The Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley Read Free Book Online

Han dashed off along the row of docking bays. He passed three before he came to the one he wanted. In it was a stock freighter, not unlike what the Millennium Falcon had once been, but this one was clean, freshly painted, and shipshape. Her name and ID symbols were proudly displayed on her bow, and labor ’droids were busily loading general cargo under the supervision of her crew, who looked nauseatingly honest. Han leaned through the open blast doors, waving a friendly hand. “Hi there. You guys still raising ship tomorrow?”
    One of them waved back, but looked confused. “Not tomorrow, bud; tonight, twenty-one hundred planetary time.”
    Han feigned surprise. “Oh? Well, clear skies.” The crewman returned the traditional spacer’s farewell as Han strolled away casually. As soon as he was out of their sight, he took off at a run.
    When he got back to Bay 45, he found Chewbacca finishing locking the impoundment-fastener on the inner sides of the blast doors, reconnecting them. Han nodded approvingly. “Bright lad. Are we revved up?”
    The Wookiee yipped an affirmative and slid the blast doors shut. Locking them again, this time from the inside, he threw the molecularly coded key away.
    Han had already reached his seat in the cockpit. Taking his headset, he called port control. Using the name and ID code of the freighter down in Docking Bay 41, he requested that liftoff time be moved up from twenty-one hundred planetary time to immediately, not an unusual request for a tramp freighter, whose schedule might change abruptly. Since there wasn’t much traffic and clearance for that ship had already been granted, immediate liftoff was approved at once.
    Chewbacca was still buckling in when Han raised ship. Her thrusters flared, and the Falcon made, for her, a moderate and restrained departure from Etti IV. When the Espos showed up at Docking Bay 45 and cut their way in, Han reflected, they’d have one interesting time trying to figure out how somebody had sneaked a starship out from under the portmaster’s nose.
    The starship parted company with Etti IV’s gravitational field. Chewbacca, elated over what had been a fairly nifty escape, was in high spirits. The Wookiee’s leathery muzzle was peeled back in a nice-hideous smirk, and he was singing—or what passed among his people as singing—at the top of his capacious lungs. The volume of it, in the confines of the cockpit, was incredible.
    “C’mon, Chewie,” Han implored, rapping a gauge with his knuckle, “you’re making all the instruments jump.” With a behemothish sort of yodel, the Wookiee ceased. “Besides,” Han continued, “we’re not out of the heavy weather yet.”
    Chewbacca lost his placid look and lowed an interrogative. Han shook his head. “Naw, Ploovo’s got his money; no matter how torqued off he is, his backers’ll never un-pocket for a contract on us now. No, what I meant was, the long-range dish we patched together won’t last forever. We need another, a top-of-the-line model. Besides, the Espos and, I guess, most other folks who like to arrest people have some kind of new sensor that evades detection on old equipment. We need one of those, too, to get back over with the smart money. One more thing—we need one of those Waivers if we’re going to operate around here; we have to wrangle ourselves onto that list somehow. Dammit, the Corporate Sector Authority’s wrung out thousands of solar systems; I can almost smell that money! We ain’t passing up on fat pickin’s just because somebody around here doesn’t like our lift/mass ratio.”
    He finished plotting his hyperdrive jump and turned to his partner with a sly grin. “Now, since the Authority doesn’t owe you and me any personal favors, what’s that leave?”
    The long-pelted first mate growled once. Han spread a hand on his chest and pretended to be shocked. “Outside the law, did you say? Us ?” He chuckled. “Right you are, pal. We’ll take so much money off the