The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  The two braggarts weren’t especially well liked among the below-the-law folk Han and Chewie used to call friends, and Han had never had any use for the pair, particularly for Moss.

  What good fortune for Lando, then, that these two happened at that time to be the leaders on his dual-run scoreboard.

  “You won’t even fit in a TIE bomber,” Han remarked to the Wookiee. “Your legs’d stick out the bottom and we’d be kicking asteroids all over the place.”

  Chewie brought his fists up beside his head, mimicking the large ears of a Sullustan, and put a stupid look on his face. Then he roared emphatically, reminding Han that Moss and Twingo would never let the two of them live down their cowardice. Both of the braggarts would use the news that Han and Chewie refused to try for the record as proof that the pair recognized and acknowledged Moss and Twingo’s superior flying skills.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Han admitted. He looked around at the others, to see them all staring at him, all smiling. “What?” he asked innocently.

  Those smiles were even wider when Lando’s crew worked to squeeze Han and the giant Chewie into the twin shock couches of a TIE bomber. One unfortunate attendant twisted Chewie’s leg the wrong way, and the Wookiee responded with a backhand slap—not a hard one, just enough to send the man tumbling a few meters. The crew finally managed to get the two into place; Chewie looked somewhat ridiculous, with his legs bent at such an angle that his knobby, hairy knees were nearly as high as his chin.

  “Ready away?” came the call.

  “How are we supposed to fly like this?” Han protested, looking doubtfully at Chewie.

  The Wookiee howled.

  “Well, you don’t look fine!” Han retorted.

  “It won’t matter,” Lando replied. “You won’t get near to Moss and Twingo’s mark of four forty-one anyway.”

  Chewie roared.

  “Ready away!” Han cried.

  “Always appeal to his pride,” Lando whispered to Leia and the others with a wink, and as soon as Han and Chewie blasted out of the dock, they all headed back to the control room to watch the show. The three kids traded predictions on the way, agreeing that their father and Chewie would blast the previous record apart, but also coming to the conclusion that there was only so far the pair could go, for they weren’t possessed of the needed sensitivity to the Force. In Jaina’s eyes, they were practically flying blind, she explained, recounting the Force-given insight she had used to defeat the apparent wall of flying stone.

  Both Jacen and Anakin, though they differed in their beliefs concerning priorities for the Force, agreed with Jaina’s assessment.

  Luke listened to it all with some amusement. None of them had come to truly understand the power and the limitations of the Force, and none of them, it seemed to him, truly understood the cleverness of their father. Luke would never underestimate the Force, but neither would he underestimate Han Solo.

  Also, Luke knew that Han and Chewie had more than a little experience in navigating asteroid belts.

  By the time the group arrived at the control room, the viewscreens wrapping all about them, Han and Chewie had put the TIE bomber through some practice maneuvers and were in position to enter the belt.

  The controllers on Belt-Runner I called to the pair that their shields were up in full, and gave them the go-ahead.

  “Great,” Han responded dryly, drawing laughs from everyone in the control room.

  The secondary, rectangular viewscreen zoomed in for a close-up of the TIE bomber as it slipped into the flow of the asteroid belt, a speck of light in the darkness, cruising effortlessly, it seemed, around the nearest obstacles, then navigating one cluster of spinning stones so seamlessly that it seemed like a ghost, ignoring the material.

  “Beautiful,” Jacen remarked.

  Han wasn’t exactly seeing things that way. In fact, from the moment he and Chewie had zipped into the asteroid belt, he had been letting out one long, terrified scream. What seemed from the ground to be a well-plotted, carefully calculated course of least resistance was, in fact, nothing more than a series of desperate reactions, and one lucky blow. For as the TIE bomber swerved on end around one asteroid, Chewie, elbows up high, slipped to the side and bopped Han off the side of the head.

  Han was about to send the craft into a vertical stoop, a maneuver that would have slammed them headlong into another asteroid, one he hadn’t noted, but the impact of Chewie’s elbow knocked him away from the controls, and the TIE bomber continued its present course, somehow slipping between two asteroids that both Han and Chewie, and the observers on the ground, had assumed were too close together.

