Chapter Twenty-Five
"What's Coruscant like?" Kyp asked. Even the pitch-black darkness couldn't dampen the kid's enthusiasm. If it wasn't so exhausting—and distracting—Han would probably find it endearing.
"It's just a big city, kid, people and buildings from horizon to horizon." He slid his fingers through the crushed rock that lined the floor of the mine, his numbed fingers searching for strands of glitterstim. All around them, other bodies moved, silent and numbed even worse than Han's fingers.
Chewie made a low, plaintive sound, and Han sympathized. His fingers weren't calloused enough for this. On the bright side, he had no intention to be working down here for long enough to get the calluses that would make it easier.
The only enthusiasm in the whole, expansive mine shaft was Kyp. Somehow no matter howmany years the kid had spent in this darkness, with only the brief breaks for meals and sleep to indulge in even dim light, he still had the energy for eager questioning. The fact that Kyp had already managed to find enough glitterstim fragments to account for Han and Chewie's required sum, in addition to his own, built a knot of suspicion in Han's gut.
It would be just like the universe to drop another Force-sensitive teenager on him, wouldn't it. Of course it would. It wasn't enough that Luke Skywalker had fallen into his life and never wandered out again, although the universe compensated Han for that by using Luke to introduce Leia, thus giving him a wonderful wife and brother-in-law. He'd even forgive the universe for dropping Jacen and Jaina on him.
(Okay, fine, he admitted silently. The twins were at least half his own fault. And he wouldn't trade them for anything.)
But now to add another Force-strong teenager, if that was what Kyp was? Han wasn't sure if he ought to be grateful or paranoid. He had more luck finding Force-strong individuals than Luke, and he wasn't even trying.
"Wow," Kyp said. "I remember Feiya on Deyer. It was on a lagoon, in the middle of a giant ocean. I can't imagine a city as big as that ocean."
Han grimaced. Deyer didn't have any cities now. The Empire had bombarded them all from orbit after the planet had issued a formal condemnation of the Empire and formally seceded in protest after Alderaan's destruction. Best not to point that out, he thought.
"So, kid," he said instead. "Tell me more about what else is down here, and the daily routine."
Kyp slid next to him, drawing still more glitterstim fibers from the layer of rocks on the ground. Han could feel the pouch they used growing fuller and fuller and became even more convinced that Kyp was Force-sensitive. It was either that or the kid could see in the dark.
"When we finish our shift," Kyp explained, "they'll bring us back to the mining cars and ship us back up to the barracks. They'll feed us, ration bars if we're lucky or nutrigruel if we're not, then they'll put us to sleep with a somno-inducer. In the morning they'll give us some more food and send us back down and we'll start over again."
Han lowered his voice. "Can you tell me more about the layout? Any computer terminals we might access?"
Kyp turned and Han could feel the kid's eyes on him in the dark. "Maybe," he said finally. "Why?"
"Look, kid," Han said, wishing desperately he could see and give Kyp one of his patented looks of entreaty. Leia claimed to have taught it to him, and Han let her claim credit, but the life of a smuggler gave plenty of opportunities to develop persuasion skills. "We need to get a signal out. My ship is still here, and if we can get to it, I can get you, and me, and Chewie all out of here. I'll take you to Coruscant and you can see the city for yourself."
He wasn't sure if Iella and Mara would need help finding them, but Han wasn't about to take any chances. A few minutes with the computer and he could make sure Iella and Mara would know where they were… though it might be a bit messy.
Kyp was silent for a long moment, breathing quietly. "I can get to it, if you tell me what to do," he said finally. "I can resist the somno-inducer."
Han blinked in the darkness. Somno-inducers weren't particularly common around the galaxy, but they were sometimes used in prisons to put prisoners to sleep at night. They wouldn't keep the subjects asleep indefinitely—they worked by amplifying the body's natural fatigue, and if the subject wasn't fatigued, or was sufficiently amped on adrenaline, they could resist its effects. But that didn't seem to be what Kyp was implying. "I won't be able to?" he asked.
Kyp's voice came back from the darkness after a moment. "No, probably not. I'm the only one down here who seems to be able to after a hard day's work in the mines."
If Han had needed further reason to suspect Kyp was Force-sensitive, he now had it. Instead of bringing it up, he just nodded, then remembered that Kyp couldn't see the nod. "If I tell you exactly what to do, do you think you'll be able to do it?" he asked instead.
"I've been a prisoner on Kessel for years," Kyp said, his tone dipping into a quiet, calm rage that Han could sympathize all-too-well with. "I'm really, really good at following orders. And if you think it'll get us out of here, there's nothing I won't do." His tone shifted from hateful to a mourning lament that Han could also sympathize all-too-well with. "Besides. I'd like to see Coruscant. Maybe look up my brother." He turned wistful. "Maybe see the ocean again."
