|
Synopsis:
While in the process of ending their affairs with a loan
shark named Ploovo-Two-For-One, Han Solo and Chewbacca
are informed by the Corporate Sector Authority's
Security Police that the Millennium Falcon is not
allowed to fly within the boundaries of Corporate Sector
Authority space unless it is added to the Authority's
Waivers List. They break the Falcon out of
impoundment and make their way to a group of outlaw
technicians headed by a man called Doc in hopes of
procuring a Waiver and repairing some damage suffered by
the Falcon during their last smuggling run. Upon
landing at the outlaw techs' base of operations, they
find Doc's daughter, Jessa, instead of Doc himself, in
charge.
Jessa tells Han that Doc has disappeared and that she is
willing to give him what he came there for despite the
fact that she knows that Han isn't flush with money at
the moment. They cut a deal in which Han and Chewbacca
will extract some individuals from the agricultural
world of Orron III in exchange for repairs, upgrades and
a Waiver for the Falcon. Since Orron III also
serves as a base for one of the Authority's Data Centers,
the techs begin work on disguising it so that it can
slip in without alerting the watchful eyes of the
Authority.
Before the work on the Falcon can be finished
however, the outlaw techs' base comes under attack by
four Authority IRD Fighters. Because he is unable to
leave before the Falcon's camouflage job is done,
Han, along with Jessa and four other techs, fly against
the Authority starfighters in outdated Z-95 Headhunters.
Han, Jessa and the other pilots prevent the base from
being destroyed, but they lose three of their own and
the base takes some damage during the course of the
dogfight.
The outlaw techs put their finishing touches on the Falcon,
which is now camouflaged as part of a drone barge and
Han and Chewbacca depart for Orron III. The techs send
two droids with them to assist the passengers in
infiltrating the Authority's data interfaces on Orron
III. The first droid, Bollux, is an outmoded labour
droid with a special hidden emplacement within his chest
for the other droid, Blue Max. Blue Max is a
state-of-the-art but immobile computer probe who relies
upon Bollux to get around.
They land on Orron III undetected and meet with Rekkon,
one of their passengers and a leader of a group of
people who are trying to find loved ones who vanished
after criticizing the Authority. Han, Chewbacca and the
droids accompany Rekkon to the Data Center to pick up
the Waiver for the Falcon and to meet the other
members of Rekkon's group. During the ride, Rekkon
confesses to Han that he had another reason for asking
Jessa to get Han to help him: there is a traitor among
the core members of his group and he needs Han to
discover who it is.
Once they reach Rekkon's office at the Data Center,
Rekkon gives Han the Waiver and sets Blue Max upon the
problem of where the Authority is holding the missing
individuals. As Blue Max sorts out the data, Rekkon's
companions arrive at his office. Torm, the first one to
arrive, is a Human male from Kail who says that he
suspects that his father and brother were kidnapped by
the Authority. The next two are a Trianii female named
Atuarre and her mute cub Pakka. They are both looking
for her mate, who had been captured by the Authority and
had never been heard from since. In Rekkon's case, his
nephew was far too vocal in his criticism of the
Authority and also disappeared without explanation.
Atuarre bears the news that they have lost contact with
Engret, another member of the group and Rekkon comes to
the conclusion that Engret has been silenced by the
Authority. Shortly thereafter, Blue Max finishes his
analysis of the data and copies it to a data plaque. He
also informs them that the Authority's Security Police
have been alerted to their presence within the Data
Center. Following Han's advice, Blue Max activates a
series of false alarms across Orron III to aid their
escape from the Authority's forces.
After getting into a fire-fight with a group of Security
Police, the group flees for the spaceport in a stolen
skimmer with troopers pursuing them. Before they arrive
at the spaceport, however, their pursuers manage to
cause Han to crash the skimmer. Thinking quickly,
Chewbacca takes Blue Max with him and hooks up the small
computer to a large agri-robot. After the connection is
made, however, Chewbacca is attacked by a group of
troopers who manage to pull him off of the large
harvesting machine. A larger group of troopers manage to
subdue and capture him.
Han tries to run to his aid, but is prevented from
throwing his life away by Rekkon, who disables him with
a single blow. Blue Max does all that he can to help
Chewbacca but the clumsiness of the harvester prevents
him from doing little more than killing some troopers.