  The maneuver appeared brilliant.

  “Hairball!” Han yelled at Chewie.

  The Wookiee turned so that his face was barely a centimeter from Han’s and let out a howl. Then both looked back to the forward screen, saw an asteroid about to pancake them, and both let out a howl, throwing up their arms instinctively to cover their faces.

  When they did, Chewie’s too-high knee kicked the stick to the side, and the TIE bomber flipped into a sidelong roll and avoided the asteroid.

  It appeared brilliant, at least.

  Lando’s voice came over the speaker. “You two got the kids standing here with their mouths hanging open.”

  Han clicked on his comm. “No problem,” he said, and then he was fast to turn off the mike before he screamed, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” as a wall of asteroids rose up before them.

  Han pulled left, Chewie right, and the TIE bomber … did nothing. Each saw the other’s countering move, each reversed his angle, and the TIE bomber … did nothing.

  “Go left, you stinking hairball!” Han shouted desperately, and then he errantly pulled right on his own stick, and since Chewie was correctly following orders, the TIE bomber … did nothing.

  “Your left, not mine!” Han scolded, which was somewhat ridiculous considering that they were both facing the same way.

  Chewie reached over, wrapping Han’s hands and his stick with one big paw, and pulled both sticks together. The nimble TIE bomber rocketed off to the left, skimming across the facing of the huge wall. Han kicked the throttle up to full, and they barely slipped around the edge of the wall, then cut back to the right, into the flow once again—what should have been a simple maneuver made to look brilliant.

  Into the flow they zoomed, going way too fast. Lando’s voice crackled over the speaker, but they couldn’t begin to pay attention to it as they tried to get back under control. One huge, spinning rock fast approached, and the two pilots, now finally in sync, dipped their nose below it, reversed throttle, and executed a perfect loop, barely skimming the asteroid’s surface and using its gravity to bring some resistance to their flight.

  They came out around the bottom at a much safer pace and fell into a smooth rhythm along a relatively clear stretch. Han glanced down at the timer, mostly to see if he and Chewie could get the heck out of there.

  It wasn’t running.

  “What?” he asked, and he gave the instrument a bang. Nothing.

  Now Han did click on his comm. “Chrono’s not running,” he called. “What do we got for a time?”

  His voice, somewhat breaking up, came over the speakers in the control room, and all glanced up at the wall chrono. Three minutes, thirty-three seconds, approaching a new record for two-seaters.

  “Three thirty-three—you’ve almost beat them,” Lando called, and he quickly added, “but all three of your kids are still way ahead of you,” just to incite the pair to keep on flying, to keep the show going.

  “What do we got for a time?” Han’s voice came again, breaking up even more.

  “He didn’t hear you,” Luke observed, and all the smiles and nods of appreciation for the so-far fine run faded fast, picking up on the cue of Lando’s suddenly grave expression. The technicians in the control pods bent low over their instruments, several opening channels to Belt-Runner I.

  “Three forty-seven,” Lando called loudly.


  “Time?” Han asked again, obviously not hearing a word.

  “Just a communication problem,” Lando assured the others.

  “More than that,” came a call from one of the controllers. “Belt-Runner I’s lost all signal.”

  “All signal?” Lando asked.

  “All,” the man confirmed.

  “What does it mean?” Leia asked, grabbing Lando’s elbow.

  “It means they’re deaf,” he answered soberly. “And it means that their shields are down.”

  All across the room, eyes opened wide in shock as the implications of that statement came clear. Luke left the control room at a run.

  In the TIE bomber, Han and Chewie were settled now, cruising easily around the relatively clear area of asteroids, confident that they were in no danger, and even beginning to understand how they might use their systems to their advantage.

  Had those systems been working.

  “Skip off that one,” Han instructed, pointing to a large and smooth-edged rock to the right. Then he brought his arm angling back to the left, predicting their flight course and pointing to the spot where they might slip through another approaching cluster.

  Chewie did as ordered, bringing the TIE bomber swooping toward the asteroid on the right, meaning to just skim it and use the shields like some constant repulsorlift coil.

