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With the Force, Leia reached out toward one of the late arrivals, a droid who held his rifle in a loose grip. She yanked toward her and the rifle came sailing to her hand. Before it landed, she repeated the trick on the next droid entering the room, and his rifle, too, leapt from his possession and into Leia’s.

She ducked down with Han. “Now what?”

“Battleship tactics.” He hauled on the heaviest plate of scrap metal in their vicinity, toppling it so that it covered the two of them almost completely. Their improvised fort was now lit only by the red glow from Leia’s weapon.

Han indicated two spots on the plate. “Holes here and here. Fist-sized.”

Leia complied, burning two apertures in the metal. The air now stank with the odor of superheated durasteel. “You won’t be able to see to aim.”

“Who needs to aim?” Han picked up one rifle in each hand, switched each to full autofire, inserted the barrels in the holes, angled them up more toward the ceiling, and began firing.

Leia switched off her lightsaber and crowded back as far away from the rifles as she could, holding her hands over her ears. The roar in this confined space was deafening. Han rocked the weapons back and forth, slowly changing his angle of fire left to right, up and down.

The metal plate shuddered as it began sustaining hits. Han turned to Leia and flashed her a manic grin, then closed his eyes and kept firing.

First one of his rifles clicked down to zero and stopped firing, then the other. But the sound of ricochets continued as shots bounded from one end of the compactor chamber to the other, bouncing again and again until they hit something not protected by the chamber’s magnetic seal.

Such as scrap metal. Such as droids. Such as droids being transformed into scrap metal.

When there were no more blasts or impacts to be heard, Han maneuvered the metal plate aside and peeked. Leia also leaned around the plate to look.

The droids weren’t completely destroyed. She saw one walking back and forth with half his head gone, clicking the trigger of a rifle that was missing its middle section. Another droid spun around, his upper half turning one direction and his lower half the other, causing him to roll erratically across the floor. But most were down, motionless.

“I’ll watch the other door,” Han said, “if you’ll cut through the pile here and get us out.”

“Love to.”

The exercise yard guards looked up as the Millennium Falcon awkwardly maneuvered into position above the yard.

The guards raised their blaster rifles and opened fire. R2-D2 saw their assault through his link with the transport’s holocams, and felt a momentary thrill of dismay and an anticipation of damage before his probability calculations indicated that their shoulder arms would not be able to harm the ship. He brought the Falcon down several meters until the keel was just above the ground, and hovered there.

Han and Leia emerged from a side door in one of the walls bounding the exercise yard. They drew the guard-droid fire from the Falcon, but Han fired with his blaster in one direction, keeping droids harried and defensive there, while Leia deflected each and every blaster bolt aimed at them from the other direction. R2-D2 lowered the starboard boarding ramp, and in moments, Han and Leia rushed up to the cockpit. R2 raised the ramp.

Leia gave R2-D2 a pat on the dome before settling into the copilot’s chair. “Well done, Artoo.”

He wheetled at her, sent one last message through the dataport, then unjacked himself.

Han peeled off his piratical tunic and scrubbed at the false scar over his eye as he looked over the control boards. “Threepio’s on foot north of here. Get into the topside laser turret. We’ll scoop Threepio up and then punch out of here.”

“To space, I assume,” Leia said.

“To the forest.” Han flashed her a lopsided grin. “Trust me on this.”

The spaceport was protected by a quartet of aging Z-95 Headhunters, venerable predecessors of the X-wing. While they