Star Wars: The Han Solo Trilogy I: The Paradise Snare (5 page)

And when I can pilot, that’ll be my way off
Trader’s Luck, he thought, his mind slipping automatically into an old dream, one that he never told anyone about. Once he’d confided it to one of the other children, and the little vrelt blabbed it to everyone. Shrike and the others laughed at Han for weeks, calling him “Captain Han of the Imperial Navy,” until Han wanted to crawl away, hands over his ears. It took all his control to just shrug and pretend not to care …

Yeah, and when I’m the best pilot around, and I’ve made lots of credits, I’ll apply to the Imperial Academy. I’ll become a Naval officer. Then I’ll come back and get Shrike, arrest him, and he’ll get sent to the spice mines on Kessel. He’ll die there … 
The thought made Han’s mouth curl up in a predatory smile
.

At the far end of his fantasy, Han pictured himself, successful, respected, the best pilot in the galaxy, with a ship of his own, lots of loyal friends, and plenty of credits. And … a family. Yeah, a family of his own. A beautiful wife who adored him, who’d share adventures with him, and kids, maybe. He’d be a
good
father. He wouldn’t abandon his children, the way he’d been abandoned …

At least, Han
supposed
that he’d been abandoned, though he couldn’t remember a thing about it. He didn’t even know his last name, so he couldn’t try to trace his family. Or maybe … maybe his parents
hadn’t
abandoned him …

Maybe they’d been killed, or he’d been kidnapped away from them. Han decided that he preferred that scenario. If he thought of his parents as dead, he wasn’t so mad at them, because people couldn’t help it if they died, right?

Han decided that from now on, he’d think of his mother and father as dead. It was easier that way …

He knew he’d probably never know the real truth. The only person who knew anything about Han’s background was Garris Shrike. The captain kept telling Han that if he was good, if he worked and begged hard, if he earned enough credits, someday Shrike would tell him the secrets behind how he’d come to be wandering the streets of Corellia that day
.

Han’s mouth tightend
. Sure Captain, he thought just like you were going to get Danalis’s face fixed …

The child glanced up at the street signs. He couldn’t read the ones in the native language, but there was a Basic translation beneath each. Yeah, this was his territory, all right
.

Han took a deep breath, then rearranged his features. A green-skinned female clad in a short robe was coming toward him. “Lady …” he whined, cringing his way toward her, little hand held out in appeal, “please, beautiful gracious lady, I beg your help … alms, just one little credit, I’m so hungreeeeee …
”

The little cupped green ears swiveled toward him, then she averted her head and swept past
.

Under his breath, Han muttered an uncomplimentary term in smuggler’s argot, and then turned to wait for the next mark …

Han shook his head and forced himself out of his reverie. Time to go and check on the
Ylesian Dream
’s progress.

Hauling himself up out of his cubbyhole, the young pilot made his way through the cramped passageways until he reached the bridge. The astromech droid was still there, its lights flashing away as it “thought” its own thoughts. It was a relatively new R2 unit, still shiny-bright silver and green, with a clear dome atop its head. Inside the dome Han could see lights blinking as it worked. It was hooked into the ship’s robot controls by means of a cable.

The R2 droid must have been equipped with a motion sensor, because it swiveled its domed “head” toward Han as he clumped boldly onto the bridge in his spacesuit.

The lights flashed frantically as it “talked,” but of course the sound waves didn’t travel in vacuum. Han turned on his suit’s communications unit, and suddenly his helmet was filled with distressed
bleeps, blurps
, and
wheeps
.

“
Whee … bleewheeeep … wheep-whirr-wheep!
” the R2 astromech announced in evident surprise. Han looked around for its counterpart droid and didn’t see one. He sighed. His suit’s communicator would transmit what he said to the droid, but how was he supposed to actually
talk
to the consarned R2 without an interpreter? How did whoever had programmed the droid talk to it?

He activated his suit communicator. “Hey, you!”

“
Blurpp … wheeep, bleep-whirrr!
” the unit replied helpfully.

Han scowled and cursed at the unit in Rodian, trader argot, and, finally, Basic. “What am I going to do now?” he snarled. “If only you had a Basic-speech module.”

