And then, to Leia’s surprise, Khione left, the door shutting behind her. The interrogation droid floated into the center of the cell, its repulsorlifts filling the enclosed space with that hideous cycling warble.
Leia jumped the first time it moved, expecting it to dart at her with one of its instruments raised. But it merely moved sideways and then began to hover again. She thought of attacking it but knew that would do no good. It would shock her, or retreat to the ceiling and summon the stormtroopers.
She sat down on the hard bunk, eyeing the droid. Her hands had begun to shake, she noticed, and she wedged them under her legs, angry at her loss of control. The droid extended one of its probes, and she instinctively retreated into the corner of the cell. Then the probe retracted and the droid was still again. Still and silent, except for the sound that was crawling little by little into her skull.
She wondered if Khione was watching. Watching and waiting for her to crack.
When the door opened Leia didn’t know how much time had passed. Two stormtroopers entered, dragging Lokmarcha between them. He was in binders. His yellow eyes leapt to the black bulbous droid, and his hands began to shake.
Khione walked into the cell, her steps unhurried. It was all Leia could do not to spring at her. At a word from her, the stormtroopers exited the cell, leaving the door open behind them.
The Imperial captain wanted Kidi, Nien, and Antrot to be able to hear what would happen next, Leia realized.
“This one’s admirably loyal,” Khione said. “Promised to tell me everything if only I let him see his princess again first. But I don’t think he has anything important to say. So we’re going to do something else.”
She smiled. “The droid’s going to work on him, and you’re going to watch. And then we’ll repeat the procedure with the rest of your friends.”
Khione touched the control unit on her belt, and the interrogation droid rotated away from Leia. It floated from side to side, scanning the room, then approached Lokmarcha.
The commando’s yellow eyes turned to Leia and he nodded.
Lokmarcha’s chest contracted so suddenly Leia heard his ribs crack. Then his chest expanded drastically, as if he’d taken an impossibly large breath. The hairs on Leia’s arms rose as Lokmarcha slumped to the deck, already dead. The interrogation droid lurched to one side, dipped, then tried to rise. In the corridor outside, the stormtroopers clutched at their helmets, knees buckling.
Electromagnetic pulse, Leia realized. Lokmarcha had been carrying some kind of pulse bomb in his chest, one powerful enough to shut down a good chunk of a Star Destroyer. That had been his plan B.
Khione looked up in shock as Leia sprang at her. The captain raised her arms, but it was too late—Leia seized the interrogation droid, trying to get a grip on the machine’s slick surface, and slammed it into Khione’s head. The captain crumpled to the deck, unconscious, the interrogation droid lying motionless between her and Lokmarcha’s body.
Leia looked sadly down at the Dressellian. She didn’t want to think about what he’d endured to maneuver Khione into the only situation that would give Leia a chance.
I do have a chance—thanks to you, Lok. And I’m not going to waste it.
She hurried out of the cell, snatching a blaster from one of the fallen stormtroopers. Behind her, the lights in the cell flickered and died. She heard the cough and zing of blaster fire and ran down the corridor, stolen rifle raised.
A shape came toward her out of the darkness and she almost fired—then was glad she hadn’t. It was Nien, holding a stormtrooper’s blaster, with Antrot and Kidi behind him.
“The guards?” she asked.
“Not a problem anymore,” Nien said grimly.
“Where’s Lok?” Kidi asked frantically.
Leia shook her head sadly. Kidi stared at the floor and began to rock back and forth.
“He sacrificed himself for us,” Leia said. “If we give into our grief now, he’ll have done so for nothing. Antrot, do you still have your detonator?”
“I started putting it back together already,” the Abednedo tinkerer said. “But it’s not working because of the electromagnetic pulse.”
“It will soon enough,” Nien said.
“And so will everything else,” Leia said. “We don’t have much time.”
The Shieldmaiden shook around them.
“What was that?” Kidi asked.
Leia looked at Nien and saw that he looked baffled, too. The Imperial warship shuddered again and klaxons began to blare.
