[Legacy Of The Force] - 04(35)

The interior of the hangar was in darkness, so it took his eyes no tin1e to adjust. Across the access way between rows of rental hangars, three people were making a hurried approach. y stopped well short of Wedge’s hangar and around a personnel door two hangars down. “Not our problem,” Wedge said, rubbing his eyes. He’d gotten to sleep only an hour or two earlier, after a long session of performing vehicle repairs and maintenance. Myri had been right to awaken him, but he was anxious to get back to sleep,

“I think it is.” The voice was Corran’s, from just behind Wedge, and Wedge started.

He turned to offer Corran a mock glare. “Ex-CorSec and Jedi. Makes you twice as sneaky. What makes you think it’s a problem? You can’t even see out there.”

“But I can feel.” Corran gestured toward the distant arrivals. “One of them is Leia Solo.”

Wedge whipped around and put his eye to the peephole again. The three people had disappeared, presumably having gone through the door. “You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“What’s all the noise?” Stumbling down the boarding ramp of the Pulsar Skate, her Baudo-class yacht, covering a yawn and half smothering her words with one hand, was Mirax Horn, Corran’s wife and Myri’s namesake. Wedge had known her for decades; she was the daughter of Booster Terrik, Wedge’s mentor in the smuggling trade back in the days before Wedge joined the Rebel Alliance. Round-faced, with black hair cut in a short, practical style, she retained much of the fresh-faced, blue-eyed beauty that had characterized her when she and Wedge were both teenagers.

“Leia’s two doors down, with two strange men,” Wedge said.

“How do you know they’re two strange men?” Mirax asked. “It might be Han and Luke.”

“Han and Luke are two strange men.” Wedge looked around the people assembled before him. Only Iella was still horizontal; on her cot beneath the S-foil of Wedge’s X-wing, she had pulled her pillow over her head to muffle all the conversational noise. “In a couple of minutes, when they’ve had time to relax, we’ll send someone over.”

“Me,” Myri said. “I’m the only one of us whose face isn’t all over CorSec’s or assassins’ shoot-on-sight guides.”

Corran gave her a melancholy little smile. “It’s not going to happen, girl.”

“Uncle Corran, if you’re going to give me the same old you’re-too-young argument…”

Corran cut her off with a gesture and a shake of his head. “Listen.”

Everyone did. They could all hear the rush of thrusters and repulsorlifts. Wedge found it curious that he couldn’t identify the speeder from its engine noise.

Then he realized why. He wasn’t listening to one speeder close by, but to several farther away, their engine and thruster noises blending together and echoing off hangar walls. And the noise was getting louder, closer …

“Iella!” Wedge called.

His wife pulled the pillow from her face and looked at him, cross but alert.

“Everyone, set up for immediate evacuation.”

Iella rolled up out of her cot and began struggling into her boots. She caught Wedge’s attention, then glanced in the direction of his cot and boots.

Up the access way, from the direction Leia and her companions had come, a stream of CorSec speeders, orange-and-blue lights blinking to signal their official status, roared toward them, each coming to a stop in front of a different hangar. CorSec officers poured out of the vehicles and immediately began moving to hangar entryways. One began banging on the door into Wedge’s shelter.

Corran sighed. “Thanks, Leia.”

CORELLIA

CONTROL CABIN OF THE LOVE COMMANDER

“Power coming online in two minutes,” Leia announced.

Lando tried to keep his dissatisfaction from his face. “I hate transports with slow start-up times,” he grumbled. “If that idiot had had any sense, he’d have installed a ten-second starter.”

“If he’d had any sense, he wouldn’t have lost his yacht to you,” Han said. “Relax. We have plenty of time.”

Through the front viewports, they could all see the line of sparks appear at the hangar door as a laser cutting tool outside sheared through the locking mechanism. The door rolled open, and half a dozen CorSec agents charged in.

Just outside, making the final turn to aim at the Love Commander, was an old, though doubtless still deadly, TIE crawler. The ball-shaped cockpit, familiar from TIE fighters, was mounted between two low, rectangular sets of tank treads, and Lando could see the machine’s twin blaster cannon barrels trained squarely on Love Commander’s control cabin.