“Wait, wait, there's something funny about this.” At Chewie's interrogatory growl, he added, “I don't know â¦Â Hold on.”
The system had automatically recorded the transmission, and Luke played it again as Chewie listened intently.
“It's chopped up a lot,” Luke said. “That's odd. Like her ship didn't receive the whole message.” He ran it through the comm system, trying to match it to a type of Imperial ship. The
Falcon
's database had been augmented by the Alliance's, so if this was a known class of ship, it should be in there. In another moment, the system signaled a match. Luke checked the result and thought,
Huh?
He sent it to Chewie's display. “This doesn't make any sense.”
Chewie growled and waved his hands. C-3PO said, “He says that it can't be the Death Star, as you might recall the memorable occasion when it blew up. I think he's right about that, Master Luke. He says it has to be some kind of strange error in the transmission itself.”
Luke listened to it again. He noted that the source never called itself the Death Star; the call signals were all clearly Imperial, but he bet the
Falcon,
the only ship here that had actually been in comm contact with the real Death Star, would be the only one to recognize that particular identifier in the signal. “It's funny how it's real clear in the part where it identifies itself as Imperial, but all chopped up when it gives the position and system information. This has to be a fake.” He turned to Chewie. “Who do we know who might think of using an old copy of a Death Star transmission for this?”
Chewie sat up straight, hooted with delight, and gave Luke a shove to the head. Luke was glad he knew that was a gesture of approval. He turned back to the console. This had to be a plan concocted by Leia or Han or both.
Luke just wished he knew what the plan was, and how well it was going.
Leia stood by the hatchway, blaster drawn, braced to hit the door release. The others gathered behind her, with Han still in the cockpit and Andevid working the map utility. Han asked her, “Ready?”
The borer was buried in solid rock some fifty or so meters below what Leia sincerely hoped was the guard station for the living quarters the pirates had converted into a slave pen.
“If this thing doesn't come apart,” Kifar said worriedly.
At this point, Leia was more concerned about the asteroid coming apart than the tunnel borer, considering how riddled the rock was with tunnels and pockets that weren't on the map. She told Han, “Ready.”
Han leaned on the controls and the hull shook as the borer leapt upward, the laser disk slicing through the rock. Warning lights blinked in the cockpit. Leia held on to the overhead handrail and exchanged a grim look with Sian. They had agreed the borer would need to move as fast as possible so no one in the chamber above realized it was coming, but it felt like Han had apparently found a way to push the machine past its already generous safety limits.
Their comlinks still weren't picking up any signals, but if Anakaret had kept her promise, she had sent her transmission just a few moments earlier. The docking ring and the ships in orbit should have just gotten the message warning of an Imperial force moving into range of the asteroid.
Leia very much hoped that Anakaret had kept her promise.
The borer rumbled and shuddered, then the deck swayed and bucked underfoot and the borer stopped abruptly, angled upward. All the warning lights flashed and the engines made an ominous clunking noise. But Han said, “We're there. Go!”
Leia hit the hatch release and Kifar jumped out.
He could have looked first,
Leia thought, exasperated. But Kifar obviously thought he had something to prove. He fired twice, then yelled, “We're clear!”
Sian and Terae surged out after him. As Leia started to follow, Han scrambled out of the borer's cockpit behind her. “Sweetheart, this thing is dead,” he told her. “One of the power cells went out when we broke through the shielding on this floor.”
Leia hesitated. “But we won't need it to get out of here.”
Han shrugged. “Probably not.”
Leia groaned under her breath and jumped out of the hatch into a chamber that looked as if it had been hit by an ion cannon. Lumas clustered near the high ceiling, pushed there by the tunnel borer's shields. They shone down on a jumble of stone rubble and torn metal floor plates. The hatch that must have secured a large archway lay in the next chamber, twisted and mangled. Two armed pirates lay sprawled near it, unconscious or dead. Leia lifted her comlink, already tuned to the asteroid's emergency frequency, and heard a babble of voices in Basic and other languages. Some were warning comrades of an Imperial attack, others demanding to know the heading the Imperials were coming in on; all were panicked.
Good,
Leia thought with relief.
Thank you, Anakaret.
In the far wall was a security blast door, clearly jury-rigged into a wider space that had to be the entrance to the slave pen. Leia half climbed, half stumbled across the ruined floor to the door. It had an access panel to one side, with a pad to enter a code lock; the manual emergency release was blocked by a plate welded into place. As Andevid climbed warily out of the borer, Leia gestured with her blaster toward the door. “You don't have the code for this lock, do you?”
