Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  Expecting another volley of cannon bolts at any instant, Han grabbed C-3PO with both hands and spun away from the doorway, dragging the droid down beside him.

  “Stay down!”

  C-3PO clattered to the grating beside Han. “Very well,” he said. “May I inquire why?”

  “No,” Han said, realizing by the lack of cannon bolts that he had overreacted. He glanced back toward the door and found Zekk cautiously peering around the corner into the corridor. “Is he … is he gone?”

  Zekk nodded and stepped fully in front of the doorway. “You got him. Nice throw.”

  “I meant Artoo,” Han said, standing. “Is he … you know?”

  “Artoo is gone?” C-3PO scrambled to his feet with surprising grace and clanged past Han into the doorway. “They melted Artoo?”

  A sharp whistle sounded from the atrium behind him. Han turned and was relieved to see R2-D2 racing across the catwalk bridge toward the storage bunker. The rear half the droid’s outer shell was scorched and pocked with melt-circles, but any damage he had suffered had certainly not affected his mobility functions.

  At the other end of the catwalk, Leia and Jaina were kneeling in the bunker’s open hatch, ready to provide covering fire. Fifteen meters below them, Kunor Bann was standing guard for Squad Saav’etu—which meant Yaqeel and Natua were already inside the storage bunker looking for the Horn kids. Seff, he knew, would be on the balcony three levels below, protecting the route through which Squad Saav’etu had entered the facility. Judging by the lack of cannon fire down there, he had also been successful in taking out the vehicle attacking them.

  “Artoo, what are you doing out there?” C-3PO inquired. “You were stationed at the data interface.”

  R2-D2 replied with an irate tweedle, then extended a third tread and bumped over the hatch threshold, entering the bunker.

  “There’s no need to take that tone with me,” C-3PO called after the astromech. “Of course I’m happy to see you in one piece!”

  Han turned to Zekk, then hitched a thumb at the corridor. “Maybe it would be better if we had a Jedi keeping an eye on things outside. My throwing arm is good, but—”

  “It’s not the Force,” Zekk finished. He flipped his palm up and turned his fingers toward Han. Two of Han’s last three thermal detonators rose off the equipment vest and floated into the Jedi’s grasp. “Be fast.”

  “Will do.” Han waved C-3PO toward the bridge, then activated his throat mike. “How’s it going in the bunker? Have you found those carbonite pods?”

  “You could say that,” Yaqeel replied. “I guess.”

  “You guess?” Han replied. “You do know what a carbonite pod looks like, right? Big black rectangle with a face in it? Mouth frozen midscream?”

  “Han, just get over here,” Leia said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Okay,” Han said. When he turned to the catwalk, he saw that he’d have to open the gate for C-3PO—apparently, everyone else had just gone over. “On our way. Cover us.”

  “Copy that,” Jaina said. “But run.”

  “Run?” C-3PO said. “As I tried to explain to Captain Solo, my servomotors are not equipped to noooooo!”

  C-3PO’s objection ended in the droid equivalent of a scream when Natua Wan appeared next to Jaina and used the Force to bring him flying toward the bunker. Han pulled the repeating blaster off his shoulder and raced after the droid in a crouching sprint. Even before the snipers opened fire, Jaina began to pick them off, silencing two with a series of quick shots.

  Han turned his T-21 in the direction Jaina wasn’t shooting and, forgetting he had not switched the power level back to STUN, began to lay his own suppression fire. By the time he reached the storage bunker, the steady stream of high-power bolts had triggered the automatic fire-suppression systems. The ceiling nozzles began to pour retardant foam into the atrium.

  “Nice trick,” Jaina said, speaking from behind her breath mask. She and Natua stepped aside to let Han race through the hatch. “Is that supposed to be camouflage or something?”

  “Hey, if the Balmorran infantry can use smoke curtains,” Han said, flipping the T-21’s power level to STUN, “I can use a foam screen.”

  Jaina rolled her eyes. “Whatever you say, Dad.”

  Han shot her a smug wink, then turned to survey the interior of the storage bunker … and felt his jaw drop.

