[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(121)

He told himself he was an honorable man, with an honorable cause—to contain the militarism that threatened all that had been won in the Rebellion. After a successful adventure in Farlax, Leia would be untouchable.

The Yevetha had to be warned.

And it appealed to Peramis’s vision of cosmic irony that Senator Cundertol would be the one to warn them, in his own words.

But when Peramis activated the hypercomm, he left his office so that he would not have to hear those words again.

Three hours short of reaching Intrepid, the commodore’s Fleet shuttle Tampion and its ferry flight escort abruptly dropped out of hyperspace.

They found half a dozen Yevethan ships waiting for them—the Interdictor Dreadnaught that had yanked them down, two thrustships, and three smaller vessels.

The ambush had been perfectly planned. Before the dozing recon-X pilots and startled shuttle passengers even understood what was happening, their ships were bracketed in a furious ion-cannon crossfire. The fighters were disabled almost at once, then left drifting, ignored.

The unarmed but better-shielded shuttle took more subduing but was soon dead in space, unable to maneuver or escape.

Shortly after, Tampion was moving away from its escorts on a new course, under tow alongside one of the spherical thrustships. Raging over his impotence, unable even to signal the other pilots, Plat Mallar watched the pair jump out toward Koornacht. The Cluster filled the entire sky on the starboard side of his ship, like a painting of a swarm of night sparks.

Mallar was never so sure of death as he was when the shuttle vanished.

Helpless as the fighters were, any one of the five remaining ships could have dispatched them at leisure.

Instead, the five ships gracefully arrayed themselves in a V, with the Interdictor in the lead position. Moments later they jumped away from the ambush point, their mission seemingly complete.

Why did they leave us alive? Mallar wondered.

An answer came to him almost at once, and it made him feel sick inside.

So we could tell the Fleet, tell Corus cant, what happened to the commodore. So we would know that they have him.

Han was brought before Nil Spaar not as a trophy, but as an object of curiosity.

The encounter was in private, with no one else present except for Han’s guards—two immensely strong male Yevetha who carried no weapons and seemed unlikely to need any, given how Han was bound. And the setting for the encounter was puzzling—not a throne room or arena of humiliation for the conquered, but a tile-wrapped chamber with floor gutters and valve jets mounted high on the walls. It made Han think of a shower stall, or an abattoir—and he wished he hadn’t thought of the second possibility.

As the Yevethan viceroy slowly circled his prisoner, he took particular interest in the bruises and burns Han had acquired by resisting when the soldiers boarded Tampion. Nil Spaar leaned in close to study the marks but was careful not to touch Han, even with gloved hands.

“You are the mate of Leia.”

“I guess that secret’s out,” said Han, deciding to try to take his captor’s measure. “And you’re Nil Spaar. I’ve heard a lot about you, all of it bad. You’ve moved right to the top of my least favorite people list. I had to drop Jabba the Hutt off to make room for you.

It’s only fair to tell you that my number one goal in life is to outlive everyone on the list. I was halfway there before you replaced Jabba.”

The Yevethan ruler did not seem to take any notice of Han’s goading.

“What sort of vermin are you?”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘scoundrel,’ as in ‘Corellian scoundrel,’” Han said. “I’ve also answered to ‘rascal,’ ‘pirate,’ ‘smuggler,’ ‘wretched scum,’ ‘toad-licker,’ and a few others. Not all of those are considered polite where I come from, though—so I don’t always answer politely. Just so you’ll know, ‘vermin’ probably counts as impolite.”

“You are stronger than she,” Nil Spaar said, cocking his head. “Why do you follow her? Why do you not lead?”

Han answered with a contemptuous gaze and a shake of his head. “I was gonna tell you that grabbing me was the biggest mistake you ever made,” he said.

“Now I see it’s the second biggest. You’ve misjudged Leia from the beginning. Day in and day out, she might just be the strongest person I know. And you’re gonna find that out the hard way now.”

Saying nothing, Nil Spaar retreated to the far end of the chamber, as if to leave. Then he gestured to the guards and spoke a few words in an unfamiliar language.

One guard stepped away from Han to stand against the wall. The other, the crests at his temples swelling, stepped in front of Han and swung on him with such speed that Han could not duck away.