  Skip they did, but by striking with their right solar array wing and no deflecting shields. The TIE bomber bounced away and into a spin, and the shocked Han and Chewie both looked out instinctively to see the damage: half the solar array torn away and the pylon bent.

  They grabbed at the sticks and fought for control, pumping the foot yokes frantically. In the jostling, one of Han’s belts popped open and he sprawled forward over his controls, launching the ship into a diagonal dive and roll.

  Chewie reacted quickly, slapping the kill switch to Han’s console, taking complete control of the craft, howling as Han yelled, working hard to correct the pitch.

  “No shields, Chewie! No shields!” Han shrieked.

  A lurking asteroid, a wall of stone, filled their viewport.

  “Down! Down! Down!” Lando yelled, watching the spectacle, and so the TIE bomber started, diving in front of the stone, and then …

  Nothing.

  “The signal’s gone!” one of the controllers yelled.

  “Belt-Runner I’s got nothing, either,” another added.

  The rectangular screen switched views suddenly, showing a TIE fighter soaring out from a pad at full throttle.

  “Find them,” Leia whispered under her breath, aiming the words and the prayer at her brother, Luke, the pilot of that soon-to-be-belt-running TIE fighter.

  They cruised easily through the blackness, the piecemeal squadron Kyp Durron had titled the Dozen-and-Two Avengers, a name the Jedi expected would be often repeated throughout the galaxy before much longer. All of them had flown Lando’s Folly several times in the modified TIE fighters, and all had done well, with several climbing onto the notable board. Even more important, through the extensive training the disciplined Kyp had forced upon them, they had learned to fly together, complementing each other’s movements, anticipating rather than reacting. They wouldn’t match up to the more notable starfighter squadrons, Kyp knew, like Rogue Squadron—not yet, but they were improving daily, and they were seeing more action than any of the others. Perhaps one day soon, the Dozen-and-Two would be spoken of in the same breathless manner as Rogue Squadron.

  That was Kyp’s hope.

  Of course, if the three Solos, or any one of them, particularly Jaina, decided to join, the equation would change dramatically. The offspring of Han and Leia would bring immediate recognition and attention to the Dozen-and-Two—a name, Kyp realized, he would have to alter. Would that be a good thing? Were the fourteen members of his squadron ready for the attention, ready for the spotlight? Such notoriety would aid them, no doubt, when battles were joined, for their enemies would likely be too afraid to properly coordinate their movements and attack, but also, with the glory would come greater enemies.

  Were they ready? Was Kyp ready?

  And what of the Avengers’ leadership? Kyp had to wonder. Jaina had surpassed him running the belt, and despite his bravado, Kyp understood just how soundly he had been beaten. He could fly the belt a hundred more times and never come near Jaina’s mark. The other pilots of the Dozen-and-Two knew that, too. So if Jaina and her brothers joined the group, who would lead? As it stood now, Kyp’s only real rival was Miko, the only other Jedi and easily the second-best pilot of the bunch. And Miko, a quiet and unassuming type, who spent most of his time practicing with his lightsaber or just sitting alone under the starry canopy, held no apparent aspirations of leadership; he was, in fact, serving time as Kyp’s apprentice, training under the more experienced Jedi.

  All of those thoughts accompanied Kyp into the darkness of space as he and his fellows departed Dubrillion. He wasn’t unsettled by the possibilities, though, but rather, contemplative, and in the end he simply decided that the gain would outweigh any of the potential troubles. If the three Solos joined the Avengers—the Dozen-and-Five, he supposed—the squadron would soon be thought of in elite terms, and their missions would become more important, more dangerous, and more profitable in terms of the gain to the cause of law and the New Republic. The Dozen-and-Five—a dozen regulars and five Jedi—could well become the greatest squadron in the galaxy.

