by Troy Denning
AlGray paused before answering. Han stored another screen shot of his tactical display, this one detailing the Kendall’s location and designating her the flagship. He could almost hear AlGray wondering whether her plot had been exposed—but the sad truth was that so far, he and Leia had managed to warn Tenel Ka of precious little.
AlGray finally seemed to reach the same conclusion. “How did that come about?”
“It’s a long story, given our comm restrictions,” Morwan replied carefully. “Perhaps I could fill you in once I’m aboard?”
“You won’t be aboard,” AlGray replied. “The Heritage Fleet is preparing to make the attack-jump. Fall in at the back of the formation. You can explain after the battle.”
“After?” Morwan asked, clearly not happy about the prospect of riding out a major space battle aboard the Falcon. “Ducha?”
“I’m afraid the Kendall has closed the channel,” C-3PO said. “Shall I attempt to reestablish contact?”
“Absolutely not.” Morwan turned to Leia. “Princess Leia, I truly hate to ask this, but the Ducha’s orders were clear.”
“Of course, we’ll obey.” Leia was already pushing the throttles forward. “We’re old hands at staying out of trouble in big battles like this.”
As Leia spoke, the nav computer beeped to announce that it had received jump coordinates. A moment later the usurper fleet—Han refused to think of it as the Heritage Fleet—began to accelerate under the head of the comet.
While Leia chased after the fleet, Han performed the jump calculations—taking the time to look up Hapes’s rotation cycle so he could plot exactly where the fleet would revert to realspace relative to the planet. After double-checking his answers, he copied the information to a datafile, then attached the two screen shots he had captured identifying the fleet’s flagship and composition. As field-intelligence dossiers went, it was neither very thorough nor very timely, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.
The Falcon passed under the comet and pulled ahead. A moment later the canopy blast-tinting paled, revealing the blue circles of hundreds of ion engines spread across the darkness in front of them. The circles were accelerating toward the tiny white ball of the Hapan sun, but still growing rapidly larger as the Falcon overtook the fleet.
“Blast!” Han said. He needed an excuse to make Leia delay a few seconds when the usurper fleet jumped into hyperspace—and he had to keep Morwan distracted at the same time. “The sensor dish is sticking again. Lady Morwan, can you shut down the sensor suite just before we jump?”
“Won’t that be dangerous when we revert?” she asked. “We won’t be able to tell where the rest of the fleet is.”
“Not if Leia waits a bit after everyone else jumps,” Han replied. “And if you bring the sensors up again right after we jump, we won’t be blind for more than fifteen or twenty seconds.”
“Twenty seconds?” C-3PO squawked. “Eighty-seven percent of all fleet-maneuver accidents occur within the first ten seconds of exiting hyperspace!”
“Better that than being blind for the rest of the battle,” Leia said, following Han’s lead. “I can handle it, Threepio. I have the Force, remember?”
“Of course—pardon me for doubting you,” C-3PO said. “It’s impossible to assign a safety coefficient to the Force, but I’m quite sure we’re as safe with you flying blind as we are even when Captain Solo has all his instruments.”
Han would have reminded the droid that he had not gotten them killed yet, except that the blue circles ahead had begun to swell more slowly as Leia matched the fleet’s velocity. He quickly formatted his intelligence dossier for transmission, then watched in silence as the Falcon slid into position at the rear of the formation.
Finally, the voice of a female maneuvering chief came over the cockpit speakers. “Jump in three.”
Leia put her hand on the hyperdrive actuator, and Lady Morwan reached for the sensor controls.
“Two.”
Han turned to C-3PO and held his finger to his lips, then cranked their S-thread unit to maximum transmission power and switched to a general hailing channel.
“Mark.”
Space ahead flared blue as the usurper fleet accelerated to jump speed.
“Deactivate sensors,” Leia ordered.
Morwan used both hands to pull the sensor suite glide-switches to their off positions, and space went dark again as the usurper fleet entered hyperspace.
Han hit the TRANSMIT key.
Leia waited another second, then shoved the throttles to maximum and activated the hyperdrive. The stars stretched into a pearlescent blur.
