Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy (22 page)

Peering out of the bunker, she dismissed the objection with a wave of her hand. “What does it matter, as long as he’s eliminated? My brother’s using anti-personnel rounds; the log-recorder won’t be damaged.”

The gunman smiled, reserving his retaliation for a more convenient moment. He touched up his mustachios with a knuckle. “Solo is well armed, my dear J’uoch. You may be surprised at his resourcefulness, as may your brother.”

Han raced over the open ground, keeping one eye out for available cover. Though hindered by the weight of the Mark
II, he adjusted it for maximum range and power level as he ran. He had thought about handing the weapon over to the Wookiee to let him shoot at the boat, but the
Falcon
’s first mate had little liking or affinity for energy weapons, preferring his bowcaster.

Han heard the boat begin its second pass. J’uoch’s brother, R’all, dove at the exposed, fleeing man. Han threw himself into a troughlike depression in the rock, the Mark II clattering down next to him. The boat flashed past, so close that Han was in the dead area between the guns’ fields of fire. Flechettes burst in long lines to either side of him. R’all flashed off, adjusting his weapons for a final pass.

Han got up, braced the Mark II’s buttplate against the rock, and fired. Still the heavy-assault rifle’s recoil made it jump and turn; the boat was out of range before he had come anywhere near it, and now was banking for a pass that was sure to find its target.

Han hitched himself around the stone trough and pulled the Mark II’s bipod legs down. He had only one more trick left, and if that didn’t work, he’d have no more worries about treasure, Gallandro, or the
Falcon
. Resettling so that his knees and the small of his back were higher than his shoulders, he wrestled the Mark II around and rested it on the incline of his legs. He set his feet against the bipod legs, holding the weapon tightly to steady it.

He squinted upward through the heavy-assault rifle’s open sights. The boat came at him again. He bracketed it in the sights and waited until he heard the first concussion of R’all’s fire.

Then he opened up, bracing the bucking Mark II with hands and feet, holding it fairly steady for the first time. The boat’s pilot recognized his danger too late; an evasive maneuver failed and the heavy-assault rifle’s full force caught the light boat, tearing a long gash in the fuselage. Control circuitry and power panels erupted and a gaping hole appeared in the cockpit canopy. The boat wallowed and shook,
out of control, and disappeared in a steep dive, trailing smoke and flame. A moment later the ground shook with impact.

“R’all!” J’uoch screamed to her dead brother as she clawed her way out of the bunker. The boat had exploded on impact, scattering burning debris over a long, wide swath of ground.

Gallandro caught her arm. “R’all is gone,” said the gunman with no particular sympathy. “Now, we will do this thing as we originally agreed. Your ground forces will encompass Solo’s position, and we’ll force him out into the open and capture him alive.”

She wrenched her arm away, seething with rage. “He killed my brother! I’ll get Solo if I have to blow these mountains apart!” She turned and called out to her enforcer, the hulking Egome Fass, who stolidly awaited orders. “Get the crew to the loadlifter and warm up main batteries.” She was about to turn from him when an unfamiliar sound, rising over the fury of the boat’s destruction, made her pause. “What’s that?”

Gallandro heard it, too, as did Egome Fass and all the others in the camp. It was a steady beat, shaking the ground, the pounding of metal feet. The column of Xim’s war-robots appeared at a spot farther along the mining camp’s perimeter, having finished their roundabout march from their mustering place.

They came in glittering ranks, arms swinging, unstoppable. When their Corps Commander gave the signal that freed them from lockstep, they spread out across the site to begin their devastation. J’uoch stared in astonishment, not quite believing what she saw. Gallandro, fingering one of the gold beads that held his mustache, tried to remain calm. “So, Solo was telling the truth after all.”

Up on the ridge, Chewbacca hooted to the exhausted Han, indicating the camp. Han wearily moved to the ridge and joined his companions in looking down on a scene of utter chaos. Their own presence had been forgotten by the response squads, fire teams, and other camp defenders.

