“Let him go.” Leia stood with the empty hold-out’s emitter jammed up under her own chin and her finger on the trigger. “I mean it.”

The huge hand opened, and Han sagged to the floor, gasping. The man stood with hands once again open and spread. Leia said, “Now back away from him. Slowly.”

The huge man took a step back, but only one.

“Keep going.”

The man dropped to one knee and slowly lowered his right hand to the floor, and in the instant his palm touched the luminescent lichen, the entire cavern went dark.

Han felt an inhumanly swift rush pass by him; he kicked blindly in the darkness but missed. All he could do was croak, “Leia, look out!”

“Han—” Whatever she’d hoped to say was smothered to snorts and gasping; then there were only muffled sounds of struggle. Han scrambled to his feet in the darkness and lunged toward the noise. Something hit him across the legs and he fell—

And the floor he fell on splashed.

This can’t be good, he thought. He managed to make it to his hands and knees … and the gooey floor hardened again, becoming stone that clamped solid around feet, calves, knees, and hands, and over his wrists to halfway up his forearms. “Let me go! Let me go, you freak! Don’t touch her. Don’t you dare touch her! Leia!”

The darkness gave back only empty echoes.

He knelt there, panting in pain and desperation. He tried to yank his hands free. He tried until his elbows creaked and his arms cramped. He couldn’t even wiggle his fingers. His toes he could wiggle—inside his boots—but his legs were entombed even more securely than his hands.

There was nothing he could do. Nothing at all.

And Leia was in the hands of the giant. Who was he? Han couldn’t guess. He couldn’t make any of this make sense.

And he was probably going to die without ever figuring it out.

Trust in the Force, she’d said. Well, if the Force had any plans to give him the occasional hand, he couldn’t think of a better time than right now.

“So?” he said out loud. “You there? Can you spare a little luck for your last Jedi’s best friend?”

From his vest pocket came a burst of static, and then a voice. “Han? Han, do you read? Han, come in! It’s Luke!”


- Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Chapter 15