[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(33)

“I still don’t get it,” Han said.

Leia spoke up. “He’s saying that politics is his battlefield, and you’re encouraging him to run away from the battle.”

“Oh.” Han thought about it. “Yeah, I am.”

Teppler turned a sad but scornful expression onto him.

“Do you also encourage all your friends to run away from their fights?”

Han shook his head. “Not for a long time. Not since I got to know them and realized that they had a chance to win. You, kid, don’t have that chance. If you stay here, you’re going to die.”

“Yeah, probably.” Teppler stared into the depths of his whiskey tumbler. “My ex-wife went on her last diplomatic mission knowing she might die. And she did. Am I so much less than she is?”

The others looked among themselves, for once at a loss for words, but Teppler was the first to speak. “Dur Gejjen,” he said.

“Complete sentences, please,” Lando said.

“Dur Gejjen was the chief planner for, and signed off on, the mission to kill the Queen Mother, Tenel Ka.”

Leia nodded. “And it was an assassination mission? Not a kidnapping attempt?”

“If they had grabbed her, they would have killed her.”

Leia pressed on. “Wedge Antilles?”

“He didn’t know about it. He was ordered to step down because he didn’t support waging a war that dirty.” Teppler held up his glass, a signal to the waiter droid to refill it.

Leia felt a little trickle of alarm, but it seemed remote, not directed at her. Closing her eyes, she extended her awareness through the Force to areas beyond her immediate surroundings-through the ceiling and floors, walls on all sides …

Outside the front door and wall, she found outrage. Someone wanting to come in, but being prevented. More than one someone. A gradual massing of bodies…

She opened her eyes. The waiter droid was just rolling up. She asked the droid, “What’s immediately beneath us?”

“That would be the storage and distillery rooms, my lady,” the waiter said, its voice cultured like C-3PO’s but not as singsong. “We no longer do tours of our microdistillery, but the floor is available for rent for private parties, holodrama recordings…”

“Quiet,” Leia said. “Han, Lando, door.”

The front door slammed open and two CorSec agents, in battle armor, carrying blaster rifles, were the first ones through it.

Han’s blaster cleared its holster and Lando tipped the table over toward the intruders, providing cover.

Han shot the first intruder in his chest armor. The blast didn’t penetrate, but the impact knocked the man backward into a new wave of CorSec enforcers trying to get through the door.

Teppler dived behind the table, switching his tumbler to his left hand, drawing his own hold-out blaster with his right. He fired over the table edge. His shot hit the glowing STREET sign over the door, incinerating it, raining sparks down on the intruders jammed there.

Leia ignited her lightsaber. She spun to crouch behind the table, then plunged the glowing blade into the floor. She began to drag it around in a wide circle.

The second intruder fired at the only upright figure in the vicinity. His blaster rifle shot hit the waiter droid at about knee level and neatly severed the cylinder there. With a somewhat inconvenienced-sounding cry of “I say,” the droid toppled sideways; the tray of drinks and empty glasses it had been carrying crashed to the floor. A wave of shattered glass, half-melted ice, and unbreakable transparisteel containers washed across table, chair, and patron legs.

Lando extracted his blaster from beneath the folds of his hip cloak. He brought it up parallel with Han’s and fired, catching the faceplate of the intruder who had shot the droid. That man, too, staggered back and down, adding to the congestion at the doorway.

Leia finished her sweep with the lightsaber and a rough circle of flooring a meter and a half in diameter dropped away into darkness, rattling against a hard surface a moment later. “Let’s go,” she said, making it sound like a suggestion, and dropped through. Her lightsaber lit her new surroundings; she was in a darkened, narrow corridor.

Lando looked at Han. “You first.” He took another shot at the doorway, catching a CorSec trooper in the second rank right on the kneecap.

Han gestured for Lando to go. “Age before beauty.”

“Idiots.” Teppler dropped through, blaster in one hand and tumbler in the other, landing awkwardly behind Leia.

Rear ranks of invaders shoved the plug of stunned or injured troopers out of the doorway; four spilled into the bar, more jamming up at the door. Han fired again and caught one in his armored gut, sending him spinning to the floor. The others returned fire and Han, braced behind the tabletop, stared in alarm as whole chunks of its artificial wood surface were torn away, not impeding the blaster bolts in the least.