Star Wars Missions 005 - The Hunt for Han Solo Read online

  Han Solo had hoped there would be one corner of the galaxy to hide in after he helped Luke Skywalker blow up the Death Star. There wasn’t.

  The planet Faldos was on the far edge of the galaxy, a dirty little backwater planet used only by a few smugglers. Stolen weapons, armor, and technology were sold there. Guns for the Rebellion or the underworld — whoever paid highest. Han Solo thought he’d be safe.

  No such luck.

  Now he was cornered, alongside Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and his trusted copilot Chewbacca. They were trapped in the hallway of a hotel, and the situation looked grim.

  A blaster charge exploded near Solo’s ear, and he wedged himself tighter against the wall at the top of the staircase. Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca were right behind him. A second bolt slammed into the far wall.

  The Restful Nights Hotel was turning out to be anything but restful! Right now, three lobby attendants had Solo pinned at the top floor, while the desk manager called for backup.

  “Give it up, Solo!” one of the lobby attendants shouted. “There’s no way out!”

  “Hey,” Solo shouted, “what did I ever do to you?” He stuck his blaster around the corner and pulled the trigger, hoping to scare them off. There was a horrible scream as the blaster erupted. Someone had been trying to sneak up on him.

  “All right,” the desk manager shouted, “now you’re in for it. That was my brother!”

  “Sorry!” Solo said.

  “That’s not good enough — I want your head!” the manager bellowed. It seemed everyone wanted Solo’s head nowadays. The Empire was after him, and so was the crime lord Jabba the Hutt. Though the criminal scum on this planet probably wouldn’t turn Solo in to the Empire, they would be happy to collect a bounty from Jabba.

  Solo glanced around the comer. The lobby attendants had taken cover behind the manager’s desk. The manager was on the comlink, gesticulating wildly as he shouted. “Yeah,” he said, “Han Solo! The one with the bounties on his head… here in the hotel!”

  “Hold them off for a minute,” Luke said. “I think I’ve almost got it!” Solo glanced behind him to see Luke furiously punching a lock pad, hoping to find the right code combination to open the door. May the Force be with you, Solo thought.

  “Okay, hotshot,” Leia told Han. “You promised us a nice room, and instead you’re going to get us all killed!”

  “It’s not my fault!” Solo protested. “How was I supposed to know that the clerks here all want to be bounty hunters?”

  “Looks like it’s up to me,” Leia said. She reached into a pocket of her coveralls and pulled out a detonation device. Quickly she punched the arming button and let it roll down the stairs.

  In half a second there was a huge explosion, accompanied by the crash of shattering vases and splintering wood. Light and heat erupted up the stairwell.

  Solo glanced down into the lobby, where several clerks poked their heads up from behind the checkin counter. Now they were really mad.

  The manager shouted into his comlink, “Security, get in here, now!”

  Several security goons rushed in from a back door — two huge aliens with four arms each, both wearing full armor and brandishing heavy blaster rifles.

  “Hand me some more detonators!” Solo shouted to Leia. Just as he’d hoped, the words caused the desk manager and his goons to scurry for cover.

  More quietly, he whispered to Chewbacca, “Chewie, give Luke a hand with one of those doors, would ya?”

  Chewbacca roared, pushed Luke away from the door, then slammed his huge shoulder against it. The door burst inward, splintering to pieces.

  As Solo dove in behind Chewie, he imagined that some poor family would be terrified by their abrupt entry. He had an apology ready as he rushed into the living room.

  He couldn’t believe what he found.

  Two Whiphid thugs were sitting on couches. A squirming sack was on the floor between them. Solo had seen enough slave traders to know a kidnapping when he saw one. His suspicions were confirmed when one of the thugs aimed a heavy blaster right between his eyes.

  “Hold it right there!” the fellow growled. He was a big man, with a glittering blue cybernetic eye and a tattoo of a krayt dragon covering the left half of his face.

  “Whatever you say, pal,” Solo said, half raising his hands. He added, “By the way, you dropped a coin.”

