“I’m guessing something unpleasant,” Han said.
“A full strike force. Shock troopers. Five thousand regular stormtroopers. Special permission from the Emperor to clear any space lanes and supersede any standing orders or Imperial protocol.”
Han’s eyes went wide despite himself, and he covered it by laughing. Chewbacca muttered to himself and started gathering the bowls.
“Sister,” Han said, “if this is your idea of talking me into getting involved, your technique’s a little rusty. Answer was no before, and it’s about a hundred times no now.”
“This data is critical to the Empire,” Scarlet said, sitting forward, her elbows resting on the table. “Whatever Galassian found, they care about it a lot. Enough to bend rules, and they hate bending rules.”
Han chewed slowly, a smile tugging at his lips. He didn’t mind the idea of the Empire being the frightened one for once. Chewbacca chuffed, shook his head, and lumbered toward the galley.
“They’re willing to kill a lot of people to make sure no one finds out what Galassian’s up to,” Scarlet said.
“And I won’t be one of them. And more to the point, neither will you. Once you get to the fleet—”
“Once I get to the fleet, it will be too late. They staged a dummy strike on the collective’s base on Nummunr a week ago. Hunter Maas escaped, but they’ve mobilized half the long-range scouting ships in the Core. According to the data, their orders are to find him and then call in the full strike force to kill him and anybody he might have shared the data with. They’ll slag planets if they have to.”
Han shoveled the last of his sahbiye into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Scarlet watched him silently. From the pilot’s cabin, an alarm squeaked in protest and went silent.
“So,” Han said. “You’re saying that instead of doing what I agreed to do—and I’ve already done more than that—you want me to get between a massive Imperial hunting party and the poor jerk they’re about to turn into a grease spot. And you want me to do it just because they wouldn’t want me to.”
“Yes.”
“Let me tell you exactly why that’s not going to happen. First, because saving every half-wit who thinks he’s big enough to take on the Emperor isn’t my job. Second, because I’ve got an unexploded missile stuck in my ship, and I’d like to get to a nice friendly port with some bomb-disposal technicians who can help me pry it out in a reinforced dock. And third, because the answer is—”
“The Empire doesn’t know where Maas is going. I do. We can get there before him.”
“The answer is no,” he said. And then, “Hold on. You know where he’s heading and they don’t? How did you find out?”
“Chewbacca told me.”
“Chewie?”
“Well, he brought me up to speed on a lot of things. I’m the one that connected the dots.”
“I don’t know what dots you’re talking about,” Han said, and then the next words died in his throat. The coppery taste of fear filled his mouth even before he knew quite why it was there.
A small-time criminal organization looking to parlay stolen Imperial data into a seat at a much larger table. The kind of big table where they decided the future of the galaxy. If he’d been in Hunter Maas’s position, there was only one place he’d have gone: the secret conclave of rebels and rogues, criminals and freedom fighters. He’d have gone to Kiamurr and made himself into one of the Rebel Alliance’s new allies.
And so when the Imperial hammer came down, it would wipe out not just the remnants of Sendavé Shared Interest Collective, but every prospective ally the rebels could hope for. Even the ones who didn’t come would see the corpses of the ones who had.
And more to the point, Leia was there.
“Chewie?” Han said, standing up. “Where are you?”
Han went to the pilot’s cabin and started pulling up star charts, figuring the paths that could take them from the depths of nowhere that presently hid them and into Kiamurr. It wasn’t the straightest path, but if he could bend a couple degrees off it …
Chewbacca appeared in the doorway, wide arms splayed. He groaned and howled, but Han barely heard him. The jump wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t clean. But it was possible. That would have to be good enough.
“I’m warming her up for jump,” he said.
The Wookiee bared his teeth and howled again.
“It didn’t blow up last time,” Han said. “Maybe it won’t blow up this time, either. Baasen always went cheap on ordnance. That’s why he’s a bottom feeder desperate for a score and we’re the heroes of the galaxy.”
Chewbacca threw up his hands in exasperation, but Han knew him well enough to see the relief under the theatrics. Scarlet leaned in the doorway, her arms crossed. Her eyes were a little narrowed, her lips a little wide. She looked like a scientist who’d come across some particularly fascinating and amusing new specimen. Han ignored her.
“Where are we jumping to, Captain Solo? The fleet?”
He went down the readouts. The coolant leak was messing with a lot of different systems, but none of them so badly that it would keep them out of hyperspace. He thought. He hoped.
Scarlet dropped into the copilot’s seat. She looked tiny in the space that usually held Chewbacca. “Are you going to abandon Kiamurr?”
“You want my answer?”
“I do.”
“Here’s my answer,” Han said, pointing a finger at her and staring from under lowered brows. “Nobody likes a wise guy.”
HIGH IN THE ATMOSPHERE OF KIAMURR, a thousand species of birds soared on the permanent updrafts of the planet’s vast mountain ranges. Long experience had taught the creatures to avoid the ships that sloped down through the planet’s thin atmosphere. Flocks of them swirled around the path of the Millennium Falcon as it burned through the high air; black dots against white clouds like space in negative. Han leaned in over the controls, certain that the next second would leave a hundred tiny bodies crashing through the cracked screen, into the landing gear and access panels, damaging the already pounded ship a little more and messily. The birds knew better and kept out of his way.
Knifelike mountain ranges of pale stone rose through the cloud cover, veined with green where the local vegetation clung to it like ivy to a wall. The ice caps that topped the mountains were the color of the clouds, and deep valleys between the peaks dropped five, six, even ten kilometers deep. The crosswinds made navigation tricky, and the walls of stone and ice made it dangerous.