“They’re under attack!” Nien said. “If we can get to the docking bay—”
“We can and we will,” Leia said. “I’ve got a plan. Nien, you and Kidi collect three pairs of binders from the guard station. Antrot, I need you to hot-wire a cell door. But wait here a minute—I need to change clothes.”
She hurried back to her cell, stepping over the two stormtroopers, blaster raised in case either the droid or Khione showed signs of stirring. But both were still on the deck. One of the stormtroopers groaned and Leia stunned both of them, then fired a stun bolt into the fallen captain for good measure. Moving quickly, she stepped into the cell and set down the blaster, then stripped off her tunic and trousers before yanking Khione’s uniform off. It was too big, and she tried to cram the extra material of the trousers into the tops of the boots.
The Star Destroyer shook again. Leia wondered who was attacking the Imperials. Had Mothma or Ackbar sent a task force after her?
She turned, adjusting Khione’s cap, and saw Antrot standing in the doorway, looking uncomfortable.
“How long have you—oh, never mind,” Leia said. “Shove the troopers in here and get the door locked. Quickly!”
“Does a minute count as quickly?” the tinkerer asked.
It didn’t even take half that long. The door shut with a groan and a flash of sparking wires. Antrot gave her a thumbs-up.
Nien returned with Kidi and the items Leia had requested. Leia fit the binders loosely around her friends’ wrists, checking to see that they appeared closed from a distance.
The Shieldmaiden shuddered again, and lights started to blink on in the detention block.
As they exited the detention level, Leia wondered if she heard a faint warble. Or perhaps it had only been her imagination, an illusion conjured by a wisp of unpleasant memory.
“It’ll just work on you until someone tells it to stop,” she murmured.
“What did you say?” Nien asked.
“Nothing. Come on.”
LEIA STRODE OUT of the detention block with the three cuffed prisoners beside her, her blaster rifle held waist high. Imperial officers and droids were hurrying along the corridor. They glanced at the gray Imperial uniform and her rank badge, but none of them stopped.
“Nien,” Leia whispered. “I don’t remember a Star Destroyer’s layout.”
“Straight a hundred meters or so, then take the elevator five levels down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sort of.”
“Great,” Leia said, then barked at them to move it.
They reached the elevator and found it guarded by two stormtroopers. Technicians were running around frantically, looking up each time the Star Destroyer shuddered around them.
The stormtroopers looked inquiringly at Leia and her prisoners.
“We lost power to the detention block,” she said, trying to inject an icy chill in her voice. “These three are being moved so the interrogation can continue.”
The stormtroopers nodded. One of them even summoned the elevator for her. Leia put a hand up in the face of a lieutenant who tried to get in with them, exhaling as the doors closed.
“Antrot, how’s the detonator coming?”
“It would be easier without these cuffs,” the tinkerer complained.
“What?” Leia saw, to her horror, that Antrot’s binders were closed.
“Is something wrong?” the tinkerer asked, looking confused. “You forgot to close mine a
ll the way, so I did it. I didn’t want the Imperials to realize our subterfuge.”
“Sweet dark-eyed mother of Sullust,” muttered Nien.
“How are we going to get those off of you?” Leia asked, then shook her head. “Never mind. Just get that detonator working.”
The lift doors opened and Leia gave a silent prayer of thanks that Nien had remembered his Imperial schematics accurately. They were in a broad corridor adjoining the Shieldmaiden’s docking bay, and she could see the Mellcrawler resting on its landing gear, perhaps fifty meters away. Not far from the yacht was a bat-winged Imperial shuttle with its ramp down.
“Go for the shuttle,” Leia said. “Remember, we belong here. But you’re prisoners, so don’t go too fast. Ready?”
“Let’s get going,” Nien said.
“I’m ready,” Kidi said.
“I think the detonator’s working,” Antrot said. “Though I won’t know for sure until I push the button.”
“We’ll hope for the best,” Leia said. “Let’s go.”
