Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [28]
“I can’t get back over!” There was desperation in her tone. “That damage I took must’ve started a burn-out creep-age. My controls are dead!”
He was about to instruct her to punch out but stopped himself. She was too close to the surface; her ejection seat would never have time to right itself. Her ship was losing altitude rapidly. Only seconds were left.
He swept in and matched speeds with her. “Jess, get ready to go when I give you the word.”
She was mystified. What could he mean? She was dead, crashing or ejecting. But she prepared to do as he said. Han eased the wing of his Headhunter under her overturned one. She saw his plan and her breath caught in her throat.
“On three,” he told her. “One!” On that count he brought his wing tip up under hers. “Two!” They both felt the jar of hazardous contact, knowing the most minuscule mistake would strew them both all over the flat landscape.
Han rolled left, and the ground that had been streaking by beneath Jessa’s dangling head seemed to rotate away as Han’s Headhunter imparted spin to hers. He finished his roll with additional force.
“Three! Punch out, Jess!” He himself was fighting to keep his jostled ship from going out of control.
But before he’d even said half of it, she’d gone, her canopy bubble propelled up and back by separator charges, her ejection seat—the easy chair—flung high and clear of her descending ship. The Headhunter plowed into the planet’s surface, making a long strip of fiery ruin along the ground, becoming the day’s final casualty.
Jessa watched from her ejection seat while its replusor units steadied and eased her down toward the ground on gusts of power. Off in the distance, she could see her Lafrarian wing man nursing his damaged craft in for a landing.
Han maneuvered his Headhunter through a long turn, coaxing with his retrothrusters until he was at a near stall. He brought his ship down nearby just as Jessa touched down.
The bubble popped up. He removed his helmet and jumped out of the aged fighter just as she slid free of her harness and threw her own helmet aside, feeling around and finding herself generally whole.
Han sauntered over, stripping off his flying gloves. “There’s room for two in my ship if we squeeze,” he leered.
“As I live and breathe,” she scoffed. “Have we finally seen Han Solo do something unselfish? Are you going soft? Who knows, you may even pick up a little morality one day, if you ever wake up and get wise to yourself.”
He stopped, his leer gone. He glared at her for a moment, then said, “I already know all about morality, Jess. A friend of mine made a decision once, thought he was doing the moral thing. Hell, he was. But he’d been conned. He lost his career, his girl, everything. This friend of mine, he ended up standing there while they ripped the rank and insignia off his tunic. The people who didn’t want him put up against a wall and shot were laughing at him. A whole planet. He shipped out of there and never went back.”
She watched his face become ugly. “Wouldn’t anyone testify for—your friend?” she asked softly.
He sniggered. “His commanding officer committed perjury against him. There was only one witness in his defense, and who’s going to believe a Wookiee?”
He fended off her next remark by glancing at the base. “Looks like they never touched the main hangar. You can have the Falcon finished in no time and still evacuate before the Espos show up. Then I’ll be on my way. We’ve both got things to do.”
She closed one eye, looking at him sidelong. “It’s lucky I know you’re a mercenary, Solo. It’s lucky I know you only flew that Headhunter to protect the Falcon, not to protect lives. And that you saved me so I could hold up my end of our bargain. It’s lucky you’ll probably never do a single selfless, decent thing in your life, and that everything that happened today fits in, in some crazy way, with that greedy, retarded behavioral pattern of yours.”
He stared at her quizzically.