Chewbacca shouted out a list of the systems that were complaining. The signal from the passive sensor antenna was cutting in and out. One of the freight barge clamps had come open and jammed. A power fluctuation in the acceleration compensator had the hyperdrive generator in safety shutdown. The port shield generator was overheating, probably because of the coolant leak.
Han cracked his knuckles.
“I’ve seen her worse,” he said.
Chewbacca howled, and from somewhere deep in the belly of the ship a woman’s laughter rose up with the sound of it.
Han didn’t remember falling asleep. The last thing he could recall clearly was wriggling on his elbows and knees through a crawl space almost too narrow for him, hydrospanner held in his teeth, to retune a power coupling for the third time. And then he was in his bunk, swimming up from a darkness as deep and black as space. He rolled over, yawned, and sat up slowly. His right side felt like one continuous bruise, and his back was stiff. He was still wearing the rough black of an Imperial officer, the fabric a maze of wrinkles and oil stains. He stripped the uniform off and threw it away. According to the ship’s chrono, he’d been asleep for something like fourteen standard hours, and a quick check of the general status board told him Chewie had been hard at work for most of it. Apart from the coolant leak and the occasional hiccup in the passive sensor antenna, the ship was good to go, or as good as could be expected with a missile still stuck in her backside.
Before he pulled his own clothes on, he took stock of his injuries. Black scabs around his wrist from when he’d hung over the shaft outside Scarlet Hark’s window. Purple-black bruises on his hip and shoulder where the Falcon had scooped him up. A long, angry scratch across his chest whose origin he couldn’t remember. He was as beat up as his ship. He put a hand to the decking, felt the gentle vibration of the engines.
“We made it again,” he said softly. “Real close that time.”
He waited for a long moment as if the ship might answer, and then got dressed.
In the lounge, Scarlet and Chewbacca were sitting together at the single, small table, eating from bone-colored bowls. Scarlet looked up as he stepped down into the space. Her smile was bright and sharp and pleased to see him. She wore dark pants and a pale open-necked shirt that was a little too big for her. He felt as if he’d gone three rounds with a rancor, and she looked like her months of desperation, lies, secrets, and violence had been a long vacation.
“Good morning, Captain Sleepyhead,” she said.
“Same to you,” Han replied. “Are you wearing my clothes?”
She shrugged. “Not my first choice in sartorial splendor, but I was packing pretty light this trip.”
Han turned to Chewbacca. “You gave her my clothes?”
Chewbacca gestured toward his own soft pelt and lifted his massive tawny brows.
“Fair point,” Han said.
“If it’s a problem—”
“No,” Han said. “It’s fine. It’s a good look for you.”
Scarlet pretended to preen for a moment, then went back to her food. The truth was, with her dark hair down and the tension of danger gone, Han found her considerably more attractive than when they’d been on Cioran. Her smile had settled into an expression of mild amusement, and her eyebrows arched high. The quirks and architecture of her face conspired to give her an edge of constant playful challenge. Han felt an answering smile playing at his own lips as he nodded toward the bowls.
“Any of that left?”
“We saved you some,” she said, nodding toward the counter behind him. Han reached for the third bowl. A mixture of soft green leaves and dark flecks of meat filled it almost to the halfway point. Scarlet took one of the last bites of hers.
“You made sahbiye?”
Scarlet shook her head and nodded toward Chewbacca.
“I think my friend here has a little crush on you,” Han said. “He never makes sahbiye.”
Chewbacca grunted and whined.
“I do too appreciate it. Here I am appreciating it right now,” Han said around a mouthful. He turned his attention to Scarlet. “So while we still have a missile stuck on our back, it doesn’t look like it’s about to detonate. Everything else is solid enough that we’ll be able to get you to the fleet.”
Scarlet nodded, her gaze fixed on the bottom of her bowl. “About that.”
“No.”
She looked up. Her eyes were bright with feigned innocence. “No?”
“Whatever it is, no. My job was to fly into the heart of the Empire, find you, and get back out. I already added in stealing data from a high-security intelligence installation. I’ve done plenty of impossible things. Whatever else it is you’re about to ask, the answer’s no.”
“I broke the data encryption. Galassian’s codes only got me in partway, but I know some of the security force’s habits, and it was enough. The datafile is the full record of the investigation of the data theft, but there are also some hints about what was in the data that got stolen. Galassian’s found something big. Maybe useful. Certainly dangerous. He’s already gone back out on some kind of follow-up investigation, and the Empire is scared blind that word of it is going to leak out before he’s done.”
“And I’m sure all the generals in the rebel fleet are looking forward to hearing all about it.”
“The important thing is that they found the thief.”
Han took another bite of the sahbiye, stopping to pry a bit of the meat from between his teeth with a fingernail. “Answer’s still no.”
“The man who got it works with the Sendavé Shared Interest Collective. Ever heard of them?”
“Sure. They’re small-time gunrunners out of Elkkasinn and Sunin. Mostly K’rrandin, but with some humans thrown into the mix. They amounted to something before the Hutts decided to take their toys away,” Han said. “But the information’s wrong. Sendavé Collective wouldn’t have any use for hot Imperial data, no matter what it was about. They’re strictly small fry these days.”
“That’s not how they see it,” Scarlet said. “According to Imperial intelligence, they’ve got ambitions. The thief is a human named Hunter Maas. And apparently he has plans for taking the collective to the big time. He’s trying to parlay the stolen data into a better position for the collective in general or, failing that, himself in particular. And your friends and mine at Imperial Intelligence? They don’t like the plan. You want to know what they’re going to do about it?”