The war-robots, faithful to their instructions, moved to obliterate everything in their path. First to feel the battle machines’ power was a domed building that housed repair shops. Han saw a robot smash through the dome’s personnel door while a half-dozen of his comrades set to work wrenching off the rolling doors. Pieces of lockslab gave way like soggy pulp, and a group of Xim’s perfect guardians moved into the dome, demolishing work areas and heavy equipment, ripping down hoisting gear, and firing with the weapons built into their metal hands. Heatbeams and particle discharges flashed, throwing weird shadows within the dome. The building flared, pitted in a score of places. The robots’ fire lanced the dome, probing the sky. More of them pressed in to tear apart everything they encountered.

It was the same elsewhere in the vast mining site. The war-robots, with their limited reasoning capacity, were taking their orders literally, devoting as much attention to devastating buildings and machinery as to attacking camp personnel. Whole companies of the war machines were moving among the abandoned mining autohoppers and land-gougers, tow-motors and excavators.

The robots blasted and sprayed fire everywhere, making full use of their tremendous strength. One of them was sufficient to reduce a small vehicle to rubble in moments; for larger equipment, groups cooperated. Tracks were wrenched from crawlers, whole vehicles lifted off the ground, their axles snapped, wheels ripped off, cabs torn loose, and engines yanked out of their compartments like toys. A battalion moved toward a barge shell that contained the latest shipment of refined ore. The robots tore into it, swinging and firing, wrecking everything they encountered and hurling the pieces aside.

Meanwhile, others engaged the camp personnel in determined combat, turning the camp into a scene of unbelievable chaos. War-robots flooded through the operations site. “They’re headed for the
Falcon
!” Han bellowed, then charged down the ridge. Badure’s shouted warnings went
unheeded. Chewbacca went racing after his partner; Badure took off, too, followed by Hasti.

Skynx was left alone, staring after them. Although going after his companions seemed a good way to ensure that he would never see the chrysalis stage, he realized that he had become a part of the oddly met group and felt acutely incomplete without them. Abandoning good Ruurian prudence, he flowed off after the others.

At the bottom of the slope, Han found his way blocked by one of the robots. It was just finishing demolishing one of the bunkers, kicking the fusion-formed walls to bits and hurling the larger chunks easily. The robot turned on him, its optical lenses extending a bit as their focal point adjusted. It lifted and aimed its weapon-hand.

Han quickly brought up the heavy-assault rifle and fired point-blank, knocked back several steps by the sustained recoil. His fire blazed blue against the mirror-bright chest. The machine itself was driven back a step with an electronic outburst and was ripped open. Han moved his aim up to the spot where the cranial turret was joined to the armored body.

The head came off, flying apart, smoke and flame gushing from the decapitated body. Han shot it again for good luck and the Mark II’s beam came only faintly; the weapon was virtually exhausted. But it served to topple the robot, which landed with a resounding clatter.

More war-robots were reaching that part of the camp. Chewbacca descended to level ground, trailing dust and tumbling pebbles, just as another machine came at Han. The Wookiee threw his bowcaster to his shoulder and aimed. But his fire bounced off the robot’s hard breastplate; he had forgotten his weapon was still loaded with regular rounds rather than with explosives.

Han threw aside the useless assault rifle and drew his blaster, setting it for maximum power. Chewbacca stepped back, removing the magazine from his weapon and taking one of the larger ones from his bandoleer. Han stepped in front to cover him in a stiff-armed firing stance. He squeezed
off bolt after bolt, deliberately and with great concentration, into the approaching robot’s cranial turret. Four blaster rounds stopped the machine just as it fired in response. Han ducked the heatbeam that split the air where he had stood. As the robot fell, the beam traced a quick arc upward.

Defenders that were sufficiently well armed were putting up stiff resistance with rocket launchers, grenade throwers, heavy weapons, and crew-served guns. Living beings and war machines were reeling back and forth in a storm of energy discharges, bullets, shells, and fire. Four robots lifted the reinforced roof off a boxlike hut as the men defending it fired frantically. Using a chattering quad-gun, the men’s shots kicked up enormous clots of ground and blew away segments of the machines even as they attacked. More robots approached to join in; the crew, with barrels depressed, traversed their gun back and forth in a frenzy, taking a terrible toll. But even though several crew members used side arms in a desperate attempt to keep from being overrun, the roofless hut was gradually outflanked and disappeared behind a wall of gleaming enemies.

