by Timothy Zahn
Mara twisted around. A half-dozen security guards were hurrying toward her from the lower staircase, weapons at the ready. Behind them was Bel Iblis. "You all right?" he called to her.
"I'm fine," she grunted, rolling further back from the corner. Just in time; the Imperials on the landing, their little surprise attack having fizzled, opened fire in full force. Mara got to her feet, ducking away from the rain of stone chips. "Calrissian's gone down to the hangar," she told Bel Iblis, raising her voice over the din.
"Yes, we passed him on the way up," the other nodded as the security guards hurried forward. "What happened here?"
"Couple of latecomers to the party," Mara told him, jerking her head back toward the corridor. "Probably on their way back from the comm section. Their friends on the landing tried to keep my attention while they sneaked up on me. Just about worked, too."
"I'm glad it didn't," Bel Iblis said, shifting his attention over her shoulder. "Lieutenant?"
"Not going to be easy, sir," the guard commander called over the noise. "We've got an E-Web repeating blaster on its way up from the armory—soon as it gets here, we can cut them right off that landing. Until then, about all we can do is keep them busy and hope they do something stupid."
Bel Iblis nodded slowly, his lips compressed into a tight line, a hint of strain around his eyes. It was a look Mara had seen only rarely, and then only on the faces of the best military commanders: the expression of a leader preparing to send men to their deaths. "We can't wait," he said. The strain was still there, but his voice was firm. "The group upstairs will have Solo's door open well before that. We'll have to take them now."
The guard commander took a deep breath. "Understood, sir. Right, men, you heard the General. Let's find ourselves some cover and get to it."
Mara took a step closer to Bel Iblis. "They'll never do it in time," she said quietly.
"I know that," the other said tightly. "But the more we can take out now, the fewer we'll have to deal with when the rest of them come downstairs."
His gaze shifted again over her shoulder. "When," he added softly, "they have hostages."
There was one final stutter of heavy blaster fire, a vaguely metallic crash, and then silence. "Oh, dear," Threepio moaned from the corner where he was trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. "I believe the front security door has failed."
"Glad you're here to tell us these things," Han said irritably, his eyes roving restlessly around Winter's bedroom. It was so much useless exercise, Leia knew—everything they could possibly use in their defense had already been moved into position. Winter's bed and memento chest were against the two doors leading out of here, and the wardrobe had been moved near the window and tipped on its side to serve as a makeshift firing barricade. And that was it. Until the intruders broke through one or both of the doors, there was nothing to do but wait.
Leia took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. Ever since the first of these kidnapping attempts on Bimmisaari, she'd been able to think of it as the Imperials gunning for her and her alone—not an especially pleasant thought, but one that she'd become more or less accustomed to after years of warfare.
This time it was different. This time, instead of being after her and her unborn twins, they were after her babies. Babies they could physically take from her arms and hide away where she might never see them again.
She squeezed her lightsaber tightly. No. It was not going to happen. She wouldn't let it.
There was a vaguely wooden-sounding crash from outside. "There goes the couch," Han muttered. Another crash— "And the chair. Didn't think they would slow 'em down any."
"It was worth a try," Leia said.
"Yeah." Han snorted under his breath. "You know, I've been telling you for months we needed more furniture in this place."
Leia smiled tightly and squeezed his hand. Trust Han to try to take the edge off a tense situation. "You have not," she told him. "You're never here anyway." She looked back at Winter, sitting on the floor beneath the transparisteel windows with one twin cradled in each arm. "How are they doing?"
"I think they're waking up," Winter murmured back.
"Yes, they are," Leia confirmed, giving each baby a quick mental caress with as much reassurance as she could manage.
"Try to keep them quiet," Han muttered. "Our pals out there don't need any help."
Leia nodded, feeling a fresh tension squeezing her heart. Both bedrooms—theirs and Winter's—opened out into the living area of the suite, giving the attackers a fifty-fifty chance at picking the door their targets were hiding behind. With the kind of weaponry they obviously had, a wrong choice wouldn't lose them more than a few minutes; but a few minutes could easily mean the difference between life and death.
The thud of a heavy blaster shot came through the wall from the direction of their room, and for a moment Leia began to breathe again. But only for a moment. A second later the sound was repeated, this time from the door in front of them. Faced with two doors, the Imperials had decided to break down both.
She turned to Han, to find him looking at her. "It'll still slow them down," he reminded her, the words more soothing than the sense behind them. "They have to split up their firepower. We've still got some time."
