by James Luceno
“Skips don’t perform well in gravity,” Han assured. “Have to rely on the antigrav capabilities of the dovin basals.”
As if they had heard him, the enemy pilots began firing at extreme range, molten-gold comets streaming from the projectile and plasma launchers in the bows of their small craft. Two of the missiles connected and, even though weakened by distance, were powerful enough to rock the larger ship. The Falcon’s sensor suite began screaming.
“Rear shields holding,” Droma reported while he activated countermeasures and distortion systems. “For now.”
Han took a steadying breath, vised his right hand on the throttle lever, and rammed it home. The light freighter surged into Sriluur’s upper atmosphere, trembling as it continued its oblique dive. With arrant scorn for the planet’s protective wrapping, the Yuuzhan Vong crafts plunged after.
“See what I told you?” Han exclaimed. “They stick like epoxy!”
The ship’s indicators railed in protest as the Falcon plummeted into denser air, rolling and corkscrewing to evade the deadly fire that sought her. All caution forgotten, Han sharpened the angle of descent, sloughing control in exchange for added speed.
“You’ve got the bridge!” he told Droma.
Droma threw him a panicked glance. “What?”
Unfastening the straps that secured him to the pilot’s chair, Han stood, spun on his heel, and started for the main ladderwell. He didn’t make it past the cockpit hatch when ship-rattling impacts aft threw him to the deck and forced him to rethink the idea of getting to one of the gun turrets.
“Enable autotracking for the quad lasers,” he said in a rush as he was scrambling to his feet. Buckling back into the chair, he donned a headset and began to call up targeting data on the weapons control display screen. “Let’s see if we can’t even up the odds.”
Droma reached for the joystick that controlled the Falcon’s belly gun while Han took hold of the controls for the dorsal gun. Data began scrolling across the respective screens. Han bracketed a coralskipper in the targeting reticle and squeezed the trigger on the control grip.
The enemy craft swallowed the bolt whole.
He pounded his fist on the console. “We’ve gotta give them more to worry about than laserfire!”
Abruptly he rolled the Falcon onto its back while Droma was still firing the belly gun. In an effort to keep up, the lead coralskipper drew deeply on the capabilities of its dovin basal and accelerated.
Again, Han brought the reticle over his target, but the coralskipper sped out of his sights in a flash.
He left the firing to Droma momentarily and peeled the ship away in a sweeping descending bank. Projectiles slammed against the rear shields, and plasma streaked between the ship’s mandibles. Han rerouted power to the forward deflector and again increased the angle of their descent.
They ripped through a filmy blanket of high-altitude clouds and went spiraling downward. Far below them ocean and desert lay side by side. Storm systems shrouded Sriluur’s western horizon, and to the north an expansive brown haze smudged the terrain.
Droma glanced at the meteorological sensors. “That’s a sandstorm!”
“How about that,” Han said. “Some wishes do come true.”
The words had barely left his mouth when the lead coralskipper dropped with mind-boggling velocity and was suddenly beneath the Falcon and firing up at her, plasma geysering from its gun emplacements.
Han pulled out of the spiral, yanked the throttle, and threw the ship up and over the coralskipper directly on his tail. A molten bolt from the craft below caught its squadron mate full on. The coralskipper shuddered as hunks of yorik coral flew in all directions. Then an interior explosion burst from the crystalline cockpit, and the crippled ship went into a helpless free fall, condemned to death by gravity.
The destroyed coralskipper’s wingmate veered and glued himself to the Falcon’s tail, battering it with projectiles and refusing to be unseated, despite a slew of daring turns and evasions Han took them through.
Han went for a pushover, but not in time. Something hit the Falcon like a hard clap on the back. Fighting with the controls, he succeeded in righting her, only to emerge from an end-over-end roll to find three more coralskippers attached to the ship as she entered the sandstorm.
The bristles on Droma’s back stood up. “Another hit like that and you may as well plow us into the sand and let the Falcon be our gravestone!”