“But I do, sir,” announced the droid in a matter-of-fact voice. Its words were flat, mechanical, but perfectly understandable.

Han gaped at the machine for a moment, then grinned. “Hey! This is a first! How come you can
talk?
”

“Because there was not room aboard this vessel for both an astromech unit and a counterpart unit, my masters programmed me with a Basic-speech transmissions module so I could communicate more easily,” the droid replied.

“All right!” Han cried, feeling a surge of relief. He didn’t like droids much, but at least he’d have someone to talk to, and it might actually prove necessary for the two of them to communicate. Space travel was usually routine, and safe … but there were exceptions.

“I regret, sir,” the R2 added, “that you are guilty of unauthorized entry, sir. You are not supposed to be here.”

“I know that,” Han said. “I hitched a ride on this ship.”

“I-beg-your-pardon, this unit does not understand the term used, sir.”

Han called the R2 unit an uncomplimentary name.

“I-beg-your-pardon, this unit does not understand—”

“Shut
up
!” Han bellowed.

The R2 unit was silent.

Han took a very deep breath. “Okay, R2,” he said. “I am a stowaway. Is that word in your memory banks?”

“Yes it is, sir.”

“Good. I stowed away aboard this ship because I needed a ride to Ylesia. I’m going to take a job piloting for the Ylesian priests, understand?”

“Yes, sir. However, I must inform you that in my capacity as a watch-droid assigned to safeguard this vessel and its contents, I must seal all the exits when we reach Ylesia, then inform my masters that you are aboard, thus expediting your capture by their security staff.”

“Hey, little pal,” Han said generously, “when we reach Ylesia, you just go right ahead and do that. When the priests see that I fit all their requirements, they won’t give a vrelt’s ass how I arrived there.”

“I-beg-your-pardon, sir, but this unit does not—”

“Shut up.”

Han glanced down at his air pak readout, then said, “Okay, R2, I’d like to check on our flight path, speed, and ETA to Ylesia. Please display that information.”

“I regret, sir, that I am not authorized to give you that information.”

Han was coming to a slow boil; he barely restrained himself from kicking the recalcitrant droid with his heavy space boot. “I need to check our flight path, speed, and ETA because I’ve got to compute how my air is holding out, R2,” he explained with exaggerated patience.

“I-beg-your-pardon, sir, but this unit—”

“
SHUT UP!
”

Han was starting to sweat now, and the suit’s refrigeration unit revved up a little faster. He struggled to keep his tones calm. “Listen carefully, R2,” he said. “Don’t you have some kind of operating systems program that orders you to attempt to preserve the lives of intelligent beings whenever you can?”

“Yes, sir, that programming is included with all astromech droids. For a droid to deliberately harm or fail to
prevent harm to a sentient being, its operating system module must be altered.”

“Good,” Han said. That fit in with what he knew about astromech programming. “Listen to me, R2. If you don’t show me our flight path, speed, and ETA, you may be responsible for my death, from lack of air. Do you understand me now?”

“Please elaborate, sir.”

Han explained, with exaggerated patience, his situation. When he finished, the droid was silent for a moment, evidently cogitating. Finally, it whirred once, then said, “I will comply with your request, sir, and will display the information requested on the diagnostic interface screen.”

Han breathed a long sigh of relief. Since the ship was basically a giant robot drone, it had no controls visible on its control boards, just assorted blinking lights. But, in order to service the ship, there
was
a screen built into the control board. Han stepped carefully around the R2 unit and stared down at the screen.

Information scrolled across it, so rapidly no human could have read it. Han turned to the R2 unit. “Put that data back up, and this time,
leave it there
until I can read it! Get it?”

“Yes, sir.” The droid’s artificial voice sounded almost meek.

Han studied the figures and diagram that appeared on the screen for several minutes, feeling his uneasiness grow into real fear. He had nothing to write with, and no way to access the navicomputer, but he had a bad feeling about what he was seeing. Biting his lip, he forced himself to concentrate as he ran the figures in his head, over and over.

Ylesian Dream
’s flight path had been set to take it in a circuitous route to the planet, in order to avoid the worst of the pirate-infested areas of Hutt space. And the little freighter’s speed was set far lower than the ship was capable of, slower than even
Trader’s Luck
normally traveled through hyperspace.

