The Han Solo Adventures (17 page)

Stars’ End’s anticoncussion field must very nearly have overloaded, Han thought; for the first seconds after the power plant blew, stupendous forces had been exerted on the tower and everything in it. But the immobilizing effect began to recede as the systems adjusted.

Smoke and heat from both the ruined Executioner and the now-defunct primary-control ancillaries rolled and drifted through the dome, choking and blinding. There was a universal rush of indistinct bodies for the elevators. Han could hear Hirken yelling for order as the Espo major bellowed commands and the Viceprex’s wife and others shrilled in panic.

Han skirted the mob headed for the elevators, wading through the anticoncussion field and the drifting smoke. Like all standbys, the anticoncussion field fed off emergency power inside Stars’ End. The tower’s reserves would be limited. Han grinned in the murk and confusion; the Espos were in for a surprise.

He made his way down the steps of the amphitheater, groping along, coughing and hoping he wasn’t being poisoned by burned insulation and molten circuitry. His toe hit something. He recognized Viceprex Hirken’s discarded belt unit, kicked it aside, and went on. He located Bollux when he stumbled over the ’droid’s foot.

“Captain sir!” Bollux hailed. “We’d thought you’d quite left, sir.”

“We’re bowing out now; can you make it?”

“I’m stabilized. Max improvised a direct linkup between himself and me.”

Blue Max’s voice drifted up from Bollux’s chest. “Captain, I
tried
to tell you when I rechecked the figures that this might happen.”

Han had gotten a hand under the ’droid’s arm, helping him to rise to his wobbly legs. “What
did
happen, Max? Not enough power in the plant?” He started moving Bollux off unsteadily through the drifting reek.

“No, there was plenty of power in the plant, but the enhanced-bonding armor plate is a lot stronger than I thought at first. The exterior deflector shields contained the force of the explosion, all except the overhead one, the one that dissolved in the overload. All the force went that way. Us too.”

Han stopped. He wished he could see the little computer, not that it would have helped. “Max, are you telling me we blew Stars’ End into
orbit
?”

“No, Captain,” Max answered darkly. “A high-arc trajectory, maybe, but never an orbit.”

Han found himself leaning on Bollux as much as the ’droid was leaning on him. “Oh my! Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I
tried
,” Max reminded him sulkily.

Han was in mental overdrive. It made sense: Mytus VII’s relatively light specific gravity and lack of atmospheric friction must give it an escape velocity that was only middlin’. Still, if the tower’s anticoncussion fields hadn’t been on when the large charge had gone off, everybody in Stars’ End would’ve been colloidal slime by now.

“Besides,” Max added testily, “Isn’t this better than being dead? So far?”

Han brightened; there was no arguing with that logic. He shouldered part of Bollux’s weight again. “Okay, men; I have a new plan. Forward!” They reeled off again, away from the elevators. “All the elevators will be out; life-support and whatnot will have pre-empted all the reserve power. I saw a utility stairwell in the floor plans, but Hirken and Company will be remembering it pretty soon, too. Shag it.”

They rounded the curve of the utility core as Han took his bearings. They were almost to a yellow-painted emergency door when the door snapped open and an Espo jumped out, riot gun in hand. Cupping his hand to his mouth, the man called, “Viceprex Hirken! This way, sir!”

Then he noticed Han and Bollux and swung his weapon to bear. With only a microcharge in the blaster, Han had to make a quick head shot. The Espo dropped.

“Brown nose,” Han grunted, still hanging on to the ’droid, stooping to grab the riot gun. He manhandled himself and his burden through the emergency door. A furor of shouting reached him; the others had found the elevators useless, and someone had remembered the stairwell. Han secured the door behind him and fired several sustained bursts at its latching mechanism. The metal began to glow and fuse. It was a durable alloy that would shed its heat again in moments, leaving the latch welded shut. Those remaining on the other side would be able to blast their way through with hand weapons, but it would take precious time.

As he and Han half fell, half ran, down the stairs, Bollux asked, “Where to now, sir?”

“The stasis-booth tiers.” They careened around a landing, nearly falling. “Feel that? The artificial gravity’s fluctuating. In time the power-management routers will cut off everything but life-support.”

“Oh, I see, sir.” Bollux said. “The stasis booths you and Max mentioned!”

“Give the ’droid a prize. When those booths start conking out, there’re gonna be some pretty cranky prisoners on the loose. The guy who might be able to pull our choobies out of the conflagration is one of them—Doc, Jessa’s father.”

They made their way down, past Hirken’s living quarters and the interrogation levels, encountering no one else in the stairwell. The gravity fluctuations lessened, but footing remained unpredictable. They arrived at another emergency door, and Han opened it manually.

Across a corridor was another door, which had been left open. Through it Han saw a long, wide aisle between high tiers of stasis booths like stacked, upright coffins. The lowest rows of booths were already darkened, empty, the highest still in operation. Booths in the middle two rows flickered.

But down in the aisles a line of six guards wavered before a mass of humans and nonhumans. The released prisoners, members of dozens of species, growled and roared their hostility. Fists, tentacles, claws, and paws shook angrily in the air. The Espos, waving their riot guns and advancing, tried to contain the break without firing, afraid they might be overwhelmed if they opened up.

