Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [149]
As soon as Jaina had advanced four meters onto the bridge, Yaqeel ushered R2-D2 and C-3PO through the hatch and started to herd them across. Despite C-3PO’s predictions of doom and certain destruction, the sniper fire dwindled to nothing after Yaqeel batted aside a single bolt.
When the droids reached the halfway point on the bridge, Han let his repeating blaster dangle from its shoulder strap and rose. He shot a smirk across at Leia, then turned toward the carbonite pods hovering on their repulsorlifts.
“See? Nothing to it.”
A deafening chorus of clangs reverberated through the storage bunker as all of its hatches slammed shut simultaneously. Han spun back around to find Leia sitting on the deck grating, her hands braced behind her and her mouth hanging agape. She was staring dead ahead, where an oily durasteel panel now blocked their only escape route.
Leia slowly turned a pair of angry brown eyes in his direction. “You just had to say it.”
“It’s not my fault!” Han said, stabbing a finger against a button on the control panel. When the hatch remained closed, he added, “Artoo didn’t say anything about Xyn changing her mind!”
“My guess is someone helped her,” Leia said. She rose and stepped over to examine the hatch. “That’s a turadium shield alloy. It’s going take forever to cut through it.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t have forever.” Han checked his chrono. “We’ve got sixty seconds.”
Leia’s brow furrowed. “You don’t think they would leave without …” She let the sentence trail off, then shook her head. “Forget it. They don’t have a choice.”
Han nodded. “That newsvan doesn’t have armor or weaponry,” he said. “They have to take off without us—or get shot down.”
“I’ll let them know.” Leia activated her throat mike, then frowned. “But not with this thing. The signal neutralizer is back on. We’ve lost the comlink.”
Her eyes grew distant and unfocused as she reached out in the Force—most likely to Jaina, with whom she had the strongest connection. Han took the chance to glance around the bunker, searching for any means of escape Xyn might have overlooked. It was eerily silent inside the bunker, and only dimly lit. The blinking status lights on all those thousands of carbonite pods made him think of a Coruscant skylane at dusk. The temperature was not uncomfortable yet, but he knew it was cold enough to cause hypothermia within a few hours.
Failing to see any obvious means of escape, Han pulled the datapad from his vest pocket and rechecked the schematic R2-D2 had provided earlier. It took only a moment to find what he needed. He looked up into the top of the bunker, which curved into a vaguely conical dome about thirty meters overhead.
Han turned the schematic toward Leia and pointed toward the bullet-shaped peak. “This thing sticks up through the roof. I remember seeing that when we set up the hoverscafs.”
“Me, too,” Leia said. “So?”
He tapped a small globe hanging from his equipment vest. “So I’ve still got a thermal detonator.”
“Okay …” Leia’s eyes began to brighten, but she did not seem quite on board yet. “And then?”
“Then we’re out on the roof,” Han said. He grabbed Valin’s pod and started to float it toward the nearest stairway. “Where the GAS boys don’t expect to see us.”
Leia cocked her head. “Well, it’s better than staying trapped in here. I’ll keep reaching out to Jaina and see if I can get across the idea that we’re going up.”
She grabbed Jysella’s pod and floated it after Han, and together they began to climb as fast as possible. They spotted a cargo lift almost immediately, but didn’t use it for fear of betraying their plan. Besides, with Leia using the Force to pull the pods up the stairwells, the ascent wasn’t too strenuous. After a couple of minutes, they were standing on the uppermost