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

"If we ever get out of this, partner," Han panted, "let's go settle down on a nice, quiet, stellar delivery route, what d'you say?"
This tier block had been taken with less trouble than the other; apparently fewer guards had been here when its stasis fields began to go. There was the same confusion, though, in a multitude of tongues and sound levels. The Wooldee, jostled into Hah, turned with a truly stentorian roar, holding his fists aloft. A space cleared around him instantly. Into the interval of silence Hah inserted the order that the prisoners take up what guns they had and join the other de-fenders.
Then he grabbed Chewbacca's shoulder. "C'mon, Doc's here somewhere, Chewie, and we haven't got long to find him. He's our only chance of coming out of this alive."
The two went on to the next tier block, of which there were five altogether, as Hah recalled from the floor plan. They encountered a door already open. Hah brought the riot gun up and peered cautiously into the chamber. Its stasis booths were empty, and a disturbing silence hung over all. Han wondered if, per-haps, the Authority hadn't gotten to use this portion of its prison yet. He stepped into the tier block; Chew-bacca followed after.
"Stand where you are!" ordered a voice behind them. Men and other creatures jumped up from con-cealment on the catwalks and outerworks, and along the walls. More appeared from around the bend in the corridor.
But both Hah and his first mate had identified the voice that had commanded them. "DOCI" Hah cried, though he and the Wooldee prudently held their places. No use being fried.
The old man, his head wreathed by a white, frizzy cloud of hair, blinked at them in utter surprise. "Han Solo! What in the name of the Original Light brings you here, son? But I suppose that's obvious: two more inmates, eh?" He faced the others. "This palr's okay."
He trotted over to them. Han was shaking his head,
"No, Doc. Chewie was here. A few of us came to see
what we,---"
Doe hushed him. "More important things to get to, youngster. All these tiers in the first three rooms went at once; that's how we took the blocks so quickly. The demands on the systems must've been extraordinary; and now I notice the gravity's unstable."
Three tier blocks going all at once figured, Hah thought, what with that first giant demand placed on the anticoncussion fields when the power plant went.
"Uh, yeah, Doc. I meant to mention that. You know
you're in a tower, right? Well, I, I sort of blew it into
space; overloaded the power plant and cut the over-
head deflector shield so that-"
Doe clapped a hand over his eyes. "Hah, you irn-
becilet"
Hah became defensive. "You don't like it? Climb back into your shipping cratel" He saw he'd made his point. "No time to argue; there's no way Stars' End can make it all the way out of Mytus VII's gravity. We're due for a crash, and I'm not sure how soon. The only thing that'll save us is that anticoncussion field, and it's faded. It's up to you to make sure it's juiced up when we hit."
Doe was staring at Han with his mouth open.
"Sonny, energizing an anticoncussion field is not like
hot-wiring somebody's skyhopper and going for a joy-
ridel"
Han threw his hands up. "Fine; let's just sit and wait to smash ourselves flat. Jessa can always adopt a new father."
That struck home. Doe sighed. "You're right; if it's our one shot, we shall take it. But I don't think much of your taste in jailbreaks." He turned to the others, who had been kept from intruding in the conversation only because of Chewbacca's looming presence. "Pay attentionl No time for chatting! Come with me, and do as I say, and we may make it yet; at least I can promise you an end to interrogation."
He elbowed Hah. "Blaze of glory, and all that, eh?" Then he started off at the head of a shuffling, loping, hoof-clacking horde, each individual moving on what-ever extremities or in whatever fashion was his.
As they went, Han rapidly told Doe the bare bones of the story. The old man interrupted: "This Trianii is onboard the Millennium Falcon?"
"Should be, but it won't do us much good; the Fal-
con's tractors could never hold back this tower from
re-entry."
Doc stopped. "I say, did you hear something, boy?"
They all had, the mew and crackle of blaster fire. They broke into a run. For all his apparent age, Doe kept up with the pilot and the Wookiee. They reached the emergency door just as the limp body of a prisoner was passed into the corridor from the stairwell. It was a gangling, saurian creature with a blaster burn in its midsection. From the stairwell came the irregular sounds of a firefight.
