Apocalypse (32 page)

“Got it?” Bazel asked.

“Got it.”

Allana dropped to a knee behind Bazel’s huge leg and shouldered the weapon. She opened fire, loosing bolts so rapidly they seemed to flow out in a steady stream. The closest Sith swung his lightsaber low to defend his ankle, brought it high to protect his head, then pivoted away and swept it low again to deflect a knee shot. The fourth bolt caught him in the ear, and Leia felt the Force shudder with the shock and confusion of a little girl who had just killed a man.

Leia took a position to Allana’s left and started to send energy bolts flying back toward the Sith. She was not surprised that Allana and Bazel had rehearsed a few maneuvers, or even that someone—no doubt Taryn Zel—had taught her granddaughter to shoot so well. But that didn’t mean Allana was prepared for the guilt and fear and relief that came of killing a person at close range.

Allana didn’t freeze. She just switched to the next Sith and put him down as quickly as the first. Leia felt a pang of sorrow in the Force—but also determination, and even a little anger. Allana understood their situation. She knew what to do.

Leia just wished
she
knew what to do. The Sith were slipping from the tunnel in two-person teams and working their way along the walls, trying to flank the little girl and her protectors before attacking. Running for cover would only trigger a charge, and trying to hole up aboard the
Falcon
would be suicide.

An imperious Keshiri female emerged from the tunnel alone. Allana opened fire on her, but the lavender-skinned woman sent the bolts streaking back so accurately that Leia had to step in to help defend her granddaughter from her own fire. Even then, two bolts slipped past in two seconds, and Allana wisely stopped firing and rolled behind Bazel’s massive leg.

Already well trained, she snatched a fresh power cell from the storage pouch on the Ramoan’s thigh holster. She ejected the old power cell, slipped the fresh one into place, then called, “What now, Grandma?”

“We hold on until Taryn and Zekk get here,” Leia said, though she had no idea how they would manage
that
. A dozen Sith were firing on them already, and more came out of the tunnel every second. “Hit your panic alarm.”

“Grandma!”
Allana’s voice was indignant. “I did
that
a long time ago.”

“Okay, well …” A bolt screamed past, so close that Leia smelled her own scorched hair. “We need cover.”

“Good idea,” Allana agreed. “Where?”

“You pick,” Leia replied. A flurry of bolts erupted from Leia’s left, and she barely pivoted around in time to deflect them into the
Falcon
’s belly. “Can’t stop to look.”

“Plan C,” Bazel rumbled.

“Yeah,” Allana said. She popped up behind Bazel, then cradled the huge blaster pistol in her elbow and extended one hand above her head. “It’s what Grandpa would do.”

“Plan C?” Leia asked, not sure she really wanted to know. “What’s Plan—”

“The last thing they’ll ever expect,” Allana explained. As she spoke, Bazel dropped to a knee in front of her. She grabbed a handful of collar and dug her feet into his waist belt, then pulled herself up and rested the barrel of the huge blaster pistol across his shoulder. “We charge!”

Bazel stood and thundered toward the tunnel, his jade bulk twisting and turning behind the whirling brilliance of his lightsaber. Allana poured blaster bolts over his shoulder. Sith danced and dived out of their path, some with fresh holes smoking in their throats or knees. Realizing that her granddaughter was right—that charging was
exactly
what Han Solo would do—Leia cast a last glance up the boarding ramp, silently willing Han to appear—to come racing down to join the charge.

But Han was nowhere to be seen.

Now that she had half a second, when not busy batting blaster bolts
away from Allana, Leia reached for Han in the Force … and felt him
alive
, inside his beloved ship. He wasn’t in pain, but he wasn’t moving. He was angry and determined and almost smug.

As usual, Han Solo had something up his sleeve.

Leia filled her presence with a love she knew he wouldn’t feel, then sprang after her granddaughter, confident that she was doing exactly what he would have told her to do, had he been able.

But that didn’t make leaving any easier.

A smoking hole erupted in Bazel’s enormous shoulder. He whirled so fast Allana would have been thrown free had she not been using the Force to keep herself stuck to her huge green friend. Another bolt took him in the chest, and Leia realized the Ramoan was spinning to shield Allana. She reached his side and began to bat bolts back toward the Sith.

“Go!” she ordered. “I’ve got your back!”