They marched into the docking bay.
“The magnetic shield’s up,” Nien said. “We won’t be able to fly out of here unless it’s lowered.”
“One thing at a time,” Leia said, prodding Nien with her blaster.
“Ow,” the Sullustan complained. “First you try to blow up my ship and now you assault me.”
“Keep talking and I really will assault you,” Leia muttered.
“Princess Leia?” Antrot said, far too loudly. Kidi and Nien looked at him in horror.
“What is it, prisoner?” Leia snapped, hoping to remind the tinkerer of their roles.
“I rigged the Mellcrawler so the blast would hit the reactor and be directed outward through the engines. If I blow it up in its current landing configuration, the blast will fill the docking bay. It’ll do no hull damage to the Star Destroyer but extreme damage to everything inside this bay.”
“Great,” Leia said. “On to plan D, then. Or maybe it’s plan E by now. Get on the shuttle, and I’ll see if I can bully someone into opening the magnetic field.”
“That’s not going to work,” Antrot muttered, looking distressed.
“Sure it will,” Nien said. “Or at least…well, it might.”
They were ten meters from the shuttle when a squad of stormtroopers caught sight of them.
“Ma’am, we’re taking fire from rebel craft,” the squad commander began, then stopped. “Wait. You’re not—”
Leia shot him.
“Get on the shuttle!” she yelled as blaster bolts began flying.
Nien threw his binders in a stormtrooper’s face and rushed up the ramp. Kidi followed, bashing her head painfully into the shuttle’s undercarriage before finding her way. Leia fired at a stormtrooper before he could get a bead on her, then looked for Antrot—and found the Abednedo running the wrong way, wrists bound in front of him.
“Antrot!” she yelled. “This way!”
“Get on the shuttle!” the tinkerer yelled in reply.
Antrot hadn’t made a mistake, she realized. He knew exactly what he was doing. They’d made a plan and he was going to carry it out. Now he was the moving target.
“Antrot, no!” she yelled, trying to think of what she could say that would make him turn around.
A blaster bolt caught the tinkerer in the arm and he stumbled, teeth gritted, but then ducked and rushed up the ramp of the Mellcrawler, which shut behind him.
“Leia!” Nien yelled from the shuttle. “We have to go!”
A blaster bolt struck near her feet and she smelled ozone. She hurried aboard the shuttle, the ramp starting to rise beneath her feet. Nien was in the pilot’s seat, jabbing at the controls. Kidi sat behind him, fiddling with her headset. Then her hand went to her mouth.
“There’s another Star Destroyer coming out of hyperspace!” she said.
“One thing at a time, right?” Nien asked.
“Right,” Leia said. “Can you fly one of these?”
“I can fly anything. But it won’t matter if Antrot’s plan doesn’t work.”
Stormtroopers were firing at them from the floor of the docking bay. Their shots splashed harmlessly off the shuttle’s viewports. Nien activated the repulsorlifts and the craft rose into the air with a whine.
“Poor Antrot,” Kidi said, and Leia put her hand on the Cerean tech’s shoulder.
“I need you on the comm, Kidi,” she said. “Rebel frequencies—let whoever’s attacking this ship know we’re a friendly.”
“Good thing I have those frequencies memorized,” Kidi said.
The Mellcrawler lifted off the deck, moving sluggishly, then made an awkward turn and tipped downward. Its landing gear scraped across the deck.
“That lunatic’s going to damage my ship,” Nien complained as the yacht began to rotate clumsily.
Leia just stared at the Mellcrawler in dismay, imagining Antrot trying to guide the yacht with a wounded arm and bound hands. The tinkerer was stubborn and odd, but he was also incredibly brave.
“Strap in,” Nien said. “This is about to get bumpy.”
The yacht kept rotating until its engines were pointed at the wall of the docking bay, its bow facing the shuttle. Leia thought she saw the slim figure of Antrot in the cockpit in the split second before the flash polarized the shuttle’s viewports and the bay filled with fire and noise.
