Star by Star Read online

  “In about—” Han glanced at the instrument panel chronometer. “—three hours. Unofficially, of course.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to find anything. There must be a thousand vessels already.”

  Han started to ask Leia what she wanted him to do about it, but realized he already knew. The crooked hyperspace lane behind them zigzagged all the way through the Colonies to the edge of the Core region. From there the Yuuzhan Vong would have a clear path to both Eclipse and Coruscant—and Han did not think even Tsavong Lah was sending a thousand vessels to attack the Jedi base.

  “I don’t want to do this.” They had been in the right place at the right time too often in their lives already. It wasn’t fun anymore. “I really don’t want to do this.”

  “I’ll ready a message,” Leia said.

  “Send it to Adarakh and Meewalh,” Han said. “We may get only one try, and they’re in a better position to make sure the news reaches Wedge and Garm.”

  “Already thought of that.”

  “And tell them to find Lando,” Han added. “The fleet’s gonna need a guide.”

  “Thought of that, too,” Leia said.

  “And tell Luke—”

  “Han!”

  “Hey, coming out here wasn’t my idea,” Han said. “I’m just trying to help.”

  Leia gave him a glare that suggested he get on with it.

  Han risked a subspace imaging scan and located the real field of asteroids where he had expected, just inside the dust ring down on the protostar’s plane of spin. He plotted a short-burn course that would carry them away from the Yuuzhan Vong at an oblique angle and bring them in behind the asteroid cluster. Once they were safely established there, they would be able to monitor the entire gas cloud with long-range sensors and feed the data to the New Republic fleet as it arrived—providing, of course, it did arrive. There was always a chance that Fey’lya or some other bureaucrat would panic and decide to keep the fleet at home.

  “We’ll have to risk an ion glow,” Han said. “I don’t think anyone will see it in this cloud, but if they do—”

  “I’ve already plotted an emergency hop,” Leia said. “It won’t be long, but it should buy us some time to come up with something better. The data dump is ready to go.”

  “Hold on tight,” Han said. “We’ll be slam-pivoting straight to vector.”

  “Wonderful. Something to look forward to.”

  Leia grabbed the arms of the big copilot’s chair and nodded grimly. Han clenched his jaw, then activated the ion drive and hit the attitude thrusters. Though the acceleration compensator was dialed to maximum, the Falcon slued around so sharply that the crash webbing crackled from the strain. His hands nearly came off the yoke and he had the sensation of tumbling sideways, then his stomach rebelled and he had to clench his jaw to keep from embarrassing himself.

  The acceleration compensator caught up as they began to travel in a straight line again, and Leia opened a subspace channel to Coruscant. It took only a few seconds for the signal to find a route through the relay maze to their Eastport apartment, but Han used the time to check the sensor displays and spied a pair of skips peeling off to investigate. The Yuuzhan Vong would have dispatched an entire flotilla if they had seen an ion glow, so it seemed likely the pair were only chasing the wake the Falcon was punching through the nebula. Hoping to muddle enemy readings and give his ship the tumbling signature of a rogue asteroid, Han began to cycle power to the particle shields in a topbottom pattern and deployed the emergency gas scoop—the ship’s reactor could fuse raw hydrogen if necessary.

  Meewalh’s voice finally came over the subspace, a little scratchy due to signal loss inside the absorption nebula. “Lady Vader, we were not expecting to hear from you. All is well?”

  “For now.” Leia began the data dump. “See that this information reaches—”

  Leia gasped and let the sentence break off, one hand rising to her chest, her expression growing pained and distant.

  “Lady Vader?”

  “Leia?” Han reached over to touch her arm, but she signaled him to wait.

  “Here, Meewalh.” She closed her eyes and seemed to collect herself, then continued, “I need you to see that the data package I sent reaches Wedge Antilles and Garm Bel Iblis in Fleet Command—at once; do what you must to succeed. Send copies to Luke and to Lando Calrissian, along with my suggestion that they offer their services to Admiral Sovv. This could mean the war for us.”

  “Lady Vader, it will be done.”

