’s fingers would be only millimeters from the fire controls. He wanted to yell Get out! Raise ship! But Zlarb anticipated that. “Not a word to him, Solo! Not a sound, or you’re canceled.” Han didn’t doubt him a bit.
Zlarb had the Wookiee’s attention and was motioning him to come down out of the ship, indicating with the blaster’s muzzle just what would happen to Han if Chewbacca failed to obey. Han, familiar with his shaggy first mate’s expressions, read indecision then resignation, on his face. Then the Wookiee disappeared from the cockpit.
Han muttered something, and Zlarb poked him with the blaster. “Save it; it’s lucky for you he paid attention. Just play along and both of you will come through this alive.”
Two of Zlarb’s underlings had come up and stopped near their boss. One was a human, a squat, tough looking ugly who could have come from any of 100,000 worlds. The other was a humanoid, a giant, burly creature nearly Chewbacca’s size, with tiny eyes beneath jutting, boney brows. The humanoid’s skin was a glossy brown, like some exotic, polished wood, and vestigial horns curled at his forehead. He seemed to feel the need for neither thermosuit nor facebowl.
But it was what the other man, the squat one, had brought that surprised Han most. He had a control leash fastened to his wrist; at the end of the leash was a nashtah, one of the storied hunting beasts of Dra III. The nashtah’s six powerful legs, each armed with long, curving, diamond-hard claws, shifted restlessly on the ice. It strained at its leash, tongue arcing, its steamy breath rasping between triple rows of jagged white teeth, its long barbed tail lashing. Its muscles, tensing and untensing, sent ripples along its green, sleek hide.
What in the name of the profit-motive system can they be doing with a nashtah? Han asked himself. The creatures were bloodthirsty, tireless and impossible to shake once they scented their prey, and were among the most vicious of all attack animals. That seemed to indicate poaching of some kind, but why would a gang of poachers go to all this trouble? Han disliked moving pelts or hides and, given a choice, would not have carried them. But that surely didn’t call for this kind of extreme action on Zlarb’s part; there were plenty of smugglers who would have taken the job.
Chewbacca appeared at the ramp head. The nashtah, sighting him, gave throat to a piercing scream and lunged, dragging its handler until he dug in his heels and pressed a stud on the control leash handle. The nashtah gave a yeowl of displeasure at the mild shock that stopped its advance for the moment. Chewbacca watched impassively, his bowcaster held ready, eyes sweeping the scene below.
Zlarb started Han off with a shove, staying close behind, and the two climbed the ramp. When they were near the top, Zlarb addressed Chewbacca. “Put down the weapon. Do it now and step back or your friend here gets fried.” There was the nudge of the blaster between Han’s shoulder blades.
Chewbacca debated the variables involved, then complied, seeing no other way to save his friend’s life. Meanwhile, Han evaluated his chances for a fast move. He knew he might stand a chance of neutralizing Zlarb, but the other two gang members were backing their boss up and each had a handgun out now. And then there was the nashtah. Han elected to postpone his most desperate option for the time being.
When they reached the top of the ramp, Zlarb pushed Han hard, then stooped to take up Chewbacca’s bowcaster. The Wookiee caught his friend as Han stumbled from the shove and kept him from falling. Han removed his facebowl and threw it aside. Taking a quick look around, he noticed Bollux still standing where Han had left him. The ’droid seemed to be rooted to the spot, immobile with surprise, his circuitry struggling to absorb the bewildering rush of events.
Zlarb’s men had come in behind him along with the nashtah, whose claws scraped the deckplates. Again it had to be curbed from leaping at the Wookiee, and Han wondered for a moment what it was about Chewbacca that antagonized it so. Something about his first mate’s scent, or perhaps a resemblance to one of the beast’s natural enemies?
Zlarb turned to the hulking humanoid who had been eyeing Chewbacca with nearly as much hostility as the nashtah. “Go tell the others to start moving. We’ll get things ready here.” Then he turned to Han. “Open up your main hold; we’re going to start loading.” And finally, to the handler who still restrained the spitting nashtah, Zlarb indicated the Wookiee. “If he moves, burn him down.”
