The Force Awakens (Star Wars)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Han opened one eye. Turning, he expected the burst of Guavian fire that had failed to reach him to be replaced by a similar barrage from the Kanjiklub members. Except that another rathtar had appeared behind them and, roaring deafeningly, was busily taking the aliens apart. Chewbacca let out a series of short, clipped moans.

  “No kidding!” Han yelled. “Come on!” Together, they raced for a side corridor. Under the guns and watchful eyes of both gangs, they never would have made it. But all remaining guns and surviving eyes were, at present, otherwise occupied.

  As misdirected blasts smashed into the crawl space around them, tearing streaks in the metal and threatening to make it impossible to move across the overheating floor, Finn and Rey found themselves crawling for their lives.

  “That was a mistake!” Finn howled, ignoring the pain in his hands and knees.

  “Huge!” Rey agreed.

  Above, Han nearly ran into one of the Guavians. Fleeing from the rathtar behind him while shooting fruitlessly at the monster, the Guavian never saw Han and Chewie—though he did make the acquaintance of Han’s fist. Staggering, he tried to bring his gun to bear on the new threat, only to be sent flying toward the rathtar by the strong arms of the Wookiee. One tentacle caught the unlucky gang member before he could hit the ground.

  “Other direction,” Han blurted. Chewie moaned while BB-8 beeped frantically. Finding instant agreement in three different languages, they took an accessway that was, for the moment at least, devoid of Guavians, Kanjis, and rathtars.

  Elsewhere, Razoo Qin-Fee scuttled past a pair of Guavians who were racing full bore in the opposite direction. Their haste gave him pause, which enabled him to hail a fellow Kanjiklub member coming toward him—just before a tentacle emerged in that individual’s wake to grab him and wrench him out of sight. Deciding that the two Guavians who had just passed him going like hell in the other direction might have a better handle on the situation, Razoo whirled and retraced his steps. This brought him back to two surviving members of his own group. A hasty discussion determined they should avoid both ends of the corridor. Accordingly, they turned down another passageway—whereupon the third rathtar grabbed the pair who had just counseled Razoo. He fired at the creature, with the same ineffectual result as before, and raced away.

  It was a big ship, he told himself. There had to be a place somewhere that was safe from the escaped rathtars. On the other hand, if the rathtars were between him and his own ship, he might never get off alive. Working cooperatively, as a pack, the carnivores would hunt him down along with every one of his companions. That was the thing about rathtars: While they acted like mindless eating machines and didn’t have very large brains, they were really good at working together. And fast. It was hard to believe how fast something that size could move.

  No, he was dead for sure, unless he could somehow circle around them and back to where his ship was docked. As he ran, terrified of what he might encounter around the next corner or in the next corridor over, his only solace came from the knowledge that that unspeakable sack of treachery Han Solo was certain to meet the same fate, and in the jaws of his own cargo.

  It was small consolation, but in his present dire situation, he clung to it.

  A tentative Finn flipped open a hatch and looked down the brightly lit corridor. Nothing. Turning, he looked in the other direction. Nothing. No evilly chattering Kanjiklub members, no heavily armed Guavians, and most important, no slobbering multi-limbed rathtars. He climbed out, giving Rey a hand up, and pointed.

  “Falcon’s this way!”

  She hesitated. “You sure?”

  “No! But we can’t stay here and wait for Kanjiklubbers and Guavians. We’ve got to try something.”

  He was thankful but hardly surprised to see how easily she kept up with him as they raced for a far corner. Surviving as a scavenger on Jakku ensured that she was in at least as good physical condition as the average trooper.

  “These rathtars?” she was asking him. “What do they look like?”

  Rounding the corner, they were brought up short by the sight of surviving gang members doing battle with the subject of her query. It was enormous and round, covered in light-sensitive orange orbs, and composed mostly of tentacles and teeth. Raising one hand to her mouth, she caught her breath, simultaneously mesmerized and horrified by the sight.

  “They look like that.” Finn reached over and took her arm, not caring this time if she objected. Back the way they had come, around another corner—only this time they didn’t stop fast enough.

