“You don’t,” Han told him. He didn’t like that answer much, and he suspected Luke would like it even less. But it couldn’t be helped. With a dozen TIE fighters currently between the Lady Luck and the X-wing, suggesting a rendezvous point on even what was supposed to be a secure comm channel would be an open invitation for the Empire to send their own reception committee on ahead. “Lando and I can handle the mission on our own,” he added. “If we run into any problems, we’ll contact you through Coruscant.”
“All right,” Luke said. Sure enough, he didn’t sound happy about it. But he had enough sense to recognize there was no other safe way. “Take care, you two.”
“See you,” Han said, and cut the transmission.
“So now it’s my mission, too, huh?” Lando growled from the copilot’s seat, his tone a mixture of annoyance and resignation. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
Sena’s transport was into the triangular pocket between the Dreadnaughts now, still driving for all it was worth. Han kept the Lady Luck with them, staying as close above the transport’s tail as he could without getting into its exhaust. “You got some particular place you’d like us to drop you?” he asked, looking back at Irenez.
She was gazing out the viewport at the underside of the Dreadnaught they were passing beneath. “Actually, our Commander was rather hoping you’d accompany us back to our base,” she said.
Han threw a look at Lando. There had been something in her tone that implied the request was more than merely a suggestion. “And just how hard was your Commander hoping this?” Lando asked.
“Very much.” She dropped her gaze from the Dreadnaught. “Don’t misunderstand—it’s not an order. But when I spoke to him, the Commander seemed extremely interested in meeting again with Captain Solo.”
Han frowned. “Again?”
“Those were his words.”
Han looked at Lando, found the other looking back at him. “Some old friend you’ve never mentioned?” Lando asked.
“I don’t recall having any friends who own Dreadnaughts,” Han countered. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m being nicely maneuvered into a corner here,” Lando said, a little sourly. “Aside from that, whoever this Commander is, he seems to be in contact with your Bothan pals. If you’re trying to find out what Fey’lya’s up to, he’d be the one to ask.”
Han thought it over. Lando was right, of course. On the other hand, the whole thing could just as easily be a trap, with this talk about old friends being designed to lure him in.
Still, with Irenez sitting behind him with a blaster riding her hip, there wasn’t really a graceful way to get out of it if she and Sena chose to press the point. They might as well be polite about it. “Okay,” he told Irenez. “What course do we set?”
“You don’t,” she said, nodding upward.
Han followed her gaze. One of the three Dreadnaughts they’d passed had now swung around to fly parallel with them. Ahead, Sena’s ship was heading up toward one of a pair of brightly lit docking ports. “Let me guess,” he said to Irenez.
“Just relax and let us do the flying,” she said, with the first hint of humor that he’d yet seen from her.
“Right,” Han sighed.
And with the flashes of the rear guard battle still going on behind them, he eased the Lady Luck up toward the docking port. Luke, he reminded himself, had apparently not sensed any treachery from Sena or her people back in the city.
But then, he hadn’t sensed any deceit from the Bimms on Bimmisaari, either, just before that first Noghri attack.
This time the kid better be right.
The first Dreadnaught gave a flicker of pseudomotion and vanished into hyperspace, taking the transport and the Lady Luck with it. A few seconds later, the other two Dreadnaughts ceased their ion bombardment of the Star Destroyer and, through a hail of turbolaser blasts from still-operating Imperial batteries, made their own escape.
And Luke was alone. Except, of course, for the squadron of TIE fighters still chasing him.
From behind him came an impatient and rather worried-sounding trill. “Okay, Artoo, we’re going,” he assured the little droid. Reaching over, he pulled the hyperdrive lever; and the stars became starlines, and turned to mottled sky, and he and Artoo were safe.
Luke took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. So that was it. Han and Lando were gone, to wherever Sena and her mysterious Commander had taken them, and there really wasn’t any way for him to track them down. Until they surfaced again and got in touch with him, he was out of the mission.
But perhaps that was for the best.
There was another warble from behind, a questioning one this time. “No, we’re not going back to Coruscant, Artoo,” he told the droid, an echo of déjà vu tugging at him. “We’re going to a little place called Jomark. To see a Jedi Master.”