They set off aft, Zlarb being careful to stay well back from Han, watchful for any surprise move the pilot might make. Following the curve of the passageway, they came to the hatchway of the Falcon’s main cargo hold. Han tapped the release, and the hatch slid back to reveal a compartment of modest size, ribbed by the ship’s structural members, featureless except for air ducts, safety equipment, and the heating-refrigeration unit. A stack of panels and disassembled support posts lay there, to be erected as shelving or retaining bins if they were needed. Dunnage and padding were heaped in a pile to one side near coils of strapping and fastening tackle.
Zlarb, looking around, nodded in approval. “This’ll do fine, Solo. Leave the hatch open and let’s get back to the others.”
Another of Zlarb’s men had arrived and was standing at the top of the ramp, a disruptor rifle leveled at Chewbacca. The nashtah handler had dragged his beast back farther toward the cockpit. The big humanoid had returned, too, carrying a small shoulder pack. Zlarb pointed to it. “You’ve got your equipment there, Wadda?”
Wadda inclined his head. Zlarb pointed to Bollux. “First I want you to stick a restraining bolt on the ’droid. We don’t want him wandering around; he might give us trouble.”
Bollux started to protest but weapons moved to cover him and Wadda closed in on him, looming over him and unlimbering the ominous pack from his shoulder. The labor ’droid’s red photoreceptors went to Han in what seemed to be an entreaty. “Captain Solo, what shall I—”
“Keep still,” Han instructed, not wanting to see Bollux destroyed and knowing Zlarb’s people would do just that if the ’droid resisted them. “It’ll only be for a while.”
Bollux looked from Han to Chewbacca, then to Wadda and back to Han again. Wadda closed in on him, fitting a restraining bolt into a hand-held applicator. The big humanoid pressed the applicator against Bollux’s chest and the ’droid gave a split-second bleep. There was a wisp of smoke as bolt fused to metal skin. Just as Bollux shuffled, resettling his changing feet as if some new posture would be of help to him, his photoreceptors went dark, the restraining bolt deactivating his control matrices.
Satisfied that the Falcon was his, Zlarb began issuing commands. “Let’s get busy.” Han was directed to Chewbacca’s side. The nashtah handler and the man with the disruptor rifle continued to watch them while Wadda hurried down the ramp, making it tremble under his great weight.
“Zlarb,” Han began, “don’t you think its time you told us what’s so flaming …”
He was distracted by the ramp’s vibrations and the sound of many light footfalls. A moment later he understood just what had happened to him and in how dangerous a situation he and Chewbacca had become involved.
A file of small figures trooped aboard, heads hung in fatigue and despair. These were obviously inhabitants of Lur. The tallest of them was scarcely waist-high to Han. They were erect bipeds, covered with fine white fur, their feet protected by thick pads of calluslike tissue. Their eyes were large, and ran toward green and blue; they stared around the Falcon’s interior in dull amazement.
Each neck was encircled by a collar of metal, the collars joined together by a thin black cable. It was a slaver’s line.
Chewbacca bellowed an enraged roar and ignored the answering scream from the nashtah. Han glared at Zlarb, who was directing the loading of slaves. One of his men held a director unit, its circuitry linked to the collars. The director, a banned device, had an unfinished, homemade look to it. Any defiance from the captives would earn them excruciating pain.
Han fixed Zlarb with his eye. “Not in my ship,” he stated, emphasizing each word.
But Zlarb only laughed. “You’re not in much of a position to object, are you, Solo?”
“Not in my ship,” Han repeated stubbornly. “Not slaves. Never.”
Zlarb aligned Han’s own blaster at him, sighting down the barrel. “You just think again, pilot. If you give me any trouble, you’ll end up locked in a necklace yourself. Now, you and the Wookiee go forward and get ready to lift.”
A second line of slaves was being led aboard and ushered aft to the hold. Han scowled at Zlarb for a moment, then turned toward the cockpit. Chewbacca hesitated, bared his fangs at the slavers once more, and followed his friend.
