by Martha Wells
Metara drew her own blaster from her jacket and fired at the confused pirates. Andevid scrambled away to take cover behind the holovid console. It was just as well; Leia had removed the power cell from his blaster.
The droid plunged through the room, bowled over the Gamorrean, and slammed two more pirates aside. Viest tried to get up and had to fling herself down again as the droid seized a float-lounge and threw it across the room. With Viest’s blaster, Leia fired past the droid at the pirates who had taken cover behind the old consoles at the far end of the room. Seeing that they had enough to distract them, she ran for Han. She had to free him and Kifar; right now they were the best targets in the room, for both the droid and the pirates.
Behind her the droid tore through the chamber, flinging aside furniture, consoles, and anything else that got in its way. Allian was supposed to have programmed the droid to make straight for the exit to the room, but when the pirates shot at it its defensive routines must have taken over. Allian was also supposed to have disarmed those defenses, but clearly he hadn’t been able to eliminate all of them. Leia ducked as a chair flew over her head and hoped they hadn’t made a terrible mistake.
The door slid open and Sian and Terae barreled in and fired at a Mirialan and two humans, the last pirates on their feet. The droid roared and they scrambled for cover. Leia reached Han, but she couldn’t see the control for the power coupling. “Where is it?” she demanded.
“Don’t know,” he told her. “Just shoot it!”
Leia was afraid that would either short out the field or kill him. “Are you sure?”
“Yes—” he began. Then: “Get down!”
Leia hit the floor just as something heavy flew past. She looked up as the Mirialan pirate slammed into the far wall, knocked across the room by the droid. Leia shoved to her feet and aimed carefully at the small power-coupling generator half a meter above Han’s bound hands, then fired.
The field flared and vanished. Han hit the floor and collapsed. Leia squelched the urge to make sure he was all right and turned toward Kifar Itran. He was only a few meters away and had managed to knock his chair over to get out of the line of fire. His binders were locked to the metal arms; he struggled to break them but couldn’t get free. Leia flung herself down again as the droid threw another console across the room. Apparently happy with the destruction it had wrought here, it roared again and dived out through the port.
Leia shoved to her feet. Viest and three other pirates sprawled on the floor; the others had either fled or been hurled elsewhere by the droid. Sian, Terae, and Andevid cautiously climbed out of the cover of the piles of shattered furniture. Metara stepped around the wreckage of the expensive holoconsole. She had her comlink out and was saying, “Fera, Fera, come in. The droid just went back out into the cavern. Are you clear?”
Leia reached Kifar and crouched beside his chair. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Yes, Your Highness, I’m sorry—” Kifar began.
“Don’t worry,” Leia replied, more concerned with trying to free him so they could get away. Whatever he wanted to apologize for, it could wait; anyway, considering how much Viest had learned about her, she had a good idea of what it was. She realized she didn’t have anything to cut the binders and Kifar was too twisted around to risk using the blaster. “Metara, do you have a—”
Kifar’s eyes widened as he stared past her. “Princess!” he gasped.
Leia twisted around to see Viest roll to her feet, pointing something at her. It didn’t look like a blaster. Han yelled an incoherent warning, and a hard shove to her shoulder knocked Leia aside.
Leia hit the floor just as something like a weird sonic pulse passed through her. It made no audible sound, but her bones vibrated from the deep bass of it. She lifted her head just as blaster bolts from two different directions hit Viest.
Viest collapsed. The bolts had struck her chest and stomach, leaving searing wounds that must have killed her instantly. Confused, Leia looked up at Metara, still standing over her. “What was that thing she—”
Fired at us, she meant to finish. But Metara swayed and her knees started to buckle. Alarmed, Leia sat up and caught her as she fell, took her whole weight and guided her to the floor as the woman went limp. She couldn’t see any wound. There was no blood on Metara’s gray shirt or jacket, no mark from any kind of projectile. She was still breathing, her eyes aware but wide in shock.
“Metara, can you hear me?” Leia demanded. “Where are you hurt?”
