“Hey, believe me, Her Royalness will be paying for every scratch when we’re done here.”
“ ‘Her Royalness’?” Scarlet said.
“Still not talking about you,” Han said, then yanked at a control bar to spin the Falcon in a hard bank. A virtual wall of incoming fire flew past them as the ship spun out of its path. When they’d stopped their wild maneuvering, Han looked over his shoulder at Scarlet. “Not everything is about you, you know.”
“I don’t think everything is—” she started.
“Shush,” Han said, and she sputtered with indignation. He pointed out ahead of them as the sky went from dark blue to black. “Out of atmosphere now, the fliers can’t chase us.”
Chewie unbuckled from his seat and headed toward the back of the ship.
“Hey! Where are you going?” Han yelled.
Chewie rumbled back at him and kept walking.
“Ha!” Scarlet said. “I’m not the only one who thinks your plan was terrible.”
Han spun his chair to face her. “Hey, I got you off that planet in one piece. And got you your precious data from one of the most secure installations in the Empire. Now who’s the best?”
She rolled her eyes at him. Something else occurred to him. “Hey, you speak Wookiee?”
“No one speaks Wookiee but Wookiees,” she said. “I mean, I can order a drink or find the bathroom okay …”
Scarlet trailed off, her eyes wide and her face pale.
“What—” he began.
She shook her head and pointed behind him. He spun his chair around. Four Imperial Star Destroyers were bearing down on them.
“Huh,” Han said. “Probably should have seen that coming.”
“Hurry,” Scarlet said. “Get us out of here.”
“I am hurrying,” Han replied, spinning the ship around and throwing the throttle to full.
“Hurry faster,” she said.
“You keep saying that. It’s not as helpful as you think.” Han opened up the ship’s internal comm. “Hey, buddy, gonna need you to get those shields stabilized!”
A loud Wookiee yell reverberated through the ship.
“Well, how do I know you’re already working on things when you don’t tell me you’re already working on things?”
Scarlet unbuckled, moved to the copilot’s seat, and strapped in there. “Tell me what you need.”
“Keep those rear deflectors angled to bounce the incoming fire,” Han said. “We’ll need some time to calculate the jump to lightspeed.”
“How much time?”
The ship rocked with a lucky long-range shot from one of the Star Destroyers. “More,” Han said, and started punching keys on the computer.
“How old is this navicomputer? Are you still running the Minashi-Ryu jump protocols?” Scarlet asked, fingers working fast on the deflector controls. She had skills, Han had to admit. He wondered if it would be enough with four big Imperial Destroyers hammering them.
“Not so old,” he said defensively. “I’ve been meaning to upgrade, but I’ve been busy.”
“Busy?”
“Fighting the Empire,” Han snapped, keying in the jump data as quickly as the deck would accept it. “You may have heard of it? Stormtroopers, Death Stars, Darth Vader?”
The ship rocked again as the Star Destroyers closed the distance and began landing more hits.
“You’re awfully testy,” Scarlet said.
“Raise your hand if you’ve fought all of those things in the last year,” Han said, raising his hand.
Scarlet grinned at him. “Maybe you should keep that on the controls.” As if to punctuate her point, the ship rocked with a barrage of incoming fire.
“They’ve got us in their range,” Han said. He twisted the controls, sending the Falcon spinning off in a hard starboard turn. The Star Destroyers were fast and bristling with firepower, but they turned like drunken banthas. He needed to buy a few more seconds for the navicomputer to do its work.
“Well. That’s disappointing,” Scarlet said, and the ship shuddered under a new wave of incoming fire.
“What is?”
“Those,” she said, as four TIE fighters streaked past in a diamond formation and banked hard to port for a second pass. “Can we out-turn them?”
“We can try.”
“Let’s do.”
The deflector alarm shouted an urgent warning at them as the rear shields started to fail.
“Chewie!” Han yelled into the comm. “We need those shields up!”
A long, loud series of growls echoed through the ship.
“Your friend has a real gift for profanity,” Scarlet said. “How’s the navicomputer doing?”
“It’s fine, almost done,” Han yelled. Then he leaned down to whisper, “Come on, baby, be almost done.”
The TIE fighters came about and streaked toward the Falcon, laser cannons blazing. Han sent the ship into a tight spin, trying to slip the wide but thin hull through the worst of the incoming fire. The view through the window became a series of blinding flashes as the shields took hit after hit. A second alarm started blaring out a warning that the front deflectors were failing, too.
“Chewie!” Han yelled into the comm.
“How about—” Scarlet started, punching something on the computer. She never finished, because the console went dark in a spray of sparks. She patted at her shirt, keeping it from catching on fire.
“What did you do?” Han asked incredulously. “What did you do!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Scarlet yelled back.
Han pounded a fist on the console. “Come on, baby, wake up! We’re in the middle of a gunfight here.”
The console flickered once, then went dark again. Outside, the TIE fighters rolled through another hard bank and lined up a new strafing run.
Chewbacca howled from the back, and the console lit back up at the same time the shield warnings stopped screeching at them.
“See?” Scarlet said. “I told you it wasn’t me!”
“Good job, pal,” Han said into the comm. “Now can you convince the navcom to hurry up?”
Chewbacca whined his disappointment at the thin praise.
“Or we could blow up, would that be better?” Han asked.
Chewbacca grumbled.
“He’s your only friend, right?” Scarlet asked. “Wonder why.”
“Chewie is not my only—” Han started, but he stopped talking to send the Falcon into another series of spins to avoid the TIE fighters. A new alarm sounded, warning of the approaching Star Destroyers and their much heavier banks of turbolasers. The Falcon could handle the TIE fighters for a while, but the big Imperial ships would chew through her shields in seconds if they got in range.