Han lowered himself unwillingly into the pilot’s seat, and Chewbacca took the copilot’s. Zlarb stood behind them watching their every move carefully. He mistrusted the two, of course, but knew that they could get more speed and better performance out of the Falcon than he or any of his men could. And that might well mean survival in the perilous business of slave-running.
“Solo, I want you and your partner to be smart about this. You take us to our point of delivery and you’ll both be taken care of. But if we’re halted and boarded, it’s the death sentence for all of us, you included.”
“Where are we going?” Han asked, tight-lipped.
“I’ll tell you that when the time comes. For now, you just prepare to raise ship.”
Han brought the Falcon’s engines to full power, warming up her shields and preparing to lift. “What are they paying you? Even I can’t think of enough money to get me mixed up in slaving.”
Zlarb chuckled derisively. “They told me you were a hard case, Solo. I see they were wrong. Those little beauties back there are worth four, five, maybe even six thousand apiece on the Invisible Market. They’re natural-born experts at genetic manipulation, and in great demand, my friend. Not everyone is happy with the rigid restrictions that were imposed after the Clone Wars. It seems these creatures like their own world too much, though, and wouldn’t sign out on contract labor for anything. So my associates and I rounded up a bunch. A few of them are sick or wounded, but we’ll deliver at least fifty of them. I’ll make enough off this run to keep me happy and lazy for a long time.”
Contract labor. That sounded like the Corporate Sector Authority was involved. But though the Authority had been known to use contract hoaxes and deceptive recruitment, Han found it hard to believe that it would be so bold as to practice out-and-out slavery, particularly raiding a planet outside its own boundaries. That was something even the Empire couldn’t afford to ignore.
“Your board looks good to me, Solo,” Zlarb commented, studying the console. “Raise ship.”
As Han, Chewbacca, and the slavers left the passageway, Bollux still stood precisely where he had been deactivated near the ramp’s head. The restraining bolt had interdicted all his control centers, immobilizing him.
But hidden within the labor ’droid’s thorax, still functioning off his own independent power supply, Blue Max was assessing his situation. Though he realized that the emergency might mean disaster for the Falcon’s entire complement, the undersized computer probe could see little he could do to change the situation. He had no motor capability of his own and contained no communications equipment except his vocoder and various computer-tap adaptors. Moreover, Max’s own power source was minuscule in comparison to Bollux’s, and he couldn’t possibly move the labor ’droid’s body far enough or fast enough to do any good before exhausting himself.
Blue Max wished he could at least talk to his friend, but the restraining bolt’s interdiction extended to all of Bollux’s brain functions. The computer, who had seldom been separated from Bollux’s host body, felt very much alone.
Then he remembered the short bleep emitted by Bollux just before he’d been immobilized. Max ran the bleep back, slowing it by a high factor and finding, as he had thought, that it was a squirt, a burst transmission. It was garbled; Bollux had been dealing with a number of things at the time. But at length Max made sense of it and saw what the labor ’droid had been trying to do.
Blue Max linked himself in carefully with some of Bollux’s motor circuitry, prepared to withdraw and close off instantly if the bolt’s influence threatened to impair him.
But it didn’t. The restraining bolt worked against Bollux’s command and control centers, not his actual circuitry and servomotors. Still, Max knew he had a very difficult task, one that would have been impossible if Bollux hadn’t repositioned his feet at the last instant before being paralyzed.
The computer lacked the power to make Bollux’s body take more than a few steps but he did have enough to effect a single servo. Though it drained him dangerously, Max fed all the power he could into the knee joint of his companion’s left leg. The knee flexed and the labor ’droid’s body tilted. Max, trying desperately to gauge the unfamiliar leverages and angles, stopped for a moment and redirected his efforts toward the central torsion hookup in Bollux’s midsection, turning him a little to the left. That demanded so much of his scant power that Max had to pause for a moment and let his reserves build a bit.
He shut down all nonvital parts of himself to hoard the energy he needed, then addressed himself to the knee joint once more as the roar of the Millennium Falcon’s warming engines made the deckplates chatter and filled the passageway with a hollow rumble.
