Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (5 page)

The driver’s seat was open to the weather, but just behind it and a luggage well was an enclosed passenger cab, also paneled in
greel
wood, complete with elaborate, hanging road lamps, tasseled bunting, and running boards and handrails on either side for footmen. Astern the cab was another luggage well between a pair of ludicrous meter-high tail fins bejeweled with all manner of signaling and warning lights. From the coach’s primary and secondary antenna whips fluttered two pennants, several streamers, and the furry tail of some small, luckless animal.

“Too austere,” Han muttered sarcastically, but he couldn’t resist popping the coach’s hood. A massive, fiendishly complicated engine squatted there. But Chewbacca quickly silenced Han’s denunciations and amazed the two girls by throwing open the cover of the midship luggage well. It contained, due to his thoughtful arrangement, a heroic picnic lunch.

Kiili and Viurre had piled into the driver’s compartment, investigating controls, dials, the sound system, and stowage drawers. Chewbacca was running an adoring palm over a
quarter-panel when Han blurted out, “I bumped into Badure today, just as I was coming into the spa.”

Forgetting everything else, Chewbacca barked a question. Han glanced away. “He wanted to hire us, but I told him we didn’t need the work.” Then he felt compelled to add, “Well, we don’t, do we?”

Chewbacca howled furiously. The two girls studiously ignored the argument. “
What
do we owe Badure?” Han hollered back. “He made a business offer, Chewie.” But he knew better.
Wookiees will honor a Life-Debt over anything else; he’ll never walk away from it
, Han thought. Chewbacca growled another angry comment.

“What if I don’t want to? Are you going to go after him without me?” Han asked, knowing what the answer would be.

The Wookiee regarded him for a long moment, then uttered a deep
Uurrr
?

Han opened his mouth, closed it, then finally answered. “No, you won’t have to. Get in the bus.”

Chewbacca yipped, knuckled Han’s shoulder, ambled off around the coach’s stern, and climbed in. Han slid into the driver’s seat and swung his door shut.

“
Captain
Chewbacca and I have to go track down a pal,” he told Kiili and Viurre brusquely. Then to himself he added,
I knew this would happen; I never should have told Chewie. So why did I
?

Kiili, twirling blond hair around one finger, smiled. “First Mate Solo, what should we talk to the captain about?”

“Anything. He just likes to listen to people talk.” Han gunned the engine and expertly pulled the powerful coach out of its parking slip. “Tell him how he’s ruining a great afternoon,” Han encouraged her, then smiled. “Or sing some off-color ditties, if you know any.”

Kiili eyed the contented Wookiee uncertainly. “
He
likes
those
?”

Han smiled engagingly. “No. I do.”

IV

REMEMBERING that Hasti, the young woman with Badure, had mentioned the district hostelry, Han zoomed off in that direction. The scarlet monstrosity of a coach, riding its low ground-effect cushion, handled smoothly and responded well for its size.

One long arm along the back of the driver’s seat, Chewbacca tilted his admiral’s cap down and listened while Kiili and Viurre described the life of an undergraduate student of nonhuman ethnography.

They didn’t have to enter the hostelry. Badure and Hasti were waiting at an intercampus shuttleskimmer stop near the building. Han pulled over to the curb with a belch of braking thrust, and he and Chewbacca jumped out, followed by the two girls. The Wookiee hugged the old man, giving out joyous sounds. Hasti regarded Han coolly. “Attack of conscience?”

Han angled a thumb at the Wookiee. “My partner’s a sentimental fellow. Do you feel like telling us what we’re getting into?”

Indicating Viurre and Kiili with a slight nod, Badure cleared his throat meaningfully. Viurre took the hint and, dragging the tall blond with her, was suddenly inspired to inspect some nearby foliage. In confidential tones Badure asked Han, “You must’ve heard of the ship called the
Queen of Ranroon
?”

Chewbacca quivered his nose in surprise, and Han’s eyebrows
shot up. “The treasure ship? The story they use to put kids to bed?”

