Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [64]
It could almost have been a character on Castle Creep.
Without so much as a backward glance she hurried off in pursuit of the creature, trailing it into a large room filled with suspended ceiling lights and long tables covered with chairs that had been turned upside down. The creature bounded to the far side of the room and disappeared into what Allana first thought was some kind of hole in the wall, but it wasn't. It was a small turbolift like the ones in the palace on Hapes that were used to move plates and food between the royal dining room and the lower-level kitchens. She wondered for a moment if the turbolift was big enough for her to fit into.
It was.
So down she went.
Han's mounting confusion reverberated like a scream in Leia's mind.
Mentally scanning for Allana, she dashed for the lobby, C-3PO hurrying behind her.
“I turned around and she was gone,” Han said, eyes darting about. Melted whipped treat was running down his left hand.
Leia looked inward. “I don't sense her in any danger …”
“Good, but where is she?”
Leia turned to the broad, curving staircase that led to the arena's upper tiers, then looked across the lobby toward the entrance doors. “She wouldn't have gone outdoors.”
“I'll take the stairs,” Han said, already in motion. “We meet back here in five.”
Leia nodded.
C-3PO came to a halt in front of her. “What should I do, Princess Leia?”
“Alert security, Threepio. Tell them that our child has gone missing.”
“Yes, mistress, I will.”
Leia put her emotions on hold and calmed herself. Reaching out, she began to feel a lingering trace of Allana. She walked across the lobby and stood still, her gaze fixed on the wide doorway to an adjacent room—a conference room, by the look of it. Removing the tinted glasses, she continued to move, allowing the Force to guide her. Again she stopped and stood still, waiting for her eyes to alight. She hurried forward and dropped down on one knee in front of a service turbolift.
It would be a tight fit, but, yes, it would accommodate a small, seven-year-old girl.
Without bothering to puzzle out why Allana would have squeezed into it, what she might have been chasing, or what might have been chasing her, Leia rushed to the turbolifts she had noticed in the lobby. In her mind, she called to the child, but received no response.
Was she hurt? No.
Preoccupied. Fascinated. Intrigued … Playing.
Exiting the turbolift, she followed the same path she had taken on the floor above, this time through a maze of corridors into a kitchen filled with appliances and floor-to-ceiling shelf units stocked with pots and pans and a vast assortment of serving trays and bowls. Her path led her into another corridor—closing on Allana, she was certain—and into a huge underground space housing hundreds of pets in cages. But not just ordinary pets, Leia realized. What the pet show industry referred to as novelties—bioengineered creatures of all description. And Allana was somewhere among them.
Leia gave voice to sudden and overwhelming concern.
“All— Amelia!”
Han had just arrived at the top of the sweeping staircase when he realized he was on the right track. The revelation came in the form of an alumabronze ashtray stand that swung down seemingly out of nowhere, narrowly missing his head but striking the floor with such force that it loosed a thick cloud of gray ash that caused him to sneeze, dislodging the wig that was part of his disguise. Head flung forward from the force of the sneeze, he inadvertently dodged the first pass of a nonhumanoid foot that whizzed over the top of his doubled-over torso. As he straightened, the foot caught him as it was coming full circle, but the spindly being the booted foot