The ’droid’s balance passed the critical point; he tottered, then toppled to the left, landing with a clamorous din. Bollux’s body ended up resting on its left arm and side, barely stabilized by its right foot, which also touched the deck.
Max found that, with the body in this position, he couldn’t get both chest panels open, but that hardly mattered since he lacked the power to do so anyway. As it was, he had to stop twice in working the right panel outward, wait for his reserves to build up, then channel power into the panel servo. He stopped when the right panel was open sufficiently for him to see his objective.
The last move was the hardest. Max extended an adaptor to the exposed fluidics systems on which he and Bollux had been working prior to planetfall. The fluidics were fitted with standard couplings, but that still left the problem of making a connection with them. Extending his rodlike adaptor arm as far as it would go, Max found his goal just out of reach. The coupling waited beyond and below his adaptor. In desperation Max tried to push his adaptor arm out even farther and nearly damaged himself. It availed nothing.
The computer saw he had only one chance left. That it involved risk of personal damage to him didn’t make him hesitate for an instant. He shifted power back to Bollux’s midsection, turning the torsion hookup again in an all-out effort that nearly overloaded him. The labor ’droid’s body twisted slowly, then rolled over.
But in the last moment, the roll brought Max’s adaptor close enough to make contact with the fluidics coupling. He linked up with the systems and had time to send out a single command. Then the torso’s descending weight bent his fragile adaptor arm, breaking the connection, and sending feedback washing into Blue Max with a computer analogue of blinding pain.
While Max fought his lonely battle, Han was staring at his controls. He was perspiring and had the front of his thermosuit open, wondering if he should let things go any further or try to jump Zlarb now.
Zlarb was scanning the control console. “I told you to get going, Solo. Raise ship.”
He was still waving Han’s blaster around to emphasize his command when he took a gush of thick, white foam full in the face.
Nozzles in the cockpit and throughout the Millennium Falcon had begun to spew anti-incendiary gas and suppression foam when Max’s single command cut in the ship’s auto-firefighting apparatus. Under the computer probe’s override, the system behaved as if the entire ship were aflame.
Han and Chewbacca, unsure of what was happening, didn’t stop to think, but seized instead upon whatever freak opportunity this was. The Wookiee struck out with a huge paw, backhanding Zlarb against the navigator’s seat, located just behind Han’s. Zlarb, blinded, let off a shot at random. The blaster blew a jagged hole in the canopy, its edges dripping with molten transparisteel.
Just then Han flung himself on the slaver, followed closely thereafter by his first mate. Zlarb was punched, shaken, kneed, bitten, and slammed head-first into the navi-computer before he could get off a second shot.
The cockpit was already ankle-deep in foam, and blasts of anti-incendiary gas made it nearly impossible to see. The racket of sirens and warning hooters was deafening. Nevertheless, both partners’ spirits had risen appreciably. Picking up his blaster, Han cupped his hand to his mouth and hollered into Chewbacca’s ear.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ve got to hit them before they can recover. I counted six of them, right?”
The Wookiee confirmed the number. Han led the way from the cockpit as quickly as he could, both of them slipping and sliding in the deepening foam.
Han dashed out into the main passageway. Fortunately he looked to his right first, toward the forward compartment. There one of the slavers stood open-mouthed, staring at the belching auto-firefighting gear. He caught sight of Han and started to bring his disruptor rifle around. But Han’s blaster bolt took him high in the chest, knocking him backward through the air, his weapon dropping from his hands.
Han heard a horrible growl and whirled. The handler appeared from the other direction and released the nashtah, which sprang at Han with such speed that it was no more than a blur. Before he could even get off a shot the beast hit him, sending him sprawling against the squares of safety cushioning that rimmed the cockpit hatchway, his shoulder and one forearm slashed with parallel furrows from the creature’s claws.
But the nashtah never completed its pounce. Instead it was grabbed and held in midair and sent hurtling against a bulkhead. Chewbacca, having lost his footing in the act of throwing the nashtah aside, scrambled to his feet once more. Han brought his gun up but hesitated to shoot because the fall had shaken him. In that moment the nashtah, with an angry flick of its tail and a hideous cry, sprang at the Wookiee, driving him back into the cockpit passageway.
