“Not really,” Lando said. “Transit time was forty-seven hours, but that doesn’t tell us a whole lot.”
Han nodded, searching his memory. “A Dreadnaught can pull, what, about Point Four?”
“About that,” Lando agreed. “When it’s really in a hurry, anyway.”
“Means we aren’t any more than a hundred fifty light-years from New Cov, then.”
“I’d guess we’re closer than that, myself,” Lando said. “It wouldn’t make much sense to use New Cov as a contact point if they were that far away.”
“Unless New Cov was Breil’lya’s idea and not theirs,” Han pointed out.
“Possible,” Lando said. “I still think we’re closer than a hundred fifty light-years, though. They could have taken their time getting here just to mislead us.”
Han looked up at the Dreadnaught that had been hauling them through hyperspace for the past two days. “Or to have time to organize a reception committee.”
“There’s that,” Lando nodded. “I don’t know if I mentioned it, but after they apologized for getting the magnetic coupling off-center over our hatch I went back and took a look.”
“You didn’t mention it, but I did the same thing,” Han said sourly. “Looked land of deliberate, didn’t it?”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Lando said. “Like maybe they wanted an excuse to keep us cooped up down here and not wandering around their ship.”
“Could be lots of good and innocent reasons for that,” Han reminded him.
“And lots of not-so-innocent ones,” Lando countered. “You sure you don’t have any idea who this Commander of theirs might be?”
“Not even a guess. Probably be finding out real soon, though.”
The comm crackled on. “Lady Luck, this is Sena,” a familiar voice said. “We’ve arrived.”
“Yes, we noticed,” Lando told her. “I expect you’ll want us to follow you down.”
“Right,” she said. “The Peregrine will drop the magnetic coupling whenever you’re ready to fly.”
Han stared at the speaker, barely hearing Lando’s response. A ship called the Peregrine …?
“You still with me?”
Han focused on Lando, noticing with mild surprise that the other’s conversation with Sena had ended. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure. It’s just—that name, Peregrine, rang an old bell.”
“You’ve heard of it?”
“Not the ship, no,” Han shook his head. “The Peregrine was an old Corellian scare legend they used to tell when I was a kid. He was some old ghostly guy who’d been cursed to wander around the world forever and never find his home again. Used to make me feel real creepy.”
From above came a clang; and with a jolt they were free of the Dreadnaught. Lando eased them away from the huge warship, looking up as it passed by overhead. “Well, try to remember it was just a legend,” he reminded Han.
Han looked at the Dreadnaught. “Sure,” he said, a little too quickly. “I know that.”
They followed Sena’s freighter down and were soon skimming over what appeared to be a large grassy plain dotted with patches of stubby coniferous trees. A wall of craggy cliffs loomed directly ahead—an ideal spot, Han’s old smuggler instincts told him, to hide a spaceship support and servicing base. A few minutes later his hunch was borne out as, sweeping over a low ridge, they came to the encampment.
An encampment that was far too large to be merely a servicing base. Rows upon rows of camouflaged structures filled the plain just beneath the cliffs: everything from small living quarters to larger admin and supply sheds to still larger maintenance and tool buildings, up to a huge camo-roofed refurbishing hangar. The perimeter was dotted with the squat, turret-topped cylinders of Golan Arms anti-infantry batteries and a few of the longer Speizoc anti-vehicle weapons, along with some KAAC Freerunner assault vehicles parked in defensive posture.
Lando whistled softly under his breath. “Would you look at that?” he said. “What is this, someone’s private army?”
“Looks that way,” Han agreed, feeling the skin on the back of his neck starting to crawl. He’d run into private armies before, and they’d never been anything but trouble.
“I think I’m starting not to like this,” Lando decided, easing the Lady Luck gingerly over the outer sentry line. Ahead, Sena’s freighter was approaching a landing pad barely visible against the rest of the ground. “You sure you want to go through with this?”
“What, with three Dreadnaughts standing on our heads out there?” Han snorted. “I don’t think we’ve got a whole lot of choice. Not in this crate, anyway.”
“Probably right,” Lando conceded, apparently too preoccupied to notice the insult to his ship. “So what do we do?”
Sena’s freighter had dropped its landing skids and was settling onto the pad. “I guess we go down and behave like invited guests,” Han said.
Lando nodded at Han’s blaster. “You don’t think they’ll object to their invited guests coming in armed?”
“Let ’em object first,” Han said grimly. “Then we’ll discuss it.”
Lando put the Lady Luck down beside the freighter, and together he and Han made their way to the aft hatchway. Irenez, her transmission chores finished, was waiting there for them, her own blaster strapped prominently to her hip. A transport skiff was parked outside, and as the three of them headed down the ramp, Sena and a handful of her entourage came around the Lady Luck’s bow. Most of the others were dressed in a casual tan uniform of an unfamiliar but vaguely Corellian cut; Sena, by contrast, was still in the nondescript civilian garb she’d been wearing on New Cov.
“Welcome to our base of operations,” Sena said, waving a hand to encompass the encampment around them. “If you’ll come with us, the Commander is waiting to meet you.”
“Busy looking place you’ve got here,” Han commented as they all boarded the skiff. “You getting ready to start a war or something?”
“We’re not in the business of starting wars,” Sena said coolly.
“Ah,” Han nodded, looking around as the driver swung the skiff around and headed off through the camp. There was something about the layout that seemed vaguely familiar.
Lando got it first. “You know, this place looks a lot like one of the old Alliance bases we used to work out of,” he commented to Sena. “Only built on the surface instead of dug in underground.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?” Sena agreed, her voice not giving anything away.
“You’ve had dealings with the Alliance, then?” Lando probed gently.
Sena didn’t answer. Lando looked at Han, eyebrows raised. Han shrugged slightly in return. Whatever was going on here, it was clear the hired hands weren’t in the habit of talking about it.
The skiff came to a halt beside an admin-type building indistinguishable from the others nearby except for the two uniformed guards flanking the doorway. They saluted as Sena approached, one of them reaching over to pull the door open. “The Commander asked to see you for a moment alone, Captain Solo,” Sena said, stopping by the open door. “We’ll wait out here with General Calrissian.”
“Right,” Han said. Taking a deep breath, he stepped inside.
From its outside appearance he’d expected it to be a standard administrative center, with an outer reception area and a honeycomb of comfy executive offices stacked behind it. To his mild surprise, he found himself instead in a fully equipped war room. Lining the walls were comm and tracking consoles, including at least one crystal grav-field trap receptor and what looked like the ranging control for a KDY v-150 Planet Defender ion cannon like the one the Alliance had had to abandon on Hoth. In the center of the room a large holo display showed a sector’s worth of stars, with a hundred multicolored markers and vector lines scattered among the glittering white dots.
And standing beside the holo was a man.
His face was distorted somewhat by the strangely colored lights playing on it from the display; and it was, at any rate, a face Han had never seen except in pictures. But even so, recognition came with the sudden jolt of an overhead thunderclap. “Senator Bel Iblis,” he breathed.
“Welcome to Peregrine’s Nest, Captain Solo,” the other said gravely, coming away from the holo toward him. “I’m flattered you still remember me.”
“It’d be hard for any Corellian to forget you, sir,” Han said, his numbed brain noting vaguely in passing that there were very few people in the galaxy who rated an automatic sir from him. “But you …”
“Were dead?” Bel Iblis suggested, a half smile creasing his lined face.