she said. "You"d better get back forward and start getting ready." Han let out a sigh. "Right," he said. He gave her a kiss and headed back to the c.o.c.kpit, but hesitated just outside the sealed hatch. He felt a strange sort of relief now that he had told her. The danger-if there was danger-hadn"t decreased at all, but at least the secret was out. He didn"t like keeping things from Leia.
But enough of that. Han wasn"t much interested in introspection in general, and right now he had other things to worry about. He slapped at the b.u.t.ton, the hatch slid open, and Han dropped, rather heavily, back into the pilot"s chair.
It was time to go to work.
Han checked the navicomputer"s countdown clock again.
They were getting close. Only a few more minutes until the drop out of hypers.p.a.ce. Chewie had checked over all the crucial systems twice, paying special attention to defense and weapons. Short of pulling into a s.p.a.cedock and doing visual checks, they were as ready as they were going to be.
And so, presumably, were their friends in Corellia No doubt they knew the Falcon"s arrival coordinates every bit as well as the Falcon"s own navicomputer. Maybe better, given the computer"s somewhat checkered history in the reliability department. If there were any surprises-to put it more baldly, if there was someone interested in a.s.sa.s.sinating the chief of state-they would almost certainly make their moves moments after the ship dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce .
So why let them? Why take the chance? What point in following Corellian Traffic Control regulations if it meant getting jumped? Han made a decision. "Chewie-scratch everything I said before. Touchy traffic control or not, we"re going to drop out of hypers.p.a.ce twenty seconds early." That earned Han the expected roar of complaint. "I don"t care how far it takes us out of the arrival zone. We can blame it on the navicomputer, and let the New Republic pay the fines. I"m still not happy about the situation, and I"d rather be off course than pop into normal s.p.a.ce lined up in some pirate"s crosshairs."
Chewbacca nodded his agreement and asked a question in a slightly lower-pitched growl.
"Yeah, I thought about staying in hypers.p.a.ce longer and arriving closer to the planet," Han said. "But I figure it"s smarter to come in behind our arrival point, rather than ahead of it. Besides, the sooner we"re in-system and can report our arrival and position, the sooner we can call for help if we need it.
Chewbacca thought it over for a moment, then nodded his a.s.sent.
"All right, then," Han said. He reached over and switched on the intercom. "Everyone all right back there?" he asked.
There was a raucous chorus of yeses from the younger set and then leia spoke We re fine Han Almost time9 "Just about," he said. "I"m going to drop us in twenty seconds early, just to be on the safe side." Han kept his voice casual, knowing that the kids could hear and not wishing to alarm them. He wanted to sound like some routine matter, rather than a major change in plans.
"That sounds fine," Leia said, her voice every bit as relaxed as his own. "I was about to suggest that myself."
"Glad to hear it"" he said. "See you on the other side." He flicked the intercom back to the off position, and doublechecked the switch setting. This would be the perfect time to leave it on by accident. If things did get hot, he didn"t want the kids back there listening in.
Han spread out his right hand, flexed his fingers twice, and grasped the lightspeed control levers. He reached out with his left hand and cut off the automatics on the navicomputer, but left the countdown display running. "Okay, Chewie, I"m dropping us out of light speed at minus-twenty seconds. Stay on top of it." The numbers clicked downward, and the seconds melted away.
Han watched the countdown clock, and pushed the lightspeed control levers forward just as the clock hit the twenty-second mark. The universe reappeared as the viewport filled with starlines that rapidly downshifted into the familiar points of light, the stars of Corellia The stars of home.
For a moment, and only for a moment, Han allowed himself the luxury of glorying in the stars he had known and loved as a child. He picked out two of the constellations that had been there in the sky when he was growing up.
Memories of his youth burst, unbidden, into his mind. The warm summer nights, staring up at a sky full of inviting stars that seemed to be pulling at him, calling to himA warning growl from Chewie brought Han back to himself. He blinked, and found that his hands were already on the proper controls. He made ready to get under way.
