Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [213]
Han and the Wookiee started shedding their extra gear. “I’m not so sure we shouldn’t have stayed in the city,” said Hasti.
Han tried to reassure her. “You would be if you’d ever done any time swabbing out the plumbing in some local lockup, doll. You ready, Chewie?”
He was. They moved out, taking turns advancing from cover to cover. Each awaited the other’s hand motion before moving; they had done this sort of thing together before.
They observed no sentries, patrols, watchtowers, or surveillance equipment as they approached; but they felt no less uneasy. When at last they reached the edge of the field, they held a brief but heated debate conducted entirely in hand signals, over who would be first to step into the open. Each insisted that he should be the one. Han cut the dispute short, just before it devolved into an exchange of angry gestures, by rising and stepping out from the cover of the boulder.
Chewbacca, eyes roving the scene, bowcaster raised and ready, immediately shifted to a position from which he could give supporting fire. Han slowly moved across the open area, blaster out, nerves taut.
No shot or outcry came—and no alarm. The field was a simple expanse of flat ground—partly smoothed soil and partly rock that, from the looks of it, had been leveled a long time ago. Han wondered why somebody hadn’t done a complete job and paved it over with formex or some other surfacing material.
He saw no buildings of any kind—only the primitive antenna mast, ground beacons, ground-control light clusters, and area illumination banks. He skirted the edge of the field, darting in among the rocks without warning to make sure no one was waiting in ambush.
He reemerged and continued working his way toward the parked ships. When he was satisfied that nobody had a gun turret or missile tube pointed at him from one of the craft, he approached them. And when he had come close enough to make out detail, he had difficulty speaking for a second.
What the flaming—“Hey, Chewie! Get over here!”
The Wookiee was out in the open instantly, racing toward him, bowcaster held high. His charge slowed to a distracted lope, then immobility as he saw what Han was talking about. He gave a bemused, lowing sound.
“That’s right,” Han agreed, slamming the side of one of the ships with his fist. It gave, leaving a deep indentation. “They’re phonies.”
Chewbacca came up slowly, shouldering his weapon, and took a firm grasp on the hatch of the next ship in line. He tore it off easily: it was merely a mockup constructed of treated extrusion sheeting and light structural alloys. He cast the hatch aside with a brayed Wookiee imprecation and leaned into the open hatchway. Light came through the clear pane used to simulate the cockpit windshield. The dummy ship, ribbed by support members, was gloomy, stale-smelling, and empty.
Han, examining the ships and the general layout of the field, was stumped. Nonetheless, he kept his pistol in his hand. The mockups were crude but had been made with obvious attention to details of landing gear, fuselage, propulsore, and control surfaces. They were copied—at least, he presumed them to have been copied—from models he didn’t recognize and secured in place with lines of some artificial fiber.
His first thought was that this was a decoy base, part of some military campaign or defense system. But there had been no organized conflict on Dellalt or, for that matter, in this sector of space for years and years. Furthermore, this fake landing field must demand a certain amount of upkeep to be in the shape it was. A trick of J’uoch’s? No logic sustained that.
Chewbacca was more instinctive. In his mind the place conjured images of some malign force using the field as a sort of trap, like those of the webweavers on the lower tree levels of his home planet. Nervously glancing around, eager to be away, he set one paw against Han’s shoulder to get him moving.
The pilot shrugged