Part 4 (1/2)

The Espo flyer was hot, accurate with his weaponry, deft with his maneuvers. He and Han quickly joined in circling, pouncing, cloverleaf battle, the upper hand alternating between them. Rolling, looping, doing their best to turn inside each other's turns, sliding into and out of each other's gun-sights over and over, they never let their sticks sit still for an instant.

For the third time Han shook the IRD off, playing on his Headhunter's greater maneuverability against the IRD's superior speed. He watched the Espo flyer try to pick him up again. ”I guess you must be the local champ, huh?” The IRD came at him once more. ”Have it your way, bozo, Let's see what you've really got.”

He split-S down deeper into the planet's atmosphere as the IRD sprang at his tail, gaining in the descent but unable to hold the Headhunter in his sights. Han pulled up sharply, twisted his s.h.i.+p into a half loop, flipped over, and went into a diving aileron roll with another loop thrown in, coming out of the combo in the opposite direction.

Cannon blasts streaked by over the canopy bubble, barely missing. Man, this Espo can really latch, Han told himself. But he has a few things left to learn. School ain't over yet.

He rammed the stick into the corner for a pushover and began a power dive. The IRD hung in but couldn't quite draw a bead on him. Han pushed the Headhunter to its limits, ducking and slipping as the Espo pilot raked at him. The snub's engines moaned, and every particle of her vibrated as if desiring to fly apart. Han jostled, watching his Heads-Up Display for the reading he wanted, The IRD's shots ranged closer.

Then he had it. He began pulling out of his dive, nosing up slowly and dreading the shot from behind that would end all his problems and hopes.

But the IRD pilot held off, not wanting to waste the opportunity, waiting for the Headhunter to present a spread-eagled silhouette in his gunsight. Han thought, Sure, he wants this one to be the perfect kill.

He yanked into a turn as the IRD aligned itself trailing him into it and edging for a lead. Han cheated the turn tighter, and tighter yet. But the IRD pilot clung doggedly, to end the frustrating chase and prove who was the hotter pilot.

And then Han had the turn tighter than ninety degrees, the thing he'd been working toward all along. The Espo hadn't paid enough attention to his altimeter, and now the thicker air was working against the IRD, cutting down on its performance. It couldn't hold a turn this tight.

And just as the IRD broke off its run, Han, with the instincts that had given him a reputation for telepathy, threw his Headhunter into a vertical revers.e.m.e.nt. The IRD was close enough now. Han fired a sustained burst and the IRD became a cloud of light, throwing out glowing motes and bits of wreckage in every direction.

And as the Headhunter zipped past the showering remains of its opponent, Han crowed, ”Happy graduation day, sucker!”

The fourth IRD had already made three strafing runs on the outlaw-tech base. The base's defensive guns couldn't keep up with it; they'd been set up for actions against large s.h.i.+ps and ma.s.s a.s.sault, not agile, low-angle fighter attacks.

The raider had concentrated on flak suppression for his first runs. Now most of the gun emplacements were silent. Outlaws dead and dying lay in a base where several buildings were already holed or ablaze.

Then Jessa showed up. Maintaining the velocity she'd picked up in her dive, ignoring the fact that the wings might be ripped off her stubborn little Headhunter at any moment, she threw herself after the IRD just as it came out of its pa.s.s. Those people down there were hers, were suffering and peris.h.i.+ng because they worked for her. She was absolutely adamant that no more runs would be made at them.

But as she was lining up on the IRD a volley of cannon fire sizzled down from above, nipping at the leading edge of her starboard wing. Another IRD flashed by with speed it had picked up in its own dive, the s.h.i.+p she had thought to be disabled. Its shots had penetrated her s.h.i.+elds and come close to cleaving her wing.

But she held position, determined to get at least one of the raiders before they got her.

Then the second IRD itself became a target. Han had it in his sights for an instant in a side-on, high deflection shot. He jinxed the nose of his s.h.i.+p, laying out sleeper rounds ahead of the Espo, investing in the future. It paid off; the IRD vanished in an outlas.h.i.+ng of force and shrapnel.

”You're on the last one, Jess!” he informed her in a crackle of static. ”Swat him!”

She was lined on the IRD again. She fired, but only her portside cannon worked; the damage to her starboard wing had knocked out its guns. Her target being slightly off to starboard, she missed.

The IRD began surging ahead, capitalizing on its raw ion power, slipping away to starboard. In another split second it would get away. Jessa snap-rolled, sliding to starboard belly-up, and fired again. Her remaining guns reached out with red fingers of destruction and hit. The IRD flared and flamed, breaking apart.

”Nice shooting, doll,” Han called over the net. Jessa's Headhunter continued along, canopy lowermost, not far from the ground. He cut in full power and went after her, saying, ”Jess, in aeros.p.a.ce circles, what we call what you are is upside down.”

”I can't get back over!” There was desperation in her tone. ”That damage I took must've started a burn-out creep-age. My controls are dead!”

He was about to instruct her to punch out but stopped himself. She was too close to the surface; her ejection seat would never have time to right itself. Her s.h.i.+p was losing alt.i.tude rapidly. Only seconds were left.

