Pirate's Price Page 13

  “Prrrrrrgggs,” he said again.

  I shrugged. After a moment, Chewbacca did, too. He had given up on trying to make himself understood. So he shook his fuzzy head and walked away.

  But I thought maybe I heard him laughing “Hrrrr hrrrr hrrrr” as he left me. I stared after him, wondering what was so amusing, and just for a second, I thought I saw something stirring in that satchel hanging from his bandolier. Was it a hint of fluffy movement? Something small peeking out at me? I could not be sure.

  Oh, well, I thought. I guess it doesn’t matter whatever a porg is. The ship is mine!

  But as you will see, it mattered very much.

  Oh, but it felt good to be alone in the cockpit. And the Falcon didn’t fight me so much that time as I powered her up. Perhaps she knew that old Hondo was going to fix her up shipshape and she was excited for the trip.

  I lifted off, and I set the course for Batuu. It was a little bit of a stretch to get from where I had met Chewbacca all the way across the Outer Rim to the edge of Wild Space, so I was going to have to make two or three jumps at least. But right then I was feeling peckish. So after plotting the first jump, I went to find the ship’s galley, looking for something to eat.

  Well, I discovered the refrigerator unit—it was an untidy mess—and I began to rifle through the foodstuffs. I found blue bantha buttermilk biscuits. Blue Bespin breakfast bars. Blue puff cubes. Was everything eatable on this ship blue?

  Well, not everything. There were some packets of polystarch dehydration ration packs, but I wouldn’t feed that to my worst enemy.

  The pickings were pretty slim. But old Hondo knows a thing or two about the culinary arts, so I decided to sauté one of the blue puff cubes in lyseed seasoning and see how it was. Just one for a test. I set it simmering, and I went to check on my flight path.

  But as I exited the galley, I got that creepy-crawly feeling that I was being watched—like little buggies up and down the neck. I turned around, but there was no one there.

  So I went to the cockpit—everything in order—and I headed back to the galley. I could smell the lyseed simmering. My cooking instincts were correct; this was going to be good.

  But when I returned—

  The blue puff cube was gone!

  Where did it go? I had never cooked with puff cubes before. Did it melt away entirely? I took another out of the refrigeration unit, and I tossed it in the cooker.

  Well, it simmered away, but it did not disappear.

  And then there it was again, behind me, that feeling of someone looking at my back.

  I spun around.

  Nothing.

  I spun back.

  And the blue puff cube was gone again!

  “Is someone playing a joke on old Hondo?” I called out. “If so, it is not funny.”

  And I threw another blue puff cube in to sauté.

  I watched it the whole time it cooked. I didn’t take my eyes off it.

  Not until it was done. Not even then.

  I got a plate, but I still watched.

  I put it on the plate. I sat down at the table. I cut a piece, and I took a bite.

  And oh, it was so good, I closed my eyes for just a moment to savor the flavor.

  When I opened them again—

  The plate was empty!

  Nothing but a lonely lyseed in some oil.

  Now, Hondo was starting to feel a little nervous. Was I not alone? Was the Millennium Falcon haunted?

  “Solo?” I called. “Is that you? You are not trying to spook your old pal Hondo, are you?”

  Surely not.

  “You’re not still mad that I tried to steal your ship? Twice, maybe three times? Come on now, let bygones be bygones.”

  There was no answer. And I felt very silly. But whatever was happening, I was going to find out.

  So very carefully, I put another blue puff cube in the cooker. And then I went to a storage unit and got in, and I left the door open just a tiny crack. And I watched.

  And there it was!

  A blur of white and brown. A flappity-flap of wings.

  A creature swooped down from the ceiling and snatched my puff cube away.

  “Aha!” I yelled, rushing out. “I’ve got you!”

  And I pounced.

  “Aw aw aw,” the little creature chirped.

  I grabbed for it, but it flapped over my head.

  And then there was movement behind me.

  Well, I wasn’t falling for that again. No.

