THE HUTT GAMBI(31)

Holding his breath, Han sent the beat-up little freighter skittering from side to side, not slacking off on their speed.

Kid sat back in the pilot’s seat and just watched. Only once did he interfere, and that was to increase the ship’s acceleration a notch, to avoid a smaller asteroid that was orbiting a larger one. The bigger asteroid had hidden its small companion. The Starfire zipped by so close that the deflector shields activated and the ship shuddered in protest.

But they avoided the impact.

Han bit his lip when the chunk of rock, half the size of the ship, tumbled away behind him. “Sorry, Kid. I should’ve seen it.”

“No way you could’ye seen it, Solo,” the older man said. “I just been flying into and out of the Run for so many years that I practically got all these rocks memorized. I knew that one had a baby taggin’ behind, ‘cause I’ve seen it before.”

When they finally emerged into clear space, Han felt as though he’d been piloting for a day instead of half an hour. He wanted to slump back into his seat, but a glance at Kid DXo’ln showed Kid, head tilted back, eyes closed, apparently asleep.

Han looked at Chewie, shrugged, and said, “Take over a second while I plot us a course to Kessel, pal.”

Minutes later Han retrieved the final coordinates from the navicomputer, and then finalized his course. He looked over at Kid DXo’ln. One watery blue eye opened. “Punch it, Solo,” the raspy voice told him. Han grinned. “Sure.”

Moments later the bright pinpoints of realspace elongated before them, and the Starfire shot down a seeming tunnel of starlines. Han realized he was grinning like a kid. It had been a long time since he’d done any real piloting that wasn’t just drills.

When he’d been in the Navy, he’d served shifts as a helmsman on the big Imperial ships, but his favorite duty had been flying TIE fighters.

Small, nimble, and deadly, they required pinpoint control to maneuver and fire, but they had no shielding at all, which made them very vulnerable. Few TIE pilots lived to grow old.

When the Starfire emerged into realspace, Han took one look at the Maw and drew a quick breath. Kid DXo’ln, who had finally awakened from his nap, stretched and grinned. “Impressive, ain’t it, Solo?”

“I’ll say,” Han muttered.

The Maw stretched before them, a collection of black holes that were sucking the life from the nearby stars. Long streamers of gas threaded their way into the monstrous whirlpools of gas and dust that marked the location of the black holes. The holes themselves were invisible, of course. The reason they were called “black” holes was that their gravity was so strong that nothing, not even light, could escape their pull.

But the gas and dust marked their location. There were quite a few of them.

So far as Han knew, the Maw was unique in the galaxy.

“Kessel’s right on the edge, Solo,” Kid said. “Here, I’ll show you the coordinates on the screen.”

Han studied readouts on the lumpy, misshapen little planet that orbited a small, fierce, blue-white star. Kessel was orbited by its small, solitary moon. “The planet isn’t even spherical,” he muttered. “It doesn’t mass enough to hold onto an atmosphere.”

“Yeah, I know. You gotta wear a breath mask there, but they keep a couple of atmosphere-generating plants runnin’, so we won’t have to put on vacuum gear,” Kid told him.

Han frowned down at the readouts. “I didn’t know Kessel had a moon.”

“Yeah, there’s rumors that the Imps have been scouting it, that they might actually build something there. Crazy, if you ask me.”

“There are Imperial ships around here?” Kid’s revelation worried Han.

Chewie was still an escaped slave, after all. They’d just love to recapture him.

“Yeah, I ran into a guy who works for Imp security as a snitch, and he told me the Imps are considering putting some kind of big hushhush installation right smack in the middle of the Maw,” Kid said thoughtfully.

Han stared at the whirling vortices of dust and gas that marked the black holes and shook his head. “A base? In there? They’re crazy, all right!”

Kid shrugged. “There’s more space than you’d guess between those black holes. Some smugglers say that you can actually shorten your Kessel Run by skimming close to the Maw.”

Han frowned as he studied his readouts. “You mean make the Run in less time.”

Kid chuckled, a creaky sound. “Well, that, too. But they say that both time and space get warped, distorted so close to the Maw. So you can not only make your run faster, but actually shave off part of the distance.”