Chewbacca somehow managed to maintain his footing. Exerting to the fullest his astounding strength, he absorbed the force of the nashtah’s attack, locking his hairy hands around its throat, hunching his shoulders and working with legs and forearms to ward off its claws.
The nashtah screamed again, and the Wookiee screamed even louder. Chewbacca held the attack beast clear of the deck and slammed it against the bulkhead to his left, then to his right and to the left again, all in less than a second. The nashtah, its head dangling now at a very odd angle, slumped in his grasp. Chewbacca let it fall to the deck.
The beast’s handler gave an outraged shout, seeing his animal’s unmoving body. He brought his pistol up, but Han’s blaster reacted first. The man staggered, tried to bring his weapon up again, and Han fired a second time. The handler fell prone on the deck not far from the body of his nashtah.
Han grabbed Chewbacca’s elbow, pointed and started aft toward the main hold. They found Bollux’s inert bulk where Blue Max had caused it to fall, and it was apparent just what the two automata had done. Foam had crept in around the ’droid’s body and had begun seeping in through the open chest panel.
Chewbacca gave a grating snarl alluding to the ingenuity of the two. “I’ll second that; they’re pretty nervy,” Han concurred. He’d taken a grip on the ’droid’s shoulder. “Help me sit him up so the foam doesn’t get at them.”
There was no time to do anything else. They propped the ’droid’s body against the bulkhead in temporary safety and hurried on. They were going full-tilt when the giant humanoid appeared around the curve of the passageway from the opposite direction, a riot gun in his hand.
Han made an awkward attempt to dodge for cover, bringing his blaster up at the same time. With the deck slippery with foam, he lost his footing and took a spill. Chewbacca, on the other hand, adapted quickly to these unusual conditions. Without decreasing speed he hurled himself into a feet-first slide along the deck-plates, cutting a bow-wave through the drifting foam, his enthusiastic bellow rising above the hiss of gas projectors and the alarms.
The slaver’s aim wavered from Han to the Wookiee, but Chewbacca was moving too fast; one shot mewed, a miss that crackled on the deck, raising steam from the foam. The Wookiee rammed the humanoid with his outsized feet, and the humanoid bounced with astonishing abruptness into a mound of foam wherein he was joined directly by Chewbacca. The foam mound quivered and shook, strands and clumps of it flying loose, as there came from it the sounds of snarls and roars, and heavyweight collision.
Han was back on his feet, rushing on, feeling somewhat lightheaded from the anti-incendiary gas. He was still uncertain what to do when he encountered the last two slavers, the ones carrying the collar-boxes. If he hesitated they might just hit the kill switches, slaying every captive on the lines. He steeled himself to fire accurately and without an instant’s delay.
But the responsibility wasn’t his. The main hold was in pandemonium. Both remaining slavers were staggering under swarming, flailing captives. All the creatures moved with agonized, twitching motions, fighting both their captors and the pulses of excruciating pain being inflicted by their collars. Many were on the deck, unable to overcome the punishment and join the fight.
But those who had mastered their agony were carrying the battle well. As Han watched, they dragged the slavers to the deck, wrestling away weapons and director units and pounding the two into submission. Apparently the creatures knew enough about the director units to deactivate them. All the slaves slumped visibly as their torture ended.
Han stepped cautiously into the hold. He hoped his unwilling passengers understood the situation well enough to know that he wasn’t their enemy, but reminded himself he’d better be charming until they were sure.
One of the creatures, its thick white fur ruffled and tufted from its struggle, was studying the collar-box. It made a decisive stab at a switch and all the collars along that particular cable sprang open. The creature tossed the director unit aside contemptuously, and one of its companions passed it a captured disruptor. The sidearm looked big and clumsy in its small, nimble hands.
Han holstered his blaster slowly, holding empty palms up for them all to see. “I didn’t want this either,” he told them in an even tone, though he doubted that they spoke a shared language. “I had no more to do with it than you.”
