Star Wars_ Recovery Part 6

Leia nodded. "That's what they're afraid of."

"It makes sense," Han said. "Hard to be sure, though."

"What else have I been doing over the last year?"' Leia asked.

"And no one was trying to kill me before Jacen's report*at least no one on our side."

"CorDuro's not exactly on our side cither, dear."

Han opened a tactical feed to the navicomputer display so Leia could waich events unfold from her seat behind the bulkhead. A minute or so after the corvette and freighter had merged into a single blip, Izal Waz opened a subs.p.a.ce channel and announced the coordinates of the rendezvous.

"I thought we had to maintain comm silence," Han said "Close enough," Tesar said.

A few seconds later, a nervous voice came from the Star Roamer. "Who was that?" When no one answered, it said again, "Unidentified transmitter, respond and explain yourself."

They did not, of course. A minute later, the electronics began to hiss and spit as the freighter went to active sensors and probed in their direction. Leia felt confident the Falcon would remain hidden. The asteroid they sat upon was only a lew times larger than the ship itself, but Han had set them down beside a ten-meter pressure ridge where standard sensors would find it impossible to distinguish the ship's silhouette.

The hissing faded away, and another minute pa.s.sed. The tactical display went briefly blank as the asteroid's rotation hid the two ships from view, then it turned to static as the sensors pointed toward the tiny sun. When the static cleared, the Roamer and the Yuuzhan Vong corvette were separate blips again.

Tesar hissed in frustration. "They will get..."

He was interrupted by the shriek of proximity alarms. A new handful of blips appeared on tin: display, streaking in from five sides, already firing laser bolts and even a couple of long-range proton torpedoes. The Yuuzhan Vong turned to meet the a.s.sault, as Yuuzhan Vong ships nearly always did. The Roamer ran in the only direction left to it, toward the Falcon.

Han and Izal began a warm start-up, while Leia occupied her self trying to guess whether they would intercept the freighter before it jumped to hypers.p.a.ce. Identifiers began to appear beneath the blips on the tactical display, revealing a motley a.s.sortment of old T-65 X-wings, even older Y-wings, and a pair of Skipray blast-boats. Some of the newcomers transponder codes were already blinking to show damage and the Yuuzhan Vong had not even fired.

"That's the saddest pirate band I've seen in some time," Leia said. "Who did Master Saba hire for this a.s.signments?"

"No one. That is our squadron, the Wild Knightz." Tesar smiled proudly. "I fly a very fine Y-wing."

Any need to apologize was forestalled by a proximity alarm. Another vessel, this one a fast-freight tagged the Jolly Man, emerged from hypers.p.a.ce to block the Roamer's line of escape. The Cor-Duro ship continued on course and began to fire, lacing the darkness outside with tiny needles of light. A trio of ancient Z-95 Headhunters dropped out of the Jolly Man's belly and moved to meet it. The Roamer started to turn away...then suddenly changed its mind and ran toward the tiny sun.

"He's going down the gravity well! On a white dwarf!" Han engaged the ion drives...still a little cold...and launched the Falcon.

"He must be crazy."

"No." Tesar said. "He is frightened"

The reason grew apparent an instant later, when a blip in hot pursuit emerged from behind an asteroid. A tag naming the vessel the Sureshot appeared, along with a legend identifying it as a CEC YT-1300 stock light freighter...the same ship as the Falcon.

"She's not as fast as the Falcon," Izal Waz said proudly.

"But...well, she still flies."

The Roamer quickly started to pull away from the Sureshot, but its abrupt change of direction had given the Jolly Man's Head hunters time to catch up. They took a few pa.s.ses, taking out the energy shields and forcing the captain to waste time maneuvering or have a hole burned through his bridge. Finally, the Sureshot activated its tractor beam and caught hold of the target.

The Roamer stopped maneuvering and continued to accelerate, firing at the Sureshot and dragging the smaller freighter alter it. The Headhunters took care of the cannon fire in two pa.s.ses, but they could not target the drive nacelles without getting caught in the tractor beam.- Tlie Sureshot turned ninety degrees in an attempt to change vector, but the course did not vary noticeably. Its engines could not match the combination of the larger freighter's power and the white dwarf's gravity.

"Smart," Leia said-"He's giving the Sureshot a choice*release or be dragged into the sun."

"Tesar," Han said, "how long before they reach the point of no return?"

Tesar had already done the calculations. "Ten minutes," he said. "We will reach tractor range in five."

Han opened a comm channel. "Hold tight, Sureshot. Help's on the way."

Just don't be all day about it," came the reply.

