[Thrawn Trilogy] - 02(50)

This time the kid better be right.

The first Dreadnaught gave a flicker of pseudomotion and vanished into hyperspace, taking the transport and the Lady Luck with it. A few seconds later, the other two Dreadnaughts ceased their ion bombardment of the Star Destroyer and, through a hail of turbolaser blasts from still-operating Imperial batteries, made their own escape.

And Luke was alone. Except, of course, for the squadron of TIE fighters still chasing him.

From behind him came an impatient and rather worried-sounding trill. “Okay, Artoo, we’re going,” he assured the little droid. Reaching over, he pulled the hyperdrive lever; and the stars became starlines, and turned to mottled sky, and he and Artoo were safe.

Luke took a deep breath, let it out in a sigh. So that was it.

Han and Lando were gone, to wherever Sena and her mysterious Commander had taken them, and there really wasn’t any way for him to track them down. Until they surfaced again and got in touch with him, he was out of the mission.

But perhaps that was for the best.

There was another warble from behind, a questioning one this time. “No, we’re not going back to Coruscant, Artoo,” he told the droid, an echo of d?j? view tugging at him. “We’re going to a little place called Jomark. To see a Jedi Master.”





Chapter 9


The little fast-attack patrol ship had dropped out of hyperspace and closed to within a hundred kilometers of the Falcon before the ship’s sensors even noticed its presence. By the time Leia got to the cockpit, the pilot had already made contact.

“Is that you, Khabarakh?” she called, slipping into the copilot’s seat beside Chewbacca.

“Yes, Lady Vader,” the Noghri’s gravelly, catlike voice mewed. “I have come alone, as I promised. Are you also alone?”

“My companion Chewbacca is with me as pilot,” she said. “As is a protocol droid. I would like to bring the droid along to help with translation, if I may. Chewbacca, as we agreed, will stay here.”

The Wookiee turned to her with a growl. “No,” she said firmly, remembering just in time to mute the transmitter. “I’m sorry, but that was the promise I made to Khabarakh. You’ll stay here on the Falcon and that’s an order.”

Chewbacca growled again, more insistently this time : and with a sudden prickly sensation on the back of her neck, Leia became acutely aware of something she hadn’t really thought about for years. Namely, that the Wookiee was quite capable of ignoring pretty much any order he chose to.

“I have to go alone, Chewie,” she said in a low voice. Force of will wasn’t going to work here; she was going to have to go for logic and reason. “Don’t you understand? That was the arrangement.

Chewbacca rumbled. “No,” Leia shook her head. “My safety isn’t a matter of strength anymore. My only chance is to convince the Noghri that I can be trusted. That when I make promises I keep them.”

“The droid will pose no problem,” Khabarakh decided. “I will bring my ship alongside for docking.”

Leia switched the transmitter back on. “Fine,” she said. “I also have one case of clothing and personal items to bring along, if I may.

Plus a sensor/analyzer package, to test the air and soil for anything that might be dangerous to me.”

“The air and soil where we shall be is safe.”

“I believe you,” Leia said. “But I am not responsible only for my own safety. I carry within me two new lives, and I must protect them.”

The comm speaker hissed. “Heirs of the Lord Vader?”

Leia hesitated; but genetically, if not philosophically, it was true enough. “Yes.

Another hiss. “You may bring what you wish,” he said. “I must, be allowed to scan them, though. Do you bring weapons?”

“I have my lightsaber,” Leia said. “Are there any animals on your world dangerous enough for me to need a blaster?”

“Not anymore,” Khabarakh said, his voice grim. “Your lightsaber, too, will be acceptable.”

Chewbacca snarled something quietly vicious, his wickedly curved climbing claws sliding involuntarily in and out of their fingertip sheaths. He was, Leia realized abruptly, on the edge of losing control : and perhaps of taking matters into those huge hands of his-

“What is the problem?” Khabarakh demanded.

Leia’s stomach tightened. Honesty, she reminded herself. “My pilot doesn’t like the idea of me going off alone with you,” she conceded. “He has a-well, you wouldn’t understand.”

“He is under a life debt to you?”

Leia blinked at the speaker. She hadn’t expected Khabarakh to have ever heard of the Wookiee life debt, much less know anything about it. “Yes,” she said. “The original life debt was to my husband, Han Solo. During the war Chewie extended it to include my brother and me.”