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  Leia and Han were in their quarters researching worlds with good nervesplicers—so far just Balmorra, Kuat, and Coruscant itself—when the door chime rang. It took C-3PO a full half a standard minute to circle the gurgling fountain in the center of the room and open the door.

  “Mistress Eelysa, what a pleasant surprise!” he said.

  Leia turned her repulsor chair to see Eelysa’s slender figure emerging from the opulent foyer, her dark hair hanging loosely over the shoulders of her jumpsuit. In her hand, she held one of the saber-toothed rodents that seemed to have taken over the spa since its abandonment—at least judging by the number of the creatures the Solos kept finding outside their suite. Though both Leia and Han had seen Eelysa many times since she emerged from the bacta tank, this was the first time she had visited them in their quarters, and her green eyes roamed over the milkstone walls, magnificent archways, and soaring cupola above the fountain.

  “And I thought my room was nice,” Eelysa said.

  “Apparently, Izal felt we would be more at home in the bridal suite,” Leia explained. She gestured at the carcass in Eelysa’s hand. “See-Threepio will dispose of that. We keep finding them in the hall.”

  C-3PO reached for the rodent, but Eelysa pulled it away and tried—unsuccessfully—to keep from smiling as she used the Force to close the door.

  “Actually, that’s one of the reasons I came.” She went into the kitchen and, talking over her shoulder, called, “The Barabels are starting to complain about your ingratitude.”

  Han frowned. “Our ingratitude?”

  Eelysa emerged from the kitchen drying her hands. “The carcasses are honor-gifts from Tesar and the Hara sisters,” she explained. “But don’t thank them, or they’ll think you want more.”

  She pulled a holocube from her pocket. “This message came in over the HoloNet. Saba asked me to give it to you before I go.”

  “You’re part of the advance team?” Leia asked. The mysterious task force had begun to sniff around the adjacent system, so the Wild Knights would be changing bases as soon as she and Han departed. “Are you ready for that?”

  Eelysa thumped her chest. “As good as new, but I’m not going to the new base. I’m on my way back to Corellia.”

  Han looked concerned—he looked that way a lot these days. “Will you be safe?”

  “As safe there as anyplace,” Eelysa answered. “And somebody needs to keep an eye on the Centerpoint Party. If they find some way to get the station going again, there’s no telling what Thrackan will blow up.”

  “Himself, if we’re lucky,” Han said. He stood and reached out to shake her hand. “Watch yourself.”

  Eelysa ignored the hand and embraced him. “Thanks again. I don’t know that Izal and the Barabels would have gotten me out of there without you.”

  “Without me, I don’t know that they would’ve needed to,” Han said, sitting back down. “But it was good seeing you again.”

  Eelysa bent down to hug Leia as well. “I’ll be thinking of you. Get better.”

  “I already am,” Leia said. “Be careful. Don’t take foolish risks.”

  “Me?” Eelysa jerked a thumb at Han. “You’re the one flying with Han Solo.”

  Leia waited until C-3PO had shown Eelysa out, then activated the holocube. It played a brief vidnews item describing a new movement in the Senate pushing for an Appeasement Vote to outlaw the Jedi and accept the truce terms put forward by Warmaster Tsavong Lah. Though the sponsors were identified as a coalition of Senators from uncaptured Core worlds, Luke’s image appeared after the report to say that the leader was Viqi Shesh. She had already struck a deal with Borsk Fey’lya to call a vote the following week, so Luke was asking them to send him any information they could about her dealings with CorDuro. He also warned them that Shesh’s chief of staff had quietly arranged to be notified the instant NRI learned their location.

  Luke was still signing off when Leia threw the cube into the wall. “That woman is poison. Killing me isn’t enough—now she has to go after all the Jedi!”

  Han looked from Leia to the shattered cube. “She’s murder on holocubes, that’s for sure—not that we’ve got anything worth putting on one.”

  “She’s corrupt. We know it,” Leia said. “The only question is how corrupt.”

