by Troy Denning
Zekk and Ben responded by projecting feelings of gratitude toward him. Jaina simply shut down.
“Isn’t the Longshot one of the Falcon’s false transponder codes?” Alema asked.
Jacen turned and found her frowning at the Longshot’s designator symbol. “It might be.”
If Alema noticed the suspicion and hostility in his tone, she ignored it. “Do you think that is a good idea?”
“Do I think what is a good idea?” Jacen asked.
“Allowing your parents to take your apprentice hostage,” she said.
“Don’t try that on me, Alema,” Jacen said, scowling. “I know how the Dark Nest worked—remember?”
“How could we forget?” Alema turned to him, the hatred in her eyes now open and honest. “We would never try to use our powers on you, Jacen. You have already proved that you are too powerful and smart for us.”
“Just so we understand each other.” Jacen waved her toward the door. “My parents are going to help Ben and the others, not take them hostage.”
“If that’s what you believe, then we’re sure we are wrong,” Alema said. “We are hardly as well informed as you are.”
“Wrong about what?” Jacen asked. He knew this was how the Dark Nest had worked—by using a victim’s own doubts against him—but Jacen would have known if Alema was using the Force. “You don’t expect me to believe my parents would harm Jaina or Ben.”
“They would never do that,” Alema agreed. “Only, we thought they had taken Corellia’s side in this war.”
“They have,” Jacen admitted. “That doesn’t mean they’re terrorists.”
“Then we must have heard wrong,” Alema said. “We thought they had been involved in the assassination attempt on your daughter.”
“They weren’t,” Jacen said tersely. “That was a misunderstanding.”
“No doubt,” Alema said. “After Roqoo Depot, we know you would never let a personal attachment prevent you from making a necessary sacrifice.”
“I wouldn’t,” Jacen said.
“We believe you.” Alema used the Force to retrieve her helmet, then turned toward the door. “Perhaps we should be going—if you are going to permit us to leave.”
Jacen nodded. “Lieutenant Orlopp will arrange an escort for you.” His hands ached to kill the Twi’lek, but he did not dare—not while he suspected it would expose the secret of Allana’s paternity. “You may consider the message dinghy a gift from the Galactic Alliance.”
Alema lifted her brow in surprise. “Thank you.”
“But if my relationship to Allana is ever exposed, I’ll hunt you down myself.”
“Have no fear, Colonel Solo,” Alema said. “Your secret is safe with us. We know it is the only reason we are leaving here alive.”
Jacen nodded. “I’m glad we understand each other.” He waited until she reached the door, then added, “There’s just one more thing, Alema. If you ever come within a light-year of my family again, I won’t be so forgiving.”
Alema smiled and nodded. “Of course—we understand.” She used one hand and the Force to lift the helmet onto her head. “The Balance must be served.”
The Twi’lek lowered the visor and went out the door. Jacen activated the intercom and asked Orlopp to arrange an escort for her, then retrieved his datapad and checked to see that his daughter was still safe—and her assassin still locked away.
Orlopp’s voice sounded from the door. “I’ve arranged the escort, Colonel. Would you like us to return now?”
“In a minute, Lieutenant. I need to think.”
Jacen went to the holodisplay, where the six surviving Battle Dragons of his rescue flotilla were in full pursuit of the Galney attackers. The remains of the defensive screen—seven rapidly blinking Battle Dragons and a like number of Nova cruisers—were gathering to give chase, but Jacen had anticipated that possibility and had a plan to stop them. Tenel Ka’s small force was already laying fire on the leading elements of the Galney fleet, and he thought it more likely than not that the Queen Mother would survive.
Jacen’s gaze shifted to the tiny blue blips that represented Ben’s and Jaina’s and Zekk’s rescue beacons. The Longshot’s designator was only a couple of centimeters away from them now. He knew Alema had been trying to make him doubt his parents’ intentions, but she was gone, and those doubts remained. There were too many unanswered questions about his parents’ role in the attempt on Tenel Ka’s life—and the intelligence they had provided had been more harmful than useful.
