The Black Fleet Crisis_ Tyrant's Test Part 34

Lumpawarrump was there as well, holding both Chewbacca's weapons and his own, ready to take up his a.s.signed task of defending the entrance to the Falcon.

[Chewbacca!] Jowdrrl shouted down the access tunnel. < p="">

Maybe they've lost us in the clutter down here.> Chewbacca collected his blaster rifle from Lumpawarrump, then placed a paw on his son's shoulder. [Go trade places with Jowdrrl.] [Father--] [Hurry.]

The nitrogen overpressure pumped into the s.p.a.ce between the two s.h.i.+ps before the final burn-through caused the metal disc cut from Pride of Yevetha's hull to blow back into the enemy s.h.i.+p as a spectacular half-ton projectile.

Chewbacca and Shoran poured through the opening moments later, each wielding a heavy blaster in each hand. Standing back to back, they quickly cut down the half dozen Yevetha who came running at the sound of the breach.

As Chewbacca stepped over the bodies he saw that none of the Yevetha had been armed. [s.h.i.+p's crew,] he said to Shoran. [Troops will be next.] Still back-to-back, they hurried down corridor 278 toward detention block three.

Lin Prell, senior tender of the breederies of Viceroy Nil Spaar, paid no mind to the alarms sounding at the monitoring console. They concerned matters outside his realm, and the new hanging in alcove five needed its blood wash.

After that, he would check the temperature of all the active alcoves, record the growth of the other fertilized casks, and wet-sweep alcove seven for the mara-nas expected later that night. And when he could find no more work in this breedery, there were four others he could inspect--anything to keep his hands and mind busy, to keep his thoughts away from the castration knife that had been delivered to his quarters this morning, and the example he was expected to set.

In that frame of mind, Lin Prell almost welcomed the interruption when two hulking, s.h.a.ggy-furred vet min blasted through the wall of the monitor room and began shooting up the consoles.

There will be much work to do--much work, he thought as he hurried down the narrow corridor toward the commotion.

"What is it? What do you want?" he called ahead, catching a glimpse of one of the invaders moving about the outer compartment.

The only answer was a horrible growl and another volley of blaster fire around the mouth of the corridor.

Lin Prell quickly reexamined his commitment to protecting Nil Spaar's progeny, and then began to back-pedal down the metal walkway.

The monsters were apparently incapable of speech, so Lin Prell made no further attempts to communicate with them. When one of the creatures appeared at the end of the corridor, roaring in savage fury, the senior keeper hurled himself into the nearest unused alcove and secured the door behind him. As he huddled in the corner, waiting, he comforted himself with the thought that he might never see the black-handled knife again.

[Where are they?] Chewbacca roared. [Where are the prisoners? What are these repulsive things?] Raising the rifle, he blasted the fleshy sac hanging from the cell wall, causing a pulpy explosion. [Honor brother!]

he roared. [Call to me!] There was no response, leading to a murderous growl of frustration. With Shoran guarding his back, Chewbacca picked his way down the corridor, peeking into each cell in turn and then laying heavily on the triggers of his weapons.

[Come on,] Shoran urged. [This is a hothouse--they're holding him somewhere else. We have to keep moving.] Chewbacca peered through the grating of the cell door at the Yevetha cowering within. He bared his teeth and growled, low and ominously.

[Come on!] Shoran said, pulling Chewbacca away.

An eerie silence continued to surround the Falcon. From the gun turrets, LumpaWarrump and Dryanta could count dozens of fighters cruising over the hull of the Star Destroyer--obviously searching for the intruder, and inexplicably unable to locate it. One fighter had pa.s.sed within seventy meters of the s.h.i.+p, so close that Dryanta could see the pilot's face, so close that it was all Lumpawarrump could do to keep his hands off the triggers of the Dennia quad.

Even stranger were the comlink reports from Jowdrrl at her station guarding the hatch.

[Someone talk to me,] she said.

[We're here,] Dryanta a.s.sured her.

[I just had visitors,] she said. [Nine of them, almost as big as Shoran and armed like stormtroopers.] [Help's coming,] said Lumpawarrump.

[No, stay where you are--they're gone now. But I don't know why,]

Jowdrrl said. [They looked over the bodies in the corridor, stood around jabbering for a minute or two, then walked right past the cut-hatch on their way out.] [That doesn't make any sense,] Lumpawarrump protested.

[I know. I was ready for them to rush me, but they never even glanced in my direction-as if they couldn't see that there was a hole in the bulkhead big enough to crawl through.] [Just like our fighters up here,] said Dryanta, both wonder and worry evident in his voice. [Like we've become invisible. I don't understand it.]

Detention block two had been modified as well, though it was empty and deserted. But by the time Chewbacca and Shoran were ready to leave it, their noisy entrance had drawn a small crowd of Yevethan soldiers to the corridor outside.

With no more than a glance between them, the two Wookiees plunged through the destroyed entryway, turning back-to-back the moment they were clear of it.

By the luck of the draw, Chewbacca had five targets in front of him, Shoran eight.

