by Martha Wells
The crewman monitoring the comm answered, “We’re out of the sensor disruption area. The corvette’s destroyed one ship and damaged two others. We’ve been engaged by three.” His voice was young and he sounded tense, at the edge of fear. It’s bad, Leia thought.
Finally, Kelvan’s voice said, “Your Highness, are you safe?”
“Yes, we’re on the Falcon.” Leia hesitated, and thought, You have to do this. They could be destroyed at any moment. She didn’t want to lose them. But she had to let them go. “Kelvan, get out of there. Take the Aegis into hyperspace.”
There was a hesitation. “Princess, we can’t leave you—”
“We’re about to enter hyperspace ourselves. You need to get out of here, and get rid of that tracer. If you—I gave Terae a list of message drop sites. If you change your mind about the Alliance, come to the first one on the list a month from now. I’ll meet you.”
“Your Highness, I can’t promise you—I don’t know what the others will want—I don’t know what I want—” A blast that must have rocked the bridge interrupted him.
“Kelvan, please, go!” Leia said, and cut the connection.
The Falcon circled the planet and blasted into space.
As they shot away from the disruption field, contacts sprang up all over the sensors. But Han had chosen their escape route well, and none of the incoming pirate ships was close enough to reach them. The corvette was drawing most of the fire, and Leia saw the Aegis disable a persistent opponent with a pair of concussion missiles and then power away from the battle.
The coordinates for the nearest fleet rendezvous point were already programmed in, and Leia set the navicomputer to calculate the jump. Most of his attention on the console, Han said, “They’ll be all right.”
Leia shook her head. She hoped … She just hoped. The Aegis’s ID vanished from the contact screen as it disappeared into hyperspace. A few moments later, the Falcon followed it.
EPILOGUE
LEIA WAS ANXIOUS about the Aegis, though there were plenty of emergencies with the fleet to keep her occupied while she waited until it was time to go to the message drop point. Still, she found herself counting the days.
By the end of the month, Sian had recovered from her wound, Luke had been sent off on another mission, and Itran had been questioned extensively by Madine. One of the things that had kept Leia busy had been tracing Itran’s progress through the Alliance, changing any codes or procedures or bolt-holes he might have had access to, checking heretofore unexplained mechanical failures and losses of supply sources that he might have engineered. Fortunately, Itran hadn’t wanted to do anything that would have caused suspicion or drawn attention; he had been biding his time, waiting until he was transferred to the Independence.
Leia knew they had been lucky to uncover him when they did. He could have continued to lie low and collect information and perform small acts of sabotage until he learned the location of Echo Base. But he had decided to risk it all with an attempt to hand Leia and General Willard over to Commander Degoren. Leia knew that was why Itran had volunteered to go with her to the Aegis; it must have been a spur-of-the-moment decision, caused by fear of losing one of his prizes. “He could have done much more damage to us, if he hadn’t been so ambitious,” Madine had told Leia at one point.
“Perhaps we should take that as a lesson,” Leia had said. They had just come out of a meeting with Mon Mothma and several members of the High Command and Leia felt like she would have rather gone another round with Viest’s mad mining droid. That she had dealt as much damage as she had taken wasn’t much of a consolation.
“We should,” Madine had admitted. “But we won’t.”
At least the whole episode of the clearinghouse hadn’t been for nothing. Not long before the month was up, Han had taken the opportunity to find Kearn-sa’Davit at the trading port he was operating out of and get an update on the situation for the merchant consortium. With Viest out of the picture, things had gotten drastically better for shipping around Arnot Station and its trading partners. Davit wasn’t certain, but he figured that many pirates had been frightened away from the clearinghouse permanently and wouldn’t be coming back to the sector. The word through the black markets was that at least one, maybe two, of Viest’s would-be successors had died at Rethel Point during the battle with the Aegis and the customs corvette.
But there hadn’t been any noticeable gains for the Alliance out of the situation, no new supply source for Echo Base, and that had been made clear to Leia. So she was glad for more than one reason to slip away from the fleet on the Millennium Falcon, with no one but Mon Mothma and Madine’s knowledge, to spend the time in Han and Chewbacca’s occasionally irascible but undemanding company. She had brought C-3PO with her, and had more than enough work to keep her occupied while they waited for the Aegis to arrive.
When they reached the message drop point, the Aegis wasn’t there, but Leia wasn’t too worried. Depending on where its travels had taken it, and what repairs it had needed, it might take a while for the gunship to make its way here.
