Saba thumped her tail on the deck and began to siss uncontrollably.
“Quiet, Master!” Leia whispered. “You’ll give us away!”
“Sssorry!” Saba replied. “She is just so funny, telling her soldierz to stay while she goes.”
“Yeah, she’s a laugh a millisecond,” Han grumbled. He turned to Leia. “How about getting the rest of ‘em to move so we can get out of here?”
Leia gave the swinging clawcraft a violent twist, and it came free of its mountings. The security platoon shouted the alarm and dived for cover, many of them zinging blind reaction shots into the gantries as they moved. An instant later the starfighter crashed down in their midst, scattering cannon arms and pieces of armor plating in every direction.
Leia and Saba were already leading the rush toward the Falcon, lightsabers in hand but not ignited. For a moment, the security troops continued to focus their attention overhead, thinking their attackers must be up in the gantries. Then one of them noticed Leia and the others racing toward the ship and shouted the alarm.
Leia and Saba Force-jerked half a dozen charric rifles out of troopers’ hands and sent the weapons skittering across the floor. Han and Tarfang began to lay suppression fire, but that did not prevent the security platoon from launching a counterattack.
Leia and Saba activated their lightsabers and began to weave an impenetrable shield of light, synchronizing their movements through the battle-meld so that one blade was always in position to block without interfering with the other. Unlike blaster bolts-which carried little kinetic energy-each maser beam struck so hard that the blow nearly knocked the lightsaber from Leia’s hand. Sometimes she called on the Force to reinforce her grasp and batted the beam back at her attacker, and other times she redirected the energy, using it to move her blade into its next position.
But no attacks penetrated their shield, and soon Leia and the others were all backing up the boarding ramp into the Falcon. Han raised the ramp, then winced at the sound of the maser bolts pinging into the ship’s hull.
“Now that’s just uncalled for,” he said.
A pair of metallic feet came clanking down the corridor behind them, then C-3P0 said, “Thank goodness you’re here! They’ve been tearing the ship apart!”
“Who?” Leia asked.
“Lieutenant Vero’tog’leo and his subordinates,” C-3P0 replied. “They reactivated me and kept demanding that I tell them where the smuggling compartments were. When I explained that I wasn’t authorized to reveal that information, they threatened to pour acid into my lubricators!”
“Where are they now?” Leia asked.
“Waiting with Cakhmaim and Meewalh in the aft hold, I believe.”
Leia turned to Han. “Saba and I can handle that. You take Jae and get us out of here.”
Han nodded and turned to go-then suddenly stopped. “Where is Jae?”
Leia looked around the boarding area and did not see the Sullustan anywhere. “Tell me we didn’t leave him outside!”
Tarfang jabbered something angry.
“It’s not her fault,” Han said. “I warned him to keep up.”
Tarfang chittered something else and pointed forward, and suddenly Juun’s voice came over the intercom.
“Initiating emergency cold-start procedures,” he said. “Secure all hatches.”
They all let out long sighs of relief, then Han motioned to Tarfang. “Come on. We’d better get up there, or he’ll still be doing circuit tests when the Chiss bring up their laser cannons.”
Han and the Ewok started up the corridor at a run, and Leia and Saba went aft. As C-3P0 had said, Lieutenant Vero’tog’leo had torn the Falcon apart, emptying stowage cabinets, disassembling the medical bay, even opening the service panels in the ceiling. By the time they reached the hold, Leia was mad enough to stow the lieutenant and his squad on the wrong side of a soon-to-be open air lock.
But when she saw how battered and bloody the Chiss already were, she decided that Cakhmaim and Meewalh had punished them enough. Leia herded the limping and slumping squad onto the cargo lift and simply off-loaded them.
The lift was still retracting when the Falcon rose from the deck and swung toward the hangar mouth. Chiss being Chiss, Leia was fairly certain that Vero’tog’leo had hidden a tracking device, a bomb, or both somewhere aboard. She sent Cakhmaim and Meewalh to do a security sweep, then she and Saba hurried to the turrets to engage the quad cannons.
Leia had barely buckled into her firing seat before Han had the Falcon shooting toward the hangar mouth. A handful of security troops pelted the hull with maser beams, but there was no question of anyone trying to stop them by sealing the barrier field. With the Killiks attacking, the Chiss had more important things to worry about than escaping prisoners. The Defender was gushing clawcraft as fast as she could, and the deck master was not going to interrupt the launch for anything.