“We could go straight through to the docking ring if we take the tunnel borer,” Andevid suggested.
Leia turned to face him. “The what?”
“Piece of machinery left over from the old mine,” he explained. “Viest used it to destroy ships in dock. They would be expecting an attack from the docking ring, or for some ship to fire on them from outside. But she and her crew would take it through the deep tunnels, then up through the bay and under the ship, and use the excavating lasers on it.” He shrugged. “Never could open those docking bays again. Even these pirates aren't dumb enough to put their ships down in a docking bay with a big hole in the floor.”
Leia thought of all the closed bay doors they had passed along the docking ring. Presumably pirates wouldn't want to put their ships down in a bay filled with wreckage and skeletal remains, either. “Show us where it is,” she said.
Andevid turned away. “Out here. If it didn't get destroyed in that blast.”
They followed him across the chamber to the passage that led to the lift tubes. “Viest had some imagination,” Han commented.
“You don't know half of it,” Andevid told him. He added to Leia, “That's what she was planning to do to your ship. Got it all powered up and ready.”
Leia wasn't surprised. Terae swore under her breath and looked toward the chamber where Viest and Metara lay.
Andevid continued, “She was going to do it a couple of hours from now, once the ships that are in dock at the cargo port finished their trading and left. They're independents, not beholden to her, and she never wanted them to know too much about what she was doing. In case she decided to take them out someday.”
All the lift tube control panels blinked with fault warnings, damaged when the control center shifted. Andevid took them past the tubes and down a curving stair, into a smaller control room lined with old dead consoles, with a large hatch opening toward the cavern. Two ports on either side showed something bulky blocking it. Andevid tapped the controls, and the hatch slid open. Leia and Han stepped over to take a look.
The tunnel borer was shaped like a long tube, about twice the size of a multiple-passenger escape pod. It had a cone-shaped disk on its nose to emit the cutting lasers. This part of the cavern was in deep shadow, and if anyone looked up from the arena or the other spaces below, the tunnel borer would just be another piece of derelict mining equipment. In the light from the ports, Leia could see that while the metal sides were stained with mineral streaks, the hatch keypad was clean and faint ready lights shone from it and from the cutting disk.
Han leaned out, braced himself with one hand on the side of the borer, and touched the keypad. The hatch slid open. Automatic lights blinked on, showing a narrow interior with a small cockpit and long bench seats along the walls.
“Can you run this thing?” Han asked Andevid.
“Never been in it,” Andevid told him. “I know which tunnel they used to get it to the docking ring, though.”
Sian had dropped back by the doorway to listen for pursuit. “I can hear them banging around somewhere above us,” she said quietly. “Must be searching the place.”
“Heavy machinery is the same all over,” Kifar said. “Should be easy enough to figure out.”
Han swung into the hatch and folded himself into the borer's tiny cockpit. “That depends on who built it.”
Leia motioned for the others to follow him. Andevid and Terae stepped lightly across and Kifar followed, ducking and turning sideways to make it through the borer's narrow hatchway. Sian and Leia boarded last. Han had already gotten the life support started, so Leia sealed the hatch.
Sian activated a small console on the wall and tried to get the display to come up as Kifar and Andevid looked over her shoulders. “I think this is a mapping utility,” she muttered. “Yes, here we go.”
A small holoimage of the mine sprang to life in midair, a few centimeters from Leia's nose. She stepped back to get a better view. Even at first glance, it was far more complete than the map Han and Sian had managed to copy earlier: it showed the asteroid riddled with tunnels that followed the paths of what must have been veins of various ores. A few sections seemed to have been left untouched, but not many.
“The other map only showed the tunnels and traverses meant for the small transports and droids,” Sian said. “This one has all the tunnels for the actual digging equipment. Solo, can you get this up in the cockpit?”
“Hold it â¦Â Yeah.”
Leia stepped forward and looked over Han's shoulder. The controls were complicated and labeled with symbols she didn't recognize. “Can you drive this thing?” she asked, keeping her voice low. From this angle she could see blood matting the hair at Han's temple and recalled belatedly that he must have had some kind of head injury. She hoped he didn't have a concussion.
