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

He dragged the toe of his boot back and forth on the deck. "Not much more to it; only that I'm not leaving this stretch of space without Chewie." Of all the things he'd mentioned, he was surest of that. He'd spent many long watches in the Falcon's cockpit, haunted by what his Wookiee partner might be under-going. A hundred times since taking up this vigil, he'd almost cut in the ship's engines to shoot his way into Stars' End and get his friend out or get flamed in the attempt. Each time, his hand had been stayed by the memory of Rekkon's words, but it was a constant struggle for Han to restrain his impulses.
Atuarre had plainly been thinking along the same lines. "When the Espos came to evict us from our colony world," she said slowly, "some Trianii tried armed resistance. The Espos were brutal in their inter-rogation of prisoners, seeking the ringleaders. It was the first time I had seen anyone use The Burning. You know what I refer to, Solo-Captain?"
Han did. The Burning was a torture involving the use of a blaster set at low power, to scorch and sear the flesh off a prisoner, leaving only blood-smeared bone. Usually, a leg would be first, immobilizing the victim; then the rest of the skeleton was exposed, inch by inch. Any other prisoners could be made to watch, to break their will. The Burning seldom failed to ob-tain answers, if answers were to be had; but in Han's opinion, no being who employed such methods de-served to live.
"I will not leave my mate in the hands of the kind of people who would do that," Atuarre was saying. "We are Trianii; death, ff it comes to that, is not something we fear."
"Not a very linear analysis," Blue Max piped up.
"Well, who said you'd understand it, birdhouse?"
Han scoffed.
"Oh, I comprehend it, Captain," Max said with
what Han could've sworn was a note of pride. "I just
said it wasn't very-"
He was interrupted by a beep from the corntoo monitoring suite. Han was out of his chair and halfway to the cockpit by the second beep. Just as he slid into the pilot's seat, a last, sustained beep signaled the end of the transmission.
"The recorder bagged it," Hah said, hitting the playback. "I don't think it was encrypted."
It was a cleartext message, sent economically, in burst. He had to slow down the playback by a five-to-one factor before it ungarbled.
"To: Corporate Vice-President Hirken, Authority facility at Stars' End," the audio-reconstruction began. "From: the Imperial Entertainers' Guild. We beg the Viceprex's indulgence and forgiveness, but the troupe scheduled to stop at your location has been forced to cancel its itinerary because of transportational mishap. This office will schedule a replacement immediately, when a troupe with a 'droid of the requisite type be-comes available. I am, distinguished Viceprex, your abject servant, Hokkor Long, Secretary in charge of scheduling, Imperial Entertainers' Guild."
Han's fist hit the console on the last syllable. "That's it!"
Atuarre's expression mixed befuddlement with doubt of Hafts soundness of mind. "Solo-Capta'm, that's what?"
"No, no, I mean that's us. We're in! We just got dealt a wild card!"
He whooped, slammed his fist in his palm, and nearly ruffled Atuarre's thick mane from glee. She retreated a step. "Solo-Captain, has the oxygen pres-sure dropped too low for you? That message was about entertainers."
He snorted. "Where've you been all your life? He said replacement entertainers. Don't you know what that means? Haven't you ever seen the broken-down acts the Guild'll throw in to fill a playdate, just so they can hang on to their agent's fee? Haven't you ever gone to some bash where they promised a class act, then at the last second they pull a switch and stick in some..."
It dawned on him that they were all staring at him now, photoreceptors and Trianii eyes. He half sobered. "What else can we do? The only other thing I've thought of is to fly into Mytus VII backward so they'd think we were leaving. But this is even wilier. We can do it. Oh, they'll think we stink like banta droppings maybe, but they'll buy the lie."
He saw Atuarre was far from convinced, and turned to Pakka. "They want entertainers. How'd you like to be an acrobat?"
The cub made a little bounce, a kind of strain to speak, then, frustrated, sprang into a backflip to swing upside down from an overhead control conduit by his knees and tail.
Hah nodded approval. "What about it, Atuarre, for your mate's sake? Can you sing? Do magic tricks?"
She was nonplused, resenting his appeal to Pakka and his invocation of her mate. But she saw, too, that he was right. How many chances like this would come their way?
The cub began clapping his paws for Itan's atten-tion. When he got it, Pakka shook his head energeti-cally in answer to Han's last question; then, still hanging upside down, he put paws on hips and made wriggling motions.
Hall's eyebrows knit. "A... dancer? Atuarre, you're a dancer!"
She cuffed her cub's rump sharply. "I am not, er, unskilled in the rites of my people." Itan saw she was embarrassed; she riveted him with a defiant stare. "And what of you, Solo-Captain? With what will you astonish your audience?"
He was too exhilarated with the prospect of action to be dampened. "Me? I'll think of something. In-spiration's my specialty!"
"A dangerous specialty, the most dangerous of all, perhaps. What of the 'droid? What 'droid? We don't even know what kind of 'droid they meant."
"Ah, a replacement 'droid, remember?" Hah talked fast, to sell his point, gesturing at Bollux. The 'droid made strangely human prevocal sounds, a creak of astonishment, and Blue Max got out a "Wow!" as Hah rattled on.
"We can say the Guild got it wrong. So Stars' End
wanted a juggler or whatever and they get a story-
teller. So what? We'll tell them to go sue the Enter-
tainers' Guildl"
"Captain Solo, sir, ff you please," Bollux finally in-
terjected. "With your kind permission, sir, I must
point out-"
But Han already had his hands on the 'droid's weatherbeaten shoulders, eyeing him artistically.
"Hmm, new paint, of course, and there's plenty
aboard; it often pays to slap a coat on something
before resale, especially if you didn't own it to begin
with. Scarlet liqui-gloss, I think; a five-coat job's all
we have time for. And maybe some trim. Nothing
flashy, no scrollwork or filigree; just some restrained
silver pinstriping. Bollux, boy, you can stop worrying
about obsolescence after this, 'cause you're gonna lay
'era in the aislesl"
Their approach and planetfall were uneventful. Han had altered the drift of their captive asteroid to take him back out of range of the Authority's sensors and then abandoned it. Once back in deep space, he'd made a nanno-jump. barely brushing hyperspace, to emerge near Mytus VII and its two small moonlets.
The Falcon identified herself. using the Waivered registration obtained by Rekkon. To that was added the proud announcement that she was the grand tour-ing vehicle of Madam Atuarre's Roving Performers.
Mytus VII was a place of rocky desolation, airless, its distance from its sun rendering it dim and cheerless. If anybody escaped Stars' End, he'd have no place to go; the rest of the solar system was untenanted, none of its planets being hospitable to humanoid life.