"What's going on?" Hah shouted, trying to elbow his way through. Chewbacca got in front, shoving and yelping, and opened a way. The prisoner who Hah had arbitrarily put in charge appeared on the stairs. "We're holding an upper landing. There are a number of Authority people up there, trying to fight their way down. I put some lookouts on the lower stairs, but nothing's happened down there yet."
"Hitken and his bunch are trying to make their way down because the air locks are located here and on the lowest level. He's hoping for a rescue," Han told them.
Doe and the others looked at him in surprise. He remembered that Stars' End must be largely unknown territory to them. The constabulary officer asked, "Just what's happened?"
"Our time's running out, is what," Han answered. "We have to hold up here and give Doe there a chance to get down to the engineering levels. Take whoever's armed on point; there'll be some resistance down there, but it ought to be light. The rest can follow at a distance."
The expedition down the stairwell began, with Doe hurrying because none of them knew when the tower would hit its apogee and begin its plummeting descent.
Meanwhile, Han and Chewbacca dashed upstairs. Han felt himself breathing hard and understood that life-support systems were beginning to fail. H the oxy-gen pressure in the tower fell too low, all their efforts would mean nothing.
They joined the defenders holding the second land-ing above the tier blocks. Blaster beams from above sizzled and crashed against the opposite wall as the re-maining armed prisoners here fired quick, unaimed shots around the corner when they could, with little chance of hitting anyone up on the next landing. Sev-eral defenders lay dead or injured. As Han topped the stairs, one man edged his weapon around the corner, quickly squeezed off a few shots, and drew back hast-fly. He spied Hah. "What's going on down there?"
Han crouched beside him and was about to ease around the corner for a squint upstairs when a volley of red bolts burned and bit at the floor and walls out in the field of fire. He shrank back.
"Get your damn bulb down, man," the defender cautioned. "We ran into theh: point men right here at the turn. We drove them back, but the rest came down. It's a standoff, but they have more weapons." Then he repeated, "What's going on below?"
"The others are headed for the lower levels, to rig a, a way out of this. We're here to keep the riffraff out." He began to sweat, thinking that the tower must surely be succumbing to the pull of Mytus VII by now.
The steady salvos from the next landing lit the stair-well. Chewbacca, checking it out with narrowed eyes, gobbled something to Han.
"My pal's right," Han told the other defenders. "See all the incoming bolts? They're hitting the far wall and the other side of the floor, and that's all, nothing on this side."
He slid around on the seat of his pants, cradling the riot gun high across his chest. Chewbacca braced Han's knees solidly to the floor. Han squirmed back on his buttocks, centimeter by centimeter, until his back was almost into the line of fire.
He and Chewbacca traded looks. The man's was rueful, the Wooldee's concerned. "Hang it out."
Han let himself fall backward. The riot gun, clamped across his chest, pointed straight upstairs. Still dropping, he saw what he'd expected. A man in g. spo brown was stealing down the stairs, hugging the near wall to avoid his covering fire. The scene burned into Han's mind with an abrupt, almost painful clarity as he cut loose with a flurry of shots. Without waiting to see their effect, he leaned up again, long before his back could touch the floor. Chewbacca felt the move, pulled hard. Han came sliding to safety; his pop-up appearance had begun and ended so suddenly that nobody upstairs had managed to redirect his aim.
There was a rapid clattering on the stairs, and an Espo-issue side arm spun to a stop on the landing. A moment later, with a weighty bouncing, the pistol's owner rolled to a halt next to it, more than adequately dead. It was the Espo major.
Han nodded in tribute to the major's devotion to duty.
The barrage from the next landing became more in-tense. The defenders answered with what weapons they had. Chewbacca picked up a pistol dropped by one of the fallen defenders, a feathered creature lying in a pool of translucent blood. The corpse's beaked face had been partly obliterated by a blaster shot. The Wooldee found that the barrel of the pistol had been hit, and was twisted and useless.