Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [65]
“Do not fret, I was not questioning your competence. I was merely making conversation.” C-3PO dumped the contents of his bag out into the slot. The rolling cart slid the slot closed and banged its way back through the doors into the kitchen, still beeping in a less-than-friendly manner.
“Government service units,” C-3PO sniffed. “Now, let us see if we can find our way back out of here.”
But he was speaking only to himself. Until he found another datapad or comlink with a strong enough transmitter to connect directly with R2-D2, he was alone. R2-D2 had told him he was to make his break for freedom now, to exit the prison by the way he’d come and then move northward as fast as his golden legs would carry him. The astromech had told him to be brave.
“So this is what bravery is,” he told himself. “How odd that it feels like petrification.”
Han and Leia heard the service droid moving up the line of cells. At each one, it announced, “Breakfast” in an irritating mechanical whine. A series of thumps and thuds followed.
“I can tell,” Han said, “that this will be an interesting dining experience.”
The droid whined to a halt outside their door. “Last meal,” it announced.
“Even better,” Leia said.
Then items poured through the slot in the door. Han’s blaster. Leia’s lightsaber. Other objects.
“You have got to be kidding,” Han said.
Leia nodded. “Well, that makes this my favorite prison ever.”
They scrambled to the door and sorted out their possessions. Leia flipped open the datapad, read the words, R2-D2 STANDING BY. AUDIO OPEN. PRESS “ADVANCE” FOR ESCAPE ROUTE MAP AND “RETURN” FOR TEXT.
Leia broke into a brilliant smile. “Artoo?”
STANDING BY. SUGGEST YOU COMMENCE YOUR ESCAPE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I AM UNABLE TO PREVENT THE MONITOR DROIDS FROM OBSERVING YOUR CELL. AT ANY MOMENT THEY MAY BEGIN WONDERING WHY YOU ARE NOT EATING YOUR FOOD.
“Understood,” Leia said. She hit the ADVANCE button, taking a quick moment to note the first few elements of their escape path. “Short hallway, metal-bar obstacle—no problem—cut through the floor into the maintenance machinery section. Got it. Ready?” She handed the datapad to Han.
“Ready.” Han took up position beside the door, his blaster in hand.
Leia lit her lightsaber. She drove the point of the gleaming red bar of energy into the door at floor level, dragged it across the bottom of the door. She felt heavy resistance that had to be the metal bars there. Once she was past that, she repeated the process at the top of the door, her blade not quite horizontal because she was not tall enough to hold the lightsaber that high.
Once she was past the heaviest resistance there, she retreated into a defensive stance and nodded.
Han shoved. The door slid halfway open. He snatched back his hand as two guards on the other side fired blasters through the opening.
Leia caught both shots with her blade, batting one to the side, the other back through the opening. It struck a blue-clad guard there in the chest and he went down, his uniform flaming and smoking.
Han leaned out and fired twice through the opening, catching the other guard in the side and hurling him out of the way. He shoved at the door again, and it opened the rest of the way.
Han and Leia rounded the corner to the barred exit from this cell block. Han waited behind and began firing back the way they had come while Leia went to work on the bars, cutting through three of them at head height and again at ankle height. Incoming blasterfire flashed past Han’s position, blackening the wall behind him. “Got it?” he called.
“Got it. Come on.” She slid through the gap and turned to face Han.
He raced to her, leapt through the gap. In those few seconds, prison guards skidded into view past the corner he’d vacated. They began firing; Leia swatted the bolts from the air, reveling at being able to do something so simple, so gratifying, so direct. Some of her deflections sailed back the way they’d come and forced the guards into hiding.
This corridor was nothing but a duracrete tube angling gently upward. Han raced