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

Then he answered Hirken. The Viceprex shouted, "Time's short, Solo. Will you yield?"
"Yield?" Hah sputtered, unbelieving. "What d'you have in mind, deftoration?" He pegged a shot around the corner, beginning a steady harassing fire, and hoped that those below could hold the Espo assault team for the required time.
Ninety seconds later a cycling light came on over one of the unused stern air locks of the Authority as-satfit craft. No one was there to notice, because, ex-cept for a skeleton watch, the entire ship's complement had been turned out to rescue the Viceprex, at his order.
The lock opened. Through it stepped a very in-censed Wooldee, hefting a captured wide-bore blaster. He was pleased, however, that he hadn't been com-pelled to waste time and power burning through the lock doors. He'd secured the outer hatch open. Behind him, floating in the weightlesshess of the extended tunnel-tube, were more prisoners, waiting with weapons and with claws and stingers and pincers and bare, eager hands. Even farther back, at the junction sta-tion, other prisoners were being crowded aboard the Falcon, while more waited to leave the tower. Since the freighter could never hold them all, this ship had to be captured.
Chewbacca gave a hand motion and set off. The others drew themselves in after, touching down as they entered the assatilt craft's artificial gravity.
The lock's opening had been noted on the bridge. An Espo crewman, coming to check out what he thought would be a malfunction in the air-lock appa-ratus, rounded a corner and almost fetched up against the Wooldee's enormous, furry-haired torso. A stroke of the blaster's butt sent the Espo flying back through the air. He landed in a brown-clad heap, his helmet skittering along the deck.
Another Espo, down a side passageway, heard the noise and came running, tugging at his holstered pistol. Chewbacca stepped out of concealment and swung the blaster's stovepipe barrel, downing him. As prisoners rushed to pick up the felled men's weapons, Chew-bacca led the rest on, past engineering and crew's quarters, as small parties split off from the main group to take and hold those areas. More and more prisoners poured from the aft lock, making way quickly for the many who were to follow.
The Wooldee came to the hatch of the ship's bridge.
He hit its release and, as the hatch slid up, stepped
through. A junior officer did a foolish double take and
fumbled for his pistol, saying, "How in-"
Chewbacca struck the officer down with a giant fore-arm, then threw his head back and roared. Those be-hind him surged into the bridge. Little of the fighting done in the next twelve seconds was with artificial weapons. None of the bridge watch ever reached an alarm hutton.
Setting the wide-bore aside, Chewbacca prepared to cast off from Stars' End.
Atuarre watched anxiously as she and a few chosen helpers in the big tier-level cargo lock almost threw milling prisoners into the tunnel-tube, where they thrashed like swimmers, moving and helping one an-other toward the junction station. Doe had already gone ahead to take the Falcon's controls. As soon as Chewbacca had control of the assault craft, he was to free it gently from the tower so that it couldn't be re-taken, and the Espos' withdrawal route would be cut off.
So many! Atuarre thought, hoping there'd be room enough for all of them. Then she saw a familiar face in the crowd and abandoned her place, keening with joy.
Pakka came, too, and clung to his father's back, holding on to both his parents for the first time in months, his wide eyes tearing.
Just then, Stars' End's general power conduits, weak-ened by erratic flow management, began to explode.
Up on the landing, Hah heard it, the beginning of Stars' End's death throes. He was holding with three others, all of them armed. Hirken's people had been quiet for the last few minutes; the Viceprex was prob-ably hoping that relief wasn't far off. And he could be right, since Espo assault troops were working their way up through the tower quickly, mowing down the prisoners' opposition.
But the exploding conduits constituted a new factor. Hah ordered everybody back. "We'll hold at the tier-block level; pass the word below to come running." They could pull back to the air lock, which lay beyond the fifth tier block, if they had to.
He fired a few more shots up the stairwell as his runner took off. He tried to figure out how long it had been since the tower had been blown free. Twenty minutes? More? They were asking a great deal of their luck.
As Han and his men fell back, the clatter of the lower-level defenders was heard. Both groups met at the emergency door leading to the tier blocks and crowded through. Han, among the last, turned to give the man behind him a hand, only to see him die with an odd, disappointed look on his face.
Han pulled the falling body out of the way as the final prisoner leaped through. Several others helped him shoulder the ponderous door shut as blaster and disrupter fire lashed against it, and made it fast with scraps of metal jammed in the latch. But it wouldn't hold long, especially if the heavy crew-served blaster were brought up. Han surveyed the prisoners with him. "How many left to load?"
"Almost done, fella," someone called. "Just a few left, not more than a hundred or so."
"Then anybody who's not armed, hat up! The rest spread out and take up a firing position. We're almost home."
They were still moving down the corridor when the emergency door crumpled inward, burned from its frame in a rain of glowing slag. The snout of the crew-served blaster stood in the gap, pointing straight into the abandoned first-tier block. Han didn't bother firing at its shielded barrel.
