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

Dodging, moving as quickly as he could, Torre raced past the cockpit, main ladderwell, and ramp hatch; none of them held any promise of even tempo-rary safety. He heard Han's bootsteps close behind and ducked into the first compartment he came to, damning himself for not having taken tune to learn the ship's layout. He hit the hatch-close button as he came through. The compartment was empty, offering no tools, nothing he might use as a weapon. He'd been hoping this was the escape-pod chamber, but fortune had passed him by. At least, he thought, he had a mo-ment's respite. He might be able to buy time, perhaps even wrest Solo's blaster from him. His thoughts were moving so quickly that he didn't realize, for a moment, where he was. But when he did, he threw himself back at the hatch through which he'd come, tearing at the controls, screaming obscenities.
"Don't waste your time," came Han's voice over the intercom. "Nice of you to choose the emergency lock, Torre. It's where you would've ended up any-way."
Han stood looking through the viewport set in the lock's inner hatch. He'd overridden the lock's controls to make sure Torm couldn't get back in. All the Fal-con's access systems had inboard overrides, to make life complicated for anyone interested in forced entry, a wise smuggler's option.
Torm tried to wet his lips with a very dry tongue.
"Solo, stop and think a minute."
"Save your breath, Torre. You're gonna need it all; you're going swimming." There were, of com:se, no spacesuits stored in the lock. Torm's eyes opened wide with fear.
"Solo, no! I never had anything against you; I never would have come, except that bastard Rekkon and the Trianii never took their eyes off me. If I'd cut, they would have shot me. You can understand that, can't you? I had to look out for number one, Solo? "So you shot Rekkon," Han told him in a soft voice, no questioning to it.
"I had to! If he'd passed on word about Stars' End, it would've been my neck! You don't know these Au-thority people, Solo; they don't accept failure. It was Rekkon or me."
Atuarre came up behind Han, and Pakka and Bol-lux after her. The cub climbed up the 'droid's shoul-ders for a better view. "But, Tom," Atuarre said, "Rekkon found you, recruited you. Your father and brother really have disappeared."
Without facing away from the viewport, Han added, "I'm sure they did. Your father and older brother, right, Torre? Let's see, now, that wouldn't by any chance make you heir to the Kail Ranges, would it?"
The traitor's face was waxen. "Yes, if I did as the Authority asked. Solo, don't play righteous with reel You said you're a businessman, didn't you? I can get all the money you want! You want your friend back?
The Wooldee is on his way to Stars' End by now; the
only way you'll ever see him again is by bargaining
with me. The Authority's got no grudge against you;
you can name your priceI"
Torre reasserted control over himself, going on more calmly. "These people keep their word, Solo. They don't even know your names yet, any of you; I was operating under deep cover, saving the informa-tion I developed so I could up the price. Strike a deal. The Authority's just good business people, like you and me. You can have the Wooldee back and go free with enough money to buy a new ship."
He got no answer. Han's gaze had gone to his own reflection in the metal of the emergency lock's control panel. Torm pounded his fists on the inner hatch, a dull thudding.
"Solo, tell me what you want; I'll get it for you, I swearl You're a guy who looks out for number one, aren't you? Isn't that what you are, Solo?"
Hah stared at his own lean reflection. In another man, he'd have said those eyes were too used to con-cealing everything but cynicism. His thoughts echoed Torm: Is that what I am? He looked back to Torm's face, straining against the viewport.
"Ask Rekkon," Hah answered, and hit the lock release.
The outer hatch snapped open. With an explosion of air into vacuum, Torm was hurled out into the chaotic pseudoreality of hyperspace. Once outside the Millennium Falcon's mantle of energy, the units of matter and patterns of force that had been Torm ceased to have any coherent meaning.


"SOLO-CAPTAIN," Atuarre interrupted his thoughts, leaning into the cockpit, "isn't it time we spoke9. We've been here for nearly ten Standard Time-Parts, and our course of action is no clearer than when we arrived. We must reach some decision, don't you agree?"
Han broke off gazing out the canopy at the distant speck, barely visible, of Mytus VII. All around the Millennium Falcon rose the peaks and hills of the tiny asteroid on which she was concealed. "Atuarre, I don't know how Trianii feel about waiting, but me, I hate it worse than anything. But there's nothing else we can do; we have to sit tight and play out our hand."
She wouldn't accept that. "There are other courses of action, Captain. We could attempt to contact Jessa again." Her slit-irises dwelled on him.
