Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy by Brian Daley Read Free Book Online

back in the passenger cab, held a somewhat different opinion. The black limo had taken advantage of Chewbacca’s descent and was still on their tail. The intercom wasn’t working, so Han pushed up the cab’s forward window and shouted, “They’re still on us!”
    The Wookiee growled an irritated reply, then spotted his opening. He turned the steering grips with such emphasis that the yoke groaned on its stem, threatening to snap. But the coach managed to fishtail across three lanes of oncoming traffic, and Chewbacca hung in the center lane while awaiting shifts in the configuration of the traffic.
    Automatic safety systems had taken notice of the potential massacre, and suddenly sequential warning lights began to flash, cautioning other drivers where the danger lay. Overhead illumi-markers and danger panels began flashing along the way, and those vehicles operating under autocontrol were brought to a halt at the shoulder by Traffic Central Override.
    Meanwhile, Han, clinging to the rear window frame, saw the limo coming on. Its driver was having an easier time, following the trail the Wookiee had blazed. Han braced his right shoulder against one side of the frame and his left hand against the other to draw a steady aim. Just as he fired, Chewbacca, having lined up another gap in the oncoming traffic, hauled at the steering grips and cut hard for the center divider. Han’s shot went wild, blowing a small hole in the tough fusionformed road.
    Chewbacca came at the divider as directly as he could, aware that it was built to resist collision. He hit it with the coach’s accelerator open, keeping his enormous foot down hard on emergency-boost auxiliaries. The engine wailed. Hasti clung to Badure.
    The coach burst through a double retaining rail, taking two lengths of railing with it. Chewbacca then swooped up the sloped center abutment; two lanterns fell from the coach,and its curb feelers, he noticed, had been sheared off. Han tangled both fists into embroidered safety belting and set his feet against the cab’s front wall.
    The coach shot through the fence at the top of the abutment, the durable links stretching, then bursting with a titanic jolt that sent the remainder of the picnic lunch arcing into the air. Crashing down the abutment and through a second section of railing, they bounced into the traffic lanes now headed in the appropriate direction, if at illegal velocity.
    Maneuvering smartly, the Wookiee avoided any other collisions. The coach sped along, intermittently shedding trim and pieces of smashed
greel
wood. Glancing out a side window, Han found himself the object of the surprised scrutiny of a gowned senior professor, a stalk-eyed creature in a robo-hack. Chewbacca accelerated and left the hack behind.
    Less than a minute later, the black limo appeared at the crest of the abutment and descended through the swath of destruction left by Chewbacca. It, too, slid into the traffic lanes. A man, holding a long needlebeam rifle in his hands, stood up and poked his head and arms through the sunroof.
    Han left the cab, swung from the handrail with one foot on the running board, and dove into the driver’s compartment. “We’ve gone and made them mad,” he hollered. “Escape and evade, old buddy!”
    But even as Han exhorted his partner, Chewbacca was throwing the coach through zigs and zags, ignoring lane divider illumi-strips, applying full power though a disconcerting black smoke had begun to roil from the vehicle’s engine. At last, the rifleman, his eye at his weapon’s scope, fired.
    A needlebeam sizzled at one of the scarlet tail fins, setting the lacquered wood afire and shearing off its tip as taillight circuitry blew. Han stood up, one hand firmly on the windshield and blaster gripped in the other. He replied with a hurried shot of his own; the bolt splashed harmlessly onto the pavement.
    A second rifle beam hissed through the cab. “Get us outof here before they cut us in half!” Han yelled to his