Free Star Wars - Han Solo and the Lost Legacy by Brian Daley Page A

column, hoping she resembled her sister sufficiently. She fumed at the memory of Han Solo’s sudden change of attitude toward her—first fussing over the buckling of her seatbelt and then his reckless—but expert—planetfall, done to impress her. Either the oaf couldn’t see how much she disliked him or, more likely, refused to accept it.
    At the top of the steps she crossed the wide, roofless portico and passed through the vaults’ single, gigantic entrance-way. The interior was cool and dark. There was a vast circular chamber under a dome half a kilometer in diameter, a mere vestibule to the huge vault complex.
    But this outermost chamber was the only part of the vaults in use anymore. Hasti’s eyes adjusted to the light of weak glow-rods and tallow lanterns guttering smoke into the cavernous room designed to be lit by monumental illumi-panels. Farther in toward the center of the place was a small cluster of work tables, partitions, and cabinets—the administrative annex for the minor activity the vaults still housed.
    A few Dellaltians, carrying data plaques, old-fashioned memo-wire spools, and even a few sheafs of paper computer-printout, passed by her. Hasti shook her head at the primitive operation. But, she remembered, the vaults had very few tenants. The Dellaltian Bank and Currency Exchange, a minor concern, was one, while the Landmark Preservation Office, charged with looking after the abandoned labyrinth with almost no resources, was that grouping of desks and partitions.
    A man approached her from the semigloom—tall, broad-shouldered,his hair as white as his forked beard. He moved briskly; at his heels was an assistant, a smaller, grimmer man whose long black hair was parted down the middle and showed a white blaze.
    The tall man’s voice was hearty and charming. “I am steward of the vaults. How may I help you?”
    Holding her chin high, Hasti answered in her best approximation of a local accent. “The lockboxes. I wish to recover my property.”
    The steward’s hands circled one another, fingers gathered, in the Dellaltian sign of courtesy and invitation. “Of course; I shall assist you personally.” He spoke to the other man, who departed.
    Remembering to walk on his right, as a Dellaltian woman would, Hasti followed the steward. The vaults’ corridors, musty with age, displayed mosaics of colored crystal so complicated that Hasti couldn’t interpret them. Many of the pieces were cracked, and whole stretches were missing; they arched high overhead into shadow. Here, their footsteps resounded hollowly.
    At last they came to a wall, not the end of the corridor but a partition of crudely cut stone that had plainly been mortared into place after the original construction. Set in the wall was a door that looked as if it had been scavenged from some later, less substantial building. Next to it was an audio pickup. The steward pointed to it.
    “If the lady will speak into the voice-coder, we can proceed to the lockbox repository.”
    When Hasti’s sister had told her and Badure about depositing the log-recorder disk she had told them the box-rental code and retrieval combination, but had mentioned no voice-coder. Hasti felt the pulse in her forehead and the thumping in her rib cage quicken.
    The steward was waiting. Leaning to the audio pickup she said, as if in mystic invocation, “Lanni Troujow.”
    * * *
    “My last offer,” Badure threatened for the fourth time, resorting to hyperbole common on Dellalt, “is ten credits a day, guaranteed three-day minimum.”
    The landlord shrieked and tore hairs out of his beard, beat his chest with his free hand, and vowed to his ancestors that he would join them before letting plundering offworlders steal the food from his children’s mouths. Skynx took it all in, amazed by the carefully measured affrontery of the hagglers.
    Han listened with one ear, worried that Hasti might not have been able to get away from the landing area undetected. There was a tug