“Even better,” Leia said.
Then items poured through the slot in the door. Han’s blaster. Leia’s lightsaber. Other objects.
“You have got to be kidding,” Han said.
Leia nodded. “Well, that makes this my favorite prison ever.”
They scrambled to the door and sorted out their possessions. Leia flipped open the datapad, read the words, R2-D2 STANDING BY. AUDIO OPEN. PRESS “ADVANCE” FOR ESCAPE ROUTE MAP AND “RETURN” FOR TEXT.
Leia broke into a brilliant smile. “Artoo?”
STANDING BY. SUGGEST YOU COMMENCE YOUR ESCAPE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I AM UNABLE TO PREVENT THE MONITOR DROIDS FROM OBSERVING YOUR CELL. AT ANY MOMENT THEY MAY BEGIN WONDERING WHY YOU ARE NOT EATING YOUR FOOD.
“Understood,” Leia said. She hit the ADVANCE button, taking a quick moment to note the first few elements of their escape path. “Short hallway, metal-bar obstacle—no problem—cut through the floor into the maintenance machinery section. Got it. Ready?” She handed the datapad to Han.
“Ready.” Han took up position beside the door, his blaster in hand.
Leia lit her lightsaber. She drove the point of the gleaming red bar of energy into the door at floor level, dragged it across the bottom of the door. She felt heavy resistance that had to be the metal bars there. Once she was past that, she repeated the process at the top of the door, her blade not quite horizontal because she was not tall enough to hold the lightsaber that high.
Once she was past the heaviest resistance there, she retreated into a defensive stance and nodded.
Han shoved. The door slid halfway open. He snatched back his hand as two guards on the other side fired blasters through the opening.
Leia caught both shots with her blade, batting one to the side, the other back through the opening. It struck a blue-clad guard there in the chest and he went down, his uniform flaming and smoking.
Han leaned out and fired twice through the opening, catching the other guard in the side and hurling him out of the way. He shoved at the door again, and it opened the rest of the way.
Han and Leia rounded the corner to the barred exit from this cell block. Han waited behind and began firing back the way they had come while Leia went to work on the bars, cutting through three of them at head height and again at ankle height. Incoming blasterfire flashed past Han’s position, blackening the wall behind him. “Got it?” he called.
“Got it. Come on.” She slid through the gap and turned to face Han.
He raced to her, leapt through the gap. In those few seconds, prison guards skidded into view past the corner he’d vacated. They began firing; Leia swatted the bolts from the air, reveling at being able to do something so simple, so gratifying, so direct. Some of her deflections sailed back the way they’d come and forced the guards into hiding.
This corridor was nothing but a duracrete tube angling gently upward. Han raced up it, pacing off a distance. He consulted the datapad in his hand, then fired his blaster into the floor, marking one point. “That’s our mark.”
Leia raced to join him and plunged her lightsaber into the floor there, dragging it around in a crude circle. Han waited until he saw the first set of feet appear at the bottom of the ramp, then began firing on the pursuers. “How’s it coming?”
“Slow. I forgot at first to angle the cut outward instead of inward.”
“What difference—never mind.” Cutting through the duracrete with the edges angled inward as they descended created a plug that would have to be hauled up; cutting it the other way would yield a plug that should just fall away.
Except that it didn’t. Leia finished her cut and stepped back, panting, and the plug remained stubbornly in place.
Han continued firing. “Artoo!” he shouted. “How thick is the duracrete here, anyway?” He stole a glance at the datapad screen.
LESS THAN A METER.
“Then why doesn’t it fall?”
Aggravated, Leia stamped on the plug. It remained obstinantly in place. “Check the map again,” she said. “Maybe we’ll have to cut through somewhere else.”
“You check it!” Han tossed her the datapad and fired three times in quick succession. Return fire bounced off the duracrete around them. “I’m obviously not fit to read a map.”
“No, you’ve got it right.”
“Fall, blast it! Fall!” Han stomped on the plug. It didn’t vibrate. He leapt clean upon it.
It fell.
