Star Wars_ The Han Solo Trilogy 01_ The Paradise Snare - A. C. Crispin [2]
“Not a power flux,” he decided after a moment. “Something else.”
Turning his head, he addressed the tall, heavyset human on his left. “Larrad, look at this. Somebody shorted out the lock and is running a sim to fool us into thinking it’s just a power flux. We’ve got a thief aboard. Is everyone armed?”
The man addressed, who happened to be Shrike’s brother, Larrad Shrike, nodded, patting the holster that hung on the outside of his thigh. Brafid the Elomin fingered his “tingler”—an electric prod that was his weapon of choice—though the hairy alien was large enough to pick up most humanoids and break them over his knee.
The other person present, a female Sullustan who was the Luck’s navigator, stood up, patting the scaled-down blaster she wore. “Ready for action, Captain!” she squeaked. Despite her diminutive height, flapping jowls, and large, appealing bright eyes, Nooni Dalvo appeared almost as dangerous as the hulking Elomin who was her closest shipboard friend.
“Good,” Shrike grunted. “Nooni, go post a guard over the weapons locker, just in case he comes back. Larrad, activate the biosensors, see if you can ID the thief and where he’s heading.”
Shrike’s brother nodded and bent over the auxiliary control board. “Corellian human,” he announced after a moment. “Male. Young. Height, 1.8 meters. Dark hair and eyes. Slender build. The bioscanner says it recognizes him. He’s heading aft, toward the galley.”
Shrike’s expression hardened until his eyes were as cold and blue as the glaciers on Hoth. “The Solo kid,” he said. “He’s the only one cocky enough to try something like this.” He flexed his fingers, then hardened them into a fist. The ring he wore, made from a single gem of Devaronian blood-poison, flashed dull silver in the bulkhead lights. “Well, I’ve gone easy on him so far, ’cause he’s a good swoop pilot, and I never lost when I bet on him, but enough is enough. Tonight, I’m going to teach him to respect authority, and he’s going to wish he’d never been born.”
Shrike’s teeth flashed, much brighter than the gem in his ring. “Or that I’d never ‘found’ him seventeen years ago and brought his sniveling, pants-wetting little behind home to the Luck. I’m a patient, tolerant man …” he sighed theatrically, “as the galaxy knows, but even I have my limits.”
He glanced over at his brother, who was looking rather uncomfortable. Garris wondered if Larrad was remembering the Solo kid’s last punishment session a year ago. The youth hadn’t been able to walk for two days.
Shrike’s mouth tightened. He wouldn’t tolerate any softness among his subordinates. “Right, Larrad?” he said too softly.
“Right, Captain!”
Han Solo gripped the stolen blaster as he tiptoed along the narrow metal corridor. When he’d wired into the sim and jimmied the lock into the weapons cache, he’d only had a moment to reach in and grab the first weapon that came to hand. There’d been no time to pick and choose.
Nervously, he pushed strands of damp brown hair back from his forehead, realizing he was sweating. The blaster felt heavy and awkward in his hand as he examined it. Han had seldom held one before, and he only knew how to check the charge from the reading he’d done. He’d never actually fired a weapon. Garris Shrike didn’t permit anyone but his officers to walk around armed. Squinting in the dim light, the young swoop pilot flipped open a small panel in the thickest part of the barrel and peered down at the readouts. Good. Fully charged. Shrike may be a bully and a fool, but he runs a taut ship.
Not even to himself would the youth admit how much he actually feared and hated the captain of Trader’s Luck. He’d learned long ago that showing fear of any sort was a swift guarantee of a beating—or worse. The only thing bullies and fools respected was courage—or, at least, bravado. So Han Solo had learned never to allow fear to surface in his mind or heart. There were times