Part 40 (1/2)
”Good. Let's get him!” Luke yelled back.
”I don't think so,” Lando said. ”Look!”
A dozen guards rounded the far end of the corridor and started shooting.
”In there!” Dash yelled. There was a door to their left. Chewie opened it by smas.h.i.+ng through it. Leia followed him, Lando and Dash behind her.
Luke went last, blocking and batting aside beams that zipped at them like angry hornets.
Inside the room, some kind of office, they looked at each other.
”Now what?” Leia said.
Blaster bolts continued to whiz past the destroyed doorway.
Lando looked at Luke, who nodded. ”Well,” Lando said, ”it's time for desperate measures.” He reached into the small backpack he wore and came out with a round, silvery ball about the size of a man's fist. There were some controls, a finger-wide slot around the ball's equator and what looked like some kind of electronic diode on the top and in the slot.
Leia looked at the s.h.i.+ny ball, then at Luke. He nodded at Dash. More blaster bolts sizzled past. They apparently hadn't noticed out there yet n.o.body was shooting back.
Dash took the ball from Lando. ”It's a thermal detonator,” he said.
”Lando's got three of them. They run on a timer or a deadman's switch.
Flip that switch right there, press that b.u.t.ton in and hold it. If you let go without disarming the deadman's switch first, it goes off.”
”And does what, exactly?”
”Makes a small thermonuclear fusion reaction.”
”A small thermonuclear fusion reaction,” she said.
”Yeah, just enough to vaporize a good-size chunk of whatever is next to it.”
”I see. That includes us if it goes off in here, right?”
”Right. But we're betting your friend the leader of Black Sun won't want us to trigger it while he's around, not to mention what it would do to his castle.”
She nodded. ”Let me see it.”
Dash's eyes went wide. Luke nodded at him.
Leia took the device, examined it. ”And if you don't use the deadman's switch?”
”It runs on a timer. The default setting is five minutes. If you lock it in, here, once the timer starts, n.o.body can turn it off.”
”Got it.” She hefted the metal ball, then tucked it inside the bounty hunter's helmet hooked to her belt. The males all looked at each other.
Luke said, ”Uh, Leia...”
”You said you had more of them, right? I want to hang on to this one. It might come in handy.” Luke shrugged. ”Okay. We bought it with your money anyhow.”
The blaster bolts outside the doorway stopped.
”I guess we'd better have a little talk with Xizor,” Luke said.
Lando handed him another of the thermal detonators. Luke touched the controls. The device started making a beeping sound. Tiny lights winked on and off.
Luke took a deep breath.
Aizor moved out into the hall behind the dozen or so guards who moved toward an open door across from where he and Guri had ducked.
He heard a small noise, a repet.i.tive beep. What was that?
Skywalker stepped out into the hall. The guards pointed their blasters, but the boy didn't have his lightsaber in hand. Instead, he held some kind of small device-Xizor had not always been an armchair commander.
He had paid his dues in head-knocking and strongarm work, and he knew a bomb when he saw one.
”Don't shoot!” he yelled. ”Lower your weapons!”
The guards looked at him as if he had gone mad, but they obeyed. ”Good idea,” Luke said. The other intruders and Leia moved out into the hall behind Skywalker.
The beep was suddenly very loud in the silence. Tiny lights blinked on the device. ”You know what this is?” Skywalker said. ”I have a pretty good idea,” Xizor said. ”It's rigged with a deadman's switch,” Luke said.
”If I let it go...”
There was no need to finish that sentence.
”What do you want?”
”To leave. My friends and I.”
”If you release the bomb, you'll die. So will your friends.” He glanced at Leia. That would be such a waste.
The boy shrugged. ”Like it stands, we're dead anyway. We have nothing to lose. How about you? You ready to give all this up?” He waved at the building around them. ”This is a Cla.s.s-A thermal detonator, you know what that means?”
Some of the guards knew, to judge from the sudden intakes of breath and muttered curses.
”I think you're bluffing.”
”Only one way to find out. Your move.”
Xizor thought about it. If the boy wasn't bluffing and somebody shot him, a Cla.s.s-A TD would take out; several floors of this building in a heartbeat. With that many of the support girders erased, the eighty-odd stories above would collapse. The structure might topple like a logged tree, to smash into the streets below. Or it might telescope straight down and flatten whatever base remained. Either way, the castle would be a total loss-as would anybody trapped inside it.
He could build another castle. But if the bomb went off this close, he wouldn't be around to do that. Was he willing to risk all he had worked for, his very life itself, that Skywalker was not suicidal? He was Vader's relative, wasn't he? Vader wouldn't bluff. And these Alliance types had demonstrated over and over again how brave they were against overwhelming odds.
No. He could not take the chance.