But before he could act, the com system lit up. "Unknown vehicle, you are in a restricted area. This is Corellia Traffic Control. Identify immediately," a rather brusque voice demanded.
Han responded with the little white lie he had at the ready.
"Corellia Traffic Control, this is Millennium Falcon.
We had a slight navigational error. Now preparing to proceed to designated entry coordinates."
There was a slight pause before they got an answer.
"Very well, Millennium Falcon. proceed at standard transit velocity to designated rendezvous coordinates and hold there for further instructions."
Rendezvous coordinates? They weren"t supposed to rendezvous with anyone. Did someone on Corellia have a surprise waiting for them? "Will comply, Corellia Traffic Control," Han said, looking at Chewie. By the expression on his face, it was clear that the Wookiee had caught the slip as well. "Looks like they"re telling us more than they intended," said Han. He confirmed the Falcon"s fix on the planet Corellia, a gleaming blue-and-white marble in the sky, did an offset calculation to the rendezvous coordinates, and lit the sublight engines. "There we go, Chewie. On course for target point. let"s see if there"s a reception committee."
But Chewie already had the long-range pa.s.sive scanners doing a sweep-and the sweep didn"t have to work very hard to find something.
There. Centered exactly on the Falcon"s designated entry coordinates. No fewer than six faint blips, in a spherical formation. If the Falcon he come in where she had been supposed to, she would have been surrounded.
Han whistled softly. "That"s some rendezvous," he said.
"Small military craft of some sort. It"s hard for us to see them now, and if we didn"t have the mil-spec sensors, we couldn"t see them at all. But is that an honor guard for the chief of state, or did someone get the bright idea of arresting Leia?"
Chewie made a slightly derisive snort with a sort of interrogative noise at the end.
"Well, yeah, it could be me they want to arrest," Han said. "But those warrants should have expired years ago.
Believe me, I checked on it. But it doesn"t matter. With six escorts waiting for us, we can"t make a run for it anyway.
There"s bound to be other patrol craft ready to cut off our escape."
Chewie let out a low moan of agreement.
"All right, then. They have military-quality sensors, and they"re getting data from Corellia Traffic Control. But I bet they think we have the standard commercial grid we"re registered as having. And if they don"t know how good our detectors are, they"ll think we can"t see them from way out here. So what do they do when they can see us and think we can"t see them?" He watched for a moment, and got his answer.
"They move," Han announced to Chewie, even though the Wookiee was watching the same image on his own screen. "They move right toward us.
And that doesn"t tell us a thing. Honor guard or bandits would do the same thing."
Chewie burbled a protest.
"Yeah, you"re right," Han said. "They got off the mark awfully fast. They couldn"t have chosen a course and timed a synchronized maneuver like that in just a few seconds."
Han thought for a moment. "Preprogrammed," he said at last. "They just performed a preprogrammed maneuver, heading straight for us.
Except we"re a million kilometers back of where we ought to be.
Chewie-cut main engines and give me rear detectors, fast!"
Most ships had blind spots in the stern, where the thrust from the sublight engines effectively jammed any and all detection and visual frequencies. The Falcon had a much smaller blind spot than most, but she still had one. But by shutting down the sublight engines, she could bring her rear detector to bear.
Like most pilots, Han didn"t like the maneuver because he was likely to need it at exactly the moment when he could least afford to have his engines off. Normally Han would have simply spun the ship around to bring the forward detector array to bear-but with a fleet of six armed and possibly trigger-happy ships of questionable motive bearing down on him, it did not seem to be the time for violent maneuvers.
The sublight engines died with a low groan, which was normal, and a sudden thud, which was not. Chewie and Han exchanged glances, but then Han shrugged. "This old crate comes up with new noises all the time," he said, trying to sound optimistic. "Probably nothing at all."
Chewie was about to reply, but just then the rear detector came online, and suddenly a possible problem with the sublight engines wasn"t on the top of the list anymore. There was company coming to visit, and it was coming at high speed, straight for the Falcon.
There were three of them, bearing down straight for the Falcon, close enough that Han could get a visual on them.
