Honor Among Thieves: Star Wars (Empire and Rebellion) (10 page)

“What? I—” the man started but the doors snapped shut and cut off whatever else he was about to say.

“He might complain to someone,” Scarlet said as they rode up.

“Naw, he's a good citizen of the Empire. If he started complaining every time an officer was rude to him, he wouldn't have time for anything else.”

“Or they'd shoot him,” Scarlet said.

“Or that.”

Scarlet began pulling tools off her belt and out of her sleeves for the job to come. Cutters, sensors, the grapnel for climbing the long shaft up to the security level. Each tool exactly the right one for the job, each perfectly maintained and ready for use. Han thought of the random boxes of tools lying around the
Falcon
and made a mental note to have Chewbacca clean up a bit before they boarded.

The lift doors snapped open, revealing a long Imperial-gray corridor with many smaller doors leading off to either side. “Lots of places to get ambushed in here,” Han said, dropping his hand to rest on the butt of his blaster.

“It's eleven doors up on the right,” Scarlet whispered, and headed off down the corridor at a fast walk. Han followed, looking over his shoulder as he went.

“What are you doing on this level?” a voice demanded, and Han's head whipped around. A high-ranking Imperial officer stood looking at Scarlet with open disdain, his arms crossed behind his back and his chest puffed out with authority. Scarlet lowered her gaze and tried to walk past him. He stepped in front of her, blocking the path with his body. “I said, what are you doing on this level? No non-military personnel above level ten at any time.”

“Well, I—” Scarlet said, but the officer turned his attention to Han.

“You! You should know the regulations regarding non-military personnel on secured levels. Who's your commanding officer?”

“Sir,” Han replied, trying for a meek and chastened tone of voice. “This is just to fix a ventilation thing—”

“Captain!” the officer bellowed. “I will be addressed as captain,
Lieutenant
.” He managed to squeeze more contempt into the world
lieutenant
than Han would have thought possible.

“Yes, Captain, sir. I was just saying—”

“You,” the captain said, spinning on his heel to thrust his chin at Scarlet, “are under arrest. I will have you in a detention cell and talking to an interrogator droid before the hour is out.”

“I think that's a mistake,” Han said.

“And
you,
” the captain continued, spinning back to Han, “will be lucky not to be shot for dereliction of duty. Give me your commanding officer's name. I plan to have him here immediately to deal with you.”

Han gave the captain his most disarming smile and moved to draw his blaster. Time to take care of the loudmouthed idiot once and for all. The idea felt like coming home.

Before Han's weapon had even cleared his holster, the captain spun sideways and threw his own head against the corridor wall. Scarlet was standing behind him, hands raised and knees bent. It took Han several long heartbeats before he realized she was in a fighting stance.

The captain rebounded from the wall, staggering back toward her, stunned and unsteady on his feet. Scarlet snapped her right foot up into his stomach, dropping him to his knees with a loud
whuff
. She kicked him again, this time between the shoulder blades, and dropped him to the floor. She dived onto his back and locked her arms around his neck. The captain struggled feebly for a few seconds, then went limp.

Scarlet stood up, her cheeks flushed with exertion, but looking none the worse for wear.

“Is he dead?” Han asked.

“Put your blaster away,” Scarlet replied. “If you fire it in here, every alarm goes off.”

“Right,” Han said, and slid it back into his holster. “Is he dead?”

“No. Does your identity card open these doors? We'll need to get him out of the hallway.”

Han punched the button next to the nearest door, and it whooshed open. “Yep.”

The room turned out to be a meeting space with a small table and six chairs, currently unoccupied. Han dragged the unconscious captain inside and dumped him unceremoniously under the table. Scarlet was already moving down the corridor to their destination.

“Ready?” she asked. Han nodded.

She punched the entry code and the door opened. Inside was a small technical station. The walls were covered with control panels and displays. It looked exactly like the kind of room that would house a cabling junction.

