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

The screen flickered, then resolved into the bright-ness of a visual image. Hah stared. He'd found the lost ones.
The room was filled, stack upon stack, with stasis booths. Inside each, a prisoner was frozen in time, stopped between one instant and the next by the booth's level-entropy field. That explained why there were no prisoner facilities, no arrangements for hand-ling crowds of captive entities, and only a minimal guard complement on duty. Hitken had all his victims suspended in time; they'd require little in the way of formal accommodations. The Security Viceprex need take prisoners out only when he chose to question them, then pop them back into stasis when he was done. So he robbed his prisoners of their very lives, taking away every part of their existence except inter-rogation.
"There must be thousands of them," Han breathed. "Hitken can move them in and out of that air lock like freight. Power consumption up there must be terrific. Max, where's their plant?"
"We're sitting on it," Max answered, though that anthropomorphism couldn't really apply to him. He filled the screen with a basic diagram of the tower. Hah whistled softly. Beneath Stars' End was a power-generating plant large enough to service a battle for-tress, or a capital-class warship.
"And here are the primary defense designs," Max added. There were force fields on all sides of the tower, and one overhead, ready to spring into exist-ence instantly. Stars' End itself was, as Han had al-ready noticed, made of enhanced-bonding armor plate. According to specs, it was equipped with an anticon-cussion field as well, so that no amount of high explo-sives could damage its occupants. The Authority had spared no expense to make its security arrangements complete.
But that helped only if the enemy were outside, and Han was as inside as he could get. "Is there a prisoner roster?"
"Got it! They had it filed: Transient Persons."
Han swore under his breath at bureaucratic euphe-misms. "Okay, is Chewie's name on it?"
There was the briefest of pauses. "No, Captain. But I found Atuarre's mate! And Jessa's fatheft" He flashed two more images on the screen, arrest mug-shots. Atuarre's mate's coloring was redder than hers, it turned out, and Doc's grizzled features hadn't changed. "And here's Rekkon's nephew," Max added. The mug was of a young black face with broad, strong lines that promised a resemblance to the boy's uncle.
"Jackpot!" Max squealed a moment later, a very uncomputerish exclamation. Chewbaeca's big hairy face flashed on the readout. He hadn't been in a very good mood for the mugshot; he was disheveled, but his snarl promised death to the photographer. The Wook-iee's eyes looked glassy, and Han assumed that the Espos had tranquilized him as soon as they'd taken him.
"Is he okay?" Han demanded. Max put up the ar-rest record. No, Chewbacca hadn't been badly injured, but three officers had been killed in apprehending him, the forms said. He hadn't given a name, which explained why it had been diScult for Max to locate him. The list of charges nearly ran off the screen, with a final, ominous, handwritten notation at the bottom listing time of scheduled interrogation. Hah glanced at a wall clock; it was no more than hours before Chewbacca was due to enter Viceprex Hirken's torture mill.
"Max, we're up against it. We have to do something right now; rm not going to let them take Chewie's mind apart. Can we deactivate defensive systems?"
The computer replied: "Sorry, Captain. All the pri-maries are controlled through that belt unit Hirken carries."
"What about secondaries?"
Max sounded dubious. "I can get to the standby, but how will you deactivate the Viceprex's belt unit?"
"I dnnno; how's he wired up? There must be ancil-lary equipment; the damn box is too small to be self-contained and still control this whole tower."
Max gave the answer. Receptor circuitry ran
through Stars' End, built into the walls on each level
"Show me the top-level circuitry diagrams." Hah studied them carefully, memorizing points of reference --doors, elevators, and support girders.
"Okay, Max, now I want you to cut into the second-ary control systems and rearrange power-flow priori-ties. When the secondaries cut in, I want that umbrella shield, the deflector direcfiy overhead, to start load-shedding its power back to the plant, but I want you to prejudice the systems' safeguards, so that they notice the deflector droppage but not the feed-back."
"Captain Solo, that'll start an overload spiral. You could blow the whole tower up."
"Only if I get to Hirken's primaries," Han said, half to himself, half to Max. "Get crackin'."
High above, Viceprex Hirken had realized that he was being played for a fool.
As fascinated as he'd been by Atuarre's dance, he'd recoLmized in a fundamental, ever-suspicious part of his mind that he was being diverted. What he desired was to see mechanized combat. This dance artistry, though pretty enough, was no substitute.