A tall, demonish-looking being broke from the mob and launched himself at the Espos, his face splitting with mad laughter, hands grasping. A burst from a riot gun brought him down in a groaning heap. The prisoners’ hesitation disappeared; they advanced on the Espos in unison. What did they have to fear from death, compared with life in the interrogation chambers?

Han pushed Bollux aside, knelt behind the emergency-door frame, and cut loose at the guards. Two of them fell before they realized they were taking fire from their rear. One turned, then another, to exchange shots, while their fellows tried to hold back the seething prisoners.

Red darts of light crisscrossed. Smoke from charred metal rose from the doorframe with the ozone of blaster fire. The smell of burned flesh was in the air. The unnerved guards’ bolts zipped through the open emergency door or hit the wall, but failed to find their target. Han, kneeling to make himself as small a mark as possible, winced and flinched from the intense counterfire and cursed his own riot gun’s poor sighting characteristics.

He finally nailed one of the two Espos shooting at him. The other dropped to the floor to avoid being hit. Han, seeing that, used an old trick. Reaching through the door frame, he placed his weapon flat on its side on the floor, triggering frantically. The shots, aligned directly along the plane of the floor, found the prone Espo and silenced him in seconds.

The remaining guards broke. One let his piece fall and raised his hands, but it did him no good; the mob poured over and around him like an avalanche, burying him in murderous human and alien forms. The other Espo, trapped between Han’s sniping and the prisoners, started scaling one of the ladders connecting the catwalks along the tiers of stasis booths.

Partway up, the guard paused and shot those who had tried to follow him. Han’s shots, at the wrong angle, missed. Han gathered up Bollux, headed for the tier room.

The last Espo’s gunfire had made the prisoners draw back as he climbed for the third catwalk. From out of the pack of prisoners, three shaggy, simian creatures swarmed up after him, disdaining ladders, swinging up arm over long arm along the tiers’ outerworks. They overtook the Espo in moments.

He hung from the rungs long enough to shoot one of the simians. It fell with an eerie caw. The other ape-things drew even with the Espo, one on either side. As he tried to fire again, his weapon was snatched from his hand and dropped to those below. The yowling guard was then caught up by both his arms, swung, and hurled with incredible strength straight upward. He slammed against the ceiling above the highest row of booths and fell to the floor in a windmilling of arms and legs, with an ugly sound of impact.

Han, setting Bollux aside, ran to join the milling prisoners. Overhead, more and more of the stasis booths were being shut down to power the overtaxed life-support systems, yielding inhabitants of many planets. Now that the immediate challenge of the guards had been eliminated, the recent escapees were at a loss. Many of them had been killed or wounded by the guards’ fire, and many others were dead or dying, unwounded, because their physiologies weren’t compatible with Stars’ End’s atmosphere and they hadn’t entered stasis with their life-support equipment. Voices overbore one another: “Hey, where are—” “The gravity’s funny! What’s happ—” “What place is this?”

Han, yelling and waving, got their attention. “Grab those guns and take up positions in the stairwell! Espos will be finding their way here in a minute!” He spotted a man in the uniform of a planetary constabulary, probably a bothersome official the Authority had decided to put on ice. Han pointed to him. “Get them organized and set up defenses, or you’ll all find yourself back in stasis!”

Han turned, heading for the corridor. As he passed the ’droid, he told him, “Wait here, Bollux; I’ve got to find Doc and Chewie.”

As the prisoners scrambled for the fallen Espos’ weapons, Han dashed into the connecting corridor, swung right, and headed for the next tier block. But as he closed on the next door, it snapped open, unlocked from the inside. Three Espos crowded, elbows and hips, each trying to be the first to get out of the tier block, as a pandemonium of fighting and shooting echoed from the room behind them.

The guards made it only halfway through the door. There was a deafening roar, and a familiar pair of long hairy arms reached out to gather all three of them back into the fray.

“Yo, there you are now,” Han called happily. “Chewie!”

The Wookiee had finished draping the guards’ limp forms over a nearby handrail. He saw his friend and hooted ecstatically. Han, his protestations ignored, was caught up in a comradely embrace that made his ribs creak. Then the artificial gravity waffled for a second and Chewbacca nearly fell. He let Han down.

“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 Wookiee, jostled into Han, turned with a truly stentorian roar, holding his fists aloft. A space cleared around him instantly. Into the interval of silence Han inserted the order that the prisoners take up what guns they had and join the other defenders.

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 Han recalled from the floor plan. They encountered a door already open. Han 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, perhaps, the Authority hadn’t gotten to use this portion of its prison yet. He stepped into the tier block; Chewbacca followed after.

“Stand where you are!” ordered a voice behind them. Men and other creatures jumped up from concealment on the catwalks and outerworks, and along the walls. More appeared from around the bend in the corridor.

But both Han and his first mate had identified the voice that had commanded them. “Doc!” Han cried, though he and the Wookiee 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 pair’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—”

Doc 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, Han 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 overhead deflector shield so that—”

Doc clapped a hand over his eyes. “Han, you
imbecile
!”

Han became defensive. “You don’t like it? Climb back into your shipping crate!” 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.”

Doc 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-ride!”

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. Doc 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 attention! 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.”