Bazel pivoted toward the tunnel entrance, now only a few steps away, and thundered forward. Leia spun into position behind him, running backward, her lightsaber painting loops of color above her head as she defended Allana.

By now the Sith had them outflanked. Leia heard the
thud-sizzle
of a dozen bolts burning into Ramoan flesh. Her own leg swung back of its own accord, and she nearly fell, catching her balance on a wounded leg that felt like boiling oil. Allana’s blasterfire became a constant shriek, and the growl of clashing lightsabers sounded on the other side of Bazel’s dancing bulk.

Then the Force lightning came.

Leia caught the first fork on her own lightsaber. Less than ten paces away, a second Sith stopped and raised her hands, her fingertips curling toward Allana.

Leia grabbed for her granddaughter in the Force. “Off!” she commanded, trying to pull Allana from Bazel’s shoulders.
“Now!”

Allana came sliding down, and the lightning crackled past only centimeters above Leia’s head. Bazel’s voice boomed in surprise and anguish.

Allana knelt next to Leia. She opened fire, and three shots later the woman who had just tried to kill her was down. So was the man who had wounded Leia.

The floor shuddered, and even before Leia heard the
snip-sizzle
of
a hot blade popping through flesh, she knew Bazel was down. Taking her granddaughter by the arm, Leia spun around his kneeling bulk and emerged on the other side—and found herself facing half a dozen crimson blades. Allana’s blaster pistol shrieked twice, and a tall Sith dropped sideways, releasing a lightsaber that had been buried in Bazel’s chest.

Amazingly, the Ramoan wasn’t finished. His green blade swept across in front of him, smashing through the guard of two Sith—slicing them apart at the shoulders—before a powerful dark-bearded man finally blocked the attack.

Bazel’s free arm shot out, collapsing the man’s chest around a massive fist.

“Behind me,” Bazel ordered. He began to rise. “We stop for—”

A thunderous chuffing erupted behind them. The entire ceiling of the loading bay flashed blue, and four geysers of molten durasteel erupted near the ceiling on the wall ahead. Leia turned. She saw R2-D2 coming down the boarding ramp toward them—and a familiar face winking at her through the
Falcon
’s belly turret.

“Han!”

The weapon barrels began to depress, and Leia saw what he intended. She spun back around to find Bazel on his feet again. He was sweeping his long lightsaber back and forth like a scythe—not actually
killing
any Sith, but knocking them off-balance and sending them flying out of his path. Allana was a pace behind him, facing the
Falcon
and staring at the belly turret with a gaping mouth.

“Wait!”
Allana gasped. “Grandpa’s
alive
?”

“Of course, dear.” Leia threw herself over Allana, at the same time hitting Bazel with the most powerful Force shove she could manage. “Now get down so Grandpa can shoot!”

They were still falling when the chuffing started again. She extended her arms to keep from flattening Allana, but even so she heard a loud gasp as they hit the floor together.

“Are you hurt?”

“No … way!” Allana’s voice was barely audible over the roaring and crashing of the laser cannons. She began to squirm beneath Leia, no doubt trying to see what was happening around them. “But I’m worried about Barv.”

“Me, too.”

Leia put a hand on Allana’s back to keep her from lifting her head too high, then looked forward and—beneath the fiery sheet of crashing cannon fire—saw that the big Ramoan was
still
battling Sith. He had at least three trapped beneath his huge green body, which was jerking and twitching as they hacked at his belly and chest with their parangs and whatever else they could bring to bear. But the Ramoan was giving better than he took. He had one man’s throat squeezed shut, another one’s skull locked in his crushing grasp, and a third pinned beneath his slashing tusks.

Between the Ramoan and the tunnel lay a smoking tangle of body parts that had once been Sith warriors. Some of the pieces were still moving, and a couple were even clutching lightsabers in their twitching hands. But none was in any condition to be a threat to Allana—or to anyone else.

Leia could tell by the molten metal and jagged holes around the tunnel mouth that Han had poured a lot of fire down it, but that didn’t mean there were no survivors lurking inside. On the other hand, there were probably a lot of nooks and crannies in the loading bay itself where their Sith enemies could have taken cover—and it wouldn’t be long before they recovered from the initial shock of the cannon attack.

