Gyndine’s sun came into view, no longer eclipsed by the planet, and the cockpit viewports polarized dramatically, making vision useless. Sensors showed the main cluster of the planet’s orbital shipyards—far less numerous than those of Kuat or Corellia, but well respected—at a lower orbit.
They were passing directly above those shipyards when the enemy task force appeared.
The Falcon’s threat sensors howled as a tremendous mass appeared directly in her flight path. Han hauled back on the yoke, a hard maneuver that pressed him and his crew deep into their seats, and cringed as he heard something scrape on the Falcon’s underside.
“Shields, we grazed her shields,” Leia muttered.
Their new course wasn’t much better. The Falcon flashed through a squadron of starfighters, at right angles to their course, too fast for Han to have anything but a vague impression of them.
“Shields up,” Han shouted. “What the brix is going on?”
Leia remained cool. “Sensors say it’s a Bothan Assault Cruiser and six squadrons of Howlrunners.”
And the squadron Han had flown through was turning in the Falcon’s wake. The capital ship gunners, doubtless caught unawares by the proximity of the Falcon when they arrived, now begin firing turbolaser batteries. Han sent the Falcon into a dizzying spiral of evasive maneuvering. “Sweetheart, Lando, I hate to ask—”
Leia unbuckled. “Yes, we’ll go shoot down the bad furry people for you.” Then she and Lando were gone.
The first shots from the pursuing Howlrunners battered at his rear shields, and Han growled. He’d had a beautifully restored, intact Millennium Falcon in his hands for ten minutes before someone was trying to shoot her to pieces again. “Threepio!” he shouted. “Get up here, operate the sensors and comm board.”
“Yes, Captain Solo.” The protocol droid, rocking wildly back and forth as Han’s maneuvers nearly took him from his feet, managed to slide into the seat Leia had vacated. Very prudently he strapped himself in. “If I may ask, sir—”
“Don’t.” Han rolled ninety degrees to starboard and arced around to a course straight out from the planet. Laserfire from the pursuers bracketed the Falcon, missing by meters. But now he could hear the Falcon’s own turbo-lasers firing.
“—what’s happening, sir?”
“Bothans have sent a task force to destroy or capture the shipyards here,” Han said. “They must have jumped straight at Gyndine and let the planet’s gravity well yank them out of hyperspace. That’s why they appeared so close.”
“Your pursuers are ten in number—no, nine. Someone appears to have scored a hit, and one of them is heading in a different direction.”
Distantly, Han could hear Lando’s shout of “Nice shooting!” He grinned. That was his lady, always blowing up people who intended to cause him grief.
“And,” C-3PO added, “you’re getting a message.”
“From the Bothan ship. Demanding surrender.”
“Well … no, actually. It’s from a Captain Ural Lavint.”
Han grimaced. Jacen had, through circuitous means—via Winter Celchu, via Iella Antilles, all because he no longer had any direct communication access to his parents—recently sent word that this Lavint wanted to get in touch. Han had heard of her, a crusty old smuggler from the Corporate Sector, but had never met her. “Tell her I can’t talk now.”
“Oh, it’s not live. It’s recorded. I’m saving it both to the Falcon’s computer and to my own memory. I believe in redundancy.”
“You don’t say.” Something belatedly occurred to Han. “Communicate with the personnel on the repair station and tell them to get out, to jump in the closest escape pod and get down to the planet’s surface.”
“Oh, I already did that, sir. Master Lando communicated those instructions to me through ship’s intercom. By the way, you are down to seven pursuers. If I calculate it correctly, that’s one damaged, two destroyed.”
Han sent the Falcon into another series of jinking, juking moves. The hammering his rear shields was taking lessened, but he could see the protocol droid’s head whipping back and forth on his metal neck.
“Sir, Master Lando requests a little more stability.”
“Does he?”
“Well, that’s what I interpret from the rather florid language he’s employing. Six pursuers. Two damaged, two destroyed. I—I say! The rest are breaking off!”
