Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [104]
Han stopped by the corpse of Zlarb. In searching the man a few minutes earlier, he had noticed the hard, rectangular lump of a breast-pocket security case under his thermosuit. Han had seen a few such cases before and knew he had to be careful with it.
Settling down with one of the Falcon’s medi-packs, he dug out a flexclamp and a vibroscalpel and began cutting away the tough material of the thermosuit. In the meantime, Chewbacca began cleaning his own wounds with an irrigation bulb and a synth-flesh dispenser. More by fortune than design, neither of the two had received deep wounds from the nashtah’s claws.
Han quickly had the security case exposed. It was anchored to the pocket by a slim clip to which it was attached by a fine wire. Han carefully felt for and found the safety, a small button concealed at the case’s lower edge. Pressing it, he disengaged the security circuit. Then he began working the clip loose from the pocket lining with his other hand. To try to remove the case in any other fashion would invite a neuroparalysis charge from the case. A numb arm would be the best he could hope for, depending on the case’s setting. Some security cases were capable of giving lethal shocks.
He reprimed the clip, and the case was rendered harmless. Humming a half-remembered tune, he got busy with some fine-work instruments he had fetched from the ship’s small but complete tool locker. The lock itself was a fairly common model; the neuroshock was the case’s main line of defense. He had it open in fairly short order.
And spat some sizzling Corellian oaths. There was no money.
All the case contained were a data plaque, a message tape, and a smaller case that turned out to be a Malkite poisoner’s kit. That Zlarb was a practitioner of the Malkite poisoner’s arts reaffirmed Han’s conviction that the universe wouldn’t mourn the man’s passing, but it did little to alleviate his frustration or his financial situation.
He threw aside the security case and glowered at the two surviving human slavers. They both began to quake visibly. “You have one chance,” he said quietly. “Somebody owes me money; I have ten thousand credits coming for this run and I want it. Not telling me where I can get it would be the dumbest thing you’ll ever do in your lives, and one of the very last.”
“We don’t know anything, Solo, we swear,” one of them protested. “Zlarb hired us on and he arranged everything; he handled the contacts and all the money himself. We never saw anybody else, that’s the truth.” His comrade confirmed it energetically.
The ex-slaves had finished their preparations and were ready to depart. Han walked over to where the empty collars and director units lay. “That’s really rotten luck for you two,” he told the slavers and fastened a collar around the neck of each, ignoring their protests. He handed the collar-box to the leader of the ex-slaves and pointed to the bodies of the dead.
The creature understood, patting the case. The slavers would pay for the deaths with their own servitude. How long a sentence they’d have to serve would be entirely up to their one-time captives. Han couldn’t have cared less.
“Take your boss’s body with you,” he ordered the two. They looked at one another. The creature’s finger poised near the controls of their collars. They scrambled to obey, hoisting the late Zlarb between them.
Chewbacca led the way as the ex-slaves, preceded by their new servants, bore their dead from the cargo hold. “Don’t forget to get rid of the other casualties,” Han called after his friend. “And collar up that other slaver for them. Then bring me a reader!”
Exhausted, he resolutely set to the task of cleaning up his injuries with another irrigation bulb, thinking ominous thoughts about how little money he and Chewbacca had left and wondering if their rotten luck would ever break. Then it occurred to him that Zlarb would undoubtedly have killed him, and Chewbacca as well, if Blue