The heavy blaster erupted into the empty tier block, and an armored Espo carne worming around it to enter the corridor. One of the prisoners stopped long enough to shoot him. At the curve in the corridor, the defenders paused to take up firing again. The gunners were hav-ing trouble getting their piece through the emergency door without exposing themselves to counterfire.
Han and three others were the only ones left; a few prisoners had gone on to set up a new line of defense. Smoke from ruptured power conduits was getting thicker, the air thinner. Han's senses strayed for a mo-ment. He was opposite the door to the second tier block and crossed to it, bent over double, for a better field of fire.
But he spied something propped up against one of the stasis booths, halfway down the tier's aisle. "Bollux, what the hell are you doing there?" Evidently the 'droid either had been dragged or had managed to drag himself this far toward the air lock, then had been shunted aside, and pausing in the shelter of the tier block for a moment, was unable to rise again. Hah realized that no prisoner in fear of his life would have taken time to worry about an antiquated labor 'droid.
He ran to his side and dropped to one knee. "Up and at 'em, Annihilator. We're beatin' feet."
It took all his strength to get the 'droid up. "Thank
you, Captain Solo," Bollux drawled. "Even with Max
m direct linkage, I couldn't-Captain.t"
Simultaneously with the 'droid's warning, Han felt Bollux throw all his mechanical weight against him, sending the two of them spinning around. In the same stopped frame, as it seemed, a disrupter beam meant for Han sliced into the 'droid's head.
As they spun, Han's draw was automatic. In that frozen instant, he saw Uul-Rha-Shan standing in the doorframe at the head of the aisle, the bodies of the other defenders on the corridor floor behind him.
The reptilian gunman had his weapon held at arm's length, knowing that his first shot had missed. The dis-rupter pistol was realigning. Hah, with no time to aim, fired from the hip. Everything seemed to him to take forever, and yet to happen instantly.
The blaster bolt flowered high against Uul-Rha-Shafts green-scaled chest, lifting him and hurling him backward, while his own disrupter shot lanced upward and splashed off the ceiling.
Han and Bollux were sprawled together on the floor. There was no light in the 'droid's photoreceptors, no evidence of function. Han rose shakily, locked the fingers of his left hand around Bollux's shoulder pauldron, holding on to his blaster with his right, and began hatfling, heaving for breath.
He never saw the Espos who, following in Uul-Rha-Shan's wake, were ready to cut him down. Nor did he see them fall, downed by the fire from the prisoners' counterattack. Han's lightheadedness had narrowed his vision down to a dark tunnel; through that tunnel he would drag Bollux back to the Falcon, nothing less.
Suddenly another figure was at his side, a furred and sinuous Trianii Ranger, bearing a smoking blaster. "Solo-Captain?" It was a male's voice. "Come, I will aid you. We have but seconds."
Han let the other do so, both of them tugging the 'droid's hulk along much more quickly. Dull curiosity made Han ask, "Why?"
"Because my mate, Atuarre, said not to bother com-ing back without you, and because my cub, Pakka, would have come if I had not." The Trianii called out, "Here, I've found him!"
Others arrived, to give supporting fire, throwing the Espos into a brief confusion. The assaulting troops, not having gotten their heavy blaster into the corridor yet, fell back. More willing hands dragged at Bollux.
Then, somehow, they were all standing at the air lock, and the Espos seemed to have broken off their attack. The 'droid was floated into the tunnel-tube, along with the other defenders and Atuarre's mate. Only then did Han enter the air lock, leaving behind a strangely silent chamber. The iresher, thicker air of the tube hit him like a drug. He waved the rest on. The Millennium Falcon was still his ship, and he would be the one to east off.
"Solo, wait!" A man stumbled out of the smoke. Viceprex Hitken, looking a century older. He spoke with hysterical speed.
"Solo, I know they've moved the assault ship away from the lower lock. I told no one, not even my wi/e. I ordered the Espos back and came in by myself."
He shuffled closer, hands imploring. Han stared at the Vice-President for Corporate Security as if he were a specimen under a scope.
"Please take me, Solel Do anything-anythlng-
anything to me, but don't leave me here to---"
Hirken's handsome face jumped, as if he'd forgotten what he was about to say, then he fell, squirming and reaching uselessly for the wound in his back. His obese wife came waddling up behind him with F..spos at her back and a smoking pistol in her hands.
Han had already hit the inner air-lock hatch closure. He dived through the outer, into the tunnel-tube, hit-ting that switch, too. As the outer air-lock hatch closed, he irised the tunnel-tube shut, released its seal with an outgushing of air, and unclamped the tube. He floated there, watching through a viewport as Hirken's wife and the Espos beat at the air lock's outer-hatch view-port, unavailingly. Stars' End's descent speed had al-ready drawn it away, and it plunged deeper into the planet's gravity well.