Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [71]
“Artoo!” Han shouted, still firing back past the Wookiee’s shoulder. “Where’s that flippin’ droid?”
An instant later, Han spotted the astromech, standing at the ramp-release panel Han had blasted, a manipulator arm and a data socket both shoved into the sparks and smoke sputtering out from the shattered electronics. “Hey, Stubby!” Han yelled. “Now is not the time for field repairs!”
R2-D2’s tootled reply sounded distinctly sarcastic, and when Chewie carried Han past to the ramp, the little droid retracted his tools and whirred along behind just as fast as his locomotor treads would carry him. Leia knelt at the base of the ramp, pouring fire up into the hold without bothering to aim, trusting that the ricochets would cause enough havoc to keep Mindorese heads down.
“Drop me and go get Artoo!” Han shouted, and Chewbacca complied with such unexpected alacrity that Han landed hard on that already-bruised portion of his anatomy. He scrambled to Leia’s side, adding his blasterfire to hers as Chewbacca sprang back up the ramp far enough to seize the droid. R2 squealed as Chewie lifted him; then the Wookiee spun and raced back down for the cavern through a buzzing hailstorm of energy bolts—some of which were now the thick, stretching smears of rifle blasts.
“Fall back!” Han told Leia. “Follow Chewie—I’ll hold ’em here!” Not for long, he thought, but he might be able to buy her a chance to get away.
“I’m not leaving you!” Leia said, still firing. “We go together or not at all!”
“Oh, for the love of—what happened to You’re the captain, Captain?”
“Things change,” Leia said, just before a random bolt clipped her shoulder and knocked her spinning to the cavern floor, which decided the issue, because Han leapt to her side, swept her up in his arms, and—despite her irritable insistence that “I’m fine, Han! It’s barely even a scratch!”—carried her at a dead run toward the mouth of the tunnel where Chewbacca and R2-D2 stood waiting.
“What’s the matter with you idiots?” Han cried at them. “Keep running!”
Chewie replied with a gruff “Hrrowrrh,” which was when Han realized the droid had extended his little parabolic antenna through a hatch in his dome and was now chirruping something that sounded less like his usual attempts at human communication, and more like the feedback from a high-speed electronic encryption protocol. Han skidded to a stop and looked over his shoulder.
Instead of what he expected to see—a flood of heavily armed irregulars streaming down the cargo ramp with rifles blazing—he found instead a narrowing aperture leaking smoke, artificial light, and the occasional badly aimed blaster bolt as the cargo ramp swung closed and latched itself in place.
Han blinked down at R2-D2. “Did you do that?”
The astromech rocked on his locomotors. Bee-woop!
“Not bad, Stubby—can you shut down the engines? Lock out the controls? Anything?”
Tyreepeep loo toooeee wrp! was the droid’s replay, which Han took to mean something along the lines of Maybe if you’d given me a chance to work it a little …
“Han?” Leia said. “Han, it’ll be all right. We’ll get the Falcon back.”
He didn’t hear her. He couldn’t hear her. He could only stand with her in his arms and watch.
Watch as somebody got the Falcon’s repulsorlifts engaged and lit the sublight thrusters. Watch as his ship slowly lifted from the cavern floor and rotated toward the way out. Watch as a flare from the sublights kicked his ship from the cavern.
Watch as his departing ship ripped open his chest, snatched out his heart, and took it along.
He set Leia on her feet. She stayed close against his chest and slid one arm up around his neck. “Han?”
He didn’t react. He only stood staring