CHAPTER
9
The little fast-attack patrol ship had dropped out of hyper-space and closed to within a hundred kilometers of the Falcon before the ship’s sensors even noticed its presence. By the time Leia got to the cockpit, the pilot had already made contact.
“Is that you, Khabarakh?” she called, slipping into the copilot’s seat beside Chewbacca.
“Yes, Lady Vader,” the Noghri’s gravelly, catlike voice mewed. “I have come alone, as I promised. Are you also alone?”
“My companion Chewbacca is with me as pilot,” she said. “As is a protocol droid. I would like to bring the droid along to help with translation, if I may. Chewbacca, as we agreed, will stay here.”
The Wookiee turned to her with a growl. “No,” she said firmly, remembering just in time to mute the transmitter. “I’m sorry, but that was the promise I made to Khabarakh. You’ll stay here on the Falcon, and that’s an order.”
Chewbacca growled again, more insistently this time … and with a sudden prickly sensation on the back of her neck, Leia became acutely aware of something she hadn’t really thought about for years. Namely, that the Wookiee was quite capable of ignoring pretty much any order he chose to.
“I have to go alone, Chewie,” she said in a low voice. Force of will wasn’t going to work here; she was going to have to go for logic and reason. “Don’t you understand? That was the arrangement.”
Chewbacca rumbled. “No,” Leia shook her head. “My safety isn’t a matter of strength anymore. My only chance is to convince the Noghri that I can be trusted. That when I make promises I keep them.”
“The droid will pose no problem,” Khabarakh decided. “I will bring my ship alongside for docking.”
Leia switched the transmitter back on. “Fine,” she said. “I also have one case of clothing and personal items to bring along, if I may. Plus a sensor/analyzer package, to test the air and soil for anything that might be dangerous to me.”
“The air and soil where we shall be is safe.”
“I believe you,” Leia said. “But I am not responsible only for my own safety. I carry within me two new lives, and I must protect them.”
The comm speaker hissed. “Heirs of the Lord Vader?”
Leia hesitated; but genetically, if not philosophically, it was true enough. “Yes.”
Another hiss. “You may bring what you wish,” he said. “I must be allowed to scan them, though. Do you bring weapons?”
“I have my lightsaber,” Leia said. “Are there any animals on your world dangerous enough for me to need a blaster?”
“Not anymore,” Khabarakh said, his voice grim. “Your lightsaber, too, will be acceptable.”
Chewbacca snarled something quietly vicious, his wickedly curved climbing claws sliding involuntarily in and out of their fingertip sheaths. He was, Leia realized abruptly, on the edge of losing control … and perhaps of taking matters into those huge hands of his—
“What is the problem?” Khabarakh demanded.
Leia’s stomach tightened. Honesty, she reminded herself. “My pilot doesn’t like the idea of me going off alone with you,” she conceded. “He has a—well, you wouldn’t understand.”
“He is under a life debt to you?”
Leia blinked at the speaker. She hadn’t expected Khabarakh to have ever heard of the Wookiee life debt, much less know anything about it. “Yes,” she said. “The original life debt was to my husband, Han Solo. During the war Chewie extended it to include my brother and me.”
“And now to the children you bear within you?”
Leia looked at Chewbacca. “Yes.”
For a long minute the comm was silent. The patrol ship continued toward them, and Leia found herself gripping the seat arms tightly as she wondered what the Noghri was thinking. If he decided that Chewbacca’s objections constituted betrayal of their arrangement …
“The Wookiee code of honor is similar to our own,” Khabarakh said at last. “He may come with you.”
Chewbacca gave a throaty rumble of surprise, a surprise that slid quickly into suspicion. “Would you rather he have said you had to stay here?” Leia countered, her own surprise at the Noghri’s concession quickly covered up by relief that the whole thing had been resolved so easily. “Come on, make up your mind.”
The Wookiee rumbled again, but it was clear that he’d rather walk into a trap with her than let her walk into one alone. “Thank you, Khabarakh, we accept,” Leia told the Noghri. “We’ll be ready whenever you get here. How long will the trip to your world take, by the way?”