Another Espo, down a side pa.s.sageway, 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, Chewbacca 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 Wookiee 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 forearm, then threw his head back and roared. Those behind 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 b.u.t.ton.

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 another toward the junction station. Doc had already gone ahead to take the Falcon's controls. As soon as Chewbacca had control of the a.s.sault craft, he was to free it gently from the tower so that it couldn't be retaken, 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, weakened by erratic flow management, began to explode.

Up on the landing, Han 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 probably hoping that relief wasn't far off. And he could be right, since Espo a.s.sault troops were working their way up through the tower quickly, mowing down the prisoners' opposition.

But the exploding conduits const.i.tuted a new factor. Han ordered everybody back. "We'll hold at the tier-block level; pa.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ps 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 came 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 having 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 moment. 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 h.e.l.l 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. Han 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 in direct linkage, I couldn't-Captain!"

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 door frame 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 disrupter pistol was realigning. Han, 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-Shan's 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 hauling, 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 the 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 coming 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 a.s.saulting 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 fresher, 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 cast off.

"Solo, wait!" A man stumbled out of the smoke. Viceprex Hirken, looking a century older. He spoke with hysterical speed.

"Solo, I know they've moved the a.s.sault ship away from the lower lock. I told no one, not even my wife. 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, Solo! Do anything-anything-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 Espos 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, hitting 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 viewport, unavailingly. Stars' End's descent speed had already drawn it away, and it plunged deeper into the planet's gravity well.

Around him he could see and hear the wobble of the tunnel-tube as packed prisoners were gradually absorbed into the a.s.sault craft and the Millennium Falcon.

Everyone in the two ships and the tunnel-tubes was so busy crowding elbow to pseudopod, or helping the injured or the dying, that only one survivor thought to watch the tower's fall.

As his mother and Doc labored over the Falcon's controls, conning the freighter under its extreme burden and maintaining tractor-grip on the junction station, Pakka hung from an overhead conduit in the c.o.c.kpit, the only one with both an unoccupied mind and a vantage point.

The cub stared down at Stars' End's descent, the flawless trajectory of an airless world. And even the sudden, brilliant flash of its impact didn't distract the others, who had lives to worry about. But Pakka, unblinking, unspeaking, saw the symbol of Authority flare and die with the brevity of a meteor.

The wind pulled hard across the landing field on Urdur, a no-nonsense wind, chilling, biting, but fresh and free. The former inmates of Stars' End, those who had lived to reach this latest outlaw-tech base, breathed it without complaint as they were herded off to temporary quarters.

But Han still pulled his borrowed greatcoat tighter around him. "I'm not arguing," he argued. "I just don't understand, is all." He was addressing Doc, but Jessa was listening, as were Pakka, Atuarre, and her mate, Keeheen.

Nearby rested the Falcon, the tunnel-tube junction still clamped to her side, and the Espo a.s.sault craft. Doc had guided both stuffy, overcrowded ships into quick contact with Jessa, and they'd been directed to this latest hide-out world.

Chewbacca was still onboard the Falcon, surveying the damage done to her since the last time he'd seen her. A new yaup of inconsolable sadness echoed from the ship each time he found another item of damage.

Doc, rather than reiterate his explanation, said, "Youngster, check the 'droid out for yourself. There." Outlaw-techs were just offloading Bollux's mutilated, beam-scorched form from the ship. An entire segment of his cranium had been shot away by Uul-Rha-Shan. At Doc's order, his men brought over the repulsor-lift handtruck with the 'droid strapped to it. With force bars and pinch-jacks, they prized open the plastron.

And there sat Blue Max, unscathed, running off his own power pack. Han leaned over him. "Uh, Maxie?"

The computer's voice still sounded like a child's. "Captain Solo! Long time no see. In fact, long time no see anything."

"Gotcha. Sorry; things were really jumping this trip. Is Bollux in there with you for a fact?"

In response, he heard the unhurried drawl of the labor 'droid coming from Max's grille, sounding strangely high-pitched through the vocoder. "Right enough, Skipper. Blue Max was in direct link with me when the disrupter hit me. He pulled all my essential information and basic matrices down here, safe and sound with him, in microseconds. Imagine that? Naturally, I've lost a lot of specifics, but I guess I can always relearn camp sanitation procedures if I have to." The voice became dejected. "I suppose my body's unsalvageable, though."

"We'll get you a new one, Bollux," Doc promised. "One for both of you, a custom puff; you have my word. But now you have to go; my boys will make sure all that circuitry in there remains stable."

"Bollux," Han said, and found himself with nothing to say. He hit that problem from time to time. "Take it slow."

"I always do," the vocoder drawled.

"G'bye, Captain Solo!" Blue Max added.

Jessa, shading her eyes, pointed to the a.s.sault craft. "There's a problem we won't solve in the shop."

A dark-skinned figure sat by the ship's ramp, head bent to his chest. "He took his uncle's death pretty hard," Jessa continued. "Rekkon was quite a man; losing him would be hard on anybody." She looked to Han. Han was studiously looking elsewhere. He saw the boy's head come up from his private grief; he bore a startling resemblance to Rekkon.

"What do we do with him?" Jessa went on. "Most of the prisoners will find a new life somehow, even Torm's father and brother. The majority of them will leave the Corporate Sector; a few hotheads plan to take it to the courts, as if they had a prayer. But the boy's by far the youngest you rescued, and he's got no one now."

She was watching her father expectantly. Doc's eyebrows shot up. "Don't goggle at me, girlie. I'm a certified businessman and criminal. I don't collect strays."

