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Han twisted quickly round, but wasn't nearly fast enough to get back through the closing door. Taking three steps back, he glared at it. "If this isn't you, kid, then I'm gonna look very, very stupid."
He stood still and expectant for long moments...in which nothing happened... Time passed, and he realized he was glaring so hard, his eyebrows were lifting off the top of his head...
Then, with no fanfare at all, the door slid open.
Stepping up, Han heard the voices of the guards to his left in the corridor, the blast door to his immediate right lifted again, now. Edging out, he saw the guards at the far end of the corridor, checking another open cell door. Without running, he stepped silently out of the cell and slipped under the blast door and into the main entrance beyond, immediately sliding sideways out of the line of vision of the troops.
He'd just stepped clear as the blast door closed again, the troops running forward in unison, way too far away to make it.
Shielded now, Han stepped quickly past the main console to the closed turbolift.
"C'mon!" he urged. There were no call panels here, the turbolifts apparently being sent down only on request.
The console beeped for attention behind him. He ignored it, visions of his last fiasco of a conversation on one of those things in the Death Star coming quickly to mind.
The turbolift doors stayed firmly closed. The comm beeped a demand which was easy to ignore...
"Open the..." Han spun round, realizing what he was meant to do and reaching over the back of the console to activate the comm.
"Finally!" Luke's voice crackled from the tinny speaker, filled with impatience.
"Hey, I'm not a mind reader!" Han defended, smiling broadly as he looked up to the security lenses in a bank on the wall. "Where are you?"
"Heading down. You need to get hold of a comlink and set it to 2372."
"Where from?"
"Hey, I got me out, I got you out, I'm about to try to talk down three very irate detention center guards. All you have to do is get one lousy comlink."
"Fine, fine." Han knew he was grinning maniacally now, adrenaline pumping. "...What frequency?"
He could practically hear the kid sigh. "2372. Don't forget. I can follow you on security images--get moving."
The turbolift doors were already opening as Han headed toward them. Finally! A little action!
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To be continued...
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Chapter 15
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CHAPTER FIFTEEN
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Mara was shaking her head, staring at the multiple screens of the ops room as call-ins sounded from various Royal Guard units. Everyone checked out--everyone.
"He's not in the Guard's uniform," she announced, not looking from the images, very sure. "He's taken it off."
"Which means he's back in his own clothes," Palpatine said slowly, considering.
Mara flinched just slightly at the powerful inrush of the Force as he gathered it to him, razor sharp, uncompromisingly accurate...if one knew how to interpret it.
She turned, expectant.
"He's still reasonably close by...nowhere near the Main Palace yet."
Mara turned back to the image of the Tower schematic, still trying to figure out how he was moving down without being detected...
The South Tower was completely shut down, all personnel confined to rooms, no window or door alarms tripped... how was he getting past them?
"He's not outside?" she asked, uncertain.
Palpatine opened cold yellow eyes to her and she knew that she'd made an error in questioning his statement, and turned her gaze down in apology.
He didn't deign to reply.
"He won't leave the Corellian. No matter how far he's come in the last few weeks, that goal will remain--he wouldn't desert his comrade." Palpatine spat the last, derisive.
Mara turned--and her master burst into a wide, predatory smile.
"And there is my answer--carefully stored for just this occasion." Mara stared, aware that her own confused expression was simply highlighting his satisfaction. "Have the Corellian brought up--take him to Skywalker's quarters. A full detachment is to escort him."
She nodded, realizing now what her master intended.
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Palpatine was still perusing the finer points of his plan--how exactly to get the smuggler to scream strongly enough that his reaction would send a wonderfully unignorable ripple through the Force to Skywalker--when Mara's alarm burst through his musings.
"Mara?" he prompted, voice low and threatening.
She turned slowly from the console. "He's not there. There was a supposed..."
"What?"
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Han worked his way with forced nonchalance through the wide walkways of the MainPalace, heading for Level one-six-one, as instructed.
The jacket he'd taken from his now-unconscious comlink donor had turned out to be about three sizes too small, but he'd stuck with it mainly because he now had black grease smeared all over his shirt from having to shimmy up the droid access hatch at the top of the turbolift shaft.
With his usual luck, the Detention Center turbolifts stopped one level before the public access levels began--evidently, the Empire did have some smart designers after all. They'd even put a charged shield over the droid access shaft--which the kid had assured him he'd already disabled with some borrowed security clearance. Staying in the turbolift whilst the doors opened onto the guarded, two-level intersection between the Detention Center and the Palace wasn't an option since he didn't have a blaster, and anyway, this was apparently supposed to be quiet getaway.
On the few military channels he could get on his stolen comlink, all hell seemed to be breaking loose in the Towers, but here on the admin levels in the Main Palace--the public face of the center of the Empire--all seemed ship-shape and glass-smooth...more or less
Not many people around though--and the high administration-personnel to white-armor ratio was very disconcerting. Or it had been...now it seemed to be settling out. Whatever the kid was doing, it sure was attracting a lot of attention elsewhere--which made Han's progress easier, but he got the feeling he wouldn't like the price.
Still, Luke seemed pretty confident and appeared to have everything under control; in fact Han's only job at this point was to get up to Level one-six-one.
It was all going way too smoothly...
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The Emperor remained still and silent in the back of the room as Mara slowly deciphered the facts.
The Detention Level guards said they were in contact with Ops 90, who had logged their level's blast-shield errors and were sending a team down. It wasn't at all unusual for them to receive contacts or commands from Ops rooms around that level; Commander Jade often requested updates and gave orders to move a certain prisoner around from any of the Ops rooms around those levels, they had defended.
Which was true--though how Skywalker knew this was...another stray memory came sharply to Mara's mind--of Skywalker standing before the windows in the drawing room the day after he had decimated the contents of the bedroom and claiming coolly that he could read her mind, despite her shields. Could he? Or was it just coincidence?
He'd seemed so brittle that day, so uncharacteristically sharp that she had dismissed it as a simple dig, an attempt to get under her skin. She was after all trained to be able to hide her thoughts from Vader--Palpatine had taken great care with that--and she knew she had never let her guard down with Skywalker to that extent.
"Bring up the security image of Ops 90," her master prompted, bringing her thoughts back to the moment.
"That security lens is down, Excellency," the duty officer admitted, his voice small.