Han could see the lights of vehicles heading toward him, and airborne PPBs coming in. More blaster fire struck to his right, and he fired back as he dove.
The second detonator went up, but it must have rolled past the PPB.
The explosion merely set this one on fire, rather than destroying it.
Han glanced toward the X-TIE just in time to see a slight figure scrambling into it.
He decided to get rid of the little nasties and stop worrying about causing maximum damage. He pulled out his last three, punched in the timer studs, and threw them as far as he could, one in every direction but that of the X-TlE.
The triple explosion was too much for the flash goggles, and they blacked out altogether and did not clear.
Han peeled them off, and watched, with a smile on his face, as the X-TIE Ugly flew directly over his head and headed for the sky. No way the PPBs could catch that thing with a real pilot in it.
The s.p.a.ceport guards were starting to converge. A spotlight from an approaching security hovercar caught Han in its beam. He laughed, threw down his blaster, put his hands over his head, and waited for them to come and get him.
Mission accomplished.
They had found an emergency stairwell that wasn"t too full of debris, and managed to clear it far enough for Leia to get up to the fifteenth floor of Corona House.
Early in the day these apartments had been the home to her family, and her family had all been there, safe and together. Now, now they were all gone, scattered to the four winds, and the apartment was a darkened, ruined sh.e.l.l of a place, with the cold wind coming in through the broken windows.
But from here, she could see the s.p.a.ceport. With a good strong set of macrobinoculars, she could see the flares of the explosions, the flicker of blaster fire, the duller flame of burning ships. She could even see the X-TIE getting away into the sky.
But she could not see Han.
And she knew she might never see him again.
The X-TIE shuddered its way up into the sky, the crude crossbreed of a ship threatening to come apart at the seams at any moment. Belindi Kalenda hung on for dear life and forced the wretched thing up into the sky, out of atmosphere, and out into the depths of s.p.a.ce. She could see now why this sort of chop-job ship was called an Ugly.
But at least this particular Ugly had an absolutely standard hypers.p.a.ce drive and navicomputer. At long last she had the X-TlE up out of the atmosphere. She set it on a course that would keep it flying while she did the jump calculations for the run to Coruscant.
She frowned at the readings the navicomputer was giving her.
Something was not quite right. The gravimetric background readings were way too high, and growing stronger even as she watched. Not strong enough to stop her jumping into hypers.p.a.ce, but they would be soon. She had never seen a reading like that, except around an interdiction ship in training exercises.
And who would have an interdiction ship out here?
Kalenda compensated as best she could for the heightened naadings, and made ready for the jump to hypers.p.a.ce. She turned flight control over to the navicomputer and hung on.
The lightspeed engines kicked in. Starlines formed, and the X-TIE Ugly bucked and shuddered its way into hypers.p.a.ce.
One of them, one of the cloud of helpers and a.s.sistants who always wanted something of her,- was waiting for Leia when she got back downstairs. She could see him, watching her come back in, hoping for the nod from her, the gesture that would allow him to approach. Very young, very earnest, with the inevitable datapad full of vital data in his hands.
His office worker"s clothes were still neat and clean, as if the whole nightmare day had never happened. Bright, energetic, relentlessly polite.
Ones like him were always waiting for her, wherever she went. The helpful people with the piece of information they wanted to give her, the people who wanted just two minutes of her time, the ones who wanted to give or get just one tiny bit of advice, and never mind that her husband and children had just been swept away from her, perhaps forever. Couldn"t they give her any peace?
But the answer was, of course, that they could not. There was a galaxy to run, and never enough time to do it. Other people"s families were in jeopardy this night, and they were trusting in Leia to put things right. She pushed her sorrow to one side and walked briskly over to the bright young technician who wanted to see her.
"Ah, good evening, ma"am. " Good in what way? she thought. But the words she spoke were at least somewhat more polite. "Good evening,"
she said, her tone a bit brittle. "You looked as if you wanted to see me."
"Yes, ma"am. There"s something I think you need to know. I work in the corn section. We"re not having much luck getting through the jamming, but while I was working on that, I noticed some very strange readings on the gravimetric sensors."
"Is that supposed to mean something?" Leia asked in acid tones, and then instantly felt guilty. "I"m sorry," she said, rubbing her forehead.
"That was uncalled for. Please tell me what 1 need to know."
"Ah, yes, ma"am. Thank you. What it boils down to is that something seems to be disrupting reals.p.a.ce in the same way an interdiction ship does."
Suddenly the earnest young technician had her full attention. An interdiction ship did one thing, and one thing only-generate gravitic energy in such a way that hypers.p.a.ce could not form in its vicinity.
Ships inside an interdiction field could not jump to hypers.p.a.ce, and ships in hypers.p.a.ce that pa.s.sed through an interdiction field were abruptly-sometimes violently-decanted out into normal s.p.a.ce. "Tell me more," she said.
