"Brian Daley "Han Solo at Stars' End"" - читать интересную книгу автора

Han whirled, dropping to one knee, blaster up. Be-yond the cockpit offshoot from the passageway crouched the cub, Pakka, his small pistol held in one paw-hand, a medi-pack swinging from the other. He seemed to be wavering indecisively.
"He thinks you're threatening me!" Atuarre rasped, moving toward her cub. Hah swung his blaster to cover her and looked back to the cub. "Tell the kid to drop it and come to you, Atuarre. Do it!"
She did, and the cub, shifting his wide eyes between Han and his mother, obeyed.
Torre took the medi-pack from the cub and handed it to Han. Still covering his passengers, Han moved to an acceleration chair and opened the pack with his free hand. He held the nozzle of an irrigation bulb against his forehead injury, then wiped at it with a dis-infectant pad.
Putting the medi-pack down, he took up the three confiscated weapons, put them aside, and confronted Torm, Atuarre, and Pakka. His mind ran in circles. How to tell who had done it? They'd each had a weapon, and time. Either Pakka had doubled back from his search, or one of the others had left his turret long enough to murder. Han almost regretted not hav-ing exchanged fire with the Shannador's Revenge; at least he'd have known if either of the quad-mounts was untended.
Atuarre and Torm were trading suspicious looks now. "Rekkon told me," Tonn was saying, "that he took you and the cub on against his better judgment."
"Me?" she shrilled. "What about you?" She turned to Hall. "Or, for that matter, you?"
That shook him. "Sister, I'm the one who got you out of there, remember? Besides, how could I lift off and shoot Rekkon at the same time? And anyway, Bol-lux was with me." Han rummaged again in the medi-pack, dug out a patch of synth-flesh, and pressed it over his injury, his mind in a turmoil.
"That all could've been done by computer, Solo, or you could have killed him just before I came down," Torm said. "And what good's a 'droid for a witness? You're the one pointing the blaster around, hotshot."
Hah, pushing the medi-pack aside, replied, "I'11 tell you what: you're all, all three of you, going to keep an eye on one another, and I'm going to be the only one with a gun. If anybody has the wrong look on his face, it's going to be all over for him. You're all fair game, understand?"
Atuarre moved to the gameboard. "I'11 help you with Rekkon."
"Keep your hands off him," Tonn shouted. "It was either you or that cub who killed him, maybe both." The big redhead's fists were bailed. Both Atuarre and Pakka were showing their fangs.
Hart cut them off with a wave of the blaster. "Ev-erybody relax. l'll take care of Rekkon; Bollux can help. The three of you move down to that cargo hold off the main passageway." He stifled their objections with a motion of the gun's muzzle. First Torm, then the two Trianii, began to move.
Han stood to one side as they filed into the empty hold. "If anybody sticks his face out of here without my say-so, I'll figure he's out to get me, and I'll fry him. And if anybody's hurt in here, I'll space whoever is left, no questions asked." He closed the hatch and left them.
In the forward compartment, Bollux waited si-lently, with Blue Max on a console nearby. Han re-garded the corpse. "Well, Rekkon, you did your best, but it didn't get you far, did it? And you dumped it into my lap. Now my partner's captured and your murderer's onboard with me. You weren't a bad old man, but I somehow wish I'd never heard of you."
Han picked up one heavy arm, dragging at the corpse. "Bollux, you get ready to take the other side; he was no lightweight."
Then he noticed the scrawl. Han pushed Rekkon's body back clumsily and bent to examine a stylus's scribble on the gameboard that the dead man's arm had hidden. The writing was difficult to read, dashed off in a pained, distorted hand, hastily and weakly. Han turned his head this way and that, puzzling the message out aloud: "Stars' End, Mytus VII." He knelt and quickly found Rekkon's bloodstained stylus on the floor by the gameboard base. With his last strength, after he'd been left for dead, Rekkon had managed to leave word of what the computer plaque had told him. Dying, he hadn't abandoned his cam-paign.
"Foolish," Han told himseN. "Who was he trying to tell?"
"You, Captain Solo," Bollux answered automati-cally. Han turned on him in surprise. "What?"
"Rekkon left the message for you, sir. The wound indicates that he was shot from behind, and therefore quite probably never saw his assailant. The only living entity he could trust would be you, Captain, and it would be logical to assume you would be present when his body was moved. He made sure in this man-ner that the information would reach you."
Hah stared down at the body for a long moment. "All fight, you stubborn old man; you win." He reached over, smearing and eradicating the words with his hand. "Bollux, you never saw this, under-stand? Play dumb."
"Shall I erase that portion of my memory, sir?" Han's answer was slow, as if he was catching the habit from the 'droid. "No. You may be the one who'll have to pass it along if I don't hack it. Make sure Blue Max keeps zipped, too."
"Yes, Captain." Bollux moved to take Rekkon's other arm as Han prepared to hoist again. His joints creaked, and his servos whined. "This was a great man, was he not, Captain?"
Han strained under the corpse's weight. "What d'you mean?"