  “Does it matter?” Han asked. “We can’t prove it. Short of assassination, there’s no way we’re going to stop her from calling the Appeasement Vote.”

  “Assassination?” Leia leaned across the arm of her chair and kissed him. They had been doing a lot of that lately. “Han, you’re a genius.”

  Han looked worried. “Maybe … do you really think we could pull it off?”

  “Not physical assassination,” Leia said. “Political assassination. We’re going to attack her character.”

  Now Han merely looked confused. “Leia, she’s from Kuat. Nobody expects her to have any character.”

  “Which is why this will work,” Leia said. “And it’s time we carried the hunt to Viqi Shesh for a change. It’s the only way we’re going to win this thing.”

  “I’m all for winning,” Han agreed. “But with what we’ve got so far, I don’t see it happening anytime soon.”

  “Then, my dear, you need to broaden your definition of winning.” Leia patted his cheek, then turned to C-3PO, who was already approaching the shattered cube with a sweeper, and said, “Bring me a datapad. And get me the transceiver address for Senator Kvarm Jia. I need him to convene a corruption panel.”

  “Without good evidence?” A knavish smile came to Han’s lips. “I didn’t think you played dirty.”

  “I’ll make an exception,” Leia said. “This woman’s trying to outlaw my children.”

  SEVEN

  The black drop of a battered CEC YT-1300 light freighter swung into view outside the viewport, the efflux from its dilapidated ion drives flickering uncertainly against the dazzle of Coruscant’s night side. Though hardly the steady blue blast of his own ship’s overpowered sublight engines, Han doubted the wavering would give them away. The Falcon’s temperamental nature was too well known—and the possibility that she had taken battle damage on the journey home too high—for the contrast to draw more than a passing curiosity about what was wrong this time.

  The cannon turrets were another story. Fabricated on the Cinnabar Moon from a pair of abandoned escape pods, they were not going to fool anyone who took a good look—especially if that person expected the support posts serving as cannon barrels to swivel around and start firing.

  Han looked toward the front of the Jolly Man’s spacious crew deck, where Izal Waz sat at a communications station using a slave unit to fly the Sureshot onto Coruscant. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

  “You suddenly think of a better way to spring their trap?” the Arcona asked.

  Han shook his head. “There isn’t one.”

  “Then stop asking.” Izal kept his attention focused on the systems display ahead of him, relying on computer keys and a pressure pad to control his battered ship. “She’s a piece of Jawa bait anyway.”

  The faint scent of ammonia permeated the air, and one of the milky bubbles that served Arcona as tears appeared in the corner of Izal’s eye. Leia, magnoclamped to the deck next to Han’s seat, cocked a brow and thumbed her fingers as though activating a credit chip. Han shook his head no. A wreck like the Sureshot wasn’t worth much, but there were some things no amount of money could replace.

  “Thanks, Izal,” Han said. “If you ever need anything from us, let us know.”

  “You’re doing it,” Izal said. “Just stop this Shesh woman and her Appeasement Vote.”

  A pair of Rendili light cruisers—on-station in Coruscant’s innermost patrol perimeter—drifted past the viewport, then the Jolly Man entered a controlled-access area and had to slow as inbound vessels were herded into narrow approach bands. Above and below these bands, dozens of New Republic frigates were lacing the darkness with rocket fire as they set a shell of
orbiting space mines.

  As the traffic flow coagulated, Han and the three Barabels—crouched on the edges of their seats rasping in awe at Coruscant’s scintillating brightness—kept a close watch. If Shesh’s assassins were going to take the bait, this would be the logical place to stage an accident, but the Sureshot—flying under the Falcon alias Shadow Bird—passed through the mine shell unmolested. A few minutes later, crescents of sunlight started to reflect off the bottoms of orbital gun platforms. The traffic began to disperse as vessels fanned out toward their docking facilities.

  The Sureshot and Jolly Man descended into low orbit. The Sureshot began to drift across Han’s viewport as it turned toward the Eastport Docking Facility, where the Solos kept a berth under an assumed name.

  Finally, a collision alarm sounded from Izal Waz’s slave controls.