  Meewalh’s tone was so flat she might as well have been promising to tell a neighbor the Solos would not make it home for drinks after all. But if she had to fight her way into Fleet Command, Han pitied the poor sentry or bureaucrat foolish enough to deny her access. Fortunately, the Noghri were as creative as they were stealthy, so she would probably just surprise the generals in the refresher or something and avoid unnecessary bloodshed.

  Minuscule as friction was even inside a gas nebula, the drag created by the hydrogen scoop was enough to require an extra two seconds of ion glow. Han watched nervously as the Falcon’s, vector converged with that of the investigating skips, trying to guess when the light of his ion drives would give them away, but the coralskippers continued as before until the burn finally came to an end. When he saw that they were slowing to swing in behind him—a standard safe approach for any unknown contact—and that their vector would not cross the Falcon’s until after it reached the asteroid cluster, he exhaled in relief. They still did not know what they were looking at.

  Han found Leia staring out the viewport, her face the color of pearls, her expression distant and guarded. Recalling her unexplained gasp earlier—and her diplomat’s habit of not showing her emotions until she had won control of them—he started to ask what was troubling her.

  She cut him off before he spoke. “Later, Han.” There was an alarming catch in her throat, but also that unyielding edge that he had learned was about as flexible as durasteel. “Pay attention to your flying.”

  A variation alarm sounded as they passed a straggler from the asteroid cluster large enough to exert its own gravitational pull. Han touched the alarm silent and plotted their new trajectory without making the suggested correction. Any such change would instantly alert the approaching skips of the Falcon’s true nature and ruin all hope of the New Republic catching the fleet unprepared.

  The new trajectory pointed the Falcon out toward the dust ring, where Han would be forced to retract the gas scoop to avoid clogging the intake filters. He was still struggling with how to accomplish that without altering their flight signature when the variation alarm sounded again and another asteroid pulled them back toward the cluster.

  Han plotted the new trajectory and saw they would hit—and soon. This was a big one, large enough so that its own gravity would shape it into a rough sphere, and it was bending their vector ever more sharply. Han saw only inky swirls of nebula gas beyond the transparisteel, but the asteroid was out there, off to their left, yet drifting toward the center of the viewport and looming larger every moment.

  And it was just what they needed.

  Han turned to the navigation computer and began to input blast radii and acceleration rates. The answer came back higher than he liked, and he had to concentrate to keep from cursing aloud.

  “Leia, you know that trick Kyp is always doing with Jedi shadow bombs?”

  “Define know,” she said.

  “About a kilometer a second,” Han said. “I can get some initial acceleration by pressurizing the missile tube—”

  “The missile tube, Han?”

  “—then blowing the hatch,” he finished. “But we’ll be right behind it when the warhead detonates, and even Han Solo isn’t that fast.”

  Leia’s face paled. “You’re not going to—”

  “We don’t have much time here,” Han said, arming the missile. “Can you do it?” Leia closed her eyes. “Which one?”

  “Port tube.”

>   Han instructed the computer to open the rear of the tube, then deactivated the missile’s ion engine and overrode the launch safeties. By the time he had completed all this, a deeper darkness had begun to emerge from the swirling nebula fog, a certain stillness that left no doubt about its solid nature.

  Han depressed the launch trigger and heard a soft pop as the hatch cover swung open. Sucked from its tube by the sudden decompression, the missile drifted out from between the Falcon’s cargo mandibles and seemed to hang there.

  “Now would be a good time,” Han urged.

  “I’m trying!”

  The missile moved forward, picking up speed—but gradually.

  “Well, it was a good idea,” Han said, prepping the ion drives for a blast start. Leia was no Jedi—she had never had time for the rigorous training—but she could control the Force, and he had seen her move things heavier than the missile. Maybe the nebula interfered with the Force or something. “Nice try, but—”

  The missile shot away, then vanished into the darkness.

  “—that’ll work,” Han finished.