Roaring defiance, Chewbacca sprayed the corridor with crisscrossing blaster bolts. The las of his targets was tottering when he heard Shoran grunt, and felt him sag against his back. A whiff of burnt hair and fresh blood reached Chewbacca's nostrils.

Whirling, Chewbacca caught Shoran up with one hand before he could fall and dispatched the last two Yevetha with a flurry of shots from the blaster in the other hand.

Then he turned his attention to the limp weight cradled in the crook of his arm. And what he saw drove him to howl with fury and scatter a dozen more blaster bolts into the corpses littering the floor.

"Shoran has fallen,] he called over the comlink when the impulse was spent. [Dryanta, come for him.]

Lumpawarrump was the first to the cut-hatch, beating Dryanta by three steps. [I'm going,] he said to Jowdrrl. [I know the map. You don't need me in the gun turret. And Dryanta shouldn't go alone.] Jowdrrl saw the determination in his eyes, the eagerness in his stance, and did not argue. [Go,] she said.

[Just remember that the Yevetha can see you perfectly well.]

Glancing down at his hands, the youth clicked his blaster's lock to off and checked the power level.

[We'll remember,] he said. [Dryanta?] She nudged him from behind.

[Take the lead.] They met Chewbacca halfway to detention block two.

Dryanta took Shoran from him without a word and hurried away back toward the Falcon, leaving Lumpawarrump with his father.

The two stood looking into each other's eyes appraisingly, one searching for strength, the other for approval.

Then Chewbacca grunted and turned away.

[Follow,] he said. [Protect my back.]

Detention block one was being guarded by half a dozen armed Yevetha, which raised Chewbacca's hopes.

But when he and his son had blasted their way through the interference, all they found were more of the grossly distended fleshy sacs hanging in the cells.

[This is taking too long--there are too many places he could be,]

Chewbacca fumed. [They will have killed him or moved him by now.]

[Father, when I think about Han, I do not see him in a place like this--]

[Be quiet--I have to think.] [I keep seeing him in a room full of people- -a large room, and all different species. I don't know where this picture comes from--] [I do not believe this,] Chewbacca said.

But Lumpawarrump's words had put the picture in his mind as well.

[And yet I see what I see, Father. It comes to me without imagining.

Is it a deception?] [When did this vision present itself to you?]

[While I was in the turret--and it will not leave me.

It is most insistent.] Chewbacca growled and blasted the ceiling at random.

The thought of Han was now inextricably connected to an oddly detailed vision of a high-ceilinged compartment half filled with a zoo of species. The image would not leave his mind either, and he could not see Han in any other surroundings. [This is powerfully annoying-and I do not understand it.] [Father, what if the enemy' has taken many hostages?

What if Han is just one of hundreds? Where would he be then?] There were noises in the outer corridor, and Chewbacca moved to the ruined security door. [In your mind, as you see Han,] he called. [Are there any markings, any numbers or words?] Lumpawarrump squeezed his eyes closed.

[Yes.

Yes, on the wall--D-two.] It was the same as what Chewbacca saw--bold black lettering high on the bulkhead above the prisoners: CARGO [The ma.s.s detention holds,] Chewbacca roared.

[Come!]

Back to back, Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump fought their way forward to cargo hold D2. Strangely, the resistance seemed to weaken rather than strengthen as they went, almost as though they were moving too fast for their pursuers to find them---or as though the carnage they left in their wake discouraged other Yevetha from getting in the way of a headlong Wookiee charge.

But the guards and patrols they did encounter fought tenaciously, never flinching or fleeing. Armed or unarmed, alone or in groups, the Yevetha confronted the intruders with a foolish courage that made them easy targets and persistent threats. Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump were forced to fire on anything that moved and to keep firing until it stopped moving. By the time their objective was in sight, the gauge on Lumpawarrump's hand blaster was nearing the POWER LOW mark, and the gauges on both of Chewbacca's were closing in on POWER CRITICAL.

Ahead of them was one final hurdle. Unlike with the detention blocks, blowing a hole in the bulkhead with a grenade threatened the occupants of the cargo hold. But the sectional doors of the hold were guarded by half a dozen Yevetha deployed behind a pair of Imperial portable s.h.i.+elds. The waist-high curved panels contained both ray-s.h.i.+eld generators and energy absorbers, and the Yevetha had nothing to fear from hand blasters so long as they stayed behind the arc of the s.h.i.+elds.

Worse, the doors to the hold were on the other side of a hundred-meter wide flight deck--a deck that normally housed some of the fighters now searching for the Falcon, and offered no cover whatever when they were gone.

"Your bowcaster,] Chewbacca said as they crouched in the hatchway.

Lumpawarrump unslung the weapon and began to surrender it to his father, but found to his surprise there was no hand extended to take it from him. Instead, Chewbacca was offering him slug cores--the nuclei of the explosive quarrels.

[First, the s.h.i.+elds,] Chewbacca said, gesturing with his blaster.

[Then go for your enemies on the extreme left and right. That will likely freeze the others and keep them bunched up for you. You must fire as quickly as your bowcaster allows--as when trying to take fiarion before the flock scatters into the cover.] [Yes, Father.] [I will divide their attention, as one gives the thar-riarr a morsel to distract it,]

Chewbacca said. [Try to keep your quarrels out of my back, son.]