“Not story,” Badure corrected, “
history
. The
Queen of Ranroon
was crammed full with spoils from whole solar systems, tribute to Xim the Despot.”

“Listen, Badure, crazies have been hunting that ship for centuries. If she ever existed, she was either destroyed or someone plundered her long ago. You’ve been watching too many holo-thrillers

“When did I ever go chasing vacuum?” the old man countered.

A good point. “You know where the
Queen
is? You’ve got proof?”

“I know where her log-recorder is,” Badure announced so confidently that Han found himself believing it. The vision of a treasure arose, a treasure so stupendous that it had become a synonym for phenomenal wealth, more than a man might squander in many lifetimes.…

“Let’s get going,” Han proposed. “We’re not getting any younger.” Hasti’s derisive look didn’t faze him. Then he noticed that Badure’s face was drawn with tension.

Following his gaze, Han turned to see a black groundlimo slowly cruising toward them. Han drew Badure over to the coach, encouraging Hasti to move as well with an inclination of the head. Chewbacca, who had already thrown Badure’s and Hasti’s light baggage into the passenger cab, was also on the alert.

Someone in the limo had noticed their reaction. The black groundcar accelerated sharply and veered straight at them.

“Everybody into the coach,” Han yelled as the limo jumped the curb and screeched to a stop, blocking the coach’s front cowling. Badure began pushing Hasti into the coach’s front seat as Chewbacca, unable to carry his bowcaster on this peaceful world, glanced around for a makeshift weapon.

Figures tumbled from the limo as Han drew his blaster. The blue concentric rings of a stun charge reached out and caught Badure, who had just propelled Hasti out of the way.
She fell backward across the seat; Badure staggered. She managed to grab him and pull him onto the driver’s seat just as Han fired an answering shot.

By then a half-dozen beings had emerged from the limo with weapons of one kind or another. Han’s hasty return shot caught the stun-gunner, a red-beaked humanoid, in its long, feathered arm. Two male humans armed with needlebeamers ducked as Han’s shots shattered two of the limo’s windows. The assailants, seeing that they had a fight on their hands, made a general migration toward the ground.

Chewbacca was clambering over the midship luggage well to help Hasti when she, hanging on to Badure with one hand, kicked the engine over and threw the scarlet coach into reverse. Two of the attackers who had been closing in found themselves pouncing on empty air. With a tremendous bump, the coach climbed the curb in reverse. Chewbacca had to cling to a decorative lantern to save himself, and Han jumped aside to keep from being run down, as Hasti hit braking thrusters, kicking up clots of purplish turf and exposing the rich gray soil of Rudrig.

“Well, pile on, Solo,” she shouted at Han. He barely got to a running board, seizing a footman’s handrail, before the coach surged forward.

Hasti didn’t quite clear the end of the obstructing limo. The coach bashed it aside, half-rotating the black vehicle and crunching in its own nose cowling with a shower of
greel
wood fragments. Chewbacca cried out at the damage. As they lurched past, Han directed a suppressive barrage at the limo and its passengers, more intent on clinging to his life than on accuracy.

Hasti swerved to avoid a robo-delivery truck, thereby slamming Han up against the cab and nearly wrenching Chewbacca from the lamp, flipping him over with a snap that twisted his neck and sent his prized admiral’s hat flying in the breeze. The Wookiee keened, grief-stricken for the lost headgear.

Over the howl of the coach’s engine and the blast of its slipstream, Han yelled, “They’re coming after us!”

The black limo was already slewing around to give chase. Han brought his blaster up. At that moment Hasti, ignoring a traffic-robo, tore into an intersection directly toward a slow-moving maintenance hauler that was towing a disabled freight ’droid. The girl set all her weight against the steering-grip yoke and hit the coach’s warning horn. The first two bars of the Rudrig University Anthem sounded majestically from the coach’s fractured hood. The maintenance hauler dodged with a bleep of distress and barely missed taking the driver’s side off the coach.

The coach streaked straight down the thoroughfare now. Holding his abused neck stiffly, Chewbacca began inching forward again in order to take over the driving duties. A double column of students and visitors on an orientation tour chose that moment to enter a crosswalk, and Hasti hit braking thrusters.

