The man had dark hair, very pale skin, and hard square features. Like the others, he was dressed as a spacer, though his clothes looked more expensive. “The Princess didn’t seem inclined to negotiate for your release,” he said.
Luke was guessing this was Commander Degoren. He shrugged. “Why should she?” His instincts told him Leia and Han were up to something. He just didn’t have a clue what that something would be.
Degoren smiled, a cold and skeptical expression. “Itran tells me that she’s very attached to you. That you’re a great confidant of hers, and perhaps something more …”
Luke thought, Good old Kifar. He made his smile bitterly amused. “Yeah, I just found out that Itran’s not very reliable.”
Kifar glared at him. Degoren’s disgruntled sideways glance at Kifar suggested that he agreed with Luke. It wasn’t a surprise; Kifar had failed to find an opportunity to warn Degoren that his ship was about to be boarded by Alderaanian pirates. That had to be a black mark on an Imperial agent’s record.
And maybe Luke could convince Degoren that Kifar had done an even worse job than that.
“It doesn’t matter,” Degoren said. “Itran’s told me who you are. You’re the one who blew up the Death Star. And he’s heard enough about your other exploits to know that we can have some very interesting conversations with you about rebel activities.”
Luke gave Kifar a disgusted glance. “Is that what you’ve told them?” He looked up at Degoren and made himself radiate earnest sincerity. Han had told him it was as effective as it was annoying. “The Death Star … “ He shook his head helplessly. “That was just an accident. One of the older pilots talked me through it. Ever since then, I’ve been mostly working on X-wing maintenance. They haven’t even sent me out on any other missions.”
Degoren put on an expression of polite skepticism, but Luke thought he detected a trace of doubt. Kifar could have reacted in a lot of different ways, with amusement or exasperation, but instead he stiffened, his face darkening with anger. “You think this is going to work, Skywalker? You don’t think we can break you?”
Luke let himself look scared and desperate. It wasn’t hard; if he didn’t pull something off and get out of here before the corvette jumped to lightspeed, he was in a lot of trouble. He said to Degoren, “Look, you’ve got me. I don’t have any reason to lie to you.” He glared at Kifar in angry reproach. “I know you’re jealous about me and … and the Princess, I know how you feel about her, but you can’t lie to them about me, they’ll find out—”
Kifar snarled and swung at Luke. Luke ducked but still caught most of the blow on his left cheekbone. He awkwardly lifted his arms to block the next punch. Degoren snapped, “Enough.”
Kifar reluctantly lowered his arm. His jaw worked and he and said, “He’s lying. He’s in Red Squadron. And there’s rumors that he was trained by a Jedi Knight.” He turned to reach into the next seat compartment and held up Luke’s lightsaber. “You saw he had this!”
Past the throbbing in his face, Luke gasped, baffled and incredulous. “You believe that? I bought it from a junk shop on Commenor.”
Degoren pressed his lips together, aimed a death glare at Kifar, and said, “We’ll settle this soon. Command has a cruiser en route. We wanted Organa, but if we can’t get her, the pilot who destroyed the Death Star would be just enough of an acceptable substitute to keep us all alive. But you better hope he knows as much as you’ve said he does.”
He turned away. The pilot had been waiting just outside the cockpit and now hit the opening sequence for the hatch. Trehar stepped forward and dragged Luke to his feet.
The shuttle’s ramp lowered and Degoren stepped out, then the pilot and the other Imperials followed him. Kifar was next, and then Luke, then Trehar. As Kifar reached the hatch, a security alarm sounded out in the bay. And Luke thought, Now.
With his bound hands he shoved Kifar in the back. Kifar stumbled forward into the man in front of him and then whipped around, furious. In that moment, with all his strength, Luke jerked his head back at Trehar behind him, and slammed the back of his skull into the Duros’ face.
Luke was pretty certain he felt a crack—hopefully Trehar’s facial bone and not Luke’s skull—but Kifar was already throwing a punch. Luke fell backward and it caught him a glancing blow. He went down on top of Trehar, grabbed the blaster out of his hand, and shot Kifar in the leg, the first available target.
