Chewbacca griped the helm firmly as they came out of hyperspace, keeping the /Falcon/ clean on course as she coasted into the Hodan system, her engines now quiet and calm, and her sensor wake covering the presence of the modified X-wing riding her tale, making her technically blind to its presence. However, Chewie had more than hunch about where the ugly little thing was, with its rather predictable Jedi Master keeping it locked in the /Falcon's/ left corner drain-void, where there wouldn't be any friction from the fuel exhaust to slow down the craft.
This had not been Chewie's idea of a good plan. He may have followed one or more of Han's ridiculous ventures into a world of hurt, but in his mind that was completely different than attacking a large group of fanatics on a world about a billion light years from anything even *he* would call civilization. He had suggested getting the New Republic military involved, or at least the Hapans, despite the length of time it might take, but he'd been outnumbered by a short, toe-headed Jedi Master. Not one of his better hours, no doubt.
So here they were: engines off and running dead, gambling on some degree of surprise, on a three man rescue mission for their friends and family. The sentimentality of the whole thing was kind of funny, something Han would have no doubt found hilarious had he not actually been a part of the situation.
"You here that?" Lando asked.
Chewie turned to look at his copilot and asked him what he was talking about.
"Nevermind, it's probably just an engine hiccup," Lando said, flipping the coolant value switch to settle the engines. "Will you check the supply closet for me, this indicator light keeps blinking like there are parasites in it," he continued, tapping the light a bit as if it would help.
Chewie nodded and switched main helm control to the copilot's terminal before heading down the corridor towards the main supply closet. He'd never liked space parasites, they were the worst kind of rodents and they stunk like sweaty mynocks. Opening the munitions cabinet close by, he pulled out a blaster and set it to stun—they smell even worse when they're dead. He opened the supply cabinet and pointed the blaster into the dark only to here a young kid's voice say "oh" as he flipped on the internal lights.
"Could you point that somewhere else, Chewie?" the Wookiee heard Jacen's voice say from inside the closet as the kid, soon after joined by Anakin, stepped out of the closet and into the corridor.
Chewie glared at the two children from several feet above their heads, and watched as they sunk a bit in their stances and digressed into more humble postures under the shadow of his rather angry stare.
"Chewie, did you fix the—" Lando began, coming up the corridor from the cockpit. "Holy son of a…" he mumbled, his gaze falling on the boys.
- - -
Leia's hand grasped the comm.-link firmly and activated it as their captors realized that something was amiss. Watching as Han pulled the blaster out of the hands of the man behind him, she took deeps breaths, attempting to get the right frequency for the /Falcon/, and hoping the old bucket of bolts was in range.
The guard with his arm wrapped around her neck tightened his grip when he saw what she was doing, making it difficult for her to breathe as he struggled to get the comm. from her and disregarded his blaster in the attempt.
A second guard came to the aide of the first, training a blaster on Leia and yelling at her to drop the comm. as a third guard came up beside him.
Leia froze, her gaze falling onto the first guard's discarded blaster as she calculated her options. One behind and two in front, she'd have to decommission the first before the other two could shoot, however that would prove a bit difficult considering the distance from herself to the weapon she so desperately needed. She straightened her posture, making to drop the comm. as the guard behind her loosened his grip and let her go.
Lifting her hand to shoulder height and extending her arm out a little, she looked out between the shoulders of the two guards who faced her, seeing Han doing a little better a few meters away. And with a quick motion, she dropped to her left, reaching for the blaster catching the reaction on the guards' faces as she did so.
Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the blaster as she turned back to her captors and shot the first guard in the chest, struggling to get back up as she maintained her distance from her other two pursuers who pulled out their blasters as they came towards her.
Leia aimed for the second guard's chest but the shot veered toward the shoulder, piercing his skin just below his collar-bone, forcing her to re-aim. Her second try made contact with his abdomen and he fell as she dodged a shot from his companion.
The one on one firefight didn't last long as another pair of guards joined what Leia had thought to be her last opponent. They raised their weapons to chest height and fired as she found cover behind a large rock near the edge of the clearing.
She realized she had cornered herself as she came up from behind the stone, getting a shot off and felling one of the guards as she did, but there didn't appear to be another immediate option. Taking the opportunity, and knowing that she was more than pressed for time, she resigned herself not to send a message and simply run a continuous-feed distress signal through the comm., hoping there was someone on board the /Falcon/ with enough sense to realize who it was from.
