Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (25 page)

The
Falcon
’s external speakers whooped and wailed with emergency sirens and klaxons. Her visual warning systems and running lights were flashing at maximum luminescence. Bystanders would have difficulty seeing and hearing, much less interfering.

The ramp dropped and Han and Gallandro ran down, blasters ready, equipment and tools weighting them. Behind followed Badure, Hasti, and Skynx. The girl objected, “Are you sure there isn’t some other way to do this?” Han had to read her lips, unable to hear her in the din.

He shook his head. Chewbacca had to stay at the controls, both because he knew the ship and because Han trusted only the Wookiee with care of the
Falcon
. Bollux stayed behind
as well to keep a photoreceptor on instrumentation the first mate couldn’t spare time to monitor. Han wanted at least two people to hold the main door, Hasti and Badure. He and Gallandro would do the searching, taking Skynx along to translate.

The area seemed fairly secure; the Dellaltians had no way to cope with an armed starship. Han waved to his partner in the cockpit, and though he couldn’t be heard, added, “Fire, Chewie!”

From the
Falcon
’s top and belly turrets shot lines of red annihilation, playing on the closed door of the treasure vault. Smoke obscured the door in seconds as the quad-guns traced incandescent lines across it. Red cannonfire pitted and burned through material that had withstood generations of time and weathering, cutting glowing gashes in it. No weapon of its time could have penetrated it so easily, but in moments the door had been breached, pieces of it falling away. The reports of the gunfire added to the tremendous noise level.

Han signaled again and Chewbacca ceased fire. Smoke billowed away on the chill wind to reveal a yawning hole, its red-hot edges quickly cooling. “Armed robbery!” laughed Gallandro. “There’s nothing like it!”

“Let’s get inside,” Han mouthed. They ran together and hurdled through the gaping door. Hasti and Badure followed a moment later. “Stay here and make sure you maintain com-link with Chewie,” Han told them. Badure set Skynx down.

“Don’t forget the defensive system!” Hasti called as Han, Gallandro, and Skynx raced off. Among the things their captives had revealed was the fact that the treasure vaults were equipped with defensive security devices; the presence of a firearm in any protected area would trigger automated weapons.

They went deeper into the gloom of the cavernous vestibule, abandoned by the Dellaltians, who had wisely sought other refuge. Han didn’t see a man appear to one side,
weapon raised, but Gallandro caught the movement, drew, and fired all in the same instant.

The steward cried aloud, clutching his middle, then collapsing to the pressure-pacted tile floor. The gunman kicked the steward’s dropped disruptor away.

“You cannot, cannot,” the white-bearded man moaned, half in delirium from his wound. “We have kept it, safe, unsullied since we were entrusted with it.” His lids fluttered and lowered forever.

Gallandro laughed. “We’ll make better use of it than you, old man. At least we’ll get it into circulation, eh, Solo?”

Han, moving on, offered no answer. Gallandro came after, and Skynx rushed to catch up. They descended dusty ramps and broad staircases, the empty vaults all around them. At one point they lowered themselves by the cable of an ancient lift platform that no longer worked, complying precisely with the instructions extracted from the captive Survivors under hypno. Han marked their trail with a tint bulb. At the lowest level of the vault proper they came to a forking of the ways. Their information on the vault-complex layout went no further than this.

“It’s off this corridor, one of the side tunnels,” Han said. “Got your copy of the identi-marks? Good.”

“The little fellow can stay with you, Solo,” Gallandro replied, meaning Skynx. “I prefer to operate alone.” He hitched up the straps holding his equipment and stalked away.

“Okay, stay sharp,” Han told Skynx, and the search began. Soon they were absorbed in the intricate business of examining side corridors for the identi-marks described by their prisoners and copied by Skynx. These lowest levels of the vault proper were stale and seemed airless, layered with ankle-deep dust, and a gloom that resisted the beam of the hand-held spotlight. They passed room after room of empty bins and vacant shelves.

At last Skynx stopped. “Captain, this is it! These are the ones!” He was vibrating with excitement. To Han the side corridor looked no different from any other, ending as it did
in a blank wall at the bottom of an obviously empty vault complex. But Skynx was right; the identi-marks matched. Han shucked his other gear and lifted a heavy-duty fusion cutter into place. Skynx, taking the com-link, tried to contact the others and inform them of the find, but could raise no response.

