Star Wars: Lightforce

Chapter 32

Han landed the Falcon gently in the mossy jungle clearing, using the same spot Luke and Chewbacca had found, as close to the hidden experimental base as possible. Powering the Falcon down, reducing the lighting so as not to draw any more attention, he pushed out of his seat and walked purposefully round the ship, grabbing a couple of blasters and clipping them into their holsters, checking that the replacement blaster power cells were safely tucked into their clips on his jacket breast where he liked to keep them, and picking up a cluster of explosive charges on a long belt holder.

He did all this without pausing. He had promised Leia that they would come back for the children. They were the reason she had done all this in the first place and it was important to her. Not that his conscience wouldn't have compelled him to come back anyway, but a promise was a promise and he wanted to do this for her.

He hit the hatch switch and lowered the ramp, drawing one of his blasters before he exited, checking the vicinity for trouble. He hoped that, after the earlier chaos, there wouldn't be too many guards to deal with. Chewbacca followed, bowcaster drawn and levelled at the undergrowth.

They made their way down to the cave, searching round for signs of life. Han checked the few bodies of stormtroopers on the ground. They were all victims of Chewbacca's bow and there was no sign of any that Luke had just rendered unconscious. Blaster trained ahead of him, Han did a sweep of the cave. He had expected some of the children he released earlier to be evident but they were nowhere to be seen.

They made their way into the base through the now gaping hole that had been the hatchway, opening each door or looking through windows, systematically, as they went through each corridor.

Something catching his attention, he held a hand up to stop Chewbacca, listening intently. He thought he could hear the faint sound of crying coming from up ahead. The doors in this corridor were all open and he checked each room was empty as he passed until he looked round the door of one to find a huddle of children. They cowered at the sight of him, blaster in hand. He holstered it quickly.

"It's OK. We're here to help." He held an empty hand up to reassure them. Meeting eyes with a lad he assumed was the eldest of the group, he decided to give him the job of leader. "Can you get these kids back up to the cave?" he asked. The lad nodded. "Do that, and wait for us. We're going to take you out of here." The boy ushered the children out of the room, encouraging the ones who were the most upset.

Han and Chewbacca continued deeper into the base, reaching the corridor where the conditioning had been taking place. Looking through the first window, Han could see children still in front of screens, as Leia had described. He found the control to open the door and entered the room, sweeping his blaster muzzle round quickly, looking for any straggling guards. There were none. He motioned to Chewbacca to find the controls for the vid-screens and, making their way round the room until they reached a console at the front, they found the screen flickering, showing what was being fed through the headsets.

He stopped to watch for a while, curious as to what was being shown to them. He needed to gather as much information as he could before he left here to provide to Leia and the New Republic. It looked like a fast playing propaganda news report, images of Alliance battles interspersed with symbols signifying death and pain. The images had been doctored to show Alliance troops carrying out mass shootings of civilians, including children. It wasn't an unusual form of conditioning or even a very original one but Han found the images disturbing despite knowing they weren't real. He didn't want to imagine what damage they were doing to the children.

His anger rising, he slammed his hand down on a button he assumed would cut the feed to the vid-screens. Lights switched off in front of the children and, slowly, one by one, they began to become focussed on their surroundings, looking dazed and bewildered.

While Chewbacca watched the door, Han went round the room, detaching wires and headsets from the children, ripping some of them out of their consoles, talking gently to them as he did so. They were naturally nervous of him as he moved round them and he made every effort not to let his disgust at the situation make his body language intimidating. When he had released them all from their electronic prisons, he gathered them all together.

"Listen. I haven't got time to explain now but what's been done to you here is wrong. We are here to take you back to your homes." He looked round at the huddle, the expectant, frightened faces. Some children cuddled others, some looked towards the ominous woolly figure of Chewbacca. "Don't worry about him." Han gestured in Chewbacca's direction. "He's a friend. I want you to make your way back up to the cave. You'll find some other kids there. Wait with them while we help the others and we will take you out of here." The children made their way out of the room and up the corridor, following his instructions. They were too scared not to, he imagined, in too much of a state of suggestion that they would probably follow anyone's instruction at this point.

They released other children from electro-shock machines, the ones he had spotted earlier. Thankfully there were only three in this room and the machines had lost power so the kids were just sitting in situ, waiting for rescue. He sympathised with their tired faces. He had felt like he'd been dropped from a great height onto a hard surface when it happened to him and he was a large, strong man. These were frail, mostly starving children. He felt a bit queasy thinking about it.

His last stop was the room just before the one he and Leia had been held in. This one held their transport travelling companions. As he released the electronic lock and slid the door open, the faces of at least one child lit up and that child ran straight to him for a hug.

"Jak?" he asked the little girl. She looked up at him and nodded. He had hoped he had recognised the right child. He had no experience with children and felt a bit awkward with them. He patted her back. Giving these kids the same instruction, he and Chewbacca searched round the rest of the corridors for stragglers.

"Want to do something really satisfying Chewie?" he asked his friend as they reached the end of their search and began to return to the surface. Chewbacca growled an enquiry. Han removed the explosives belt and held it up. "I want to blow this place to hell," he said with conviction. Chewbacca agreed. "If we place these carefully, we can hit the first one with a good shot and set off a chain reaction. That way we can get the kids out of danger first." He passed Chewbacca the belt. He knew what he had in mind and was certain it would work.

They strategically placed the explosives en route back to the cave, gathering the group of some forty children on the way through. Chewbacca led the way up the rocks to the Falcon, Han bringing up the rear with Jak, a little, vice-like fist clutching the side of his jacket. He looked down occasionally to check on the child, mildly embarrassed by the attention of the little attachment.

Filing them all onto the Falcon, he sat them on the floor in the central lounge area, stepping over them with his long stride and making his way to the cockpit with Chewbacca. What they were going to do with them all, he didn't know. He hadn't planned that far ahead. He just wanted to get them back to the castle and then he was sure Leia would come up with a sensible idea when she woke up. He just hoped he didn't have to look at her expectant, large eyes and tell her she couldn't adopt them.

He sent a message to Luke to expect them and raised the Falcon gently off it's landing spot, manoeuvring it carefully over the trees and coming down low again in front of the cave. He couldn't come in too low because of the dense undergrowth but he had allowed for that in his placement of his last explosive charge. Dropping the Falcon's guns from it's underside, he fired, hitting the charge first time, and pulled the Falcon up and back out of range of the ensuing chain reaction.

It happened just as he had hoped, in fact, better than he had hoped. Each charge setting off the next one. He could trace the line of the mini explosions by the disruption of the ground above from his cockpit view, and the mouth of the cave itself disappeared in a pile of rubble, earth and foliage, a fitting grave for Leia's childhood friend. Good riddance to Imperial rubbish he thought to himself, turned the Falcon and headed for their temporary home.