Kifar dropped in front of the hatchway. Luke fired over him, out the hatchway, hitting the first man to try to lunge back inside and scattering the two men past him. Luke saw a stormtrooper helmet pop into view as he kept firing. Wedged between two injured but still moving bodies, another body half blocking the hatchway, his hands cuffed, Luke thought, I don’t think I’m getting out of this alive. But it was better than ending up an Imperial prisoner.
That was when he heard the other shooting start.
They moved fast, and managed to bypass the passages to the engineering section that would surely be fully staffed with crew. So far the corvette conformed to the schematics Leia had seen, and it must have for Han, too, since he led the way unerringly so far.
Over the shipwide comm, a voice said, “Security to the main docking station.”
“Is that for us?” Sian whispered.
“Maybe. Or Luke might be dragging his feet,” Han said.
Ahead was another set of blast doors leading into a junction that should connect to the port docking module. Leia breathed, “It should be right up here.”
Han and Chewbacca reached it first, and Han slid to an abrupt halt. Leia almost plowed into him. The junction was extended with a large slanted port looking down on the docking station. The far wall was open to space, the chamber protected and pressurized by containment fields, meant to accommodate ships of many shapes and sizes. Degoren’s shuttle was in the center, locked into docking clamps, its ramp extended and hatch open. And a gun battle raged around the hatch, with someone inside the shuttle firing out and several men in spacer’s garb and a couple of stormtroopers firing in, trying to angle for better positions.
Chewie hooted with delight and Leia exchanged a look with Han. Grimly, Han said, “Yeah, that’s the kid in there.”
Leia looked around for a way down into the docking station. To the right a blast door opened into a large lift platform that dropped the short distance to the lower floor. Leia said, “Sian—”
“Stun grenades?” Sian said, and pulled one out of her satchel.
That was the moment when the blast door behind them slid open. Leia spun with the others to see four surprised stormtroopers. Han and Chewbacca fired blaster and bowcaster as the first stormtrooper jerked his blaster up to fire. Sian whipped back her arm to throw the grenade. A blaster bolt struck her in the shoulder and she staggered and fell. The stun grenade spun across the floor and Leia lunged, grabbed it, pressed the trigger, and flung it through the blast door.
The concussion knocked her back, slammed her into the metal floor. Her ears ringing, she shoved herself up to see the four troopers strewn across the deck and down the corridor. Han staggered to the blast door, hit the release, and as it slid closed he stepped back and fired a bolt into the panel to slag the controls. “That wasn’t a stun grenade, Your Worship!”
“I think that was a concussion grenade,” Leia agreed. She rolled to her feet and stumbled to Sian, who sat up, clutching her arm and grimacing in pain.
Guilty, Sian gasped, “I just pulled the first one out of the bag, I didn’t look—”
“But it worked.” Leia squinted at the burn in Sian’s shoulder. The skin was blistered and raw around the open wound, the cloth of her jacket and shirt burned away. There was nothing they could do about it now. Leia dug in the satchel and held up a stun grenade. There were only three left. Chewbacca scooped it out of her hand and stepped to the blast door that looked down on the dock. Han grabbed another grenade and moved to his side. “Ready?” he said.
Leia pushed to her feet and saw that
the Imperials below had scattered, some running toward a blast door in the lower part of the dock and others running for the lift tube. She said, “Chewie, throw long to port.”
Han hit the door release and as it slid up he crouched and pitched his grenade. It landed among the men nearest the lift tube, who scattered back. As the door lifted out of the way, Chewbacca flung his grenade so hard and fast Leia couldn’t see it, but she heard the muted crack as it hit the port wall of the bay. The Imperials must have thought these were concussion grenades, too, because the scramble to get away was violent. Han and Chewie ducked back, and the double thud of the muted explosions bounced off the viewport. Han straightened up, took a cautious look, and snapped, “Come on.”
Leia grabbed Sian’s uninjured arm and stood up with her. Han and Chewbacca dropped and climbed down the ladder next to the lift platform. They spread out, moved cautiously toward the shuttle past the unconscious or groaning bodies, watching the lower-level blast door in the far wall. With Chewbacca to cover him, Han shut it and shot the control panel. Helping Sian, Leia rode the lift platform down and staggered hurriedly toward the shuttle. The ship’s security alarm wailed, louder in the docking station than it had been in the corridor. “Luke,” she called out. “Is that you in there?”