  Of course, Kyp didn’t really believe that the Solos would join in, not all of them, at least. Luke Skywalker had been typically diplomatic and respectful when he had met with Kyp on Dubrillion, but he had also been somewhat stern and disapproving. Kyp wasn’t sure if Luke thought this smuggler hunting a duty that was beneath Jedi Knights, or if he simply objected to it on personal grounds—hadn’t Han Solo been among the most notorious of smugglers at one time?—but in either case, Kyp had come away from the meeting with the definite feeling that Luke was not in favor of his present activities.

  Yet neither had Luke demanded that those activities cease, and so Kyp led his squadron now to the Veragi sector, to a remote area bereft of star systems, an empty black space region except for an observation buoy Kyp and his friends had put in place at a hyperspace junction.

  Following the signal on a secret and little-used channel, Kyp guided the squadron to the buoy. Miko Reglia put the others in a defensive ring about Kyp’s XJ X-wing as Kyp docked with the buoy. His astromech droid, R5-L4—Kyp called him Elfour—quickly began downloading the information, passing it onto Kyp’s viewscreen, fast-forwarding through days and days of emptiness.

  Kyp sighed and relaxed back in his seat. Smugglers weren’t easy to find anywhere in the galaxy, and were particularly rare out here in this region of the Outer Rim—except, of course, for those who went to Lando’s planets for a little business and a little training. And Kyp couldn’t go after any group that was anywhere near Lando Calrissian’s operations, he knew, for the pragmatic profiteer would quickly exert his influence with people like Han and Luke to shut Kyp down.

  The only movement showing on the viewscreen in front of him was that of the stars for a long, long while, and Kyp settled back for an uneventful hour. He perked up briefly as R5-L4 slowed the sequence to normal, recording the appearance of one suspicious freighter as it hypered into the region, but then sighed again as he watched that ship revector and hyper away, with R5-L4’s computations showing that it was heading for Destrillion.

  And so it went, hour after hour, with the records of the buoy showing nothing remarkable other than a couple of asteroids in areas previously unknown and a few freighters and even a couple of smaller, personal ships, but so far out and moving too fast to even warrant an inspection. But then, nearing the end of the records, a ship did show up where one didn’t seem to belong, an outdated shuttle—Spacecaster class, according to R5-L4.

  “Backtrack its course, Elfour,” Kyp instructed. Its angle of approach into the buoy’s field of scan seemed out o
f place, certainly nothing coming from the inner Core.

  The word Belkadan flashed on the screen, along with its coordinates in the nearby Dalonbian sector.

  “Vitals?” Kyp asked, and even as the word left his mouth, the history and present disposition of Belkadan scrolled before him, including the details of ExGal-4.

  “Why would they be leaving?”

  A question mark appeared on the screen, R5-L4 apparently not understanding the rhetorical nature of the question.

  On Kyp’s instruction, R5-L4 focused on the buoy records that followed the path of the departing Spacecaster, calculating its jump all the way to the borders of the Helska system, where it disappeared from scanners.

  Then the droid went at the audio recordings, pieces of subspace chatter, mostly from Lando’s operation. On Kyp’s orders, the droid calculated the approximate departure time from Belkadan for the Spacecaster, then focused its inspection on that period and on those signals coming from the general direction of Belkadan.

  Only one of the few clear words decipherable from the less-than-perfect detection jumped out at Kyp: storm.

  Was Belkadan, and this station called ExGal-4, in trouble?

  Kyp felt the adrenaline beginning to course through his veins, that tingle of excitement that always so charged him before adventure. He had a choice to make, for Belkadan was a long way from the Helska system, but as soon as he gave it any real thought, the answer seemed obvious. Whatever might have happened on Belkadan, some of the scientists had apparently escaped, though why they would make their way to the remote Helska system and not back toward the Core, or even toward Lando’s operations or toward the not-so-distant Moddell sector, escaped him.

  “Give me all the details of the Helska system,” Kyp instructed his droid, and the scrolling began immediately and didn’t last long.

  There were no listed settlements in Helska, and no apparently inhabitable planets.

  “Why?” Kyp asked quietly.

  “Because you requested it,” scrolled the oblivious droid’s answer.

  Kyp frowned and slid the screen away. “We’re going to the Helska system,” he called out to Miko and the others. “Plot it out.”