"Three Uglies," he shouted, "dead astern! I hate Uglies." Han had reason to hate them. "Uglies" were an unpleasant little specialty of the less reputable of the Corellian shipyards-patch-up jobs cobbled together from whatever wrecks happened to find their way into the sc.r.a.p heap. By the looks of them, two of the things-Han could not bring himself to call them "fighters" or "ships" "-had started out life as X-wings. Now, however, the wings themselves had been stripped off, and the side shields from a pair of early-model TIE fighters were welded on.
The third Ugly wasn"t even that recognizable. It had a c.o.c.kpit section from a Corellian stock light freighter-one of the Falcon"s sister ships-bolted onto the fuselage of a badly damaged B-wing, with a turbo-laser cannon slung under the ship"s belly. By the look of it, the laser had started life as a ground-based unit. It would have to be all but impossible for the gunner to aim with great accuracy, but with a cannon that size, the gunner would only have to get lucky once.
The problem with Uglies was that it was impossible to know their specs at all. The X-TIE fighters might have no shields at all, or double-powered ones. Or one might have completely different armament from the next. None of the three of them was likely to be all that s.p.a.ceworthy, which meant that the pilots...o...b..ard had to be either stupid or suicidal, if not both. In any event, Ugly pilots weren"t likely to be very good-and in a close-quarters dogfight, a bad and desperate pilot in an unreliable ship could be more dangerous than a skilled pilot who valued his own skin and knew what his ship could and could not do.
Perhaps worst of all, however, was the fact that only the real dregs of Corellian s.p.a.ce flew Uglies. Downon-their-luck pirates, mercenaries who would change sides in the middle of a battle if the price was right, losers who had nothing left to lose. And people who did not wish to be identified.
All of this flashed through Han"s mind in something less than a heartbeat. He turned toward Chewie, about to order him to get the main shields up and the forward lasers online, but Chewie was already on it.
Han skipped to the next item on the agenda. "Chewie, you"re gonna have to fly her.
I"ll take the upper quad-laser turret."
Chewie nodded and gestured violently, urging Han to be on his way.
Han hit the hatch-open b.u.t.ton and was on the other side of the hatchway before the thing was half-open.
He scrambled through the accessway to the upper laser turret and into the control chair. He jammed the headset on and powered up the turret.
"Chewie!" he cried out. "I"ve got em on visual. Not quite in range yet, and I want it to stay that way." With the kids...o...b..ard, he was more interested in running than duking it out with a bunch of Uglies, and maybe the honor guard, too, if they turned out to be less than honorable.
"Relight the sublight engines and get us out of here," Han said. He swung the turret gun around and got a tracking lock on the first X-TIE fighter. He was about to fire when the Falcon suddenly pitched around, a hard ninety-degree rotation. Chewie was lining up the ship on a trajectory that would get them out from between these ships. Good. He"d settle for losing the shot if it got them out of here. He waited for the sublight engines to kick in and throw them clear of this mess.
But then nothing happened. Han, who had learned from bitter experience what nothing happening meant at such times, already knew what the story was before Chewie even roared his frustration. That unexpected thump when Chewie shut down the sublight engines had meant something after all. Han looked up the accessway panel just in time to see Chewie rushing past the base of the pa.s.sage, headed for the sublight engine access panels.
Han muttered a silent and profane prayer to whatever powers might be looking in, asking that, for once, it would be a simple problem. Then he thrust the question from his mind and concentrated on the incoming Uglies. He checked his tactical display. They would be within range in another 2.5 seconds. The tactical display was preparing an automated firing run, but Han slapped it over to manual. He didn"t trust a computer to do his fighting for him. Take the B-wing chop job with the laser canaon first. It posed the biggest threat.
After all, he was just guessing that the B-wing"s laser was hard to aim. Line it up. Pray that Chewie had set all the shields on max before he dove at the engines.