Han returned the comm unit to its previous settings, then caught C-3PO looking at him with a cocked head.
“It was hardly necessary to do that yourself,” the droid said. “I’m perfectly capable of—”
“Your timing’s no good,” Han interrupted, worried the droid was about to mention the S-thread message. “And that’s the last I want to hear about it.”
“But my timing is excellent!” C-3PO protested. “My reaction speed is less than two one-thousandths of a second, which is two magnitudes better than yours.”
“Han means that it’s a matter of judgment,” Leia said. “There were too many variables to define in the time available.”
“Oh, I see,” C-3PO replied, sounding calmer. “Captain Solo is having trouble expressing himself again.”
“I’m going to trip your primary circuit breaker,” Han said. “Is that clear enough?”
“That’s hardly necessary.” C-3PO retreated toward the far side of the flight deck. “If you want me to keep quiet, all you have to do is say so.”
Morwan turned around in her seat. “Keep you quiet about what, Threepio?”
C-3PO glanced briefly in Han’s direction. “I’m really not at liberty to say, Lady Morwan.”
“Threepio isn’t allowed to divulge anything concerning the Falcon’s operation,” Leia lied. She kept her gaze fixed on the control panel chrono, counting down the seconds until they reverted to realspace. “It’s a standard security protocol.”
“But there’s no big secret,” Han added quickly. “The comm antenna retracts when the sensor dish reverses for the jump. And since the dish was stuck—”
“—you had to lower it manually,” Morwan finished. She glanced at C-3PO, as though she could read the truth in the droid’s expressionless face, then nodded. “Of course.”
Morwan turned back to the sensor glides, leaving Han to wonder how high her suspicions had been raised. Even had she not believed before that he and Leia were spies, C-3PO’s gaffe had clearly planted the seed.
The reversion alarm chimed, and an instant later the gray veil of hyperspace erupted into a wall of crimson energy. The cockpit speakers began to crackle with alarmed voices and shipboard explosions, then the invisible fist of a turbolaser strike glanced off the Falcon’s top shields, pounding her so hard that C-3PO clanged to the deck on his back.
“We’ve been hit!” the droid cried. “Shall I activate the abandon-ship siren?”
“No!” Han said. “That was just a graze. We’re fine.”
He peered over Leia’s shoulder at the damage-control board and saw that he was only partially right. The forward cargo hold had sealed itself off because of a pressure leak, and a coolant line had burst somewhere in the aft engineering tunnel, but Han thought they would probably last out the battle—as long as they didn’t take another big hit.
“Let’s not do that again,” he said, speaking into Leia’s ear. “We don’t want to scare the droid.”
A turbolaser strike blossomed a hundred meters beneath the Falcon’s belly, bucking Han against his crash webbing and setting off a new round of alarms.
C-3PO emitted a surprised squeal and wrapped his arms around the comm officer’s chair, then Leia flipped them into a tight spiral and even Han gasped in alarm. He ached to take the pilot’s yoke—but with only one hand to hold it, that would have been foolish e
ven for him. The crimson fury of a rolling barrage erupted ahead and began to advance toward the Falcon.
“Dive!” Han was straining against his crash webbing, yelling over Leia’s shoulder. “Go belooooooowww!”
Leia had pushed the yoke as far forward as it would go. “Trying!”
The barrage passed over their stern, bucking the ship hard enough to bang C-3PO against the floor—and to send a bolt of pain shooting through Han’s wounded shoulder.
A glowing red disk appeared ahead, then quickly expanded into a sheet of half-molten metal that had once been the upper saucer of a Hapan Battle Dragon. Escape pods were spraying from the vessel like shooting stars, and momentary fists of flame kept punching out through breaches in the hull.
“Pull up!” Han cried.
Leia was already bringing their nose up, and the Battle Dragon began to swing out from beneath the Falcon. “Trying!”
They leveled off just above the Battle Dragon, so close to the half-melted hull that the temperature inside the Falcon began to climb.
“Give her some throttle!” Han ordered. “Get us out of this!”
