Four Y-wings fired simultaneously on the port side of the shuttle, rocking
it. A shower of sparks blasted from the comm unit, and Chewbacca struggled
to reroute the circuits.
"There are supposed to be safe paths through it," Kyp said. "There must be."
"Yeah, and about a million paths that are sudden death!"
"It'll be flying a razor's edge all the way through." Kyp's young eyes
looked immeasurably old as he stared at Han. "Do we have a better chance
staying here and fighting?"
The enormous gravity wells of the Maw made a maze of all the hyperspace and
normal space paths through the cluster. Most of the routes were either dead
ends or went right down the gullet of a black hole. "We'd never find the
right course," Han said. "It'd be suicide."
Kyp gripped Han's shoulder. "I can show you the way."
"What? How?"
A TIE fighter looped overhead, rotating in flight and firing at the hijacked
shuttle. Cruisers from the moonbase approached, closing the gap. Against the
capital-ships' turbolasers, the escapees would be vaporized within moments.
Chewbacca groaned as their rear shields weakened and failed.
Han scrambled with the controls; both he and Chewbacca tried to reinforce
weak points by draining the stronger shields up front. Lights in the cabin
dimmed as the shields gulped more power.
"I helped you navigate through the dark spice tunnels when we were running
from Skynxnex, didn't I?" Kyp said. "I knew when Doole was going to switch
on the energy shield! I can find the right path into the Maw."
"That still doesn't tell me how, kid!" Han shouted.
Kyp wore an embarrassed expression for a moment; then he spoke quickly.
"This is going to sound like a hokey old religion--but it works! An old
woman who spent part of her sentence in the spice tunnels told me I had some
sort of tremendous potential. She showed me how to use something called "the
power" or "the strength" or something."
"The Force!" Han cried in relief. He wanted to grab Kyp and hug him. "Why
didn't you say so? Who was this woman?"
"Her name was Vima-Da-Boda. Down in the spice mines she taught me only a few
things before the guards hauled her away. I never saw her again, but I've
been practicing what she taught me. It's helped a few times, but I don't
really understand how."
"Vima-Da-Boda!" Han said, remembering the withered fallen Jedi he and Leia
had found on Nal Hutta. During her guilt-ridden hiding, Vima-Da-Boda had
somehow spent time in the spice mines, long enough to train Kyp in a few
essential skills. Han hoped that would be good enough.
"I don't like this," Han said.
Another pair of fighters soared by, firing repeatedly. "But I like it better
than our other options right now."
He altered course, swinging around and heading straight toward the seething
cluster of black holes. He hoped the shuttle's weakened shields would last
long enough to get them there.
The first of the capital ships reached them and fired, looping overhead,
then returning, as if to ram them. The shape of the attacking freighter made
Han's blood turn to water, and he stared in silent dismay for a full second
before he managed to cry out. "That's the Millennium Falcon! That's my
ship!"
The Falcon came straight at them, firing again and again as the shuttle's
forward shields tried to compensate for the pummeling. At the last moment
Han wrenched the stolen shuttle into a steep dive so the Falcon scraped by
overhead. One of the shots passed through the wavering shields to scar the
armor of the shuttle.
"That does it!" Han said. "Now I'm mad. Chewie, at my order drop shields and
dump everything into thrust. Pump every last erg into our engines and take
us straight into the Maw." He glanced down at his readouts. "Shields are
failing in less than a minute anyway, and the navicomputer needs another six
to finish its calculations. Blasted five-hundred-X models!"
Another wing of fighters strafed them, then roared by, leaving a gap to
their rear as a huge Lancer frigate closed the distance. A wave of
system-patrol craft and Carrack cruisers followed, ready to bring a full
armada of turbolasers to bear. Moruth Doole was taking no chances this time.
"Go, Chewie!" Han said.
The Wookiee dropped shields and channeled all power to the sublight engines.
The shuttle burst forward in an unexpected spurt of speed, startling the
pursuing ships.
"Surprise is only going to help us for a few seconds," Han said. "Then we're
on our own."
"By that time we should be in the grip of the Maw," Kyp whispered.
"If you're not right about this, kid, we'll never know it."
Curtains of incandescent gas blazed in front of them, swirling residue
heated by friction as it spiraled in complex orbits through the Roche lobe
of one black hole and down the gullet of another. Deadly X-rays filled
space, forcing the transparisteel to dim itself to protect the eyes of the
passengers.
"Only a complete idiot would try something like this," Han said. Chewbacca
agreed.