Han knelt at Metara’s side, his wrists still in binders. Staring down at her, he said, “It was some kind of sonic mining probe. I didn’t know she could use it from a distance.” He met Leia’s gaze. “This is about to get ugly.”
Terae flung herself down beside them, calling out, “Captain!”
Han made room for her. The color had drained from Metara’s face, and she still looked more surprised than in pain.
“You’re going to be fine,” Leia said automatically. Maybe she was just stunned. If they could get her to the ship—
Then Metara drew a breath, and blood bubbled at her lips. She gripped Leia’s hand and said, her voice thick and strained, “Take care of them.”
“You know I will,” Leia whispered.
Metara’s body convulsed once and started to collapse inward, as if she were being crushed by some force they couldn’t see. Her eyes went blank; blood ran from her mouth and nose. Terae made a strangled, horrified noise in her throat.
Leia’s stomach tried to turn and she swallowed hard. She sat back, released Metara’s hand, and carefully folded the captain’s limp arm across the ruin of her body. Stupid waste. All of it was a stupid waste. Metara, Viest, the pirates, this whole place. She shook her head and looked up. She didn’t have time for the emotion, not now. “Somebody get Han and Kifar out of those binders. We have to get out of here.”
Sian moved first, fumbling a small cutter out of her pocket and stepping over to Kifar. Terae stayed where she was, staring down at her captain, anguish on her face. Leia pushed to her feet. “Terae, we have to go. The seismic charge.”
Terae’s face was terrible to look at, drained and sick as if she had been shot as well. But she nodded, took Metara’s comlink and her blaster, and got to her feet.
“The what?” Han asked, lifting his hands for Sian to cut the binders off. Kifar staggered to his feet, stretching his neck. “You still set the charge?”
“You’re blowing the place up?” Andevid asked, startled.
Leia told Han, “Yes, but we should have plenty of time to—”
She heard Fera yell, “Captain! The charge—” over the comlink, just before the floor flew up and hit her.
Lying on her back, her ears ringing, tasting blood from a bitten lip, Leia had time to realize the metal floor plates had not actually risen up and slammed her in the back of the head. Her body had been knocked flat by the concussion of the blast.
She sat up in time to see the last sheet of transparent material in the port slide out and drift away in the cavern. The others were all groaning, trying to rise.
Sprawled nearby, Han inquired acidly, “You were saying, Your Worship?”
Leia shoved herself upright, saying through gritted teeth, “You know, you could be a little more supportive right now.”
Terae struggled to sit up, then pulled her comlink out and said frantically, “Fera, report!”
A moment later Fera’s shaken voice came over the com. “It went off early, Lieutenant—the droid set it off. We’d nearly made it back to the tunnel when we saw it climb down the wall from the control center. It was going back and forth along the wall there, just flailing around, and it must have gotten too close to the charge … Are you all right?”
Terae shook her head in mute denial. No, we’re not all right, Leia thought bitterly, but Fera and the others didn’t need to know about Metara just now.
“Get back to the ship, as fast as you can,” Terae ordered. “We’ll meet you there.”
<
br /> Leia said, “Right, let’s get moving.” They had just run out of time. Anakaret wouldn’t have sent her transmission yet, so there would be no confusion among the ships in orbit or the other ships docked here. Somebody would be on their way to find out just what had exploded. And if Leia knew anything about pirates, everybody on the asteroid who had ever hoped to kill Viest and take over her part of the operation would be coming to find out if she was dead or injured. As Han got to his feet, she handed him Viest’s blaster and drew her own from inside her jacket.
“Terae, you—” She was interrupted by a loud crack reverberating through the metal floor. The whole control center shuddered. Leia grabbed the side of the holotable to steady herself.
Sian staggered but stayed on her feet. “That sounded like—I hope we didn’t just come loose from that bridge …”
Deep under the floor somewhere, metal shrieked and groaned. “I think that’s exactly what happened.” Leia started for the doorway.