"Now if we just had something to do with it," Leia said, looking futilely around the room. Years of moving around the galaxy with the Rebellion's Supply and Procurement section had gotten Winter into the habit of traveling light, and there simply wasn't anything else in here that they could use.
Another volley of shots came from outside, followed by a faint splintering sound. The regular wooden bedroom doors would be down soon, leaving only the inner security doors. Leia looked around the room again, desperation starting to cloud her thoughts. The wardrobe, the bed, the memento chest; that was it. Nothing but the security doors, the transparisteel windows, and bare walls.
Bare walls . . .
She was suddenly and freshly aware of the lightsaber clutched in her hand. "Han—why don't we just get out of here?" she said, the first cautious wisp of hope flicking through her. "I can cut us through the wall to the next suite over with my lightsaber. And we wouldn't have to stop there—we could be halfway down the corridor before they get that door down."
"Yeah, I already thought of that," Han said tightly. "Problem is, they probably thought of it, too."
Leia swallowed. Yes—the Imperials would certainly be ready for them to try that. "How about going down, then?" she persisted. "Or up? Do you think they'd be ready for us to go through the ceiling?"
"You've seen Thrawn in action," Han countered. "What do you think?"
Leia sighed, the brief glint of hope fading. He was right. If the Grand Admiral had planned this attack personally, they might as well open the security door and surrender right now. Everything they could possibly come up with would already have been anticipated in exquisite detail, with counters planned for each move.
She shook her head sharply. "No," she said aloud. "He's not infallible. We've outthought him before, and we can do it again." She turned around to look at Winter and the twins, still sleeping under the window.
The window . . .
"All right," she said slowly. "What if we go out the window?"
He stared at her. "Out the window to where?"
"Wherever we can get to," she said. The blasters outside were pounding at the security doors now. "Up, down, sideways—I don't care."
Han still had that astonished look on his face. "Sweetheart, in case you hadn't noticed, those walls are flat stone. Even Chewie couldn't climb it without mountain gear."
"That's why they won't expect us to go that way," Leia said, glancing at the window again. "Maybe I can carve out some hand-and footholds with the lightsaber—"
She stopped, giving the window a second look. It hadn't been a trick of the room's lighting: there were indeed a pair of headlights approaching. "Han . . ."
He swiveled to look. "Uh-oh," he muttered. "More
company. Great."
"Could it be a rescue team?" Leia suggested hesitantly.
"Doubt it," Han shook his head, studying the approaching lights. "It's only been a few minutes since the shooting started. Wait a minute . . ."
Leia looked back. Outside, the headlights had begun to flicker. She watched the pattern, trying unsuccessfully to match it with any code she knew—
"Captain Solo!" Threepio spoke up, sounding excited. "As you know, I am fluent in over six million forms of communication—"
"It's Chewie," Han cut him off, scrambling to his feet and waving both hands in front of the window.
"—and this signal appears to be related to one of the codes used by professional sabacc players when dealing with—"
"We've got to get rid of this window," Han said, throwing a look back at the door. "Leia?"
"Right." Leia dropped her blaster and scrambled to her feet, lightsaber in hand.
"—cheating by third or fourth parties to the game—"
"Shut up, Goldenrod," Han snapped at Threepio, helping Winter and the twins out from under the window. The lights outside were getting rapidly closer, and now Leia could make out the faint shape of the Falcon in the backwash of light from the city lights below. A memory flickered back: the Noghri kidnapping attempt on Bpfassh had used a fake Falcon as a lure. But the Imperials wouldn't have thought to use a sabacc player's code . . . would they?
It almost didn't matter. She would rather face enemies aboard a ship than sit here waiting for them to walk in on her like this. And well before they got on board, she ought to be able to sense whether it was Chewbacca out there or not. Stepping to the window, she ignited her lightsaber and raised it high—
And behind her, with a final explosive crash, the security door blew in.
Leia spun around, catching a brief glimpse through the smoke and sparks of two men pushing aside the memento chest and diving to the floor as Han grabbed her arm and yanked her to the floor. A covering volley of blaster fire spattered against the wall and window as she shut down her lightsaber and scooped up her blaster again. At her side Han was already returning fire, ignoring the danger as he crouched half protected by the wardrobe. Four more Imperials were at the doorway now, adding their contribution to the rapid splintering of the wardrobe. Leia clenched her teeth, firing back as well as long practice and the Force would let her, knowing full well how futile it was. The longer this firefight went on, the greater the chance that a stray shot would hit one of her babies—
And suddenly, unexpectedly, something touched her mind. A mental pressure; half suggestion, half demand. And what it told her . . .