Leia watched as a round of shots went over and around the rock and she covered her head as the bolts of red light flew past her right shoulder and into the bushes ahead. This wasn't going so well anymore.
Coming up from behind the rock, she aimed quickly and caught one of the guards in the neck, sending him falling to the ground and she aimed for his companion, but not as quickly as she might have hoped. The second guard shot back before Leia could pull the trigger, and she felt the painful heat and sting of a blaster wound piercing her left shoulder as she fell back from the force of impact.
She opened her eyes quickly, wondering how long they'd been closed and finding her answer just above her as her captor, standing right over her, lined his blaster up with the center of her forehead.
There was a familiar ring as a blaster bolt exited the barrel of the gun and headed towards its target. Leia looked straight into the eyes of the man above her as he staggered, and fell straight forward onto her, his hand, and the blaster in it, folding in and under him.
Leia exhaled, feeling that she should have done so quite a bit earlier as he head felt a little light, and trying to push the man off of her, especially since her elbow was digging into her stomach. This, combined with a natural wanting to not have dead men laying on top of ones self, overrode her desire to simply lay there and breathe for a few minutes.
As she started to push the man off her, she saw someone coming towards her, blaster drawn and running. She struggled to push the dead guard over so she could try to get out, but as the figure she saw moved closer she heaved a sigh of relief.
"How many are left?" Leia asked as Han came to stand next to her.
Han leaned down and helped her lift the guard off of her and aided her in standing up. "None standing, but I don't think it'll take them too long to change that."
Leia nodded and looked toward the direction they had originally been heading for. Looking back at Han, he nodded an affirmative and they started running toward the rendezvous point, hand in hand.
Letting go of Han's hand as they entered the clearing they'd designated the rendezvous point, Leia cradled her shoulder for a moment, gritting her teeth as the exposed wound oxygenated and the stinging pulsated through her arm and down her shoulder blade toward her spine.
"They're not here yet," Leia said, stating the obvious.
As she was about to turn to Han, a blaster bolt flew past her ear and they both turned around to face the gunman. They came face to face with five guards no more than fifty meters away, all with blaster trained at them.
The two of them stood a little taller, something slightly difficult for Leia in her petite form, as the five guards moved closer and spanned out to encircle them. Leia felt Han's fingers find her hand and wrap themselves around it.
As she looked up at him she smiled, ~Here goes nothing.~
- - -
Luke glanced forward, past the /Falcon/ and toward the planet ahead, estimating the distance and attempting to see if they were at the right angle for entering the atmosphere.
It was a relief to finally be doing something about this whole mess instead of sitting around on Coruscant while Han and Leia fought their own battle in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't such a stretch from their normal lives when it came to being together, but at least when they were home their battles didn't involve life and death, not in the physical sense anyway.
He wanted everything back to normal, they way he'd only been able to maintain it for short periods of time, but the way he liked it. Of course, normal meant that his best friend and his sister would be on different planets whenever he saw them, but something told him that he wasn't going to get things "back to normal" when this was all over anyway. There was some sixth sense that seemed to think that he wasn't going to get back the people he knew and loved, but he might get back two people from the past, people he'd thought were long gone and buried.
The incessant beeping of his communicator caught Luke's attention as his gaze wandered back to the flight controls and he flipped the receiver on.
"Luke?" Lando's voice came from the other end.
"I'm here, Lando."
"We seem to have a bit of a problem… we've got stowaways."
Luke let out a long exhale. He knew exactly who Lando was referring to and his two students weren't the most ideal passengers on such a venture.
"Where'd you find them?" he asked.
"Supply closet, but I think they started out in those old smuggling compartments under the corridor's floor paneling. It hadn't really occurred to Chewie and me to check."
"Do me a favor, just put them back where you found them." Luke said, going to press the sever switch and allow the cockpit to go silent once again.
"Will do." Lando replied just before the comm. went off.
Luke leaned back in his seat and took a deep breathe, hoping the whole thing would go smoothly, and putting together a tirade of scolding for the boys once they were on solid ground. He felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder through the Force, but ignored it for the moment.
The communicator started beeping again, and Luke leaned forward to signal it on, only to find it replaying a text distress call on his display screen. It was a common mayday, but as Luke tracked it back to their rendezvous point, it didn't take to many brain cells to decipher its sender.
