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She couldn’t react fast enough. Seeing the down-sweeping arc of the sharp claws and the blinding speed with which the wampa charged, Luke yelled, “No!” and cut sideways with his lightsaber.

Putting all the Force behind his swing, Luke cleaved the one-armed snow creature in half.

The dead monster continued to growl and gurgle as it lay smoking on the threshold of the shield door. “I thought I had done that a long time ago,” Luke whispered.

More wampas surged from the tunnels below. Outside in the night snow creatures stood up from the outcrops, no longer bothering to hide.

“Don’t just stand there,” Callista said, shoving Luke as he stared at the dead one-armed creature. “Run!”

The two sprinted across the hard-packed snow. The cold slashed like razors at their lungs as they gasped for breath, already exhausted from the battle.

The wreckage of the poachers’ ship looked ominous in the watery light, but their own space yacht shone like their only hope. As the wampas pursued, leaping across the snow-swept rocks, Luke and Callista ran with their last surge of strength.

Reaching the ship, Luke hammered at the door controls. Callista stood behind him, her lightsaber glowing. The door slid open, and Luke pulled her inside, then sealed the door again.

He ran to the pilot compartment and stared at the controls, stifling the sickening despair that swept over him. The controls were smashed. The navicomputer gone. The comm system ripped out. The wampas hadn’t ruined the engines, though the cables for thrust control had been torn free.

He and Callista set to work, removing dented or slashed panels and trying to cross-wire anything, just to get them lifted off.

Outside, the wampas began to batter the hull of the space yacht with sharp rocks. If they breached the hull, Luke knew he and Callista could never leave the atmosphere of Hoth. Callista hunched beside him, working on a different panel. She sorted wires, traced connections, moving with a frantic, efficient energy that wasted not a second. “Try this,” she said, and pulled out an alternative power source, which he jacked into the thruster control.

“We can ignite the engines, lift up out of here,” Luke said.

Callista agreed. “We’ll never be able to restart the engines if we land again. We have to move now, and we have to get off this planet.”

Luke triggered the firing button, and the space yacht’s engines roared to life at full power. They had no directional control. The ship lurched up off the ground—and the last thing they heard from the wampas was a long, shrieking scrape of claws against the metal hull as the ship tore away, plunging upward into the night. The icy cracked surface dwindled below them with dizzying speed. They had no maneuverability, just a blind ballistic takeoff that hurled them into the atmosphere.

Callista worked at the other controls. Luke already knew what damage the wampas had done, but her voice faltered as she gave her own assessment.

“No comm system, no navicomputer, only five percent life support.” She sighed. “Who knows where we’ll end up? We might have been better off staying down there.”

NAL HUTTA

CHAPTER 34

Though See-Threepio was miffed that Durga the Hutt had cut short the diplomatic visit so suddenly (after offering a wealth of excuses and apologies), Leia felt an oppressive weight leave her shoulders as soon as the fat slug was off the planet.

It had become clear that Durga either had no overall authority from the Hutts or no inclination to enter into a bargain with the New Republic—as Leia had suspected. Their negotiations had gone exactly nowhere, and Durga feigned ignorance every time Leia mentioned the subject of secret weapons.

“We are businessmen, not warriors,” Durga had said. “Our battles consist of under-the-table negotiations, not blasters and detonators.”

Although Han glanced at Leia with an I-told-you-so expression, she could tell that she had managed to shake Durga. The birthmarked Hutt had hoped to stall longer, and he