  But then more of the little things came flapping-flapping from under my legs, and to the left and right of me. They were bursting out of the very storage closet I had been hiding in!

  I was waving my arms and stumbling in my hurry to get away from the closet. What were these creatures?

  Two of them were on the counter. One had one end of the bag of blue puff cubes in its little fuzzy snout, and the other had the bag by the other side.

  “Give that here!” I shouted, and I grabbed the bag and snatched it away.

  And then, suddenly, everything was quiet again.

  And the little things were all staring at me with these big brown eyes.

  “So you guys must be the porgs that Chewbacca warned me about,” I said. “Well, you’re not going to get the better of old Hondo.”

  They all blinked at once at that. It was kind of creepy and a little bit sad.

  Then the first one—the one who had stolen all my puff cubes—suddenly jumped in a little burst of flight, and he grabbed the bag right out of my hand. And away he went racing down the corridor on flappy little feet.

  “Come back here with that, you thief!” I cried.

  I don’t know why I said it. As one who has stolen many things myself, I know that no thief anywhere has ever come back when somebody yelled at them, “Come back here with that, you thief!” But there I was, yelling those words at a sneaky little bird.

  I ran down the corridor into the lounge.

  Nothing. No sign of the pesky creature.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I said. I pulled my blaster out, but what was I thinking? Because you don’t want to fire a blaster inside a spaceship. So I set it down on a nearby container, and I looked around.

  He was not in the storage locker. He was not in a basket. Where could he be?

  Someone, I saw, had left the holochess table on. All the little holograms were just standing still, waiting for the players to make a move.

  No, wait. One of the little holograms was not little. It was quite larger than the others. It was bigger than the Kintan striders. It was bigger than the Mantellian Savrip. And it had fluffy little wings.

  I walked over really quiet-like. Nothing moved. Those big brown eyes were staring straight ahead and not blinking. It was almost comical the way he was standing so still. I got down on a knee.

  “Aha!” I exclaimed. “You are no hologram!”

  With a squawk, the porg leapt into the air, its little flippers scraping across my hat.

  I saw the bag of blue puff cubes under the holochess table, so I snatched it up, and then I was running down the corridor.

  Well, the porg scurried into the cockpit, and so I did, too.

  “This is the end of the line for you, my friend,” I said. “And I am using the word friend very liberally, because I do not feel very friendly to you, you little pest.”

  But then the porg turned and sort of meeped, and I looked out the viewport.

  The Falcon had come out of hyperspace and was waiting for me to plot the next jump.

  But there was a ship right in front of me—a pirate ship.

  And that’s when I heard a boarding clamp locking on to my airlock.

  “Meep is right,” I said to the porg. “It looks like we are having company.”

  I started back down the corridor, the porg trailing along behind me—and behind him, a whole bunch of other porgs. I felt like I had a very strange crew indeed.

  We got to the airlock just as it popped open with
a chuu-kunk of shifting metal and escaping gas.

  “Now, let me do the talking,” I said to the porgs. “Hondo has been all over this galaxy, and many villainous scum are dear friends of mine, so I’m sure whoever it is will understand their mistake in boarding this ship when they see me. Everything will be all righ—”

  Well, the words died in my mouth.

  Because who in all the galaxy should be facing me but that Pakiphantos scum Trunc Adurmush.

  He was, of course, much older than when I’d last seen him. One of his tusks was broken, and it looked like something had taken a bite out of one of his big flappy ears. But I gave him my best smile.

  “Trunc,” I said, “my old friend. Imagine running into you here. I am so glad to see you up and around, given that the years have obviously not been kind.”

  Trunc frowned at that, but then he smiled. It was not a nice smile.

  “Hondo Ohnaka,” he said. “Well, isn’t this a great day in the morning? We get our hands on the Millennium Falcon, and we get to pay you back for all that trouble you gave me all those years ago.” Then Trunc turned to two more Pakiphantos pirates and said, “Grab him, boys.”

