“He won’t stay that way,” she said, and there was regret in her voice.
“No one does.”
“LOOKS COMPLICATED,” Han said in what he was pretty confident was the universe’s greatest understatement.
“It’s a planet-scaled mechanism using technology we don’t understand in a language that’s not only alien, but dead. So a little bit, yeah,” Scarlet said, pointing at the blinking device. “He did make some progress, though. If I can figure out which one of these was affecting the relays, I think we can—Don’t touch that one!”
Han yanked back his finger. “That one? Is it dangerous?”
“I think so,” Scarlet said. “This baby’s channeling an impressive amount of energy. Galassian has a lot of notes about small imbalances getting big quickly. And, you know, a giant force field keeping the planetary crust from collapsing into the exposed core. Don’t want to turn that off.”
She tapped something and the screen lit up. She moved through several pages of translations of the control panel’s runes and diagrams without slowing to read them.
“Can you tell what he was doing?” Leia asked, trying to read the information flashing across the table.
“Not really, no.”
“All right,” Leia said, grabbing Scarlet’s hands to stop her from touching the panel. “General Rieekan is going to jump in with the strike force. Once he’s here we can figure out how to keep any Imperial ships from jumping into the system. Then we’ll have time to—”
The first blaster shot passed so close to Leia’s face, Han saw the flash reflected in her eyes. A volley of shots followed it, but Han had already grabbed Leia and Scarlet and pulled them to the ground. He tried to cover Leia’s body with his own, knowing it would only buy her a few seconds but doing it anyway. The first blaster shots that hit the fragile control board would blow it apart, and then there would be nothing between him and death.
Han turned to find whoever was shooting. The round door had irised open silently behind them, and a mass of stormtroopers had taken position just outside the platform. Several lowered their weapons to aim at him on the ground. This is it, he had time to think, and then they opened fire.
After several seconds of continuous fire from half a dozen troopers, they stopped. The thin sheet of what looked like glass that held up the control panel didn’t even have a scorch mark on it.
“Huh,” Scarlet said.
“I guess they built their stuff to last,” Han said, then rolled off Leia and to his knees. He pulled Baasen’s blaster and took several shots around the side of the control board. It was actually sort of nice to have cover he could see through. He could place his shots without having to risk sticking his head out. A second later, two troopers were down and the rest had ducked back out of the doorway. They reached their weapons around the edge to take a few indirect shots, but only one of them even hit the panel, and it did no damage.
“Still going to be hard to hold this position,” Scarlet said.
“We have to reopen the hyperwave relays,” Leia shouted. “If we can signal General Rieekan to start the attack—”
“Little busy right now,” Scarlet said.
“We can’t let them take control of it,” Leia said. She moved in a crouch to the other side of the panel and began firing at the doorway, forcing the stormtroopers to pull back.
As Han and Leia traded ineffective shots with the stormtroopers, Scarlet studied the control panel. “I think … I think I found the thing that’s blocking the hyperwave relays from sending messages out. Maybe.”
“Do it!” Leia shouted over the top of a fusillade of blasts from the stormtroopers. Han managed to drop one with a shot to the thigh, and the trooper dragged himself away from the doorway and out of sight. Han could see where his shots were landing, but he’d be much more accurate if he actually stood up and sighted down the blaster. Another wave of incoming fire splashing against the control panel convinced him it wasn’t worth the risk. He didn’t need to win this fight, really. He just needed to survive it.
Han pulled his hand back to avoid the next barrage of shots, but Leia leaned out and fired off a few blasts that downed another stormtrooper.
“How many do you think are left out there?” Han asked.
“Pretty soon it will be all of them on this planet,” she replied. Scarlet grunted out a laugh but didn’t look up from her work.
“At least Wedge and Luke guaranteed we won’t have that Star Destroyer dropping reinforcements,” Han said, firing off a couple more shots as punctuation. His blaster started flashing at him, so he pulled a charge pack from his belt and reloaded.
“Luke! We’ll call Luke!” Leia shouted, scrabbling at her comlink. “Red Wave, this is Pointer, are you there?”
“Uh-oh,” Han said to no one in particular. The stormtroopers were doing something just outside the door. He could only see the edge of their activity, but it looked as if they were setting up some sort of tripod-mounted heavy weapon.
“Red Wave, this is Pointer, come in!”
“Probably getting some interference from being so far underground,” Scarlet said.
“One of us has to make a break for it,” Leia said. “Get far enough up that we can ask Luke to tell General Rieekan to start the attack. And then get back down here so that we know when he’s through.”
“Another really bad plan,” Han muttered.
Leia said something else, but it was drowned out by the massive concussion of the stormtroopers’ heavy weapon. They’d wheeled it around the doorway and fired it. They hadn’t taken time to aim, so the blast hit a meter and a half in front of the control panel. The thin grating of the floor instantly turned white with heat.
“I hope our cover can survive a hit from that,” Han said.
“I hope the floor can,” Leia replied.
The big cannon fired again, this time hitting the control panel’s single fragile-looking support. The concussion of the blast knocked Han onto his back and sucked the wind out of his lungs. Both Leia and Scarlet were tossed across the floor, rolling to a stop several meters away.
The blast had left a discoloration on the support glass. A vaguely yellowish spot, with tiny hairline cracks running through it. They couldn’t afford to let the troopers hit them again with the big gun. Not if it could actually damage the only thing they could hide behind.