Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [70]
“When’d they quit making APDs, Chewie?” Han hunkered to turn the boards over in his hand. All the chips had been pried out, the power cells removed.
The Wookiee guessed the Clone Wars, but didn’t come into the room. He remained in the low-beamed rectangle of the doorway, listening back along the blackness of the tunnel, to the echo chamber of the last cave. Han could hear only the distant rushing of water somewhere, but knew his friend’s ears were far sharper than his own.
“Yeah, I thought that myself. They switched to the C Three series because the APDs used gold wire and xylen points. This’s an old model, too.” He flashed the light around the litter of split casings and looted boards. “Must be six, eight droids’ worth of junk here. This was what they were after, all right.”
In the next room along the corridor they found the jewels.
“What the …?”
Han’s light threw rainbows from the three boxes ranged along the wall, bright colors springing back to salt the low ceiling in fire. He stooped, brought up dirty, crusted earrings, chains, pectorals, pendants …
Chewie growled a remark, held up a plastic packing crate, half filled with xylen chips.
Their eyes met, baffled.
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Han ran his fingers through the chips. They were jumbled together with electronic salvage, gold wire, power cells, selenium … “There must be three quarters of a million credits in this room.” He shone his light through the inner doorway, and the gleam passed over the hard angles of machinery, dark screens, the smooth curved arms of processors and pumps. “This stuff hasn’t been touched. I can’t see Nubblyk just walking away and—”
Chewie held up his paw, head turning toward the outer door, and made a sign to kill the light.
Silence and utter darkness. The far-off hursh of water echoed in the low groinings of the ceiling. A horrible scratching, and the dirty-sweet kretch smell, made Han fight to thrust from his mind the awful fantasy of a dozen of the things climbing his boots the minute the light was out.
He picked his cautious way to where he knew Chewie stood still in the entrance. His outstretched hand met fur. Had his companion been human he would have whispered his name to avoid a knife between his ribs, but the Wookiee would know his smell. Chewie did not growl, but under his fingers Han felt the fur of his friend’s arm lift and prickle.
There was definitely something in the corridor.
Stray, hot wind down the tunnels brought a feral stink that almost made Han gag. Whatever it was, for that amount of smell it was big.
Then a scream, the scratch of claws; Han yelled “Light!” to warn Chewbacca and threw the full-force beam directly at the source of the sound. It flared diamond hard in yellow beast-eyes, slashing brown teeth. Chewie’s blaster bolt went wild and spattered, ricocheting crazily in the narrow space while the creature threw itself on the Wookiee, howling and ripping in a mass of filthy, mold-covered hair.
There was no question of a second shot, and Han plunged in with his knife, stabbing at the creature’s back as it bore Chewbacca to the floor. It screamed, writhed in Chewie’s grip, slashed at Han, and the dropped luminator caught movement in the dark. Other things were running, eyes blazing, the uneven ceiling suddenly echoing with screams.
Han twisted loose from the first attacker as it slumped, grabbed the luminator and Chewbacca’s dropped rifle, and the Wookiee rolled to his feet, leaped over the corpse, and pelted away into the dark. Han dashed behind him, firing back, the bolt hissing from wall to wall and showing like lightning the shambling, filthy things on their heels.
“Back that way!”
Chewie only roared, long legs taking him far ahead down the twisting rock of the tunnel. The luminator beam leaped crazily over mold-covered walls, bounced across doorways yawning into blind dark of dead-end rooms, transformed stalagmites in the great cavern into attackers and old vent holes and lava formations into bottomless pits. They scrambled,