"Han! Is that you?" Lando said. A sudden thrill surged through Luke.
"Lando?" Han said after a pause. Over the speakers Chewbacca"s roar drowned out Han"s own exclamation. "What are you doing here?"
In s.p.a.ce around them, blinding lances of light flashed as the weapons of two fleets were brought to bear. Like rival krayt dragons in mating season, the Kessel and Imperial forces slammed into each other in a total free-for-all s.p.a.ce brawl.
"Han, listen to me. Luke is here, too," Lando said. "We"ve got to get away from Kessel, but the Falcon"s navicomputer is disabled. We can"t make the jump into hypers.p.a.ce."
An explosion rocked them from the starboard side, but most of the Kessel fighters concentrated their firepower on the much larger threat of Daala"s Imperial fleet. Though hopelessly outmatched, the three Carrack cruisers lined up and began to blast the Basilisk.
Over the private comm channel Han spoke to someone else behind him, then answered Lando. "We can dump the coordinates to your navicomp, and we"ll fly tandem back to Coruscant."
Lando checked the computer, saw the numbers scrolling through, and raised a fist in triumph. "Got it! Artoo, get ready to go."
"You"d better keep my ship safe, Lando," Han said. "On my signal."
"You have my word, Han." Lando"s hands flew over the Falcon"s familiar controls.
"Ready to enter hypers.p.a.ce!" Han said.
The Kessel forces flanked and attacked the far larger Star Destroyers, pummeling the Imperial ships with blasts from their ion cannons and turbolaser banks. But the Star Destroyers disgorged their own squadrons of TIE fighters to butcher the unregimented forces from Kessel.
"On your mark, Han!"
"Punch it!"
The last thing they saw was Kessel"s ma.s.sive Loronar strike cruiser exploding under the concerted fire from the Manticore and the Gorgon.
They watched the flaming hulk reel and ram into the Star Destroyer Basilisk, causing the bottom of the arrowhead hull to buckle and burn.
Then the universe filled with starlines.
The reunion was everything Han had imagined. He had spent a lot of time thinking about it during the long hypers.p.a.ce flight back to Coruscant.
Leia and the twins met him the moment the Sun Crusher and the Millennium Falcon touched down side by side at the high landing platform.
Han backed out of the Sun Crusher"s hatch and began climbing down the ladder, but Leia ran forward and hugged him before he managed to get all the way down.
"Glad I"m back?" he asked.
"I missed you!" she said, kissing him.
"I know," he said with a roguish smile.
She put her hands on her hips. "What? You didn"t miss me?"
Han turned away sheepishly. "Well, first we crashed on Kessel, then we were stuck in the spice mines, then we got captured by a bunch of Imperials in the middle of a black hole cl.u.s.ter. I really didn"t have a whole lot of-"
When Leia looked as if she were going to punch him, Han reacted with a grin. "But even through all that I don"t remember more than about two seconds when I didn"t miss you with all my heart."
Leia kissed him again.
Artoo trundled down the Falcon"s ramp, and Threepio bustled to greet him."Artoo-Detoo! I"m so glad you"re back. You wouldn"t believe the difficulties I"ve had while you were gone!"
Artoo bleeped something n.o.body bothered to translate.
Kyp Durron and Qwi Xux climbed down from the Sun Crusher and stared out at the endless spires and towers of Imperial City, the metropolis of glinting transparisteel and alloy that stretched to the horizon. Above them the tiny lights of shuttles winked across the sky. "Now that"s a city!" Kyp said with a sigh.
Qwi looked overwhelmed. The Sun Crusher would be transferred to a high-security hangar for study by the scientists of the New Republic.
Qwi did not like abandoning it, but she had no choice.
Han strode over to his two children, bending his knees and gathering Jacen and Jaina into his arms.
"Hey, kids! Do you remember your daddy? It"s been a long time, huh?"
He mussed their hair and stared down at them with the wide-eyed astonishment he always felt when seeing how much they had grown between the visits Winter arranged to the hidden planet of Anoth. Now, though, Jacen and Jaina"s two years of isolation and protection were over, and the children were home to stay, leaving only baby Anakin in need of special protection.
Jacen nodded; then a moment later Jaina nodded as well. Han wasn"t sure he believed their answer, but he hugged them anyway. "Well, if you don"t remember me, I"ll try to make it up to you from now on."
A puffed-up official wearing the bright uniform of an offworld administrative office finally cornered Lando in a high-brow diplomatic lounge. The official held an armored briefcase similar to the type credit investigators carried, and he had the same pinch-faced demeanor of a person being given a mission whose importance he drastically overestimated.