Projectiles raced past the outrigger cockpit. With the Falcon’s Quadex power core roaring, Han pushed the ship to its limits, jinking and juking as the coralskippers continued to rake fire at them. He dropped the Falcon away in a power dive, leaving Droma struggling to adjust thrust bias and avert disaster as enemy missiles ranged closer.
All at once a mountain loomed before them. Han torqued the ship to starboard so forcefully that both he and Droma nearly sailed from their seats. The lead coralskipper pilot pursued them ferociously, obviously unable to hold the Falcon in his sights but firing anyway, perhaps in the hope of shaking Han’s concentration.
Without warning, a plasma bolt sizzled through the overtaxed rear shields. A muffled explosion sounded from aft, followed by the sibilant hiss of the ship’s fire-suppression system. An acrid smell drifted forward on exhaust fan currents.
Han sniffed and shot Droma a wide-eyed glance. “What was that?”
Droma’s eyes roamed over the console telltales. “Power converter.”
Han winced. “Of all the rotten luck!”
He utilized more of the ship’s amazing speed to improve their lead and leapt deeper into the swirling haze. The three coralskippers decreased velocity, waiting for the Falcon to come across their vector, but instead Han poured on all power, climbed, looped, and came around behind the trio.
Droma fired instinctively with the belly gun. With the dovin basal of the trailing ship too stressed to handle defense as well as guidance, the laser bolts sneaked through. The widespread burst caught the craft right on the nose, blowing it to nuggets.
Han hooted triumphantly as he sheered off and settled calmly into kill position behind the second craft. The coralskipper pilot, realizing the position he was suddenly in, climbed slightly, unintentionally placing himself in the overlapping field of fire between the Falcon’s upper and lower batteries.
“Money Lane!” Han shouted. “One hundred credits to whoever nails him!”
“You’re on!” Droma said.
Simultaneously, the two of them tightened their fingers on the trigger. The quad lasers loosed storms of red darts that peppered the rear of the enemy craft and perforated the cockpit, disintegrating the ship.
Han and Droma howled their joy as Han steered through a corkscrewing dive, zipping through the far-flung remains of the exploded ship. Swooping past the lead craft, Han inverted the Falcon and took her back into the storm.
Where it could be glimpsed at all, the land was dark red and studded with monolithic rock towers that were the sandblasted and wind-eroded remains of volcanic upthrusts. And yet despite their size, the swirling sand made the tors almost impossible to see.
Eyes on the terrain-following display and making the most of the Falcon’s maneuverability, Han aimed deliberately for the closest obelisk. Faking a climb, he stood the ship on its side and swerved to starboard while Droma triggered bursts from the belly gun. Unsecured items throughout the ship flew from their perches, crashed into bulkheads, or were sent rolling along the deck plates of the ring corridor. But two well-placed laser bolts caught the coralskipper at the cockpit seam, splitting it in two, as if struck by a chisel in the hands of a master stonemason.
Still, the three remaining coralskippers clung doggedly, chomping at the Falcon’s tail. Nap of the ground, Han weaved through a forest of storm-obscured spires and wind-sculpted stelae. The engines moaned and the ship vibrated as if on the verge of flying apart. Hiking power to the rear shields, he snap-rolled, then stood the Falcon on its side once more to narrow her profile as plasma streaked past them to
both sides.
Droma lashed his tail around the seat to keep from being strangled by the seat harness. “At least warn me when you’re going to do that!”
Han leveled out and maneuvered through a ludicrously tight turn, feathering the engines until the Falcon was at a near stall, then shunting power to the thrusters and throwing the ship into a vertical reversement. Swerving to evade Droma’s fire, the trailing coralskipper flipped out of control and careened straight into an outcropping, shattering to bits.
The Falcon’s thrusters flaring, Han pulled up sharply, climbing out of the storm at high boost.
Neither of the surviving pair of fighters followed them back up the well.
They collapsed into their chairs as the stars lost their twinkle and swarmed around them as pinpoints of light.
“Nice shooting,” Han said after checking in with the threat assessor one final time.
Droma returned the grin. “Nice driving.”
