by Troy Denning
Chapter 7
The black drop of a battered CEC YT-1300 light freighter swung into view outside the viewport, the efflux from its dilapidated ion drives flickering uncertainly against the dazzle of Coruscant’s night side. Though hardly the steady blue blast of his own ship’s overpowered sublight engines, Han doubted the wavering would give them away. The Falcon’s temperamental nature was too well known—and the possibility that she had taken battle damage on the journey home too high—for the contrast to draw more than a passing curiosity about what was wrong this time.
The cannon turrets were another story. Fabricated on the Cinnabar Moon from a pair of abandoned escape pods, they were not going to fool anyone who took a good look—especially if that person expected the support posts serving as cannon barrels to swivel around and start firing.
Han looked toward the front of the Jolly Man’s spacious crew deck, where Izal Waz sat at a communications station using a slave unit to fly the Sureshot onto Coruscant. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“You suddenly think of a better way to spring their trap?” the Arcona asked.
Han shook his head. “There isn’t one.”
“Then stop asking.” Izal kept his attention focused on the systems display ahead of him, relying on computer keys and a pressure pad to control his battered ship. “She’s a piece of Jawa bait anyway.”
The faint scent of ammonia permeated the air, and one of the milky bubbles that served Arcona as tears appeared in the corner of Izal’s eye. Leia, magnoclamped to the deck next to Han’s seat, cocked a brow and thumbed her fingers as though activating a credit chip. Han shook his head no. A wreck like the Sureshot wasn’t worth much, but there were some things no amount of money could replace.
“Thanks, Izal,” Han said. “If you ever need anything from us, let us know.”
“You’re doing it,” Izal said. “Just stop this Shesh woman and her Appeasement Vote.”
A pair of Rendili light cruisers—on-station in Coruscant’s innermost patrol perimeter—drifted past the viewport, then the Jolly Man entered a controlled-access area and had to slow as inbound vessels were herded into narrow approach bands. Above and below these bands, dozens of New Republic frigates were lacing the darkness with rocket fire as they set a shell of orbiting space mines.
As the traffic flow coagulated, Han and the three Barabels—crouched on the edges of their seats rasping in awe at Coruscant’s scintillating brightness—kept a close watch. If Shesh’s assassins were going to take the bait, this would be the logical place to stage an accident, but the Sureshot—flying under the Falcon alias Shadow Bird—passed through the mine shell unmolested. A few minutes later, crescents of sunlight started to reflect off the bottoms of orbital gun platforms. The traffic began to disperse as vessels fanned out toward their docking facilities.
The Sureshot and Jolly Man descended into low orbit. The Sureshot began to drift across Han’s viewport as it turned toward the Eastport Docking Facility, where the Solos kept a berth under an assumed name.
Finally, a collision alarm sounded from Izal Waz’s slave controls.
“Izal?” Han asked. He kept his gaze fixed out the viewport, but could see nothing moving toward the Sureshot. “I don’t see anything.”
“Something small.” Izal punched a button to activate the Sureshot’s distress alarm, and the electronic tones of an all-channels emergency beacon drifted down from the bridge speakers. “I think it came from—”
The Sureshot became an orange ball, hurling oddly shaped silhouettes and still-glowing drive nacelles in all directions. Even the Barabels gasped, and the comm channels erupted into inquiries and exclamations. Han turned toward Izal Waz and found the Arcona pushed back from his station, wiping the bubbles from his eyes.
“A rescue ship,” Izal said. “It came underneath and ejected something.”
A wedge of broken sensor dish glanced off the particle shields outside Han’s viewport, drawing an involuntary recoil—and a chorus of sissing from the Barabels.
“Very funny,” Han said. “I’ll bet you guys wouldn’t flinch in a meteor storm.”
More debris began bouncing off the Jolly Man’s shields, and the freighter started to slow. The captain patched a comm channel through the intercom.
“. . . mine spill,” an official voice was saying. “Cut speed to dead stop, and we’ll tractor you out. Repeat, dead stop.”
“In a Sarlacc’s eye,” Leia scoffed. She turned to Han. “Could they have seen through our decoy?”
