Before him was the attacker who’d just tried to enter his room. To his left was another black-armored figure bringing his weapons to bear on Mara, who advanced toward them clad in black sleepwear. So we were all caught asleep.
He trusted Mara to be able to deal with the second attacker. He flicked his lightsaber blade up, slicing through the first intruder’s weapon.
Fast as an attacking slashrat, the rifleman stepped back in a crouch, drawing and firing a holstered blaster in a single, practiced move. Jacen tapped the bolt out of the way with a negligent readjustment of his lightsaber blade, then thrust, shoving the blade through the man’s armor at the shoulder. Jacen felt it penetrate the armor, burn its way through flesh and bone beneath, and emerge from the armor on the other side. The man screamed and fell, dragging his body off Jacen’s weapon.
Jacen glanced left. Mara’s foe was falling, a smoking line from shoulder blade to stomach marking the injury that had defeated him. Beyond, Luke was in the midst of four enemies, all of them firing; the oversized bolt from one of their weapons, missing wildly, flashed toward Mara and Jacen, and the two Jedi ducked out of its way. At the end of his spin, Luke stood up, and something fell away from each of his attackers-a rifle barrel, an arm, a severed head. Three of them fell down. The fourth cast his destroyed weapon to the floor, raised his hands … then, oddly, followed his companions to the floor, his body limp.
From the door nearest Luke emerged Jaina, wearing a brown sleep shirt, her lightsaber lit. From the destroyed door opposite her emerged Zekk, soot smearing his face, smoke rising from the forward portion of his hair. “They keep trying to blow me up,” he complained.
Chapter Twenty
HAN AND LETA SNUGGLED TOGETHER ON THE COUCH, SITTING IN the darkness, wordlessly watching the galaxy rotate outside beyond the viewport. The door to the passageway hissed open behind them, spilling light into the large room. Han and Leia turned to look. Four armored figures marched in, quiet and confident. Apparently not noticing the Solos on the couch, they walked straight to the doorway leading to the main bedchamber. The one with the largest weapon, a shoulder-mounted blaster rig, set up to destroy the door while the other three readied their own weapons.
Han and Leia exchanged a puzzled look. Leia shrugged.
Han drew his blaster. He’d spent frustrating hours not permitted by the various security staffs to carry his favorite weapon, so he had recovered it the instant he’d returned to his own quarters. Now he aimed it at the four intruders, bracing it against the top of the couch. “Hey,” he said.
The four turned. One, fastest on the uptake, began to aim more quickly than the others. Han shot him in the throat.
Leia sprang up from the couch, a Force-assisted leap that carried her toward the ceiling of the tall living chamber. She lit her lightsaber on the way up. One of the intruders, the one carrying the shoulder-mounted blaster, aimed at her. Han, not knowing whether her skills and lightsaber could deflect the blast from such a weapon, shot him, too, his blaster bolt burning its way into the side of the man’s helmet.
The other two fired at him. The first shot hit the back of the sturdy couch and picked the furniture up, spinning it toward the outer wall. Han and the couch hit the transparisteel of the viewport.
Han felt the viewport shudder under the impact and he wondered, for one eternity-long fraction of a second, if it would give way beneath the blow, buckling free of its housing, sending him into the coldness of space and decompression.
It didn’t. It rang metallically as he hit it, pain shot through his shoulder blades, and suddenly he was on the floor, the couch on top of him.
He heard Leia’s lightsaber hum and sizzle. He rolled out from under the furniture. In the moment it took him to come upright, blaster in hand, the situation was resolved. One of the two remaining attackers was down with his head off; the other, shaking in pain, was missing both arms at the elbow. Both of Han’s targets were down, smoke rising from where the blaster bolts had hit them.
Leia turned her attention to the door, and Han didn’t need Jedi powers to know what she was thinking. “Yeah,” he said. “You left, me right.”
They emerged into Kallebarth Way at a dead run, Han turning toward the chambers of the Corellian delegation, Leia turning toward the delegation from Coruscant.
The first door Han passed slid open and a man leapt out. Han aimed, wrenched his blaster back out of line-the man emerging was his own son. “C’mon, kid,” he said and ran past.
Han could see, up ahead, that the double-wide door leading into the Corellian delegation’s suite was open. Small-arms blasterfire emerged from the doorway to pockmark the passageway wall opposite. As he watched, a black-armored figure staggered back through the doorway, his chest smoking from what looked like blaster hits, and swung his oversized blaster rifle into line back toward the doorway. The blaster fired. A lance of red light leapt from the weapon, and the interior of the chamber beyond the door was suddenly illuminated in flame colors.