"Don't worry kid," Han said with more confidence than he felt. "Chewie and me have been in tougher spots than this one."
Chewbacca quietly growled his agreement.
Even in the dark Han could feel Kyp staring at them, blank-faced. "If that was a recruitment pitch, it wasn't a very good one."
Every night started the same. The guards would bring them up to the barracks, stunners in hand, and push them all into the mess. They'd eat the slop they were given, the tasteless, textureless nutrigruel that provided them with enough strength to see through the day, but only just. There would be an occasional fight, the rage and despair and hopelessness of the prisoners boiling over, fighting back if only for a change of pace; Kyp joined in sometimes, just to feel something other than the monotonous, dull, embittered and numbed sensation of life on Kessel.
That had attracted him to Han and Chewie. They were new. Lively. Hopeful. Defiant. On Kessel, those emotions died eventually. If it wasn't after a week, it was after a month. Or a year. Or a decade. Those who could resist despair were few; Kyp could vaguely remember a cadre of Corellians who had still had the ability to laugh and plot, but they were all gone now.
Once they'd eaten their fill, they were herded into the bunks and the somno-inducer activated. Aliens who could resist it were always taken away; humans never could. Kyp could hear the sudden calming of Han's breathing, of Chewbacca's breathing, as they were drawn inexorably into sleep, unable to resist the device.
Every night he'd heard the hum of the somno-inducer. Every night he'd felt it amplify his fatigue, press down, make his eyelids heavy. He'd fade quickly into a restless sleep, plagued by chaotic dreams. The worst dreams weren't the ones of his parents' deaths, or the ones of the destruction of Deyer, or even the ones of his brother being taken away by the Imperial stormtroopers, before Doole's revolt. The worst dreams were the ones of the Spice mines, the gravel under his fingertips, the filaments of glitterstim between his fingers.
He'd learned to resist the somno-inducer. It had been a slow learning process, one of months, perhaps years—who could say, when every day was the same. There was an ad-hoc calendar the prisoners kept so that they could know when their prison terms were at an end, but few ever reached the end of a term, and Kyp himself had never committed a crime in the first place. He'd just been caught in the wake of his parents' resistance, resistance that he reminded himself every single day to hold on to. Resistance fed by the memory of Zeth's kidnapping. Resistance because it was the only thing that felt alive down here.
The guards didn't keep a close watch at night. There wasn't any point; once the somno-inducer had put the prisoners out, they were out. He slipped off the bunk, peering in the very dim light out towards the rest of the complex. The lift shaft that went all the way back up into the main base structure was at the end of the corridor, green and red lights gleaming above the lift doors. Next to it was the security station, a room that would be sealed shut with a single guard inside during the day.
The Empire had been diligent about keeping it properly guarded even at night, but Doole's men were not so careful. They trusted the somno-inducer more than they should, and Kyp crept towards the station and pushed the door open enough to slide through. He knew the basics of how to use computers, though it had been a long time since he'd operated one, and Han's instructions had been very precise. He concentrated, focusing on the memory of those instructions, watching Han's hands as they moved over the panel. He closed his eyes, taking a breath, his hands guiding their way over the control panel without reliance on his sight.
"We don't need to do much," Han had told him. "Just get a message out, and hopefully get a message in."
He accessed the station's communications system, then carefully input the string of numbers and letters that Han had made him memorize and then recite back a dozen times. The phrase Han had told him to enter next was gibberish, but Kyp dutifully entered it in anyway.
He waited, as Han had told him to. It took a few minutes. Maybe a lot of minutes, Kyp wasn't sure… time could be funny down in the mines.
WILL COME TOMORROW. YOU'LL KNOW WHEN.
He blinked at the message a few times, then did what Han had told him to do to reset the terminal. Slipping back to the bunks, he hoisted himself quietly into his bunk and tried not to let the words get him too excited.
When was the last time he'd anticipated tomorrow, he wondered?
It was the first night he'd ever felt eagerwhile letting the somno-inducer draw him into sleep.
Han found himself jostled awake and forcibly bodied into the mess, shoved towards the slop that the guards laughably called food. He thought of his kitchen on Coruscant, of what he'd make for the kids for breakfast—of the fit they would have thrown if he'd fed them anything like the grey, tasteless gruel in his bowl.
Chewbacca yowled in pain as he was shoved into the mess, grunting as he slammed into the table next to Han. The other prisoners were already eating, and Han searched until he found Kyp. The dark-haired teenager didn't have much of a sabacc face, Han noticed dourly, anticipation and excitement were both plain on his face. But after hearing Kyp's story, and seeing the dull, almost lifeless gazes that the other prisoners never seemed to lose, he was just glad the kid could still smile.