Han shook his head. “The mine would’ve hit us,” he said. “They’re just trying to figure the Jolly Man. They might have been watching for a while, or maybe they picked up some of Izal’s signal traffic.”
“What do you think?” the Jolly Man’s captain asked over the intercom. “Should I call in our backup?”
“No, we don’t want Viqi to know her assassins failed.” Leia looked over at Han, then added, “We can still pull this off.”
Han raised his brow, then rose and, waving Leia toward the back of the ship, told the captain, “Just keep your launching bay in the Jolly’s sensor shadow.”
The Barabels’ slit pupils widened to diamonds, and Izal Waz gasped, “You two are getting out here?”
In the Jolly Man’s makeshift docking bay, the freighter’s normal complement of primitive starfighters had been replaced by two dozen twin-pod cloud cars. Long ago converted for civilian tours on the Cinnabar Moon, they were a cargo far less likely to draw unwanted attention from Coruscant customs. Han opened the canopy of the vehicle he would fly. The backseat had already been removed, so Tesar used the Force to deposit Leia—chair and all—in the passenger compartment facing aft.
C-3PO came clunking into the hold. “Captain Solo, Mistress Leia, wait! You’re forgetting me!”
“Sorry, Threepio,” Leia said. “You’ll have to stay with Izal and the Barabels until they can send you home.”
“Stay?” C-3PO regarded the Barabels for a moment, then asked, “Are you quite sure there’s no room?”
“You’re a little large for the trunk,” Han said.
He floated the cloud car out into the launching bay and shut down all non-life-support systems to lower their sensor profile. Then, with Izal and the Barabels waving good-bye through the observation port, he and Leia watched nervously as the outer hatch opened.
The cloud car lurched sharply as one of the Jedi used the Force to launch it from the bay. There was just enough time to be overwhelmed by the immensity of space compared to the tiny cockpit—and to wonder how much more vast the darkness must have seemed to Jaina when she went EV at Kalarba—before one of the Barabels reached out again. The cloud car began to tumble like an ordinary piece of space flotsam.
“Oh—nice touch,” Leia said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Fighting to keep his gaze fixed on the Jolly Man—and his own stomach down—Han alternated between trying not to watch Coruscant’s sparkling surface slide by and trying not to notice the stars swirling past in ever-widening spirals. Tails of ion efflux appeared and disappeared at random. Once, the tiny halo of an approaching vessel swelled into the backlit silhouette of a New Republic frigate. It vanished beneath the floor of the spinning cloud car and reappeared an instant later, less than a kilometer overhead and veering sharply away.
At last, the Jolly Man’s blocky silhouette disappeared over Coruscant’s horizon. Han waited a few more minutes, then fired the attitude thrusters to stabilize their tumble. Shaken by their close call with the frigate—and all too aware that being bounced off a particle shield would demolish their little craft—he activated the transponder next, and then the navigation systems.
It was at about that time Leia asked, “Why do I doubt those rescue launches are coming to help?”
Not waiting for the traffic display to come on-line, Han pushed their nose down and fired the cloud car’s little ion drive. They streaked out of orbit like a meteor and began to buck and burn in the thickeni
ng atmosphere. Finally, he had time to glance at the jiggling screen. A pair of rescue launch symbols sat almost atop their own. Farther away, the Jolly Man was turning away from Coruscant, a quartet of Cinnabar Moon cloud cars rushing back to its launching bay. Behind them tumbled the blinking codes of nearly a dozen damaged rescue launches. The rescue ship itself was nowhere to be seen.
Han opened a private channel to the Jolly Man. “You guys okay back there?”
“Of course,” sissed a Barabel—Han thought it was Bela. “But one of those spilled mines changed course and struck the rescue ship, and the debris field has been very hard on her launchez. Only two escaped.”
“No need to worry about those,” Leia said. “We have them in sight. Have a safe journey home.”
“We will,” Izal Waz said. “We’re clear of danger now. May the . . . well, you know.”