  The thug looked down. In that instant, Solo clubbed him in the head with the butt of his blaster. The other kidnapper leaped off the couch to grab his fallen partner’s weapon. Chewbacca thumped him from behind, sending the thug over the couch and into a wall. As he hit, bits of plaster fell from the ceiling.

  Just then Leia and Luke rushed into the room. Solo grabbed the squirming sack and leaped through the nearest window, rolling to the ground some ten feet below. The others followed.

  They sprinted down a street and around a comer. In the gunrunner’s market, they were soon just part of the crowd.

  As they hurried back to the spaceport, Solo could hear the hotel manager shouting, his voice shaking with rage, “You’ll pay for this, Han Solo! Every damaged piece of furniture! You’ll pay!”

  When they reached the Millennium Falcon, the golden droid See-Threepio took one look at the squirming bag and chided, “Why Captain Solo, you haven’t kidnapped someone, have you? I’m certain the authorities would not appreciate it if you have!”

  “No, my rusting friend, I didn’t kidnap anyone. I’ve rescued someone. It’s an old habit of mine — one I’m trying to break. Now give me a minute to see if I can get us off this rock before whatever passes for security on this planet comes and blows the ship into scrap metal.”

  Solo and Chewbacca leaped to their seats and fired the thrusters while Luke and Leia strapped themselves into their safety harnesses.

  A moment later, the Falcon took off into space. Solo checked his scanners for signs of pursuit.

  When he felt sure that no one was following him, Solo and Chewbacca carried the squirming bag back to the passenger bay. Luke, Leia, the droid Artoo-Detoo, and See-Threepio all gathered around. Solo opened the bag by pulling a string.

  As the bag fell open, Solo saw something that both disgusted and intrigued him: Inside the bag was a brown creature, wormlike in appearance, with an enormous mouth and two cruel eyes that shone like gold.

  “A baby Hutt?” Luke asked, unsure. Chewie roared and nodded.

  The baby Hutt flowed across the ground like liquid, came to Solo, and gazed up at him from knee height It could not have weighed much more than a bowling ball, but it seemed too long for its weight.

  The creature gazed at Solo for half a second, then bit his knee.

  “Ow!” Solo said, kicking at the little savage. “Is that the thanks I get for saving your worthless hide?”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” it laughed in a throaty growl. “I love the taste of fresh meat, human.”

  A baby Hutt.

  “So, you little carrion eater,” Solo said, “what do I call you?”

  “Grubba,” the youngster replied.

  “Good,” Solo said, smiling with false pleasure. “It’s nice to meet you, Grubba So, tell me — there must be someone who is in charge of you. Someone who will be real happy to see you? Maybe happy enough to offer a big reward?”

  The baby Hutt nodded enthusiastically and made a rude noise like a burp. “Jabba My Ur-Damo is Jabba.”

  Solo tried to contain his surprise. He smiled broadly. Maybe, just maybe, if he gave Jabba the child, Jabba would take the bounty off Solo’s head. “Grubba my friend,” Solo said, “you don’t know what a pleasure it is to meet you!”

  “Oh, this i
s a hideous world,” the Prefect Eugene Talmont said with a sigh. He leaned on his gold-handled walking stick and gazed out his office window, overlooking the Mos Eisley spaceport. A huge storm had just blown through. Yellow dust hung heavy in the air. Tawny grime had settled onto buildings, speeders, banthas — everything. Even the little Jawas scurrying through the streets on their secretive errands wore dark robes coated in dust. Both of Tatooine’s suns had just risen, and the heat beating in through the window felt like a blast furnace.

  The Prefect Eugene Talmont was the Empire’s chief administrator for this world. “There must be a way out of here,” he muttered to his audience of bounty hunters. “My father was always assigned to decent posts, yet I am a far better man than he. It almost seems that the Empire is punishing me for my excellent skills.”

  True, Tatooine was a tough world to govern, full of ruffians and outlaws. The moisture farmers were too poor to tax, and the local criminals sometimes delighted in tearing Talmont’s tax collectors and lawmen into little tiny pieces. The Empire never gave Talmont enough troops to properly subdue the planet. Talmont often comforted himself by saying it was an “opportunity” to tame the barbaric rock, but lately he had begun to wonder if perhaps someone higher up in the chain of command disliked him.