He swept in and matched speeds with her. ”Jess, get ready to go when I give you the word.”

She was mystified. What could he mean? She was dead, cras.h.i.+ng or ejecting. But she prepared to do as he said. Han eased the wing of his Headhunter under her overturned one. She saw his plan and her breath caught in her throat.

”On three,” he told her. ”One!” On that count he brought his wing tip up under hers. ”Two!” They both felt the jar of hazardous contact, knowing the most minuscule mistake would strew them both all over the flat landscape.

Han rolled left, and the ground that had been streaking by beneath Jessa's dangling head seemed to rotate away as Han's Headhunter imparted spin to hers. He finished his roll with additional force.

”Three! Punch out, Jess!” He himself was fighting to keep his jostled s.h.i.+p from going out of control.

But before he'd even said half of it, she'd gone, her canopy bubble propelled up and back by separator charges, her ejection seat-the easy chair-flung high and clear of her descending s.h.i.+p. The Headhunter plowed into the planet's surface, making a long strip of fiery ruin along the ground, becoming the day's final casualty.

Jessa watched from her ejection seat while its replusor units steadied and eased her down toward the ground on gusts of power. Off in the distance, she could see her Lafrarian wing man nursing his damaged craft in for a landing.

Han maneuvered his Headhunter through a long turn, coaxing with his retrothrusters until he was at a near stall. He brought his s.h.i.+p down nearby just as Jessa touched down.

The bubble popped up. He removed his helmet and jumped out of the aged fighter just as she slid free of her harness and threw her own helmet aside, feeling around and finding herself generally whole.

Han sauntered over, stripping off his flying gloves. ”There's room for two in my s.h.i.+p if we squeeze,” he leered.

”As I live and breathe,” she scoffed. ”Have we finally seen Han Solo do something unselfish? Are you going soft? Who knows, you may even pick up a little morality one day, if you ever wake up and get wise to yourself.”

He stopped, his leer gone. He glared at her for a moment, then said, ”I already know all about morality, Jess. A friend of mine made a decision once, thought he was doing the moral thing. h.e.l.l, he was. But he'd been conned. He lost his career, his girl, everything. This friend of mine, he ended up standing there while they ripped the rank and insignia off his tunic. The people who didn't want him put up against a wall and shot were laughing at him. A whole planet. He s.h.i.+pped out of there and never went back.”

She watched his face become ugly. ”Wouldn't anyone testify for-your friend?” she asked softly.

He sn.i.g.g.e.red. ”His commanding officer committed perjury against him. There was only one witness in his defense, and who's going to believe a Wookiee?”

He fended off her next remark by glancing at the base. ”Looks like they never touched the main hangar. You can have the Falcon finished in no time and still evacuate before the Espos show up. Then I'll be on my way. We've both got things to do.”

She closed one eye, looking at him sidelong. ”It's lucky I know you're a mercenary, Solo. It's lucky I know you only flew that Headhunter to protect the Falcon, not to protect lives. And that you saved me so I could hold up my end of our bargain. It's lucky you'll probably never do a single selfless, decent thing in your life, and that everything that happened today fits in, in some crazy way, with that greedy, r.e.t.a.r.ded behavioral pattern of yours.”

He stared at her quizzically. ”Lucky?”

She started for his fighter, walking tiredly. ”Lucky for me.” Jessa said over her shoulder.

V.

”WHAT'D you say, Bollux? Quit whispering!”

Han, seated across the gameboard from Chewbacca, glared at a crate on the other side of the Millennium Falcon's forward compartment, where the old 'droid sat. The compartment's other clutter included s.h.i.+pping containers, pressure kegs, insulated canisters, and spare parts.

The Wookiee, seated on the acceleration couch, chin resting on one enormous paw, studied the holographic game pieces. His eyes were narrowed in concentration and his black snout twitched from time to time. He'd spotted Han two pieces, and was now on the verge of wiping out that advantage. The pilot had been playing poorly, his concentration wandering, fretting and preoccupied with the complications of the voyage. The new sensor package and dish were working perfectly, and the stars.h.i.+p's systems had been fine-tuned by the outlaw-techs. Nevertheless, Han's mind couldn't rest easy as long as his cherished Falcon was hooked up to the huge barge like a bug on a bladderbird. Furthermore, the trip was taking far longer than the Falcon alone would have required; the barge wasn't built for speed.

Han could hear the barge's engines now, their m.u.f.fled blast vibrating through the freighter's deck and his boots, into the soles of his feet. He hated that barge, wished he could just dump it and zoom off; but a bargain was, after all, a bargain. And, as Jessa had explained, the Waiver for the Falcon was being arranged by the people he was to pick up on Orron III, so it behooved him to hold up his end of the agreement.

”I didn't say anything, sir,” Bollux replied politely. ”That was Max.”

”Then what did he say?” Han snapped. The two-in-one machines sometimes communicated between themselves by high-speed informational pulses, but seemed to prefer vocal-mode conversations. It always made Han nervous when Bollux's chest was closed up, with the diminutive computer's voice rising spectrally from an unseen source.

”He informed me, Captain,” Bollux replied in his slow fas.h.i.+on, ”that he would like me to open my plastron. May I?”