“What did you do?” he asked, nodding back behind her.
“The decking tape I had for getting into the shaft? It’s melting down that ladder. We didn’t need it, did we?”
“Nope,” he said, and they started up again.
Level after level they climbed, the legs of the transmission tower narrowing around them. The stormtroopers surrounded the tower’s base, firing up at them, but the steel girders and webwork of ladders and conduits took the damage. Scarlet kept sabotaging the path behind them. The only direction was up, until they reached the tiny platform where all four legs of the tower met. They were seventy meters above the rooftop. The last thirty meters to the top were reachable only by steel handholds welded into the tower’s side. That high up, even steel swayed in the wind. Han’s legs felt as if they were made of string, and his back ached. Scarlet’s hair was plastered to her forehead and neck, and she was shivering. The decking tape had run out, and she had a blaster in either hand. Below them, the stormtroopers looked like white dolls. The tower shifted, the metal groaning.
“Hmm,” Scarlet Hark said.
“What?”
“Down there.”
Han leaned to the side, peeking down. Four stormtroopers were struggling with a small plasma cannon, their commanding officer screaming at them, his voice made inaudible by distance.
“They can’t do that. They’ll take down the tower.”
Scarlet grinned. For a moment she seemed less like a rational, calculating master of espionage than a force of nature taking joy in the chaos. Not a soldier, but a criminal. “We may have made them feel a little inadequate. I wonder why they aren’t bringing in fliers.”
“Fliers?”
“That’s what I’d do. Get a few two-person fliers. Maybe a combat droid. Shoot us out of this thing without bothering with the ground game.”
Han nodded, then rested his head against the metal. Thirty meters was a hell of a long climb, and he wasn’t sure his body was up for it. He closed his eyes, listening for the faint but familiar scream of engines. Yes. There it was. “Maybe something’s keeping those guys busy.”
“Something like?”
“Come on,” he said. “We need to hurry.”
The city spread out around them in all directions, gray and hazy and bright with the sun. Flocks of birds swirled below them, passing between the massive buildings. The clouds glowed with sunlight. Han felt the first impact of the plasma cannon in his feet and fingers before he heard the explosion. He kept pushing himself up. Scarlet was just below him, grabbing the handholds as he lifted his feet from them. The wind was cold, the air thin. A second explosion made the transmission tower shudder. The glowing yellow navigation light at the tower’s top grew brighter with every moment.
“We’re almost out of up, Solo,” Scarlet Hark said. Her voice was thin and ragged.
“You’re never out of up,” he said. “Look.”
On the horizon, just above the level of the highest buildings, something like an electrical storm was going on. Dark shapes churned and shifted, flashes of brightness too straight to be lightning. And at the front, flying before the storm of fliers and droids, Imperial police and port authority enforcers, the beautiful gray smudge of the Millennium Falcon. The tower shuddered again and began to list. Han fired his blaster into the air three times. Four. The Falcon shifted, correcting course toward them.
“Get ready,” he said. “We don’t get to try this twice.”
The Falcon dipped a fraction when the ramp extended, then corrected. She was coming in fast, but Chewie wouldn’t be able to slow down much with half of Cioran getting scorched by his exhaust plume. Han pulled himself up to the top of the tower, ignoring the abyss before him. Scarlet clambered up at his side. Her eyes were bright. She was grinning.
“Not a good plan,” she said. “But it’s got style.”
Bolts of energy rained down from the belly of the Falcon, scattering the tiny stormtroopers far below them. The entry ramp was extended, the speed ripping contrails from the moisture in the air. Han breathed deeply, watched his ship grow larger, closer.
“Now!” he shouted, and jumped.
For a terrible moment, he thought his timing was off. A night without sleep. A hundred-meter climb while being shot at the whole way. And the day before hadn’t been much better. Being off by a few hundredths of a second could only be expected. He seemed to hang in the void, his death visible between his feet. Scarlet was a blur to his right, her arms thrown high as if in victory.
The ramp hit him in the side, bouncing him up its length. The world went small and quiet for a few seconds, and when he came fully back to consciousness, the only sounds were the shriek of the engines, the hum of the actuators pulling the ramp closed, and Scarlet laughing. He rolled onto his back and looked at her. Her hair was a wild tumble, her mouth a manic grin, and her teeth were bloody where the impact had split her lip. She shook her head as if trying to clear it.
She held out her hand and hauled him up when he took it. Han was uncomfortably aware of her body beside his; that he was a man and she was a woman, and that against all odds, they hadn’t just died together.
“Well,” she said, wiping the blood from her mouth. “So much for the easy part.”
THE FALCON THUMPED WITH the sounds of blaster fire hitting her shields. The ship rocked as Chewbacca slammed down the throttle to get away from their pursuers. The Wookiee’s howl came from the cockpit as if it were a kilometer away. The metal creaked and groaned, the superstructure of the freighter warping under the strain.
“I’m so sorry, honey, I know this has been rough on you,” Han said.
“I’ve had worse,” Scarlet said, frowning at him. “And don’t call me ‘honey.’ ”
“The ship. I was talking to my ship,” Han said as he ran, limping, down the corridor to the cockpit. “This beating she’s taking? It’s because of you. Be nice to her.”
Chewbacca was strapped into the copilot’s chair, frantically pulling at the controls as the Falcon climbed over the city. Green bolts of plasma and turbolaser fire streaked past as the Imperial fliers gave pursuit. A red light flashed a shield overload warning on the panel behind him.
Han threw himself into the pilot’s seat and gestured at the third chair with his head. Scarlet took the hint and buckled in.
“Heya, pal, thanks for the save,” Han said.
Chewbacca growled back, waving at all the flashing damage indicators.