Payback: The Tale of Dengar by Dave Wolverton

Author:Dave Wolverton [Wolverton, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fortunately, when Dengar reached the repair docks, his ship was already out of the repair bay and sat gleaming on the launch field. The dockmaster had gone beyond repairing the ship, and had actually cleaned the exterior, filling the micrometeor pits and applying a fresh coat of protective paint. Too bad no one was here to collect for the repairs.

Unfortunately, half a dozen stormtroopers sat at the launch pad beside a light cannon. Dengar and Manaroo were hiding in a repair hangar, behind an old freighter. The sounds of fighting and explosions echoed all around Cloud City.

Dengar watched the stormtroopers all positioned in a tight knot, and grumbled to himself, “This is what grenades are for.” These must have been fresh troops, lacking basic training.

He reached into the leg pouch on his body armor, pulled a grenade, armed it, and hurled it twenty meters till it popped a stormtrooper on the helmet and exploded.

At the sounds of running feet, Dengar looked down a side passage. Several stormtroopers, in company with Darth Vader, ran past in an adjoining corridor.

Instinctively, Dengar ducked. He really didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

When the stormtroopers passed, he took Manaroo’s hand, rushed to his ship, and in half a moment, blasted off through the clouds.

Signal jammers were screaming all across the spectrum, and Dengar couldn’t get a fix on any other vessels in the area, but his rear viewer showed a trio of TIE fighters swooping down from a towering cloud behind him.

Dengar dove into the cover of a nearby cloud, spiraled down, turning back the way he had come, then opened his engines, blasting up on a new trajectory, firing all guns, just in case one of those Imperial fighters crossed his plane.

Within seconds they were out of the Tibanna gas clouds, heading for the stars, and when the navicomputer laid in his course, he blurred into hyperspace.

Dengar lay back in his chair. It was true that he could not feel many emotions, could not register them with his mind, but his body registered them sometimes. His hands were shaking now, and his brow was covered in sweat. His throat was dry.

Yet when he felt inside himself, he could not detect any sense of panic.

But Manaroo stood behind his pilot’s seat, hands clutching the back of his chair, her mouth frozen open in terror.

“We’re all right now,” Dengar said, hoping to comfort her.

“Why, why are you still following Han Solo?” she asked. “He’s already been captured!”

Dengar hesitated, trying to find the right words to answer. He had no hopes of catching up with Boba Fett. The bounty hunter’s ship was too fast, and he’d likely land right at Jabba’s palace, so there would be no opportunity to bushwhack Boba Fett in any case. No, he needed something else. “I want to catch up to him for once,” he said. “I want to touch him, just once.

“Besides, Solo has friends in high places in the Rebellion,” Dengar said, trying to voice a nagging suspicion. “I figure they’ll come to break him out—if Jabba the Hutt doesn’t kill him first.

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