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He fired a few more shots up the stairwell as his runner took off. He tried to figure out how long it had been since the tower had been blown free. Twenty minutes? More? They were asking a great deal of their luck.

As Han and his men fell back, the clatter of the lower-level defenders was heard. Both groups met at the emergency door leading to the tier blocks and crowded through. Han, among the last, turned to give the man behind him a hand, only to see him die with an odd, disappointed look on his face.

Han pulled the falling body out of the way as the final prisoner leaped through. Several others helped him shoulder the ponderous door shut as blaster and disrupter fire lashed against it, and made it fast with scraps of metal jammed in the latch. But it wouldn’t hold long, especially if the heavy crew-served blaster were brought up. Han surveyed the prisoners with him. “How many left to load?”

“Almost done, fella,” someone called. “Just a few left, not more than a hundred or so.”

“Then anybody who’s not armed, hat up! The rest spread out and take up a firing position. We’re almost home.”

They were still moving down the corridor when the emergency door crumpled inward, burned from its frame in a rain of glowing slag. The snout of the crew-served blaster stood in the gap, pointing straight into the abandoned first-tier block. Han didn’t bother firing at its shielded barrel.

The heavy blaster erupted into the empty tier block, and an armored Espo came worming around it to enter the corridor. One of the prisoners stopped long enough to shoot him. At the curve in the corridor, the defenders paused to take up firing again. The gunners were having trouble getting their piece through the emergency door without exposing themselves to counterfire.

Han and three others were the only ones left; a few prisoners had gone on to set up a new line of defense. Smoke from ruptured power conduits was getting thicker, the air thinner. Han’s senses strayed for a moment. He was opposite the door to the second tier block and crossed to it, bent over double, for a better field of fire.

But he spied something propped up against one of the stasis booths, halfway down the tier’s aisle. “Bollux, what the hell are you doing there?” Evidently the ’droid either had been dragged or had managed to drag himself this far toward the air lock, then had been shunted aside, and pausing in the shelter of the tier block for a moment, was unable to rise again. Han realized that no prisoner in fear of his life would have taken time to worry about an antiquated labor ’droid.

He ran to his side and dropped to one knee. “Up and at em, Annihilator. We’re beatin’ feet.”

It took all his strength to get the ’droid up. “Thank you, Captain Solo,” Bollux drawled. “Even with Max in direct linkage, I couldn’t—Captain!”

Simultaneously with the ’droid’s warning, Han felt Bollux throw all his mechanical weight against him, sending the two of them spinning around. In the same stopped frame, as it seemed, a disrupter beam meant for Han sliced into the ’droid’s head.

As they spun, Han’s draw was automatic: In that frozen instant, he saw Uul-Rha-Shan standing in the door frame at the head of the aisle, the bodies of the other defenders on the corridor floor behind him.

The reptilian gunman had his weapon held at arm’s length, knowing that his first shot had missed. The disrupter pistol was realigning. Han, with no time to aim, fired from the hip. Everything seemed to him to take forever, and yet to happen instantly.

The blaster bolt flowered high against Uul-Rha-Shan’s green-scaled chest, lifting him and hurling him backward, while his own disrupter shot lanced upward and splashed off the ceiling.

Han and Bollux were sprawled together on the floor. There was no light in the ’droid’s photoreceptors, no evidence of function. Han rose shakily, locked the fingers of his left hand around Bollux’s shoulder pauldron, holding on to his blaster with his right, and began hauling, heaving for breath.

He never saw the Espos who, following in Uul-Rha-Shan’s wake, were ready