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“Artoo mentions that there is an antipersonnel blaster cannon situated very near the loading ramp, which is where that scoundrel is preparing to make his assault on our armor.”

The astromech tweetled again.

“Oh. I was not supposed to convey that information to you. In no way was he recommending that you activate the antipersonnel weapon and annihilate our tormenter.” C-3PO turned toward the astromech. “Of course, we can’t use it, either, so why mention it at all?”

Tweetle.

“No, it’s not a part of my programming that I’ve ever endeavored to overcome.”

Allana looked over the ship’s controls, momentarily overwhelmed by their number and complexity. She looked for something, some button marked REPEL BAD MEN, anything that would get her out of this jam.

There was no such button, and when she looked out the cockpit canopy again, she saw two more figures running toward the Falcon—a tall broad-shouldered man and a female companion—and they were both wearing coats with hoods pulled up to cover their heads. Didn’t bad people always try to hide their faces?

Allana looked back at the control board. No, there was no single button that would help. But there was … all of them.

Allana was a very good student when the subject was interesting, and the Falcon was very interesting.

Tentatively at first, she began flipping switches in the ship’s power start-up procedure.

“Mistress Allana, what exactly are you doing?”

R2-D2 tweetled.

“I know that, you rolling trash collector, but I’m giving her the conversational escape route of plausible deniability. Mistress Allana, please don’t play with the power activation controls.”

“I’m not playing. Go get me some pillows.”

“Now is scarcely the time for a nap.”

“I need the pillows because I’m short. The chair is too big for me. Please go get me some pillows so I can save us and keep them from hurting Anji anymore. There are more bad guys coming—I saw them!”

“Yes, miss.” The protocol droid hopped up and waddled out of the cockpit with unseemly haste.

He was back in less than a minute and, under R2-D2’s direction, as Allana continued her distracted, meticulous series of switch and control activations, arrayed them behind her on the pilot’s seat so she could lean back against something solid while still handling the controls. “Artoo, we are all doomed.”

Allana glanced at the astromech. “Can you plug in to the computer?”

He tweetled an affirmative. He extended his datajack arm and slotted it into a plug near the comm board.

Monitors and readouts all over the control surfaces were now lighting up, many of them with notifications of an imminent hull breach at the loading ramp.

What was next? Oh, yes, a checklist. She didn’t know the checklist. Well, she knew one item. “Passenger, buckle in.”

“Oh, dear.”

Tentatively, even fearfully, she put her hands on the yoke. No, that wasn’t right. First, the repulsors. She activated that system, diverting most of the Falcon’s motivator energy away from thrusters, and then gripped the yoke again. Distantly, she heard cries of alarm from the vicinity of the loading ramp—then she felt a big bump and heard a sharp bang.

“Oh dear,” C-3PO said. “That sounded like an explosion.”

Gently, as carefully as she could manage with her too-small hands, she pulled back on the yoke.

The Falcon lurched nose-first into the sky. Reflexively, she shoved on the yoke and the nose came crashing to ground again, jarring Allana nearly out of the seat, sending a metallic clanging noise throughout the ship.

R2-D2 tweetled.

“Artoo reports that Monarg’s cutting torch exploded as he was trying to light it,” C-3PO said. “We appear to have taken some hull damage, but the rest of the intruders have fallen off.”

“Good.” She tried again, even more gently this time, pulling up on the yoke as well as back.

The Falcon rose, wobbly, into the air. The repulsor system whined like an uncertain adolescent.

Perimeter lights all around the spaceport’s fences brightened into