[Hand Of Thrawn] - 01(8)

“What’s going on?” Luke asked, frowning at Han and trying to read his mood. Suddenly all the earlier frustration was gone, leaving a sort of sly excitement in its place. “You know who the smuggler is?”

“He’s not a smuggler,” Han said. He found the card he was looking for and slid it into his datapad. “You got it, Chewie? Great. Punch it into the hologram pod over here.”

Chewbacca growled acknowledgment, and a more complete Iphigin schematic appeared over the table. Han peered at it, then looked down at the datapad in his hand. “Great. Okay, come here and give me a hand with this.”

What is it?” Luke asked.

“This is the ground station list and the orbit data for their Golan I Defense Platform,” Han told him, waving the datapad as Chewbacca lumbered to his side again. “Let’s see …”

For a minute the two huddled close together, peering alternately at the hologram and Han’s datapad and conversing in low tones. Luke studied the schematic, watching the color-coded freighters and other ships moving in and out and wondering what this was all about.

“Okay,” Han said at last. “That’s where they’ll come in. So all we need to do is sit somewhere in the middle of that cone and wait. Great. Get down to the Falcon and get er ready. I’ll be right there.”

Chewbacca rumbled an acknowledgment and headed out the door at a fast Wookiee trot. “Do I get to know what’s going on?” Luke asked.

“Sure,” Han said, gathering up the datacards and packing them away again. We’ve got pirates on the way.”

“Pirates?” Luke blinked. “Here?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I didn’t think pirate gangs operated this far into the Core, that’s all,” Luke said. “So the Sarkan is just a feint?”

“Yeah,” Han said, getting to his feet. “Only he doesn’t know it. It’s an old trick: you call an alert on some ship coming in sun-side, then hit a nightside target while Customs is busy half a planet away. The only tricky pan is making sure the ground and orbit defenses can’t get to you. Plus figuring out bow to fake the alert in the first place. Come on, let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we alert the Iphigini first?’ Luke asked, reaching for the comm.

“What for?” Han said. “You and Chewie and me ought to be able to handle it.”

“What, a whole pirate gang?”

“Sure, why not? The only gangs working this sector are small ones-two or three ships, tops.” Han’s lip twitched. “Actually, you probably won’t even need us.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” Luke said icily. “But I’d just as soon not take them all on myself, thank you.”

Han held up his hands. “Hey. No offense.”

“None taken.” Luke gestured to the hologram and the patrol ships weaving their net around the incoming Sarkan freighter. “And I still think we ought to call in the Iphigini.”

“We can’t,” Han said. “The pirates probably have a spotter already here. Any sign of an alert, and they’ll just call off the raid. We’d end up looking stupid, and Diamalan opinion of the New Republic would sink a little deeper. The High Council will have my hide if that happens.”

Luke sighed. “Things were a lot easier when Alliance military activity wasn’t always getting tangled up in politics.”

“Tell me about it,” Han growled. “Look, we’ve got to get going. You in or out?”

Luke shrugged. “I’m in,” he said, pulling out his comlink. “Artoo?”

***

R2-D2 didn’t like it. Not a bit. The words scrolling across the X-wing’s computer display made that very clear indeed.

“Oh, come on, Artoo,” Luke chided. “We went all the way through a war together, against the most powerful military machine the galaxy has ever seen. You’re not going to tell me you’re afraid of a couple of patched-up pirate ships, are you?”

The droid grunted indignantly. “That’s better,” Luke said approvingly. “Just keep an eye out. We’ll be fine.”

Artoo warbled again, clearly not convinced, and went silent. Luke peered out the X-wing’s canopy, trying to shake away his own collection of nagging doubts. The odd discomfort that kept surfacing in Han’s emotions-the unexplained Diamalan refusal to allow him at the negotiations-all of it just added to the strange restlessness that had been simmering and growing in him over the past few weeks.

He’d talked to Leia twice about it, hoping her insight and experience could help him bring the vague glimmerings into sharper focus. But the best she’d been able to do was suggest that it was some kind of subconscious prodding from the Force itself. Something Luke was supposed to do, she hypothesized, or perhaps something he wasn’t supposed to do.