He settles upon using it to provide transport to the
spaceport for Han and Rekkon's group. They make it
safely to the Falcon after Blue Max programs the
harvester to run wild within the confines of the
spaceport to provide another distraction for their
escape.
With the Falcon still camouflaged as a drone
barge, Han and Rekkon's group depart from Orron III.
However, an obstacle in the form of the Shannador's
Revenge, an Authority dreadnaught, still stands in
their way. The Shannador's Revenge locks a
tractor beam onto the drone barge that the Falcon
is attached to, but Han, alone in the cockpit save for
Bollux, finds a way to use that to his advantage. First,
he empties thousands of tons of grain that had been
loaded onto the barge during their brief stay on Orron
III into the dreadnaught's path. He then reverses the
barge's acceleration as he detaches the Falcon
from the barge. The barge collides with the Shannador's
Revenge, allowing the Falcon to escape to the
relative safety of hyperspace.
Han leaves the cockpit and finds Rekkon's dead body
slumped on the Falcon's game-board. Han also
finds the melted remnants of the data plaque that held
the information pointing to the location of the
Authority's detention facility. Figuring that everyone
besides himself and the droids are suspects, Han disarms
Torm, Atuarre and Pakka. He warns them that he will kill
whoever provokes the slightest suspicion from him and
then dismisses all of them to the cargo hold while he
jettisons Rekkon's corpse. Han then discovers that in
the last moments of his life, Rekkon had written the
location of the secret detention facility on the
game-board: "Stars' End, Mytus VII." Han
renders the words unreadable and decides to take up the
deceased man's cause.
Han sets a trap involving the location of the detention
facility for the traitor and causes Torm to out himself
as the traitor. A scuffle ensues and Torm breaks free
and tries to find anything that will serve as a weapon.
He enters a compartment and realizes that it is the Falcon's
emergency airlock. He tries to cut a deal with Han, but
Han turns down his offer and ejects him into hyperspace
without any protective gear.
The Falcon arrives in the Mytus system, but Han
is unsure as to infiltrate Stars' End until the Falcon's
communications system eavesdrops on a message from the
Imperial Entertainers' Guild to the detention facility.
The message states that the originally scheduled troupe
was unable to come and that a replacement act would be
scheduled immediately. Billing themselves as "Madam
Atuarre's Roving Performers", Han, Atuarre, Pakka
and the droids land at Stars' End.
The group of ersatz entertainers are taken immediately
to Vice-President Hirken, head of the facility. During
the course of their conversation with him, Han learns
that Hirken was expecting them to bring a gladiator
droid, a role for which Bollux is ill-suited. Adding
further to the problem, Hirken's bodyguard, Uul-Rha-Shan
appears to be sceptical of their story. In order to buy
more time and locate the prisoners, Han tells Hirken
that Bollux had been damaged prior to their arrival at
Stars' End and passes Blue Max off as a component that
needs attention.
Hirken grants Han permission to make his repairs while
Atuarre and Pakka perform for him and his wife. However,
he grows impatient at Han's absence and decides that he
will have Bollux destroyed by his state-of-the-art
gladiator droid in retribution for what he believes to
be a fraud perpetrated against him. To make things more
interesting, Hirken has Bollux equipped with a simple
handheld shield and sets his Mark X Executioner upon the
old labour droid.
Meanwhile, Han is escorted to Stars' End's general
maintenance section. Once there, he cons the technician
who brought him there into revealing the location of the
facility's central computer section and then knocks him
out. After acquiring the man's identification, he
carries Blue Max to the central computer section
unmolested.
Blue Max taps into the Authority's network and after
some searching, he discovers that Chewbacca is being
held prisoner in a stasis booth, the same fate as the
other lost ones. Han asks Blue Max if he is able to
deactivate the prison's defence systems. Blue Max says
that he can't, since the primary control systems can
only be accessed through Hirken's master-control unit.
However, if the master-control unit can be deactivated,
the secondary control systems, which Blue Max has access
to, will take over. Han tells Blue Max to set up Stars'
End for self-destruction in order to force Hirken to
choose between letting the prisoners free or the deaths
of everyone within the facility.