Not far away, a dozen of J’uoch’s employees had formed a firing line in three ranks, concentrating on any robot that came near, and were thus far succeeding in preserving their lives. Elsewhere, isolated miners worked their way among the high rocks to exchange earnest fire with the machines, which couldn’t negotiate the incline.

But many of the camp personnel were caught alone or unarmed, or were surrounded. The fighting was heaviest and fiercest there, the robots’ implacability matched against the furious determination of the living beings. Humans, humanoids, and nonhumanoids dodged, evaded, ran, or fought as well as they could. War-robots simply advanced, overcoming obstacles or being destroyed, without any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

Han saw a stocky Maltorran run up behind a robot with a heavy beamdrill cradled in its brachia and press it flush against the machine’s back. The robot exploded, and the
drill, exploding from the backwash, killed the Maltorran. Two mining techs, a pair of human females, had gotten to a landgouger and were making a resolute effort to break through the automaton lines, crushing many of them under the gouger’s tremendous treads, maneuvering to avoid their weapons’ aim. But soon the fire of many robots converged on them, finding the landgouger’s engine. The gouger was blown apart with an ear-splitting explosion. Elsewhere, Han saw a robot grappling with three
W’iiri
who had swarmed onto it, tearing at it with their pincers. The machine plucked them off one by one, smashing them and tossing them aside, broken and dying; but in the next moment, the robot itself toppled over, disabled by the damage they had done it.

“We’ll never get through to the
Falcon
!” Badure yelled at Han. “Let’s get out of here!” More robots were approaching, and to attempt a return up the steep ridge under fire would be out of the question. The old man proposed, “We can withdraw across the bridge and take shelter in the barracks area!”

Han glanced across the crevasse. “It’s a dead end; there’s no other way off that plateau.” He considered blowing the bridge behind them, but that would take the
Millennium Falcon
’s guns, or those of the lighter.

The latter ship was herself under attack. A ring of dozens of war-robots had formed around her, furiously firing while the huge cargo ship’s engines strained to lift her off, her main batteries answering the robots’ fire. Many of the robots’ weapons were silent, their power exhausted, but more of the machines were gathering around the lighter every moment. Though the vessel’s salvos wiped out five and ten robots at a time, sending them flying in heaps of tangled, liquefied wreckage, Xim’s machines kept clustering to her, weapons-hands blazing, standing their ground. Soon hundreds were massed there.

Others turned their attention to Gallandro’s scoutship, cutting swaths in her hull. The lighter rose unsteadily, her shields glowing from the concentrated fire, her heavy guns raking
back and forth. Just at the moment it seemed she would reach safety, one of her aged defensive shields failed; after all, the lighter was an old industrial craft, not a combat vessel. The ship became a brilliant ball of incandescence, showering torn hull fragments and molten metal into the crevasse. The detonation knocked combatants, living and machine both, to the ground. Han was on his feet again in an instant, charging toward the
Falcon
with his blaster in his hand, determined that the same thing would not happen to his beloved ship.

So was someone else. Across the battlefield a ring of war-robots was closing in on the converted freighter, preparing to demolish her, their arms raised and weapon apertures open. Others were shoving the wreckage of Gallandro’s scoutship toward the brink of the crevasse.

Another machine, far smaller than they, blocked the way to the
Millennium Falcon
, seeming fragile and vulnerable. Bollux’s chest plastron was open, and Blue Max’s photoreceptor gazed forth. From his vocoder tumbled the signals learned from tapes shown him by Skynx, amplified by the gear Bollux had cannibalized from the podium.

The advance stopped; the war-robots waited in confusion, unable to resolve the conflicting orders. The Corps Commander appeared, the death’s-head insignia of Xim gleaming on his breastplate. He loomed over Bollux. “Stand aside; everything here is to be destroyed.”

“Not this vessel,” Max told him in the command signalry. “This one is to be spared.”

The towering robot studied the two-in-one machines. “Those were not our orders.”

Max’s voice, directed through the podium’s scavenged horn, was high. “Orders may be amended!”

The thick arm came up, and Bollux prepared for the end of his long existence. But instead a metal finger indicated the
Falcon
, and the command came: “Spare that vessel.”