Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [93]
“It looks like your high priest has split with the church,” observed Sonniod. Lisstik succeeded in wrenching loose a piece of the control panel casing and flung it in Han’s general direction with a vindictive series of clicks.
Feeling himself more the aggrieved party than the one at fault, Han lost his restraint. “You want a show? Here’s a show, you rotten little ingrate!” He fired into the holoprojector. The red whining blaster bolt elicited a brief, bright secondary explosion from somewhere in the projector’s internal reaches.
Suddenly the sound synthesizer was producing the most appalling string of loud, piercing, unrecognizable agglutinations of noise Han had ever heard. The projection filled the sky over the amphitheather with nova bursts, solar flares, pinwheels, sky rockets, and strobe flashes. The entire crowd gave a concerted bleat and charged off in all directions up the slopes of the bowl.
Han and Sonniod took considerable advantage of the confusion by sprinting madly toward the Millennium Falcon. They could hear harsh chitters and clacks from both sides as Badlanders, having not yet vented their full outrage, began giving chase. Han pegged unaimed shots into the air and the ground behind him. He still hesitated to fire at his former customers unless it meant life or death.
As they neared the Falcon’s gaping ramp, Han and Sonniod were gratified to see the starship’s belly turret fire a volley. The quad-guns spat lines of red annihilation, and a rocky upcropping already passed by the racing men was transformed into a fountain of sparks, molten rock, and out-lashing energy. The heat scorched Han’s back and a stone chip whistled past Sonniod’s ear, too close for comfort, but it put a halt to the Badlanders’ chase for the moment.
When they reached the ramp, Sonniod dashed up at maximum speed while Han slid to a stop on one knee to gather up what he could from the more valuable q’mai. A hurled stone bounced off the Falcon’s landing gear and another ricocheted from the ramp while Han groped.
“Solo, get up here!” Sonniod screamed. Spinning, Han saw Badlanders closing in around the ship. He fired over their heads and they ducked, but kept coming. Backstepping rapidly up the ramp, Han fired twice more and fell when he dodged a thrown rock. He ended up crawling through the hatch.
As the main hatch rolled down, Chewbacca appeared at the passageway, leaning out of the cockpit with an incensed snarl in this throat.
“How should I know what went wrong?” Han bellowed at the Wookiee. “What am I, a telepath? Get us up and head for Sonniod’s ship, now!” Chewbacca disappeared back into the cockpit.
As Sonniod helped him up off the deck, Han tried to reassure him. “Don’t worry, we’ll get you back to your ship before the grievance committee arrives. You’ll have time to lift off.”
Sonniod nodded thankfully. “But what about you and the Wookiee, Solo?” The starship trembled slightly as she hovered on her thrusters and swung away toward Sonniod’s parked vessel. “I wouldn’t come back for my profits if I were you.”
“I suppose I’ll have to head back for the Corporate Sector,” Han sighed, “and see what kind of jobs there are floating around. At least the heat should be off; I doubt if anyone’s looking for me or this freighter anymore.”
Sonniod shook his head. “Try to find out what the job is before you get into it,” he encouraged. “Nobody seems to know what kind of run it is.”
“I don’t care; I’m in no position to be picky. I’ll have to take it,” Han said, resigned. They heard Chewbacca’s dejected hooting drifting aft from the cockpit. “He’s right,” he said. “We just weren’t cut out for the honest life.”
II
THE Millennium Falcon seemed a ghost ship, a spectral spacecraft like the long-lost, sometimes-sighted Permondiri Explorer, or the fabled Queen of Ranroon. Trailing sheets of crackling energy, with dancing lines of brilliant discharge playing back and forth over her, she