Chewbacca flew head-first into the driver’s compartment and hit the floor, his feet sticking up into the air. But even under those conditions, he had the presence of mind to notice that Badure wasn’t completely aboard, and he clutched the stunned man’s clothing to tug him into the coach. Hasti noticed her companion’s dilemma and gave the coach a snappy cut so that the passenger door swung shut. Though hampered by wires of pain lancing through his neck, the Wookiee began extricating himself.

Just astern, Han had managed to pull himself inside the passenger cab and saw that the limo was closing in rapidly. He smashed the cab’s crystalline rear window with a hard blow from his blaster. It cracked in webs, split, and fell away. Clearing away the shards, Han leaned his forearms across the empty sill. The coach’s bouncing made the macro-sights useless, so he waited for a clear shot.

Chewbacca had hauled himself up and was yelping loudly at Hasti and gesturing madly. She somehow understood his meaning and hit the couch adjustment controls, which started
up the servo-motors. Hasti held tightly to the control stem as the couch moved from under her, leaving her in a tense stoop. The Wookiee slid in behind her, whisked her out of the way, then took over the controls. Hasti turned at once and saw to her relief that Badure was unhurt. He was already stirring, throwing off the stun charge’s effects.

The Wookiee proceeded directly through an intersection without benefit of right of way, aware that the limo, still chasing the coach, was zooming along between towering buildings.

Taking a fast curve, Chewbacca came abruptly up to a road-repair site. Far back in the mirror’s reflection he could see the limo closing in. He gunned the engine, bursting through illumi-panel markers, smashing warning light-banks aside, and hurling two robo-flagwavers, still diligently waving their flags, several meters into the air. But his hopes for a safe route through the site were dashed when he rounded the turn; the roadbed had been excavated completely, side to side, the shoulders torn up right up to the building faces.

Chewbacca slowed, calmly considered his options, and decided he would have to offer his pursuers a head-on challenge. He hit the accelerator and swung the steering grips over for a smuggler’s turn. The long coach leaped forward into a precise end-for-end spin, destroying several more danger indicators, its lift cushion kicking up dirt and debris. Then it sped off in the direction from which it had come.

Han leaned out a side window. As the limo bore down on them he propped his forearm through a handrail and opened fire, scoring hits on the limo’s hood and one in the center of its windshield. Prepared for a terrible impact, Chewbacca uttered a piercing cry and Hasti began hugging Badure. Han could make out terrified expressions among the limo’s occupants.

At the last moment the limo driver wavered, declining the imminent head-on, and the black vehicle swung aside. Ripping through a dense Mullanite lattice-sculpture of thick creepers, slewing across a stretch of purple lawn, and—after
bowling aside several long planters and snapping support columns—the limo ended up on a portico outside the local Curriculum Committee headquarters.

Chewbacca brayed his delight, but Han called a warning as the limo started up again. Chewbacca, glancing at the several rearview mirrors and single aft viewscreen, made a hard right turn to high speed by dint of sheer strength applied to unwilling controls.

The coach’s left side rose, and the Wookiee took advantage of his momentum to snag another quick right into a side avenue, hoping to break off the chase. Unfortunately, he had swung the long coach onto the up-ramp of a major ground-transport artery. But he had the presence of mind to apply a Han Solo adage: when it won’t help to slow down, pour it on! So he slapped toggle switches for full boost and auxiliary guidance thrust.

The immediate problem was a refuse-collection robo-dumpster making its way up the ramp. Its cyberpilot system was in a quandary over this unusual obstruction. Chewbacca, still exploiting centrifugal force, hit his offside thrusters and took the groundcoach full tilt against the ramp’s safety fence.

The fence, part of a traffic-control design scheme based on very forgiving systems, gave and bent outward as the Wookiee barreled along with half the coach on the ground, half up on the wilting fence. Han, dragging himself up off the cab floorboards, took one look ahead and hit the deck again. The robo-dumpster edged toward the opposite side of the upramp and the two weighty vehicles passed each other.