When he learns of Bollux's duel with the Mark X
Executioner, Blue Max tells Han that they must intervene
for Bollux's sake. Han disagrees and tells Blue Max to
get on with his work. Blue Max, who has befriended
Bollux, continues to refuse even in the face of threats
of physical violence from Han and insists that there is
time for the two of them to help Bollux. Han relents and
takes Blue Max to the amphitheatre where Bollux is
facing the Executioner. In the process of getting to the
amphitheatre, Han encounters Atuarre and Pakka, who are
on their way to the Falcon and tells them of his
plan. They then continue on their separate ways.
Coming into the amphitheatre, Han and Blue Max find
Bollux waging a losing battle against the Mark X
Executioner. However, Blue Max manages to inform Bollux
of the Executioner's one weakness and Bollux takes his
advice. Dodging the Executioner's attacks, Bollux gets
beneath the Executioner and sabotages its cooling
circuitry. The Executioner, unable to reach Bollux,
races around the arena and overheats in the process. The
excess heat causes further damage to the Executioner's
other components, which leads to it behaving erratically
and its eventual self-destruction.
Enraged by the destruction of his toy, Hirken demands
that Han agree to a duel with Uul-Rha-Shan. Believing
his fate to be sealed, Han tricks his opponent into
destroying the primary control systems, which results in
the overload spiral that he and Blue Max had set up
earlier and Stars' End's power plant explodes. However,
Han had failed to take the combination of the facility's
exterior deflector shields, its enhanced-bonding armour
plate, anti-concussion field and the depleted overhead
deflector shield. When the power plant exploded, these
various factors, along with Mytus VII's weak gravity,
caused Stars' End to be blown like a rocket from the
planet's surface.
However, there is a limited time before the airborne
prison facility must come crashing back down to Mytus
VII. With Hirken and his subordinates still confused,
Han, Bollux and Blue Max make their way down to the
lower levels of Stars' End, to find Chewbacca and Doc,
the one man who Han believes will be able to get
everyone out of this mess. On the main prison level Han
finds that quite a few of the prisoners have been freed
from stasis due to the dwindling power supply and he
aids them in subduing their captors. He finds Chewbacca
and Doc shortly thereafter and informs the grizzled
outlaw tech about their current predicament.
Their only chance for survival of the impending crash is
to get down to the engineering levels and re-energize
Stars' End's anti-concussion field. Han and some other
prisoners will try to hold Hirken and his forces at bay
while Doc and others try to make their way down to the
engineering section. However, Doc comes back without
having fixed the anti-concussion field. He tells Han
that Authority reinforcements have arrived at Stars' End
from an assault craft that has docked at the tower's
lower airlock to rescue Hirken.
Han decides that the only option left is for himself and
the prisoners to rush the Authority forces on the upper
levels and to take Hirken hostage. Just before they are
about to do that, however, they find that Atuarre has
docked the Falcon to the detention level airlock.
Not all of the prisoners can fit aboard the Falcon
but Atuarre had secured one of the facility's
tunnel-tube junctions to the Falcon and the
Authority assault craft docked at Stars' End's lower
airlock, nearly emptied of any Authority troops serves
as a convenient escape vessel.
While covering the evacuation of the remaining
prisoners, Han discovers Bollux, who had been left
behind. He helps the ancient droid up and then is fired
upon by Uul-Rha-Shan. Bollux manages to push Han out of
the way and is hit in the head by the disruptor beam.
With no time to spare, Han fires from the hip and kills
Hirken's reptilian bodyguard. Han begins to drag Bollux
back to the tunnel-tube to the Falcon and
receives help in doing so from Keeheen, Atuarre's mate.
Once Han gets inside the tube, Hirken tries to make it
to the airlock alone, imploring Han to let him aboard.
He is cut off in mid-sentence when he is shot in the
back by his wife. Han seals the tube and detaches it,
leaving them and the tower of Stars' End behind. The
tower crashes to the surface of Mytus VII as the Falcon
and the captured Authority assault ship escape safely.
The two ships land on the planet Urdur, the new site of
the outlaw techs' base. Although Bollux's body is
unsalvageable, Blue Max managed to save his personality
and Doc promises a new body for Bollux. Han becomes
angry at Jessa when she merely thanks him verbally for
risking his life to save her father and the others. She
reminds him that he was only fulfilling his part of a
deal, but stops him before he leaves. Jessa suggests
that she and Han could strike another deal, listing
various upgrades to the Falcon. Hearing this,
Chewbacca becomes so happy that he kisses the Falcon's
landing gear and then watches as Han and Jessa snuggle,
walking away to discuss Han's end of the arrangement.
|