Leia already had the throttles pushed past the overload stops. The Falcon leapt away from the Battle Dragon—only to find a slender Nova cruiser dead ahead, breaking apart midway down her long spine, pouring dark clouds of vapor and flotsam into space.
“Go left!” Han yelled half a second before the Nova’s bridge exploded into a spray of superheated shrapnel. “Wait, go down!”
The Nova’s stern weapons arrays began to fire at random, lacing space below with stabbing shafts of color and flame.
“No, go—”
“Captain Solo!” Morwan cried. She was clenching the arms of her chair with both hands. “Will you please shut up and let her fly? You’re going to get us killed!”
Han bristled at Morwan’s tone—then realized how right she was and began to feel a little ashamed. “With Leia holding the yoke?” he said. “No way! I’m a better teacher than that.”
“Don’t … brag!” Leia spoke through clenched teeth. “You’ll jinx us.”
She flipped the Falcon on her side and continued in the only direction she could, straight between the two halves of the Nova’s broken spine. The gap vanished behind a cloud of frozen atmosphere. Dark blurs began to flash past too quickly to identify, and the impact alarm sounded continuously as they plowed their way through the flotsam.
“I certainly hope the particle shields don’t fail us now,” C-3PO said, clanking to his knees. “One of those frozen bodies could cause a catastrophic hull breach!”
They emerged from the vapor cloud into a pocket of relative calm behind two wrecked Battle Dragons. The main part of the fleet was barely visible ahead, a field of blue efflux circles exchanging dashes of color with an enemy fleet too distant to spot visually.
Han let out a sigh of relief. “You see? Nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about?” Morwan released her chair arms and turned to Han with a half-accusatory glare. “We were ambushed! The Royal Navy was waiting for us.”
Han met her gaze with his best sabacc face. “Yeah, it’s almost like they knew the reversion coordinates. Wonder how that happened?”
Morwan’s eyes narrowed. “So do I, Captain Solo.”
They passed the wrecked Battle Dragons, and the Falcon’s canopy darkened against fresh blossoms of nearby turbolaser strikes.
“I hate to interrupt,” Leia said with her usual perfect timing. “But I need that tactical display back up. Even Jedi can’t see through this much battle fire.”
The suspicion in Morwan’s eyes changed to fear, and her attention returned to the sensor panel. “I’ve been trying. All I get is one long burst of screen snow.”
“It’s all this turbolaser fire,” C-3PO said from behind her. “You need to bring up the filters.”
“Filters?” Morwan sounded confused. “How do I do that?”
“You call yourself a pilot?” Han grumbled. “How did you ever find Telkur Station?”
“I was flying a Batag Skiff,” Morwan answered, as though the name explained everything. “The sensors have automatic filters.”
“Automatic filters?” Han shook his head. “What will they put in spacecraft next? Heated seats and cockpit caf dispensers?”
He unbuckled and stepped into the gap between the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, then leaned in front of Morwan to activate the electromagnetic discharge filters. “They’re on glide-switches, starting with radio waves and going all the way up to gamma rays.”
As Han explained this, he pushed the glides up, reducing the amount of static. Gradually, a clear image appeared on the tactical display. The usurper fleet was in even worse shape than he had imagined, with large gaps in the assault formation and a quarter of the Hapan Royal Navy pouring fire into the Kendall.
“Looks like you lucked out staying with us,” Han said, removing his hand from the filter glides. “AlGray’s flagship is taking quite a pounding.”
“Yes.” Morwan caught Han’s arm and held him in front of her. “I think we both know why that is.”
Something small jabbed Han in the side, and he looked down to find a small hold-out blaster pressed to his ribs.
“You think I had something to do with it?” The anger in Han’s voice was genuine—and mostly with himself for letting Morwan get the drop on him. “Of all the ungrateful she-Hutts—”
“Save it, Solo!” Morwan ordered. “You really don’t want to heat my jets more than you have. I’m already furious with myself for not seeing through you two from the start.”
