Beside him, Lando slid through the hole. He kept his cane from colliding with anything, but his hip cloak caught on one edge of the hole and was yanked free of his shoulders. He landed gracefully and glared up at his traitorous garment. Then he trotted after Leia.
Han grabbed one table leg and fell through the hole, hauling the leg with him. All four table legs dropped into the hole, leaving the tabletop flush against the floor. The awkwardness of his descent caused him to hit the corridor floor hard and go to his knees, but he rose unhurt and sprinted after the others, guided by the glowrod-like qualities of Leia’s lightsaber.
Han rounded a corner and caught up with the others. This chamber was as large as the taproom above but stacked high with plasteel crates and falsewood kegs.
Leia stood at the top of a short permacrete ramp. A metal door barred her way. She slashed at the top hinge of three, cutting through it. Teppler stood behind her, calm, blaster and tumbler at the ready. Lando, like a catalog holo of elegant indifference, leaned against the wall, twirling his cane.
Han gestured toward Teppler’s tumbler. “Get rid of that.”
“Can’t,” Teppler said. “It has my fingerprints on it.”
Han grabbed the tumbler from him, tossed it into a corner, and pumped three blaster shots into it. When the smoke cleared, it was a melted, charred mass of transparisteel.
There were more blaster shots from back the way they’d come. Han heard pieces of wood raining down into the corridor.
Leia finished the second hinge and got to work on the third. Teppler stepped forward and raised his arm to catch the top of the door when it toppled.
The door fell. Teppler wrenched it out of the way, and it clattered to the permacrete floor. On the other side, the ramp continued up; several meters beyond it, Han could see speeders roaring past what had to be the end of the alley behind the cantina. He, Leia, and Teppler ran toward the escape the street represented. Lando remained behind to delay pursuit, Han assumed.
Leia extinguished her lightsaber as they reached the alley mouth. A narrow sidewalk gave them an avenue for escape, and cross-traffic just a few centimeters away roared past, the speeders’ running lights leaving colorful horizontal streaks in the air.
Han looked at the situation. This was going to turn into either a running blaster battle or a blaster battle performed on stolen speeders. “Ready to go, sweetheart?”
“Garbage loader,” Leia said.
“You always know the right thing to say.” Han followed her gaze. Lumbering up the flyway toward them, low toward the ground, was a repulsorlift-based garbage loader, a story and a half tall, wider than a standard traffic lane, with droid arms along its upper rim to seize garbage receptacles, lift them into the air, and dump their contents into the vessel’s payload bay.
Leia led them from the alley and along the sidewalk in the direction of traffic, but she walked backward, concentrating on the pilot of that garbage loader. “Nice time for a nap,” she whispered. “Good place for a nap.”
Lando ran from the alley mouth, neither leg apparently causing him distress; he carried his cane tucked under his left arm, military-academy-style. “We have maybe fifteen seconds,” he said. Then he gave Leia a curious look and turned to stare at the object of her interest.
The trash loader pulled over until it was mostly in the traffic lane but also fully covering the sidewalk, and came down to a landing directly in front of the alley mouth. The pilot, illuminated by blue cockpit lighting, was a jowly middle-aged man; he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“Kill the engines,” Leia said, and sagged just a bit; the effort to impose her will on someone at range, without benefit of the target being able to see her eyes or hear her voice, had taken a toll on her.
Han and Lando obliged by aiming their blasters at the front face of the garbage loader’s underside and firing four or five times each into it. The blasterfire immediately awoke the pilot, and Han saw the man seize the controls and try to lift off, but it was too late: the multiton vehicle was dead, firmly situated flush with the alley mouth. Now Han could hear curses and hammering from where the loader blocked the alley-the CorSec agents had reached the obstacle.
“Time to grab a speeder and run for it,” Lando said.
Teppler shook his head. “I’ll be less conspicuous on foot and on my own. Good luck.” He turned and dashed away along the sidewalk.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELMAS PRIVATE SPACEPORT.
CORONET, CORELLIA, RENTAL BAY 601208
“Dad, something’s happening outside.”
Instantly awake, still dressed in a jumpsuit not much improved by having been worked in for a day, Wedge rolled out of his cot and joined his daughter at the hangar’s side viewport, The viewport was mostly covered in black sheeting, in which Myri and Iella had cut strategic holes for viewing.