She glanced back toward the
Falcon
. The laser cannons were still sweeping toward the right side of the loading bay, firing on full automatic and cutting down anything that moved—and most of what didn’t. R2-D2 was already within a couple of meters of her, coming out of the smoke with his grasping arm extended and a grenade in the pincer claw.

Leia tried to catch sight of her husband inside the belly turret, but the smoke was too thick and the flashing of the cannons too bright. She shook her head.
He really
does
think of everything!

She extended her hand and used the Force to gently tug at the grenade. To her relief, R2-D2 seemed to understand and opened his claw. The grenade was a Merr-Sonn C-20 concussion model, perfect for clearing the tunnel without rendering it impassable. Leia set the fuse for two seconds and removed the safety pin, then finally took her weight off Allana.

“When I run—”

“I follow,” Allana yelled back. “I
have
had evasion training, you know!”

Leia
did
know, and it broke her heart to realize just how essential that training had been. Her nine-year-old granddaughter was already a veteran of several assassination attempts and practically an old hand at close-quarters combat.

R2-D2 rolled past, making straight for the tunnel. Leia released the firing handle and tossed the grenade ahead of the droid, then used the Force to float it into the mouth of the passage—where it stopped dead as someone inside caught it in the Force. Leia pushed harder and felt the Sith pushing back. Then a white flash filled the tunnel, and Leia felt nothing inside the passage at all.

Pulling Allana up beside her, Leia jumped to her feet—and felt a cold ripple race up her spine. She shoved Allana forward.

“Go!” she yelled. “And blast anything that moves in there!”

As Leia spun around, Sith heads started to pop into view, peering over smoking bodies and from behind the
Falcon
’s struts. Bolts of energy began to streak toward her from half a dozen directions. She deflected the first three, then launched herself into a backward Force flip—and nearly collapsed when she came down hard on her injured leg.

Bazel was two meters away from Leia, trailing long loops of intestine as he crawled toward her—and the tunnel—on hands and knees. She switched to a one-handed grip and extended her free hand toward the Ramoan, trying to use the Force to help him to his feet.

A fork of Force lightning crackled past a fist’s width above his back, and Leia barely managed to catch it with her one-handed lightsaber grip. Bazel looked up and shook his head.

“No.” A pained smile creased his wide mouth, and one of his tiny eyes squeezed shut in a weary wink. “It’s an … act.”

Leia felt her grasp slipping and had to grab her lightsaber with both hands. Bazel slumped, but instead of dropping back to his belly, he lifted himself higher, into the path of the Force lightning.

“Go!” he boomed. “Allana needs …”

Allowing the sentence to trail off, he simply pointed at the tunnel. Then, incredibly, he rose to his feet again and turned, bringing his
lightsaber up to catch the Force lightning. Somehow, over the roar of the
Falcon
’s cannon turrets and the screaming blasters and the hissing lightsabers, Leia heard Allana crying out for her friend, begging him to come back.

Bazel was right. Allana needed her.

Leia turned and raced into the tunnel mouth. There she found Allana kneeling among the corpses, Bazel’s huge blaster pistol braced atop R2-D2’s grimy dome and tears streaking down her face. She was continuing to pour fire out into the loading bay, trying to help her big green friend. Judging by the blaster wounds in some of the bodies strewn around Allana, Leia could tell that at least a few of those Sith had still been alive when Allana entered the passage.

“I
told
them to surrender,” Allana said, almost shouting to make herself heard over her screaming blaster pistol. “But they just kept reaching for their weapons.”

“Then you had no choice,” Leia said. She glanced up the tunnel. “Did any—”

“No,” Allana yelled, shaking her head. “No one escaped. I killed them. All of them.”

“It’s okay, Allana.” In truth, Leia didn’t know if it would ever be okay. The despair and cold detachment in her granddaughter’s voice tore at her inside—perhaps because it reminded Leia of what Allana’s father had become—but she could offer no comfort or wisdom until they were safe. “You did the right thing.”

Leia turned back toward the loading bay and was astonished to see Bazel still on his feet, spinning through a storm of blasterfire. His robe had been reduced to smoking tatters, and his green hide was pocked by so many burn holes that he appeared to be spotted. Meanwhile a steady stream of cannon bolts continued to pour from the
Falcon
’s belly turret, melting a long furrow into the loading bay’s durasteel wall.