The disruptor was moving slowly. Han argued with himself the wisdom of reaching for his pistol but doubted his own ability to shoot the creature down. It had no fault in this matter either. He decided to reason on, but the skin on his neck was trying to crawl up into his scalp.
“Listen: you’re free to go. I’m not going to stop—”
He sprang sideways as the disruptor swung up at him. It took an iron, conscious effort to keep from drawing. He heard the disrupter’s blaring report. And unexpectedly, he heard a small clatter and a gasp from behind him.
Framed in the hatchway, looking down without comprehension at the broad wound in his chest, was Zlarb. At his feet lay the little palmgun. He sank against the hatchway and slid slowly to the deck. The creature had lowered its disruptor once more. Han went and knelt by Zlarb.
The slaver was breathing very unevenly between clenched teeth, his eyes screwed shut. He opened them then, focusing on Han, who had been about to tell him to save his strength, but saw that it made no difference. Perhaps, in a full-facility medicenter, the slaver could have been saved, but with the limited resources of the Falcon’s medi-packs Zlarb was as good as gone.
He didn’t avoid the slaver’s gaze. “They weren’t quite as meek as you thought, were they Zlarb?” he asked quietly. “Just real, real patient,”
Zlarb’s eyes began to flutter shut again. He only managed “Solo …” He put more hatred into the name than Han would have thought possible.
“And how did Zlarb get past you? He almost scored me, you big slug!”
Chewbacca gobbled angrily in response to Han’s indignant question and pointed to where the burly humanoid slaver, the one with whom the Wookiee had collided, lay battered and bound by the main ramp.
“So what?’ Han demanded with elaborate sarcasm, enjoying himself. He was kneeling by Bollux’s side, setting the cap of an extractor over the restraining bolt. “You used to handle three of his kind before breakfast. What I don’t need is a first mate who’s turning into a geriatric case.”
Chewbacca barked so loudly that Han ducked involuntarily. A Wookiee’s lifespan is longer than a human’s—age was a standing joke between the two.
“That’s what you say.” Han thumbed the extractor’s switch. There was a pop and a tiny burst of blue discharge around the bolt’s base.
Bollux’s red photoreceptors came on. “Why, Captain Solo! Thank you, sir. Does this mean the crisis has passed?”
“All but the housework. I got the firefighting outlets shut down, but the ship looks like an explosion in a dessert shop. You can skate from here to the cockpit if you want. That was a good move you and Maxie—”
“Blue Max!” Bollux interrupted, a rarity for him. “Sir, he’s not in linkage; I think he’s been damaged.”
“We know. His adaptor arm was bent and he took some burnout creepage. Chewie says he can fix him up, though, with components we have onboard. Just leave Max be for now. Can you get up?”
The labor ’droid answered by rising and swinging his chest panel shut over the computer module protectively. “Blue Max is remarkably resourceful, wouldn’t you say, Captain?”
“Bet your anodes. If he had fingers we’d have to start locking up the tableware. You can tell him that for me later, but for now just take it easy.” Han stood and beckoned Chewbacca and the two went aft to the hold again.
The former captives had laid out the bodies of their several dead, those who hadn’t survived the terrible ordeal of the slave collars. They were assembling litters from materials in the hold, which Han had offered them, with which to bear their fellows home.
Han stopped by the corpse of Zlarb. In searching the man a few minutes earlier, he had noticed the hard, rectangular lump of a breast-pocket security case under his thermosuit. Han had seen a few such cases before and knew he had to be careful with it.
Settling down with one of the Falcon’s medi-packs, he dug out a flexclamp and a vibroscalpel and began cutting away the tough material of the thermosuit. In the meantime, Chewbacca began cleaning his own wounds with an irrigation bulb and a synth-flesh dispenser. More by fortune than design, neither of the two had received deep wounds from the nashtah’s claws.
