Scarlet and Leia began crawling across the floor back to the control table. The stormtrooper crew manning the cannon were lining up a second shot. They seemed to have noticed the damage the first shot had done and were trying to hit the same spot again.
“Hey!” Han shouted. “You know that thing you’re shooting at controls the planet, right? What happens if you blow it up? You don’t know.”
The stormtroopers ignored him. Han popped up, his arms braced on the top of the table to get one clean, accurate shot. The trooper at the back of the cannon was just about to fire when Han’s blaster bolt hit one of the supporting legs and blew it apart. The big cannon canted forward, pulling the gunner along with it. Halfway to the floor the weapon fired, hitting the grating just a little over a meter from the crew with a sound like thunder. The blast hurled the entire crew away. Two of them lay motionless and smoking. The third unlucky man went over the edge of the grating and pinwheeled down and out of sight toward the molten core. Han hoped for the stormtrooper’s sake that the blast had killed him before he went over. A few other stormtroopers peeked around the corner of the doorway at the carnage. Han drove them back. The K’kybak control panel glowed under his arms.
He hesitated, then tapped at it and ducked back down.
“How are we doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” Leia said, crawling back over to her side of the control board and taking cover, blaster in hand. She didn’t look okay. There was a trickle of blood running from her hairline and down her cheek, and her forehead was bruised. She’d get upset if he pressed the issue, so he let it drop. Scarlet groaned.
“Are you all right?” Han asked the spy. The wound in her leg looked bad.
“I’m fine,” she said, but she seemed a little unsteady. “I just need to …”
She wobbled up to her feet to look at the control board, which took her out of cover. The stormtroopers crowded the doorway to fire at her, too many for Han and Leia to drive back all at once. Scarlet yelped and dropped to her knee, clutching her elbow. The troopers paid for it, with two more dead before they could withdraw.
“This is getting old,” Scarlet said. She was examining her upper arm, where a blaster bolt had burned through the flesh just above her elbow. It was another ugly wound, but it wasn’t bleeding. “Can you believe today’s the first time I’ve ever been shot? Years in the field, nothing. Today, shot twice.”
“No!” Han said. “Anyone as reckless as you should be getting shot all the time!”
“Sort of thought it would never happen to me,” Scarlet continued. Han hoped she wasn’t going into shock.
One of the stormtroopers leaned out and tossed an explosive device. It rolled across the floor at them. Han shot it, sending it rolling in the opposite direction. The stormtroopers peeking out ducked back just before it blew up right outside their doorway.
“There might be a pattern, though,” Scarlet said. Her eyelids were drooping and she started to sag onto her back. “We should ask him …”
“Sure, sweetheart, I’ll give him a call. Whoever ‘he’ is,” Han said. “Leia, grab her medpac and give her something to keep her on her feet.”
Leia pulled the pack off Scarlet’s belt and started rummaging through it.
“Did you hear what she said earlier? Force fields and tricky-to-balance energies?” Han asked. “That means we can blow this place.”
“Are you insane?” Leia asked. “If we figure this device out, it ends the war.”
“If—”
“It ends the war,” she repeated, looking up from her work to stare him in the eye. Han didn’t know how her eyes could be that soft and that hard at the same time. “No more Alderaans. No more Kiamurrs. Never again, Han. What is that worth? We stay here. We hold this position until General Rieekan comes.”
A stormtrooper risked a quick look into the room, but Han put a blaster bolt into the door frame right next to his face and he pulled back.
“We can’t do it,” he said, keeping his pistol trained on the same spot, waiting to see if the trooper would peek out again. “And even if we could, you’re talking about making a government with absolute power to control travel. The first government that can enforce its laws without anybody slipping through the cracks.”
Leia pressed an injection ampoule to Scarlet’s neck, then began winding a bandage around her arm. The spy mumbled something unintelligible.
“This isn’t the time for that conversation,” Leia shouted. But a few seconds later she went on, “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Only criminals would have anything to worry about.”
Han laughed and fired a few shots at a trooper who’d looked around the corner to take a few desultory blasts at him.
“Leia, hate to break it to you. We’re criminals. I’m shooting at the government right now. That’s why they call it a rebellion!”
“We’re fighting to restore—”
“Yeah, yeah, the glorious Republic of old,” Han snorted. “I’ve heard the sales pitch, sister. But tell me this: if that glorious Republic had had this technology, would it have stopped Palpatine from taking control?”
Leia opened her mouth to answer, then closed it and frowned. Han stood up and fired off a few more shots at the doorway. No one was visible, but he wanted it to stay that way. Scarlet blinked and sat forward, rubbing her eyes.
“Probably not,” Leia finally admitted. “By the time anyone realized what he was up to, he controlled the bureaucracy.”
“And would there now be a Rebel Alliance?” Han asked gently. He trusted her to see what he saw. He didn’t need to browbeat her into it.
“No,” she said. Her expression was almost hurt. “I’d never misuse this, you know. I’d never let anyone else, either.”
Scarlet coughed and struggled to focus on them. “What are we talking about?” she asked, but they both ignored her.
“I know you wouldn’t,” Han said. “I trust you, Princess. But the guy who’s elected after you? I don’t know him.”
Leia frowned and looked away. Something moved in the shadows on the other side of the doorway, and Leia took a quick shot at it. Whatever it was stopped moving.
“If we take this,” Han said, using his blaster to wave at the massive machine all around them, “the next evil galactic empire that rises never ends. Does the fact that we probably won’t be there to see it make you feel better?”