Moving cautiously, Leia led the way out of what had been Viest’s private quarters and into the main room of the control center. As they reached it, another screech of strained metal echoed through the chamber and the whole structure lurched sideways. Leia stumbled into Han and he caught her arm, swaying to keep his balance. Keeping his voice low, he said, “Hey, it wasn’t me that talked.”
“I know,” she told him. She had never seriously considered the thought that he might have.
Han eyed her suspiciously, as if he doubted her word, but then said, “Give me your comlink—the Falcon’s here.”
Startled, Leia handed the comlink over. “What?”
“Yeah, Viest told me about it; she knew it was my ship.” He was eyeing Kifar, who had gotten a blaster from one of the dead pirates and was following Sian toward the doorway. It was clear whom Han suspected.
He adjusted the comlink’s frequency and said, “Chewie, Chewie, come in.” There was a long moment of static, and Leia had a moment of doubt. Viest might have been lying, or she might already have ordered one of her pet captains to fire on the Falcon. From Han’s expression, she knew similar thoughts were going through his head. Then they heard a welcome and familiar Wookiee growl.
Leia let out her breath in relief. Chewbacca went on at length, probably with questions and a lot of comments about dumb Corellians who thought it was a good idea to run off to pirate ports. With difficulty, Han managed to interrupt. “Hey, hey, listen to me! Yeah, we’re fine, but we’re busy. Just stay where you are and don’t do anything until I say so.”
Han signed off before Chewbacca could protest, and Leia took back the comlink. Ahead of them, Sian had made it up the stairs, which now slanted to the right as the floor shifted. She took a look through the hatch and reported, “Princess, the bridge is torn out of the wall.”
Leia dragged her focus back to the immediate problem and followed Sian up the steps. Cool, dank air flowed down from the shaft, now heavy with the smell of ozone and superheated metal. The entire control center had moved back toward the cavern, and the bridge that crossed from it to the main section of the asteroid had been torn from its moorings. One large piece still hung from the gallery of the control center, festooned with the moored lifters dragged down with it.
“We can still get across,” Terae said. “One of those liftpallets—”
Sian stepped down to try to grab the mooring chain for the nearest one. Then Leia spotted movement in the waiting area across the shaft. Han snapped, “Get back!”
Sian retreated hastily, and they all ducked back through the doorway as a dozen or more pirates ran into the waiting area, shouting, exclaiming in alarm as they saw the broken bridge. Leia assumed they were the scavengers, here to see if Viest was dead, as she had predicted. Some of them undoubtedly hoped to finish the job if they found her only wounded. Once the word spread, more would be arriving from the ships in orbit.
“We can go out through the cavern and take one of the haulage tunnels,” she said. The lift tubes were likely broken, too, but there were enough old repulsorsleds and lifters around that the pirates would have no trouble getting over here. They could also go around via the tunnels and come up through the low-gravity area of the cavern. “We have to move fast, before we’re trapped here.”
“They’re going to be right behind us,” Han said.
Leia crossed the room to the port and looked out into the cavern. Dust floated in the air, swirling in odd patterns due to the low gravity, with chunks and fragments of rock. Light from the control center glinted off metal shrapnel, possibly the remains of the unfortunate droid. She couldn’t see the lights in the arena or the technician’s work area below. “We can get out through the lift tube shaft—Blast!” Small lights suddenly appeared below, long, glowing shafts moving erratically but coming closer. They were handlights, carried on lifters or small repulsors. “They’re already coming up that way.”
“We could go straight through to the docking ring if we take the tunnel borer,” Andevid suggested.
Leia turned to face him. “The what?”
“Piece of machinery left over from the old mine,” he explained. “Viest used it to destroy ships in dock. They would be expecting an attack from the docking ring, or for some ship to fire on them from outside. But she and her crew would take it through the deep tunnels, then up through the bay and under the ship, and use the excavating lasers on it.” He shrugged. “Never could open those docking bays again. Even these pirates aren’t dumb enough to put their ships down in a docking bay with a big hole in the floor.”
Leia thought of all the closed bay doors they had passed along the docking ring. Presumably pirates wouldn’t want to put their ships down in a bay filled with wreckage and skeletal remains, either. “Show us where it is,” she said.