"Are you Lando Calrissian?" the official said. "I have been attempting to locate you for several days. You"ve made my job most difficult." He bustled forward.
Lando saw that he could not slip out the back entrance of the lounge. Beside him at the table Han raised his eyebrows. Both of them had gone to the lounge to relax and settle down after their long debriefings by the Alliance High Command.
Unfortunately, the lounge catered to bureaucrats and political functionaries, and served only cloyingly sweet drinks. Han and Lando sipped theirs slowly, trying to keep from grimacing.
Lando had heard rumors about an investigator trying to track him down and had managed to avoid him thus far. He feared some debtor coming after him, or a complaint regarding the tibanna gas mining operations he had abandoned on Bespin or the hot metal mines he had recently lost on Nkllon.
"Yes, you finally caught me," Lando said with a sigh. "What do you want? I can get the best legal representation in the galaxy here in Imperial City."
"That won"t be necessary," the investigator said, heaving his armored briefcase onto the table, then fiddling with the cyberlock. "I"ll be glad to be rid of this."
He lifted the lid of his case, and glittering light sparkled out.
Other people in the lounge turned to gape. The briefcase brimmed with carefully sorted packets of firefacet gems and shimmering chrysopaz.
"I am from the planet Dargul, and this is the reward owed to you by the d.u.c.h.ess Mistal for the safe return of her beloved consort Dack. You can have them appraised, but I am told these jewels are valued at approximately one million credits. Plus the briefcase, which is worth another forty."
Lando stared, hunched over the briefcase and dazzled by its contents. "A million?" he said.
"A million, plus forty for the briefcase."
"But I was only supposed to get half of the reward."
The investigator reached into his pocket. "I neglected to give you this. It is a message wafer for you from Slish Fondine, the owner of the blob stables where you a.s.sisted apprehending our consort Dack." He handed Lando a small rectangular object.
Lando turned it over in his hand, frowning, then ran his fingernail along the crease in its center. He cracked the message wafer open, then folded the two halves back to stand it upright on their small table.
An image of the blob-stable owner wafted up. "Greetings, Lando Calrissian. Since you are listening to this message, I will a.s.sume you"ve received your reward. I"m happy to say that your suggestion of not executing the criminal Tymmo has proved advantageous to all concerned.
d.u.c.h.ess Mistal was so delighted to receive her consort back that she insisted on paying you the full reward, as well as offering to build a subsidiary blobstacle course for me in the main stadium on Umgul. We are already hiring creative engineers to design even tougher blobstacles for the new course, which, at the d.u.c.h.ess Mistal"s request, will be called the "Dack Track."
"I am forwarding these firefacet and chrysopaz gems to you and hope you will spend the reward wisely. Why not come to Umgul and do some gambling? I"d be happy to be your host."
As the message dissolved into wisps of light, Lando could do little more than stare open-mouthed at his fortune.
Han laughed, then gestured for the short investigator to sit down.
"Join us for a drink. In fact, here--you can have mine! It"s too sweet for me anyway."
The investigator shook his head, the hard expression remaining on his face. "No, thank you. I don"t think I would enjoy that. I"d rather get back to my work." With that the investigator left the lounge.
Han clapped Lando on the shoulder. "What are you going to do with all that money? Still thinking of investing it in spice mining?"
Lando came back to reality with a streak of defensiveness. "I hate to say this, but when Moruth Doole showed us around, I was rather impressed by the potential there. Spice has plenty of good uses, too-perfectly legitimate alternatives in psychological therapy, criminal investigation, communication with alien races, even artistic inspiration and entertainment. You knew that, Han, or you wouldn"t have run spice yourself in the old days."
"You"ve got a point, Lando."
But Lando"s imagination kept working on the problem. "I don"t see why the spice mines have to be run as some sort of slave-lord operation.
A lot of that could be automated. Even if there are more of those energy spiders running around, we could just use super-cooled droids down in the deeper tunnels. No big investment. I don"t see what the problem is."
Han looked at him skeptically, took a gulp of his sweet drink, then puckered his lips. "Uh-huh."
"Besides," Lando said, "I"m in the market for a new ship. I had to leave the Lady Luck stranded on Kessel. I may never get her back. What am I supposed to do for the time being?"
Seeing the eager stares from the others in the lounge, Lando snapped shut the lid of the armored briefcase. "Well, anyway, it"s wonderful just to be solvent again!"
"Everybody in!"Wedge Antilles called inside the echoing Imperial City s.p.a.ceport. "Let"s get ready to go."
The last of the New Republic colonization specialists, sociologists, and survival instructors hauled their personal packs up the ramp of the medium transport. The ninety-meter-long ship occupied the better part of an entire bay in the supply sector, but the group needed a transport large enough to haul the Eol Sha survivors and their meager possessions, as well as the supplies necessary to set up a new home on Dantooine.