“Leia?” Luke poked his head out, then stepped onto the ramp. His hands were in binders and he had a developing black eye but he was holding a blaster. “Good to see you guys!”
Dragging an Imperial out of the launch area, Han told him, “You better not have shot up the inside of that shuttle, junior, because that’s our only way out of here.”
“No, it’s fine,” Luke assured him, “Help me get rid of these guys in here. We’ve got to hurry—Degoren said there was a cruiser on the way.”
Leia waited with Sian while Han hauled out an unconscious Duros and dumped him onto the deck. He told Leia, “Itran’s in here, wounded. We’re spacing him, right?”
Luke leaned out again. “You knew he was an Imperial agent?”
Leia said, “We figured it out, a little late. And no, Han, though it’s a tempting thought.” Sian slumped more heavily against her, slowly losing her grip on consciousness. Leia half helped, half hauled her forward, and Han caught Sian around the waist and carried her up into the shuttle.
Leia climbed in after him and saw Kifar Itran lying on the floor toward the back of the shuttle. He was wounded in the leg, and Han and Luke must have found a couple of spare sets of binders because both his hands and feet were cuffed. Luke was struggling with a code-lock key, trying to get his binders off. Leia helped Han settle Sian into a seat and then strapped her in as Han headed for the cockpit.
Itran said, “Princess, it’s a mistake—”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Leia told him. “You have until we reach the fleet to come up with a better story than that, and I recommend that you use the time wisely.” She forgot Itran as Chewbacca climbed into the shuttle and she smelled burned fur. “Chewie, are you hurt?” she demanded.
He woofed a denial at her and hit the sequence to raise the ramp and seal the hatch. Then he dropped heavily into the first seat. There was blackened and singed fur all along his left arm, and the patches of skin she could now see looked raw and abraded. “You are hurt!”
Chewie shook his head vigorously.
Leia didn’t have time to argue with him. She heard a muted clank against the hull as the docking clamps released and stepped forward through the cockpit hatch. Han’s hands moved swiftly over the control board as the shuttle’s systems came to life. He said, “They’re gonna try to stop us. We need covering fire from the Aegis.”
Leia dropped into the copilot’s seat, strapped in, and brought up the comm board. “Chewie took a near miss but won’t admit it.”
“Yeah, but once we get out of here, he’ll admit it plenty. He just doesn’t like sympathy while he’s busy.”
Leia didn’t comment. The only thing more dubious than Han’s catalog of Chewbacca’s odd habits and behaviors was Chewie’s catalog of Han’s odd habits and behaviors. She hailed the Aegis and said, “We’ve taken Degoren’s shuttle and we’re about to leave the corvette in it. Be advised there is an Imperial cruiser in route.” A crash out in the docking station interrupted her as the blast door Han had slagged blew open in a shower of sparks and smoke. Leia winced. “We need covering fire—”
The comm crackled and Kelvan’s voice, desperate and urgent, said, “Your Highness, we have multiple comm ID contacts! We can’t see them on the sensors yet—we’re just at the edge of the sensor disruption zone—but at least a dozen ships must have come out of hyperspace!”
Han didn’t glance away from the console but he grimaced. “Uh-oh.”
“Imperial IDs?” Leia demanded.
Voices in the background gave conflicting reports, then Leia heard Terae swear. “It’s the pirates!”
It can’t be. Leia snapped, “Confirm that. These are ships from the clearinghouse?”
“They couldn’t have followed us to this system. We didn’t even know we were coming here,” Han said, his jaw set in a grim line. “Unless somebody from the Aegis got to the comm and called them after we set our course here.”
Leia shook her head. “No.” Over the comm, she told Kelvan, “They must have put a tracer on the Aegis when Viest paid for your repairs. She wanted to make sure you kept your end of her bargain. Whoever took over for her either suspects we killed her and wants revenge, or just wants the Aegis.”