Andevid turned away. “Out here. If it didn’t get destroyed in that blast.”
They followed him across the chamber to the passage that led to the lift tubes. “Viest had some imagination,” Han commented.
“You don’t know half of it,” Andevid told him. He added to Leia, “That’s what she was planning to do to your ship. Got it all powered up and ready.”
Leia wasn’t surprised. Terae swore under her breath and looked toward the chamber where Viest and Metara lay.
Andevid continued, “She was going to do it a couple of hours from now, once the ships that are in dock at the cargo port finished their trading and left. They’re independents, not beholden to her, and she never wanted them to know too much about what she was doing. In case she decided to take them out someday.”
All the lift tube control panels blinked with fault warnings, damaged when the control center shifted. Andevid took them past the tubes and down a curving stair, into a smaller control room lined with old dead consoles, with a large hatch opening toward the cavern. Two ports on either side showed something bulky blocking it. Andevid tapped the controls, and the hatch slid open. Leia and Han stepped over to take a look.
The tunnel borer was shaped like a long tube, about twice the size of a multiple-passenger escape pod. It had a cone-shaped disk on its nose to emit the cutting lasers. This part of the cavern was in deep shadow, and if anyone looked up from the arena or the other spaces below, the tunnel borer would just be another piece of derelict mining equipment. In the light from the ports, Leia could see that while the metal sides were stained with mineral streaks, the hatch keypad was clean and faint ready lights shone from it and from the cutting disk.
Han leaned out, braced himself with one hand on the side of the borer, and touched the keypad. The hatch slid open. Automatic lights blinked on, showing a narrow interior with a small cockpit and long bench seats along the walls.
“Can you run this thing?” Han asked Andevid.
“Never been in it,” Andevid told him. “I know which tunnel they used to get it to the docking ring, though.”
Sian had dropped back by the doorway to listen for pursuit. “I can hear them banging around somewhere above us,” she s
aid quietly. “Must be searching the place.”
“Heavy machinery is the same all over,” Kifar said. “Should be easy enough to figure out.”
Han swung into the hatch and folded himself into the borer’s tiny cockpit. “That depends on who built it.”
Leia motioned for the others to follow him. Andevid and Terae stepped lightly across and Kifar followed, ducking and turning sideways to make it through the borer’s narrow hatchway. Sian and Leia boarded last. Han had already gotten the life support started, so Leia sealed the hatch.
Sian activated a small console on the wall and tried to get the display to come up as Kifar and Andevid looked over her shoulders. “I think this is a mapping utility,” she muttered. “Yes, here we go.”
A small holoimage of the mine sprang to life in midair, a few centimeters from Leia’s nose. She stepped back to get a better view. Even at first glance, it was far more complete than the map Han and Sian had managed to copy earlier: it showed the asteroid riddled with tunnels that followed the paths of what must have been veins of various ores. A few sections seemed to have been left untouched, but not many.
“The other map only showed the tunnels and traverses meant for the small transports and droids,” Sian said. “This one has all the tunnels for the actual digging equipment. Solo, can you get this up in the cockpit?”
“Hold it … Yeah.”
Leia stepped forward and looked over Han’s shoulder. The controls were complicated and labeled with symbols she didn’t recognize. “Can you drive this thing?” she asked, keeping her voice low. From this angle she could see blood matting the hair at Han’s temple and recalled belatedly that he must have had some kind of head injury. She hoped he didn’t have a concussion.
“Sure. Sort of. Maybe,” Han murmured, more concerned with figuring out the operation of the controls. A smaller version of the map had appeared above the console. There was no viewport: this vehicle had been designed to travel through solid rock or the darkness of a completed tunnel. Leia felt the deck vibrate as the powerful engine rumbled to life. Then she grabbed a safety handle as the vehicle rolled away from the control center, maneuvering lightly on repulsors. A sensor view of the cavern that had appeared below the map rolled with it, showing the walls and the other moored mining machines in outline.