He turned on his comm. and picked up the /Falcon's/ frequency, knowing that they'd probably gotten the signal as well.
"Chewie," Luke said, cuing up his engines, "I think it's time we speed things up."
This had not been Chewie's idea of a good plan. He may have followed one or more of Han's ridiculous ventures into a world of hurt, but in his mind that was completely different than attacking a large group of fanatics on a world about a billion light years from anything even *he* would call civilization. He had suggested getting the New Republic military involved, or at least the Hapans, despite the length of time it might take, but he'd been outnumbered by a short, toe-headed Jedi Master. Not one of his better hours, no doubt.
So here they were: engines off and running dead, gambling on some degree of surprise, on a three man rescue mission for their friends and family. The sentimentality of the whole thing was kind of funny, something Han would have no doubt found hilarious had he not actually been a part of the situation.
"You here that?" Lando asked.
Chewie turned to look at his copilot and asked him what he was talking about.
"Nevermind, it's probably just an engine hiccup," Lando said, flipping the coolant value switch to settle the engines. "Will you check the supply closet for me, this indicator light keeps blinking like there are parasites in it," he continued, tapping the light a bit as if it would help.
Chewie nodded and switched main helm control to the copilot's terminal before heading down the corridor towards the main supply closet. He'd never liked space parasites, they were the worst kind of rodents and they stunk like sweaty mynocks. Opening the munitions cabinet close by, he pulled out a blaster and set it to stun—they smell even worse when they're dead. He opened the supply cabinet and pointed the blaster into the dark only to here a young kid's voice say "oh" as he flipped on the internal lights.
"Could you point that somewhere else, Chewie?" the Wookiee heard Jacen's voice say from inside the closet as the kid, soon after joined by Anakin, stepped out of the closet and into the corridor.
Chewie glared at the two children from several feet above their heads, and watched as they sunk a bit in their stances and digressed into more humble postures under the shadow of his rather angry stare.
"Chewie, did you fix the—" Lando began, coming up the corridor from the cockpit. "Holy son of a…" he mumbled, his gaze falling on the boys.
- - -
Leia's hand grasped the comm.-link firmly and activated it as their captors realized that something was amiss. Watching as Han pulled the blaster out of the hands of the man behind him, she took deeps breaths, attempting to get the right frequency for the /Falcon/, and hoping the old bucket of bolts was in range.
The guard with his arm wrapped around her neck tightened his grip when he saw what she was doing, making it difficult for her to breathe as he struggled to get the comm. from her and disregarded his blaster in the attempt.
A second guard came to the aide of the first, training a blaster on Leia and yelling at her to drop the comm. as a third guard came up beside him.
Leia froze, her gaze falling onto the first guard's discarded blaster as she calculated her options. One behind and two in front, she'd have to decommission the first before the other two could shoot, however that would prove a bit difficult considering the distance from herself to the weapon she so desperately needed. She straightened her posture, making to drop the comm. as the guard behind her loosened his grip and let her go.
Lifting her hand to shoulder height and extending her arm out a little, she looked out between the shoulders of the two guards who faced her, seeing Han doing a little better a few meters away. And with a quick motion, she dropped to her left, reaching for the blaster catching the reaction on the guards' faces as she did so.
Her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the blaster as she turned back to her captors and shot the first guard in the chest, struggling to get back up as she maintained her distance from her other two pursuers who pulled out their blasters as they came towards her.
Leia aimed for the second guard's chest but the shot veered toward the shoulder, piercing his skin just below his collar-bone, forcing her to re-aim. Her second try made contact with his abdomen and he fell as she dodged a shot from his companion.
The one on one firefight didn't last long as another pair of guards joined what Leia had thought to be her last opponent. They raised their weapons to chest height and fired as she found cover behind a large rock near the edge of the clearing.
She realized she had cornered herself as she came up from behind the stone, getting a shot off and felling one of the guards as she did, but there didn't appear to be another immediate option. Taking the opportunity, and knowing that she was more than pressed for time, she resigned herself not to send a message and simply run a continuous-feed distress signal through the comm., hoping there was someone on board the /Falcon/ with enough sense to realize who it was from.
Leia watched as a round of shots went over and around the rock and she covered her head as the bolts of red light flew past her right shoulder and into the bushes ahead. This wasn't going so well anymore.