"Well, right now it"s a fairly weak effect, but it"s getting stronger by the minute, as if there were a very powerful interdiction generator just warming up very slowly. At the moment it"s not enough to force a ship out of hypers.p.a.ce or keep one from entering it, but it will be soon. But that"s not the bad part."
"What is the bad part?" Leia asked.
"The size of the interdiction zone, ma"am. If this field keeps growing at the present rate, it"s going to blanket the entire Corellian star system."
"The whole system?" Leia asked. "That"s impossible.
No one could generate an interdiction field that big."
"Except someone is, ma"am. And when that field reaches full strength, nothing is going to be able to- get within a light-week of this star system in hypers.p.a.ce. We"re going to be cut off from the outside."
The young technician put down his datapad, knit his fingers awkwardly together, and he looked away from Leia, down at a corner of the floor.
For the first time the fear in his own voice came through.
"It means," he said, "that we"re not going to get any help."
Leia Organa Solo found a place to be alone in an empty, windowless conference room across from the GovernorGeneral"s office. It was a good place for her, just then, for from there she could not see the sky, or the s.p.a.ceport, or the stars that were suddenly so much farther away.
Her family was lost to her, lost to the depths of s.p.a.ce.
The Corellian System, in a single day, had somehow found a way to backslide into the worst sort of irrational species hatred, the sort of thing that should have been left in the slime a thousand generations before. Neighbor was turned against neighbor in a three-way fight that could only grow more vicious as the wounds cut deeper. And the Corellian Sector had seceded from the New Republic in a way that could only tempt others to do the same. She knew how fragile the fabric of the New Republic still was. She knew how easy it would be to tear it to shreds, how impossible it would be to put it back together.
But there were plenty of other worries besides mere politics. Where had Mara Jade gone? She had vanished. How were a bunch of thugs like the Human League capable of stealing the most secret New Republic data?
How were they able to blow up stars on command? Were they truly capable of exterminating an entire living star system if they did not get their way? And who was producing this ma.s.sive new interdiction field?
And they were all counting on her. If she made only the slightest effort, used the least of ability in the Force, she could quite literally feel their need, there in the GovernorGeneral"s office. They needed her, had faith in her, believed that she would find the way out of this for all of them.
And she did not have the least idea what to do next.
Leia reached down, deep into herself, into the power of the Force, and searched for the strength that would let her hang on.
Luke Skywalker made his way back to the control cabin of the Laay Luck and sat down in the copilot"s seat.
"Almost there," Lando said, glancing up from his seat at the pilot"s station.
"Good," Luke said, strapping himself in. "It"ll be good to see Han and Leia and the kids again." Lando looked over and grinned wolfishly.
"It"ll be even better to cut some nice big deals at that trade summit."
Luke laughed. "If only it were that easy," he said.
"Then maybe-" Suddenly the Lady Luck shuddered violently from stem to stern, and went into a violent tumble as half a dozen alarms sounded at once. "Luke!" Lando shouted as he wrestled with the att.i.tude controls. "It"s an interdiction field! It"s knocked us out of hypers.p.a.ce. Shut down the hyperdrive motors before they burn out!"
Luke reached out and shut down the hyperdrive, silencing most of the alarms. Lando pulled the ship out of its tumble and hit a series of reset commands, quieting the last of the alerts.
Luke let his friend work. He could sense something, a huge and powerful disturbance in the Force. He closed his eyes and reached out with his Force senses.
"What was that?" Lando demanded, when he finally had the ship put to rights. "What maniac would put an interdiction field way out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"Not out here," Luke said as he opened his eyes. "In there." He pointed through the viewscreen toward the stilldistant point of light that was the star Corell, at least two months" travel away at sublight speeds. "It"s very weak, and very subtle, but I can feel the way it interacts with the Force. We"ve just hit the fringes of an interdiction field that covers the whole Corellian star system."
"Are you nuts?" Lando asked. "No one could build an interdiction field that big. No one."
"Well someone has," Luke said. "It"s here. We"ve just run into the edge of it."
Luke reached out again, this time trying not to sense the shape of a field in s.p.a.ce, but the feel of the minds in the Corellian System. He did not try to reach any one mind, but instead to get some overall sense of emotion. Even at this extreme range, he ought to be able to get something.
But the power of what he got back astonished him. Hate, fear, revenge, anger, terror-all the dark emotions were running wild in the minds of the Corellian System.
"Lando," Luke said, "turn this ship around. We"re not more than a few hundred kilometers inside the interdiction field. Fly us back out of the interdiction field in normal s.p.a.ce, and then set a lightspeed course for Coruscant. We need to go for help. Now."
Lando seemed about to protest, but then he stopped.
"You"re right," he said. "You"re absolutely right." He took up the controls, and began turning the ship around.
"Hurry, Lando," Luke said.
Luke looked out the viewport again, to the gleaming light of Corell. "Hurry," he said again.
"I"ve got a bad feeling about this."