VII

THE two strongarm specimens still standing at the top of the ramp ducked instinctively. Something small and fast swooshed past Han, knocking the humanoid who had been guarding him off his feet. Bollux pivoted to follow the action.

From the now-exposed Blue Max more high-pitched beeps issued forth. Han realized with some amazement that the computer module had managed to summon the remote target-globe from the Falcon’s interior and was using it as a weapon.

Before J’uoch’s people could react, Han yelled, “Hit ’em!” He grabbed the nearest opponent’s weapon, a slug-shooter carbine with a drum magazine and, twisting his leg behind the other’s, toppled him over.

Badure rammed his elbows back into the face of his guard and turned to grapple with him. Chewbacca was less fortunate. Preparing to enter the fray, he was unaware that the massive Egome Fass had stolen up behind him. The enforcer’s hard fist crashed into the base of the Wookiee’s skull.

Chewbacca staggered, nearly falling to his knees, but his tremendous strength bore him up again. He turned groggily to give battle, but Egome Fass’s first blow had given the enforcer a formidable edge. He avoided Chewbacca’s slowed counterpunch and landed another blow, bringing his fist down on the Wookiee’s shoulder. And this time the Falcon’s first mate went down.

Badure was having a difficult time with his second guard, who was young and fast. They struggled, feet shuffling in the dry dust, but just as the older man was gaining the upper hand by dint of weight and reach, he was tackled low around the knees and went down.

The tackier was Hasti. She had seen that J’uoch’s men on the ramp were about to open fire on Badure. Propelled by its repulsor power and forced air, the remote globe had taken two antagonists out of the fight. J’uoch was shooting at it with Hasti’s confiscated pistol, missing, and screaming orders that her troops ignored.

Han had retrieved the carbine, knocking his opponent away with a stroke of the weapon’s butt. He spotted his partner struggling to rise as Egome Fass hovered over him. The enforcer’s hood was thrown back, and in the light spilling down through the hatch, Han saw the humanoid’s huge, square jaw and tiny, gleaming eyes set far back under thick, bony ridges of brow.

Han clamped the carbine stock to his hips and squeezed off a burst. The weapon stuttered with a deafening staccato and reeked of burned propellant. A stream of slugs plucked at the enforcer’s chest but only ripped away fragments of cloth. Egome Fass was wearing body armor under his outsized coveralls. Before Han could adjust for effect, the humanoid lunged for cover.

A wash of white fire flared on Han’s right. Turning, he saw that it was a power-pistol shot aimed at Badure by a man on the ramp who missed because Hasti had just tackled the old man. But it hit the man with whom Badure had been struggling. He shrieked once and died as he fell.

Han grabbed Chewbacca’s elbow as the Wookiee struggled to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. Retaking the Falcon was impossible; the two remaining guards at the ramp head were kneeling in the shelter of the hatchway and firing into the night. “Get back!” Han hollered to his companions. He moved back, firing in brief bursts, followed by Hasti and Badure with Skynx scuttling rapidly behind.

The spotty return fire, hasty and poorly aimed, never came close. But one guard, a leather-skinned creature with a horny carapace, blocked Bollux’s retreat. Blue Max beeped, and immediately the remote flashed out of the darkness, striking the creature from behind and knocking it over. Since the remote couldn’t operate at any great distance from the starship, Max gave the signal that sent it jetting back onboard.

The labor ’droid hurried after the others, bounding in long strides made possible by heavy-duty suspension. The group ran, bounded, and scuttled to the edge of the landing area. All the while Han raked the field behind them to keep J’uoch’s people pinned down. Then the carbine went silent.

“Drum’s empty,” he said. Off in the night he could hear J’uoch railing at her followers and calling for a comlink.

“She’s posting a guard on the ship and calling for reinforcements,” Badure announced. “We’d best lose ourselves in town for a while.”

The group descended through the city in an informal race, past shuttered shops and locked doors. No lights could be seen; the Dellaltians who had seemed so curious earlier wanted no part of this lethal dispute among offworlders. Leading the others, Han plunged into an alley, followed it to a market plaza, and hurried down a trellised side street that smelled of strange foods and fuels.

They came to a factory district. Pausing in the shadows, the humans and the Wookiee leaned against a wall and fought for breath while Bollux waited impassively and Skynx, with a superior respiratory system, checked his carrier cinches to make sure that none of his precious instruments had been damaged.

“You should’ve snagged a gun,” Han puffed, “instead of worrying about that one-man band of yours.”