The fact was, Jacen had begun to question his parents’ motives before Alema ever boarded the Anakin—when he returned from Relephon to find Tenel Ka already under attack. Of course, he knew that the great Han and Leia Solo were capable of playing double agents. He had simply refused to believe they would participate in a coldblooded assassination attempt against a friend.
Lumiya had been right. Jacen had put loyalty to family above his mission. He had balked at the necessary sacrifices. And that hesitation had nearly cost Allana her mother and Hapes a Queen Mother, had come close to costing the Alliance one of her most important member states … and maybe even the war.
Jacen motioned Orlopp and the others back into the salon, then activated the intercom. “Commander Twizzl, the time has come to smash the usurpers. Order the Anakin and her escorts to advance and engage—we need to wipe those Galney Battle Dragons off the tail of our rescue flotilla.”
“Very good, sir.” Twizzl’s voice was happy. “And nicely done, if I may say so.”
“You may, Commander,” Jacen said. “And I have one other order. Have one of our long-range batteries target the Longshot.”
There was a moment of silence, then Twizzl said, “But, Colonel, the Longshot is a false transponder code. That transport is really—”
“Stop wasting time,” Jacen said. “I’d like the vessel destroyed before it reaches those rescue beacons.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, then Twizzl said, “Colonel Solo … the Longshot is almost on them now.”
“I understand the risks, Commander.” Jacen checked the datapad one more time and found Allana smiling up into the cam. Her eyes were sparkling with confidence and trust, and he knew he was doing the right thing for her—and for all the children of the galaxy. “Assign our best gunnery team and fire away.”
chapter twenty-four
The air lock had almost finished equalizing when a boom like a meteor strike resonated through the Falcon’s hull. The corridor dropped away, and Han hit the ceiling—or rather, it hit him. An instant later he found himself plastered to the deck with no memory of leaving the ceiling. His head was aching and his shoulder was throbbing, and his ears weren’t ringing—they were blaring.
Han rolled to his side and lay there suffering, trying to sort out what had happened—trying to sort out the whole last couple of months, as a matter of fact, how he and Leia had gotten themselves involved in another war and what made this one worse than the others, so much more painful and confusing.
Then a scrap of flimsiplast tumbled past, bouncing along the deck past Han’s nose, and suddenly it didn’t matter what had happened. The blaring was not in his ears at all. It was coming from the intercom speakers, and it was slowly—though steadily—rising in pitch.
The cabin pressure was dropping.
Han scrambled to his feet, then stepped over to the control panel next to the air lock and silenced the emergency alarm.
Leia’s voice came over the ship intercom instantly, backed by a chorus of chimes and buzzers that suggested the Falcon’s systems were sinking faster than a comet down a black hole.
“Han? You okay?”
“Yeah, so far.” Realizing he would need both hands to make repairs, Han tried to pull his arm out of the sling—and nearly collapsed with pain. He was going to need help. “But I can’t waste time talking about it. We’ve got a pressure leak somewhere.”
“A leak?” C-3PO asked, also speaking over the intercom from the cock
pit. “Captain Solo, you have only one functional arm. You’ll never be able to—”
“I’ll handle it.” Han peeked through the hatch viewport and was relieved to see that Jaina and her companions were all on their feet and steady. “I’ve got help in the air lock.”
“Just watch yourselves,” Leia warned. The deck continued to tilt and buck as Leia put the Falcon through a serious of evasive maneuvers. “Some laserbrain in a Star Destroyer is taking potshots at us.”
“Is that all?” Han asked. Seeing that the air lock pressure was almost within normal safety margins, he hit the safety override. “I thought you’d hit an asteroid or something.”
A warning light flashed inside the air lock chamber, and the hatch hissed open a moment later. Jaina and the others—Zekk, Ben, and a Twi’lek stranger—emerged in the typical post-EV rush to free themselves of their claustrophobia-inducing emergency suits, pulling off gloves and opening closure rings. Han’s heart soared at seeing Jaina—and his gut clenched because now she was in just as much danger as he and Leia were.
