“Not dead,” Scarlet said. “And not an artistic tutor. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Ell-Threepio, protocol droid and research assistant to Essio Galassian.”
“You!” the droid squeaked. “It was you all along!”
“Actually, it was the gardener,” Scarlet said. “Long story. Why don’t you tell us what we want to know before my friend here reduces you to a thin, uniform layer of foil?”
“I will not betray the master!”
“Sure you will,” Baasen said, and took a step forward.
The droid danced awkwardly back.
“No! Stop! Harming me will gain you nothing! The device has been activated. Master Essio is in the process of decoding its control schema, but the calculating controller is very odd. He … hasn’t made a great deal of progress as yet. And the device hasn’t been used in eons. It is not perfectly stable. I will not allow you to interrupt him. His work is too delicate and important.”
“Where is he, Ell-Three?”
The droid looked back over his shoulder at the array of doors, his servomotors whining. His hand fluttered and clanked. Scarlet nodded.
“Ell-Three?” she said. “Do you remember what I said at the garden party?” The droid turned to her again, his eyes glowing suddenly brighter in surprise or alarm. “This is that day.”
Scarlet’s blaster bolt took the droid in the neck, neatly cleaving the headpiece from the blued shoulders. The droid’s body froze and tipped backward, clanking against the floor. The head dropped to the decking, the eyes dimming, but not yet dark.
“You were a terrible artist,” L-3PO said, and then turned off.
“Garden party?” Han said.
“Long story,” Scarlet replied. “Let’s go.”
Han and Leia took position on one side of the leftmost door, while Baasen pressed himself against the other. It took Scarlet a moment to find the controls, but a second later the door shuddered and the dozen blades slid apart.
Beyond it, a grate of steel mesh stood out over a cavern too vast to comprehend. A hot wind swirled and pressed, stinking of overheated iron. A dark-cloaked man stood at what looked like a long, glass table, his fingers shifting across its surface. Two spherical droids floated, one over each shoulder, dull red lights tracking slowly along their smooth surfaces. Han stepped out. The grating below his feet seemed too fragile to support his weight, yet it didn’t flex at all when he stood on it. Far below, a massive sphere glowed a dull and sullen red. Han’s mind struggled to make sense of the scale he was looking at. The wind moving past him murmured like something enormous and old, talking very softly. They were a hundred meters over the glowing orb. They were a thousand meters over it. Something in his mind struggled, and his sense of scale reset. He saw the room as if he were flying the Falcon, and then it made sense.
Still, it took his breath away.
“The planet. It’s hollow. That down there,” he said, pointing with his blaster, “I think that’s the core.”
“I thought I gave orders to be left alone!” the man at the desk shouted. “Do you have any idea of the energies involved in this? How delicate this work is? Your constant interruptions could destroy us all.”
“I know,” Scarlet said. “But that’s not going to happen.”
The man straightened and turned. Essio Galassian was even younger than Han had expected, his face rugged and almost handsome. The shoulder-length hair that shifted in the wind was the same honey-blond that it had been in the R3’s hologram, and his smile was bright and sharp as a blade’s edge. His gaze flickered over them, spending the greatest time on Leia and Scarlet.
“Princess Leia, I presume,” Galassian said. “And my former artistic tutor. I have to assume she was working for you.”
“Essio Galassian,” Leia said. “Toady to the Emperor and professional grave robber.”
“Your service,” Galassian said sourly.
“We’ve come for the hyperspace nullifier,” Scarlet said. “Hand it over, and we might take you into custody.”
“Rather than kill me?”
“Rather than leave you to your disappointed patron,” Scarlet said, and Han saw the man flinch. The door irised closed behind them, and Baasen spun, blaster at the ready. The grate they stood on was one of a network that clung to the inner surface of the hollow world. Now that Han understood the scale, he could see platforms hanging from the stone roof that stretched all along the globe. Galassian leaned against the glass table and crossed his arms. The molten core of the planet spun below them like a sun, radiating heat and light, casting shadows up along the man’s face.
Galassian looked at Leia for a long time. The two droids shifted, rising and falling, curving up through the air above him and swooping down behind his back in a sideways figure eight. His shoulders began to shake, and a stream of rich laughter poured out. He spread his arms.
“You want it? Fine. Here it is.” His gesture encompassed the table, the platforms, the core spinning below. Everything. The humor left his eyes, and he looked like a corpse. “What do you plan to do with it?”
Leia and Scarlet looked at each other, the hot wind tugging at their hair. Baasen coughed and spat down through the grating and into the more-than-oceanic void beneath them.
“I’ve got to say,” Han said, “I’d been picturing something a little smaller.”
SCARLET STEPPED TOWARD GALASSIAN, her blaster pointed at his heart. Han moved forward, too. The man ignored the threat and turned back to the glass table. The light from its display danced across his face.
“Back away from the table. Do it now,” Leia said.
“Or else what exactly?” Galassian said.
“At a guess, we kill you,” Baasen said from his place beside the door. “That’s how these things tend to play out.”
He might as well not have been there for all the attention Galassian paid.
“You have interrupted me. Threatened me. I imagine you must have killed some number of my escort? That was rude, Princess. I don’t think I care to speak with you further.” The spinning droids were going too fast for the eye to follow now, the curving paths seeming like streaks of silver air behind him.
“All right,” Han said. “What’s the plan?”
“Plan was we get in here,” Scarlet said, “kill him, take the hyperspace-blocking device, and head back for the surface. Turns out there’s a problem with the middle part.”