The B-wing was getting closer. Han held his fire for just a fraction of a second longer than he wanted, letting the B-wing get fully into range. Then he pulled at the trigger, let it have a long volley of fire. He caught it with a nice series of hits amidships as it swept past, swinging the quadlaser turret around to pound another volley into its sublight engines. One of the ponside engines flared suddenly and then went dark. Good. That was not just a definite hit, but one that had done some damage. Han swung the turret back around to take a crack at the X-TIE fighters, and suddenly realized they had flown past with the B-wing, flying outboard to it.
Then it struck him. They had all flown right past him.
They had ignored him altogether. None of them had fired at all.
"Oh, no," Han muttered to himself. Had he just fired on three heavily anad ships that had no quarrel with him, that just happened to be flying on the same vector as his own ship? There had been an old saying in the Corellian Sector Fleet of the old Imperial Navy, back when Han was a junior officer there. "Never get an Ugly angry." As best he recalled, there were very good reasons for that advice.
Then, with a sudden lurch that made itself felt, artificial grav system or no, the sublight engines came back on-lineand then shut down again just as fast. At a guess, Chewie had gotten them working again by doing whatever he had done aft, and then was forced to shut them down again until he could get back forward to the c.o.c.kpit and light them up from there. Han judged how much time it usually took Chewie to perform this sort of maneuver, figured in half a step"s worth of delay to account for Chewie being out of practice, then took another quick peek down the accessway.
Sure enough, there was Chewie, hotfooting it hack to the c.o.c.kpit.
Han allowed himself a half moment"s regret that he hadn"t put Lein on the quad lasers. That way he could have stayed in the c.o.c.kpit while Chewie ran back and forth on repair duty. Too late for that idea now, and besides, someone had to watch the children. Poor kids must be in a full panic by now. Not that there was anything he could do about it but man the quad-laser turret.
A half moan, half growtcoming through the headset told Han that Chewbacca was back at the flight controls. There was another hard jerk as the Wookiee slammed the sublight engines back on at full power, and Han struggled to keep a track on the Uglies as they headed straight for the honor.
guard ships. The Millennium Falcon took off at right angles to the line between the Uglies and the honor guard. But something was wrong.
Very wrong. Neither the Uglies nor the honor guard was paying the Falcon the slightest attention. "Chewie!" Han shouted. "Full stop! Cut the engines, do a one-hundred-and eighty degree turn, reverse thrust, and hold us here." Chewbacca replied with a wholly predictable roar of protest, but Han shouted right back at him.
"Do it!" he said. "Something"s not right. That cholob B-wing could have vaporized us on the first shot from its range, and it didn"t even try."
Chewbacca"s voice hooted again, a bit softer, in Han"s ear. "So if they were pirates, they would have tried to disable us, not fry us. So what? They didn"t try that either.
And they should have. They had us dead to rights. A blind shot to our rear as we were coming out of hypers.p.a.ce, and we"d be lunch." Leia"s voice came on from the ship"s lounge. "Han, this is leia on a headset link." She was telling him the children couldn"t hear. "What"s going on?"
"Later, leia. Don"t joggle my elbow just now." Han reached up and cut the lounge out of his com circuit. Not the most respectful way to treat his wife, but on the other hand, one distraction too many could be fatal just now. He could apologize later, if they lived. "Chewie," he said again. "Full stop, now. Reverse course and hold this position, then adjust ship att.i.tude to give both of us a good field of view of whatever"s going on out there." The ship lurched again as Chewie finally obeyed his orders, and the Falcon came about to its new heading. Han checked to make sure the tactical display was being recorded, then zoomed the view to get a good close look at the Uglies.
They were nearly on top of the honor guard now-but instead of engaging them, they came about, and"Chewie-all power to forward and starboard shields!
Now!"
Now the Uglies were opening fire on the Falcon, from a much poorer firing angle, with twenty times the distance of their closest approach, with the element of surprise gone and with the honor-guard ships-if they were an honor guard-just about to jump on them. But why? Why? A volley of near misses from the B-wing"s ground laser blazed past the Falcon, bouncing off the shields and rattling the ship. It was close, but it should have been much closer.