But in the center of the room, where the conduit access should have been, was a large control station with an Imperial officer manning it.

“I told you this was a terrible plan.”

“Excuse me?” the officer said.

“Are we in the right room?” Scarlet asked no one in particular.

“Non-military personnel—” the officer started.

“Not allowed on this level,” Han finished for him. “We know. Say, there's supposed to be a major trunk line here, with a conduit access point.”

The officer nodded. “Yes, but the last security audit noted it as a flaw, so the cable was rerouted. This communications security station was put in to utilize the space. Do you need access to the trunk line?”

“Not as such,” Scarlet replied. For the first time since he'd met her, Han thought she looked a little lost.

“So you work on the security detail?” Han asked.

“Yes.” The officer nodded again.

“Would your access card get you into the intelligence service center above us?” Han smiled gentle encouragement at the man.

“Sure, but there's no
way
they'd let non-military—”Han drew his blaster and in one smooth motion clubbed the Imperial officer on top of the head. The man slid out of his chair, boneless, and wound up in a heap on the floor.

Scarlet blinked at Han, opened her mouth as if she had something to say, then closed it without speaking.

“We tried your plan,” Han said, holding up the access card. “The rest of this, we're doing my way.”

Nine

“
This
is your better plan?” Scarlet said under her breath.

“It is,” Han whispered back.

The intelligence service was the whole planet Cioran—maybe the whole Imperial Core—writ small. There were no colors in the flooring, the walls, the doors. Only shades of gray and black. The air had a sharp, astringent smell that reminded Han of cleaning up blood. The stink of the well-maintained interrogation chamber.

“Steal a keycard and just walk in,” Scarlet said. “Why didn't I think of that? You know we're going to die.”

“No one'll see us coming,” Han said. “And everyone dies sometime.”

“Not comforting.”

“The alternative is we go spend a bunch of time waiting for you to come up with some other plan that doesn't work. This way, we get all the risk out of the way quickly and get off this sinkhole of a planet.”

The guard at main desk looked up at them, curious but not yet alarmed. “I think you're on the wrong level.”

Han grinned and held up the keycard without breaking stride. “Special permission. Someone routed the ventilation power right through the secure facility. We've got to move it back before anyone compromises it.”

The guard stood up, frowning. “I wasn't informed about that.”

“General Screal doesn't like us announcing security flaws until after they're addressed,” Scarlet said.

“
Screal
?” the guard said, his eyebrows reaching for his hairline.

“Just take us a minute,” Han said, as they reached a thick steel door. He slid the keycard through the reader, and the display shifted from red to green with a loud beep. The door slid open. “See?”

As they stepped into the data center, Scarlet pulled a storage disk and a diagnostic interface out of her pocket. Around them, a thousand pillars of black ceramic glowed under blue light. The hiss of coolant and the almost inaudible ticking of power relays were the only sounds. She stepped to the nearest pillar, slid her fingers across its surface to open the control panel, and attached the interface. It squealed once, and a bright red warning code blinked on its face.

“Do we have a problem?” Han asked.

“Several,” Scarlet said. “But this isn't one of them.”

Her fingers moved gracefully over the interface controls. The red gave way to a soft blue. She took a security chit from another pocket, slid it into the interface's spare slot, and fed the disk into the dark pillar.

“Did we get it?”

“Soon,” she said. “So how did you wind up joining the Rebellion?”

“What? Why?”

“Just making conversation,” she said.

“An old guy and a kid were looking for a ride and I needed the money,” Han said. “After that, it was just bad luck.”

The pillar chimed and Scarlet took out the disk. The screen of the diagnostic interface flared and started running through a reboot sequence.

“We should get out of the room now,” she said.

At the front desk, the guard was scowling and tapping at his console. Han felt a tightness in his gut. His fingertip drifted toward his blaster.