“We do, and the same to you,” Leia said. “Thank you again, and send C-3PO back when you get a chance.”
Han continued to accelerate until the hull temperature warning light came on—then went faster. The first towers appeared far below, their spires jutting through the clouds like spikes through a bed. The rescue launches began to drift back. Han thought they might be losing nerve—until they brought their tractor beams on-line. He began to juke and jink like a fighter pilot.
The voice of a startled approach-control officer came over the comm speaker. “Cinnabar Moon cloud car five-three, what is the nature of your damage?”
“Damage?” Han said.
“From the mine spill,” Leia whispered over the seat. “He thinks we were hit.”
“Uh, no damage,” Han commed. “We’re fine.”
“Then slow down!”
Han checked the traffic display. “Negative, Control.”
There was a puzzled silence, then a disbelieving supervisor growled, “Negative?”
“This is an emergency,” Han said. “My wife is, uh, having a baby.”
“Whaaaaat?” Leia managed to modulate her startled outburst into something resembling a scream. “It’s coming!”
“We can confirm that.” The voice was so gravelly it might have been human or Aqualish. “We been escortin’ ’em.”
“Very well, cloud car,” the supervisor said. “We’ll clear a direct lane to Lamoramora Medcenter. Please follow the beacon on your traffic display . . . and slow down. You have the time to arrive in one piece.”
“Like you’d know!” Leia snapped, playing her role. “Ronto brain!”
A deep chuckle came over the channel. A winking safety beacon flashed past as they reached the towertops and dived into the clouds. Han shifted to instrument-flying and found himself plummeting through a canyon of display lines. A blue bar illuminated the route to Lamoramora, but the hoverlane was too narrow for maneuvering. Han swung into a broader skylane and circled an ancient cylindrical tower he could see only on his screen.
“Not going to lose them that way,” Leia reported. “If I can see them, they can see us.”
“You can see them in this?” Han did not dare glance up from his instruments, but he suspected he could not have seen five meters beyond the cloud car’s nose. “How close are they?”
“Close.” Leia’s voice assumed the eerie calm that meant things were really bad. “Close enough to—”
Lines of blaster bolts started to flash past.
Control’s angry voice squawked over the comm channel. Han slapped the unit off, then dropped out of the clouds through a crowded hoverlane, tipped the cloud car on its side, and ducked around a corner into oncoming traffic. Hovercars went everywhere. Han picked his way up to an emergency access level.
“Are the launches still back—”
The crackle of melting canopy told him they were.
“You all right?”
“Define all right.” Leia had to yell to make herself heard over the rush of air. “I’m staring down the barrels of two blaster rifles, and I’ve got nothing but spit to fight back with.”
Han dived for the dark underlevels, buying enough time to pull his blaster. He pushed it over the seat into Leia’s hands, then the launches were on them again. Another bolt hit the canopy. The plasteel shattered. The wind filled Han’s eyes with tears, and his blaster began to screech.
“Han, do something.” That calm voice again.
“Can’t see!”
Han squinted and thought he saw a bridge below. No, a roof! He leveled off and shot along a few meters above its surface, weaving through exhaust stacks and intake vents, then the roof dropped away and the cloud car was over a black abyss again.
Something pinged in the rear of the vehicle.
“Smoke!”
“Good,” he said. “Maybe it’ll blind ’em.”
Han widened his eyes and saw a pair of dark bars ahead. Two bridges, stacked. He’d have to shoot through a hoverlane, but not a congested one. Wherever they were, this part of the city was not exactly prosperous.
The cloud car chugged. Han thought at first a tractor beam had snagged them, but the whine of the little ion engine began to fall in pitch, not rise. The dark bars ahead started to assume shape and depth. Half a kilometer away, maybe, with about the same distance separating them vertically.
“Leia, activate your chair’s repulsors,” Han said. “And be ready to shut off the magnoclamp.”
She saw what he was thinking. “Han, if you think I’m leaving this car without—”
“You’re not going anywhere without me.”
