Chapter 18: Scouting the forest moon

The group marched through the brush. It was hard to see through all of the trees and bushes, but they stayed vigilant.

They came to a clearing. Han motioned for them to stay low. Leia stayed close to him.

"I told you it was dangerous here!" Threepio complained.

Han, Leia, Luke, and Chewie went ahead to scout. There were a few stormtroopers– not many, but enough to be a problem.

"Should we try to go around?" Leia asked.

"It'll take time," Luke answered. They knew they needed to get the shield down quickly.

"This whole party will be for nothing if they see us," Han added.

"Chewie and I will take care of this," he whispered, pointing a finger. "You stay here." She knew he was still trying to protect her– no matter how much she told him not to treat her differently, he was still going to try to keep her from jumping into a fight.

"Quietly," Luke whispered back. "There might be more of them out there."

"Hey, it's me." Han smirked and crawled away. Leia and Luke chuckled at his cocky remark.

They watched Han sneak up on a stormtrooper, and as he was about to strike, he stepped on a very loud branch which snapped under his foot. The stormtrooper turned around and smacked him, knocking him to the ground.

"Go for help! Go!" The stormtrooper told another.

Luke and Leia jumped into action. "Great. Come on!" Luke told her.

Leia spotted some stormtroopers on speeders. "Over there! Two more of them!" She didn't wait and jumped on an empty speeder to race after them.

"I see them. Wait, Leia!" Luke jumped on her speeder as she was pulling away. He grabbed her by the middle, and they were off.

"Quick. Jam their comm. link! Center switch!" Luke yelled over the noisy engine as they raced past trees and rocks.

"Move closer!" He yelled. "Get alongside that one!"

She rammed into the stormtrooper's speeder to try to knock him off balance. He hit hers back, though, and she had trouble keeping it steady. Luke leapt onto the other speeder and knocked the guy off and into a tree.

They continued chasing down the other one.

Suddenly, there were two more on their tail. They fired a couple of shots, and Luke told her, "Keep on that one. I'll take these two!" He dropped back and shot one down.

Leia kept her eyes ahead at the stormtrooper she was supposed to get. She was determined. She ducked around some trees and tried to surprise him. He leveled with her, and he pulled out a small blaster. She managed to avoid a few shots, but he landed one on the engine of her speeder. She was thrust off as the machine shook, and she tucked and rolled onto a grassy patch. She hit the ground hard, but she watched as the stormtrooper sped right into a tree trunk.

Her last thought before she passed out was, Han is going to kill me.