Lumpawarrump laughed easily. [Try not to run in front of my sights, Father.] Chewbacca thumbed his comlink. [Jowdrrl.] [Here, cousin.]

[Prepare to make a pickup from the flight deck which is directly forward of your position.] [I will seal the hatch and be ready for your call.]

Chewbacca looked back at Lumpawarrump. [This is your brrtayyk.] [I am ready.] Chewbacca gestured, and Lumpawarrump stood up into the hatchway, bringing the bowcaster up to chest height as he rose. The first explosive quarrel was away before he was fully erect, the second before Chewbacca had taken his first long stride out onto the flight deck.

The twin explosions that came an instant later were compact and focused. One s.h.i.+eld was driven violently backward, knocking two of the Yevetha off their feet. The other s.h.i.+eld simply shattered, pelting the deck, the bulkhead, and the guards with sharp-edged fragments.

Tracking his targets through the smoke as though they were shadows in the underbrush, Lumpawarrump kept firing. One quarrel burned out the thorax of a Yevethan guard, and the next spun his nearest companion around like a ragdoll.

Just then, Chewbacca loosed a blood-chilling howl and began spraying the flight deck with his blaster. The howl contained all of Chewbacca's grief over Shoran and his fury over Han, and it riveted the attention of the surviving guards. With Chewbacca's hunger for vengeance driving his long legs, he crossed the open deck with stunning speed. None of the few blaster bolts directed his way came anywhere near him.

By the time Chewbacca reached what was left of the guard station, the return fire had ceased. Every one of the guards had fallen victim to Lumpawarrump's steady hand and hunter's eye. True, three guards still had some fight left in them, despite ma.s.sive bowcaster wounds--but Chewbacca did not object to that.

He crushed the chest of one who was trying to rise from the deck, then threw himself on the back of another and broke his neck with a savage twist. Spinning away from the toppling corpse, Chewbacca found himself face-to-face with the last guard.

The Yevetha was bleeding profusely from gaping shrapnel wounds in the shoulder and right cheek, and his thorax plates were scorched and bubbled. He slashed the air with his claws, and Chewbacca roared a challenge. They charged each other, meeting in a collision that would have leveled lesser creatures.

Their short struggle ended with Chewbacca hoiSting his huge attacker overhead and hurling him against a structural column. The Yevetha slid heavily to the deck and never moved again, his back broken.

Standing over the body, Chewbacca tipped back his head and made the Wookiee triumph-cry echo to the farthest corners of the flight deck.

Then he turned away and waved Lumpawarrump across to join him.

Only then did Chewbacca see that his son was injured, dragging his right leg as he ran. When and how seriously Lumpawarrump had been wounded, Chewbacca did not know--he only knew that his son had not uttered a sound in complaint, and that when the moment had come, he had faced the katarn without flinching, and his aim had been true.

The woman called Enara crouched beside where Han Solo lay dozing and lightly touched an unbruised spot on his forearm.

"There is fighting on the s.h.i.+p," she whispered.

"Your friends have come for you."

Moving awakened a thousand pains and brought a sharp wince to Han's face, but he struggled to a sitting position nevertheless. "For me?

How do you know?"

"I know," she said, her face drawn. "I have called them to us, and they have finally heard me. Come, we must move you. It is not safe to be close to the walls."

"I don't understand," Han said. But he allowed Enara to help him limp to the center of the hold. The effort left him weak, making it necessary for him to lay himself out once more on the uncomfortably hard surface.

"I don't hear anything."

"They are a long way from here. I cannot hide them--it is too much for me. But I will try to Help them find you." Enara sat down beside him, arranging the folds of her scorched brown caftan around her as though it were a fine gown and she was expecting to receive guests. Then she cupped her hands lightly around one of his and looked away toward the locked loading doors that sealed them in.

Han did not question her words. She was a puzzling woman, given to curious p.r.o.nouncements and long periods of distraction marked by a faraway gaze and an aversion to company. But of all the prisoners in the hold, Enara was the only one to step beyond her own fears and needs to befriend him. She had been the first to speak to him when he had first arrived, and hers had been the only compa.s.sionate face he had seen when he awoke in agony after the beating at the hands of Nil Spaar.

But the tenuous promise of a rescue was not enough to keep Han from dozing. Pain quickly exhausted him, and his bruised organs, his torn and battered muscles, a.s.sailed him relentlessly when he was conscious.

Sleep was his only relief.

"The fighting is close now," Enara said during one of Han's wakeful moments. "If you need to walk--" "If those doors open, I can get to them.

But I still don't hear anything."

"Soon," she said.

He saw that her face was pale, and he felt her hands trembling, the skin that was usually soothingly cool now hot against his.

"Enara--what's wrong?"

"I cannot keep them apart. So many dying--your way is so hard, so much chaos," Enara whispered.

"Are you some kind of empathY' "It is not hard to feel death," she said. "They are coming. They are almost here."

It was at that moment that Han began to believe that something truly was happening aboard the stars.h.i.+p.