"We're going to take him with us," he murmured to Chewie. "The kid doesn't belong down here with all these criminals."
The Wookiee growled softly in agreement, his large head nodding subtly.
Han sighed. "Right. Well, stick close to him and me, Chewie, and let's find out what the score is."
The buzzer that signaled the end to breakfast went off and the guards started moving them all towards the mining cars that would take them down into the Spice mines. Kyp managed to shimmy his way through the mass of prisoners and guards, sliding over next to Han and Chewie with the ease of long practice. A shove at his back sent Han stumbling into the nearest mining car, and Chewie and Kyp clambered in after him, clustering together at the end of the car, the lights growing dimmer and dimmer as the car started moving down into the dark.
Han waited until it was pitch dark before leaning towards Kyp. "Did you mana—"
Kyp's excited whispers cut him off. "I got a message back," he said, leaning into Han's shoulder to make sure the sound didn't carry, and to be heard over the steady, mechanical grating of the mining car. "Your friends said they'd come today, and we'd know when."
Han frowned. They'd now returned to total darkness, the sense of stone just above his head, the somewhat moist smell of the stone and gravel growing stronger. But that didn't seem to dampen Kyp's enthusiasm.
"Do you know what that means?" Kyp asked excitedly.
"Shhh," Han shushed him, feeling paranoid. In the dark, and with the noise of the mining car as it slid over the rail down into the mine, he couldn't be sure no one had snuck near them; he hoped Chewie's sense of smell wasn't too dulled by the scents of the mine. When Kyp had gone quiet, he considered what Kyp had actually told him. "Well," he murmured softly, "that means they have computer access and know where we are. Just be ready today."
"Oh, I'm ready for anything," Kyp said with fervent enthusiasm.
Chewbacca rumbled his agreement, thumping his big hand on both of their backs.
The descent down into the mines was slow, but everything felt new. Kyp's eyes were useless in the complete darkness, but his other senses all felt alive and sharp. The world may be dark, but there was color to it again, and imagination which had long since turned grey and dull had been sparked back to life. A city that stretched from horizon to horizon, he thought. What would that be like? How many people would there be? Would they be packed together tight, or would they each be able to move? And the sun… what did a sunrise look like in such a place?
Or who were Han and Chewbacca's friends? The mysterious figure on the far side of the computer, who Han had such faith could come for them, despite all the guards they'd have to sneak past? What did he have to do to be ready?
He didn't even notice as he finished filling his entire daily quota of glitterstim filaments in less than an hour, his calloused fingers pushing yet another filament into the now tightly-packed pouch. Oops, he thought. Should have worked more slowly.
Next to him, Han was grumbling and cursing with frustration, his blind hands groping in the dark. The Wookiee was doing a little better; his fur was better protection from the rough, rocky ground than Han's now very torn pants. Kyp's own knees were calloused over with tough skin, to match his fingers.
"Stop complaining and get back to work!" called one of the guards.
Han, not even sure where the instruction had come from, threw a profane hand gesture into the air, and Chewie let out an annoyed growl.
Kyp heard heavy booted footsteps coming their way; a guard wearing a pair of infrared goggles that let him see in the dark. "You're new here, aren't you," the guard said, looming over Han. "Maybe we should send you deeper into the mines, hmm? Let you get a taste of Kessel's natives—or let them get a taste of you."
"Oh yeah?" said Solo, and Kyp could hear the frayed temper in the other man's voice, fed by hours of largely fruitless searching for the glitterstim filaments among the thin layer of rocks under their knees. "You think that'll make your bosses happy, you feeding the workers to the spiders?"
"Down here, prisoner, I am the boss." Kyp heard the telltale sound of knuckles cracking. "Ain't no one tells me what to do."
"I'm sure Doole would be pleased to hear—" Kyp heard the all-too-familiar sound of a gloved fist striking an uncovered cheek. Han's voice cut off with a grunt of pain, and all hell broke loose.
Chewbacca might not be able to see, but he had enough of a sense of smell to know where the guard was standing. His huge arms reached out in the darkness, found a human form, and heaved it through the air. There was a sound of a body falling a half-dozen meters away, the now prone form smacking into two prisoners who had been working closer to the cave wall. The prisoners, seeing an opportunity to vent old frustrations, immediately set upon the guard, hitting him and occasionally each other in their blind flailing.
Han rolled to his feet, clustered near Chewbacca. Kyp stepped near, felt Han grip his back. "It's me! And the kid," Han told Chewie.
Chewbacca growled an annoyed response. All around them prisoners had joined in a growing, aimless brawl, tossing punches blindly at anyone who came close. In the darkness, few made contact, and the first whines of blasters set on stun quickly settled the fight. Blue blasts gleamed in the dark, the temporary glow from the weapons fire making the glitterstim in the walls gleam momentarily in response, light echoing light. A blaster bolt struck Chewie and knocked the big Wookiee on his back, groaning and huffing for breath.