Not good. Not good at all. If their speed and course weren’t altered, Han realized, he’d run out of air about five
hours before the
Dream
set down on Ylesian soil. The ship would land with a corpse aboard … his.

He turned back to the R2 unit. “Listen, R2, you’ve got to help me. If I don’t alter our course and speed, I won’t have sufficient air to make the trip. I’ll die, and it will be
your
fault.”

The R2 unit’s lights flashed as the machine contemplated this revelation. Finally, it said: “But I did not know you were on board, sir. I cannot be held responsible for your death.”

“Oh, no.” Han shook his head inside his helmet. “It doesn’t work that way, R2. If you
know
about this situation and do nothing, then
you will be causing the death of a sentient being
. Is that what you want?”

“No,” the droid said. Even its artificial tones sounded faintly strained, and its lights flickered rapidly and erratically.

“Then it follows,” Han continued inexorably, “that you must do whatever you can to
prevent my death
. Right?”

“I … I …” The droid was quivering now in agitation. “Sir, I am constrained from assisting you. My programming is in conflict with my hardware.”

“What do you mean?” Han was worried now. If the little droid overloaded and went dead, he’d never be able to access the manual “diagnostic” controls that he knew had to be in these panels somewhere. They’d be tiny, something for the techs to use to test the robot drone’s autopilot.

“My programming is constraining me from informing you …”

Han took one huge stride over to the little droid and knelt in front of it. “Blast you!” He pounded his fist on top of the droid’s clear dome. “I’ll
die!
Tell me!”

The droid rocked agitatedly, and Han wondered if it would simply fall apart with the strain. But then it said, “I have been fitted with a restraining bolt, sir! It prevents me from complying with your request!”

A restraining bolt!
Han seized on this bit of information with alacrity.
Let’s see, where is it?

After a moment he spotted it, low down on the droid’s metal carapace. He reached down, grasped it, and tugged.

Nothing. The bolt didn’t move.

Han gripped harder, tried twisting. He grunted with effort, really sweating now, imagining he could feel those molecules of oxygen running out in a steady stream. He’d heard that hypoxia wasn’t an especially bad way to die—compared to explosive decompression or being shot, for example—but he had no desire to find out firsthand.

The bolt didn’t move. Han tried harder, jerking at it, swearing in half a dozen alien tongues, but the stubborn thing didn’t budge.

Got to find something I can hit it with
, Han thought, glancing wildly around the control cabin. But there was nothing—not a hydrospanner, a wrench—nothing!

Suddenly he remembered the blaster. He’d left it on the floor in his little cubicle. “Wait right here,” Han instructed the R2 unit, and then he was squeezing back through the narrow corridors.

Shooting a blaster inside a spaceship—even an unpressurized spaceship—wasn’t a good idea, but he was desperate.

Han returned with the weapon, and examined the settings.
Lowest setting
, he thought.
Narrowest beam
. Clumsy in his spacesuit gloves, he had trouble adjusting the power setting and beam width.

The R2’s lights had been flashing frenetically ever since he’d returned, and now it
wheeped
plaintively. “Sir? Sir, may I ask what you’re doing?”

“I’m getting rid of that restraining bolt,” Han told it grimly. Aiming and narrowing his eyes, he squeezed delicately.

A flash of energy erupted, and the little droid
WHEEEEPPPPED!
so shrilly it sounded like a scream. The restraining bolt fell to the deck, leaving behind a black burn scar on the otherwise shining metal of the R2 unit.

“Gotcha,” Han said with satisfaction. “Now, R2, be good enough to point me toward the manual interfaces and controls in your ship here.”

The droid obediently extruded a mobile wheeled “leg” and rolled over to the control banks, its interface cable trailing behind it. Han went over and crouched before the instrument panel, awkward in his suit. Following the droid’s instructions, he wrenched off the top of one featureless control panel and studied the tiny bank of controls. Cursing at the awkwardness of trying to manipulate the controls while wearing spacesuit gloves, Han began using the manual interface mode to disengage the hyperdrive. Altering course and speed could only be done in realspace.