A heartbeat later, it was all over.
Luke took a shuddering breath. He’d done it. Not the way he’d wanted to, but he’d done it. Now, he could only hope he’d done it in time. Calling the lightsaber back to his hand on a dead run, he sprinted past the crumpled alien bodies and stretched out again through the Force. Leia?
The decorative columns flanking the downward ramp were visible just beyond the next row of booths when, beside him, Han felt Leia twitch. “He’s free,” she said. “He’s on his way.”
“Great,” Han muttered. “Great. Let’s hope our pals don’t find out before he gets here.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when, in what looked like complete unison, the circle of aliens raised their stokhli sticks and started pushing their way through the milling crowd of Bimms. “Too late,” Han gritted. “Here they come.”
Leia gripped his arm. “Should I try to take their weapons away from them?”
“You’ll never get all eleven,” Han told her, looking around desperately for inspiration.
His eyes fell on a nearby table loaded with jewelry display boxes … and he had it. Maybe. “Leia—that jewelry over there? Grab some of it.”
He sensed her throw a startled look up at him. “What—?”
“Just do it!” he hissed, watching the approaching aliens. “Grab it and throw it to me.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the smaller display boxes stir as she strained to establish a grip on it. Then, with a sudden lurch, it leaped toward him, slapping into his hands and scattering small neckpieces to the ground before he managed to get hold of the rest.
And abruptly the raucous conversational hum of the marketplace was split by a piercing shriek. Han turned toward it, just in time to see the owner of the pilfered merchandise stabbing two fingers toward him. “Han!” he heard Leia shout over the scream.
“Get ready to duck!” he shouted back—
And was literally bowled off his feet as a yellow wave of enraged Bimms leaped atop him, knocking the accused shoplifter to the ground.
And with their bodies forming a barrier between him and the stokhli sticks, he dropped the jewelry and grabbed for his comlink. “Chewie!” he bellowed over the din.
Luke heard the shriek even from the top Tower floor; and from the sudden turmoil in Leia’s mind, it was instantly clear that he would never make it to the marketplace in time.
He skidded to a halt, mind racing. Across the room a large open window faced the open-domed structure; but five floors was too far for even a Jedi to safely leap. He glanced back to the room he’d just left, searching for possibilities … and his eye fell on the end of one of the aliens’ weapons, just visible through the archway.
It was a long shot, but it was as good a chance as he was going to get. Reaching out through the Force, he called the weapon flying to his hand, studying its controls as he ran to the window. They were simple enough: spray profile and pressure, plus the thumb trigger. Setting for the narrowest spray and the highest pressure, he braced himself against the side of the window, aimed for the marketplace’s partial dome covering, and fired.
The stick kicked harder against his shoulder than he’d expected it to as the spray shot out, but the results were all he could have hoped for. The front end of the arching tendril struck the roof, forming a leisurely sort of pile as more of the semisolid spray pushed forward to join it. Luke held the switch down for a count of five, then eased up, keeping a firm Force grip on the near end of the tendril to prevent it from falling away from the stick. He gave it a few seconds to harden before touching it tentatively with a finger, gave it a few seconds more to make sure it was solidly attached to the marketplace roof. Then, taking a deep breath, he grabbed his makeshift rope with both hands and jumped.5
A tornado of air blew at him, tugging at his hair and clothes as he swung down and across. Below and partway across the top level he could see the mass of yellow-clad Bimms and the handful of gray figures struggling to get past them to Han and Leia. There was a flicker of light, visible even in the bright sunshine, and one of the Bimms slumped to the ground—stunned or dead, Luke couldn’t tell which. The floor was rushing up at him—he braced himself to land—
And with a roar that must have rattled windows for blocks around, the Millennium Falcon screamed by overhead.
The shock wave threw Luke’s landing off, sending him sprawling across the floor and into two of the Bimms. But even as he rolled back up to his feet, he realized that Chewbacca’s arrival couldn’t have been better timed. Barely ten meters away, the two alien attackers nearest him had turned their attention upward, their weapons poised to ensnare the Falcon when it returned. Snatching his lightsaber from his belt, Luke leaped over a half dozen bystanding Bimms, cutting both attackers down before they even knew he was there.
From overhead came another roar; but this time Chewbacca didn’t simply fly the Falcon past the marketplace. Instead, forward maneuvering jets blasting, he brought it to a hard stop. Hovering directly over his beleaguered companions, swivel blaster extended from the ship’s underside, he opened fire.
The Bimms weren’t stupid. Whatever Han and Leia had done to stir up the hornet’s nest, the hornets themselves clearly had no desire to get shot at from the sky. In an instant the roiling yellow mass dissolved, the Bimms abandoning their attack and streaming away in terror from the Falcon. Forcing his way through the crowd, using the Bimms for visual cover as much as he could, Luke started around the attackers’ circle.
Between his lightsaber and the Falcon’s swivel blaster, they made a very fast, very clean sweep of it.
“You,” Luke said with a shake of his head, “are a mess.”
“I’m sorry, Master Luke,” Threepio apologized, his voice almost inaudible beneath the layers of hardened spraynet that covered much of his upper body like some bizarre sort of gift wrapping. “I seem to always be causing you trouble.”
“That’s not true, and you know it,” Luke soothed him, considering the small collection of solvents arrayed in front of him on the Falcon’s lounge table. So far none of the ones he’d tried had been even marginally effective against the webbing. “You’ve been a great help to all of us over the years. You just have to learn when to duck.”
Beside Luke, Artoo twittered something. “No, Captain Solo did not tell me to duck,” Threepio told the squat droid stiffly. “What he said was, ‘Get ready to duck.’ I should think the difference would be apparent even to you.”
Artoo beeped something else. Threepio ignored it. “Well, let’s try this one,” Luke suggested, picking up the next solvent in line. He was hunting for a clean cloth among his pile of rejects when Leia came into the lounge.
“How is he?” she asked, walking over and peering at Threepio.
“He’ll be all right,” Luke assured her. “He may have to stay like this until we get back to Coruscant, though. Han told me these stokhli sticks are used mostly by big-game hunters on out-of-the-way planets, and the spraynet they use is a pretty exotic mixture.” He indicated the discarded solvent bottles.
“Maybe the Bimms can suggest something,” Leia said, picking up one of the bottles and looking at its label. “We’ll ask them when we get back down.”
Luke frowned at her. “We’re going back down?”
She frowned at him in turn. “We have to, Luke—you know that. This is a diplomatic mission, not a pleasure cruise. It’s considered bad form to pull out right after one of your ships has just shot up a major local marketplace.”
“I would think the Bimms would consider themselves lucky that none of their people got killed in the process,” Luke pointed out. “Particularly when what happened was at least partly their fault.”