"Don't fire your blasters you idiots!" yelled one of the guards. "You'll make the glitterstim ripen early! Do you want to be the one to tell Doole that you wasted all the Spice in this shaft just to subdue a prisoner!" There was a heavy smacking sound. "He'll re-assign you from guard to prisoner, and that's if you're lucky!"
A second voice—presumably the guard who had fired—responded with a nervy-sounding, "Y-yes sir."
"Get the prisoners back to work, especially the Wookiee. We wouldn't want to miss our quota—"
An alarm sounded. The klaxon echoed through the mine back from the entrance to the mine shaft, amplified by the stone and the tight confines. There was the sound of cursing and annoyance as the guards yelled at each other, confused. "What is that?"
"I don't know, my comlink isn't working," another guard called back over the screaming klaxon.
"Guard detail calling security office! We've got an alarm down here. What is it for?"
The only response from the guard's comlink was extended static. Kyp stared around in confusion. Was this what they were supposed to wait for?
Han clearly thought it was. "Get down!" he said, dropping down next to Chewbacca and pulling Kyp down with him. Kyp fell on the Wookiee, making them both grunt. Down the corridor there was the sound of scuffling; a body hit the floor with a hefty grunt. A blaster fired, the blue glow of a stun blast sending another shiver of light echoing down the corridor in response.
"Shavit! What did I just tell you about not firing your blaster?"
"It wasn't me!"
"Well, when I get my hands on whoever it was I swear—"
"Funny thing about infrared masks," a voice Kyp knew he didn't recognize said casually. It took him a second to realize why the voice sounded so strange—it reminded him of his mother's voice. It was a woman's voice. But there were no women in this mining detail, they were kept separate—
There was a snap-hiss and a steady blue light filled the space. Kyp's eyes hurt from the sudden, unexpected glow, lifting his hand to shade them as he adjusted, but the guards had it worse—they grappled with their masks, tearing them off with curses.
All around them the cave started to radiate light. It started surrounding the figure, the glow of her laser sword reaching the glitterstim filaments in the wall and ground; they reacted with a responding inner light, making it seem as if she were standing in the center of a glowing sphere that circled over her head and below her feet, radiating outwards… and growing. The light-sensitive glitterstim filaments, so hard to find in the dark, were crackling and fizzling, glowing a pearlescent blue that matched the gleam of the woman's laser sword.
The woman had a blaster in her free hand and two quick blaster shots took the two nearest guards before they got their masks off, sending them to the ground. Ripening glitterstim made the floor below them glow, and before long the entire cave was an eerie, shining blue. The prisoners nearest the guards responded first. Now able to see and in a confined space with their captors, they grabbed the closest guards, fists flying.
The head guard had his mask off and was swinging his blaster towards the unknown woman. She darted forwards, dodging to the right, and brought the lightsaber up, driving it through the man's chest. With a gurgling sound he fell to the ground, and then she was standing over Han and Chewie, staring at Kyp with an odd expression, her blade casting them in blue light. "Come on," she said, never taking her eyes off Kyp. "Iella's waiting for us at the security station."
Kyp stared up at her, at the gleaming laser sword in her hand, then down the mine shaft. The light from the blade was continuing to reach more glitterstim filaments. Some of the prisoners were consuming them and that meant it was a good idea to get away as quickly as possible. Prisoners hopped up on glitterstim didn't happen often, but it happened often enough that he was fully aware of all the possible consequences.
Han pulled himself to his feet, then helped the shaken Chewbacca, who was still obviously groggy after sustaining the stun blast. The light from the cave walls around them was starting to dim, as the ripened spice lost its potency, leaving the woman's laser sword the only brilliant source of light. "Do you have any idea how much all this Spice was worth?" Han asked the woman, sounding stunned.
Kyp had no idea. He assumed it had to be worth a lot.
"Do you care?" asked the woman, using her lightsaber like a torch to maintain light even as the spice illumination was fading, leading them back towards the mining cars at a jog. As they moved into areas farther away from the combat, the spice around them was triggered by her lightsaber, sending another pulse of light down the cave ahead of them.
Some of the other prisoners followed; the smart ones had stolen the guards' infrared masks but weren't using them yet. The woman had one herself, hanging around her neck.
Chewie growled something Kyp didn't understand. "The man I used to be would have," Han muttered. "But still, that's gotta be millions of credits worth of glitterstim she just burned!"
The woman shrugged. "Tens of millions, probably. It's their own fault for putting you down here. Come on, let's go, we don't have a lot of time."
Mara held the lightsaber up, warding off the prisoners as the mining car started to run. "We're taking the first one," she said warningly as Han got the thing moving, the agonizing scraping of the rails forcing her to yell. She pulled a few glow-rods out of her pack and threw them into the middle of the crowd of prisoners. "Don't waste those!"