The Kessel ships poured on additional acceleration, desperately trying to
catch the escapees before Han could reach the Maw cluster. Han hunched over
the controls, white-knuckled, as if to increase their speed by sheer force
of will.
The fighters unleashed a laser firestorm, but the Maw's huge gravitational
distortions spread out their focus and sent them on long arcs away from the
target.
"Let's just hope these guys aren't idiots too!" Kyp said. Han drove toward
the blazing shreds of hot gas.
The Kessel ships pursued until the last instant, then peeled off at full
thrust with their maneuvering engines, letting their prey go to certain
death.
Han's ship plunged into the gravitational jaws of the black hole cluster.
Leia suppressed a dignified smile as she led Gantoris into the projection
chamber. The dark-haired man stared in his puppet-like way as he tried to
gawk at everything at the same time.
Gantoris was resplendent in a new uniform, tailored to match the
generations-old pilot suit he had worn as leader on Eol Sha. Leia had loaded
a tailor droid with patterns from the archives and presented the uniform to
Gantoris as a gift. He had been delighted, puffed with admiration.
Even after getting to know him, Leia felt uncomfortable around Gantoris.
Though Luke assured her of the strong Jedi potential in the man, Leia did
not like the thought of the deadly "tests" Gantoris had given Luke before he
would agree to leave Eol Sha. Gantoris had lived a hellish life, she
admitted, but he seemed too intense, his dark eyes fiery pits of contained
fury. He had the look of a man accustomed to power suddenly shown how small
he is in the grand scheme of things.
But the other side of Gantoris intrigued Leia. She watched him flick his
eyes back and forth, craning his head to stare at the tall building spires
rising to the fringes of Coruscant's atmosphere. He gaped in astonishment at
the sparkling audience chambers, at the minor personal a
menities in the
quarters Luke had obtained for him. He had never before seen or even
imagined things that Leia considered commonplace.
Now, as they entered the projection room, Gantoris stared at the giant
windows that filled the walls with broad vistas of Coruscant and the
centuries-old buildings that girdled the world. The two of them were not
really high enough for such a view, Leia knew; the projection room was
actually a deep internal chamber, and the "windows" were high-resolution
screens displaying images from cameras mounted at the top of the Imperial
Palace.
"What is this place?" Gantoris asked.
Leia smiled, folding her arms over her robe. "Right now this is just a room.
In a moment, though, I'll give you a new world."
She stepped to the control dais in the middle of the room and called up
images she had compiled from the archives, records left over from Old
Republic surveys and the dossiers compiled during the Alliance occupation.
The window screens flickered, and the images changed, startling Gantoris. He
whirled as the landscape suddenly showed a completely different planet. His
eyes grew wide and panicked, as if Leia had just transported him across the
galaxy.
"I'm showing you a new home. This is Dantooine, the place we have chosen for
the people of Eol Sha."
Around them the window screens displayed vast plains of grassland and spiky
trees. Purplish hills rolled across the distant horizon. A herd of small,
hairy beasts roamed across the savanna; in the air a cluster of bright
balloon-like things, either plants or rudimentary animals, drifted about; a
few had snagged on pointed branches of the spiky trees. Two moons, one
lavender and one greenish, soared overhead.
"We established one of our first Rebel bases on Dantooine. It has a mild
climate, abundant life-forms, plenty of water. A few nomadic tribes roam up
and down the coasts of the ocean, but for the most part the planet is
uninhabited."
Leia had used Dantooine as a decoy when Grand Moff Tarkin interrogated her
aboard the Death Star. To save her beloved planet of Alderaan, Leia had
divulged the location of the old Rebel base on Dantooine rather than naming
the real base on Yavin 4; but Tarkin destroyed Alderaan anyway, because
Dantooine was too remote for an effective demonstration of the Death Star's
power. Now, though, Dantooine could be put to use again, as a home for the
refugees of Eol Sha.
"Do you think your people would like to live on a place like this?" Leia
raised her eyebrows.
Gantoris, who had so far seen only his own blasted world, the gas planet of
Bespin, and the city-covered surface of Coruscant, seemed impressed. "This
looks like a paradise. No volcanoes? No earthquakes? Plenty to eat, and no
sprawling cities?"
She nodded. Before Gantoris could say anything else, the door to the
projection room opened. Leia turned, surprised to see the Chief of State,
Mon Mothma, coming to join them.
The auburn-haired woman walked with a sure step that made her glide across
the floor. The leader of the New Republic extended a hand to Gantoris. "You
must be one of Luke Skywalker's first Jedi trainees. Please let me welcome
you to Coruscant and wish you the best of success in becoming part of a new
order of Jedi Knights."