  “Soon, with your help, I will be able to move to a better world.” He turned to the bounty hunters gathered behind him in his office.

  Among them, the most imposing was Dengar. He wasn’t the largest of the bounty hunters, but the big man had a cold and impassive look; his head was swathed in bandages to hide old scars. Years ago, while racing the Rebel pawn Han Solo, Dengar had nearly been killed. Afterward, he gained a reputation as an Imperial assassin and bounty hunter. Now the man was eager to hunt Han Solo down — so eager that he had volunteered to blast Solo for free.

  According to the papers on Prefect Talmont’s desk, Solo had helped the Rebels destroy the Empire’s greatest weapon, the Imperial Death Star, only a few weeks ago. The Empire had since put a fabulous bounty on Solo’s head — dead or alive. Dengar wanted him dead.

  Besides Dengar, there were two others in the group.

  The first was a gray-skinned creature with a long snout, called a Kubaz, from the planet Kubindi. The Kubaz greatly admired social insects, and had a philosophy based on the concept of following their queen without question. This creature, named Udin, couldn’t understand why Han Solo would fight his own Emperor. Udin carried a laser rifle slung over his shoulder, with which he planned to fry Han Solo and his insane Rebel cohorts.

  Last was Eron Stonefield, a beautiful human woman who had only recently begun working as a freelance bounty hunter. Her long red hair flowed in gentle waves to the middle of her back, and her fair complexion remained pale despite the planet’s perpetual sun. Talmont was unsure about her loyalties. She was a decent woman who disliked Tatooine as much as Talmont did, and hoped to use her share of the bounty to make a better life for herself. Like Talmont, she’d been born into the service of the Empire, and felt uneasy about much of what the Emperor was doing. Talmont felt she was on the verge of becoming a Rebel herself. But Solo’s reputation as a criminal in the service of Jabba the Hutt kept Eron from sympathizing with the man. And as an expert in martial arts, she was as deadly as she was talented.

  “So, you all know why we are gathered,” Prefect Talmont continued. “Solo is evasive and dangerous. But he has yet to deal with me!”

  “Excuse me, oh great Lord of Tatooine,” Udin the Kubaz said with a gentle wiggle of his snout. An electronic interpreting device slung around his neck spoke in an unnaturally pleasant voice, “I am but a simple hunter, and do not understand your brilliant plan. You say that we will stalk Han Solo here on Tatooine. But why should he come here? Doesn’t Jabba, the most imperious of Hutts, have a bounty on Han Solo? My simple mind has me thinking that Han Solo will avoid this place more than all others.”

  Udin nodded his head as he spoke, showing his servitude to the great leader Talmont

  “Explain it to him,” Talmont said, waving his hand to Eron. “You’ve been following this case.”

  Eron Stonefield nodded. She spoke in a firm voice. “As we all know, Han Solo helped destroy the Death Star. This treason has landed him on the Empire’s list of most-wanted villains. The Empire will pay handsomely for Solo. But Jabba also wants him.

  “Solo must hide from the Empire. With the crime lords hunting for him, he cannot continue to hide in the underworld. So he must pay off Jabba if he wants to live.

  “I don’t think we need to hunt Solo. I’ve been expecting him to come here. I’ve spent considerable efforts trying to decode all incoming transmissions. In the next few days, Solo will likely come to Tatooine to pay off Jabba. But we will be waiting for him. Once we nab him, we’ll have the money he plans to use to pay off Jabba. Jabba will then pay us his bounty, and the Empire will pay us the reward. Between the three payoffs, this should make us rich.”

  “And don’t forget,” Eugene Talmont added, “I will be paying you, too.

  “Our plan is simple,” Talmont continued. “Jabba the Hutt lives in an ancient fortress on the edge of the Dune Sea, across the Jundland Wastes. You will camp there with monitoring equipment and vehicles. When Han Solo flies to Jabba’s fortress, you will apprehend him. You will get your reward, and I will get sent to a post on a far, far better world. You have my word on that. My solemn word.”