The prisoners, offered a source of light, scrambled to claim their prizes and the guards' fallen weapons. Distracted, by the time they were ready to turn their attention back to Mara and the others, the mining car was already moving away and up at a brisk and hastening pace. Mara double-tapped on the stud of her lightsaber to deactivate the blade, then ducked down under the rock overhang and fell in next to Chewbacca. The Wookiee wrapped one powerful arm around her to make sure she didn't fall out.
"I'm fine," she batted the Wookiee's huge arm away, making sure she was indeed secure in the rickety mining car. "As fine as anyone can be in one of these things, anyway."
The Wookiee brayed his amusement.
She felt the kid's eyes on her. When she'd come down here, she'd expected to be rescuing a party of two, not three, and she could feel the hint of power, untrained, unharnessed, hanging around him, an aura of potential. "I'm Kyp!" he said, staring at her with unrestrained awe. "Are you Han's wife?"
Chewie wuffled another laugh, and she saw Kyp's enthusiasm abruptly wane as her gaze narrowed threateningly.
"That's Mara, kid," Han supplied. "My wife is a little smaller and much scarier."
Mara didn't feel like a round of casual introductions. "When we get to the top we'll have to move fast. We can set up some diversions, but we will probably have to fight our way to the Falcon." The mining car jolted, and they all jerked except Kyp. Mara took a breath. "Iella and I intercepted a communication from Moff Vorru to the forces in charge here. They're loyal to Tavira."
"Anything we can use to hunt Vorru and Cracken's escapee down?" Han asked.
"Maybe. Some of the forces here are going to reinforce Vorru, so if we can get a tracking device on one of the fighters or on their escort carrier we can use that to find him." The car was starting to slow now as they neared the top; light from above was beginning to trickle down. After another minute the car slid into its berth at the barracks. They all scrambled out awkwardly, passing the stunned forms of the two guards who previously had been on watch.
Iella was in the security booth, equipped for combat. "I went scrounging," she said as they arrived, "and grabbed us a stash of ration bars for later. Detonators and tracking devices are in the knapsacks." Her eyes went to Kyp. "I see we have a new recruit." She extended her hand to him, and he took it, seeming awed. "I'm Iella Wessiri. I work for the New Republic," Iella said.
"I'm Kyp. Kyp Durron. My, uh, parents were dissidents," Kyp said.
"Nice to meet you, Kyp," Iella replied with a kindly nod. She turned to the others; behind her Mara was stepping to replace her in the security booth. Kyp wandered after her, watching Mara as she worked while Iella talked to Han and Chewie. "We're going to set up a series of diversions, triggering base alarms to announce prisoner riots," Iella said. "Try to move as many guards as we can out of our path." She jerked a thumb behind her. "When we leave we'll send the cars back down and let the prisoners here run wild behind us. That should keep the guards too busy to stop us."
"Right," Han said. "What about these ships you want to track? Can we get to them?"
Mara ignored the conversation. She brought up the computer's administrative access, and inputted her Imperial override codes—the Emperor's own. She took a moment to examine a map of the entire facility, noting each of the mine shafts that descended down into the mines and their location compared to the Falcon's landing pad. Then she checked to see where Doole's forces—and Tavira's forces—were being garrisoned.
"Ready?" she called over her shoulder. Kyp was still behind her, watching her work.
"Ready!" called Iella and Han; Iella sounded calmly professional, while Han teemed with obvious frustration. Iella had handed Han back his blaster pistol, and Chewbacca was now armed with his bowcaster. Both looked haggard but sharp. "I hate Kessel," muttered Han.
Chewie growled his agreement, checking his weapon for damage, then nodding his big head.
"Good," Mara said darkly. Then she started wreaking her own brand of havoc, disabling systems and triggering alarms. All the other mining shafts suddenly found their mining cars disabled, refusing to respond to commands, and that was paired with the sudden facility-wide wail of the prisoner riot alarm. "That ought to keep them busy," she muttered. "Come on."
The alarms blared as they moved. Every so often Mara would hold up a hand and they'd all skitter to a stop, ducking into a corridor or hiding in a room, waiting for the sound of running boots to subside. Mara and Iella led them, Iella keeping an eye on the map of the facility while Mara used her abilities to make sure they didn't stumble across trouble.
It took Kyp only a few minutes to realize what she was doing, and took him a few minutes more to realize that no other member of their party could do it.
Except him.
He could still remember the first time he realized he was different. Working with a group of prisoners who he'd semi-befriended, they'd been astonished by the sheer number of glitterstim filaments he could collect in an hour when he put his mind to it. He'd just shrugged and said he could hear them calling when he listened. Most of them had just laughed and chalked it up to a child's luck, but one of the men had taken him aside, lowering his voice. "You shouldn't advertise that you can do that," he'd said. "The Empire has already taken enough from you. If the guards realize you have abilities, they'll take even more."
