Part 16 (2/2)
Perhaps worst of all, however, was the fact that only the real dregs of Corellian s.p.a.ce flew Uglies. Downon-their-luck pirates, mercenaries who would change sides in the middle of a battle if the price was right, losers who had nothing left to lose. And people who did not wish to be identified.
All of this flashed through Han's mind in something less than a heartbeat. He turned toward Chewie, about to order him to get the main s.h.i.+elds up and the forward lasers online, but Chewie was already on it.
Han skipped to the next item on the agenda. ”Chewie, you're gonna have to fly her.
I'll take the upper quad-laser turret.”
Chewie nodded and gestured violently, urging Han to be on his way.
Han hit the hatch-open b.u.t.ton and was on the other side of the hatchway before the thing was half-open.
He scrambled through the accessway to the upper laser turret and into the control chair. He jammed the headset on and powered up the turret.
”Chewie!” he cried out. ”I've got em on visual. Not quite in range yet, and I want it to stay that way.” With the kids...o...b..ard, he was more interested in running than duking it out with a bunch of Uglies, and maybe the honor guard, too, if they turned out to be less than honorable.
”Relight the sublight engines and get us out of here,” Han said. He swung the turret gun around and got a tracking lock on the first X-TIE fighter. He was about to fire when the Falcon suddenly pitched around, a hard ninety-degree rotation. Chewie was lining up the s.h.i.+p on a trajectory that would get them out from between these s.h.i.+ps. Good. He'd settle for losing the shot if it got them out of here. He waited for the sublight engines to kick in and throw them clear of this mess.
But then nothing happened. Han, who had learned from bitter experience what nothing happening meant at such times, already knew what the story was before Chewie even roared his frustration. That unexpected thump when Chewie shut down the sublight engines had meant something after all. Han looked up the accessway panel just in time to see Chewie rus.h.i.+ng past the base of the pa.s.sage, headed for the sublight engine access panels.
Han muttered a silent and profane prayer to whatever powers might be looking in, asking that, for once, it would be a simple problem. Then he thrust the question from his mind and concentrated on the incoming Uglies. He checked his tactical display. They would be within range in another 2.5 seconds. The tactical display was preparing an automated firing run, but Han slapped it over to manual. He didn't trust a computer to do his fighting for him. Take the B-wing chop job with the laser canaon first. It posed the biggest threat.
After all, he was just guessing that the B-wing's laser was hard to aim. Line it up. Pray that Chewie had set all the s.h.i.+elds on max before he dove at the engines.
The B-wing was getting closer. Han held his fire for just a fraction of a second longer than he wanted, letting the B-wing get fully into range. Then he pulled at the trigger, let it have a long volley of fire. He caught it with a nice series of hits amids.h.i.+ps as it swept past, swinging the quadlaser turret around to pound another volley into its sublight engines. One of the ponside engines flared suddenly and then went dark. Good. That was not just a definite hit, but one that had done some damage. Han swung the turret back around to take a crack at the X-TIE fighters, and suddenly realized they had flown past with the B-wing, flying outboard to it.
Then it struck him. They had all flown right past him.
They had ignored him altogether. None of them had fired at all.
”Oh, no,” Han muttered to himself. Had he just fired on three heavily anad s.h.i.+ps that had no quarrel with him, that just happened to be flying on the same vector as his own s.h.i.+p? There had been an old saying in the Corellian Sector Fleet of the old Imperial Navy, back when Han was a junior officer there. ”Never get an Ugly angry.” As best he recalled, there were very good reasons for that advice.
Then, with a sudden lurch that made itself felt, artificial grav system or no, the sublight engines came back on-lineand then shut down again just as fast. At a guess, Chewie had gotten them working again by doing whatever he had done aft, and then was forced to shut them down again until he could get back forward to the c.o.c.kpit and light them up from there. Han judged how much time it usually took Chewie to perform this sort of maneuver, figured in half a step's worth of delay to account for Chewie being out of practice, then took another quick peek down the accessway.
Sure enough, there was Chewie, hotfooting it hack to the c.o.c.kpit.
Han allowed himself a half moment's regret that he hadn't put Lein on the quad lasers. That way he could have stayed in the c.o.c.kpit while Chewie ran back and forth on repair duty. Too late for that idea now, and besides, someone had to watch the children. Poor kids must be in a full panic by now. Not that there was anything he could do about it but man the quad-laser turret.
A half moan, half growtcoming through the headset told Han that Chewbacca was back at the flight controls. There was another hard jerk as the Wookiee slammed the sublight engines back on at full power, and Han struggled to keep a track on the Uglies as they headed straight for the honor.
guard s.h.i.+ps. The Millennium Falcon took off at right angles to the line between the Uglies and the honor guard. But something was wrong.
Very wrong. Neither the Uglies nor the honor guard was paying the Falcon the slightest attention. ”Chewie!” Han shouted. ”Full stop! Cut the engines, do a one-hundred-and eighty degree turn, reverse thrust, and hold us here.” Chewbacca replied with a wholly predictable roar of protest, but Han shouted right back at him.
”Do it!” he said. ”Something's not right. That cholob B-wing could have vaporized us on the first shot from its range, and it didn't even try.”
Chewbacca's voice hooted again, a bit softer, in Han's ear. ”So if they were pirates, they would have tried to disable us, not fry us. So what? They didn't try that either.