She took a deep breath. "Stop!" she shouted over the din. "Stop shooting. We surrender."
The firing hesitated, then came to a halt. Laying her blaster on top of the shattered wardrobe, she raised her hands as the two Imperials on the floor got cautiously to their feet and started forward. And tried to ignore Han's stunned disbelief.
The balustrade near the rightmost stairway erupted in a cloud of chips and stone dust as the concentrated fire of the security guards finally broke through it. The answering fire from the landing caught one of the guards as the balustrade collapsed, sending him flopping backward to lie still. Mara eased an inconspicuous eye around the corner, peering through the debris and the blinding flashes of blaster bolts, wondering if in all the mess they'd managed to take out the Imperial they were trying for.
They had. Through the clearing smoke she could make out the shape of a body, scorched and dust-covered. "They got one," she reported, turning back to Bel Iblis. "Three to go."
"Plus however many there are upstairs," he reminded her, his face grim. "Let's hope the legendary Solo luck extends to Leia and the babies and anyone else up there they take hostage."
"That's the second time you've mentioned hostages," Mara said.
Bel Iblis shrugged. "A hostage screen is their only way out of here," he said. "And I'm sure they know it. Their only other option is to go up, and I've already told Calrissian to scramble some fighters to close off the airspace above the Palace. With the turbolift blocked, this stairway is it."
Mara stared at him, an icy shiver running abruptly through her. What with all the rush and commotion since this thing had started, she hadn't had time to pause and consider all the nuances of the situation. But now, Bel Iblis's words and her own distant memories had combined in a blinding flash of insight.
For a handful of heartbeats she stood there, thinking it through, wondering if it were real or a construct of her own imagination. But it held up. Logical, tactically brilliant, with Grand Admiral Thrawn's fingerprints all over it. It had to be the answer.
And it would have worked . . . except for a single flaw. Thrawn obviously didn't know she was here. Or didn't believe she'd really been the Emperor's Hand.
"I'll be back," she told Bel Iblis, stepping around him and hurrying back down the hallway. She rounded a comer into a cross corridor, eyes studying the carved frieze running along the top of the wall. Somewhere along here would be the subtle marking she was looking for.
There it was. She stopped in front of the otherwise ordinary-looking paneling, glancing both ways down the corridor as she did so. Skywalker and Organa Solo might accept her past associations without any qualms, but she doubted anyone else here would be quite so blase about it. But the corridor was deserted. Stretching up to the frieze, she slid two fingers into the proper indentations, letting the warmth of her hand soak into the sensors there.
And with a faint click the panel unlocked.
She slipped inside, closing the panel behind her, and looked around. Built more or less parallel to the turbolift shafts, the Emperor's private passageways were by necessity narrow and cramped. But they were well lit, dust-free, and soundproof. And, more importantly, they would take her past the Imperials on the presentation landing.
Two minutes and three staircases later, she was at the exit that opened out onto Organa Solo's floor. Taking a couple of deep breaths, preparing herself for combat, she stepped through the panel and out into the hallway.
With the battle raging three staircases below, she would have expected to find a secondary rear guard stationed near their bolthole. She was right: two men in the by-now familiar Palace Security uniforms were crouched against the walls with their backs to her, keeping watch on the far end of the corridor. The noise of heavy blaster fire coming from the other direction was more than enough to cover her quiet footsteps, and it was likely neither of them had any idea she was even there as she shot them down. A quick check to make sure they were out of the fight, and she was heading down the corridor toward Organa Solo's suite.
She had reached it and was just starting to pick her way across the debris from the shattered outer door when the blaster fire from inside was suddenly punctuated by an explosive crash.
She clenched her teeth as the blasters of the defenders opened up, their noise mixing with that of the attackers. Rushing straight in without any attempt at stealth or cover would be a good way to get herself killed. But if she moved in more cautiously, someone in there was likely to be killed before she could get into firing position.
Unless . . .
Leia Organa Solo, she called silently, stretching out through the Force as she had earlier when Calrissian had gone for his blaster. No more certain now than she had been then that Organa Solo could even hear her. It's Mara. I'm coming up behind them. Surrender. You hear me? Surrender. Surrender. Surrender.
And as she reached the outer door she heard Organa Solo's shout, barely audible over the blaster fire. "Stop! Stop shooting. We surrender."
Carefully, Mara eased an eye around the door. There they were: four Imperials standing or kneeling at the blackened edges of the doorway, blasters trained warily inside, with two more inside starting to get up from prone positions across the ruined security door. None of them giving the slightest bit of attention in her direction.
