Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [87]
Threepio cried, “There!” as they emerged into the sheltered cargo porch fronting the wide permacrete space of a bay, where the familiar shape of the Millennium Falcon crouched, entry ramp down, like a great gray-and-rust heap of junk in the streaming rain.
A spattering of blaster fire tore up the pavement before them. Two troops of natives—one the uniformed Drovian troopers, the other a band of Gopso’o—held the two entrances to the bay. Those under the same porch as Artoo and Threepio were, unfortunately, the Gopso’o, a ragged assemblage of ill-clad guerrilla fighters armed to the teeth with the finest of weaponry. The Drovians under the other porch, which lay at ninety degrees, were fewer in number, but Threepio could distinguish the red-and-violet headstalks of the Ho’Din who’d been with Solo, and, crouched behind a barricade, Captain Han Solo himself.
“Captain Solo!” cried Threepio. “It’s us! Don’t leave us!”
More laser fire drowned his well-modulated voice. Solo broke cover, dashed across the open pavement in a lightstorm of covering fire. The Gopso’o in the porch fell back—Threepio could not but observe that most of them were far inferior shots when compared with the Drovians—he said to Artoo, “Now!” and called out to the sergeant of the Drovians, “Let us through! We’re friends!”
He called out—for better understanding—in Drovian, a language used chiefly by Gopso’o; the ruling Drovians tended to speak Basic, even to one another.
A storm of shot drove them back.
Han Solo made a long rolling dive and plunged up the boarding ramp. Someone within the ship was surely watching, for the ramp started to lift the moment the captain’s body touched its end. It almost literally gulped him up, like a steel monster slurping up a treat. Threepio made a despairing try at stepping out into the bay and retreated hastily with a scorch mark across his stained and muddy chest perilously close to his power-supply jacks.
“Don’t leave us!”
White fire poured from the Millennium Falcon’s vents.
Artoo let out a despairing wail.
The souped-up freighter tore a hole in the rain-black clouds and was gone.
12
Luke was still sufficiently furious the following evening to consider telling Gerney Caslo to pick up his own smuggler drop and take it to perdition in his pocket, but something Arvid said to him changed his mind. It was only a chance remark, when Luke met the young farmer the following day, to the effect that Caslo was Ashgad’s business agent in Hweg Shul, but it caused Luke to think. Ashgad had clearly been doing everything he could to rouse the local Rationalists to fury. It didn’t take many data to figure out that it was to Ashgad’s benefit to have a private army ready to drive the Therans out of the gun stations and open the planet to trade. As the wealthiest man Luke had so far encountered, heir to the crime boss Beldorion, Ashgad would be in a position to act as middleman for the community once trade started coming in.
Only for a few years, true, thought Luke. Did he think he could control the place longer than that, once the gun stations weren’t there to limit imports? Or did Ashgad just want to seize the gun stations for himself and keep the status quo for his own profit?
The planet itself was dirt poor. Its only export seemed to be the rather friable Spooks, and having lived for several days on topatoes, smoor, and blerd exudum, Luke couldn’t imagine anyone paying the shipping costs to acquire any of those delicacies. But having been raised there, Ashgad might very well desire only the power that he knew.
Was that logical? he wondered that evening, as he waited in the darkness of the Blue Blerd’s yard. Ashgad had been raised on the planet, true, but he had been raised by a father who had dreamed of