  Well, my hand went to my blaster then. But instead of my blaster, I pulled out a bag of blue puff cubes.

  You see, I had set down my blaster in the lounge, and I had holstered the puff cubes by mistake. It’s the little details that get you in trouble, I may have said before.

  Trunc looked at the bag of blue puff cubes strangely for a minute.

  “I’ve already eaten,” he said. “But thanks.”

  And then I was being unceremoniously bundled away, out of the Falcon and into Trunc’s much larger ship.

  “Help, porgy porgies!” I cried. But craning my neck, I saw no sign of the little feathered critters. They had vanished. And then, as easily as I had gotten the Falcon, I lost her.

  Well, they bundled me down the hallway pretty fast, and into a holding cell I went.

  “You can stew here until we figure out how we’re gonna get rid of you,” said Trunc.

  “Stew would be very nice,” I said. “My lunch keeps getting interrupted!”

  “You’ll live,” said Trunc, “though maybe not for very long.” And then he laughed at his poor joke, and he left me alone without even a glass of water.

  Despondent, I looked at the bag of blue puff cubes. They were pretty crumpled, after my unjust and very rough treatment by the Pakiphantos. What’s more, there was a hole in the wrapping where one of those pesky winged fur balls had torn it open with its little sharp teeth. At least half the contents of the package had been spilled.

  This is just perfect, I thought. I am a prisoner. I have lost the Falcon. I am going to be put to death. And I never even got to have lunch.

  I sat there for a while, wondering what I could do, while the Pakiphantos left to search and secure the Falcon. And then I had that feeling again, you know, of someone watching me.

  I looked up, and there on the other side of my bars, it was that porg. The first one. The lunch thief. A fat little guy with orange plumage around his big eyes. He cocked his head to the side and looked at me—at least I thought it was a he—and then he kind of proo-proooed at me.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” I said. “Come to gloat at me in my misery?”

  “Proo-prooo,” said the porg.

  “Ah,” I said, looking where the big brown eyes were pointing. “You just want more puff cubes. You don’t care about old Hondo at all, you selfish creature. Well, you can go hungry.”

  “Proo prooo proooo,” said the porg. And that time he looked all sad and mopey.

  “Oh, stop it,” I said. “I can’t stand to see a porg cry. Even if I didn’t know what a porg was until this morning.”

  So I tossed a puff cube through the bars. And he snapped it up so quick, he almost knocked it from the air.

  I tossed another, and the little porg leapt to catch it, but in his enthusiasm he banged against the control panel to my cell.

  That gave old Hondo an idea.

  So I took a third puff cube, and I reached between the bars, and the porg shot into the air and snatched it out of my fingers.

  “Not so fast, you greedy little puff ball!” I said. “That is not what I had in mind at all!”

  So I was more careful with the next one. I kept my fist closed as I slipped my hand through the bars. And I tossed the puff cube just so.

  The porg pounced after it. He bounced off the control panel. And I got a nice electric shock for my efforts.

  “Wrong button!” I shouted. But I was happy. I knew the principle of my idea was sound.

  So we tried again.

  And again.

  And again.

  I got shocked a few more times. And I worried that maybe the little fellow was going to fill up on blue puff cubes. But I should not have worried. He was a bottomless pit for the stuff.

  Finally, it happened.

  I tossed a cube directly onto the correct touch button, and he lunged right at it.

  And the bars to my cell slid open!

  I was free!

  Well, that changed my feelings about porgs considerably, I can tell you.

  “Thank you, my little friend,” I called. And I gave him another blue puff cube. He puffed up at that and made another proo-prooo sound. “I’m going to call you Puffy,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here, Puffy. Quietly now.”

  We tiptoed out into the corridor.

  And there was a whole flock of porgs—all walking down the hallway with their fat little waddles. “Proo prooo prooooo,” they were cooing.

  Well, they saw the bag of blue puff cubes and all leapt at me.

  So then Hondo was running down the hallway in a cloud of flapping wings and the hungry squawks of plump little birdies.

