[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(145)

Lando felt his mouth drop open. But he looked at his friend, and his objections died unsaid. Han’s face was set into tight lines, his eyes smoldering with anger and frustration. He knew what this meant, all right. Probably better than Lando did.

The escape pod bobbed on the surface of the sea, surrounded by a hundred other pods and floating bits of reef. Through the tiny porthole Han watched as, in the distance, the last of the Imperial assault shuttles lifted from the Coral Vanda and headed back to space. “That’s it, then?” Lando ventured from the seat behind him.

“That’s it,” Han said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. “They’ll probably start picking up the pods soon.”

“We did all we could, Han,” Lando pointed out quietly. “And it could have been worse. They could have blown the Coral Vanda out of the water-it might have been days before anyone came to get us then.”

Which would have given the Empire that much more of a head start. “Oh, yeah, great,” Han said sourly. “We’re really on top of things.”

“What else could we have done?” Lando persisted. “Scuttled the ship to keep them from getting him-never mind that we’d have killed several hundred people in the process? Or maybe just gotten ourselves killed fighting three assault shuttles’ worth of stormtroopers? At least this way Coruscant has a chance to get ready before ships from the Dark Force start showing up in battle.”

Lando was trying-you had to give him that. But Han wasn’t ready to be cheered up yet. “How do you get ready to get hit by two hundred Dreadnaughts?” he growled. “We’re stretched to the limit as it is.”

“Come on, Han,” Lando said, his voice starting to sound a little irritated. “Even if the ships are in mint condition and ready to fly, they’re still going to need two thousand crewers apiece to man them. It’ll be years before the Imperials can scrape that many recruits together and teach them how to fly the things.”

“Except that the Empire already had a call out for new ships,” Han reminded him. “Means they already have a bunch of recruits ready to go.”

“I doubt they have four hundred thousand of them,” Lando countered. “Come on, try looking on the bright side for once.

“There’s not much bright side here to look at.” Han shook his head.

“Sure there is,” Lando insisted. “Thanks to your quick action, the New Republic still has a fighting chance.”

Han frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“You saved my life, remember? Shot those goons of Ferrier’s off my back.”

“Yeah, I remember. What does that have to do with the New Republic’s chances?”

“Han!” Lando said, looking scandalized. “You know perfectly well how fast the New Republic would fall apart without me around.”

Han tried real hard, but he couldn’t quite strangle off a smile on that one. He compromised, letting it come out twisted. “All right, I give up,” he sighed. “If I stop grousing, will you shut up?”

“Deal,” Lando nodded.

Han turned back to the porthole, the smile fading away. Lando could talk all he wanted; but the loss of the Katana fleet would be a first magnitude disaster, and they both knew it. Somehow, they had to stop the Empire from getting to those ships.

Somehow.





Chapter 26


Mon Mothma shook her head in wonderment. “The Katana fleet,” she breathed. “After all these years. It’s incredible.”

“Some might even put it more strongly than that,” Fey’lya added coolly, his fur rippling as he gazed hard at Karrde’s impassive face. He’d been doing a lot of that throughout the hastily called meeting, Leia had noticed: gazing hard at Karrde, at Luke, at Leia herself. Even Mon Mothma hadn’t been left out. “Some might, in fact, have severe doubts that what you’re telling us is true at all.”

Beside Karrde, Luke shifted in his seat, and Leia could sense his efforts to control his annoyance with the Bothan. But Karrde merely cocked an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting that I’m lying to you?”

“What, a smuggler lie?” Fey’lya countered. “What a thought.”

“He’s not lying,” Han insisted, an edge to his voice. “The fleet’s been found. I saw some of the ships.”

“Perhaps,” Fey’lya said, dropping his eyes to the polished surface of the table. Of all those at the meeting, Han had so far been the only one to escape Fey’lya’s posturing and his glare. For some reason, the Bothan seemed reluctant to even look at him. “Perhaps not. There are more Dreadnaught cruisers in the galaxy than just the Katana fleet.”