The Falcon bucked. Indicators flashed and the console came alive with warning tones. Han and Droma fell silent once more and turned to the painful chore of assessing just how much damage the ship had sustained.
“The hyperdrive is viable but responding erratically,” Droma said a long moment later.
Han nodded glumly. “Must have suffered collateral damage when the power converter got hit.”
Droma tugged at one end of his drooping mustache.“We might be able to make Nar Shaddaa. It’s difficult to tell.”
“No,” Han said. “We can’t chance it.”
“Do we return to Sriluur?”
Han shook his head. “I doubt we’ll find the replacement parts we need. Besides, I don’t want to risk running into those coralskippers again.”
Droma called up star charts. “Kashyyyk, then. Two quick jumps and we’re there.”
Han ran his hand over his mouth. “Not a good idea.” When Droma didn’t respond, he said, “It’s not what you think. I can handle the memories. It’s just that Chewbacca’s family still consider themselves responsible for my well-being, and I can’t face that right now.”
“So where to?”
Han studied the displayed star charts and grinned, more to himself. “A little out-of-the-way place I know, where they’ll have everything we need.”
“Everything Han Solo needs,” Droma thought to point out.
“Maybe you’re right,” Han said. He turned slightly to regard Droma. “Think you can handle playing captain for a while?”
On Coruscant, in the new office that had come with her unexpected appointment to the Advisory Council, Senator Viqi Shesh supervised the two labor droids she had tasked with rearranging the furniture.
“Turn the desk catercorner to the window,” she instructed them as she moved about the room.
The identical humaniform droids manipulated the hoversled on which the desk sat. When the desk was in place, they turned to her, seemingly eager to see her pleased by the results. But she wasn’t.
“No, no, all wrong,” Shesh said, shaking her head, then running a hand through her lustrous mane of ink-black hair. “Put the desk back where it was and move the conform chair beneath the window.”
The pair of droids looked crestfallen. “At once, Senator,” they responded in unison.
Shesh lowered herself into an antique armchair from her native Kuat and glanced around the office, smiling slowly as she took in the spacious room. Well-appointed without being ostentatious, the room enjoyed a breathtaking view of Commerce Way and the New Republic Obelisk. With a bit of work, it would become the most elegant chamber in the building, one that would make a lasting impression on all who entered.
Not bad for someone who had entered the political arena only six short years ago, Shesh told herself. But she had expected no less than this from the start, and she anticipated a great deal more in the coming years, despite the fact that her appointment to the Advisory Council had failed to meet with unanimous endorsement.
Several would-be political pundits had accused Chief of State Borsk Fey’lya of attempting to win the support of wealthy Kuat. Others had denounced Shesh for allowing herself to be seduced by power, and accused her of turning her back on the very things that had fueled her rapid rise. Under Fey’lya’s thumb—so the fretting went—what would become of her impassioned concern for the needy, her economic patronage of disenfranchised worlds, her outspoken praise for the Jedi Knights and all they stood for?
Shesh’s smile broadened as she considered the questions. In the end, they showed how mistaken everyone was about her, and how successful she had been in fostering illusions.
The office comm sounded. “Senator Shesh,” her secretary said, “Commodore Brand has arrived.”
Shesh glanced at her watch. “Admit him,” she answered.
She rose from the chair, smoothed the black skirt that sheathed her long legs, and ordered the labor droids out of the room. By the time Brand entered she was settled behind the desk.
“Commodore Brand,” she began, smiling and extending her hand across the desk. “How delightful to see you.”
A rigid, gloomy functionary, with the inward-turning gaze of one who sees only his own truth, Brand took off his cap, shook her hand as decorously as he could, and tried to make himself comfortable in the tight confines of the armchair.
Shesh gestured broadly to the office. “Excuse the mess. I’ve only just moved in.”
Brand’s eyes raced about. “Congratulations on being named to the council, Senator.”
Shesh feigned solemnity. “I only hope I can measure up to everyone’s expectations.”
Brand leaned forward. “War speeds the promotion of those best equipped to lead. I’m certain you will surpass everyone’s expectations.”
“Why, thank you, Commodore.” Shesh paused briefly. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit?”