Once Jaina’s visor was raised, she turned to Han and opened the bulky arms of her evac suit to embrace him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but whatever it is—”
“I love you too, kid,” Han said, raising a hand to stop her. “But the hugs will have to wait. We’ve got a pressure leak.”
Jaina’s eyes dropped to the sling hanging in front of Han’s chest, and her expression switched from relief to understanding. “How bad have we been hit?”
“Don’t know yet,” Han said. He turned back to the control panel and tapped the keypad, calling up a ship-wide damage report. “But it can’t be that bad. We’ve still got—”
Han was interrupted when a hand appeared between him and the display panel. It took his eyes a second to focus, but when they did, he saw that the hand was holding a pair of Jedi wrist-restraints.
“What the frizz?” Han turned, running his gaze up an evac-suited arm to his nephew’s face.
“I’m really sorry, Uncle Han,” Ben said. “But you’re under arrest.”
“Arrest?” Han frowned at the boy, trying to decide whether he should explode in laughter or anger. “Kid, you’ve got one lousy sense of timing.”
“It goes with the company he keeps,” Jaina said. She turned on Ben with fire in her eyes. “Put those away before I—”
“It’s okay, Jaina.” Zekk reached over Ben’s shoulder and gently pushed the boy’s hand down. “I’ve got this.”
To Han’s amazement, Jaina merely nodded and turned back to the control panel, perfectly content to let Zekk take charge of Ben while she focused on the pressure leak. Clearly, something had changed between the two of them—she was acting like she actually respected him.
“But there’s a Search and Detain Warrant out on them,” Ben protested. “We’ve got to arrest them!”
“You’re training to become a Jedi, Ben,” Zekk said. “That means you’re supposed to use your own best judgment in these situations.”
“I am,” Ben insisted.
“I hope you don’t really believe that.” Zekk pulled his hand back, then said, “Put those away. We’ll talk about this later.”
Finding himself in no position to argue, Ben obediently returned the restraints to a utility pocket inside his evac suit, then scowled up at Han. “Nothing personal, Uncle Han—but I’m still bringing you in.”
“Whatever you say, kid,” Han answered. “Let’s just get through this first.”
Han turned away from Ben.
“I don’t know, Dad,” Jaina said. “This leak might be more than we can handle.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Han said. “Back in the Corporate Sector, Chewbacca and I used to get banged up this bad every week.”
“Not this bad.”
Jaina pointed to the damage schematic she had brought up on the control panel display screen, and Han’s heart dropped into his gut. The upper cannon turret was gone—along with a substantial portion of the surrounding hull armor—and the lower turret was spread open like a flower blossom, clearly blown apart from the inside. The access tunnel that connected them was red, indicating a total pressure loss, and the surrounding compartments were quickly shading to pink.
Jaina must have sensed Han’s shock, because she asked, “Cakhmaim and Meewalh were in the turrets?”
“Yeah—firing the laser cannons.” Han’s insides were knotting with sorrow; given the damage he had seen in the schematic, the only thing left of the two Noghri were the places they would always hold in the Solos’ hearts. “I owe whoever’s commanding that Star Destroyer a detonite sandwich.”
“A Star Destroyer fired on you?” Ben asked. His light-saber was hanging from a utility loop on his evac suit, but Zekk was being careful to remain at his side anyway.
“What’d you do to deserve that?”
“Saved you,” Han said sourly. “We can always throw you back, if you think it was a bad idea.”
“We’ll take care of Ben later.” Jaina took Han’s arm and started forward. “Right now we need to get you and Mom into evac suits.”
“Evac suits? No way.” Han started aft. “By then, the Falcon won’t have any cabin pressure left.”
“Dad, you took a turbolaser strike straight down your access core.” Jaina waddled up beside him in her suit. “We might not be able to patch things up.”
“Sure we will,” Han replied. “This is a YT-Thirteen-hundred. The access core isn’t that important.”
