THE PARADISE SNARE(109)
Gasping, Han managed to stagger to his feet. One look told him Plancke was dead. Too bad. He’d have let the man go, if those troopers hadn’t started trouble …
Han’s ears popped rapidly as the turbolift hurtled down. Quickly he pulled out his map-link and checked his location. If the link was correct, this lift would take him down about a hundred fifty stories, then he’d have to catch another.
The moment the lift doors opened, Han sprang out. The Corellian had dragged Plancke’s body into the darkest corner of the lift, so it couldn’t be seen from the front. Han had also shoved his blaster inside his leather jacket, but his hand rested lightly on its grip, ready to draw.
The scene that met his eyes was entirely peaceful. Citizens strolled along a passageway between buildings, and from somewhere not far away, music played.
Han glanced at his map-link as he strode along. Turn right here …
And there was the next turbolift. Han passed it up as being too obvious, and went on to take a horizontal tube into the next megablock.
Then came another lift down. Two hundred stories, this time.
The streets were dirtier, now, as he searched for the next lift, making sure his turns were random. Down again. He was five hundred stories down, by now. The streets grew ever seedier.
One time, a gang of kids approached him as he hurried along. Han shook his head at them warningly. “Don’t,” he said.
“‘Don’t’!” the leader, a huge, dark-skinned kid with a black fall of greasy hair, mocked. “Ooooooh, is big man afraid? Big man gonna be real afraid, when we get done with him …”
Six vibroblades flashed in the dim squalor of the alleys the streets had come to resemble. Han sighed, rolled his eyes, and pulled out the blaster.
The gang evaporated so quickly they might have been snatched up by hawk-bats. Han stood there, blaster in hand, until he was certain the kids were gone.
A few startled passersby glanced at him, then quickly hurried on about their business, with a “Me? I didn’t see nothing!” expression.
Shoving the blaster back into the front of his jacket, Han jogged down the shadowed street toward the next lift.
Another hundred stories, then another. He was seven hundred stories down.
By now his map-link was useless. How deep is this place? he wondered, boarding another horizontal lift. The turbolift reeked of human and alien effluvia.
Eight hundred … eight hundred fifty.
By now Han was moving through streets lit only feebly by stray gleams from the airshafts, or by wan glow-lamps attached to the ramshackle buildings.
The permacrete beneath his boots was often awash with foul-smelling, viscous liquid. Noxious rain spattered down, and fungi grew thick on the stonework. No more citizens were in evidence—only darting forms that were too quick and furtive to identify. Han thought some of them might be aliens, and knowing Emperor Palpatine’s poorly concealed dislike and distrust of nonhumans, Han wasn’t surprised to find them lurking here, in the depths.
One thousand stories. Eleven hundred …
Han went in search of another lift, but couldn’t find one. Instead he found a series of stairwells that took him down, and down …
He was now almost twelve hundred stories down. Approximately thirty-six hundred meters below where he’d started out at the top level at the Imperial Bank.
Han was panting, even though he was going downhill. The air down here was thick and humid, and smelled foul, as though he were at the bottom of a tunnel.
No sign of pursuit. I’ve lost them, Han thought, walking aimlessly along.
He caught a flash of something scuttling along beside the front of one of the sagging, sunken buildings, something that moved hunched over, like an animal, but it walked on its hind legs. Tattered scraps of cloth barely concealed pallid skin, blotched with lesions and running sores. The creature snarled at Han from behind a mat of lank, filthy hair, revealing a mouth full of rotting stumps of teeth.
Han truly couldn’t decide whether it was—or once had been—human.
The being scrambled away, hissing like a vrelt, half on its feet, half using all fours as it ran.
Shaken, Han took his blaster out of his jacket and stuck it into the front of his belt, wearing it openly, hoping its presence would deter any more creatures like the one he’d seen.
He passed the mouth of another alley, and there, in the ooze, several of the troglodytes crouched, tearing and ripping at something, cramming bits of it into their red-stained mouths. Revolted, Han drew his blaster, snapped off a shot over their heads, and watched them scatter.
He didn’t go any closer to their prey, but swallowed uneasily when he saw that human-shaped ribs protruded from the mangled chest. Minions of Xendor, what kind of place is this?