  “Izal?” Han asked. He kept his gaze fixed out the viewport, but could see nothing moving toward the Sureshot. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Something small.” Izal punched a button to activate the Sureshot’s distress alarm, and the electronic tones of an allchannels emergency beacon drifted down from the bridge speakers. “I think it came from—”

  The Sureshot became an orange ball, hurling oddly shaped silhouettes and still-glowing drive nacelles in all directions.

  Even the Barabels gasped, and the comm channels erupted into inquiries and exclamations. Han turned toward Izal Waz and found the Arcona pushed back from his station, wiping the bubbles from his eyes.

  “A rescue ship,” Izal said. “It came underneath and ejected something.”

  A wedge of broken sensor dish glanced off the particle shields outside Han’s viewport, drawing an involuntary recoil—and a chorus of sissing from the Barabels.

  “Very funny,” Han said. “I’ll bet you guys wouldn’t flinch in a meteor storm.”

  More debris began bouncing off the Jolly Man’s shields, and the freighter started to slow. The captain patched a comm channel through the intercom.

  “… mine spill,” an official voice was saying. “Cut speed to dead stop, and we’ll tractor you out. Repeat, dead stop.”

  “In a Sarlacc’s eye,” Leia scoffed. She turned to Han. “Could they have seen through our decoy?”

  Han shook his head. “The mine would’ve hit us,” he said. “They’re just trying to figure the Jolly Man. They might have been watching for a while, or maybe they picked up some of Izal’s signal traffic.”

  “What do you think?” the Jolly Man’s captain asked over the intercom. “Should I call in our backup?”

  “No, we don’t want Viqi to know her assassins failed.” Leia looked over at Han, then added, “We can still pull this off.”

  Han raised his brow, then rose and, waving Leia toward the back of the ship, told the captain, “Just keep your launching bay in the Jolly’s sensor shadow.”

  The Barabels’ slit pupils widened to diamonds, and Izal Waz gasped, “You two are getting out here?”

  In the Jolly Man’s makeshift docking bay, the freighter’s normal complement of primitive starfighters had been replaced by two dozen twin-pod cloud cars. Long ago converted for civilian tours on the Cinnabar Moon, they were a cargo far less likely to draw unwanted attention from Coruscant customs. Han opened the canopy of the vehicle he would fly. The backseat had already been removed, so Tesar used the Force to deposit Leia—chair and all—in the passenger compartment facing aft.

  C-3PO came clunking into the hold. “Captain Solo, Mistress Leia, wait! You’re forgetting me!”

  “Sorry, Threepio,” Leia said. “You’ll have to stay with Izal and the Barabels until they can send you home.”

  “Stay?” C-3PO regarded the Barabels for a moment, then asked, “Are you quite sure there’s no room?”

  “You’re a little large for the trunk,” Han said.

  He floated the cloud car out into the launching bay and shut down all non-life-support systems to lower their sensor profile. Then, with Izal and the Barabels waving good-bye through the observation port, he and Leia watched nervously as the outer hatch opened.

  The cloud car lurched sharply as one of the Jedi used the Force to launch it from the bay. There was just enough time to be overwhelmed by the immensity of space compared to the tiny cockpit—and to wonder how much more vast the darkness must have seemed to Jaina when she went EV at Kalarba—before one of the Barabels reached out again. The cloud car began to tumble like an ordinary piece of space flotsam.

  “Oh—nice touch,” Leia said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Fighting to keep his gaze fixed on the Jolly Man—and his own stomach down—Han alternated between trying not to watch Coruscant’s sparkling surface slide by and trying not to notice the stars swirling past in ever-widening spirals. Tails of ion efflux appeared and disappeared at random. Once, the tiny halo of an approaching vessel swelled into the backlit silhouette of a New Republic frigate. It vanished beneath the floor of the spinning cloud car and reappeared an instant later, less than a kilometer overhead and veering sharply away.