Chewie"s voice growled again in the headphones, but Han cut him off. "No! Do not maneuver!" he said.
"They"re shooting to miss. Even a bunch of Uglies couldn"t miss that completely from that range unless they were trying. If you move the ship, we might fly into a shot that was intended as a near miss. Hold position. I"m not sure, but I think I know what"s going on."
Han watched as the honor-guard ships jumped the three Uglies, none of which did a very credible job of responding to the threat. The B-wing ignored their attack altogether, and concentrated on firing near misses and the occasional glancing hit at the Falcon. The X-TIE fighters turned on the interlopers and blasted away, to very little effect. To Han"s experienced eye, it was clear that either the X-TIEs" weapons were extremely underpowered, or the PPBs of the honor guard were packing some implausibly powerful shielding-far better shielding than Han could credit in a vehicle that size. And if they did have shields that good, they certainly couldn"t have laser cannon of any size. And yet it took only five or six desultory shots from the lead PPB to disable one of the XTIEs. Its engines and weapons died and it drifted off, derelict. Three of the PPBs took off on a needlessly complex synchronized maneuver and came up under the other X-TlE, blasting away. The X-TIE came about, managed to land a few shots on the lead PPB, and then its left wing blew off.
Its fighter cover gone, the B-wing Ugly finally broke its ineffectual attack on the Falcon and came about in rather lumbering fashion. It leveled its cannon at the one PPB that hadn"t managed to do much besides fly straight, and the little fighter exploded on the first shot. The five remaining PPBs converged on the B-wing from all sides and concentrated their fire on it. The B-wing took several hard hits from multiple directions and a small explosion amidships sent it into a hard tumble. The PPBs poured the fire on from every point of the compa.s.s.
Another explosion in the B-wing"s aft section sent it tumbling even harder. Then a whole series of blasts ripped through the ship"s interior, merging into one huge firestorm that lit up the sky, blinding Han for a moment or two before it guflered down to nothing.
The cho job B-wing Ugly wasn"t there anymore.
Han watched as the surviving PPBs did a graceful joint victory roll. "Very nice," he said. "Very nice. Almost makes me want to believe it. But will they have the nerve to Play it out to the end?"
Millennium Falcon, this is Captain Talp.r.o.n, leading Squadron Two, Corellian s.p.a.ce Defense Forces s.p.a.ce Service. Are you all right?"
"Ah, yes," Han said, trying to sound convincingly grateful. "Just fine, thanks. Thanks for the rescue."
"Our pleasure, Millennium Falcon." It had been agreed long before that all Corellian craft would address the ship, and not mention the name of anyone onboard, to provide at least a mote of security for the chief of state"s private visit. Apparently, Talp.r.o.n was determined to honor that arrangement, even if it was spectacularly obvious that security was shot full of holes.
Well, if Talp.r.o.n wanted to pretend everything was fine, Han had his own reasons for playing along. "Whose ships were those?" he asked in a conversational tone of voice, as if he didn"t already know.
"Unknown group, Millennium Falcon," Talp.r.o.n replied. "Could be any of the Corellian pirate groups out to score big. They might be from one of the Outlier systems," he said.
"That"ll make em hard to trace," Han said sympathetically.
"So it will, Millennium Falcon," Talp.r.o.n said, in a world-weary sort of voice. "So it will."
"Well, even if you can"t track them down, we can"t tell you how grateful we are for your a.s.sistance," Han went on. "We"re very sorry that you lost one of your craft. We would like to express our condolences to you and to the family of the crew you lost."
"What?" Talp.r.o.n asked. "Oh, yes. Of course. We"ll make the arrangements."
"Yeah, I bet you will," Han said under his breath, low enough so the mike wouldn"t catch it. He spoke again, louder, into the microphone.
"Captain Talp.r.o.n, thanks once again for a.s.sistance. However, I"ve got to get my ship secured from general quarters and run some systems checks.
Will you excuse me?"
"Of course, sir. We"ll stand by until you are ready to proceed.