“Right, then,” Han said. “We've got the power routing fixed, and—”

The alarm sounded, and the great steel door slammed shut behind them with a deep gonglike clang. The guard rose up, blaster in hand. Han pulled his own and shot him before the Imperial could find his aim. Together he and Scarlet raced for the doors. In the outer corridor, emergency lights flared red, while men and women in Imperial uniforms scuttled in a hundred levels of panic.

“We have to get down to the street level,” Scarlet said. “There's a supply conveyor that runs from here to a holding facility close to the docks.” She stopped at the lifts. All of them showed the black-and-red symbol of secure lockdown. She took a small crowbar from her belt and popped the access panel free. “We'll be going through the warehouses.”

“Actually, I've seen those,” Han said.

She deftly stripped three wires, crossed the connections, and reinserted them. When the unit sparked, she ignored it. The indicator on the lift stuttered back to life. The doors slid open. Ten stormtroopers, weapons drawn, looked out at them. For a moment, no one moved.

“Ah,” Han said. “Thank goodness we, um, got you guys. Did you know there's been a security breach?”

“Halt in the name of the Empire!” one of the stormtroopers shouted, and Scarlet pulled the wires free. The lift doors closed on a barrage of blasterfire. Scarlet cursed under her breath and popped open a second access panel.

“We don't have time,” Han said. “They're going to get those doors open.”

“I can do this,” Scarlet Hark said between clenched teeth. The lift doors boomed as something struck them from within. Han shifted his weight from one foot to the other. At the edge of the bank of lifts, a door was marked with the sign for manual access. A stairway. Every muscle in his body was tensed with the need to run. Scarlet spat out an obscenity. The lift doors opened a centimeter, and a blaster barrel stuck out.

“All right. Enough being clever,” Han said, taking Scarlet by the shoulder. “Run now.”

The stairway dropped down a hundred or more floors below them and rose another twenty above, all lit by the angry red of the security alarms. Han and Scarlet hurried down them three steps at a time. The sound of confused and angry voices echoed behind them. Han's breath was short, his legs burning from effort. The distance beneath them didn't seem to be getting any smaller.

He stopped before he was quite sure why he'd done it. Scarlet went down another half flight, paused, and looked back over her shoulder at him. Her black eyes were confused for a moment, and then she heard it, too: the tramping of booted feet. Han leaned over the railing and looked down. Maybe ten floors below them, the alarm lights threw shadows across the handrails. Soldiers. Coming up.

“Come on,” Scarlet said, heading for the closest door, but Han stopped her, his hand on her arm.

“Up,” he said. “What about up?”

“Nothing's up there. No flier stations. No walkways. Just transmission towers and air.”

The sound of boots grew louder. Han turned and started back up.

“Solo?”

“Come on,” he shouted. “I've got an idea.”

Running down the stairs had been bad. Running up was a thousand times worse. Every flight felt longer than the one before. They passed the door of the intelligence center, back where they'd come from, and then up past it. Below them, they heard doors being kicked open and the whine of scanning droids. Han forced himself on. His muscles were burning with the effort. Someone below them shouted, and a bright red blaster bolt burned the air in the shaft.

“We should hurry,” Scarlet said.

“Am hurrying.”

“You should do it faster.”

At the foot of the next flight of stairs, she paused, fixing something to the handrail. Han leaned against the wall.

“I didn't get any rest last night,” he said.

“All right.”

“Just saying, I can usually run better than this.”

Scarlet pulled a hair-thin strand of monofilament across the steps, just below waist-high. In the red light, it was practically invisible. The drum of footsteps grew louder.

“What's—” Han said, then swallowed. “What's that?”

“That's a few more seconds,” she said. “Let's go.”

Han turned back up, pushing himself. They'd made it up another two full flights, both of them running with their shoulders touching the wall, when an electrical discharge crackled through the air. A man's voice rose in panic, and another one shouted it down.

“That was us, right?” Han said. “We did that?”

“Makes them take it a little slower,” Scarlet said. “Hope whatever you've got in mind is a really good idea.”