He shook his head. “Only Mekerel, who was in charge of guarding the slaves for Viest, had it.” He glanced back at the borer and did a double take. There was blood splashed on the rubble below the cutter disk, and what looked like fragments of leather and metal. “Maybe that's him.”
Leia wasn't concerned with Mekerel's fate. As a slaver, he had probably deserved a great deal worse. But it meant the code was unavailable, and they would just have to get in the hard way. “Terae, if you would,” Leia said.
Terae stepped forward and pulled a fusioncutter out of her tool satchel. She switched it on, crouched beside the door, and started to cut through the armor over the door's manual release. “Shouldn't take long.”
“Good, because we don't have long.” Leia looked toward the archway, where Han, Kifar, and Sian had taken up guard positions. She could hear confused yelling somewhere ahead, and the distant rumble of ships' engines. After a moment Han slipped out and vanished down the passage. Sian followed him.
They were checking the escape route, making sure it was clear. Once away from the borer, with nothing to show they weren't just another crew of pirates, they could all walk out of here. Theoretically.
“Got it,” Terae said. The panel fell away and she pulled the manual release. The door started to slide upward.
Leia stepped back, in case the prisoners had to be persuaded that they were actually being rescued. Terae moved to the side, drawing her blaster.
But the door opened to a small secure guard booth, protected by the flicker of a containment field. Beyond it, Leia could see a large bare room, with metal walls and floor, filled with battered, weary people staring warily at her.
“Hello,” she said, as Terae stepped into the guard booth to examine the control panel. “I'm Leia Durane. We're here to rescue you.” She didn't get to do this kind of thing very often and she meant to enjoy it, even knowing they might all be killed trying to get off the asteroid.
There were gasps, and a gold-skinned Videllan man pushed forward, asking, “You are with Captain Solo?”
“Yes. Are you Kearn-sa'Davit? I believe Han Solo told you we might be coming by.”
The Videllan turned to face the others and declared, “We are saved!”
Terae glanced at Leia and nodded, indicating that she could drop the containment field. Leia told the prisoners, “We're going to take you to a ship now, and then we'll make a run for Arnot Station. You have to stay together, stay quiet, and follow us, is that clear?”
Davit consulted the others with a look, then assured Leia, “We are prepared, Leia Durane.”
Leia signaled to Terae to drop the containment field. “All right, let's go.”
Han and Sian found a wide, arched hatch that opened into the loading dock. They had seen this area from the end of the docking ring corridor, but then it had been filled with bickering pirates. Han had been hoping to find it empty, with everybody sensibly scrambling to get back to their ships, but the blasterfire that echoed through it told him that this particular hope was in vain.
He reached the hatch first, put his back to the wall, and took a careful look around the edge of the seal. Sian took the opposite side.
Bodies, blasted droids, and broken pressure crates lay strewn across the big loading bay. Just above it, where the ramp curved up to the docking bays, there was a blaster battle raging. One group had taken cover behind an old ore cart and a broken cargo lifter and were firing up at a second group, which held the entrance to the docking ring. Han couldn't tell how many were up there; they were hiding behind piles of broken droids and consoles on both sides of the entrance. A third group, which seemed to be shooting at both the other groups, was stationed out along the gallery just below the row of docking bay entrances that overlooked the loading area, firing from the cover of a mound of crates and storage barrels. The cargo that had apparently sparked the battleâlittle lumps of varicolored metal, spilled out of a scattering of broken security cratesâwas strewn across the far end of the loading area.
“Oh, you have to be kidding,” Sian muttered. “Why don't they just run?”
“Because if they had any sense, they wouldn't be pirates,” Han told her. He felt for his comlink and realized it was back at Viest's control center. “You got a comlink?” She tossed him one and he tuned it to the
Aegis
's frequency. “
Aegis,
come in, this is Solo.”
“This is
Aegis,
” Kelvan's relieved voice said. “Where are you? Fera and Allian and the others said they lost contact with Captain Metara, and we haven't been able to raise anyone on the comlink.”
“Yeah, we had to take another way out, and we couldn't get a signal through.” There was no time to update Kelvan on everything that had happened; anyway, there was no way Han was going to be the one to give him the bad news about his captain. “We're breaking the prisoners out now. What's the situation in the docking ring?”
“Not good. Some of the ships farther down have taken off, but we can hear fighting out in the corridor. More ships are leaving orbit every moment, so if you can get to us, we should be able to make it out of here.”