“These have been making music in my family for a dozen generations,” Skynx replied indignantly. “And I’m sure I don’t know how I could’ve wrested a weapon away from some malodorous ruffian four times my size.”

Han gave up the argument and checked the nearby rooftops. “Can anybody spot a ladder or staircase? We have to see if they’re trailing us.”

“Now I can be of help there, I believe,” Skynx announced. A nearby pole supported fiber-optic cables for intown communications; wrapping himself around it, Skynx spiraled up the pole, protecting his instruments carefully. Since all the buildings were one-story affairs, he had a good view of the surrounding area.

Having reconnoitered, Skynx corkscrewed his way down the pole again. “There are search parties working their way down through town,” he told them. “They have hand-held spotlights; I assume them to be using comlinks.” He tried to hide his fearful quaking.

“Did you see their ship?” Han asked eagerly. “It must be around here somewhere. Perhaps we could pick up some fire power there.”

But Skynx hadn’t spotted it. They decided to try to skirt the search parties’ pattern and see if they couldn’t get back to the Millennium Falcon. Skynx’s feathery antennae wavered in the air, attentive to vibrations. “Captain, I hear something.”

They all held their breath and listened. A rumbling swelled until it shook the ground. “Looks like J’uoch got through on the comlink,” observed Badure over the tumult. An enormous vessel mounted with heavy guns was hovering above the landing area, its floodlights playing over the city. The fugitives pressed backs into the shadows.

The ponderous lighter couldn’t hover and search for long; instead she descended. “There’ll be more manpower onboard her,” Badure warned. “Skynx, shinny up and take a look. Be careful.”

The Ruurian went up a nearby line-pole and was down again almost at once. “The big ship must have dropped off parties down in the lakeside area,” he told them urgently. “I saw them spreading out, coming up the hill. And there’s a group of three coming down this way from above. One of them is carrying Chewbacca’s bowcaster.”

The Wookiee growled ominously. Han agreed, “Let’s take care of them, but good.” No one mentioned surrender; it was plain J’uoch would do anything to get what she wanted.

The search party flashed hand-held spots into alleys and doorways. Teams were being organized to scour the rooftops; virtually every trustworthy being who could be spared from the mining camp had been armed and brought to the scene.

The man leading this particular party, the man whose carbine Han had appropriated, carried Chewbacca’s bowcaster and had tucked Han’s blaster into his belt. He had seen a Wookiee bowcaster used in the holo-thrillers and was determined to get even with the two by downing them with their own weapons. He was delighted, therefore, to see a looming, shaggy shape step out of the darkness before him.

Blocking his companions in the process, the man with the bowcaster took a stance and fired. But Chewbacca ducked at the last instant, knowing that the man’s unfamiliarity with the feel and aiming characteristics of the bowcaster would cause a first-round miss. In a flash the Wookiee hurled himself forward.

The man gave the bowcaster’s foregrip a yank to recock it and strip another round off the magazine for a second shot. But he got nowhere; the weapon’s mechanism was set for a Wookiee’s brawn and length of arm. Before he could cast it aside and pull out Han’s blaster, a mountain of angry brown fur descended upon him.

The other two searchers fanned out to either side. One was felled immediately as Han Solo stepped out of the shadows and knocked him out with a swipe of the carbine’s butt. The other was stunned by masonry brickbats flung by Hasti and Badure.

Han adroitly snatched his victim’s pistol and fired at the brickbat-stunned searcher. Yelling, the man clenched his calf and fell. Meanwhile Chewbacca had separated his man from the bowcaster and thrown him against a wall. The man crashed with an impressive thud and slid to the ground.

“You’ll live,” Han decided, toeing over the man he had shot and waving his recaptured blaster, “if you make some worthwhile conversation. How many guards on my ship?”

The man licked his fear-parched lips. “Ten, maybe twelve. A few actually onboard, the rest around her.”

“What about the ship you came in?” Hasti asked their captive. “The first one, not that big lighter.”

Han slightly depressed the blaster trigger.

The man gasped. “Backslope of town, below the landing area, in the rocks.”

Badure came up, having collected the comlink dropped by the bowcaster thief. “Sonny boy, you just bought yourself a future.” Then he told them that J’uoch’s spaceboat was grounded on an expanse of flat stone, with only two men guarding her. “I’ve grown to dislike unnecessary killing,” Badure explained, setting an appropriated stun-gun for maximum dispersal. He squeezed the trigger, and blue rings of energy leaped outward. Immediately the two guards collapsed. Badure and Hasti patted them down for whatever weapons or equipment they might have, then Han climbed into the boat and moved to the pilot’s seat. “Fueled and ready!”