Han shifted around in the pilot seat to face her di-rectly, so quickly that she drew back reflexively. See-ing this, he reined in his temper. "We could waste all kinds of time looking for lessa. When her operation ran, after we got hit by the IRDs, she probably dug a hole and pulled it in after her. The Falcon can cook along at point-five factors over Big L, but we still might waste a month looking for the outlaw-techs and not find them. Maybe word will find its way to Jessa, or one of the prearranged blind transmissions, but we can't bank on her. I don't count on anybody but me; if I have to bust Chewie out of there alone, I'll do it."
Some of the tension left her. "You aren't alone, Solo-Captain. My mate is there at Stars' End, too. Your fight is Atuarre's." She extended a slim, sharp-clawed hand. "But come, now, take some food. Star-ing at Mytus VII cannot help and may be distracting us from solutions."
He pushed himself up out of the seat, taking one more look at the distant planet. Mytus VII was a worthless rock, as worlds went, revolving around a small, unexceptional sun at the end of the wisp of stars that was the Corporate Sector. Stars' End, in-deed. There'd be scant danger of anyone's happening on the Authority's secret prison facility here, unless he came looking for it specifically.
Since Mytus VII had been listed in the charts as being at the outermost edge of its solar system, Hah had broken into normal space nearly ten Standard Time-Parts before, deep in interstellar space, far out of sensor range. He'd come in from the opposite side of the system, entering a thick asteroid belt halfway between Mytus VII and its sun, and hunted up what he'd wanted, this jagged hunk of stone. Using his starship's engines and tractors, he'd brought the aster-oid onto a new course, one that would allow him to take a long-range peek at Stars' End, sure that no one there would notice the slightly unusual behavior of one tiny mote in the uncharted asteroid belt.
He'd spent most of his time monitoring the planet's communications, studying it by sensors, and watch-ing the occasional ship come and go. Monitored commo traffic had told him nothing; most of it had been encrypted in codes that had resisted his compu-ters' analyses. Plaintext messages had been either mundane or meaningless, and Hah suspected that at least some of them had been sent strictly for appear-ances' sake, to make Stars' End look like an ordinary, if remote, Authority installation.
Now he trailed Atuarre into the forward compart-ment. Bollux was seated near the gameboard, his plastron open. Pakka was stalking a jetting remote back and forth. The remote, a small globe powered by magnetic fields and repulsor power, turned, dove, climbed, and dodged unpredictably. The cub hunted it with tail twitching and quivering, obviously enjoying the game. The remote eluded him time and again, demonstrating more than its usual maneuverability.
As Hah watched, Pakka nearly caught the globe, but it evaded his pounce at the last second. Hah looked to the 'droid. "Bollux, are you directing that remote?"
The red photoreceptors trained on him. "No, Cap-tain. Max is sending information pulses to it. He's much better at anticipation and dictating random factors than I, sir. Random factors are extremely dif-ficult concepts."
Hah watched the cub make a final, long spring and catch the remote in midair, pulling it to the deck and rolling over and over with it in sheer delight. Then the pilot sat at the gameboard, which often doubled as a table, and accepted a mug of concentrate broth from Atuarre. They had used up fresh supplies several Time-Parts before and were now sustaining them-selves on the Falcon's ample, if bland, emergency ra-tions.
"There have been no new developments, Captain?" Bollux asked. Han presumed the 'droid already knew the answer and had asked only out of a sort of pro-grammed conversational courtesy. Bollux had turned out to be an entertaining shipmate who could spin hours of tales and accounts of his long years' work and the many worlds he'd seen. He also had a reper-toire of jokes programmed into him by a former owner, and an absolutely deadpan delivery. "Zero, BoUux. Absolutely zilch."
"May I suggest, sir, that you assemble all available information in sum, recapping it? Among sentient life forms, new ideas sometunes emerge that way, I have noticed."
"I bet. After all, aren't most decrepit labor 'droids
armchair philosophers?" Hah put his mug down, rub-
bing his jaw thoughtfully. "Anyway, there isn't much
to tote up. We're on our own---"
"Are you sure there's no other resource?" Max chirped.
"Don't start that again, lowpockets," Han warned.
"Where was I? We've found the place we want, Mytus
VII, and-"
"How high is the order of probability?" Max wanted to know.
"Up an afterburner with the order of probability," Hah snapped. "If Rekkon said it's here, it's here. The installation has a pretty big power plant, almost for-tress class. And quit interrupting, or I'll take a drill to you.
"Let's see. We can't hang around forever, either; supplies are running low. What else?" He scratched his forehead where the synth-flesh patch had flaked away, leaving new, unscarred skin.
"This is a strictly off-limits solar system," Atuarre contributed.
"Oh, yeah, and if we get nailed here without a mighty good alibi, they'll stick us in jail, or what-ever." He smiled at BoUux and Blue Max. "Except you boys. You, they'd probably recycle into lint filters and spittoons."