R2-D2 sent the command through the cable that snaked out through the false escape pod to the landing bay door computer datajack. Immediately, his audio sensors picked up the grinding noise of the bay roof levering open.
He ejected the cable from his own datajack and watched it snake down through the hole to the bay floor below.
With a little musical squeal that betrayed his eagerness, the astromech rolled out of the escape pod and up to the Falcon’s bridge. He plugged into the dataport there and began an abbreviated, computer-speed power-up sequence. It wouldn’t take long for the spaceport authority to realize that a supposedly unoccupied bay was opening to release a supposedly impounded transport, and he wanted to be out of here by then.
It wasn’t every day R2-D2 got to fly the Millennium Falcon, after all.
Captain Mudlath was in his office, calculating just what he could purchase with the Solo reward, when his comlink buzzed into life. “Captain,” his administrative aide told him, “the Solos have escaped.”
Mudlath actually felt himself grow dizzy for a moment as adrenaline jolted through him. “This had better be a joke,” he said. “And a funny enough joke that I laugh until I forget about killing you.”
“They’re not out of the prison,” his aide said. “They won’t get out. But they’re out of their cell.”
Mudlath lowered his voice to a near-whisper. “I suggest you put them back in their cell.” Not waiting for a reply, he switched the comlink off, then sat back to try to persuade his stomach muscles to unclench.
If he didn’t get them back … well, his Peace Brigade superiors would not only decline to reward him for the capture of the Solos, but they might choose to take the news badly. And if things continued as they were, and the Peace Brigade became the legitimate government of this backwater planet, he might have to leave. Quickly. Surreptitiously.
Jarred back into activity, he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of identichips taken from prisoners. Perhaps, with a little modification, one of them would serve to get him off-world.
The duracrete under Han’s feet fell into darkness, but only about three meters, a deep enough drop for him to begin to worry that he was dropping into a mine shaft, a short enough drop that, with his experience, he was able to absorb most of the shock of impact with bent knees, to roll forward off the plug and across another hard floor to come up on his feet with a minimum of bruises.
A minimum. Not none. His middle-aged back would feel that one in the morning. Amazingly, he still had his blaster pistol in hand.
He was in another duracrete tunnel, this one illuminated only by the hole overhead. A hole in which Leia’s face suddenly appeared. “Are you all right?”
“Get down here!”
She leapt in headfirst, rotating in midair to land on her feet atop the plug. Her landing was so light compared to his that he couldn’t help but grin. “You do that just like a Jedi.”
“Hush. Where to now?” She handed him the datapad.
He checked the datapad screen and turned in the approximate direction they’d been running while in the tunnel above. “There’ll be a metal door there giving us access into a metal scrap compactor. We take a left and get out the door at the end.”
“No, Han. Not another compactor. Once in a lifetime is enough.”
The map on the screen suddenly blanked, replaced by words: I INITIATED A POWER SHUTDOWN ON THE COMPACTOR. IT CANNOT BE ACTIVATED UNTIL IT GOES THROUGH A FULL START-UP PROCEDURE. IT WILL BE THREE HOURS AT LEAST.
“Well,” Leia all
owed, “that’s all right, then.”
More shapes blocked the hole above. Han and Leia ran before they could begin firing.
Seeing through the Falcon’s holocam eyes and sensor screens, R2-D2 sent the transport up on repulsorlifts. The transport wobbled like a plate being balanced atop a stick and he marvelled that humans, with their reflexes that crawled in relation to the speed of droid calculations, could learn to pilot vehicles so well.
He managed to get the Falcon clear of the bay before its ceiling panels began to swing down again. His trill was a little like laughter—the spaceport authorities had noticed just a little too late. Now that he was above the bay, he was clear of whatever comm-jamming equipment they had put in place; he could once again detect and interact with Han and Leia’s datapad.
Now he had to make sure he got the Falcon to the prison. Not just to the prison, he reminded himself, but to the prison and in one piece.
Furious, Han kicked at the pile of metal scrap leaning against the exit door from the compacting chamber. “Artoo, you didn’t say anything about having to dig our way out!”
