“Stall?” C-3P0 stopped at the threshold and let his head slump forward. “Why am I always assigned the dangerous tasks?”
Han drew his blaster pistol-a 434 “DeathHammer,” which Lando had given him to replace the trusty DL-44 that Raynar Thul had taken on Woteba-then he and the Noghri each slipped into one of the cramped crawlways hidden behind the service hatches in the back of the hold.
Han sat in the dark, waiting and thinking about how Leia’s devotion to her Jedi training had changed things between them. There had been a time-not that long ago-when he would never have agreed to let her stand bait. But now, even the Noghri recognized that her Force abilities were adequate protection. She radiated a calm confidence that seemed as unshakable as the Core, as though her Jedi studies had restored the faith she had lost in the future after Anakin died.
Han was glad for the change. Leia had always been his beacon star-the bright, guiding flame that had kept him on course through so many decades of struggle and despair. It was good to have her brightening the way again.
The soft whir of the cargo lift sounded from the other side of the service hatch and sent a chill racing down Han’s spine. He had not been thinking about his experience with the Kamarians when he squeezed into the crawlway to set up an ambush, but the darkness and the cramped confines and the likelihood of a bug fight set his pulse to pounding in his ears. It had been over forty years, but he could still feel those Kamarian pincers closing around his ankles, hear his nails scraping against the durasteel as he tried to keep them from dragging him out of his hiding place …
Han grabbed his earlobe and twisted, hard, trying to break out of his thought pattern with pain. His hands were already shaking, and if he let the memory progress into a full-fledged flashback, he would end up lying there in a ball while Leia and the Noghri dealt with the Flakax.
The lift clunked into place, and Leia’s muffled voice sounded through the service hatch. “Are these the crates the Squibs, er, the Directors wanted us to take to Tenupe?”
“Right.” The Flakax ended his answer with a throat-click. “Where do you-queen’s eggs!”
Han pushed open the service hatch and saw the heads of all six insects turned toward the far corner of the hold, where the crate Leia had just Force-ripped from the pincers of the first Flakax was crashing into the wall. It broke open, spilling a rifle version of the Verpine shatter gun and a variety of thermal grenades.
“Why, that doesn’t look like green thakitillo,” Leia said.
She pointed at the box in the second Flakax’s arms. That crate, too, went flying, and the insects finally recovered from their shock. The four Verpine ripped the tops off their crates. Before they could pull their weapons from the boxes, Cakhmaim and Meewalh opened up with their stun blasters and dropped all four from behind.
Han leveled his DeathHammer at the Flakax. “Take it easy, fellas,” he said. “No one has to get-“
The pair launched themselves at Leia, clacking their mandibles in fury and spewing a brown fume from their abdomens. Han fired twice, but their chitin was so thick and hard that even the DeathHammer’s powerful bolts did little more than blast fist-sized craters into it.
Leia vanished beneath the two creatures, and Han stopped firing. The chances of hitting Leia were just too great, especially when all he could see through the growing haze of brown fume was thrashing arms and swinging insect heads. He called for Cakhmaim and Meewalh and raced forward. As he gulped down his first breath of bug vapor, his nose, throat, and lungs erupted into caustic pain.
Within two steps, his eyes were so filled with tears he could no longer see. A step after that, he grew weak and dizzy and collapsed to his hands and knees, coughing, retching, and just generally feeling like a thermal grenade had detonated inside his chest. He crawled the last three meters to the fight and reached up to press the muzzle of his blaster to the back of a greenish thorax.
With its large compound eyes and a fully circular field of vision, the Flakax had already seen Han coming. It caught him in the head with a lightning-quick elbow strike. The DeathHammer bolt went wide, ricocheting off the deck before it burned a hole through the wall.
Then a muffled snap-hiss sounded from beneath the insect, and Han was nearly blinded when the tip of Leia’s lightsaber shot up through the Flakax, just a few centimeters from his nose. He barely managed to roll out of the way as the blade swept toward his face, opening the thorax from midline to flank and spilling bug blood all over Lando’s deck.
“Hey, watch-” Han had to stop and cough, then finished, “-that thing!”
Han staggered to his feet and pointed his blaster in the general direction of the tear-blurred melee in front of him, trying to separate his wife’s shape from that of the Flakax attacking her.