Leia opened her eyes. Bright spots danced across her vision. She couldn’t see, but apparently Nien could. He stomped on the shuttle’s throttle and the bat-winged ship swooped through the gaping hole punched in the Shieldmaiden’s hull by the demise of the Mellcrawler.
Leia, eyes still dazzled, was trying to make sense of the battle around them. Flashes of light surrounded the Shieldmaiden, which was listing badly. She could see the triangular bulk of the other Star Destroyer—and the TIE fighters pouring out of its belly.
“How long until we can make the jump?” she asked Nien, wondering why the Sullustan seemed so calm.
“Thirty seconds,” Nien said with a grin. “Scan shows the Shieldmaiden’s reactor is failing. We should wave good-bye.”
“First we need to tell those other rebel ships to get clear,” Leia said. “Kidi, can you raise any of them?”
“Yes—yes, I can,” Kidi said quietly. “Now that they know we’re safe, they’re jumping.”
“Good,” Leia said. “But where did they come from? Whose task force is that?”
“You might say it’s ours,” Kidi said, and tears began to run down her cheeks. “They’re the ships from the rendezvous—the ones you warned to flee. They came back.”
“They did?” Leia looked at Kidi, astonished. “How many?”
“All of them.”
WITH THE SHUTTLE safely in hyperspace, Leia left the cockpit to check on Kidi, who had gone back to sit in the crew compartment.
“Are you all right?” Leia asked, taking her hand.
Kidi shook her head. “I can’t believe he’s gone. We’d barely gotten to know each other and now he’s gone.”
“I know,” Leia said. “But you can’t let your grief stop you from living. I’ve learned that. We have to live for those we’ve lost so that their memories are kept alive through us. Particularly those who sacrificed their lives so we could go on.”
“Lok,” Kidi said. “And Antrot.”
“And the people we never knew,” Leia said. “The crews of the ships that came to our aid, and the villagers in Jowloon, and the pirates on Sesid. We have to honor them by carrying on their fight.”
“By doing our duty, you mean.”
“That’s part of it,” Leia said, remembering Mon Mothma’s words to her, before they’d set out for Corva sector.
“That’s part of it, but now I realize there’s something more important than that,” she said. “We fight for a cause, but what we’re really fighting for is each other. That’s why our pilots fly into fire instead of abandoning a wingman and our commandos stand their ground rather than l
eave a flank unguarded. It’s because they care for each other. We fight for duty, yes. But we also fight because we love each other. And that’s something even more powerful.”
“And do you think Lok loved me?”
“You don’t need to ask me that,” Leia said. “You already know the answer.”
To Leia’s amazement, Kidi managed to broadcast an encrypted transmission to R2-D2, and an hour later Leia was looking at a hologram of Luke.
“Mon Mothma’s been beside herself,” he said, smiling. “And I’ve been a little worried, too.”
“I’m fine. Where are you?”
“Kothlis,” Luke said, then peered at the hologram he was seeing of her. “Are you wearing an Imperial uniform?”
“I am,” Leia said. “Its previous owner won’t miss it—she’s space dust. Along with her Star Destroyer. Of which the shuttle Tydirium is all that remains.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it when you get here. The fleet’s nearly assembled. Plus we have new intel about Han. He’s still in carbonite, in Jabba’s palace. And I have a plan to get him out.”
Leia looked down at her uniform. “I don’t know your plan, but I’ve been thinking about a role I could play. I’ll tell you about it when we reach Kothlis. And then we’ll get Han and bring him back to us. Where he belongs.”
PZ-4CO SAID nothing for a long moment after Leia had finished, and she briefly feared that the protocol droid had shut down without her noticing. But then the droid’s eyes brightened and the holorecorder sticking out of her chest turned off, then retracted into her torso.
Leia turned at the sound of her quarters’ door chime.
“This is an excellent beginning, General Organa,” the droid said. “Now perhaps we could discuss your childhood on Alderaan—”
Moving Target: A Princess Leia Adventure Page 11