“The walls are probably too thick,” Han suggested as he set to work. When it had been built, the wall would have withstood any assault that could have been made with portable equipment, but Han was beneficiary of a long technological gap. Chunks of the wall began to fall away. Beyond was the glow of a perpetual illumi-system.

Han set the fusion cutter aside hurriedly, anxious to see for himself. A treasure beyond spending! He could barely contain himself. He ducked and stepped through, followed by Skynx. The vault was dust-free, dry, and as quiet as when Xim’s artisans had sealed it, moments before they were put to death, centuries ago.

His steps echoing in the stillness, Han smiled. “The
real
vaults; all the time they were right here!” Hunters had scoured this whole part of space for Xim’s treasure because his vaults were empty and all the time there had been complete duplicates, right under the decoys. “Skynx, I’ll buy you a planet to play with!”

The Ruurian made no answer, silenced by the weight of years hanging over the place. They followed the corridor through a few turns and came to a stretch where warning flashers blinked in their wall sockets, as they had been doing for centuries. This no-weapons zone was an antechamber to the true treasure vaults of Xim.

Han stopped, wishing neither to be burned by the defensive weapons nor to go on unarmed, aware he might face other dangers. He turned back with great reluctance. At the fusion-cut opening, Gallandro waited.

Han paused and Skynx waited uncertainly. “We found it,” the pilot told the gunman with a jerk of his thumb. “The
real one. It’s back there.” He realized Gallandro had heard Skynx’s transmissions after all.

Gallandro registered no elation, only amused acceptance. Han knew without being told that everything had changed. The gunman’s abandoned equipment was stacked to one side, and he had doffed his short jacket, prelude to a gun duel. “I said, the
treasure
is back there,” Han repeated.

Gallandro smiled his frosty smile. “This has nothing to do with money, Solo, although I postponed it until you and your group could help me find the vaults. I have my own plans for Xim’s treasure.”

Han warily shrugged out of his jacket. “Why?” was all he asked, carefully unsnapping his holster’s retaining strap and rotating it forward out of his way. His fingers stretched and worked, waiting.

“You require chastening, Solo.
Who do you think you are
? Truth to tell, you’re nothing but a commonplace outlaw. Your luck has run out: now, call the play!”

Han nodded, knowing Gallandro would if he didn’t. “And this’ll make you feel superior, right?” His hand blurred for his blaster, the best single play of his life.

Their speeddraw mechanics were very different. Han’s incorporated movements of shoulders and knees, a slight dipping, a partial twist. Gallandro’s was ruthless economy, an explosion of every nerve and muscle that moved his right arm alone.

When the blaster bolt slammed into his shoulder, Han’s overwhelming reaction was surprise; some part of him had believed in his luck to the end. His own draw half-completed, his shot went into the floor. He was spun half around, in shock, smelling the stench of his own charred flesh. The pain of the wound started an instant later. A second bolt from the cautious Gallandro struck his forearm and Han’s blaster dropped.

Han sank to his knees, too startled to cry out. Skynx retreated with a terrified chitter. Swaying, clasping his wounded arm to him, Han heard Gallandro say, “That was very good,
Solo; you came closer than anyone’s come in a long time. But now I’ll take you back to the Corporate Sector—not that I care about the Authority’s justice, but there are those who have to be shown what it means to stand in my way.”

Han gasped through locked teeth, “I’m not doing time in any Authority horror factory.”

Gallandro ignored that. “Your friends are more expendable, however. If you’ll pardon me, I’ll have to see to your Ruurian comrade before he gets into any mischief.”

He slapped a pair of binders he’d found onboard the
Falcon
around Han’s ankles and ground the pilot’s com-link under his heel. “You were never the amoralist you feigned to be, Solo, but I am. In a way, it’s too bad we didn’t meet later, when you were salted and wiser. You’re pretty good in a fight; you might’ve made a useful lieutenant.” He removed the charge from Han’s blaster, tucked it into his belt, and sauntered off after Skynx, who, unable to get past the gunman, had fled back down the corridors toward the treasure vaults.