Chewbacca, examining the copilot’s side of the board, woofed a question.

“No. We won’t leave Dellalt without the Falcon; we couldn’t get out of the system with this baby carriage anyway,” Han replied. “We’ll jump out of their search locus, then work out our next move.” He began throwing switches and punching instructions into the flight computer.

A warning sounded and the board lit up. Chewbacca threw his head back and yeowled his frustration. From the console rang J’uoch’s voice: “Attention, landing boat, attention! Why are you attempting to violate instrument lock? Guard detail, answer!”

“I need tools; they’ve got the board locked down,” Han said urgently. Chewbacca dug long fingers around the edges of the utility locker’s door and ripped it away. Han was busy unfastening the console’s housing latches. The Wookiee grabbed some implements from the locker and handed them to Han, and soon the partners were attacking the lockdown mechanism, ignoring J’uoch’s vehement transmissions that crackled in the background.

Chewbacca howled in triumph, neutralizing one security circuit. “Got the other,” Han crowed. But their elation disappeared as they heard the thunder of mass-lift thrusters.

“She’s coming after us in the lighter!” Hasti yelled from the hatchway. “How soon can we lift off?”

“She’s too close with those heavy cannons,” Han rasped. “But at least we’ll have a diversion. Get clear!”

The others ran for it. There was a chart readout on the console; Han slipped it into his vest and, with one foot out the hatch, inserted a series of instructions into the console. Automatic sequence cycled the hatch shut, and the boat lifted off.

Han hurdled a rock and crouched in its shelter with the others, and they watched the spaceboat rise into the night sky. The lighter was already on a close interception course; it seemed to Han a good time to get as far as possible from the liftoff site. Having distracted those on the lighter, the fugitives moved off in a ragged line. Chewbacca kept rearguard and, wielding a clump of dry red shrubbery, eradicated the few prints they’d left on the rocky terrain.

The spaceboat picked up speed, following Han’s programming. The lighter’s heavy artillery spoke, and tremendous spears of green-white energy made a brief noon in the Dellaltian night. The first salvo missed but gave the gunners their registration. The second hit dead center, several beams converging on the small boat at once. It exploded in a fireball, leaving a few scraps of burning wreckage to flutter from the sky.

“Capturing us wasn’t such a big priority after all,” Badure observed.

They had barely reached the temporary shelter of a rocky outcropping and hidden themselves among the boulders when the lighter returned with a rumble of brute thrusters and settled in where the boat had lifted. In moments the area was swarming with armed searchers sweeping hand-held spots. The stunned guards were quickly discovered, the ground examined.

“They’re buying it!” Hasti whispered with muted elation. The searchers noted the prints left by Han and the others when they had approached the boat but missed any sign of departure, thanks to Chewbacca’s painstaking work. The dozing guards were lugged aboard the lighter and the rest of J’uoch’s employees embarked. Thrusters flared again.

Han’s mind was racing. Now that they were armed and J’uoch apparently believed them dead, they had a chance of retaking the Millennium Falcon. Han expected to see the lighter land next to his own ship, to take away the guards onboard. Instead, the larger vessel hovered above the freighter. The Falcon’s ramp was up, her ramp-bay doors closed. Han suddenly understood what was happening.

He threw himself forward at a flat-out run, bellowing at the top of his lungs, with Chewbacca only a step behind. No one on either ship heard them, of course; the lighter, its hoisting gear making loud contact with the freighter’s upper hull and achieving tractor-lock on the smaller ship, lowered her mechanical support booms. In the same manner as she transported mining equipment, the lighter lifted off with the Millennium Falcon tucked up tightly to her underside.

The lighter veered south, gathering speed and altitude as she went. Han slowed to a stop. In despair he and Chewbacca watched their ship being borne away across the lake and over the mountains beyond. The others caught up.

“They think the log-recorder disk is onboard, isn’t that it, Captain?” Skynx asked, somewhat in shock. “They searched us and didn’t find it and tried to kill us, so they must assume we left it onboard the Falcon.”

“Where are they headed?” Han asked tonelessly.

“Straight for the mining camp,” Badure answered. “They’ll have all the time and privacy they need to tear—to search her thoroughly.”

Han pivoted on his heel and walked off toward town. A drizzle was starting.

“Where are you going? Where are we going?” Skynx yelped as the others hurried after.

“I want my ship back,” said Han simply.