  He was standing inside a huge refrigerated cylinder, on one of more than a dozen circular balconies. Hanging along the walls on each level were several hundred carbonite pods, each connected to a power supply and a monitoring station by a shielded cable.

  “Bloah!” Han cursed. “We’re gonna need more transport!”

  “Captain Solo, there’s no way we can take everyone in here,” Natua said. The Falleen was probably exuding calming pheromones, but if so, they had no effect through Han’s face mask. “And even if we could, there’s no way to know whether we should.”

  Han frowned at her. “Of course we should!” He could not help thinking of his own experiences in carbonite, of the frozen eternity of fear and the terrible anguish of awakening. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be frozen in carbonite?”

  “Han, all Natua is saying is that we can’t help them all now,” Leia said, stepping to his side. “We came to get Valin and Jysella. And it’s going to take more time than we hoped just to find them. This place is huge.”

  “No kidding,” Han said. “Who are all these guys?”

  Natua shrugged. “Political prisoners? Troublemaker inmates?”

  “Daala’s old buddies?” Han offered.

  “That’s as good a guess as any,” Leia replied. “All we know for sure is that psychotic Jedi aren’t the only ones Daala has been storing in carbonite.”

  “Assuming it is Daala,” Jaina said. “This could be something Colonel Retk is doing on his own. It has a certain Yaka sensibility.”

  “Yeah,” Han said. “It’s sure sick.”

  He began to count, first the number of pods hanging along a ten-meter length of wall, then the number of balconies inside the storage bunker. By the time he finished and came up with an estimated number of pods, he felt nauseated.

  “Over four thousand,” he said. “Even if we only spend a second looking at each one, it could take us …”

  Han started the calculations, and for once he was grateful when C-3PO jumped in with an answer.

  “Eighteen point three minutes,” the droid supplied. “That figure assumes that there are four people searching, and that they spend no more than five seconds with each level change.”

  Natua turned toward the nearest set of stairs. “I’ll start at the top.”

  Han caught her shoulder and shook his head. “Hold on,” he said. “We don’t have eighteen minutes. We don’t even have a quarter of that.”

  Natua’s face scales darkened. “We aren’t going to give up.” Her tone made it clear that she was issuing a proclamation, not asking a question. “Not after we’ve come this far.”

  “Of course not,” Han said. He turned to R2-D2. “You, start recording. We want the layout, the interfaces, and as many pod faces as you can capture. When we get back to the Temple, the Council is going to want to know who all these people are, and anything you can give them will help.”

  R2-D2 gave an obedient chirp and spun toward the nearest pod.

  “Pardon me, Captain Solo,” C-3PO said. “But wouldn’t it be better to find a dataport and have Artoo simply ask Xyn for the Jedi Horns’ location?”

  “No time for that,” Han said. “If it were that easy, Artoo would have done it already.”

  “Then how are we going to find the Horns?” C-3PO asked.

  “We’re not,” Han replied. “You are.”

  “Me?”

  “Sure,” Han said. “The signal neutralizer is off, and we know those transmitters Mirax planted are in here somewhere.”

  “Of course!” Leia shot Han one of those admiring smiles that always ma
de his day. “See-Threepio has a full-spectrum receiver.”

  “That’s true,” C-3PO said. “But I fail to see how that’s going to help me find the Horns. They won’t be calling us on their comlinks.”

  “No, but those tracking bugs are,” Jaina said. “Taryn said they disguise their microbursts as background radiation, remember?”

  “Right,” Han said, turning back to C-3PO. “So do a full-spectrum scan and—”

  “There!” C-3PO extended an arm and nearly swept Natua off her feet as he lurched to the safety rail. “Just one level below us. I recognize the signal from our planning session.”

  “Good job!” Han slapped C-3PO on the back and—ignoring the droid’s protest—turned to Natua and Leia. “Why don’t you two help Yaqeel and Seff bring up the pods. Jaina and I will get started on the extraction strategy.”

  Instead of running for the stairs, Leia and Natua simply leapt off the balcony, grabbing the safety rail with one hand and using it swing themselves onto the level below. Han returned to the hatch and knelt beside Jaina, then removed the last of the stun grenades from his vest and arrayed them on the floor. He still had the single thermal detonator that Zekk had left him.

