Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [70]
This was only partially because they couldn’t fire on him without risking shooting their friends. Mainly, it was because—as the Mindorese discovered, to their considerable dismay—once one gets within reach, there is no such thing as an unarmed Wookiee.
Han got his blaster primed and snapped off a burst at a couple of Mindorese who’d had the bright idea to aim high, thinking to blast Chewie over their friends’ heads. One ducked and darted away, but the other caught Han’s bolt square in his chest; the blast of the impact sent him toppling backward, but the spreading cloud of reddish-black smoke coming from his armor reminded Han of what Leia had said about that flippin’ Lava Gear armor of theirs.
Now that he’d thought of it, the air in the hold was getting distinctly thick with smoke and dust, stinging his eyes and rasping his throat as Mindorese armor absorbed ricochets from bulkheads and deck and ceiling, which reminded him of which three people in that hold weren’t wearing tough armor made of the local lava. An estimate of how long his, Leia’s, and Chewie’s luck could conceivably last before one of those stray bolts blew off an irreplaceable piece or two of their respective anatomies made the decision for him in an instant.
He whirled and put a blaster bolt into the cargo-ramp release. The panel exploded into sparks and smoke and the ramp began to descend. Leia was still kneeling on Aeona’s back with a fist tangled in her long red hair, holding her to the deck.
“Hey!” Han leapt over and grabbed her shoulder. He had to shout over the blasterfire and the ear-shattering whoops of Chewbacca’s war howl. “Playtime’s over! We gotta go!”
Leia looked up at him with a fierce grin, sparkling eyes, and high color blazing on her cheeks, and Han thought again, for the tenth or hundredth—maybe thousandth—time, that the Princess of Alderaan really was never more beautiful than when she was knocking the Sithspit out of somebody.
She leapt to her feet. “Where’s Artoo? We can’t leave him!”
“I’ll get the droid! Just go!”
“One second—”
She dropped back to one knee and snatched Aeona’s KYD-21 from the deck where Han had let it fall. Han covered her with a barrage of marginally aimed fire, blasting more and more armor smoke off every irregular he could spot in the thickening haze, while she rifled the semiconscious woman’s pockets and came up with the KYD’s power cell. “My turn!”
From one knee, she started snapping off shots into the fringes of the melee, in the middle of which a joyously berserk Wookiee was now swinging a Mindorese by the ankles, using him as a human club to batter others in all directions. “Go get Chewie!”
Han flashed her a grateful glance and charged into the thick of the fight. Leia started backing down the open ramp, still firing. Han lowered his shoulder and just dewbacked his way in, shoving and kicking and smacking a couple of guys with his blaster until he was close enough to Chewbacca that he had to duck to keep the Wookiee from flattening him with his club of unconscious Mindorese. He caught Chewie’s arm, and the battle-maddened Wookiee roared and tried to backhand Han away. Han didn’t take it personally; he just hung on and rode Chewie’s arm while he shouted, “Chewie, it’s me! Code Black, Chewie—you understand? Code Black!”
Chewbacca blinked down at him, and Han watched comprehension snap into those blue eyes. The next flick of those eyes instantly took in the situation, which had actually gotten worse as Chewbacca had battered down man after man; the more Mindorese who went down, the less there were to get in each other’s way—and now a couple of Big Brains among them had remembered the pile of weapons in the number-six hopper and were in the process of digging out blaster carbines, which meant that this situation, already ugly as a drunken monkey-lizard, was about to escalate all the way to Naked Gamorrean.
“Harrraroufgh!” Chewie said, and Han let go of his arm. The Wookiee