Nor was she unarmed, though at first glance it had appeared she was. A pop-up turret hidden beneath an artfully concealed access plate on the top hull held a turbolaser. At the bow beneath the bridge was a concussion missile port hidden behind a false dish in a sensor array. And the yacht did have shields, though the shield generator, appearing to he an auxiliary hatch, lay folded down against the top hull when not in use and would take a few seconds to raise into position and become active.
Now, with Leia in the pilot’s seat-at Lando’s insistence, since Han was not yet fully healed-and Lando in the oversized, preposterously comfortable captain’s chair at the rear of the command cabin, the Love Commander lifted ponderously from her berth, backed on repulsorlifts away from the Falcon, and slid stern-first into vacuum.
“Where to, navigator?” Lando asked, activating his chair’s massage vibration. “Someplace interesting, I hope.”
“Should be interesting enough.” Han finished putting their course into the nav computer. “Corellia. We’re going to zip through the exclusion zone, laughing at the Alliance picket vehicles trying to blow us up. Then we’re going to drop down to the planet’s surface, determine whether Prime Minister Dur Gejjen was acting alone when he ordered the hit on Tenel Ka-which probably means beating a confession out of him-and then deciding whether to forgive him or kidnap him and his co-conspirators and bring them to justice.”
“Oh,” Lando asked. “What do we do on day two?”
Despite himself, Han snorted, amused. “We’ll figure something out.”
“Well, wake me when we get there, whatever-yourname-is.”
EMPTY SPACE
ENGINE COMPARTMENT OF THE DURACRUD
Captain Uran Lavint lay on the grimy durasteel deck, half propped up against an almost equally grimy wall, and waited to die. Her tools lay scattered on the deck, along with the deck plates she had pulled up-plates that gave Her access to the various components of Duracrud’s hyperdrive.
The only sounds to be heard were her own breathing and the distant, rhythmic noises made by the ship’s life-support system. There were no lights on in the ship except heremechanics’ glow rods magnetically clamped to offer light to the hyperdrive compartment-and on the bridge, where status lights should still be winking in their various colors.
Lavint knew it would take her a long time to die. The Duracrud would continue to provide breathable air for weeks. The stores of food and water would run out first, in a few days. She’d have plenty of time to record and transmit a few final messages. One would denounce Jacen Solo for his treachery. One would confirm that her will, on file with an advocate’s office on remote Tatooine, did accurately record her final wishes. She might even record a final speech, something to put her life into perspective.
Then she’d die of thirst, or, if she chose to end her suffering faster, she could shoot herself or step out an air lock.
But one thing she could be sure of: given the remote, untraveled nature of the spot she’d chosen for her first hyperspace jump, no cargo vessel or fast-moving courier would ever chance upon her .., and her last transmissions, traveling at the speed of light, would take eight years to reach the nearest star.
She was as alone and doomed as anyone in the universe could be.
“Delicious, isn’t it?” The voice was female, and came from outside the meager light provided by Lavint’s glow rods.
Lavint jerked upright. She grabbed for her blaster, then remembered it was with her holster belt in her cabin - she’d left it there when collecting her tools. “Who’s there?”
“Your suffering, we mean,” the voice continued. “You suffer like a child who cries herself to sleep each night, knowing that her parents will never, ever understand. How long has it been since you were that child?”
Lavint rose on shaky legs and began to edge her way back to the door out of this compartment. At the door she could turn on the overhead glow rods and see who was tormenting her.
But she almost didn’t want to turn on those lights. What if there was no one in the compartment with her? What if recognition of her fate had driven her crazy, and she was doomed to spend her last few days hearing voices?
As if reading her mind, the voice in the darkness laughed.
Lavint reached the doorway, found the light control by touch, and activated it. The overheads came on, bright, blinding her
And then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw her visitor. And she knew she was not crazy, because her accumulated experiences and neuroses would never concoct a being like the one she saw.
Her visitor was a blue Twi’lek woman of no unusual size. She was dressed in a dark traveler’s robe and black clothes. Her features were pretty, but she had obviously been the victim of catastrophe at some point in her life. Her left shoulder was lower than her right, with her left arm hanging in such a way that Lavint suspected it was nonfunctional, and her right head-tail had been severed at about the halfway point.