That was a pretty big “if” at the moment. These pirates were grabbing anything that wasn't nailed down and shooting anything that moved. If they tried to make their way through the cargo area, Han thought the chances were good that they would get shot as potential rivals for the goods. “We need a distraction.”
“Like what?” Sian asked worriedly.
They needed something to remind the pirates that they were supposed to be under Imperial attack. “Kelvan,” Han said, “I'm going to get a ship to fire on the bays in the docking ring between the
Aegis
and the cargo area. Just stay where you are until we call you.”
He cut off Kelvan's startled “What shipâ” and tuned the comlink, searching for the
Falcon
's frequency. “Chewie, come in, it's me.”
The quick response was a relief, and the first thing Chewbacca tried to do was demand to know if Han and Leia were behind the fake Death Star transmission and just what was going on down there? Han managed to get a word in edgewise to tell him, “Listen to me, I need your help right now. We're stuck here and we need a distraction. This is what I need you to doâ”
Leia led the way through a set of smaller chambers and passages that had been torn apart by years of pirate occupation. She had put Kifar and Terae behind the prisoners, to guard their retreat and to make sure the stragglers kept up. The merchants and crew who had been captured on the ship with Davit were in the best shape, able to help the wounded. The ones who had been imprisoned there longer were suspicious, desperate, and not entirely sure they were being rescued and not just being transferred to different captors. They were mostly human, except for a small group of Sullustans and Duros and an Arkanian woman. Leia couldn't keep an eye on all of them and could only hope that no one decided to pick up a weapon and use it on her or Kifar or Terae. Andevid followed by her side, which helped a little. Leia had no idea if he would actually risk his hide for any of them, but he did look tough, so at least that was something.
She reached the last chamber, where an arched hatchway opened into the loading area, and found Han and Sian. She winced at the sound of blasterfire and fighting; obviously the pirates hadn't panicked and fled en masse as they had hoped.
“Solo!” Davit greeted Han with relief. “It's good to see you again, and not through a metal mesh.”
“Yeah, it's good to be seen,” Han said, leaning to look around the edge of the hatchway.
“What was this idea of yours?” Leia asked Han. She had heard the brief comlink conversation with Kelvan at the
Aegis,
and the prospect of getting down the docking ring hadn't sounded promising.
“I called the
Falcon,
” Han said. “Chewie's going toâ”
An explosion rattled the metal floor plates under Leia's feet and sent dust and mold raining down from the rocky ceiling. Leia leaned around Han to see the loading area. “What was that?” The three rival groups of pirates holding the entrance docking ring and the cargo area had stopped shooting to stare around. The freed prisoners whispered nervously, and Davit glanced worriedly over his shoulder, as if afraid they would bolt.
“That was Chewie.” Han watched the scene in the loading area intently. “Let's hope these guys get the message.”
Distant rumbles sounded from the outer corridors, muffled by the layers of rock overhead. “Chewie is strafing the asteroid,” Leia said, not sure whether to be appalled or â¦Â “That might actually work,” she finished reluctantly. With the explosion in the interior and Anakaret's fake transmission, the idea that it was time to flee might finally penetrate some thick pirate skulls.
The crew nearest the ring of docking bays above the loading area gave in first. Someone must have given an order, because they fell back with almost military precision, efficiently covering one another until they could dodge back into their docking bay. That released the other two crews from their standoff, one bolting in a noisy mob to vanish down the curving corridor of the docking ring, the other scrambling to grab what they could of the metal fragments scattered across the loading area. As the docking bay doors shut behind the first crew, the third crew charged up the ramp and headed for the last open bay.
“That's it,” Han said, and stepped cautiously out of the hatch. “Come on.”
Leia clicked her comlink. “Terae, we're moving. Make sure they keep up.”
“Yes, CapâYour Highâ Leia,” Terae replied.
Leia followed Han and Sian as both kept a wary eye out for pirate stragglers. Andevid, Davit, and the prisoners followed her. They crossed the large open space of the loading area, passing several bloody and blasted bodies of humans, a couple of Bith, and a Rodian. “We're going to go along the docking ring to our ship,” Leia told Davit, mainly to distract the prisoners near him who were listening nervously. She hoped none of them had gotten a good enough view of the
Aegis
during the battle to recognize it in dock. She wanted to wait until they disembarked at Arnot Station to explain to them that the pirate ship rescuing them was the same pirate ship that had captured them in the first place. “It's not far. It'sâ”