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He tried to fire up the shuttle’s engines. The control panel gave him an ERROR message. “Bantha dung it is, then,” he said. But he had one more thing to try.

The lead guard suddenly stopped and gestured toward the open hatch in the first shuttle. He tilted his head to speak into his helmet comlink, then went cautiously forward. He took another guard with him, while the remaining two drew their weapons and spread out, looking from side to side.

“Oh boy,” Kyp said.

Han rewired the security circuit, feeding the password-checking mechanisms back into themselves; then he snapped the plate back on. “Let’s try it. Kyp, get ready to close the hatch. If this works, those guards are going to be upset. If it doesn’t work, I’m going to be upset.”

The two guards poked their heads out of the first shuttle, gesturing wildly. They had seen the sabotage. The other two jabbered into their helmet radios, then sprinted toward the second shuttle, drawing their weapons.

Kyp slapped the button that slammed the hatch shut. All the guards began running, pointing their blasters at the shuttle.

Han punched the start controls. With a merciful whine and hum, the engines ignited. Power surged through the shuttle. Han gave a whoop of triumph, but Chewbacca knocked him back into the pilot’s seat as he furiously worked the controls with his big hairy hands to lift them off the pad.

The guards fired blasters at the shuttle. Han heard the sizzling thumps as the beams struck, but the ship’s armor could withstand attack from minor hand weapons.

At the base of the atmosphere stack, doors opened and an entire squad of guards boiled out like Anoat lizard-ants in mating season. One bright laser bolt splashed across the transparisteel directly in front of Han’s eyes, dazzling him. “Time to leave this party,” he said.

Chewbacca raised them off the ground, maneuvering the shuttle away from the other vehicles on the landing pad.

Two guards wrestled a blaster cannon into place, erecting it on its tripod and cranking up the aim point. Chewbacca growled, and Han took over the controls. “I know. That thing could be real trouble if we don’t get some altitude fast.”

A flurry of hand-blaster bolts pinged against the lower hull. Han flew the ship higher, adjacent to the gigantic stack, spiraling upward and using the curving walls as a shield. The guards managed to fire only one shot from the blaster-cannon, but the beam scattered wide as Han corkscrewed up, keeping the stack between him and the troops. Below, the guards ran around the perimeter to keep within firing range, but Han flew the shuttle beyond the reach of small weapons fire.

“We’re out of here!” Han said. “Punch it, Chewie!”

Then the massive laser turrets mounted on the atmosphere tower began firing at them.

“What!” Han cried. “What are they doing with weapons on an atmosphere stack? It’s a factory, not a garrison!”

One brilliant green bolt struck the starboard planar wing of the shuttle, sending the vessel into a roll. Han and Chewbacca grappled with the controls as they spun, and Kyp clung to the supports of the pilot’s chair.

They careened into the gushing white updraft from the stack, knocked from side to side by manufactured air dumping into Kessel’s atmosphere. “Hang on!” Han yelled. He did not want to crash on the planet again.

At the shuttle’s top acceleration, he took them along the stream of air, roaring upward like a boat riding the rapids. Green blasts from the turret lasers continued to streak up, but by riding the center stream, Han kept the shuttle in the blind spot of their targeting mechanisms.

They zoomed toward the fringes of the atmosphere. Han looked at both Kyp and Chewbacca. “Well, so much for sneaking out of here. Now Moruth Doole is going to know we escaped.”

As if on cue the shuttle’s comm crackled, and they could hear Doole’s croaking voice in the background. “Is this it? Did you get the right override channel this time?”

“Yes, Commissioner.”

“Solo! Han Solo, can you hear me?”

“Why, it sounds like my old friend Moruth Doole!