• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The trooper reached up, stabbing through the plated case with vibroblade claws. Mara used his temporary disorientation to grab Lando and add his mass to her own as she shoved the spacetrooper. With her foot Mara pried free one of the spacetrooper’s boots as he fought to regain his balance. She slammed against him, breaking the magnetic grip of his other boot. In an instant the trooper snapped free.

Suddenly unattached to the core, he dropped with the momentum imparted by the force of Mara’s attack. The spacetrooper scrabbled to find purchase against the smooth cylindrical hull as he slid down toward the fiery contact points. The vibroblades in his glove made long, silvery score marks on the metal, but did no good.

Sucked inexorably down, the trooper plunged into the flaming discharge between the contact points and vaporized in a bolt of green-and-blue static.

The detonators continued their countdown.

Lando signaled. “We’re on our way, Han, old buddy. Make sure you’re ready to go.”

When he felt a vibration through his boots, Lando looked up to see another spacetrooper drop down from the catwalks. This one carried a blaster rifle, but Lando guessed that the trooper dared not use it in the vicinity of the power core.

The second trooper brought his blaster rifle to bear, motioning for them to surrender, but no voice came over their helmet radios. Lando wondered if the trooper had tuned to a different frequency, or if he merely expected the blaster rifle to be a universal language.

“Can he hear us?” Lando said.

“Who knows? Distract him. Our time is running out.” Lando waved his gloved hands and pointed down the expanse of metal to the blinking detonators. He flapped his palms frantically and threw his arms wide to mime an explosion.

As the spacetrooper glanced in the other direction, Mara launched herself forward and grabbed the barrel of his blaster rifle, using it like a lever. In free fall her own momentum knocked him free, sending the trooper tumbling back up toward the catwalks.

“Let’s go! Don’t worry about him,” Mara said, returning to Lando’s side. “Get to the Falcon before those detonators blow.”

Mara and Lando toiled back to the ship still clinging to the support girders. Behind them the second spacetrooper managed to reach out and grab one of the tangled coolant pipes, stopping his reckless tumble. He descended toward the power core again, ignoring Lando and Mara as he hurried to the detonators.

Lando felt Chewbacca’s enormous baggy suit folding around him, making it difficult to walk. He looked back and saw the spacetrooper working with the detonators, but he knew Mara had cyberlocked them together. With only a few minutes left, the spacetrooper would be able to do nothing.

Less than a minute before the timed detonation, Lando and Mara sealed themselves inside the Falcon just as Han disengaged the landing claw.

“Glad you could join me!” Han said, immediately punching the accelerators.

The Falcon raced back out along the Death Star’s equator. Its sublight engines flared white-hot behind it.

The surviving spacetrooper managed to reach the ring of detonators. He worked meticulously but rapidly, disconnecting each one, using the built-in laser welder in his suit to remove the explosives. He tossed each one, still blinking, into the open space.

He succeeded in disarming six of the seven detonators. He was standing right above the last one, prying it up, when it exploded beneath him.

Outside, in the midst of the space battle, Admiral Daala gritted her teeth. Her face wore a perpetual look of disdain as she stared at the dizzying firefight.

The attack was not going well. Her forces were being gradually worn away. She hadn’t had many TIE fighters to start with; most of them had been left behind in the Cauldron Nebula when she had wheeled the Gorgon about to escape the exploding stars. She had only her reserves, and most of those squadrons had been wiped out by Rebel starfighters.

When the Death Star prototype reappeared