And they should have. They had us dead to rights. A blind shot to our rear as we were coming out of hypers.p.a.ce, and we'd be lunch.” Leia's voice came on from the s.h.i.+p's lounge. ”Han, this is leia on a headset link.” She was telling him the children couldn't hear. ”What's going on?”
”Later, leia. Don't joggle my elbow just now.” Han reached up and cut the lounge out of his com circuit. Not the most respectful way to treat his wife, but on the other hand, one distraction too many could be fatal just now. He could apologize later, if they lived. ”Chewie,” he said again. ”Full stop, now. Reverse course and hold this position, then adjust s.h.i.+p att.i.tude to give both of us a good field of view of whatever's going on out there.” The s.h.i.+p lurched again as Chewie finally obeyed his orders, and the Falcon came about to its new heading. Han checked to make sure the tactical display was being recorded, then zoomed the view to get a good close look at the Uglies.
They were nearly on top of the honor guard now-but instead of engaging them, they came about, and”Chewie-all power to forward and starboard s.h.i.+elds!
Now!”
Now the Uglies were opening fire on the Falcon, from a much poorer firing angle, with twenty times the distance of their closest approach, with the element of surprise gone and with the honor-guard s.h.i.+ps-if they were an honor guard-just about to jump on them. But why? Why? A volley of near misses from the B-wing's ground laser blazed past the Falcon, bouncing off the s.h.i.+elds and rattling the s.h.i.+p. It was close, but it should have been much closer.
Chewie's voice growled again in the headphones, but Han cut him off. ”No! Do not maneuver!” he said.
”They're shooting to miss. Even a bunch of Uglies couldn't miss that completely from that range unless they were trying. If you move the s.h.i.+p, we might fly into a shot that was intended as a near miss. Hold position. I'm not sure, but I think I know what's going on.”
Han watched as the honor-guard s.h.i.+ps jumped the three Uglies, none of which did a very credible job of responding to the threat. The B-wing ignored their attack altogether, and concentrated on firing near misses and the occasional glancing hit at the Falcon. The X-TIE fighters turned on the interlopers and blasted away, to very little effect. To Han's experienced eye, it was clear that either the X-TIEs' weapons were extremely underpowered, or the PPBs of the honor guard were packing some implausibly powerful s.h.i.+elding-far better s.h.i.+elding than Han could credit in a vehicle that size. And if they did have s.h.i.+elds that good, they certainly couldn't have laser cannon of any size. And yet it took only five or six desultory shots from the lead PPB to disable one of the XTIEs. Its engines and weapons died and it drifted off, derelict. Three of the PPBs took off on a needlessly complex synchronized maneuver and came up under the other X-TlE, blasting away. The X-TIE came about, managed to land a few shots on the lead PPB, and then its left wing blew off.
Its fighter cover gone, the B-wing Ugly finally broke its ineffectual attack on the Falcon and came about in rather lumbering fas.h.i.+on. It leveled its cannon at the one PPB that hadn't managed to do much besides fly straight, and the little fighter exploded on the first shot. The five remaining PPBs converged on the B-wing from all sides and concentrated their fire on it. The B-wing took several hard hits from multiple directions and a small explosion amids.h.i.+ps sent it into a hard tumble. The PPBs poured the fire on from every point of the compa.s.s.
Another explosion in the B-wing's aft section sent it tumbling even harder. Then a whole series of blasts ripped through the s.h.i.+p's interior, merging into one huge firestorm that lit up the sky, blinding Han for a moment or two before it guflered down to nothing.
The cho job B-wing Ugly wasn't there anymore.
Han watched as the surviving PPBs did a graceful joint victory roll. ”Very nice,” he said. ”Very nice. Almost makes me want to believe it. But will they have the nerve to Play it out to the end?”
Millennium Falcon, this is Captain Talp.r.o.n, leading Squadron Two, Corellian s.p.a.ce Defense Forces s.p.a.ce Service. Are you all right?”
”Ah, yes,” Han said, trying to sound convincingly grateful. ”Just fine, thanks. Thanks for the rescue.”
”Our pleasure, Millennium Falcon.” It had been agreed long before that all Corellian craft would address the s.h.i.+p, and not mention the name of anyone onboard, to provide at least a mote of security for the chief of state's private visit. Apparently, Talp.r.o.n was determined to honor that arrangement, even if it was spectacularly obvious that security was shot full of holes.
Well, if Talp.r.o.n wanted to pretend everything was fine, Han had his own reasons for playing along. ”Whose s.h.i.+ps were those?” he asked in a conversational tone of voice, as if he didn't already know.
”Unknown group, Millennium Falcon,” Talp.r.o.n replied. ”Could be any of the Corellian pirate groups out to score big. They might be from one of the Outlier systems,” he said.
”That'll make em hard to trace,” Han said sympathetically.
”So it will, Millennium Falcon,” Talp.r.o.n said, in a world-weary sort of voice. ”So it will.”
”Well, even if you can't track them down, we can't tell you how grateful we are for your a.s.sistance,” Han went on. ”We're very sorry that you lost one of your craft. We would like to express our condolences to you and to the family of the crew you lost.”
”What?” Talp.r.o.n asked. ”Oh, yes. Of course. We'll make the arrangements.”
”Yeah, I bet you will,” Han said under his breath, low enough so the mike wouldn't catch it. He spoke again, louder, into the microphone.
”Captain Talp.r.o.n, thanks once again for a.s.sistance. However, I've got to get my s.h.i.+p secured from general quarters and run some systems checks.
Will you excuse me?”
”Of course, sir. We'll stand by until you are ready to proceed.
<script>