“Seeing through us how?” Leia asked. The Falcon decelerated and banked as she turned away from the battle. “And I’d be very careful with that blaster. I’ve been known to lose my temper with people who shoot my husband.”
“And you really don’t want to see Leia lose her temper,” Han said, doing his best to keep his body in front of Morwan’s face. As soon as Leia had said shoot, C-3PO had started to creep toward the back of the flight deck, probably intending to sneak down the access corridor to fetch Cakhmaim and Meewalh. “Ever since she became a Jedi, when she gets mad, things just start flying at you from all directions.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem, Captain Solo. Your fate rests entirely in the Princess’s hands.” Morwan was speaking from under Han’s arm, since she continued to hold him in front of her. “I won’t blast you if she turns back toward the battle.”
Leia continued to bank away. “What for?”
“Because she doesn’t want it to look suspicious when we send Tenel Ka another message,” Han said, glancing down at the tactical display. Protected by their powerful shields and multilayered hulls, two Corellian Dreadnaughts were continuing to press the attack, with what remained of the usurper fleet close behind. “She wants to tell Tenel Ka to tighten up and hold her position.”
Leia was quiet for a moment, probably studying her own display, and the anger that Han had felt over being taken hostage began to give way to other emotions. Knowing that Leia would be sensing the change through the Force, he only hoped she realized that the fear he was feeling was only for Tenel Ka. The last thing he wanted was for Leia to think a little thing like having a blaster stuck in his ribs was starting to bother him.
After a moment, Leia asked Han, “You think the Dreadnaughts can actually break through?”
Han nodded. “That’s what they were designed for—to penetrate an enemy fleet and tear it apart from the inside. And if that strategy works—”
“—they’ll go after Tenel Ka,” Leia finished. “And it won’t matter whether they win the ship-to-ship melee that follows. If they kill Tenel Ka, the monarchy will be shattered.”
“And the Heritage Council will still be in position to put the Consortium back together again,” Morwan said. “Very astute, Princess.”
C-3PO reached the back of the flight deck and began to clank down the access corridor.
Morwan didn’t even turn
to look. “It sounds as though we’re running out of time, Princess. Will you turn back now … or do I blast your man?”
“Hmmm,” Leia said. “That’s a tough decision. On one hand, I would inherit this old transport—”
“That’s classic transport,” Han corrected. “The YT-Thirteen-hundred is one of the most valuable—”
“Stop stalling,” Morwan ordered. “Turn back now, or I pull the trigger.”
Leia sighed, and the Falcon’s nose started to drift back toward the battle.
“Leia!” Han’s fear had turned to embarrassment; could she really believe he would want her to risk Tenel Ka’s life to save him? “The traitors have a spy!”
“It’s okay, Han,” Leia said. “I have a feeling it won’t matter.”
“Of course it’ll matter!” Han objected. “They’ll know what ship Tenel Ka is—”
“That’s enough, Captain Solo.” Morwan jammed the blaster harder into his ribs. “With a Jedi and two Noghri aboard, I don’t expect to survive this anyway. On my way out, I won’t hesitate to rid the galaxy of one more Alliance braintick.”
“Alliance braintick?” Han pushed his wounded arm forward in the sling. “There’s no call for insults!”
He clamped his hand over Morwan’s hold-out blaster. As he pushed the tiny weapon away from his body, she squeezed the trigger, sending a flurry of bolts burning across his palm and ricocheting off the control board.
“Han, no!” Leia screamed.
But Han was already slamming the elbow of his good arm into Morwan’s nose. He felt cartilage crumble and heard her scream, but the blaster bolts continued to come. He brought his elbow back again.
Morwan released the hold-out blaster and reached up to protect her nose. Han stepped away, moving the weapon to his good hand—and letting out a roar of pain as he finally realized just how much his scorched palm hurt.
“Han!” Leia reached out and gently pushed Han back so the lightsaber in her hand would have a clear path to Morwan’s head. “What are you doing?”
“Taking my ship back.” Han pointed the weapon at Morwan, who was now holding her face in both hands, bleeding between her fingers and groaning in pain. “What do you think?”