“Sure. Sort of. Maybe,” Han murmured, more concerned with figuring out the operation of the controls. A smaller version of the map had appeared above the console. There was no viewport: this vehicle had been designed to travel through solid rock or the darkness of a completed tunnel. Leia felt the deck vibrate as the powerful engine rumbled to life. Then she grabbed a safety handle as the vehicle rolled away from the control center, maneuvering lightly on repulsors. A sensor view of the cavern that had appeared below the map rolled with it, showing the walls and the other moored mining machines in outline.
“Good, that works like it looked like it did,” Han said, not reassuringly. “Andevid, get up here and show me that tunnel.”
Leia stepped back to make room, and the Quara squeezed past her to stab a clawed finger toward the holoimage of the cavern. “There, down and under the control center,” he said.
“Right.” Han didn't sound thrilled, and Leia could see why.
Yes, right below the control centerâwhich is in the process of pulling free from the rock and sliding down into the cavern.
It was doing it slowly, because of the low gravity, but it was still doing it.
Han rolled the borer around again and dropped it down until it was pointed toward the rock face below the control center. “This looks like it,” he said as the holo displayed a blue-lined round opening among the red streaks depicting the folds in the rock.
Loud bangs echoed through the compartment, though the hull didn't vibrate. Leia thought it was debris falling onto them, then remembered the low gravity. “The pirates are firing on us.” Unless they had brought up something bigger than hand blasters, she didn't think they had a chance of getting through the hull, but if they were able to damage the engines â¦
“Can we shoot back?” Kifar asked.
Han said, “Yeah, let's open the hatch, and you can stick your head outâ”
Andevid snorted.
Leia set her jaw. “Han. Just drive.”
“Yes, Your Worship.” Han took the borer forward into the tunnel. Leia winced away from the scraping sound as the hull vibrated. Swearing under his breath, Han corrected their course slightly and increased the power to the repulsors. “Gravity kicked back inâit threw us off a little.”
They moved forward slowly, leaving the cavern behind. Leia started to breathe easier. There was no way anyone with any sense was going to follow them down here. They would all be trying to loot or seize control of Viest's headquarters.
The tunnel borer rumbled around a curve, and suddenly the display showed a solid wall of red.
“What happened?” Han demanded.
“Oh.” Andevid stared at the holomap. “Maybe it wasn't this tunnel.”
“Maybe?” Leia stared at him. The others watched in a combination of concern and incredulity.
“It's not like Viest took me for rides in this thing,” Andevid said, studying the map. “Wait, wait, here it is. It was lower down, and to the right.”
Han twisted around to give Andevid a dark look. Leia was pretty certain it matched the one on her face. Andevid said, “Sorry, but I'm sure this time.”
“Can we back out?” Leia asked, thinking,
The pirates must be almost at the control center by now.
“No, we'll do it this way,” Han said, and hit a control on the panel. A high-powered hum traveled through the deck, and another holodisplay appeared.
Leia recognized the disk shapes. “The laser cutters? Are youâ”
Crazy,
she meant to finish, but Han pushed the control yoke down and the rumble turned into a roar. Leia grabbed the safety handle and watched, fascinated, as the rock on the holodisplay dissolved.
“This is kind of fun,” Andevid commented.
“You've got to get out more, buddy,” Han told him.
“That's true,” Andevid agreed.
Leia told herself the machine had been designed for this. The machine was also who-knew-how-old, probably poorly maintained, had been used as an impromptu means of destroying starships, and was being driven by Han Solo. She was in the process of developing claustrophobia when the last of the rock fell away and they came out into a tunnel. This one was barely bigger than the borer; it had probably been dug by it at some point.
Behind her, Leia heard Sian swear with relief. She glanced back to see Kifar holding on to a handle so tightly that his knuckles had gone dark orange, and Terae looked ill. Leia took out her comlink to call the
Aegis,
but all she got was static. She looked at Terae and Sian. “Can you get anything?”