He hadn't understood what the man had meant, but he'd known enough about the Empire to take the warning seriously. As the years passed, his powers had grown, giving him useful skills beyond just finding glitterstim. He always knew where the guards were, could sometimes instinctively know what they were thinking. He knew which days he should avoid the more dangerous spurs of the mines. Most alarming was the recent discovery that he could convince the guards to let him do things by commanding it with the right tone of voice, a commanding timbre he had only recently grown into.
Mara was like him.
The realization was stunning, an eye-opening awakening to what he might be capable of. She clearly was more accustomed to using her abilities than he was; her ability to sense the guards as they approached was significantly better than his, polished with age, experience and, he suspected, deliberate training.
"Move, move," Iella urged as they traveled through more of the facility, passing through sections Kyp had never seen. The lights were still thankfully dim—the few times Kyp had seen the surface of Kessel he'd been forced to shield his gaze from the planet's glaring star—but Kyp really only exited the barracks and mines for his occasional lessons with Kassar and Myda Forge, who had continued his education after the deaths of his parents. The Forges hadn't been equipped or trained to teach a child through all his years of primary schooling—their job was to prepare adult prisoners for release, not educate children who had no scheduled release date—but they had done their best. Each trip to their housing unit had required protective lenses to avoid searing his unaccustomed gaze, and there had been days in the mines he would have been near blind even if there had been light to see.
Mara stopped at a doorway that led towards the hangars, fiddling with the keypad next to the lock. She got into the process of inputting a sequence before Iella's yelp of alarm—followed by Chewbacca's bellow—heralded the sudden end of her efforts. Mara was already in motion, dropping and rolling to avoid the sudden burst of blaster fire from down the corridor, coming up in a crouch with her blaster rifle held in a solid two-handed grip. She shot back at the collection of semi-professional mercenaries who had stumbled unexpectedly over them, but it was the explosive snarl of Chewbacca's bowcaster that ended the fight.
"Everyone okay?" asked Han, and Kyp realized that the older man had instinctively put himself between Kyp and their foes. Kyp blinked a few times, staring at Han's back with an awed confusion.
"I'm fine," he said.
Mara grunted, looked back at the door and sighed. "Kriff," she muttered, peering at the ruined keypad, at least one blaster bolt having struck it directly. "Okay. Option two." She handed her rifle to Han then drew her laser sword, igniting it with a snap-hiss before driving it into the door, her expression tight with exertion as she started carving through the reinforced armor.
"How long?" asked Iella, glancing at her, her blaster rifle still covering the corridor behind them. "We're exposed here."
"I know," Mara grunted with annoyance, the metal of the door starting to turn liquid hot as she twisted the blue blade.
Han turned to Kyp. "You know how to use a blaster, kid?"
Kyp shook his head, stepping away from the door as it started to radiate heat. Mara's red-gold hair gleamed in the glow from the newly molten metal of the door and he turned away, the glow starting to become painful. "Uh, no," he replied belatedly to Han.
"Here," Han said, handing him the rifle. He quickly gave Kyp a tutorial in its use. "Just don't ever point it at one of us," Han glowered, "even if you have no intent to use it. Accidents happen with blasters and I've seen more than a few people get shot by their friends."
Kyp nodded choppily, pointing it down the corridor.
"And don't shoot unless you see us shooting first," Han added. "How long, Red?"
"Stop… asking me that…" Mara glowered, sweating. The hinges of the door came free, falling at her feet. She jumped back as the door sagged, and Kyp could feel her push, sending the metal door to collapse inwards, away from them. There was a shuddering crash and Kyp glanced over; saw overheated, molten metal burning into the floor as Mara took a deep breath and pushed her hair out of her eyes.
Iella ducked past her through the now open doorway, then waved the others to follow. Mara followed last, re-igniting her laser sword and holding it up defensively to ward off any potential pursuing fire. To Kyp's relief, none came. "I can't close this door and lock it behind us," Mara pointed out. "So we might have more pursuit, especially if they've figured out all our riot alarms were bogus."
"Were bogus," said Han with a scowl. "Who knows if they're still bogus. I can assure you that after one day in the mines I was already up for a good prison riot."
Chewbacca growled his frustrated agreement.
Kyp shook his head, pointing his rifle at the floor as they moved. "After a few months prisoners mostly lose the will to fight. Those that don't end up dead, one way or another. Besides, no one wants to jeopardize their chance at release." He felt all four sets of eyes looking at him and he shrugged self-consciously. "It's true."
Han turned his head and glared at Iella, whose grimace was more pained than Kyp thought was warranted.
