“No,” Leia said. “No. You’re right. Let’s blow it.”
Han let out a long breath. “I’ve got to admit, it’s a huge relief to hear you say that,” he said with a grin. Leia frowned at him, confused. Her eyes went wide.
“You already set it to collapse?”
“Yeah, that one thing Scarlet told me not to touch? I touched it about a minute ago. But I was having trouble figuring out how to break the news.”
“WHAT DID YOU DO?” Scarlet asked, staring down at the planet’s core as it shifted from dull red to a brighter orange. “What did you do?”
The platform trembled, and a hot wind blew up from below through the grating—a gentle presentiment of worse things to come. Han stood up, but a barrage of fire from the stormtroopers drove him back into cover.
“We can’t get out the way we came in,” he said. “Think I could explain to those guys that we should all be leaving?”
Leia didn’t answer. “There.” She pointed at a nearby platform where there was a set of irising doorways the twins of the ones on their platform. “We need to get to that one.”
“Long jump, sweetheart,” Han said. It was at least fifteen meters from the edge of their platform to the one she was pointing at.
“Your grapnel,” Leia said to Scarlet. “Would it reach that far?”
Scarlet shifted her gaze between them, struggling to put Leia’s question together with the one she’d asked.
“Yes,” Scarlet said, nodding. She was moving her head too fast. The drugs Leia had pumped into her to keep her from going into shock were making her jittery. “But nothing to secure it to on this side. The magnet’s only on the grapple end.”
An electronic voice came from the doorway yelling, “Go go go!” and seven stormtroopers rushed into the room, shooting wildly. Han and Leia returned fire from cover, but Scarlet stood up and fired over the top of the control panel. When the troopers were finally driven back to the doorway, they left three of their number behind on the grating. Several blaster bolts had passed close enough to Scarlet to singe her hair and shirt.
“Please stop doing that,” Leia said. “Getting shot three times in one day won’t be better.”
The core below shifted from orange to yellow, and the platform shook more vigorously. A gentle rain of dust and pebbles fell toward the core from the rocks above.
“We should leave now,” Han said.
“There!” Leia shouted, pointing up at a bright metal support arm for the platform above them. “Attach it there. We should be able to swing across.”
“Swing across,” Scarlet repeated. “That’s crazy.”
“It’ll work,” Leia insisted. “Trust me.”
Scarlet shrugged and handed her blaster to Han. She pulled the grapnel rig off her belt and programmed in the length of line she wanted.
“I’ll be exposed while I’m doing this,” she said. “And while we’re … swinging across.”
“I’ve got you covered. Get it set up,” Han said. When Scarlet moved off to the edge of the ramp to line up her grapnel shot, Han went with her, keeping his back to her and firing into the open doorway with both blasters as fast as he could pull the triggers. When one started to flash a warning at him, he yelled, “Reloading!” and Leia stood up to take over covering fire while he slapped in a new charge.
The grapnel line flew off with a smooth hiss, the magnetic head striking the support beam with a thud. Whatever the beam was made of, magnets stuck to it. Scarlet leaned all her weight back on the line, and it held.
A few brave stormtroopers poked their heads around the corner to take shots, but the blistering return fire from Han and Leia drove them back. One of them caught a blaster shot in the eye of his helmet and dropped, half in and half out of the round doorway.
“Do we go one at a time, or all at once?” Scarlet asked.
“Oh, we’re all leaving right now,” Han assured her. “Leia, go, I’m right behind you.”
Leia ran past him, but he was too busy firing at the doorway to watch her attach herself to the line. “Han, go!” she shouted, and a wave of blaster fire flew past him as she opened up on the doorway.
Han turned and ran to the edge of the platform, firing back over his shoulder as he went. Scarlet and Leia had both attached the end of the line to their utility belts, so Han just ran at them at full speed, dove into a bear hug around them, and launched all three of them off the edge of the grating.
Scarlet yelped when Han’s arm gripped her injured elbow, and Leia gasped as he squeezed all the air out of her. Han looked down, nothing between him and the almost white-hot planetary core but a few thousand kilometers of empty space. Galassian’s tumbling body was too far away to see. A second later they were above the next platform and Scarlet released the line. They crashed to the metal grating in a knot. Han wound up on the bottom, with Leia’s elbow in his eye and Scarlet’s knee in his stomach.
“Ouch,” he said as they climbed off him. He didn’t have time for more complaining, as a few blaster shots hit the grating and nearby wall.
Scarlet raced to open the platform’s door, and Leia dived through, chased by incoming fire. Han stood and fired a few shots back at the stormtroopers, but at that range, any hits on either side would be completely up to luck. One of the remaining troopers wasn’t firing, just looking across the gap at them, head cocked to the side in an obvious you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me pose.
Han fired off a few more shots to keep them off balance, then followed Scarlet and Leia through the door. Scarlet shut it immediately behind him, and the sound of blaster shots hitting it echoed through the wall.
They were in a small chamber with one long, sloping shaft leading up at the end. A platform like the one they’d ridden down sat at the bottom.
“I hope that thing has power,” Han said.
Scarlet limped toward it. “It seems like everything down here is still powered up.”
“I hope you’re right,” Han said. “Because there’s no other way out of this room, and going back out onto the platform right now seems like a terrible idea. Also, the planet is imploding.”
Scarlet began flipping switches on the control panel, whispering to herself while she worked. Han heard the word “blue” and realized she was repeating the code from their last ride. His first thought was I hope the same code means up; his second was How does she remember it at all?