Han glanced over at the sensor screen. C-3PO was right: the remaining half squadron of Howlrunners was disengaging, turning back toward the planet. “We’re not their mission,” he said. “But we ran when they appeared, and like neks, they chased us. Until their commander figured out we were a waste of time.” He leveled off. “Leia! Come plot me a course. Let’s get out of this system.”
Leia’s voice was artificially sweet. “Shall I bring you a bottle of ale, too? Maybe your slippers?”
Han grimaced. “Didn’t mean it like that.”
While they were in hyperspace, Han reviewed the message Lavint had sent him, then he put it on one of the large displays for everyone to see.
It seemed to have been recorded by the cheapest variety of pocket holocam. The image of the woman’s leathery face, when stretched to fill the large display, was heavily pixilated. “Greetings,” she said. “I’m sending you this message to do you a big favor and hope you’ll do me one in return.”
“Smuggler economics,” Leia whispered.
“I’m on the Errant Venture under my own name. There’s someone else here, too. A Twi’lek by the name of Alema Rar.”
Han glanced at Leia. Her face set into hard lines.
“I think she has plans for you, and I don’t think they’re nice ones. So I’m sending you this message. I’m betting that she’ll kill me, too, when I’m of no more use to her. So I’m hoping you’ll do her first. She says she’s a Jedi, otherwise I’d try myself … but in my experience, it doesn’t pay to try to knock off a Jedi.
“And I have a favor to ask. There are rumors that there’s an important meeting planned of Confederation bigwigs. For personal reasons, I really need to get somebody there. I don’t know what your affiliations are, and I don’t care, but I don’t plan to do anything to disrupt the meeting.
“You’re one of the best-connected people in the galaxy. If you could let me know the where and when, I’d appreciate it.
“Please erase this message once you’ve reviewed it. A bunch of people would kill me if they knew I’d sent it.”
The message ended, fading to black.
“Huh,” Han said. He glanced at Leia. “What do you think?”
“Hard to tell with a low-resolution message,” Leia said. “I’d need to speak to her in person to get a real sense of whether she’s telling the truth. But her story makes sense. That would explain the presence I felt aboard Errant Venture. After our last talk with Luke, I’ve been wondering if it might have been Alema, or Lumiya.”
Han nodded. “Let’s go back to the Errant Venture.”
Lando sounded hurt. “You’re not asking my opinion?”
Han sighed. “Lando, should we go back to the galaxy’s largest mobile gambling and shopping enterprise?”
“What kind of stupid question is that?”
chapter eighteen
ZIOST
Ben dreamed of red eyes springing across the fire he had built, and the dream was so powerful, so immediate, that he woke up out of it in midkick.
His foot connected with something muscular. His blow deflected it in the air, but Ben took enough of the force of the impact that he was rolled backward, away from his blanket.
Shaker was tweetling sounds of alarm. Ben could see the droid’s lights, dim glows where the fire was dying—nothing else. There was darkness all around. He grabbed his light-saber from his belt and activated it, casting a soft blue glow on his surroundings.
Kiara was still wrapped up in her blankets, just now coming awake, her eyes wide. Two meters beyond, between her and the nearest tree, a shape strugg
led back to its feet and whipped around to face Ben.
It was extremely broad in the chest, with four stubby legs that ended in three-toed feet. Its neck was protected by a bony plate or ridge that circled it like a collar, and its head was dominated by a long jaw filled with triangular, pointed teeth. It looked a lot like holos Ben had seen of neks, but there were no cybernetic enhancements to be seen, and this example was covered in short gray fur.
The fur did not make it look like a plush toy. It crouched and roared at Ben, a roar that echoed from several directions, outside the light cast by the lightsaber.
When it roared, Kiara turned involuntarily to look. The creature glanced over, and, instead of jumping for Ben, lunged at her.
Ben jolted forward, but his reflexes were dulled by sleep and exhaustion. He could not reach her in time.
Shaker’s protruding arc-welder arm touched the nek’s side. There was a flash of light and the beast howled. It twisted, biting Shaker, taking the droid’s extended arm off with a snap of its jaws.
