Part 29 (1/2)
The Corellian swallowed. ”Uh, yeah, about that load, Jabba. Well, you see... it was 'almost like they'd set a trap for me! The Imps were waitin' and they-”
”The customs officials have my spice?” Jabba roared, so loudly and suddenly that Han couldn't help flinching back. ”How couM you, Solo?”
”No! No, no, Jabba? Han cried. ”They didn't get it! Honest, they've got nothin' on you, nothin'! But... in order to keep the customs guys from finding it, I had to dump it. I marked it, but they wouldn't let me go right away. And when I went back for it . . . it was gone, Jabba.”
”My spice is gone,” Jabba said, staring blearily at Han, his voice ominously quiet.
”Uh... yeah. But, hey, Jabba, don't worry. I'll make it up to you, I promise. Me and Chewie will work it off, we'll pay you the value, don't worry. You know we're good for it. And honest, Jabba, I got a feelin' I was set up, you know? How many people besides you and Moruth Doole knew I was goin' on a Run?”
Jabba ignored Han's question. His bulbous eyes blinked rapidly as he took several puffs on the hookah. Then, reaching out, he grabbed a wriggler from the liquid-filled globe and stuffed the squirming thing into his mouth.
”Han. . . Hah, my boy, you know I love you like a son,” he said slowly, portentously. ”But business is busi-ness, and you've broken my primary rule. I can't make exceptions just because I am fond of you. That load cost me twelve thousand four hundred credits. Deliver the spice or the credits to me within ten days, or face the consequences.”
Hah wet his lips. ”Ten days... but, Jabba-”
The connection was abruptly broken. Hah sagged back in his pilot's seat, wrung out. What am I gonna do?
Six days later, having tried and failed to sc.r.a.pe up the credits from some of the sentients who owed him money, Han went back to Nar Shaddaa; He hated to do it, but he was going to have to borrow the credits from friends.
He discovered that someone involved in that night-mare Run... some Imp officer, or trooper... had evi-dently talked about what had happened. His fellow smugglers regarded him with a mixture of awe and trepidation.
Awe because he'd set a new record for the Run, trepi-dation because the news was out-Jabba was displeased, most displeased, with his former favorite pilot.
Shug was off-planet, and Hah cursed when he dis-covered that the master tech was gone. He knew Shug was good for that much, though it would strain his resources.
Hah made the rounds, managed to pick up a couple of thousand credits by calling in some old favors. But news of what had happened to some of the captains on Ylesia had spread, and several people simply looked the other way when Hah approached.
Han finally went to Lando's place. He didn't want to, but he was out of options.
He knocked on the door, and heard the gambler's sleepy voice from inside. ”Who is it?” ”Lando, it's me,” he called. ”Han.”
The Corellian heard steps, then suddenly Lando jerked the door open. Before Hah could utter a single word, the gambler's fist lashed out in a vicious sucker-punch, catching Han in the jaw and sending him flying back across the hallway. The Corellian slammed into the wall, then slid down, landing on his rear.
Han grabbed his jaw, spots dancing before his eyes, struggling to speak. Lando loomed over him. ”You have got to have the most colossal nerve in the entire galaxy, coming here after what you pulled on Ylesia!” he yelled. ”You're lucky I don't just shoot you, you lousy, lowlife, double-crosser!”
”Lando...” Han managed to croak, ”I swear, I didn't know what she was plannin'. I swear .... ”
”Right,” Lando sneered. ”Sure you didn't!”
”Would I have come here like this if I wasn't inno-cent?” Han mumbled. His jaw wasn't working very well. He could feel it swelling. ”Lando... she did it to me, too. I didn't get nothin' from that trip. Nothin'!”
”I don't believe you,” Lando said, coldly. ”But if I did, I'd say, 'good!' You two deserve each other!”
”Lando,” Han said, ”I lost a load of spice I was carryin' for Jabba. I'm desperate, buddy. I need to borrow-”
”What?” Lando grabbed Han's jacket in both hands and yanked the pilot to his feet. He slammed the Corel-lian against the wall. The gambler's dark face was barely a handsbreadth from Han's. ”You came here to ask me for a loan?”
Hah managed to nod. ”I'm good for it... honest .... ”
”Get this through your head, Solo,” Lando snarled. ”We've been friends in the past, so I'm not going to do what you so richly deserve and blow your head off. But don't ever come near me again!”
