• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

[Be quiet—I have to think.]

[I keep seeing him in a room full of people—a large room, and all different species. I don’t know where this picture comes from—]

[I do not believe this,] Chewbacca said. But Lumpawarrump’s words had put the picture in his mind as well.

[And yet I see what I see, Father. It comes to me without imagining. Is it a deception?]

[When did this vision present itself to you?]

[While I was in the turret—and it will not leave me. It is most insistent.]

Chewbacca growled and blasted the ceiling at random. The thought of Han was now inextricably connected to an oddly detailed vision of a high-ceilinged compartment half filled with a zoo of species. The image would not leave his mind either, and he could not see Han in any other surroundings. [This is powerfully annoying—and I do not understand it.]

[Father, what if the enemy has taken many hostages? What if Han is just one of hundreds? Where would he be then?]

There were noises in the outer corridor, and Chewbacca moved to the ruined security door. [In your mind, as you see Han,] he called. [Are there any markings, any numbers or words?]

Lumpawarrump squeezed his eyes closed. [Yes. Yes, on the wall—D-two.]

It was the same as what Chewbacca saw—bold black lettering high on the bulkhead above the prisoners: CARGO D2.

[The mass detention holds,] Chewbacca roared. [Come!]

Back to back, Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump fought their way forward to cargo hold D2. Strangely, the resistance seemed to weaken rather than strengthen as they went, almost as though they were moving too fast for their pursuers to find them—or as though the carnage they left in their wake discouraged other Yevetha from getting in the way of a headlong Wookiee charge.

But the guards and patrols they did encounter fought tenaciously, never flinching or fleeing. Armed or unarmed, alone or in groups, the Yevetha confronted the intruders with a foolish courage that made them easy targets and persistent threats. Chewbacca and Lumpawarrump were forced to fire on anything that moved and to keep firing until it stopped moving. By the time their objective was in sight, the gauge on Lumpawarrump’s hand blaster was nearing the POWER LOW mark, and the gauges on both of Chewbacca’s were closing in on POWER CRITICAL.

Ahead of them was one final hurdle. Unlike with the detention blocks, blowing a hole in the bulkhead with a grenade threatened the occupants of the cargo hold. But the sectional doors of the hold were guarded by half a dozen Yevetha deployed behind a pair of Imperial portable shields. The waist-high curved panels contained both ray-shield generators and energy absorbers, and the Yevetha had nothing to fear from hand blasters so long as they stayed behind the arc of the shields.

Worse, the doors to the hold were on the other side of a hundred-meter wide flight deck—a deck that normally housed some of the fighters now searching for the Falcon, and offered no cover whatever when they were gone.

[Your bowcaster,] Chewbacca said as they crouched in the hatchway.

Lumpawarrump unslung the weapon and began to surrender it to his father, but found to his surprise there was no hand extended to take it from him. Instead, Chewbacca was offering him slug cores—the nuclei of the explosive quarrels.

[First, the shields,] Chewbacca said, gesturing with his blaster. [Then go for your enemies on the extreme left and right. That will likely freeze the others and keep them bunched up for you. You must fire as quickly as your bowcaster allows—as when trying to take flarion before the flock scatters into the cover.]

[Yes, Father.]

[I will divide their attention, as one gives the tharriarr a morsel to distract it,] Chewbacca said. [Try to keep your quarrels out of my back, son.]

Lumpawarrump laughed easily. [Try not to run in front of my sights, Father.]

Chewbacca thumbed his comlink. [Jowdrrl.]

[Here, cousin.]

[Prepare to make a pickup from the flight deck which is directly forward of your position.]

[I will seal the hatch and be ready for your call.]