And then Ben reached it. With a hard downward stroke of his lightsaber, he cut through the nek’s armor and into its neck. He only sliced halfway through, but that was enough to sever the spine. The beast collapsed, leaving others out there in the dark, close. He could hear them moving, hear their little growls and yips.
They were communicating.
Ben’s initial flush of anger began to fade and he started to think.
He reached out through the Force, looking for his enemies. He found them, six in all, circling. He sensed that they were waiting for a moment’s inattentiveness on his part, waiting for the lightsaber to go out. They understood that it could only bite them when they were close to him.
He offered them the Jacen Solo you’ve-underestimated-me grin. Left-handed, he drew Faskus’s blaster. Aiming through the Force, he fired.
There was a howl of pain out in the darkness, and he could both hear and detect through the Force the wounded nek bounding away.
He chose another target, not bothering even to look in that direction, and fired a second time. The result was the same: one animal wounded and fleeing.
The rest turned and faded away into the surrounding forest. Comparative silence fell on the camp; the only thing to be heard was the buzz of Ben’s lightsaber. Now the cold began to eat into him again, and he shivered.
“Are they gone?” Kiara asked.
Ben holstered the blaster, drew his glow rod from his pouch, and switched it on and the lightsaber off at the same moment. “Yeah. But we’re going to spend the rest of the night up in the tree, to be sure.” He looked at Shaker. The droid had withdrawn its arm stump and shut the cover plate over it; the rest of the arc-welder arm lay on the snow. “Sorry about that, little guy,” Ben said. “You did good.”
Shaker gave him a pleased-sounding trill.
Minutes later, once he and Kiara were nestled together up in the tree—high enough, he hoped, that these neks could not reach them—Ben had time to think again.
He wouldn’t have been so oblivious to the neks’ arrival, but he had been deep in sleep. He was getting more tired every day, and not sleeping as lightly as he used to, as lightly as a Jedi or an Alliance Guard needed to.
And he’d been dreaming.
In the dream, the voices that pressed close all around had finally learned his name. “Ben, Ben, Ben, Ben,” they had chanted, and it was so much harder to ignore his own name.
He couldn’t, in fact, and once they knew he was listening to them, they learned to say other things. “Protect girl,” they whispered. “Protect girl.”
That seemed so strange, that in this place famous among the Jedi for evil deeds, the ghostly voices would offer such a positive message. Was it because they cared?
Or because they knew he would listen to a message like that?
On that thought, he fell asleep again, and the voices returned.
“Ben … Ben …”
CORUSCANT SYSTEM
ERRANT VENTURE
This time there was a kind of electricity to the conversation, as if everyone involved knew they were steps closer to their goal. The interesting thing, Wedge noted, was that there were so many goals, but everyone was making progress.
“So Lando and I have been cashing in old favors,” Han was saying. “Sometimes very old. And it turns out Captain Lavint is right. There’s a major Confederation gathering being put together. And it’s not just to elect their warlord. News trickling out of that whole mess suggests they’re assembling a fleet at the election spot, and from there the new warlord will lead some sort of fleet action. But no one knows where or against what.”
“Shipyards.” Wedge and Jag said the word at the same time, and looked at each other.
“Kuat, Coruscant,” Wedge began.
“Sluis Van, Thyferra, any number of places. But shipyards,” Jag said.
Zekk frowned. “How do you know?”
Wedge had noticed that Zekk frowned just about every time Jag spoke, and Jag frowned just about every time Zekk spoke. “The pattern of the last several days’ worth of Confederation attacks and raids,” Wedge said. “Mostly against orbital shipbuilding facilities. Their clear strategy is to diminish the Alliance’s production and repair of warships. That way, despite the fact that the Confederation has fewer worlds than the Alliance by orders of magnitude, they’ll come closer to parity in shipbuilding resources.”
“Which sounds,” Jag interrupted, “as though they have a pretty clear military plan in place. I wonder why they need a supreme military commander if they’re already cooperating so well.”
“That cooperation won’t last without a commander they all agree on,” Leia said. “Now back to Alema?”
Wedge smiled. “Sorry.”