  At the Mos Eisley spaceport, the bounty hunters soon prepared their vehicles. The deserts of Tatooine were treacherous, and the sand from a storm could quickly destroy most engines. In light of this, Udin the Kubaz decided to ride a bantha into the desert. Eron Stonefield elected to ride a dewback, for though the creature was slow, it could stand the blistering heat of Tatooine’s two suns. Dengar, however, trusted his personal speeder bike more than some bantha or lizard. The speeder was faster than the animals, and if Dengar had to chase Solo down, he would need a fast vehicle.

  Udin hooked a large wagon to his bantha — a wagon filled with active sensors that would detect any ship that tried to land near Jabba’s palace. The wagon also contained communications gear, weapons, food, and camping equipment — the bounty hunters tried to prepare for any situation, no matter how life-threatening. Chief among this equipment was an inflatable biosphere, a dome for the bounty hunters to live in out in the desert. The dome stayed cool in the hot sun, and its spun carbon filaments were tough enough to withstand any sandstorm.

  After checking over their survival gear, the bounty hunters were off into the Wastes.

  The Jundland Wastes were filled with rocky hills and crags of old lava rocks, with valleys worn smooth by wind and sand. The area was said to be the home of any number of beasts. Jawas scavenged the Wastes, as did the Sand People. But rumor said that even worse creatures lived among the rocks — dune worms and krayt dragons.

  As Dengar rode beside the dewback and bantha, Eron Stonefield smiled down at him. Perhaps because they were both human, she felt some connection to him. Dengar didn’t share her feeling. After he’d wrecked his speeder bike in the race on Corellia, the Empire had saved him — for a price. In order to make him a better assassin for the Empire, the Imperial surgeons had cut out the part of his brain that let him feel human compassion.

  “What are you thinking?” Eron asked. “You were smiling.”

  Dengar wondered at that. He’d been imagining Han Solo trying to dodge as he pulled the trigger of his blaster. He’d smiled at the thought of revenge against Solo.

  “I was thinking about what a pleasure it will be to meet Han Solo again.”

  “You want to fight him? He won’t be alone, you know. He has his Wookiee friend.”

  Dengar nodded. “His fuzzy friend won’t save him this time.”

  On the bantha, Udin leaned forward. Large stinging flies were crawling all over his mount, and Udin sucked several of them up. “This is not a good world,” he said. “The insects here are dry and flavorless.”

  Just then some
thing caught his eye. On the bantha, he was up higher than the others. Squinting, he peered over a rocky crag. “Trouble ahead,” his electronic translator buzzed. “Creatures on banthas. They have blasters.”

  Eron stopped her dewback, then jumped onto a rock pile and climbed up to look over. “Sand People,” she said. “About a dozen of them on the trail up ahead. They look like they’re setting an ambush. You see over there — at least one of them is pointing toward a possible spot to hide.”

  Eron aimed her heavy blaster rifle and fired. Her shot was high and to the right, but it hit the cliff above the Sand People and sent small rocks tumbling onto the foremost bantha and rider. The Sand People quickly turned their animals in the narrow canyon and sped away.

  “They’re gone,” she said. “For the moment. But if I know Sand People, they’ll be back on our trail soon.”

  “Why would they want us?” Udin asked. “We have only a few bugs to eat, and none of them are very tasty.”

  “They want our bodies,” Eron answered. “They’ll drain the water from us and throw the rest away.”

  “We could hunt them down,” Dengar said. “Neutralize them before they warn their friends.”

  “No,” Eron said. “It would be dangerous to chase them through these canyons. Besides, we don’t need to chase them. Given time, they’ll come to us…”

  For the next two days the bounty hunters traveled, making their best time at night, sleeping in the narrow canyons during the heat of the day.

  They left the Jundland Wastes, and traveled faster on the edge of the Dune Sea. By the third night, they set camp on a small outcropping of rock near Jabba’s palace.

  Dengar and Udin installed the sensor dishes. In the quiet of the night, Dengar stood for a long time looking up at falling stars, wondering if one of the flashes might be Han Solo, dropping out of hyperspace.

  On board the Millennium Falcon, Leia looked out the view screen to the planet Tatooine below.