  “Now comes the fun part.” He peered out into atrium, which looked like it had been hit with a blizzard of flame retardant. “Do you know where the snipers are?”

  “Sure.” Jaina waved her hand in an arc, indicating the upper balconies lining the atrium wall opposite them. “Pretty much everywhere.”

  “So we’re not going to have trouble hitting them, huh?”

  “I doubt it.” She looked over and said, “You know, Dad, this wouldn’t worry me so much if you were a Jedi Master.”

  Han smiled. “Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “I’ve got my luck—and it’s gotten me this far, hasn’t it?”

  Jaina smiled back. “I suppose it has.” She kissed him on the cheek, then reached over and flipped his repeating blaster’s power setting back to FULL. “Just in case, though, let’s give them a reason to keep their heads down.”

  Han barely heard this last part because his attention was fixed on her hand. Actually, it was fixed on her ring finger, where he had just noticed that a very familiar, very expensive engagement band had reappeared.

  “Hey, where’d that come from?” he asked. “I thought you told Jag to toss that in the lake?”

  Jaina blushed and looked away. “I never told him that.”

  “Something like that,” Han said. “So what gives?”

  “Nothing, Dad,” she said. “Don’t read too much into it, okay? We’re not sure what it means ourselves yet. I’ll tell you later.”

  “But it means something?” Han pressed. “This is the real reason he tracked us down before he went back to the Pellaeon, right?”

  “Dad!” Jaina said. “Don’t you have an escape to organize?”

  “Piece of cake.” Han activated his throat mike. “Zekk, how’s it looking outside?”

  “We’re definitely going to be on the holo tonight,” Zekk said. “There are about a dozen newsvans filming me as we speak. I see BAU, HNE, HoloNews, and … a lot more, Captain.”

  Translation: Zekk was worried about eavesdroppers, but Doran and Bandy—in the MSHoloNews van—were in pickup position.

  “Okay,” Han said. “What about our ride?”

  “The Cygnus-7 is having trouble getting back to us,” he said. “Their communications have been compromised, and every time they try to circle back to the detention center, they run into more GAS sleds. They think they’ve got twenty or thirty trying to box them in already.”

  Translation: Turi and Taryn were deliberately allowing their communications to be monitored, trying to draw off as many GAS pursuit vehicles as possible.

  “Stang!” Han said, pretending to be dismayed. He knew better than to think their comlinks’ Jedi encryption had been broken, but Zekk’s caution made it sound as though he were relaying their transmissions directly to the Cygnus-7—for the sole purpose of misleading GAS, of course. “We can’t get out of here without that Cygnus-Seven. Tell them to report in …”

  Han glanced back and saw Leia leading Yaqeel and the other two Jedi toward him at a sprint. Between them, floating on tiny repulsorlift engines, were two carbonite pods bearing the terror-stricken faces of Valin and Jysella Horn.

  “Two minutes,” Han said into his throat mike. “If the Cygni can’t shake free by then, we’ll head for the undercity and try to escape on foot.”

  Translation: We’ll be at the pickup point in two minutes. Make sure Doran and Bandy are waiting.

  “The undercity?” Zekk replied. “On foot?”

  “In two minutes, that may be our only way out,” Han said. “It’s better than rotting in a GAS prison cell … right, Kunor?”

  Kunor’s surprised voice sounded over Han’s earpiece. “Uh, sure, Captain Solo.” Across the atrium, Kunor’s white-clothed figure began to race along the access balcony toward a stairway that would take him up to Zekk’s level. “If you want to make a run for it, I’m with you.”

  Translation: I’m on my way up to the extraction point.

  “Okay, then I’ll start a count.” Zekk sounded truly terrified—which was how Han knew he was acting. The only thing Zekk feared was the dark side, and he had even faced that down a couple of times. “We’ll talk in two minutes.”

  Translation: Get yourself over here. The ride leaves on time.

  As Leia and the others approached, Han stood and laid out his plan in less than ten seconds.