Coming up from behind the rock, she aimed quickly and caught one of the guards in the neck, sending him falling to the ground and she aimed for his companion, but not as quickly as she might have hoped. The second guard shot back before Leia could pull the trigger, and she felt the painful heat and sting of a blaster wound piercing her left shoulder as she fell back from the force of impact.
She opened her eyes quickly, wondering how long they'd been closed and finding her answer just above her as her captor, standing right over her, lined his blaster up with the center of her forehead.
There was a familiar ring as a blaster bolt exited the barrel of the gun and headed towards its target. Leia looked straight into the eyes of the man above her as he staggered, and fell straight forward onto her, his hand, and the blaster in it, folding in and under him.
Leia exhaled, feeling that she should have done so quite a bit earlier as he head felt a little light, and trying to push the man off of her, especially since her elbow was digging into her stomach. This, combined with a natural wanting to not have dead men laying on top of ones self, overrode her desire to simply lay there and breathe for a few minutes.
As she started to push the man off her, she saw someone coming towards her, blaster drawn and running. She struggled to push the dead guard over so she could try to get out, but as the figure she saw moved closer she heaved a sigh of relief.
"How many are left?" Leia asked as Han came to stand next to her.
Han leaned down and helped her lift the guard off of her and aided her in standing up. "None standing, but I don't think it'll take them too long to change that."
Leia nodded and looked toward the direction they had originally been heading for. Looking back at Han, he nodded an affirmative and they started running toward the rendezvous point, hand in hand.
Letting go of Han's hand as they entered the clearing they'd designated the rendezvous point, Leia cradled her shoulder for a moment, gritting her teeth as the exposed wound oxygenated and the stinging pulsated through her arm and down her shoulder blade toward her spine.
"They're not here yet," Leia said, stating the obvious.
As she was about to turn to Han, a blaster bolt flew past her ear and they both turned around to face the gunman. They came face to face with five guards no more than fifty meters away, all with blaster trained at them.
The two of them stood a little taller, something slightly difficult for Leia in her petite form, as the five guards moved closer and spanned out to encircle them. Leia felt Han's fingers find her hand and wrap themselves around it.
As she looked up at him she smiled, ~Here goes nothing.~
- - -
Luke glanced forward, past the /Falcon/ and toward the planet ahead, estimating the distance and attempting to see if they were at the right angle for entering the atmosphere.
It was a relief to finally be doing something about this whole mess instead of sitting around on Coruscant while Han and Leia fought their own battle in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't such a stretch from their normal lives when it came to being together, but at least when they were home their battles didn't involve life and death, not in the physical sense anyway.
He wanted everything back to normal, they way he'd only been able to maintain it for short periods of time, but the way he liked it. Of course, normal meant that his best friend and his sister would be on different planets whenever he saw them, but something told him that he wasn't going to get things "back to normal" when this was all over anyway. There was some sixth sense that seemed to think that he wasn't going to get back the people he knew and loved, but he might get back two people from the past, people he'd thought were long gone and buried.
The incessant beeping of his communicator caught Luke's attention as his gaze wandered back to the flight controls and he flipped the receiver on.
"Luke?" Lando's voice came from the other end.
"I'm here, Lando."
"We seem to have a bit of a problem… we've got stowaways."
Luke let out a long exhale. He knew exactly who Lando was referring to and his two students weren't the most ideal passengers on such a venture.
"Where'd you find them?" he asked.
"Supply closet, but I think they started out in those old smuggling compartments under the corridor's floor paneling. It hadn't really occurred to Chewie and me to check."
"Do me a favor, just put them back where you found them." Luke said, going to press the sever switch and allow the cockpit to go silent once again.
"Will do." Lando replied just before the comm. went off.
Luke leaned back in his seat and took a deep breathe, hoping the whole thing would go smoothly, and putting together a tirade of scolding for the boys once they were on solid ground. He felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder through the Force, but ignored it for the moment.
The communicator started beeping again, and Luke leaned forward to signal it on, only to find it replaying a text distress call on his display screen. It was a common mayday, but as Luke tracked it back to their rendezvous point, it didn't take to many brain cells to decipher its sender.
He turned on his comm. and picked up the /Falcon's/ frequency, knowing that they'd probably gotten the signal as well.
"Chewie," Luke said, cuing up his engines, "I think it's time we speed things up."