SORRY. THE COMPUTER SYSTEM DIDN’T MENTION THAT THE COMPACTOR WAS HALF FULL. THEY ARE IN VIOLATION OF THEIR OWN REGULATIONS. THAT IS PROBABLY WHY THEY DO NOT HAVE THE LOAD LISTED.
“Leia, can you cut through this? Or through the wall?”
Leia bounced her lightsaber blade off the glossy blue wall of the chamber and shook her head. “Magnetically sealed. I can cut through the pile. In a few minutes.” Then she heard the sound of mechanical voices from behind her. She spun. “Which we don’t have.”
A security droid entered through the door Han and Leia had used just moments before. The droid fired as soon as his barrel cleared the door and continued to fire as he sprinted to the wall opposite the door, where he took up position, laying down covering fire.
Leia batted the first blast out of the way as she and Han got behind cover. The cover was good—heavy steel scrap that easily absorbed the energy unloaded by blaster rifle shots. But missed shots ricocheted off the walls, propelled by the magnetic shielding, and inevitably one would bounce down into Han’s or Leia’s back.
Then a second droid entered the chamber, and a third, and a fourth, all of them firing.
“We’re sunk,” Leia said.
“I don’t think so.” Han glanced around, found a more protective niche in the scrap, and sidestepped into it. He rose high enough to return fire for a moment. “Six, seven, eight of them. The more, the better.”
“The more, the better?” Leia slid into place beside him.
“Yeah, when we get enough of them in here, we can’t possibly lose.”
“Now I know why you never want to be told the odds. Because you don’t know what they mean!”
Han grinned at her. “Nine, ten, eleven. That’s good enough to start with. Can you get me a couple of those blaster rifles?”
“You planning on shooting our way out of here?”
“That’s right. Please, Leia. Two rifles.”
Leia hesitated, caught off guard by Han’s rare use of the word please, then said, “Cover me. Go.”
Han popped up and squeezed off several quick shots. Leia stood from behind cover a moment later, saw several of the droids aiming to return fire. Some of them had to hold off firing to avoid hitting more droids charging into the chamber.
With the Force, Leia reached out toward one of the late arrivals, a droid who held his rifle in a loose grip. She yanked toward her and the rifle came sailing to her hand. Before it landed, she repeated the trick on the next droid entering the room, and his rifle, too, leapt from his possession and into Leia’s.
She ducked down with Han. “Now what?”
“Battleship tactics.” He hauled on the heaviest plate of scrap metal in their vicinity, toppling it so that it covered the two of them almost completely. Their improvised fort was now lit only by the red glow from Leia’s weapon.
Han indicated two spots on the plate. “Holes here and here. Fist-sized.”
Leia complied, burning two apertures in the metal. The air now stank with the odor of superheated durasteel. “You won’t be able to see to aim.”
“Who needs to aim?” Han picked up one rifle in each hand, switched each to full autofire, inserted the barrels in the holes, angled them up more toward the ceiling, and began firing.
Leia switched off her lightsaber and crowded back as far away from the rifles as she could, holding her hands over her ears. The roar in this confined space was deafening. Han rocked the weapons back and forth, slowly changing his angle of fire left to right, up and down.
The metal plate shuddered as it began sustaining hits. Han turned to Leia and flashed her a manic grin, then closed his eyes and kept firing.
First one of his rifles clicked down to zero and stopped firing, then the other. But the sound of ricochets continued as shots bounded from one end of the compactor chamber to the other, bouncing again and again until they hit something not protected by the chamber’s magnetic seal.
Such as scrap metal. Such as droids. Such as droids being transformed into scrap metal.
When there were no more blasts or impacts to be heard, Han maneuvered the metal plate aside and peeked. Leia also leaned around the plate to look.
The droids weren’t completely destroyed. She saw one walking back and forth with half his head gone, clicking the trigger of a rifle that was missing its middle section. Another droid spun around, his upper half turning one direction and his lower half the other, causing him to roll erratically across the floor. But most were down, motionless.