Wedge kept track of the final details of the operation, skimming a checklist on his datapad. At least this was a better a.s.signment than knocking down ruined buildings--for the time being. He was glad to be flying again, even if it was only a sluggish transport carrier instead of a fighter.
But he knew tougher a.s.signments lay in the near future. Admiral Daala and her three Imperial Star Destroyers had devastated the Kessel system, then vanished into hypers.p.a.ce. The New Republic had sent its best trackers to find where she had gone to hide. Han insisted she was bound to make destructive guerrilla strikes, popping out of hypers.p.a.ce and blasting a random planet. A loose cannon like Daala would not follow a predictable overall strategy. The entire New Republic had to be on its guard.
Chewbacca insisted that a New Republic occupation force head out to the Maw Installation to free the other Wookiee slaves. The Alliance High Command also wanted to get their hands on any other plans and prototypes remaining in the secret weapons lab. So much for relaxing and picking up pieces, Wedge thought. Things are going to get a lot more interesting.
But right now his a.s.signment was to get the people of Eol Sha to safety on their new homeworld.
When everything checked out onboard, Wedge noticed Gantoris standing alone beside supply containers piled next to the wall. The displaced colony leader looked tall and powerful, but didn"t seem to know how to react to seeing the relocation ship leave.
"Don"t worry," Wedge called, "we"ll take your people to their new home. After living with volcanoes and earthquakes all their lives, Dantooine will seem like a paradise to them."
Gantoris nodded, furrowing his smooth forehead. "Give them my greetings."
Wedge waved to him. "You just go and become the best of the new Jedi Knights."
Luke looked deep into the eyes of Kyp Durron, searching for the core of a Jedi. The younger man flinched but continued to meet Luke"s gaze.
"Are you nervous, Kyp?" Luke asked.
"A little. Should I be?"
Luke smiled as he remembered boasting to Yoda that he wasn"t afraid of his impending Jedi training. "You will be," Yoda had said, "you will be!"
Han interrupted them, clapping his hand on Kyp"s shoulder. "You should have been there to watch him zipping through the dark spice tunnels. And he navigated us right through the Maw with his eyes closed!
This kid has a lot of potential, Luke."
Luke nodded. "I was about to do that trick in the Maw myself. I know how difficult it must have been."
"Does that mean you"ll take me for your Jedi academy?" Kyp asked.
"I want to know how to use this power I have. While I was sitting in a cell on the Star Destroyer, I vowed never to be helpless again."
Luke withdrew the power pack and sheet-crystal sensor paddles from the old Imperial scanner that had once been used to detect Jedi descendants. "Let"s try this scanner first."
Untangling the cords, Luke stretched out the sheet-crystal paddles on either side of Kyp. "This won"t hurt or anything. It just maps the potential of your senses."
He tripped the scan switch on the control pack, and a narrow line of coppery light traveled down Kyp"s body as a smaller image of the copper scan-line reappeared in reverse motion in front of them, digitizing its a.n.a.lysis of Kyp Durron.
Kyp"s reproduction hung in the air, bathed with the pale-blue corona Luke had found on the others with genuine Jedi potential. But the aura waxed and waned, knotting itself, turning darker, growing brighter, streaked with red, then becoming tangled.
"What does that mean?" Kyp said.
"He"s okay, isn"t he?" Han seemed eager to have his protege accepted.
Luke wondered at the anomalous mapping, disturbed because he didn"t know how to interpret it. The shimmer could be a result of faulty scanning equipment, since the instrument had been roughly treated and could no longer be calibrated--or it could be that because of the strain and pressure on Kyp for so many years, he hadn"t quite sprung back to his full potential yet.
"I see a lot of power there. A lot," Luke said, and Kyp sighed at the rea.s.surance. "Let me try one other test."
Luke stretched out his hands to touch the curly black hair on Kyp"s head. "Let him do what he needs to," Han whispered to the young man.
"Trust him."
Luke closed his eyes and sent a tendril of thought to the back of Kyp"s mind where the deep primal memories hid, leaving little room for conscious thought. Luke touched inward to the isolated nub in his subconscious. He pushed--and suddenly found himself hurled backward, tossed aside like a piece of fluff in a Bespin wind storm. He landed flat on his back on the other side of the room, gasping.
Han and Kyp ran toward him as he struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. Luke shook the daze from his head.
"I"m sorry!" Kyp said. "I don"t know what I did! I didn"t try to.
Honest!"
"What happened?" Han said. "What does that mean for Kyp?"