Honor Among Thieves

While Baasen was sputtering and cursing and trying to get the mud off his face and clothes, Han held his breath, waiting for the giant snake to react.

The reaction, when it came, was just a ripple of muscle under the scales, and then the snake shot away into the underbrush with surprising speed.

“I think you scared it,” Han said.

Baasen was still brushing mud out of his hair. “If I’d known that was all it took, I’d have kicked the blasted thing in the ribs and saved myself some embarrassment.”

“Maybe we should leave before it realizes its mistake,” Scarlet said, already moving off down the path at a jog.

Finally, they reached the edge of a clearing and, peering past the thick, fernlike undergrowth, spotted the massive stone slabs of the temple just a few hundred meters away. A large opening yawned in the side of the structure, twice the height of a human man and four times as wide. It looked big enough to drive a pair of landspeeders into side by side. Not even a door blocked the entrance.

But between them and that opening, Han counted at least a hundred stormtroopers, several vehicle-mounted rapid-fire anti-aircraft cannons, and five AT-ST scout transport walkers.

“Huh,” Scarlet said.

“Yeah. I really didn’t have a plan for this,” Han replied. “We should have had a plan for this.”

“When did we start planning?” Leia asked. “Haven’t we been making this up as we go?”

“Think they’re afraid of snakes?” Baasen said. “Maybe we could send that big fellow into the camp, create a disturbance.”

“Well,” Han said with a sigh, “we’ve gone from no-plan to stupid-plan. That’s progress of a sort.”

“Red Wave,” Leia said. She was talking into her comlink. “Red Wave, are you out there? This is Pointer.”

“Red Wave Two, here,” Luke said. “Everything okay?”

“No, Red Wave, we’re going to need a favor.”

“Tell me what we can do to help.”

HALF A DOZEN X-WING FIGHTERS screamed out of the sky, laser cannons blazing.

Han and Leia crouched behind the largest rock they could find, watching the carnage unfold. Baasen and Scarlet were several meters away, taking cover behind a rotted log as big around as Chewbacca was tall.

“First the Star Destroyer, now this. Farmboy went and got himself useful,” Han said. “When did that happen?”

“There’s more to him than you give him credit for,” Leia replied, but most of her words were drowned out by a series of explosions.

The X-wings cut across the stormtrooper encampment at high speed. The strafing run’s goal was maximum confusion, not accuracy. Even so, when the X-wings peeled off and streaked back up into the sky, one AT-ST and two of the anti-aircraft cannons were flaming ruins. The haze of smoke mixed with the mist from the swamp.

The stormtroopers had scattered, some running into the temple, more running into the jungle. A few brave souls held their ground, firing their blaster rifles into the sky. It made a pretty light show, but there was little chance the handheld weapons could pierce a T-65’s robust shields.

“Give it another pass,” Han whispered in Leia’s ear. “Then we go.” He waved at Scarlet to get her attention, and when she nodded back, he mimed running with his fingers and pointed at himself. She nodded again and got into a crouch, ready to go, braced like a sprinter waiting for the starting gun.

The high, throaty roar of X-wing engines returned, followed by another barrage of fire. This time the X-wings had split up, each strafing one of the high-value targets. All of the remaining walkers and vehicle-mounted weapons exploded as the X-wings rocketed past, the ground around them detonating with high-energy laser shots that hurled mud and steam into the air. The remaining stormtroopers dived for cover as the ground heaved under the onslaught. Black smoke poured out of the destroyed equipment, clouding the field.

“Now!” Han shouted, and broke from cover at a dead run. Leia ran beside him, head down, legs pumping, blaster in hand. Han risked a glance behind and saw Scarlet and Baasen a few steps back. If anyone noticed them in the confusion and carnage the X-wing attack had brought, they kept it to themselves. No new shouts or alarms rang out, and in seconds all four of them had reached the dark opening into the temple.

Four stormtroopers were huddled just inside the entrance, looking up at the sky, waiting for the deadly X-wings to return. One of them glanced at Han, cocking his helmeted head to the side in confusion.

“Hey, you can’t—”

Baasen shot him, then shot two more while they fumbled with their weapons. The fourth got his blaster out and pointed it at Baasen’s face, but Scarlet dropped low to the ground and kicked out, sweeping the trooper’s legs out from under him. He fell on the stone floor with a loud crack and went still.

Han poked Baasen in the chest. “Avoid shooting if you can. There could be a lot more of them in here.”

“In where, boyo?” Baasen asked.

It was a good question. The antechamber they’d entered was a square space about the same size as the entrance. The walls were of the same cut stone as the exterior, though in the cool dark of the interior, a profusion of slimy molds and mushrooms grew from the rock. Some of it glowed with its own luminescence. A confusion of tunnels branched off from the entryway, heading in every direction. Except for the four cowering inside the doorway, there were no more troopers in sight.

“You have a map of this?” Han asked.

“Not yet.” While the rest of the group moved into a dark corner to hide, Scarlet reached into one of the many pouches on her belt and pulled out half a dozen metal balls the size of human eyeballs. She held them in the palm of her hand, and they uncurled into metallic insect shapes, with translucent wings and glowing red eyes. She tossed them into the air, and they raced off down the various passages.

“The rebels pay for all those nifty toys, do they?” Baasen asked.

Scarlet grunted noncommittally. Han was pretty sure Scarlet’s tools had been paid for by the people she’d stolen them from, but he kept the opinion to himself. She pulled out her datapad and fidgeted with the controls, and soon a glowing holographic map of the interior of the temple began to fill in. The corridors appeared as yellow tubes of light, with larger rooms shifting to orange, and occasional red dots scattered through them. Outside, the scream of X-wing engines started to ramp up again.

To Han’s eye it was an impossible maze, but with deft gestures Scarlet rotated the map this way and that, nodding and talking to herself under her breath. She rushed into one of the smaller passages, gesturing impatiently for everyone to follow. They did, and moments later a squad of stormtroopers stepped into the antechamber.