“I’ll watch the other door,” Han said, “if you’ll cut through the pile here and get us out.”
“Love to.”
The exercise yard guards looked up as the Millennium Falcon awkwardly maneuvered into position above the yard.
The guards raised their blaster rifles and opened fire. R2-D2 saw their assault through his link with the transport’s holocams, and felt a momentary thrill of dismay and an anticipation of damage before his probability calculations indicated that their shoulder arms would not be able to harm the ship. He brought the Falcon down several meters until the keel was just above the ground, and hovered there.
Han and Leia emerged from a side door in one of the walls bounding the exercise yard. They drew the guard-droid fire from the Falcon, but Han fired with his blaster in one direction, keeping droids harried and defensive there, while Leia deflected each and every blaster bolt aimed at them from the other direction. R2-D2 lowered the starboard boarding ramp, and in moments, Han and Leia rushed up to the cockpit. R2 raised the ramp.
Leia gave R2-D2 a pat on the dome before settling into the copilot’s chair. “Well done, Artoo.”
He wheetled at her, sent one last message through the dataport, then unjacked himself.
Han peeled off his piratical tunic and scrubbed at the false scar over his eye as he looked over the control boards. “Threepio’s on foot north of here. Get into the topside laser turret. We’ll scoop Threepio up and then punch out of here.”
“To space, I assume,” Leia said.
“To the forest.” Han flashed her a lopsided grin. “Trust me on this.”
The spaceport was protected by a quartet of aging Z-95 Headhunters, venerable predecessors of the X-wing. While they made cautious runs in the distance, unwilling to strafe a transport so close to the ground, Leia helped keep them at bay with judicious use of the Falcon’s top turret.
Han guided the Falcon north over the base, swooping down once, just long enough to lower the boarding ramp and give C-3PO time to hurry aboard. Then Han kicked the thrusters in and headed northwest, the direction with the nearest heavy stand of forest. As he neared the leading edge of old-growth trees, some of which reached to the height of twenty-story buildings, he rotated the Falcon until the ship was perpendicular. The Falcon slid into the forest like a vibroknife into blue butter. The pursuing Headhunters broke off pursuit, scattering, climbing above the tr
eetops to look for the Falcon from an altitude. After a few hundred more meters of nerve-jangling maneuvering through the trees, Han tilted the transport back onto her belly and settled down in a shadowy glade.
“If I may ask, sir,” said C-3PO as he desperately clung to the restraining straps on his seat, “why do we not just go into space?”
“Because someone was aboard the Falcon,” Han snapped. “And do you know what happens every time someone I don’t like comes aboard?”
“No, sir.”
“They sabotage something! Usually the shields, or especially the hyperdrive motivator. I hate that. Leia, take over at the controls while I see what they did.”
“Yes, Captain. Right away, Captain.” Leia trotted into the cockpit, took the pilot’s seat as Han vacated it, gave him a kiss as they made the transfer. “You know we’re only going to have a few minutes here before they find us and bring in the heavy guns.”
“Then let’s hope I’m as good as mechanic as I know I am.”
“Anything I can do while we’re waiting?”
“Get on the comm board and see if you can find their comm traffic. That may give us an idea of how much time we really have.”
“I’m also going to put in a call to our smuggler contacts. Let them know we have to leave in a hurry.”
“Very polite of you. Very proper.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Han didn’t take long to find it. The hyperdrive motivator had indeed been sabotaged. Someone had installed a simple fuse that would hold up to a system check but would blow the first time real power surged through the system. In the hyperdrive motivator compartment, the saboteur had also wired a tracking device. Han rerouted the hyperdrive power the way it was supposed to be, then threw the tracking device out an airlock.
He returned at a run to the cockpit and slid into the pilot’s chair as Leia, still in her comm unit privacy headset, vacated it and took her own seat.
They watched as, in the distance ahead and to port, a long-nosed flying vehicle edged through the trees. “What is that?” Han asked. “Vong, or local make?”
Rebel Stand: Enemy Lines II Page 16