Gallandro moved cautiously, knowing the Ruurian was unarmed but counting no being harmless when it was fighting for its life. He rounded a corner to see Skynx cowering against the wall some distance along, gazing at him with huge, terrified eyes, paralyzed with fear. Around the far turn of the corridor he could see the reflected warning lights of a no-weapons zone.

Gripping his blaster, Gallandro smirked. “It’s a pity, my little friend, but there’s too much at stake here: Solo’s the only one I can afford to take alive. I shall make this as easy as I can. Hold still.”

Drawing a bead on Skynx’s head, he stepped forward. Energy discharges flashed from hidden emplacements; even Gallandro’s fabulous reflexes gave him no edge against the speed of light.

Caught in a flaring crossfire of defensive weapons, the gunman was hit by a dozen lethal blasts before he could so much as move. He was the center of an abrupt inferno, then
his scorched remains fell to the corridor floor and the smell of incinerated flesh clogged the air.

Skynx uncoiled from his spot at the corridor wall bit by bit. He threw aside the warning flashers he had removed from their sockets along the corridor’s wall. He gave silent thanks Gallandro hadn’t noticed the empty sockets; a prudent Ruurian probably would have.

“Humans,” remarked Skynx, then went off to rescue Han Solo.

   “Not much left of him, is there?” Han asked rhetorically an hour later as he stood over Gallandro’s blackened remains. Like the others, he had left his gun outside the no-weapons zone. Badure and Hasti had made temporary repairs to his shoulder and forearm with one of the ship’s medi-packs. If Han received competent medical attention soon, there would be no lasting effect from Gallandro’s blaster bolts.

Chewbacca was just finishing a careful examination of that corridor and the one beyond, running a thorough check along the walls to search out each weapons emplacement. He had opened each one with hand tools and deactivated it. Satisfied that there would be no danger in bringing power equipment and tools inside, the Wookiee barked to Han.

“Let’s get busy; I don’t like the idea of the
Falcon
being unmanned.” When Skynx had returned with news of the gun duel, Chewbacca had moved the starship so that she blocked the main door, her ramp extended down through it. He had warped the ship’s defensive mantle around and set her guns to fire automatically on sensor-lock should anyone come too close, one warning volley and then the real item. The Dellaltians trapped inside on the starship’s arrival had already surrendered and been permitted to leave; the
Falcon
would protect the treasure hunters for the time being, but Han didn’t want to press his already overextended luck.

They gathered their gear and moved on. At the end of the next corridor was a metal wall bearing a Wookiee-high representation of Xim’s death’s-head symbol. Chewbacca lifted
the fusion cutter to it and began slicing, splitting the insignia in two amid flying, flashing motes. Then he began carving in earnest. Heat washed back across him.

In short order there was a wide opening in the door. Beyond, bathed in the glow of illumi-panels that had been keeping the place bright for generations, was the glittering of gems, the gleam of metals, piles of strongboxes, and racks of storage cylinders in warehouse-sized shelf stacks that stretched from floor to high ceiling and away into the distance as far as they could see.

And this was only the first of the treasure rooms.

Skynx was quiet, almost reverent. He had made the find of a lifetime, a discovery out of daydreams. Badure and Hasti remained solemn, too, as they considered the size and wealth of the place, the impact it would have on their lives, and the memory of what they had gone through to stand here.

Not so Han and Chewbacca. The pilot jumped through the gap in the door, wounded arm held to him by a traction web. “We did it! We did it!” he shouted in glee. The Wookiee lurched after him, tossing his long-maned head back with an ecstatic “
Rooo-oo!
” They slapped each other, laughter echoing away into the piles of treasure. Chewbacca’s huge feet slapped the floors in a thumping victory dance as Han laughed in joy.

Skynx and Badure had gone to open containers with Bollux’s help, to examine Xim’s spoils. Chewbacca offered to assist them. “Spread it out here!” Han enjoined him. “I want to roll around in it!”

He paused when he noticed Hasti nearby, eyeing him strangely. “I always wondered what you’d be like,” she told him, “when you found your big win, you and the Wook. What now?”

Han still rode the wave of elation. “
What now
? Why, we’ll, we’ll—” He stopped, giving the subject some serious thought for the first time. “We’ll pay off our debts, get ourselves a first-class ship and crew, uh …”