He continued aft, bouncing off the walls as the corridor tipped and tilted around him. A deepening shudder in the deck hinted at a broken engine mount, while a steady serenade of muffled groans suggested how fiercely the Falcon’s damaged frame was straining under Leia’s evasive maneuvers—and made Han wonder how long they had before a metallic bang deep inside the ship somewhere brought that final ear pop of decompression.
He rounded the corner to find the bulkhead hatch sealed and a stream of air whistling out through a tiny hole in the wall. The edges of the hole were smooth and puffy, as though the durasteel had been melted instead of punctured.
“That’s bad news,” Ben commented from a couple of meters behind Han. “It’s a spatter breach.”
“No big deal,” Han said. Spatter breaches happened when a metal mass erupted in a molten spray, usually after being hit by a turbolaser strike. They were notoriously dangerous and difficult to repair because they caused so much damage in so many different places. “It didn’t hit anything important, or we’d be dead already.”
Han activated the control panel, then checked the pressure on the other side of the bulkhead and entered a safety override code. His ears popped painfully as the hatch retracted, and the whistle of escaping atmosphere became a scream. He stepped into the rear hold and turned toward the sound, and the first problem became instantly apparent.
The spatter had perforated a meter-wide circle of dura-steel with literally hundreds of tiny melt holes. The metal was so weak that the air pressure was bowing the wall outward, and Han knew it wouldn’t be long before the area simply tore free and sucked the atmosphere from the hold in a deadly whoosh.
“Okay, so it’s kind of a big deal,” he said. “Jaina, you and Zekk go to the repair locker and break out the patches and reinforcement strips. Ben, take your Twi’lek friend and—”
“We’re not really friends,” Ben interrupted, sounding as petulant as only young teenagers could at a time like this. “And his name is Spacer First Class Sorzo.”
“Fine.” Han looked over Ben to the Twi’lek. “Just take a look around the access core and see if there are any other spots this bad.”
The Twi’lek—Sorzo—acknowledged the order with a salute and started off with Ben in tow. Han spent the next twenty seconds searching the immediate area for less obvious punctures—and finding plenty. Even if they did manage to patch this cluster, they would still have to track down dozens of tiny melt holes concealed behind places like the engineering st
ation and medbay. It was going to mean sealing off the cockpit and spending hours in evac suits, but what else could he do—abandon the Falcon?
A tremendous bang rumbled up from somewhere be-lowdecks, and an odd chugging sensation began to accompany the ship’s shuddering and bucking.
Leia’s voice came over the intercom, barely audible above the screech of escaping air. “Han, what was that?”
“How should I know?” Han was actually beginning to feel overwhelmed by the Falcon’s problems, and that never happened. “Can’t See-Threepio tell you?”
“There’s no indication of a new problem on the damage reports,” the droid reported. “But we do seem to be losing power in our sublight drives.”
“Blast!” Han started to bang a fist against the wall—then took another look at the circle of spatter perforations and decided not to risk it. “Something must be pinching a feed line.”
“Perhaps you could free it,” C-3PO suggested.
“I’m kind of busy patching pressure leaks back here,” Han responded.
“That won’t matter if we take another hit,” Leia said. “And if we can’t maneuver—”
“We’re going to take another hit,” Han finished. “I know. Okay—let me get a flow report and see if I can locate the problem.”
He stepped around the corner and found Ben already standing in front of the aft engineering station, eyes glued to the display and fingers on the keypad. Thinking the boy had done something to cause the power loss, Han rushed to his side.
The screen had nothing on it but a tactical display feed, which showed a confused-but-improving situation near the planet Hapes. Admiral Bwua’tu’s fleet was already starting to hammer the Corellian Dreadnaughts, and a task force of Royal Battle Dragons was tearing through the second usurper fleet from behind.
With the Royal Battle Dragons was an Imperial-class Star Destroyer with a designator symbol reading unknown. While the vessel was directing most of her fire toward the usurpers, she had dedicated a single long-range turbolaser battery to attacking the Falcon.