THE HUTT GAMBI(37)

Tatooine was a remote world, back of beyond, and Han had to make several hyperspace jumps to reach it. His next-to-last jump put him into a little-traveled spacelane, but it was the most direct route to Tatooine.

That’s where the pirate ships were waiting for them. Four Drell teardrop-shaped vessels, sleek and shining, small but deadly. Han had faced their like before, when he’d been piloting for the Ylesians. The moment he saw them his mental alarm bells went off. Pirates?” They could be! Better to be safe than sorry…

“Chewie, shields on maximum!” Han snapped, sending the yacht into an evasive maneuvering pattern while his copilot adjusted their deflectors to maximum strength. Han flipped on the comm unit. “Attention!

Gunnery crew, stand ready! We may be seeing some action!” He switched frequencies.

“Headhunter pilots, report to your snubs! This is not a drill!”

Even as the words left his mouth, the closest ship spat a salvo of quad laser fire at them. I was right! Han mentally congratulated himself.

Thanks to his caution, the Drell ship’s fire went wide.

The ships were only a third the size of Jabba’s massive space yacht, but their quad laser cannons spat deadly bursts at the bigger ship as they rushed in at top speed. They were so small they were going to be difficult to hit. Han banked the Star Jewel around and yelled, “Gunnery crew …

fire at will!”

Even as the crews manning the yacht’s six heavy turbolasers began returning fire, Han switched to another comm frequency. “Attention, passengers and crew—we are under attack! Prepare for evasive maneuvers.

Activate your restraint systems.”

Beside him Chewie was performing his job ably, leaving the piloting mostly to Han, but busy balancing and distributing power to their shields, monitoring the ship’s status, checking on how much power they could channel to the weapons. The Hutt yacht’s turbolasers, mounted discreetly beneath the ridge of the yacht’s superstructure, actually tapped directly into the ship’s power core, thus giving them far more destructive capability than any opponent would expect.

Han dodged an incoming Drell ship, saw the turbolasers fire a vicious burst at the oncoming vessel, but at the last moment it dodged the fire. Blasted little ships are too fast His comm unit crackled.

“Headhunters here. Ready for launch.”

Chewie opened the cargo-bay doors, and dropped one shield amidships so the two fighters could launch.

Han activated the comm. “Pilots … launch on my order! Three ˇ ..

two .

. . one … NOW!”

Jabba was hollering over the comm, demanding an explanation. Han could hear wails and curses from the Twi’lek and the dancing girls.

Totoplat, the cook, was fussing that Jabba’s dinner was ruined, just ruined!

With a muttered curse, Han spared half a second to close the comm channel from the passenger section. When he looked back up, he paled.

“Incoming amidships, Chewie!” he yelled, knowing this time he couldn’t evade fast enough. The Star Jewel shuddered violently, then shuddered again. Han realized the first ship had swung around and was now firing on their stern! He cursed when he saw that his rear deflectors were nearly gone. “Chewie! I’m coming about! Compensate for that shield!”

Activating the comm, Han shouted, “I’m coming about, hard to port! You guys get that blasted pirate off my rear!”

The Wookiee snarled as he worked frantically on the shields. Han sent the Star Jewel into a hard port turn, then a second later he felt the faint jolts as the gunners fired.

Another miss!

Han cursed and activated the comm. “Listen up, you guys! I want portside gunner one to target the following coordinates, and fire on my order!”

Glancing at his sensors, Han located the position of the first Drell ship, saw that it had swung far out, then turned and was coming back for another run. Han checked his X-Y coordinate grids and made a rapid calculation. He spat out a string of coordinates.

“Coordinates acknowledged, sir!” the portside gunnery chief said.

“Gunner two, target the following coordinates and fire your burst five seconds after gunner one! Got that?” Han reeled off another string of coordinates.

“We copy, Captain!”

“Gunner three, target the following coordinates and fire your weapon five seconds after gunner one.” Again, Han gave the prescribed coordinates.

“Yes, Captain! Ready!”

“Okay … gunner one … prepare to fire!”

What Han was attempting was a military technique called a limited barrage pattern. It was designed to make a ship dodge a burst of fire, only to run right into another blast. Tricky, but if they could get the timing right .