There was a moment of shocked chagrin that Leia could sense right through the comm. The corvette couldn’t see the pirate ships on its sensors from its position in the sensor disruption cloud, but it had to be picking up those ID contacts. The corvette’s captain would think it was an elaborate trap, and they might cut and run for hyperspace.
Stormtroopers, the rest of the squad that they had met in the upper corridor, appeared out of the smoke. Most had only blasters, but one had something bigger. Han said, “We can’t wait, sweetheart.”
“Kelvan, we’re launching now,” Leia said, ending on a strangled gasp as Han fired the bow thrusters and the sudden jolt shoved her forward in her seat.
The shuttle fell back through the containment field and between the corvette’s modules, down and away. The starfield wheeled as Han brought the little ship around. “I’m heading deeper into the sensor disruption field. If we can land and get to the Falcon, we’ll have a chance.”
Leia didn’t argue. The corvette wouldn’t be able to target them, and hopefully it would be too busy to turn back and try to pick them up on visual. The shuttle’s sensors were showing nothing but error codes and Leia doubted they could find the Aegis without being hit, either by the corvette or the pirates.
Luke stepped into the cockpit hatch and said, “How’s it going?” He had managed to get the cuffs off and retrieved his lightsaber.
“It’s been better,” Han said.
“How is Sian—” Leia started to ask, then the port dimmed and a too-near blast impact shuddered through the hull.
Han swore, sent the shuttle into an evasive flip that was better suited to a snubfighter and made the metal hull groan. Leia got a confused view of the Aegis falling past their port. On the comm, Kelvan said calmly, “A pirate fired on you, Your Highness. We’re engaging now.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Leia managed.
Han sent the shuttle hurtling away from the battle. “You’re right, Your Worship, they got a tracer on the Aegis. That’s the only way they found it and us so fast.”
“She’s breathing okay,” Luke told Leia, answering her question. “But we need to get her some help fast. I couldn’t find a medkit anywhere on board.”
Leia could still hear the Aegis’s bridge. Someone reported that the corvette had engaged the other pirates, unintentionally teaming up with the Aegis and confusing the situation further. Listening, Luke said, “The Imperials must think the pirates are Alliance ships.”
The shuttle fell toward the planet’s g
ravity well, shuddering as it hit the upper atmosphere. They were close enough to make out the gray plains and the ridges that marked the ruined city. Luke leaned forward to type a course into the shuttle’s nav screen. “This is where the Falcon is, if it’s still there.”
“If?” Han managed to get a world of appalled recrimination into that one word.
From the back, Chewbacca groaned.
“Hey, I was stunned,” Luke protested. “I don’t know what happened. But I code-locked the hatch, and C-3PO was in there, so Itran couldn’t get back inside.”
“Why didn’t he call the Aegis?” Leia asked, over some expressive cursing from Han that they didn’t have time for.
Luke shook his head. “I was having trouble with the comm after I landed. I think the field is stronger on the surface; he probably couldn’t get a signal through.”
Following Luke’s directions, Han brought the shuttle down over the empty stone city, past shattered towers and circular streets covered by sand drifts and vegetation. As the Millennium Falcon came into sight, still parked on the plaza where Luke had left it, there was a collective sigh of relief. Leia felt her heart unclench for Han and Chewie’s sake, and for Sian. The Falcon had enough medical supplies on board to treat a blaster burn and stabilize her, at least until they could get her to the fleet.
Han landed the shuttle nearby and they hurriedly disembarked. Sian was conscious but in pain, and Luke carried her into the Falcon while Han ran ahead to start prepping the ship for a fast launch. The hatch slid open as he reached the ramp, revealing the gold droid. C-3PO said, “Oh, you’re back! I was so worried! And I think Master Itran has been behaving very suspiciously.”
Han shouldered past them and Leia said, “Thank you, C-3PO. Please get the emergency medical station ready, we have wounded.”
“At once, Your Highness. Oh, but where is R2?”
“He’s fine. He’s with General Willard, heading back to the fleet,” Leia told him. Relieved, C-3PO hurried away as Chewbacca dragged Itran out of the shuttle. Once they were all safely inside the ship, Leia left Luke getting Sian settled on a bunk and went to the cockpit.