Jaina turned her tabletop display so everyone could see it. On it was the triangular plan of one entire Star Destroyer’s deck level. “We’ve added the last several days’ worth of Errant Venture security recordings to our sample, and Booster authorized the ship’s computers to give their analysis top priority. And gave us a more complete set of deck plans to compare them with. We can confirm a pattern of Alema’s movements.” She began tapping the screen, and each time she did so, a different level was displayed. “Here, for example. Casinos and shopping. Thin traces, widely spread. She was searching. And not finding anything.”
She tapped again. “A few casinos where she spent a lot of time. I don’t think she’s a gambler or attempting to build a new social life. Lavint shows up a lot in the holocam views during Alema’s presence, so it’s likely she’s keeping tabs on her partner.”
Another tap, and plans for small passenger staterooms came up. There was a bright spot in one area, suggesting frequent travel by Alema, and movement trails leading off from it in all directions. “Lavint’s compartment,” Jaina said. “No surprise there. But here’s one.”
She switched the view to a diagram of ship’s areas far away from the luxuries that the passengers enjoyed. “Just prior to the Bothan-Commenorian breaking of the Corellian blockade, she began venturing into the crew portions of the ship.”
Mirax, silent until now, sprang up and moved to stand directly in front of the monitor. “Bridge, technical centers … my father’s quarters. My quarters! She’s been in my room?”
In his best CorSec investigator voice, Corran asked, “Have you noticed anything suggesting that someone has been sampling your cosmetics, trying on your clothes?”
Mirax shot her husband an unamused look. “Other than you?”
“Ow.” Corran raised his hands. “I give up.”
“It’s not funny, Corran.” Mirax moved away from the display. She resumed her seat, clearly rattled.
Jaina caught Leia’s eye. “Mom, you may have saved Booster’s life by coming back when you did. When Alena stopped being able to sense you, she probably thought about getting to you through Dad, through the loose network of smugglers—and Booster’s an obvious target.”
“Well, let’s ma
ke sure she doesn’t get another crack at Booster,” Leia said. “Or at any of us. We’re going to hunt her down and eliminate her as a problem—the easy way, if she’ll cooperate, or the hard way if she won’t. And that means Jedi.”
Han gave her an incredulous look. “I’m not going to stay while you—”
She shot him a look suggesting that this wasn’t a matter for debate. “I think you’d better. Alema’s a Jedi who thinks like an assassin. How much training have you done against a combination like that?”
“I don’t need training, I have reflexes,” he blustered.
Wedge touched his arm. “Actually, you and I can do them a lot more good by monitoring everything on the security holocams. We can anticipate traps and ambushes, warn them about confederates Alema has that we don’t know about.”
“Well …” Then Han heard what Jag was saying to Jaina: “—need about five minutes to get some equipment from my X-wing.”
“Hey,” Han said. “If I’m not going, he’s not going.”
Jag turned his attention to Han. His reply was calm, reasonable of tone. “I’ve been preparing for this for years. And it’s my mission.”
“Jag’s right, Dad.” Jaina moved up to Han, then leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Please.”
Han uttered a little growl, then slumped, defeated.
Alema was thrilled. Only half an hour ago she had detected the Force presence—the one that said Leia was probably aboard again.
“You were right,” she told Lavint. She donned her black hooded cloak and felt around with her one functioning hand to be sure that all her weapons and tools were readily available.
“I usually am,” Lavint said. She got up from the bed, moved to the compartment’s tiny closet, and selected a dress jacket that was all piratical purple synthsilk and big gold-toned buttons. “I think I’ll get some gambling in while you’re out killing people. Hey, the deal is still the deal, right? You set eyes on either of the Solos, and I’ve met the terms of our contract.”
“Of course,” Alema assured her.
The truth was more complex than that, naturally. If Alema set eyes on Han but failed to kill him, she might choose to kill Lavint to ensure that the captain would not be captured by the Solos. Lavint knew too much about Alema’s movements. But if Han died, what Lavint knew would not be as critical, so she might let the captain live under those circumstances.
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