He stood, fingering a button on his belt unit. Lights
came up, and Pakka stopped playing. Atuarre looked
around her, as if awakening from a dream. "What-"
"Enough of this," Hirken decreed. Uul-Rha-Shan, his reptilian gunman, stood at his side, hoping for the order to slay. But instead, Hirken said, "I've seen enough, Trianii. You're clearly stalling. You think me an imbecile?" Then he motioned to Bollux. "You ri-diculous excuses for entertainers brought this obsolete 'droid to me purely as a fraud, never planning to give me value for my money. You'd hoped to plead me-chanical failure and get me to reimburse you for your trip, or even reward you for your efforts. Isn't that so?"
Her quiet "No, Viceprex" was ignored.
Hirken was not convinced. "Prepare that 'droid for combat, and bring out my Mark X," he ordered the techs and Espos around him.
Atuarre drew herself up, enraged, and siraid for Bollux. But she could see Hitken was adamant, and she had her cub to think of. Furthermore she could do Han and her mate little good here. "With your per-mission, Excellency, I will return to my ship." On-board the Falcon, at least, more options would be available.
Hirken waved her away, preoccupied with his Exe-cutioner, laughing his humorless laugh. "Go, go. And if you see that worthless liar of a Marksman of yours, you'd be wise to take him with you. And don't think I won't lodge a complaint. I'll have your Guild member-ship revoked."
She glanced to where Bollux was being ushered
down to the arena, helpless to aid him. "Lord Hirken,
surely this is illegal. That is our 'droid-"
"Brought here to defraud me," he finished for her, "but I'll have my value from it. Now leave, if you're going to, or watch if you wish." He wagged a finger, and an Espo sergeant barked an order. Tall, stern guards fell in, one to either side of the two Trianii.
Atuarre couldn't restrain her hiss. She grabbed Pak-ka's paw and stormed toward the elevator, the cub bouncing along behind. Uul-Rha-Shan's dry laugh was like a stab of hatred.
Down in the computer center, the readout screen, which had been showing a small part of the modifica-tion Blue Max was making, went blank for a moment. "Max? You all right?" Han asked worriedly. "Captain Solo, they're activating that combat ma-chine, the Mark X. They're putting it in with Bolluxl" Even as the computer-probe spoke, the rapid-fire images of the Mark-X Executioner's engineering de-tails replaced one another on the screen. Max's voice was filled with alarm. "The Mark X's controls and power are independent of this system; I can't touch itl Captain, we have to get back upstairs right now. Bollux needs me!"
"What about Atuarre?"
"They're summoning an elevator and notifying se-curity that she's leaving. We've got to get up there!"
Han was shaking his head, unmindful that Max's photoreceptor was off. "Sorry, Max, there're too many other things I need to do here. Besides, we couldn't help Bollux now."
The readout went blank and the photoreceptor came on. Blue Max's voice trembled. "Captain Solo, I'm not doing anything else for you until you take me to Bollux. I can help him."
Han struck the probe, not gently, with the heel of his hand. "Get back to work, Max. I'm serious." For an-swer, Max withdrew his adapter from the network. Han, infuriated, snatched the little computer up and held it high overhead.
"Do what I told you, or I'll leave you here in pieces!"
Max's reply was somber. "Go ahead, then, Captain. Bollux would do whatever he had to if I were in trou-ble."
Hah paused in the midst of dashing the computer to the floor. It occurred to him that Max's concern for his friend was no different from Hall's own for Chew-bacca. He lowered the probe, looking at it as if for the first time. "I'll be damned. You sure you can help Bollux?"
"Just get me there, Captain; you'll seel" "I hope. Which car was going to the dome?" Max told him's and he set out for the elevators at once, slinging the probe over his shoulder. When he got there, he removed the security badge and punched for a downward ride. The wrong car stopped; he let it wait and go on, and punched the descent button again.
He lucked out. The car containing Atuarre, Pakka, and their two guards had stopped a number of times on its way down. She saw Han and pulled her cub off the car with her. The Espos had to hurry to avoid be-ing left behind.
Han took the two Trianii aside a pace or two, but the Espos made it plain that they were keeping an eye on all three.
"We were going to the ship," Atuarre told him in