Both checked, and both shook their heads. “This thing's hull must be heavily shielded,” Terae said. “Signals just aren't getting through.”
Leia looked around for anything that resembled a comm but couldn't find one. “Han, how close can you get us to the
Aegis
?”
Cool and vaguely preoccupied, as if he did this every day, Han steered the machine down the tunnel. “Check the map; look for a good route.”
Leia traced the tunnels, finding the docking ring immediately. The borer's guidance system had marked all the old exploratory tunnels used to find ore veins in the bulk of the asteroid, some distance below the cavern. But the new tunnels toward the docking bays were flagged with warning symbols. Clearly, Viest had been overriding the machine's safety features to make them. It was a good thing there were nearly a hundred bays along the length of the docking ring, since Viest had destroyed twenty of them over the years. The closest one to the
Aegis
was six bays down, at the end of the ring, where it split to head toward the larger loading area that Han had said the pirates used to store and trade cargoes.
Leia leaned closer suddenly.
And the slave pen.
She pulled out her comlink and checked the time to Anakaret's transmission. She smiled. “I have an idea.”
In the cockpit of the
Millennium Falcon,
in orbit above the asteroid, Luke said, “Wait, ask himâ”
Chewbacca flung his arms in the air in frustration as Han signed off.
“Blast it! He didn't even say if Leia was with him!”
Luke tried to raise Han again but got no answer. “Nothing,” he told Chewie. Either the comlink was turned off, or they were cut off by some kind of interference.
Chewie shook his head and rumbled something that sounded unhappy.
From behind them, C-3PO translated, “He says that Captain Solo said to wait. He was very rude. Captain Solo, I mean, not Chewbacca. Not that time, anyway.”
Chewbacca scrubbed his forehead and moaned in frustration.
“Wait, fine,” Luke muttered. At least they knew Han and Leia were here, and alive. Or at least that Han was alive. But surely Han would have sounded worse if things had gone so badly.
He tapped his fingers on the console and stopped when Chewie glanced at him in irritation. Luke didn't think he could wait anymore without losing his mind.
They had spent the trip here trying not to talk about how worried they were. Chewbacca had sat in the cockpit disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling his bowcaster over and over again, with nervous precision. With nothing else to do but watch him, Luke was now fully prepared for a life-or-death situation where he had to assemble a bowcaster blindfolded. All the questions like
what if they aren't here, what if we can't find them, what if we never see them again
had hung in the air between them.
Now at least those questions were answered. Before Han's call, Chewie had been going through the ships' IDs that had shown up in the comm system and trying to find the
Aegis,
while Luke searched the sensor data for any ship that matched its description. If that hadn't turned up anything, they had been planning to call the asteroid's controller and try to talk their way into a landing berth.
So far the
Falcon
hadn't drawn any unwanted attention, mostly because there were dozens of other small, battered freighters in the vicinity, and Luke thought they were doing a good job of blending in. They had had to identify themselves when they arrived, but the controller hadn't seemed interested. Good thing Han and Chewie hadn't been out this way in a long while, he thought wryly.
Luke couldn't just sit here. “We could try finding the
Aegis
and contacting it.”
Chewbacca gave him a look with lowered brows. Luke knew enough about Wookiee facial expressions to realize it meant “Is there something wrong with you?” He said, “Yeah, yeah, I know. It's probably not a good idea until we know what the situation is.”
Then the comm system signaled a transmission coming in on the asteroid's all-ship frequency. Luke listened to the beginning and blew out his breath. “Chewie, listen to this.”
Chewie stabbed a blunt-clawed finger at the board, gesturing for Luke to turn up the volume. They listened as a female voice repeated a warning of Imperial ships entering the system and then played a fragment of the transmission her ship had picked up.
Chewbacca growled in frustration. The sensors showed ships already accelerating out of their orbits, scattering like startled womp rats. Luke shook his head, bit his lip in thought.