She giggled. "But you never turn them away, either. And you always say there's always room for one more at the table, we'll just-"

"-scramble the eggs," he antic.i.p.ated her, "and water the soup. I know. Well, I suppose I could at least talk to the lad. He might have some usable apt.i.tude, hmm, yes. Atuarre, you worked with his uncle quite closely; would you mind coming with me?"

Doc went off with all three Trianii at his side. Pakka turned and flipped Han a parting wave, his other pawhand caught up in his father's.

Jessa looked at Han. "Well, Solo, thanks. See you around." She turned to go.

He couldn't stifle an involuntary "Hey!" She turned back with a cant to her head that let him know he'd have to talk fast. Which he did. "I put my life-my one and precious life, mind you-on the line for your father-"

"-and all those other fine people," she cut in, "including your good friend Chewie-"

"-and went through a couple of types of hair-raising situations, and all you have to say is thanks?"

She evinced shock. "Why, you only carried out your part of our deal. And I carried out mine. What else did you expect, a parade?"

He glared at her, hoping she'd wither from his gaze. She didn't. He spun on his toe and headed for the Falcon's ramp with long strides. "You win! Women, hah! I've got the whole galaxy, sweetheart, the whole galaxy. Who needs this?"

She caught up, whirled him around. Jessa looked good even in cold-weather gear. "Numbskull! What's wrong with striking another deal?"

His brow furrowed. I am somehow slipping into some thing tricky here, he thought, but I can't quite see what "What kind of deal?"

She considered it, looking him over. "What are your plans? Are you going to join this campaign against the Authority? Or clear out of this part of s.p.a.ce?"

He looked up, sighing. "You should know better than that. Rob 'em blind, that's my kind of revenge."

Jessa leaned around him and called up into the ship: "Hey, Chewie, how'd you like an all-new guidance system? And a complete overhaul?"

The Wookiee's delighted honks, preceding his appearance at the ramp, sounded like a happy foghorn. Jessa finished cheerily, "And to show you what a sport I am, boys, I'll throw in some body work, repair all minor hull damage. I'll reroute the ducting in the c.o.c.kpit, too; get all those conduits and other head-knockers out of your way."

Chewbacca was close to tears of joy. He threw his hairy arm around the Falcon's landing gear and gave it a wet Wookiee kiss.

Jessa said, "See, Solo? It's easy when you're the boss's daughter."

He was flummoxed. "Jess, what am I supposed to offer?"

She slipped her arm through his, grinning slyly. "What've you got, Han?" She led him away, ignoring his objections. His outbursts became fewer as the pair walked across the landing field toward the distant buildings. Halfway there, Chewbacca saw, Han held his greatcoat open so that she could slip into it, safe from the bitter winds of Urdur, though her own suit was quite well insulated.

Leaning casually on the Falcon, the Wookiee watched them go, and thought about what he and Han Solo could do with a ship milled and tuned fine by the full resources of the outlaw-techs. His muzzle wrinkled back from his fangs. He was glad for the breather they'd have here on Urdur.

But after that, everybody had best hang on to his cash with both hands.

HAN SOLO'S REVENGE.

For Cargo-master-apprentice Dane Thorson, Chief Scout Adam Reith, Jason dinAlt, Jame Retief of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne and all others of that rare stripe And who are they anyway, these so-called free traders and independent s.p.a.cers? Rogues, scoundrels, and worse! The common slangtalk term "freighter b.u.ms" is more applicable, surely. Beware to the shipper who would entrust them with cargo; woe to the being who books pa.s.sage with them!

At best, they are f.e.c.kless ruffians whose unconscionable social values allow them to undercut the fee rates of established, reliable companies. More often, they're con artists, frauds, tariff-dodgers and, yes, even smugglers!

Is any rascal with a s.p.a.cecraft to be entrusted with your livelihood? Overhead, administrative apparatus, and managerial proprieties-these are the best guaranties of a dependable business arrangement!

(Excerpted from Public Service Message #122267-50,

sponsored by the Corporate Sector Authority).

I.

"CHEWIE, hey, I've got it!"

Han Solo's happy shout surprised Chewbacca so much that the towering Wookiee straightened involuntarily. Since he'd been hunkered down under the belly of the starship Millennium Falcon welding her hull with a plasma torch, he b.u.mped his s.h.a.ggy head against her with a resounding gong.

Snapping off the torch and letting its superheated field die, the Wookiee tore off his welding mask and threw it at his friend. Han, knowing Chewbacca's temper, skidded to a stop and ducked with the reflexes of a seasoned star pilot as the heavy mask zipped by overhead. He took a step backward as Chewbacca stalked out from under the grounded Falcon into the brilliant light of Kamar's white sun. Making temporary repairs on the damaged ship had brought the Wookiee peevishly close to mayhem.

Han pulled off his wraparound sun visor and grinned, raising his free hand to ward off his copilot's pique.

"Hold on, hold it. We've got a new holofeature; Sonniod just brought it." To prove it, Han held up the cube of clear material. Chewbacca forgot his anger for the moment and made a lowing, interrogative sound.

"It's some kind of musical story or something," Han replied. "The customers probably won't understand this one either, but are we going to pack them in now! Music, singing, dancing!"

Han, waving the cube, beamed happily over their good fortune. He still retained a good deal of the ranginess of youth, but combined it with much of the confidence of maturity. He had shucked his vest in the heat of Kamar, and his sweat-stained pullover shirt clung to his chest and back. He wore high s.p.a.ceman's boots and military-cut trousers with red piping on their seams. At his side was a constant companion, a custom-made blaster that was fitted with a rear-mounted macroscope. Its front sight blade had been filed off with the speeddraw in mind. Han wore it low and tied down at his right thigh in a holster that had been cut away to expose his sidearm's trigger and trigger guard.