Han quickly had the security case exposed. It was anchored to the pocket by a slim clip to which it was attached by a fine wire. Han carefully felt for and found the safety, a small button concealed at the case’s lower edge. Pressing it, he disengaged the security circuit. Then he began working the clip loose from the pocket lining with his other hand. To try to remove the case in any other fashion would invite a neuroparalysis charge from the case. A numb arm would be the best he could hope for, depending on the case’s setting. Some security cases were capable of giving lethal shocks.
He reprimed the clip, and the case was rendered harmless. Humming a half-remembered tune, he got busy with some fine-work instruments he had fetched from the ship’s small but complete tool locker. The lock itself was a fairly common model; the neuroshock was the case’s main line of defense. He had it open in fairly short order.
And spat some sizzling Corellian oaths. There was no money.
All the case contained were a data plaque, a message tape, and a smaller case that turned out to be a Malkite poisoner’s kit. That Zlarb was a practitioner of the Malkite poisoner’s arts reaffirmed Han’s conviction that the universe wouldn’t mourn the man’s passing, but it did little to alleviate his frustration or his financial situation.
He threw aside the security case and glowered at the two surviving human slavers. They both began to quake visibly. “You have one chance,” he said quietly. “Somebody owes me money; I have ten thousand credits coming for this run and I want it. Not telling me where I can get it would be the dumbest thing you’ll ever do in your lives, and one of the very last.”
“We don’t know anything, Solo, we swear,” one of them protested. “Zlarb hired us on and he arranged everything; he handled the contacts and all the money himself. We never saw anybody else, that’s the truth.” His comrade confirmed it energetically.
The ex-slaves had finished their preparations and were ready to depart. Han walked over to where the empty collars and director units lay. “That’s really rotten luck for you two,” he told the slavers and fastened a collar around the neck of each, ignoring their protests. He handed the collar-box to the leader of the ex-slaves and pointed to the bodies of the dead.
The creature understood, patting the case. The slavers would pay for the deaths with their own servitude. How long a sentence they’d have to serve would be entirely up to their one-time captives. Han couldn’t have cared less.
“Take your boss’s body with you,” he ordered the two. They looked at one another. The creature’s finger poised near the controls of their collars. They scrambled to obey, hoisting the late Zlarb between them.
Chewbacca led the way as the ex-slaves, preceded by their new servants, bore their dead from the cargo hold. “Don’t forget to get rid of the other casualties,” Han called after his friend. “And collar up that other slaver for them. Then bring me a reader!”
Exhausted, he resolutely set to the task of cleaning up his injuries with another irrigation bulb, thinking ominous thoughts about how little money he and Chewbacca had left and wondering if their rotten luck would ever break. Then it occurred to him that Zlarb would undoubtedly have killed him, and Chewbacca as well, if Blue Max and Bollux hadn’t given the situation a twist. As it was, he and the Wookiee were alive and free and, with a little cleaning up, would have their starship in something like running order again very shortly. By the time Chewbacca returned, Han was applying synth-flesh to his wounds and whistling to himself.
The Wookiee was carrying a portable readout. Han shoved the medipack aside and fit the data plaque into the reader. His copilot leaned over his shoulder and together they puzzled over what they saw.
“Date-time coordinates, planetary index numbers,” Han muttered. “Ships’ registry codes and rental agents’ IDs. Most of them for a planet called Ammuud.” Chewbacca rumbled his own mystification.
Han again cursed Zlarb. Removing the plaque, he inserted the message tape into the readout’s other aperture. On the screen appeared the face of a young, black-haired man. The tight closeup told Han nothing about the man’s surroundings, whereabouts, or even the clothing he wore.
The face in the portable readout began speaking. “The measures you suggested are being taken against the Mor Glayyd on Ammuud. When delivery of your current consignment is made, payment will take place on Bonadan. Be at table 131, main passenger lounge, Bonadan Spaceport Southeast II at these coordinates.” Standard date-time coordinates appeared on the screen for a moment, then it cleared.
Han tossed the reader into the air with a burst of laughter. “If we pour it on, we can still get there in time. Let’s get the canopy patched; we can tidy up and see to Bollux and Max while we’re in jump.”
He kissed the reader and the Wookiee brayed, muzzle wrinkling, tongue curling, fangs showing. It was time to see about payments due.