  He moved his hand to the repulsorlift drives and waited. In the sensor display, the coralskippers omitted the detour caused by the first asteroid and cut straight for the one ahead. They would have a clear view of the impact—though hopefully not so clear they would see the matte-black Falcon silhouetted against the flash.

  As soon as the first pinpoint of light caused the cockpit blast-tinting to darken, Han activated the repulsorlift drives and swung away, decelerating and turning almost as sharply as his earlier slam-pivot. The coralskippers would be in scanning range by now, but repulsorlifts were not nearly as conspicuous as ion drives, and he was betting the energy burst from the concussion missile would wash out whatever the skips were using for sensors.

  They were around the horizon before the impact flash had begun to fade. Flying in the total darkness by sensors and instruments alone, Han slipped the Falcon into a deep stress rift, orienting it nose-up and using the landing gear to wedge it against the walls so the efflux nacelles would not be damaged.

  “Now what?” Leia asked.

  “We wait until they’re done searching.”

  “You think they’ll search?” Leia asked. “That concussion missile had to leave a pretty convincing crater.”

  “Yeah, but that’s a big fleet,” Han said. “They’ll search—then they’ll search some more.”

  Han shut down any of the Falcon’s systems that might leak so much as a photon of energy, then he and Leia lay back and stared into the darkness. He had purposely selected a rift facing the interior of the Bantha, so even the stars were too shrouded in nebula gas to count. It reminded Han of being frozen in carbonite—except that he had not been conscious of time in carbonite.

  “How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” Leia asked.

  “Longer than we like.” Han had a bad feeling about her gasp earlier and wanted to ask about it, but knew better than to press. “We’ll know.”

  “How?”

  “We’ll get tired of waiting.”

  They were silent some more, then Leia just said it. “Anakin’s been hurt.”

  Han’s heart collapsed like a black hole. “Hurt?”

  He began to depress actuator buttons and toggle circuit switches. Even with so many systems shut down and cool, the Falcon’s start-up sequence was remarkably short. They would be launched and on their way in less than three minutes.

  “Han?” There was frailty in Leia’s voice. “Where are we going?”

  “Huh?” Han primed the ion drives and began a twenty-second countdown. “Where do you think we’re going?”

  “I have no idea,” Leia said. “Because I know you’d never have let Anakin go through with that hypercrazed surrender plan if there was some other way to reach Myrkr.”

  The count reached fifteen, and Han’s finger automatically swung over to the actuator and hovered there waiting for twenty. Then he finally grasped why Leia had waited for the Falcon to cool down before telling him, and stopped counting.

  “There’s not another way.” He deactivated the primers and began to shut down the rest of the systems, then found the strength to ask, “Is it bad?”

  Leia’s only response was a nod.

  Han wanted to do something—protect Anakin or help Leia with what she must be feeling through the Force—but how could he defend a son from a thousand light-years away? Or assume Leia’s burden, when he could not even sense the Force, much less feel Anakin’s wound through it?

  “At least he’s not alone.” Han reached over to her and noticed that his hand was trembling. He laid it on her arm anyway. “Jaina’s there.”

  “And Jacen.”

  “Yeah, and Jacen.” Given Jacen’s recent moral dilemma over using the Force, Han was not accustomed to thinking of his oldest son in the role of a Jedi warrior, but on Duro it had been Jacen who faced Tsavong Lah and saved Leia’s life. “The twins will look after him.”

  “That’s right.” Leia nodded absently, her thoughts already back on Myrkr a thousand light-years away. “He has the twins.”

  The last glow faded from the cockpit displays, and they sat in the dark, alone with their thoughts and still close enough to hear each other breathe.

  After a time, Han could stand it no longer. “I wish I hadn’t said those things when Chewbacca died,” he said. “I really wish I hadn’t blamed Anakin.”

  A warm hand found his. “That’s over, Han. Really.”

  They waited in silence, pondering the same unanswerable questions—how serious? how did it happen? was he safe now?—for what seemed an eternity. Once, Han saw a glimmer of purple cross over the rift, but it was so faint and fleeting that he thought it more likely to be a trick of his light-starved eyes than the glow of a Yuuzhan Vong cockpit. For the most part, they just sat and waited, not even able to confirm that the New Republic would be sending an attack fleet, since the Falcon’s subspace transceiver antenna was shielded by several kilometers of iron asteroid.