  One tentacle whipped around Finn’s waist, and moving with incredible speed for something so massive, the rathtar rushed off with the screaming trooper in its grasp.

  “FINN!”

  Though it was too big for her and too fast, she gave chase anyway.

  Fighting in a desperate attempt to break free, Finn realized he might as well have been wrestling with a steel cable. Neither pounding on it with his fists nor kicking at it with his drawn-up legs produced the slightest reaction on the creature’s part. He even resorted to trying to take a bite out of it. The hard, rubbery flesh proved impenetrable. At that moment he would have given a limb for a blaster, even though small-arms fire had shown itself to be largely ineffectual against the monsters.

  “Finn!”

  Not only had Rey lost sight of him, but now the rathtar had moved so far ahead she could no longer hear Finn’s shouts for help. It was a futile exercise anyway. Suppose she did catch up? The rathtar had more than enough appendages with which to sweep her into its grasp without letting go of Finn. Still, she kept running, keeping an eye out for anything that could be of use.

  SUBSIDIARY BAY CONTROL ROOM

  She’d run all the way past the door before the full meaning of the words struck home. Halting, she ran back and slammed an open palm over the access panel. For an awful moment nothing happened and she was afraid that the relevant system was down. Then the door slid aside, admitting her.

  Ignoring entire banks of instrumentation, she made her way to a set of multiple monitors. Not only was the system not down, it was fully activated. There were clear views of motionless cargo, empty storage rooms, the Millennium Falcon, both the Guavian and Kanjiklub vessels, and…

  Finn, being dragged down a main corridor by the rathtar. Dragged toward an empty intersection.

  One hand over the pertinent control, she leaned toward the monitor, watching, waiting, hoping that it would respond faster than the door that had led to this control room. Wait, she told herself, suspecting that if she blew the opportunity she might not get another. Or at least not another where she would have a chance to recover Finn in one piece.

  Slowing, the rathtar edged forward, checking both cross corridors. No wonder they were so dangerous, she told herself as she kept her attention locked on the monitor. Reassured, the creature started forward again, dragging the increasingly weakened Finn behind it.

  Her hand came down on the control. An indicator flipped from green to red. On the monitor, a blast door descended with gratifying speed. The rathtar reacted almost immediately—but not quite fast enough to prevent one of its tentacles from being severed by the emergency door. The tentacle, she had calculated, that was gripping Finn.

  The shriek of pain and fury from the rathtar was horrible to hear. She paid it hardly any attention as she watched a dazed Finn struggle to his feet and commence fighting to extricate himself from the still-clinging piece of amputated limb.

  Stunned by his unexpected escape, he was free of it by the time she arrived. “It didn’t get you,” he said unnecessarily. “It had me!” He turned around. “But there was a blast door, came down at just the right moment…”

  “Lucky,” she told him. “Which way did you say the Falcon was?”

  For a moment he eyed her uncertainly, unable to quite escape the feeling that there was something she wasn’t telling him. No
time for questions now, though. He pointed.

  “That way—I hope.”

  In another corridor Bala-Tik was talking to one of his gang’s surviving members. “That thing’s taken two of my men.” As he said it, a tentacle slipped forward to wrap itself around another screaming associate. “Three of my men,” the Guavian corrected himself.

  If they didn’t do something soon, he knew, none of them would get off this cursed freighter alive. Even as he retreated, firing behind him, he could not keep from wondering how Solo, that worthless dispenser of devious schemes, had managed to pull it off. Capturing even one rathtar was considered a near-impossibility. Impounding three and then getting them aboard a ship alive and in good condition stretched all bounds of believability.

  Probably, an increasingly desperate Bala-Tik thought as he let off yet another ineffectual blast, Solo had done it by talking all of them into a state of complete insensibility.

  At the far end of the main cargo corridor, the object of the Guavian’s curses had taken cover together with Chewbacca and BB-8. Demonstrating unexpected determination in the face of rathtar-inspired bedlam, several members of both gangs had continued to pursue. Their persistent fire prevented human, Wookiee, and droid from crossing the cargo-crowded open bay to reach the waiting disc-shaped ship on the other side.