“Here” was a small trading port on a world at the edge of the Inner Rim, a long way from the clearinghouse and Arnot Station. The port was built out on raised platforms above a shallow freshwater sea, with docking pads, supply depots, cargo factors, shipwrights, and the usual clusters of drink and food service establishments. Everything was accessed by bridges, with small fishing boats sailing beneath, and several causeways connected the structures to the small city spread out across the nearest archipelago. It wasn’t a bad spot to bide some time, even with the humidity and the morning mists—though Chewie frequently ended up being the one to go out to get food, and he had made it clear that he didn’t take requests and they would eat what he brought back and like it. Leia settled in to wait, and to read the reports she had collected on her datapad.
After the second day with no sign of the Aegis, she was too anxious to relax. Waiting was becoming nerve racking rather than a pleasure.
The pointed absence of the Aegis was so painful to her that Chewbacca just watched her sympathetically, and even Han didn’t mention the ship’s failure to appear.
But finally, after four days, he said reluctantly, “If we stay here any longer, we’re going to have to get jobs, or grow crops, or something.”
“I know.” Leia rubbed her eyes. They were sitting in the cockpit, where they had a good view of the other landing pads. The Falcon’s platform was a little higher than the others, and they could see the other ships, mostly freighters and small local transports, in between the stretches of water and the tall, green fern-reeds that grew between the pilings. “I just hoped they would change their minds.”
It hadn’t been just a hope—it had been almost a certainty. At the last, she had really thought Kelvan and even Terae had become open to the possibility of joining the Alliance. They had had every chance to betray Leia for profit, yet they hadn’t done it. They had been honest with her, and trusted her. They were honest with you, they wanted to help you, they trusted you. You, not the Alliance, she thought. And in the end, you failed them. “I pushed too hard. I should have tried to set up another meeting just to talk. There was an implied commitment in coming here—that was a mistake.”
Han swung the pilot’s chair back and forth. “I don’t know what else you were supposed to say. They knew the situation. They needed to make a decision.”
Leia looked away, at the busy crews and droids loading and unloading cargo. “And they must have made it.”
“Hey,” Han said softly. She turned back to look at him. “Let’s give it one more day.”
Leia got to her feet. She wanted to nurse her disappointment in private. “One more night,” she said. She appreciated Han’s generosity, but she knew there wasn’t any point to remaining longer. “We can leave tomorrow morning.”
Han nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
She woke at dawn the next morning to Han banging on her cabin door. Leia had al
ready drawn her blaster, thinking the ship was being attacked, when she realized he was saying, “Get out here, sweetheart, there’s something you need to see.”
She threw her clothes on hastily, and ran up to the cockpit just in time to watch something very like an Alderaanian gunship landing on the next platform over.
ALSO BY MARTHA WELLS
THE ELEMENT OF FIRE
City of Bones
The Death of the Necromancer
Wheel of the Infinite
THE FALL OF ILE-RIEN TRILOGY
The Wizard Hunters
The Ships of Air
The Gate of Gods
Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary
Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement
THE BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA
The Cloud Roads
The Serpent Sea
The Siren Depths
YOUNG ADULT FANTASY
Emilie and the Hollow World
Emilie and the Sky World (forthcoming)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MARTHA WELLS was born in 1964 in Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.A. in anthropology. She is the author of fourteen science fiction and fantasy novels, including the Nebula-nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as a number of short stories and nonfiction articles. Her books have been published in seven languages.
STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe
You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …
In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?
Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?
Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?
Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?
All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!
Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.
READ ON FOR AN EXCERPT FROM
STAR WARS: EMPIRE AND REBELLION: HONOR AMONG THIEVES
BY
JAMES S. A. COREY
PUBLISHED BY DEL REY BOOKS
ONE
FROM THE IMPERIAL CORE to the out-flung stars of the Rim, the galaxy teemed with life. Planets, moons, asteroid bases, and space stations peopled with a thousand different species, all of them busy with the great ambitions of the powerful and also with the mundane problems of getting through their days, the ambitions of the Emperor all the way down to where to eat the next meal. Or whether there would be a next meal. Each city and town and station and ship had its own history and secrets, hopes and fears and half-articulated dreams.
But for every circle of light—every star, every planet, every beacon and outpost—there was vastly more darkness. The space between stars was and always would be unimaginably huge, and the mysteries that it hid would never be wholly discovered. One bad jump was all it took for a ship to be lost. Unless there was a way to reach out for help, to say, Here I am. Come find me, an escape pod or a ship or a fleet could vanish into the places between places that even light took a lifetime to reach.
And so a rendezvous point could be the size of a solar system, and the rebel fleet could still hide there like a flake in a snowstorm. Hundreds of ships from the cobbled-together, plasma-scorched cruisers and third-hand battleships to X- and Y-wings and everything in between. They flew through space together silently, drifting closer in or farther apart as the need arose. Repair droids crawled over the skins of the ships, welding back together the wounds of their last battles, sure in the knowledge that they were the needle in the Empire’s haystack.