Slamming Han against the wall one more time, Lando let the Corellian go. Hah slid down the wall again, as Lando stormed back into his fiat. The door banged shut, and Han heard the lock click.
Slowly, painfully, Hah got to his' feet. His jaw was throbbing, and he tasted blood.
Well, that~ that, he thought, staring at the closed door. Now what?
”We're not going to get out of here, are we?”
Commander Bria Tharen ignored the barely audible question as she ducked down behind the pile of rubble and ejected the spent power pak from her blaster. Or tried to. The pak was jammed. Looking at her weapon, she saw that the constant firing from the past few min'-utes of battle had fused the power connectors together, making it impossible toremove the empty pak.
She swore under her breath, and crawled over to the body next to her. Jace Paol's features were frozen into an expression of tight, concentrated anger. He'd died fighting, the way he would have wanted to go. Grabbing his weapon, she eased it out from beneath his body, but before she had it .all' the way out, she saw the barrel was fused. It was as useless as her own.
Glancing over at the pitiful remains of Red Hand Squadron, Bria said, ”Anyone who can, give me cover. I've got to scrounge me up something to shoot with.”
Joaa'n nodded and gave her a thumbs-up. ”Ready, Commander. I don't see anything moving out there at the moment.”
”Okay,” Bria said. Tossing the useless weapon aside, the Rebel commander peered carefully over the rubble, then stealthily slid around to the side, out from behind her cover. She didn't bother getting to her feet, not sure that her wounded leg would support her. Instead, she scuttled forward on ,hands and knees, keeping low, through the ragged hole in the outside wall of the half-destroyed Imperial comm center where they were mak-ing their last stand.
A few meters away, an Imperial trooper lay, a hole still smoldering in his breastplate.
Quickly, Bria crawled over and stripped the dead man of his weapon and spare power paks, noting wryly that the trooper must have used 'all his grenades before he'd been shot.' Too bad... I could have made good use of a couple of grenades ....
Bria thought about taking the man~ body armor, but it hadn't done him any good, had it?
Here, outside the remains of the Imperi'al corem center on the restricted world of Toprawa, she could hear better. And breathe better, too. The stench of bat-tle was replaced by a cool night breeze. Bria crouched behind a fallen block of permacrete, daring to pull off her helmet for a second, then wipe her grimy face. She sighed with pleasure as the gentle breeze cooled her sweaty hair. The last time she'd felt a cool, pleasant breeze like that had been on Togoria ....
Where are you, Han? she wondered, as she often did. What are you doing right now?
She wondered if Hah would ever know what had be-come of her. Would he care if he did? Did he hate her now? She hoped not, but she would never know ....
Bria thought about that day on Ylesia, and wished things could have been different. Yet... if she'd had it to do over again, would she have done things any differently?
She smiled sadly. Probably not ....
The credits she'd raised had come in handy, and had led directly to this a.s.signment. Torbul and the other Rebel leaders had sent intelligence units to infiltrate Ralltiir, and they'd discovered that the Empire was s.h.i.+pping vital plans for its new secret weapon to its records center on Toprawa.
Torbul had been straight with her when he'd dis-cussed the mission, using terms like, ”recovery iffy,” and ”expendable.”
Bria had known what she was getting into, but she'd volunteered Red Hand Squadron anyway. She knew they needed the best for this job, and she was confident her people could deliver. And they had ....
This was the biggest anti-hnperial offensive of the Resistance so far, a coordinated offensive a.s.signed to transmit the plans for the latest Imperial secret weapon. Bria didn't know all the details, but her a.s.signment had been to seize this Imperial comm center on Toprawa and hold it, while the comm techs transmitted the stolen plans to a Rebel courier s.h.i.+p . . . a Corellian corvette that would ”accidentally” pa.s.s through this highly restricted star system.
When Torbul told Bria that the Rebel Alliance needed volunteers to accompany the intelligence team to Toprawa, to hold off the Imps while the comm techs did their job, Bria hadn't hesitated before volunteering. ”Red Hand will go, sir,” she said. ”We can handle it.”
She looked out across the plaza, seeing the carnage of war reflected dimly in the streetlights. Bodies, over-turned ground-cars, wrecked speeders... the place was a mess.
Bria thought about Ylesia, reflecting that place had been an even bigger mess . . . and she was proud that she had some responsibility for that. Glancing up at the sky, she thought about Retribution. They'd lost contact with her, and Bria feared the worst.
Time W get back to work, she thought, and crawled back into the wrecked comm center.