Brand cleared his throat meaningfully. “The Corellian situation, Senator.”
Shesh nodded. “The reenabling of Centerpoint Station. In my opinion, a judicious decision.”
“Then you’re not concerned about possible … repercussions?”
“An armed and dangerous Corellia, for example? Of course not. A well-defended Corellia benefits the entire Core.”
Brand regarded her for a long moment. “Yes. But what if I were to tell you that even more might be gained by inducing the Yuuzhan Vong to attack Corellia?”
Shesh raised an eyebrow. “Are you in fact telling me that, Commodore? Because if you are—and notwithstanding that I sit on the Security and Intelligence Council—I would be obliged to bring this matter to the attention of the Advisory Council immediately.”
“The Defense Force intends to do just that, Senator,” Brand said in a rush. “Unfortunately, however, we find ourselves in something of a dilemma.”
“A dilemma,” Shesh repeated.
“Assuming first that we could succeed in luring the Yuuzhan Vong to Corellia, we must ensure that we can defeat them—soundly. And while we wouldn’t want to tip our hand by massing ships at Corellia, we would need to pull from Bothawui and a host of similarly defended worlds to amass the required armada.”
Shesh took a moment to respond. “You’re concerned that the Advisory Council would refuse to sanction any actions that would imperil Bothawui and the others. And yet, to accomplish your goal, it would have to appear as if Bothawui were being defended to the disadvantage of Corellia.”
Brand almost grinned.
She appraised him openly. “I see that I’ve read you correctly. Though I still wonder why you think it necessary to bring this to my attention.”
Brand held her gaze. “Should the matter go to a vote, the Defense Force would want to make certain that Bothawui wins out.”
Shesh grinned. “But, Commodore, if the Yuuzhan Vong are routed at Corellia, wouldn’t those who voted in favor of Bothawui be seen in disfavor?”
“Perhaps. But any vote tendered in the interest of the greater good would be seen as enlightened.”
<
br /> Shesh fell silent for a long moment. “A moment ago you said that this entire plan rests on the assumption that you can entice the Yuuzhan Vong to attack Corellia. As I understand it, you hope to accomplish this by leaving Corellia essentially undefended, in the hope that the enemy takes note of that fact. But wouldn’t it be more profitable if word got out about what you’re doing? For its technological powers alone, Centerpoint Station would be an irresistible target for destruction.”
Brand tugged at his earlobe. “This isn’t something we can simply announce over the HoloNet, Senator.”
Shesh laughed shortly. “There are better lines to the Yuuzhan Vong than the HoloNet.” She gave it a moment, then added, “The Hutts. If they had even an inkling of your plan, they would certainly apprise the Yuuzhan Vong, if only in the interest of safeguarding their future.”
“But the New Republic has broken off diplomatic relations with the Hutts. To communicate with them at this point—”
“The Hutt consul general is still on Coruscant. I could pay him a visit and let slip a few things.”
Brand stared at her. “You would do that?”
“I would. But in return—in the event the true purpose of my visit ever came to light—I would want it known that the Defense Force asked me to intercede.”
“You want deniability,” Brand said.
“Irrefutable deniability, Commodore.”
He took a moment, then nodded. “I think that can be arranged. We could say that we were merely feeling the Hutts out.”
“Just so.”
Brand smiled. “You should have gone into the military, Senator. You would have made a brilliant tactician.”
“The military?” Shesh snorted in derision. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Commodore, but why would I want to be the one who fires the weapon when I can be the one who decides at whom the weapon is pointed?”
TEN
The size of a Victory-class Star Destroyer, the bulk freighter Starmaster hung above the inert Twi’lek homeworld, Ryloth. Pods of vessels surrounded it—tenders, gunboats, and shuttles—some as smooth as marine creatures, others as boxy and graceless as the freighter itself. Anchored in the umbra of the great ship floated a Ubrikkian luxury yacht. Also in shadow, and closing steadily on a rectangular docking bay, moved a lunette-shaped craft launched from Ryloth’s miserly zone of inhabitable twilight.