The cloud car chugged and lost speed, and a blaster bolt shattered the main display. No need for that anyway. There were figures on the lower bridge, watching the battle race toward them. Han angled for the far support girder, and the figures ran for cover. The bridge swelled. Another blaster bolt melted the small comm unit.
They passed under the bridge, and Han stopped weaving. The cloud car chugged again—this time caught in a rescue launches’ tractor beam. Han pulled back on the stick, and the cloud car went into a steep climb, passing beneath the far support girder so closely he had to duck—and yell for Leia to do the same.
The launch could not cut its tractor beam in time. It hit the girder and disintegrated, freeing the cloud car to continue skyward. Leia poured blasterfire down into the smoke.
Han spun the car around and saw a two-person rescue launch shoot out of the fumes beneath them, a line of blaster holes burned along the roof of its casualty compartment. The pilot took it into an inside loop, and two snarling Aqualish glared out the ceiling of their blaster-scorched canopy. Leia and the passenger exchanged fire, but at that range even rifle bolts dissipated harmlessly.
The rescue launch leveled off and approached inverted. Han kept waiting for it to roll upright, but the pilot was too good to maneuver into a blind spot. The passenger continued to fire. Instead of wasting precious thrust maneuvering, Han spun the top of the cloud car away from the launch and continued to climb. The upper bridge wasn’t far, maybe a hundred meters.
Blaster bolts hammered the bottom of the hull. One burned through, then another.
“Han?” Leia asked. “You do know I can’t fire back?”
“I know.”
The enemy blasterfire stopped, then the rescue launch roared past just meters above and abruptly dived to avoid the high bridge.
Han eased off the throttle. “Ready to get off this tub?”
“Never been readier to get off anything,” Leia said. “Since Jabba’s sail barge, anyway.”
The cloud car chugged . . . rose level with the bridge . . . chugged again . . .
Han swung the nose over the edge and leveled off.
The cloud car chugged in relief and shot onto the bridge.
“Now!”
Han unbuckled his crash webbing and twisted around to clasp Leia’s arm, then allowed her to pull him free as the repulsor chair rose out of the passenger compartment. The cloud car slid out from beneath them and continued out over the hoverlane. They had barely touched down—Leia settling gen
tly onto her chair’s repulsors and Han falling gracelessly to his side—before the rescue launch came up and stitched a fresh line of blaster holes in the cloud car’s bottom. The battered vehicle dropped its nose and began a smoky descent, the launch close behind, pouring blaster bolts into its ion drives.
Han rose and, seeing that Leia was all right, looked along the bridge in both directions. If there was anyone around, they were staying out of sight.
“So,” he asked, “any idea where we’re at?”
Leia shook her head. “Not really, but I think Lamoramora is over by the Troglodyte Park.”
“Great—the wrong side of the world,” Han said. “It’ll take us all day to get back.”
A distant explosion rumbled up from the depths of the hoverlane. Han glanced briefly toward the sound, then took Leia’s hand and started toward the nearest building.
Leia jerked him back. “Not so fast, flyboy,” she said, smiling. “You’re the one who got us lost in the first place. I’ll find the way home.”
Chapter 8
The Senate Inquiry Room door slid aside to reveal a solid wall of newsvid light. By the squall of hushed voices, Leia could sense that the chamber was packed beyond capacity. But it was not until her eyes grew accustomed to the novalike glare that she began to see the faces behind the whispers. The room was crammed horn-to-eyestalk with the media of a thousand different worlds, all murmuring quietly into their microphones as they reported that Leia Organa Solo, for some reason still dressed in a travel-worn flight suit, had arrived at the Corruption Panel’s meeting exactly on time.
Han leaned close to Leia’s ear. “Looks like we win already,” he whispered. “Even if the charges won’t stick, Viqi will be too busy ducking holocrews to line up support for the vote.”
Leia started to remind him to be careful of the microphones, then caught herself and simply nodded. Even if he had never cared for it, Han was as experienced at this game as she was.
“What I want to know is how you’re going to get to the accuser’s table,” Jaina whispered. All Leia’s children were there, along with Luke, several more Jedi, and Leia’s new Noghri bodyguards. “We’ll have to float you!”