  At last, the Jolly Man’s blocky silhouette disappeared over Coruscant’s horizon. Han waited a few more minutes, then fired the attitude thrusters to stabilize their tumble. Shaken by their close call with the frigate—and all too aware that being bounced off a particle shield would demolish their little craft—he activated the transponder next, and then the navigation systems.

  It was at about that time Leia asked, “Why do I doubt those rescue launches are coming to help?”

  Not waiting for the traffic display to come on-line, Han pushed their nose down and fired the cloud car’s little ion drive.

  They streaked out of orbit like a meteor and began to buck and burn in the thickening atmosphere. Finally, he had time to glance at the jiggling screen. A pair of rescue launch symbols sat almost atop their own. Farther away, the Jolly Man was turning away from Coruscant, a quartet of Cinnabar Moon cloud cars rushing back to its launching bay. Behind them tumbled the blinking codes of nearly a dozen damaged rescue launches. The rescue ship itself was nowhere to be seen.

  Han opened a private channel to the Jolly Man. “You guys okay back there?”

  “Of course,” sissed a Barabel—Han thought it was Bela. “But one of those spilled mines changed course and struck the rescue ship, and the debris field has been very hard on her launchez. Only two escaped.”

  “No need to worry about those,” Leia said. “We have them in sight. Have a safe journey home.”

  “We will,” Izal Waz said. “We’re clear of danger now. May the … well, you know.”

  “We do, and the same to you,” Leia said. “Thank you again, and send C-3PO back when you get a chance.”

  Han continued to accelerate until the hull temperature warning light came on—then went faster. The first towers appeared far below, their spires jutting through the clouds like spikes through a bed. The rescue launches began to drift back. Han thought they might be losing nerve—until they brought their tractor beams on-line. He began to juke and jink like a fighter pilot.

  The voice of a startled approach-control officer came over the comm speaker. “Cinnabar Moon cloud car five-three, what is the nature of your damage?”

  “Damage?” Han said.

  “From the mine spill,” Leia whispered over the seat. “He thinks we were hit.”

  “Uh, no damage,” Han commed. “We’re fine.”

  “Then slow down!”

  Han checked the traffic display. “Negative, Control.”

  There was a puzzled silence, then a disbelieving supervisor growled, “Negative?”

  “This is an emergency,” Han said. “My wife is, uh, having a baby.”

  “Whaaaaat?” Leia managed to modulate her startled outburst into something resembling a scream. “It’s coming!”

  “We can confirm that.” The voice was so gravelly it might have been human or Aqualish. “We been escortin’ ’em.”

  “Very well, cloud car,” the supervis
or said. “We’ll clear a direct lane to Lamoramora Medcenter. Please follow the beacon on your traffic display … and slow down. You have the time to arrive in one piece.”

  “Like you’d know!” Leia snapped, playing her role. “Ronto brain!”

  A deep chuckle came over the channel. A winking safety beacon flashed past as they reached the towertops and dived into the clouds. Han shifted to instrument-flying and found himself plummeting through a canyon of display lines. A blue bar illuminated the route to Lamoramora, but the hoverlane was too narrow for maneuvering. Han swung into a broader skylane and circled an ancient cylindrical tower he could see only on his screen.

  “Not going to lose them that way,” Leia reported. “If I can see them, they can see us.”

  “You can see them in this?” Han did not dare glance up from his instruments, but he suspected he could not have seen five meters beyond the cloud car’s nose. “How close are they?”

  “Close.” Leia’s voice assumed the eerie calm that meant things were really bad. “Close enough to—”

  Lines of blaster bolts started to flash past.

  Control’s angry voice squawked over the comm channel. Han slapped the unit off, then dropped out of the clouds through a crowded hoverlane, tipped the cloud car on its side, and ducked around a corner into oncoming traffic. Hovercars went everywhere. Han picked his way up to an emergency access level.

  “Are the launches still back—”

  The crackle of melting canopy told him they were.

  “You all right?”

  “Define all right.” Leia had to yell to make herself heard over the rush of air. “I’m staring down the barrels of two blaster rifles, and I’ve got nothing but spit to fight back with.”