Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [65]
In the first confused moments of the attack, Chewie dove into the foliage, while Han and Leia hit the dirt in the cover of the arches that flanked the bunker door. Explosions all around kept them pinned from leaving; the bunker door itself was closed again, and locked.
Han punched out the stolen code on the control panel keys—but this time, the door didn’t open. It had been reprogrammed as soon as they’d been caught. “The terminal doesn’t work now,” he muttered.
Leia stretched for a laser pistol lying in the dirt, just out of reach, beside a felled stormtrooper. Shots were crisscrossing from every direction, though.
“We need Artoo,” she shouted.
Han nodded, took out his comlink, pushed the sequence that signaled the little droid and reached for the weapon Leia couldn’t get as the fighting stormed all around them.
Artoo and Threepio were huddled behind a log when Artoo got the message. He suddenly blurted out an excited whistle and shot off toward the battlefield.
“Artoo!” Threepio shouted. “Where are you going? Wait for me!” Nearly beside himself, the golden droid tore off after his best friend.
Biker scouts raced over and around the scurrying droids, blasting away at the Ewoks who grew fiercer every time their fur was scorched. The little bears were hanging on the legs of the Imperial walkers, hobbling the appendages with lengths of vine, or injuring the joint mechanisms by forcing pebbles and twigs into the hinges. They were knocking scouts off their bikes, by stringing vine between trees at throat level. They were throwing rocks, jumping out of trees, impaling with spears, entangling with nets. They were everywhere.
Scores of them rallied behind Chewbacca, who had grown rather fond of them during the course of the previous night. He’d become their mascot; and they, his little country cousins. So it was with a special ferocity, now, that they came to each other’s aid. Chewie was flinging stormtroopers left and right, in a selfless Wookiee frenzy, any time he saw them physically harming his small friends. The Ewoks, for their part, formed equally self-sacrificing cadres to do nothing but follow Chewbacca and throw themselves upon any soldiers who started getting the upper hand with him.
It was a wild, strange battle.
Artoo and Threepio finally made it to the bunker door. Han and Leia provided cover fire with guns they’d finally managed to scrounge. Artoo moved quickly to the terminal, plugged in his computer arm, began scanning. Before he’d even computed the weather codes, though, a laser bolt explosion ripped the entranceway, disengaging Artoo’s cable arm, spilling him to the dirt.
His head began to smolder, his fittings to leak. All of a sudden every compartment sprang open, every nozzle gushed or smoked, every wheel spun—and then stopped. Threepio rushed to his wounded companion, as Han examined the bunker terminal.
“Maybe I can hotwire this thing,” Solo mumbled.
Meanwhile the Ewoks had erected a primitive catapult at the other side of the field. They fired a large boulder at one of the walkers—the machine vibrated seriously, but did not topple. It turned, and headed for the catapult, laser cannon firing. The Ewoks scattered. When the walker was ten feet away, the Ewoks chopped a mass of restraining vines, and two huge, balanced trunks crashed down on top of the Imperial war wagon, halting it for good.
The next phase of the assault began. Ewoks in kite-like animal-skin hang-gliders started dropping rocks on the stormtroopers, or dive-bombing with spears. Teebo, who led the attack, was hit in the wing with laser fire during the first volley and crashed into a gnarled root. A charging walker clumped forward to crush him, but Wicket swooped down just in time, yanking Teebo to safety. In swerving out of the walker’s way, though, Wicket smashed into a racing speeder bike—they all went