  These guys must really want their money back, Han thought as he and Chewbacca returned fire with weapons they had recovered from where rathtar-munched Guavians and Kanjis had dropped them.

  Having come this far, he was not about to be denied. Sidling around behind the Wookiee, he gestured across the bay deck. “I’ll get the door. Cover us.”

  Moaning assent, Chewbacca let loose a ferocious barrage as Han, also firing, darted across the open space toward the Falcon. BB-8 went with him, judiciously choosing to keep the human between himself and the intruders’ fire. Once back at his ship, Han methodically activated the portal via the external emergency controls. For the first time in quite a while he felt some relief, as the ramp lowered smoothly. Turning, he yelled back toward the corridor terminus.

  “Chewie, we’re in! Come on!”

  Letting out a bellow that signified both recognition of Han’s call and defiance of their remaining enemies, the Wookiee turned and raced for the waiting ship—only to be hit in the back of a shoulder by a lucky shot from one of the pursuing Guavians. The impact sent him crashing to the deck.

  Uttering a quiet curse, Han left BB-8 behind and raced back toward his injured copilot, firing as he ran. A single well-placed shot took down the Guavian who had hit Chewbacca.

  “Get up! Chewie, get up!” Striving to divide his attention between the wounded Wookiee and the gang members who were trying to break out of the far corridor, Han got one arm underneath Chewbacca and strained with all his might. It was like trying to lift a mountain. A big, heavy, hairy, smelly, and badly bleeding mountain. One that he would no more leave behind than he would his ship or himself.

  Had the gangs been intact, he and Chewbacca never would have made it back to the Falcon. There would have been too many guns, too many blasts to avoid. But the intruders had been drastically reduced both in number and capability. The shot that had struck the Wookiee had really been as wild as the others.

  Together, Han still supporting the stumbling Chewie, the two of them started up the ramp. At that moment, the last thing either of them expected to hear was a recognizable, friendly voice.

  “Han!”

  Dodging the greatly reduced fire from the surviving gang members and keeping to cover as much as possible, Rey and Finn made it across the open deck to reach the Falcon. As they raced up the ramp, a grimacing Han gave orders.

  “You shut the hatch behind us!” he instructed Rey, who nodded a swift response. To Finn he snapped, “You take care of Chewbacca!” Half slipping free of his burden, half throwing the wounded copilot in Finn’s direction, Han charged up the ramp.

  Nearly collapsing beneath the Wookiee’s weight, Finn manfully did his best to help the moaning Chewbacca stay upright as the two of them staggered the rest of the way up the ramp.

  “How do I do that?” the trooper called after the pilot. To no avail. Han didn’t answer.

  Chewbacca, on the other hand, groaned, bellowed, and chuffed suggestions. Understanding none of them, a willing Finn nonetheless nodded amenably in response to each one.

  “That’s right…for sure…yeah, I’ll do that…no problem.” Wincing as the Wookiee stumbled, Finn had to employ every bit of his strength to keep both of them upright.

  If he falls on me, he decided worriedly, it’s all over.

  Somehow they made it to the medbay. Helping Chewbacca into the padded alcove that served as a bed, Finn eased the Wookiee in and started digging through the boxes of medical equipment that formed a line on the floor. This was something he could do, he knew, feeling considerably less helpless than he had when trying to assist Rey earlier. Every stormtrooper received training in how to deal with battlefield wounds. Hopefully, the Wookiee’s shoulder injury wouldn’t present any distinctive surprises.

  In the cockpit, Han was hitting one control after another, bringing the Falcon back on line. With each green telltale that lit up, a little of his own life did, too. He was startled when Rey arrived and, without waiting for an invitation, settled down in Chewbacca’s seat.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” He gestured back in the direction of the lounge. “Passengers back there.”

  Sliding her fingers over console controls, she spoke while barely glancing in his direction. “Unkar—the guy who last had your ship—installed a fuel pump, too. If we don’t prime it, we’re not going anywhere.” She looked across at him sympathetically.

