Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [49]
Han hauled himself up and looked down at Max, nestled in the control niche. “Can you program this crate so it’ll run without you?”
The computer probe’s photoreceptor swiveled around, coming up to bear on him. “That’s what it’s built to do, but it’ll remember only simple things, Captain. For a machine it’s pretty dumb.”
Han weighed his suspicions, presumptions, and a knowledge of security procedures. “They’ll be rushing their men to the passenger-ship end of the port; they won’t think the barges are any good to us. But they’ll certainly be looking for this tub, Max. Set it up so it’ll give us a few seconds to get clear, then head itself down toward the main port area.” To the others, he called, “Checkout time! Everybody pound ground!”
From Blue Max came low buzzes, beeps, and wonks of his labors. Then he announced, “Done, Captain, but we better get off right now.”
Han reached down as Max disengaged himself from the harvester’s controls, pulled free the connector jacks Chewbacca had inserted, and lifted the computer out of the niche. There was a carrying strap in a recessed groove on Max’s top. Han pulled it out and slung Max over his shoulder.
When he reached the ground, Rekkon and the others were already there. They all stepped back as the harvester ground into motion again, wheeled promptly, and tore off between rows of barges. From the harvester, Han had already spotted, not far away, the barge shell concealing the Millennium Falcon. He handed Blue Max back to Bollux and started for his ship at a dead run, with the rest keeping up as best they could.
The outer hatch, the makeshift one, wasn’t dogged, of course. He pushed it aside, palmed the ramp and inner hatch open. Then he dashed to the cockpit and began swiping at controls, bringing his ship back to life, yelling: “Rekkon, say the word the second everybody’s onboard, and hang onto your heirlooms!” He pulled on his headset and deserted all caution, thinking, Hell with preflight. He brought the barge’s engines up to full power all at once, and simply hoped they wouldn’t blow or dummy out on liftoff.
His best hope lay in the nature of bureaucracy. Somewhere back in the fields, the Espo detachment commander was trying to explain to his superior what had happened. That man, in turn, would have to contact port security and give them the rundown. Given a creaky enough chain of command, the Falcon still stood a chance.
Han pulled on his flight gloves and ran through his preparations with a sharp feeling of incompleteness; he was used to dividing the tasks with Chewbacca, and each detail of the liftoff drove home the fact that his friend wasn’t there.
He checked the barge’s readouts—and swore several of his choicer curses. Bollux, stumping into the cockpit to relay Rekkon’s word that all was secure, added, “What’s wrong, Captain?”
“The motherless barge is what’s wrong! Some over-eager Authority expediter filled it up already!” The instruments proved it; several hundred thousand metric tons of grain were stowed in the barge’s vast shell. There went Han’s plan for rapid ascent.
“But, sir,” Bollux asked in his unhurried speech pattern, “Can’t you release the barge shell?”
“If the explosive-releases worked, and if I didn’t damage the Falcon, I’d still have to get above the port’s close-proximity defenses, and maybe a picket ship.” He turned and yelled back down the passageway, “Rekkon! Get somebody in those gun turrets; we may have to stand tall!” Han could operate the ship’s top and belly turrets by means of servos from the cockpit, but remote control was a poor substitute for sentient gunners. “And screw your navels in; we go in twenty seconds!” He fumed over the fact that the barge