"Enough chatter," Mara's tone was an order and one she expected to be followed. "Move."
She seemed not to even notice Han's irritated glare; with a gruff, annoyed sound Han pushed Kyp after Iella. "Keep your head down, kid," he grunted.
The instinctive care from Han was alien to Kyp. It reminded him of Kassar Forge; the man's clear, constant exhaustion had never prevented him from taking a minute to spend with Kyp. Some of Kyp's fondest memories were of Kassar's tiny dining room, of the expensive hot chocolate that Kassar could occasionally offer that Kyp had always savored. Han's gaze was oddly like Kassar's; exhausted but determined to offer him the protection and affection he could.
Part of Kyp oddly resented it, just as he'd always oddly resented Kassar. But he craved the fragments of affection too much not to take what he was offered.
It wouldn't last. It never did.
Moving through these halls, surrounded by a party with blasters, brought back memories, and all of them were bad. The Imperial Correctional Facility had been built with the traditional Old Republic modular style, which meant each corridor looked almost exactly like each other corridor; each room was shaped almost exactly like each other room. Even as they moved further from the places with which he was most familiar, the sounds of boots ringing on impact with the floor, of blasters held in fumbling hands, of nervy breathing… occasionally, the sound of distant combat.
Half a decade before, when Doole had staged his great prison revolt and seized control of the facility from the Empire, the only difference had been the bodies. The Imperial corpses, broken stormtrooper armor, the cries of the wounded and dying. The sounds of victory from Doole's ad-hoc army, looting the corpses and everything else they could get their hands on. The days of slow, ruthless re-imposition of order; the replacement of the Imperial stormtroopers with Doole's very own, just as ruthless, just as brutal equivalent. The weeks of executions, by firing squad or by hanging, of any and everyone who had collaborated with the Imperials or—just as common—anyone who had wealth that Doole or his men wanted to loot.
"This way, kid," Han grabbed the scruff of his collar and pulled him along the rest of their party. At the end of the corridor was the gleam of blue-white sunlight and Kyp had to shield his eyes from the glare.
"Stop!" Mara pulled them to a halt before they could exit into the hangar. Kyp could see—despite the glare, peeking through narrow slits—an old freighter sitting on its landing struts. Mara put her hand in front of Han and Chewbacca, staring at it. "They're waiting for us."
"True," called a voice Kyp remembered all too well from his memories and nightmares. A man, armed with a double-barreled blaster pistol held in a comfortable two-handed grip, stepped in front of the Falcon's landing ramp. Kyp hissed at the sight of him; the man who had led Doole's mercenaries during the uprising, the man who had made the list of all the prisoners deemed trusties by Doole's law. The man who had ordered the death of his parents.
Arb Skynxnex.
"What do you want," Han asked with a scowl. "Here to offer us a fond farewell?"
Skynxnex's smile was as Han remembered it. Small, humorless, with an edge of viciousness that he couldn't quite hide. There had always been something unnerving about him. There always had been. Han had always known he was a killer, but that hadn't bothered him so much at the time—most people who worked for Jabba were—but now Han found Skynxnex's gaze deeply unsettling. He wasn't sure if he ought to chalk that up to Skynxnex becoming more dangerous and unrestrained as he'd become more powerful, or if it was something that had changed in Han himself.
Skynxnex alone would be bad enough. Even more unfortunate was the fact that he was flanked by multiple guards, armed and armored.
Han held his pistol in a firm grip, keeping it pointed at the ground but within a single easy motion of flicking up to Skynxnex. Beside him Chewie was less subtle, his bowcaster twitching.
"Hardly," Skynxnex said. His own blaster was, like Han's, pointed at the floor, and, like Chewie's, twitching aggressively. "You see, Solo, I can't let you leave." He gestured to the side and a collection of additional guards could be heard waiting close by. "Doole doesn't want you to leave because he has an old grudge; he's never forgiven you for ruining his relationship with Jabba. And Vorru doesn't want you to leave because he doesn't want you interfering with his plans." His smile grew thinner and more sharklike. "Doole wants you dead. Vorru wants you alive." His eyes shifted to look at Mara and Iella, his gaze lingering on Mara and her lightsaber briefly. "Neither of them mentioned your companions, though."
"Taking money from all sides then, Skynxnex?" Han asked.
Skynxnex shrugged. "I don't see any reason not to maximize my earning potential. Vorru pays very well."
Mara wagged her lightsaber in the air, the blade humming as it moved. "Forgive me for interrupting," she put in sarcastically, "but what makes you think you can stop us?"
The scarecrow-like man looked at her, slow and confident. "Solo is predictable. He wouldn't leave his ship behind. So I've always known you were coming here." He smiled now, a wolf's toothy smile. "Try me."