"Just, sir, that he had a function, a purpose he cared about above and beyond his life. Doesn't that indicate a greatness to the purpose?"
"You'll have to read the obituaries, Bollux; all I can tell you is, he's dead. And we're going to have to eject him through the emergency lock; we might get boarded yet, and we can't have him around."
Without further conversation, the two dragged at Rekkon, who had reached out from beyond death and given Hah the answers he needed.
Hah opened the hatch. Atuarre, Pakka, and Torm looked up in unison. They'd taken seats on the bare deck, the man at the opposite side of the empty hold from the two Trianii.
"We had to ditch Rekkon," Han told them. "Atuarre, I want you and Pakka to go square away the forward compartment. You can throw some eats into the warming unit, too. Torm, come with me; ! need a hand repairing the damage we did on liftoff."
Atuarre objected. "I am a Trianii Ranger, and a rated pilot, not a drudge. Besides, Solo-Captain, that man is a traitor."
"Save it," Hah cut her off. "I've locked up all the other weapons in the ship, including Chewie's other bowcaster. I'm the only one armed, and things stay that way until I figure out what to do with you all."
She gave him a sullen look, telling him, "Solo-Captain, you're a fool." She left, with Pakka trailing behind.
Torre rose, but Han stopped him with an arm across the hatchway. The redhead retreated back into the hold and waited. "You're the only one I can trust," Han told him. "Bollux isn't really much good, and I just figured out who killed Rekkon." "Which of them did it?"
"The cub, Pakka. He was in Authority custody, and they messed with him. That's why he doesn't talk. I think they brain-set him, then let Atuarre recover him. Rekkon wouldn't have let any of you others near."
Torm nodded grimly. Han produced the man's pis-tol from the back of his gunbelt and handed it to him. Its charge indicator read full. "Keep this on you. I'm not sure Atuarre's figured it out yet, but I'm willing to play them along and find out if either of them know anything that'll help."
Torre stashed the gun in his coverall pocket. "What will we do next?"
"Rekkon left a message as he was dying, scrawled it on the gameboard. The Authority's keeping its spe-cial prisoners at something called Stars' End, on Mytus VI. After we've checked the ship over, we'll gather in the forward compartment and run down everything we've got in files and computers on it. Maybe Pakka or Atuarre will let something slip then."
When the light damage suffered by the Millennium Falcon in her breakout from Orton III had been re-paired insofar as was possible, the ship's complement gathered in the forward compartment. Hah had brought four portable readouts. He gave one to each of the others and took one himself. Bollux watched, seated to one side, with Max back in his usual place, gazing out from the 'droid's chest.
"I patched these readouts into the ship's computers," Han explained. "Each of there's keyed to one kind of information. I'll pull navigational, Atuarre's got plan-etological; Pakka can retrieve the Authority's unclas-sifted stuff, and Torm's got operational files from the outlaw-techs. Okay, punch up Stars' End and let's get at it."
Each of the other three complied. Torm's screen, except for the retrieval request, remained blank. Atuarre's too. She looked up, as they all did, to see Han scan his own readout.
"Your portables aren't hooked up to anything," he told them, "only mine. Atuarre, show Torre your screen."
Dubious, she still did as he asked, turning her read-out so that the redhead could see it. On her screen was the shnple retrieval request, MYTUS VIII. "Yours too, Pakka," Hah bade the cub. That readout showed MYTUS V.
"Catch his face," Han told the others, meaning Torre, who had become pallid. "You know what you've done, don't you, Torre? Show everybody your readout. It says MYTUS VII, but I told you that Stars' End was on MYTUS VI, just as I told the others the wrong planet. But you already knew the right one, because you read it over Rekkon's shoulder before you killed him, right?" His voice lost its false light-ness. "I said right, traitor?"
Torre jumped to his feet with impressive speed, gun drawn. Atuarre pulled her out too, and pointed it at him. But neither Torm's shot at Hah nor Atuarre's at him worked.
"Two malfunctions?" Hah inquired innocently, un-limbering the blaster at his side. "I betcha mine works, Term."
Term heaved his pistol wildly. Hah reacted with a star pilot's reflexes, slapping the gun out of midair with his left hand. But Term had already whirled and seized the surprised Atuarre in a savage infighting hold, prepared to break her neck with a slight twist. When she started to resist, he forced her neck to the brink of fracture, making her subside.
"Put down the blaster, Solo," he grated, "and get
your hands on the gameboard, or I'll-"
He was interrupted as Pakka, in a spectacular leap, landed on Torm's shoulders, sinking fangs into his neck, clawing at his eyes, wrapping a supple taft around the traitor's throat. Term was forced to release his hold to keep from being blinded. Atuarre sought to turn and fight, and even Bollux had risen in the moment of crisis, unsure of just what to do.
Term gave Atuarre a vicious kick. His superior weight and strength sent her sprawling, blocking Han, who had been moving for a clear shot. As Han skirted Atuarre, Term tore Pakka from his shoulders and threw the cub aside just as Bollux blundered into the pilot's path. Pakka bounced off one of the pads of safety cushioning lining the compartment hatch, as Torm dashed into the passageway.