  When he was finished, Jaina asked, “Dad, are you sure you should be one of the ones pulling the pods? Without the Force, you’ll be vulnerable enough.”

  “That’s why I’m going last. By the time I start across, there won’t be anyone left shooting.” Han checked his chrono. “Enough talk. Just remember, don’t stop for anything. Get to the extraction point, get aboard, and get going.”

  He nodded to Natua and Seff, who immediately ignited their lightsabers and charged onto the catwalk. A storm of colored bolts rained down on them from the balconies. Instead of leaping into an acrobatic routine, the two Jedi remained on foot, intentionally drawing fire, their blades weaving glowing spheres of color about their heads as they batted bolts aside.

  Han and the two Solo women made good use of the tactic. Han armed stun grenades and tossed them out into the atrium, and Leia or Jaina immediately sent them flying at the guards who had revealed their positions by attacking. By the time the two Jedi Knights were halfway across the bridge, the blasterfire had faded to a drizzle.

  Han tapped Jaina on the shoulder. “You and Yaqeel are next. Go.”

  Jaina tossed her blaster aside and launched herself from the hatch, snatching her lightsaber off her belt and activating it in mid-stride. Unlike Natua and Seff, she merely held the blade at a high guard, flicking it back and forth almost leisurely whenever one of the remaining snipers gathered enough courage to take a shot—and risk the flurry of bolts that Han and Leia sent flying back at him.

  As soon as Jaina had advanced four meters onto the bridge, Yaqeel ushered R2-D2 and C-3PO through the hatch and started to herd them across. Despite C-3PO’s predictions of doom and certain destruction, the sniper fire dwindled to nothing after Yaqeel batted aside a single bolt.

  When the droids reached the halfway point on the bridge, Han let his repeating blaster dangle from its shoulder strap and rose. He shot a smirk across at Leia, then turned toward the carbonite pods hovering on their repulsorlifts.

  “See? Nothing to it.”

  A deafening chorus of clangs reverberated through the storage bunker as all of its hatches slammed shut simultaneously. Han spun back around to find Leia sitting on the deck grating, her hands braced behind her and her mouth hanging agape. She was staring dead ahead, where an oily durasteel panel now blocked their only escape route.

  Leia slowly turned a pair of angry brown eyes in his direction. “You just had to say it.”

  “It’s not my fau
lt!” Han said, stabbing a finger against a button on the control panel. When the hatch remained closed, he added, “Artoo didn’t say anything about Xyn changing her mind!”

  “My guess is someone helped her,” Leia said. She rose and stepped over to examine the hatch. “That’s a turadium shield alloy. It’s going take forever to cut through it.”

  “Yeah, well, we don’t have forever.” Han checked his chrono. “We’ve got sixty seconds.”

  Leia’s brow furrowed. “You don’t think they would leave without …” She let the sentence trail off, then shook her head. “Forget it. They don’t have a choice.”

  Han nodded. “That newsvan doesn’t have armor or weaponry,” he said. “They have to take off without us—or get shot down.”

  “I’ll let them know.” Leia activated her throat mike, then frowned. “But not with this thing. The signal neutralizer is back on. We’ve lost the comlink.”

  Her eyes grew distant and unfocused as she reached out in the Force—most likely to Jaina, with whom she had the strongest connection. Han took the chance to glance around the bunker, searching for any means of escape Xyn might have overlooked. It was eerily silent inside the bunker, and only dimly lit. The blinking status lights on all those thousands of carbonite pods made him think of a Coruscant skylane at dusk. The temperature was not uncomfortable yet, but he knew it was cold enough to cause hypothermia within a few hours.

  Failing to see any obvious means of escape, Han pulled the datapad from his vest pocket and rechecked the schematic R2-D2 had provided earlier. It took only a moment to find what he needed. He looked up into the top of the bunker, which curved into a vaguely conical dome about thirty meters overhead.

  Han turned the schematic toward Leia and pointed toward the bullet-shaped peak. “This thing sticks up through the roof. I remember seeing that when we set up the hoverscafs.”

  “Me, too,” Leia said. “So?”

  He tapped a small globe hanging from his equipment vest. “So I’ve still got a thermal detonator.”