  “I hate that guy,” Han muttered. “I don’t even know him and I hate him.”

  “No need.” Rey continued to bring instrumentation to life on her side of the cockpit. “I’ll hate him on your behalf. Meanwhile, you could use a copilot.”

  Han frowned at her. “I got one. He’s back there.” Raising his voice, he yelled toward the lounge. “Right? I’ve got a copilot?” A bellow of pain greeted his query.

  “C’mon, Chewie: It’s just a flesh wound!” Han heard Finn say. This observation prompted further bellowing, considerably more stressed, and carrying with it overtones of something approaching annoyance.

  “Fine!” Han shouted back. “Be that way!” Han’s hands flew over the controls. “Fuel pump’s primed. Watch thrust from your end: We’re gonna jump to lightspeed.”

  She knew a lot about ships, all kinds of ships. But in all her studies she had never come across the maneuver he had just proposed.

  “From inside the hangar? Is that even possible?”

  He was wholly at one with the Falcon now, focused intently on the instrumentation. “I never answer that question until after I’ve done it.”

  Further discussion regarding the viability of making the jump from stationary position to post-lightspeed was interrupted by something enormous, ravenous, and bilious landing on top of the ship. Heavy thumping penetrated the cockpit, indicating that something was moving in its direction. This was confirmed a moment later by Rey’s scream in response to the appearance of a giant radial mouth that all but covered the forward port. The tooth-filled mouth belonged to a rathtar, which, perceiving the presence of living non-rathtars inside the craft, was chewing its damnedest to get at them. Designed to protect against high-velocity meteoric impacts, the port suffered no immediate damage. Rathtars were notably persistent, however, and frustration only led them to redouble their efforts. Like the rest of them, their mouthparts were exceptionally robust. Design or not, Han had no intention of waiting around long enough to see whether the material of which the port was composed was tougher than rathtar dentition.

  “This is not how I thought this day would go,” he muttered. “Shields up, and angle ’em.”

  Re
y worked the controls. “Got it.” She glanced over at him. “Pretty muscular shields for a Corellian freighter.”

  “The Corellians build ’em the way I like ’em.” Under his skillful hands, more instrumentation and equipment came on line. “Of course, I have had a little tweaking done here and there. You may not believe it, but there are some people out there who don’t like me.”

  “Hard to imagine,” she murmured.

  Seeing that the Falcon was powering up, a quartet of gang members took a chance in emerging from cover to fire at the ship. Though their shots were handled by the Falcon’s shields, the detonations resonated within.

  As far as Han could tell, everything was in readiness. There was nothing more to do but try it. He yelled in the direction of the medbay. “Hang on back there! We’re leaving—in a hurry!”

  Having dealt with the basics of Chewbacca’s injury, Finn was rummaging through the depths of the medkit he’d found in search of something stronger than a primary painkiller.

  “No problem!” he called back, fully aware that, based on the preceding events of the day, there was likely to be one. So while expecting nothing less, he kept searching for something to mitigate Chewbacca’s distress even as the ship’s shields absorbed additional blasts from the Guavians’ weapons.

  “Come on, baby,” Han was murmuring, “don’t let me down.” He pulled on the main hyperdrive control.

  Nothing.

  “What?”

  Reaching across to his side of the console, Rey calmly activated a control he had not touched and spoke matter-of-factly. “Compressor.”

  He glared at her, but only for a moment. As he pulled slowly back on the drive control for the second time, he half smiled at her.

  An enormous, overpowering thunder filled the cargo hangar as the Falcon’s engines came to life. In deciding to rush the ship, the surviving gang members had chosen an unfortunate angle that put them directly behind the engines. When these came on, the Guavians disappeared. So did the corridor behind them, and the walls surrounding it, and a good deal more. In all, a respectable quantity of metal, plasticene, and ceramic alloy, comprising a modest chunk of the big freighter, vanished in the energetic backwash of the Falcon’s swift departure. As for the rathtar, it fell apart as the Falcon jumped through it, leaving tell-tale smears behind.