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By Root 572 0

wordless that expressed vividly how he felt about having Imperial boots touch his ship and slipped his blaster over Luke’s shoulder, snapping off a pair of double taps that caught two troopers while they were still in the air. The bursts blew them backward far enough that they fell short and tumbled into the shaft below, but dozens made it onto the hull. There were plenty more where they’d come from, and Han had a strong feeling that a stand-up fight against a hundred-some stormtroopers was a losing proposition under the best of circumstances. Which these circumstances weren’t.

“Make for the hatch!” Han fired twice more, dropping one dark silhouette and knocking another spinning off the rim of the hull, while Luke fanned away a flood of return fire. “Let’s see how these sons of monkey-lizards like open space and hard vacuum!”

“You first,” Luke said.

“That’s another thing you won’t have to tell me twice.” Red-glowing spheres sailed in through the smoke: thermal detonators. Some bounced away, but four or five maglocked themselves to the hull. “Uh, Luke?”

“I’ve got them.” With his left hand, Luke swung his lightsaber in a dazzling flourish to spray blaster bolts randomly through the smoke, while his right hand stretched out toward the dets. All of them suddenly jerked themselves loose and flipped over the edge of the ship. Multiple detonations bounced the ship off the wall again. “Go, Han! Go now!”

Han took three steps, then threw himself into a flat dive that became a belly flop and sent him skidding and scraping over the lip of the hatch. He pulled himself in with his free hand and pivoted around his grip to land on his feet on the deck below. “I’m in! Luke, come on!”

More dets went off and lit the smoke with bloody flame, and there came no sign that Luke had any intention of following him. Han scrambled back up the gangway. “Luke, don’t be an idiot!”

“I’m going after Vastor.” Luke leaned into the gale of blasterfire as he worked his way toward the ship’s edge. “Go. Save Leia! Don’t wait for me.”

“We’re not leaving without you! And if you’re going after that huge crazy thunderbucker, I’m coming with you! You’ll need me!”

“Leia needs you. Stopping the bad guy is my job. Your job is to save the Princess.”

“And since when do I take your orders?”

Luke threw him a glance. For one brief instant his face lit up with one of those old sunny farmboy grins Han hadn’t seen since Hoth. “Watch your fingers.”

“What?”

The hatch slammed down on Han hard enough to knock him down the gangway. He landed hard, rubbing his ringing head. “Luke!”

He hauled himself back up the gangway, but the hatch controls were dark, and the manual dogs were frozen. He snarled and pounded at them with the butt of his blaster, but then it occurred to him that the hull above was crowded with old-line Imperial troopers, the kind who specialized in cracking ships, and any of them who weren’t busy trying to kill Luke would be busy trying to peel the hull so they could flood inside and kill Han and Chewie.

And Leia.

“Hope you know what you’re doing, kid,” Han muttered. It was as close to a good-bye as he could let himself say.

He jammed his blaster back into its holster and pelted headlong for the cockpit. “Chewie! Change of plan!” He skidded into the accessway. “The stun field, Chewie! Charge ’em up!”

“Growf! Heroo geeorrough?”

“He’s not coming.” Han vaulted into his seat. He hit the antipersonnel trigger himself and was treated to the gratifying sight of a couple of stormtroopers falling past the cockpit’s viewports with blue energy still crackling over their black armor. Maybe on some other day he would have stayed and fought it out, but Leia, strapped into Chewbacca’s copilot chair, writhed and moaned and twisted Han’s heart.

“Luke’s doing his job. We have to do ours,” he said.

He heeled the ship over, pointed her mandibles straight down at the shaft’s bottom, and kicked in every erg of energy her damaged thrusters could produce. The ship streaked toward a wall of solid rock. Han lit up the quad in his one remaining turret and held down the trigger;