Gantoris took Mon Mothma's hand and nodded to her with a slight bow; but
Leia caught a fleeting impression that he considered himself a leader
meeting an equal.
"Mon Mothma," Leia said, "I was just showing Gantoris some images of
Dantooine. We are considering moving the refugees from Eol Sha to our old
base there."
Mon Mothma smiled. "Good. I'm aware of the plight of your people, and I
would like to see them safely on Dantooine. I always thought it was one of
our most pleasant bases, not quite as rigorous as Hoth or Pinnacle Base,
without the dense jungles of Yavin 4." She turned to Gantoris. "If this
world meets with your approval, I'll direct Minister Organa Solo to begin
the relocation work immediately."
Gantoris nodded. "If these are representative pictures, this place Dantooine
would be a perfect new home for my people."
Leia felt a surge of relief. "I was thinking of putting Wedge ... I mean
General Antilles in charge of the relocation duties. He's been supervising
the reconstruction of the lower city levels for months, and frankly, I think
that's a waste of his talents."
"I agree," Mon Mothma said. Though buried under more diplomatic
entanglements and bureaucratic decisions than Leia could imagine, Mon Mothma
somehow maintained a calm energy. "Also, my calendar just reminded me that
the Caridan ambassador will be arriving in two days. Are all the
preparations going smoothly? Can I offer my assistance in any way?"
"Just plan to be there. That's the most I can ask of you. I have decided to
move the reception to the Skydome Botanical Gardens, rather than holding it
here in the Imperial Palace. Since Ambassador Furgan seems hostile to our
cause, I didn't want to exacerbate his reactions by receiving him in the
former seat of the Emperor's government. In fact, the ambassador is trying
to disguise his mission here as a mere pilgrimage to visit the site of
various Imperial landmarks."
Mon Mothma nodded slightly but gave a smile. "At least he's coming. That's
the best signal of all."
"I suppose." Leia remained skeptical.
"By the way, I never received your report on Han's mission to Kessel. That
was a brilliant idea to send him instead of a formal ambassador. Han can
speak to those people in their own language, and reopening the spice
channels away from the black market might do wonders for the new economy.
Did he have any success?"
Feeling awkward, Leia dropped her gaze to the floor. "He has been delayed,
Mon Mothma, so I don't have any information at the moment. I'll give you a
full report as soon as he gets back. Let's hope his mission is a success."
"Agreed." Mon Mothma's expression hinted that she suspected there was more
to Leia's story, but she asked no further questions. "I have to go debate
with the Ugnaught representatives about salvage rights for the wrecked ships
in orbit around Coruscant. I'm afraid it's going to be a long afternoon, and
I just wanted to greet you while I had the chance. Gantoris, it was a
pleasure."
Mon Mothma turned to go but flashed a glance back at Leia. "By the way,
you're doing a fine job, Leia. Too often in government we get inundated by
so many dissatisfied interest groups, so many complaints, that we forget the
things we're doing right. You are doing a lot of things right."
Leia couldn't cover an embarrassed smile. If only she hadn't lost her
husband, she might have been a lot happier.
* * *
The twins began bawling in unison as soon as Winter stepped onto the ramp of
her unmarked shuttle. Leia's personal servant stopped, keeping her back
turned to Jacen and Jaina, and then slowly faced them.
Leia gripped the shoulders of the two children, but they still treated
their
mother as a stranger, even after several days. She held on tightly, which
she realized might not have been the best thing to do, but she felt suddenly
possessive of the twins.
Winter's face was cold and impassive beneath her white hair. "Children, stop
crying this instant."
Jacen snuffled. "We want you to stay, Winter."
Winter thrust out one hand, pointing her finger like a spear at Leia. "That
is your mother. I was only taking care of you. You are big children now, and
it's time for you to be at your own home. I have to go back and take care of
your baby brother."
Leia kept herself from trembling. She had known Winter a long time; the
woman had total recall of anything she had ever seen or heard, and she
rarely showed any sort of emotion. Now Leia thought she could detect a
sadness in her, a sense of loss as she finally gave over care of her two
wards.
Leia knelt beside the twins. "You'll be staying with me now, both of you.
And your daddy should be home soon. We'll have lots of fun together."
The twins turned to look at her; Winter took that moment to slip inside the
shuttle. Before Jacen and Jaina noticed she had gone, Winter activated the
doors, sealing herself inside.
Leia stood beside the children on the windswept landing pad. The shuttle's
repulsorlifts whined, powering up. Leia stepped backward, nudging the twins
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