Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [59]
“We can say the Guild got it wrong. So Stars’ End wanted a juggler or whatever and they get a storyteller. So what? We’ll tell them to go sue the Entertainers’ Guild!”
“Captain Solo, sir, if you please,” Bollux finally interjected. “With your kind permission, sir, I must point out—”
But Han already had his hands on the ’droid’s weatherbeaten shoulders, eyeing him artistically. “Hmm, new paint, of course, and there’s plenty aboard; it often pays to slap a coat on something before resale, especially if you didn’t own it to begin with. Scarlet liqui-gloss, I think; a five-coat job’s all we have time for. And maybe some trim. Nothing flashy, no scrollwork or filigree; just some restrained silver pinstriping. Bollux, boy, you can stop worrying about obsolescence after this, ’cause you’re gonna lay ’em in the aisles!”
Their approach and planetfall were uneventful. Han had altered the drift of their captive asteroid to take him back out of range of the Authority’s sensors and then abandoned it. Once back in deep space, he’d made a nanno-jump, barely brushing hyperspace, to emerge near Mytus VII and its two small moonlets.
The Falcon identified herself, using the Waivered registration obtained by Rekkon. To that was added the proud announcement that she was the grand touring vehicle of Madam Atuarre’s Roving Performers.
Mytus VII was a place of rocky desolation, airless, its distance from its sun rendering it dim and cheerless. If anybody escaped Stars’ End, he’d have no place to go; the rest of the solar system was untenanted, none of its planets being hospitable to humanoid life.
The Authority’s installation was marked by groupings of temporary dormitories, hangars and guard barracks, hydroponics layouts, dome-sheds and weapons sites. The ground was gouged and pocked where construction of permanent subsurface facilities was in progress, but there was at least one finished structure already. In the middle of the base reared a tower like a stark, gleaming dagger.
Evidently no tunnel system had been completed yet. The whole complex was interconnected by a maze of tunnel-tubes, like giant, pleated hoses radiating from their boxy junction stations, a common arrangement for construction sites on airless worlds.
There was only one sizable vessel on the ground, an armed Espo assault craft. There were also smaller craft and unarmed cargo lighters, but Han had checked carefully for picket ships this time and was satisfied that there were none.
Han, checking visually for that heavyweight power plant his sensors had spotted, failed to locate it and wondered if it might be in that tower. He shot a second look at the tower, thinking something about it looked strange. It was equipped with two heavy docking locks, one at ground level and the other near its summit, the former hooked up to a tunnel-tube. He would very much have liked to run a close sweep of the place to see if he could pick up a high concentration of life forms that might indicate prisoners, but dared not for fear of counterdetection. Being caught probing the base would spell the end of the masquerade.
He made an undistinguished approach, nothing fancy, revealing none of the Falcon’s hidden capabilities. The attentive snouts of turbo-lasers tracked the ship exactingly. Ground control guided the starship down, and one of the tunnel-tubes snaked out, its folded skin extended by its servoframe, its hatch-mounted mouth sealing to the Millennium Falcon’s hull, swallowing the ship’s lowering ramp.
Han shut down the engines. Atuarre, in the oversized copilot’s seat, said, “I tell you one last time, Solo-Captain: I don’t wish to be the one to do the speaking.”
He brought his chair around. “I’m no actor, Atuarre. It’d be different if we were just going to jump in, spring the prisoners, and kiss off, but I can’t cut all that chitchat and play the role.”
They left the