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"I'm working on it!" Han finally shouted, blasting at an aiwha who'd foolishly drawn too close.

Luke would have laughed, but he needed all his energy to hold his weight. Finally, he made it to the top and pulled himself into the nest.

"I told you I didn't need your help," Han said, scowling. "Now we're both stuck up here. What good does that do?"

"This, for one thing," Luke, said, pulling out his blaster and adding to Han's attack.

The aiwhas shrieked and cawed, their wings beating furiously.

"They're never going to abandon the nest!" Han said. "We have to get down from here."

"That's the plan," Luke answered. "After you. I'll hold them off."

"After you, kid," Han insisted. The skies darkened as a thick cloud blew their way.

Far below, Chewbacca roared impatiently.

Luke's eyes widened. That was no cloud. It was a flock of aiwhas, at least twenty of them, coming straight for the nest. "How about we both go!" he said, pointing toward the flock. " Now. "

They dived out of the nest and scrambled down the side of the building toward Chewbacca, clinging tightly to the niches carved out by the lightsaber. The aiwhas tore after them, their massive wings beating in a rhythmic thunder. Han, Luke, and Chewbacca ran through the empty streets, over permacrete gleaming in the rain, feet sloshing through puddles as they fled from the aiwhas. Soon they'd left the thunder of the wings far behind.

The night was still again, silence broken only by the rumbling thunder and the distant waves.

"You're welcome," Han said once they'd all caught their breath.

" I'm welcome?" Luke asked incredulously. "For what?"

"We found you, didn't we?" Han said. "If we hadn't come looking for you, you'd be wandering around on your own. You would've made a nice, tasty dinner for some baby birds."

"Aiwhas are herbivores," Luke pointed out. "And I found you. If it weren't for me, you'd still be up in that nest, waiting to hatch."

Chewbacca growled his agreement.

"Aw, can it, furball," Han snapped. "At least I'm not afraid of the dark."

Luke was tempted to keep arguing, but they had bigger problems to deal with. "Have you had any luck contacting Wedge or Zev?" Luke asked.

Han shook his head. "They must have been too far from the planet's surface. Weren't caught in the beam."

Unlike us, Luke thought, flushing. It was his fault they were trapped here. He had been in charge of the mission, and he was the one who'd ordered that final maneuver, bringing the three of them closer to the planet's surface. If one of them hadn't made it, there would have been no one to blame but himself.

"Hey, kid, don't beat yourself up about it," Han said, as if he knew what Luke was thinking. He clapped him on the shoulder. "None of us knew about that tractor beam. You couldn't have guessed—"

"But I knew something was off," Luke insisted. "I should have…" He shook his head.

He didn't know what the right choice had been, only that he'd made the wrong one. "I should have been more careful."

"A firefight's no place for careful," Han said. "And it's no place for what-ifs. You made the call you had to make, in that moment. It was a good maneuver: I would have done the same. And you might have saved all our lives."

"How do you figure that?" Luke asked, a little sourly.

"What if we'd won that fight, blasted all those ships out of the sky?" Han said. "We'd have come in for a landing, and we'd all have been caught in the beam. At least this way Wedge and Zev are still out there somewhere—hopefully coming up with a plan."

"We can't count on that," Luke said.

"You're right. And even if they are out there, they can't do anything until we shut down that tractor beam."

"It must be an old security system, left behind by the Empire," Luke said. "We've have to find it. Then, if we can disable it—"

R2-D2 beeped indignantly.

"Okay, okay," Luke patted R2-D2's dome. " When we disable it, maybe we'll be able to find a ship,"

"And it'd be handy if we arrived before the others," Han added. "So let's go."

"Others?" Luke asked.