  With the sensor dish pointed into the heart of the Bantha, the one thing they could do to occupy themselves was periodically risk a passive scan to update their data. Eventually, it grew obvious that the Yuuzhan Vong were drawing vessels not just from the flotilla that had grabbed Reecee, but from active duty stations all over the galaxy. Most of the arriving vessels went straight to the heart of the fleet and lined up to nurse food and munitions at the big ship tenders. Han was relieved to see that the Yuuzhan Vong were only marginally faster at the process than his own fleet had been when he was a general. At the rate the enemy was reprovisioning, even the cumbersome New Republic Fleet Command would have time to make a decision; he only hoped they would bring enough ships.

  The first hint of action came when a sensor sweep showed two skips—almost certainly the pair that had followed them to the asteroid—streaking toward the heart of the Bantha. Shuddering at how many times they had discussed leaving their hiding place, Han activated all passive scanning systems and plotted the results on the main data display. The screen looked as though someone had blasted a nest of killer stingnats, with frigate- and corvette-analog yorik coral vessels boiling out toward the protostar’s opposite rim and more than a hundred cruiser and destroyer analogs moving to the heart of the formation, forming a sphere of protection around the enormous ship tenders.

  “It certainly doesn’t look like a jump configuration,” Leia commented.

  “No, that’s their ‘taken-by-surprise’ configuration,” Han said. “Store this for analysis—it’s not a formation the New Republic has seen before.”

  Han cold-started the repulsorlift drives and lifted the Falcon out of the rift. They had barely cleared the rim before the voice of a communications officer came over the tactical comm unit.

  “—hailing the Millennium Falcon.” The energy-absorbing effects of the nebula gas rendered the young woman’s voice thready and full of static. “Repeat, this is the New Republic scout vessel Gabri
elle hailing the Millennium Falcon. Please respond on S-thread six zero niner.”

  “The coordinates don’t match the bearing to the battle,” Leia said. She tapped the data display, indicating a position a quarter of the way around the circle from where the corvettes and frigates were headed—and on the Reecee side of the Bantha. “Could the Yuuzhan Vong be pulling a Friendly Hutt?”

  “If some traitor told them we were out here, why not?” A Friendly Hutt was an old Imperial tactic in which they tried to trick their quarry into giving away its position. “But we have to take the chance. This is no time to be a coward—not with the war hanging in the balance.”

  Han did not add “and not when our children are risking their own lives,” but Leia heard him just the same. As he started to bring the rest of the Falcon’s systems on-line, she activated the subspace transceiver and entered the coordinates provided.

  “This is the Millennium Falcon—”

  “Thank the Force!” Wedge Antilles exclaimed. “We’ve been trying to raise you for an hour. I thought something unfortunate had happened.”

  Han and Leia glanced at each other, but said nothing about Anakin. “We had a couple of skips sitting on us.” Leia’s fingers flew across the computer input. “Here’s the data we promised.”

  As she spoke, the first bursts of battle static appeared on the sensor display. The assault fleet itself was too distant to be detected through the nebula gas even with active sensors, but Han could tell by the fire that there were only a few hundred vessels attacking. Still, scores of Yuuzhan Vong frigates and corvettes vanished into stars of dispersing energy before they could organize themselves into a picket wall. The Falcon was too distant from the battle to detect anything as small as a starfighter, but Han knew they were present by the sparks of explosion static that appeared all too frequently between the Yuuzhan Vong vessels.

  By now, the New Republic fleet had its own surveillance craft watching the battle, but Han and Leia held their position and continued to relay data to the oddly placed command post. In a conflict this size, information was more valuable than ships, and both combatants placed a premium on destroying, blinding, or misleading enemy reconnaissance vessels. That made the Falcon, as an undetected observation asset, more important to the attack than any three Star Destroyers.