Their greatest danger wasn’t the enemy but inaction. And the ways a certain kind of man coped with it.
“I wasn’t cheating,” Han Solo said as Chewbacca bent to pass through the door in the bulkhead. “I was playing better than they were.”
The Wookiee growled.
“That’s how I was playing better. It’s not against the rules. Besides, what are they going to buy with their money out here?”
A dozen fighter pilots marching past in dirty orange-and-white uniforms saluted them. Han nodded to each one as he passed. They were an ugly bunch: middle-aged men who should have been back home on a planet somewhere spending too much time at the neighborhood bar and weedy boys still looking forward to their first wispy mustaches. Warriors for freedom, and terrible sabacc players.
Chewbacca let out a long, low groan.
“You wouldn’t,” Han said.
Chewbacca’s blue eyes met his, and the Wookiee’s silence was more eloquent than anything he might have said aloud.
“Fine,” Han retorted. “But it’s coming out of your cut. I don’t know when you went soft on me.”
“Han!”
Luke Skywalker came jogging down a side corridor, his helmet under his arm. Two droids followed him: the squat, cylindrical R2-D2 rolling along, chirping and squealing; the tall, golden C-3PO trotting along at the back, waving gold-chrome hands as if gesticulating in response to some unheard conversation. The kid’s face was flushed and his hair was dark with sweat, but he was grinning like he’d just won something.
“Hey,” Han said. “Just get back from maneuvers?”
“Yep. These guys are great. You should have seen the tight spin and recover they showed us. I could have stayed out there for hours, but Leia called me back in for some kind of emergency meeting.”
“Her Worshipfulness called the meeting?” Han asked as they turned down the main access corridor together. The smell of welding torches and coolant hung in the air. Everything about the Rebel Alliance smelled like a repair bay. “I thought she was off to her big conference on Kiamurr.”
“She was supposed to be. I guess she postponed leaving.”
The little R2 droid squealed, and Han turned to it. “What’s that, Artoo?”
C-3PO, catching up and giving a good impression of leaning forward to catch his breath even though he didn’t have lungs, translated: “He’s saying that she’s postponed her departure twice. It’s made a terrible shambles of the landing docks.”
“Well, that’s not good,” Han said. “Anything that keeps her from sitting around a big table deciding the future of the galaxy … I mean, that’s her favorite thing to do.”
“You know that’s not true!” Luke said, making room in the passageway for a bronze-colored droid that looked like it had barely crawled out of the trash heap. “I don’t know why you don’t like her more.”
“I like her fine.”
“You’re always cutting her down, though. The Alliance needs good politicians and organizers.”
“You can’t have a government without a tax collector. Just because we’d both like it better if the Emperor wasn’t in charge, it doesn’t make me and her the same person.”
Luke shook his head. The sweat was starting to dry, and his hair was getting some of its sandy color back.
“I think you two are more alike than you pretend.”
Han laughed despite himself. “You’re an o
ptimist, kid.”
When they reached the entrance to the command center, Luke sent the droids on, R2-D2 whistling and squeaking and C-3PO acting annoyed. The command center had taken a direct hit in the fighting at Yavin, and the reconstruction efforts still showed. New panels, blinding in their whiteness, covered most of one wall where the old ones had been shattered by the blast. Where the replacements ended, the old panels seemed even darker by contrast. The head-high displays marked the positions of the ships in the fleet and the fleet in the emptiness of the rendezvous point, the status of repair crews, the signals from the sensor arrays, and half a dozen other streams of information. None of the stations were manned. The data spooled out into the air, ignored.
Leia stood at the front of the room, the bright repair work and grimy original walls seeming to come together in her. Her dress was black with embroidery of gold and bronze, her hair a soft spill gathered at the nape of her neck in a style that made her seem both more mature and more powerful than the side buns she’d worn on the Death Star. From what Han had heard around the fleet, losing Alderaan had made her older and harder. And as much as he hated to admit it, she wore the tragedy well.
The man she was talking to—Colonel Harcen—had his back to them, but his voice carried just fine. “With respect though, you have to see that not all allies are equal. Some of the factions that are going to be on Kiamurr, the Alliance would be better off without.”
“I understand your concerns, Colonel,” Leia said in a tone that didn’t sound particularly understanding. “I think we can agree, though, that the Alliance isn’t in a position to turn away whatever help we can get. The Battle of Yavin was a victory, but—”
Harcen raised a palm, interrupting her. He was an idiot, Han thought. “There are already some people who feel that we have become too lax in the sorts of people we’re allowing into our ranks. In order to gain respect, we must be free of undesirable elements.”
