Han’s arm snapped out with a gunfighter’s speed, the tips of two fingers just barely managing to catch a loose fold of her shirt. But it stopped her fall long enough that Baasen and Leia could dart forward and catch her arms. They pulled her back, hard, and she fell on her rump with a grunt.
“Thank you,” she gasped as she fought to catch her breath.
“You’ll want to watch your step in here, miss,” Baasen said. “Traps and whatnot.”
Leia crouched by the spy’s side. “Are you all right?” She pulled the canteen off her belt and handed it to Scarlet, who nodded and took a sip.
When her breathing had slowed, the spy stood up and ran a hand through her dark hair. “So, let’s not do that again,” she said.
A few twists and turns later, they crouched in the darkness of the side passage looking out into the large room beyond. At the far side of the room, what had appeared to be a short corridor on Scarlet’s map actually turned out to be a steep ramp down. From their position, they couldn’t see what lay at the bottom. A dozen or more Imperial troops were stationed in the room. About half wore the armor of stormtroopers; the rest were in technician’s uniforms. They were looking at the main corridor as though expecting an attack from that direction. They were all armed.
“Only about four each,” Baasen whispered. “I’ve faced worse.”
Before Han could object, Scarlet said, “Let me give us some help.”
Han pulled his blaster and noted that Leia had done the same. She smiled at him, though it was a sad smile. Han tried out a carefree grin and a wink. It felt false and ridiculous, but he tried not to let it show.
Scarlet was doing something with her map. Han heard a faint buzzing, and one of her six bugs flew past his ear into the room. It joined with the other five already there, and each one landed on a different stormtrooper. A second later, they detonated, knocking the six troopers to the ground. The other six spun around, looking for the attackers, but with Han, Baasen, and Leia firing from cover, all six were down before they could fire a shot.
“That was loud,” Han said. “So we should go fast now.”
He jumped up and ran across the room, hoping the other three were following but not slowing to check. He ran down the ramp, nearly slipping on the slimy wet stone, and flew face-first into a massive metal door.
“Don’t touch it,” Leia snapped at him.
“Too late,” Han replied, probing his nose gingerly with one finger. It didn’t seem to be broken.
The hatch was made of a gleaming alloy, almost seeming to glow with its own internal light. A complex-looking locking device was mounted in the center of the door, though it had been disassembled by the Imperial technicians. They’d hung a simple red button from it.
“Wait,” Leia said, but Baasen was already reaching out. He pressed the button and the shiny metal hatch slid open, revealing a corridor below, sinking down into the crust of the planet. Baasen bounced on his toes and looked back to Leia.
“Sorry, miss. You said something?”
PAST THE GLOWING HATCH, the corridors changed completely. It was like stepping from one world into another without traveling the space between them. After a steeply descending ramp covered with thin, toothlike silver projections that snagged their toes and seemed to shift as they moved, the passage opened to a tall but almost impossibly thin network of corridors. Han thought the walls seemed to shift whenever he wasn’t looking directly at them. The geometry of the corridors was wrong in a way he couldn’t quite understand, the floors seeming to tilt in opposite directions at once. He had the eerie and inexplicable sense that the air was tasting him.
Han had seen the products of hundreds, maybe thousands, of alien species. He understood that each one had quirks of body and mind that made their artifacts and architecture unique. Whatever the K’kybak had been physically, their minds were unlike anything Han had ever encountered. The walls were built in curves of shining steel and deep-blue alloy that seemed to shift as they passed. Sometimes strange, flickering lights and sounds came, and Han couldn’t say if they were the warnings of some ancient computer system, or art, or an accident of stress and pressure. Everywhere, the angles of the architecture seemed subtly off, the textures of the surfaces unpleasant, intimate, and threatening.
Every few hundred meters the Imperial survey team had left pale marks on the walls, and they crept along, following the path their enemy had established. Everything about the buried K’kybak civilization was beautiful and disturbing and left Han wanting to wash his hands. And apparently, the others were all thinking something very much the same.
“Creepy,” Scarlet said as they entered a great, round room, perhaps half a kilometer wide, with long strands of chainlike metallic growths hanging from its ceiling. A clear, watery liquid dripped down the strands, leaving the wide floor slick and shining.
A drop landed on Baasen’s shoulder with a splat. He wiped it off with mild, companionable disgust. “I can’t say my sorrow these K’kybak aren’t still among us runs all that deep.”
“Speaking of which,” Leia said, “do we have any idea of how far down this is supposed to go? It feels like we’ve been heading down forever.”
“This way,” Han said, gesturing with his blaster. At the far end of the dripping chamber, the path was marked by a backpack-sized box with a small red light at the top. Seeing something of recognizably human design in the unsettling place was a comfort, even if the make was Imperial. Tinny, compressed voices echoed down the chamber beyond. Stormtroopers. And they sounded frightened. At a bend in the hallway, Han held up an arm, stopping the others. He ducked his head around the corner, and pulled back. A solid sheet of blasterfire passed close enough that his cheek tingled with it.
“How many?” Scarlet shouted over the sound of the blasts.
“A dozen, maybe? Something like that,” Han answered. “They’re in front of some kind of machine. I think they’re guarding it.”
“The device?”
“How would I know? There were a bunch of stormtroopers shooting at me.”
Scarlet’s attention was already shifting to the walls and passages around them. Her narrowed eyes glittered with excitement and pleasure. Leia’s gaze was fixed on the corner, ready to return fire if the enemy appeared. The barrage of energy bolts began to slow. A smoke haze filled the corridor with the smell of battle. Scarlet pulled out her datapad, but the holographic image on it was fuzzy and indistinct. She closed it again.