  “Hold it right there,” someone said. I pushed flying porgs aside, and I faced one of Trunc’s minions. She was raising her blaster.

  I tossed a blue puff cube, not at the Pakiphantos but at a control panel. Puffy did his thing, and a blast door slammed into place with the Pakiphantos on the other side.

  “Good Puffy!” I said. “Someone has earned another puff cube.”

  Well, Hondo and his cloud of porgs made it to a weapons locker. And little Puffy, he just jumped at the panel without even being told.

  Then I had a blaster.

  After a moment’s reflection, I turned the setting to stun.

  “I wouldn’t want you to see anything too upsetting,” I said to little Puffy.

  And then we were creeping down the corridor toward the Falcon.

  Or maybe I should say cheeping down the corridor, because the plump little brown-eyed birdies were making a huge amount of noise.

  Two of Trunc’s gang heard us. But bdew-bdow I went. And down they fell.

  Then the porgies ran them over, planting little porg feet on big Pakiphantos faces. And we were on our way.

  As you might expect, I had to go bdew-bdow a few more times, and Puffy, he was crashing into every control panel he saw. If it was on the wall and it lit up, then he would smash into it with tremendous enthusiasm.

  And all those other little porgies, they were doing the same thing. They had been watching my Puffy and learning. Soon they were flinging themselves into the control panels with wild abandon—and maybe not such good aim.

  Blast doors were rising and lowering. Lights were blinking on and off. Alarms were sounding—whomp-whomp-whomp!

  Obviously, this attracted some attention.

  Two more of Trunc’s gang fired at us. And I had to run again.

  Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn into the cockpit of their ship.

  A Pakiphantos leapt up from the pilot’s chair.

  I grabbed his trunk and yanked down on it, smashing his head into the dashboard of the ship.

  “Sorry, my friend,” I said as he passed out. “But if you are going to walk around with such an obvious handle for a nose, someone is going to use it.”

&nbs
p; But then the porgs washed over me. The cockpit dashboard—it was covered with so many shiny control panels to entice my hungry little friends! They were hopping and jumping all over the place, hurtling into everything that glowed or blinked.

  Maneuvering thrusters began to fire up. I heard a hyperspace drive power up and power down. A shout deeper in the ship and a rush of air made me wonder if an airlock had been compromised.

  Then someone screamed, “What have you done to my ship?”

  I looked, and there was Trunc Adurmush. He was having to steady himself in the doorway of the cockpit, because the ship was rocking so badly.

  I was standing in the middle of a swarm of porgs. A stunned Pakiphantos lay at my feet. And all the buttons in the cockpit of the rocking ship were going blinky-blink.

  “I imagine this looks bad,” I said with a smile.

  “What are you smiling for?” asked Trunc.

  “Sometimes a smile is all you need to turn a frown upside down,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll smile once I’ve peppered you with holes,” said Trunc. And then he pointed his blaster at me in a most unfriendly manner.

  “Pepper?” I said. “That reminds me. You know, this never would have happened if you hadn’t interrupted my lunch.”

  And then I held up the bag of blue puff cubes, and I tore it open in his face.

  And all the little porgies leapt at him, prooing and proooing away.

  “Get them off! Get them off!” screamed Trunc.

  “Why, Trunc,” I said, “whatever is the matter?”

  “Get them off!” he yelled again.

  And then I realized.

  “Are you afraid of birdies?” I asked.

  “Yes!” he screamed amid a mass of wings. “Get. Them. Off!”

  But I didn’t get them off. No, I shoved him aside, and I ran for the Falcon.

  “Come on, my little friends,” I said. And the porgies all raced after me.

  Again, we were running down the corridors. Bdew-bdow—the blaster bolts were flying behind us.

  And we almost made it back to the Falcon. The ship was rocking so badly that I thought the little porgs must have messed with the high-mass electromagnetic gyroscopes. It also sounded like the ion engines and the retro-thrusters were firing in opposition to each other, trying to pull Adurmush’s ship apart.