Han thought Mara might take him up on that option. He glanced at Kyp to make sure the kid was in a safe location just in case she did, and found the kid staring at Skynxnex with a lethal glare that Han had seen before. It took him a second to place it and when he did his gut tightened with sudden worry: Kyp's expression exactly matched Leia's from Bespin, when she'd glared at Darth Vader.
Mara, Iella, and Skynxnex were continuing their verbal spar. Iella offered possible concessions, while Mara put in an occasional pointed threat (often echoed by a confident Wookiee growl). None of them were looking at Kyp, whose rifle was slowly starting to lift up towards Skynxnex. Han glanced between them, wondering if he could stop Kyp—
Three things happened all at once. Mara's head snapped around, turning towards Kyp with a surprised expression, her green eyes sharp with sudden concern. Skynxnex saw her motion, saw Kyp at the rear of the group, and his double-barreled blaster started to come up. And Kyp, armed with Mara's blaster rifle, lifted the rifle up to point it at Skynxnex.
The scarecrow realized abruptly that he had miscalculated, that he should never have stepped out into the open no matter how confident he was of his superior military situation. He started to move to take himself out of the line of sight, his blaster firing, the twinned barrels fusing dual blaster bolts into a single overcharged blast that erupted from his weapon. Mara twisted back, bringing her lightsaber up instinctively and deflecting the bolt up into the ceiling, sending fragments of permacrete showering in every direction. As she did, Kyp—his expression wrenched with pain and outrage and fear—fired his blaster for the first time.
It was a good shot and caught Skynxnex just below his solar plexus. The man's surprised expression was almost comical, as if he couldn't believe what had just happened, and Kyp fired again. The second shot caught him in the stomach and with a gasp and gurgle he fell onto his back, his blaster clattering to the floor, a second fused blaster bolt firing wildly into the wall.
Everything went mad. Blaster bolts ripped in either direction; one of Chewie's large bowcaster bolts took the guard closest to Skynxnex in the chest, blowing him off his feet. Mara jumped back as still more fire poured into the narrow corridor at sharp angles, deflecting a pair of bolts away and sending one of them into the chest of Skynxnex's second guard. Iella shot the third twice; his return blaster fire grazed her arm, but she held up a hand to let them know she was fine. The remaining guard scrambled out of the way, throwing himself down and out of sight; Mara and Han gathered against the wall. Next to them the blaster rifle slipped from Kyp's suddenly nerveless fingers and fell to the ground. Mara scooped it up and slung it over her back with a scowl.
They found themselves clustered in the middle of a narrow hallway. Back the way they'd come there would surely be more guards at any time, though they hadn't arrived yet, and in front of them were what sounded like at least a dozen blaster-armed men, occasionally firing into the hallway.
"Great," growled Han over the sound of blaster fire. "Just great. Now we're pinned down and have nowhere to go." He didn't look at Kyp, regretting the words even before he'd finished uttering them.
Chewbacca rumbled confidently.
"You'll handle it?" Han stared at him. "How are you planning to do that? In case you haven't noticed there are a lot of them and we're caught like vrelt in a particularly nasty trap!"
Chewbacca rumbled again, rummaging through Iella's pack. He pulled out a device that Han hadn't seen before, started to activate it...
"How is that going to help us?" Han asked with a scowl.
The Wookiee's growl was punctured by the sudden mechanical sound of the Millennium Falcon's swivel blaster descending from its concealed location in the freighter's hull and opening fire. The anti-personnel weapon rotated, blasting a furious hurricane of energy. Inside the hangar there was the sound of surprise and consternation—and the sounds of pain and bodies falling still. Chewbacca manipulated the remote, taking full advantage of the swivel blaster's field of fire to clear their foes from at least one side of the room within; some blaster fire was now directed uselessly at the Falcon.
"We can use the swivel blaster remotely? Since when can we use the swivel blaster remotely?" Han asked, astonished. He turned to stare at Chewie at the Wookiee's short answer. "Last week?" Han blinked a few times. "I thought you said those modifications were vital just so you could get out of watching Jacen and Jaina while I made dinner."
Chewbacca growled and rolled his eyes.
"I do not take you for granted! Leia'd kill me. Luke'd kill me. I'd kill me!"
"Come on," Mara said with an annoyed scowl. She stepped into the open space as the blaster fire towards them reduced, batting the blaster fire that did come at them back. Iella ran out next, darting onto the Falcon's landing ramp and firing at the people shooting at Mara.
"Our turn, kid," Han said, gripping Kyp's collar and running with him and Chewbacca after her. They dodged at least one blaster bolt which came alarmingly close, then their feet thudded up the ship's ramp and they were safe inside. He pointed at Kyp. "You find a seat and stay out of the way. Chewie, let's figure out what these vrelt-for-brains did to our ship and get out of here!"