Leia spent the next few minutes scarcely breathing as the Falcon closed. The Headhunters continued to harry the Roamer, though it was just hara.s.sment and everyone knew it-On Leia's recommendation, they opened a channel to the captain and promised to broker a lenient sentence. In return for cooperating with New Republic Intelligence. The captain responded by promising not to drag the Sureshot into the sun. In return for shutting off the tractor beam, then closed the channel, Izal Waz suggested offering the crew freedom in exchange for the bacta tanks, but Leia overruled that idea. If the captain knew what they were really after, there was a good chance he would destroy the tanks out of vindictiveness.

So they waited and watched on the tactical display as the other two flights of Wild Knights used the Yuuzhan Vong picket ship for target practice. Though the vessel was hurling an amazing amount of plasma and magma into s.p.a.ce, the ancient starfighters always seamed to be where the enemy attacks weren't, or to angle their shields at just the right time, or to take the Yuuzhan Vong gunners by surprise. The corvette a.n.a.log disintegrated bit by bit, slowly at first, then more rapidly, and finally it simply flew apart and became indistinguishable from the dust ring.

Han whistled-"Where were they when the Yuuzhan Vong attacked Ithor? The New Republic could use a few more pilots like those."

"This one does not think Master Luke would have approved,"

Tesar said. "We are given to understand he does not want the Jedi to hunt as soldierz."

"You're all Jedi?" Leia asked..

"All of the pilotz , yes."

The blocky silhouette of a Damorian freighter eclipsed the tiny sun ahead, its gloving ion drives sliding across the c.o.c.kpit canopy as Han brought the Falcon in behind it.- The smaller disk of a YT-1300 appeared below them and a little off to one side, its back painted ill a patiernless kaleidoscope of the primary colors so favored by the Arcona. The Headhunters were barely visible, a trio of tiny black crosses chasing, the bolts of their laser cannons up the Roamer's half-kilometer hull.

Han spoke over the intercom. "Ladies, we're counting on you to take out the drive nacelles. Izal, why don't you handle the tractor beam?"

"On my way."

The Arcona unbuckled his harness and rose-The mere sight of the ma.s.sive hull ahead was enough to convince Leia they could not change its vector in time.

"Han," she said, "this isn't the way to do it."

Han half turned in his seat. "I'm listening."

"Won't there be an escape hatch above the bridge?"

"Yeah...locked from the inside," Han said.

"Doesn't matter," Leia said. "We have Jedi. "

Han frowned. "The CorDurol crew will be waiting."

"So?" Tesar asked-."We have ]edi."

For some reason even Izal Waz did not seem to uriderstand; this sent Tesar into a fit of sissing. Leia waved the back of her fingers at Han.

"We have five minutes," she said-"I can handle the cofferdam."

"Four and a half minutes," Izal Waz corrected, stepping to the back of the flight deck.

"Two will do." Tesar began to siss again. ."We have Jedi."

"Right." Han drew his blaster and pa.s.sed it to Leia. "I just hope we still have Jedi when this is done."

Leia led the way to the port docking ring, where Bela and Krasov were already waiting in their brown Jedi robes-They were a terrifying contrast to Izal Waz, who if the imth was told, looked rather comical in his ragged flight tabard.

Han set the Falcon on edge and brought it into position over the docking ring. The Roamer attempted to slide out from under them, but Han was too good a pilot to let such a c.u.mbersome ship outmaneuver him. Leia put the cofferdam over the docking ring on the third try, then activated the magnetic clamp and pressurized the pa.s.sage.

"Three minutes," Han warned. "If you can't..."

Tesar opened the hatch...and promptly hissed as a blaster bolt caught him in the shoulder From her chair, Leia glimpsed a charging crew member in a CorDuro uniform and squeezed off two shots, then the two Hara sisters were leaping through door with lit lightsabers. The human gurgled and thumped to the floor. A pair of blaster rifles opened up from the opposite hatch. The tunnel filled with flashes and hums and zings for about two seconds, then the sounds began to recede as the Barabels carried the battle into the Roamer.

Izal Waz followed, stepping over two bodies in the cofferdam and kicking another out of the way as he boarded the freighter. Tezar was slower to react, pulling the. cloth away from his shoulder to reveal the smoking hole and scorched scales beneath.

Leia moved her chair forward. "Tesar, how bad?"

"Bad," he growled. "My best robe." He stuck a claw through the hole. "This really burnz me."

Then, sissing with hilarity, he leapt through the hatch and followed his companions into the Star Roamer.

Leia stared after him in dumbfounded silence. When the hatch at the other end of the cofferdam closed, she sealed the Falcon's hatch and withdrew, the cofferdam, then checked her chronometer.

Two minutes.

She activated the intercom. "Han, we're clear-Maybe we can buy a little time if we use the..."

"Don't need to Han replied. "The Roamer has cut her throttles and is turning outbound."

"They're surrendering?" Leia asked-"Good. Maybe now we can find out who wants me dead."

"Uh, maybe not," Han said. "They're not exactly surrendering."

"Not exactly surrendering?" Leia double-checked the hatch seal, then started for the main hold-"What are you talking about?"

"Sensors are showing two escape pod deployments."

"Here?"

Leia reached the main hold and went straight to the engi neering station, where she saw the image of two escape pods arcing away from the Star Roamer. At escape pod speeds, it would have taken them over three years to reach the nearest habitable environment. But that was not going to be a problem. From the way it looked to Leia, both pods were already well down the white dwarf's gravity well.

Izal Waz's breathless voice came over the speaker. "Star Roamer secure," he said. "With enough bacta to fill a lake."

"Izal," Leia asked, patching through the intercom-"What about the crew?" Leia said.

"You mean survivors?"

"Yes, survivors," Leia said.

There was a moment of silence, then Izal Waz's voice fell to a whisper. "Well, what would you do if you saw three angry Barabels coming your way?"

Chapter 6.

Impossible as it was to ignore the stunning cascade of liquid metal outside the transparisteel walls of the Cinnabar.

Moon Retreat, Han tried. He sat in the natatorium of the aban doned spa the Wild Knights were using as a base, trying to concentrate on the two datapads before him, listening to Leia's leg braces whir mid clunk as she walked circuits around the empty pool. C-3PO was standing behind the covered bar, using a portable HoloNet hookup to access databases across the galaxy and add yet more entries to the catalog Han was studying. It was maddening work. if only because CorDuro had so many employees, and so many of them had at one time or another been affiliated with illicit organisations.- Han wondered what his own dossier would have looked like in this light, or even Leia's. Smugglers, insurrectionists, Hutt-killers...

The name of a woman who had once served as a clerk in Thrackan Sal-Solo's Human League appeared on a display. Han transferred it to the scrutiny list on the second datapad, then used a electronic stylus to bring up the next entry. Somewhere on this list he would find someone who knew Roxi Barl, and that would give him a thread he could follow to the person who wanted his vife dead. Or so he hoped. In the week since their capture of the Star Roamer, it was the best plan they had devised, and time was run ning out to develop a new one. The Wild Knights had spotted a mysterious task force sniffing around a nearby system; like the flotilia that had jumped the Falcon outside Corellia, this one oper ated with deactivated transponders and included Lancer-cla.s.s cus toms frigates.

Leia's clunking, grew louder. Han looked up to see her approaching, arms swinging wide to balance the cybernetic exercise braces that kept her legs from collapsing.

"That's all." She stopped in front of her repulsor chair and turned her back toward it, arms extended for Han to take when he lowered her into the seat. "These braces still aren't adjusted. I can't even c.o.c.k my ankle."

"Give it some time." Han did not rise. Leia had only completed six of the twenty-five laps that Cilghal...the Jedi's most accomplished healer...had prescribed, and today was the first day she had gone beyond four laps. "You just need to get used to them."

"Thanks for your opinion, Dr. Solo," Leia said dryly. She con tinued to stand with her arms out. "Now, would you please help me into my chair and take these things off?"

Han slapped the stylus on the table. "Sure."

Though thrice-daily bacta treatments had finally chased the infection from Leia's legs, it seemed to Han another infection had been festering a place bacta could not reach. There was a sadness in her that had been growing, since Corellia. Any effort to encourage her invariably met a sharp-tongued riposte, any bid to urge her on only resulted in a sullen retreat. This was not the. Leia he had married all those yeara ago, before... well, before he had gone crazy and shut her out. She had Leia's face and voice and body and even her wit, but she held herself apart now; it was as though the Yuuzhan Vong had taken Leia away from him without even killing her, and now he wanted her back.

"Han?" Leia was suspended hallway above the seat of the repulsor chair, her arms still clasped in his grasp. "Are you going to keep me hanging here?"

"No." Han hauled her to her feet, then took her arm and pulled her two steps toward the pool. "Let's do a couple of circuits together. If something's out of alignment, maybe I'll see it."

"If, Han?" Leia pulled her arm free. "Wouldn't I be the one who could tell?"

Han sighed. "Look, maybe they^re uncomfortable, but there are only so many adjustments, I've tried them all."

Leia narrowed her eyes. "So I don't know what I'm talking about."

"I'm saying give them more time." Han took her arm again.

"Come on, just a couple more circuits."

"Are you listening?" Leia refused to move her feet, and Han had to stop pulling or drag her over. "It hurts. I can't do any more today."

C-3PO looked up at the sound of Leia's sharp voice and started to say something, then wisely decided his a.s.sistance was not needed.

"You mean won't," Han said.

"All right, won't." Leia clunked the two steps back to her chair.

"What's the difference?" Either way, you're helping me into that chair and out of these braces. If you can't do that*"