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The Falcon's comm board was alive with Coruscant Security and traffic monitors warning Han to return to designated ship traffic lanes or be subject to arrest. He growled and switched the thing to silent mode. “They found him?”

“They found him. He's in an X-wing with a hole in the cockpit.”

“Armed?”

“Fifty–fifty chance. It was in the Senate Building, so it's either a fully functional security vehicle or some Senator's unarmed memories-of-youth vehicle. I'm hoping for the second option.”

“Me, too.”

“Come to two-five-nine.”

“Nah.” Han put the Falcon into a dive. His stomach fluttered, and the sensor screen filled up with tiny objects getting larger—smallvehicle traffic at and below building-top level. Flashing down at terrifying and illegal speed, he twitched the controls right and left, nimbly dodging the much smaller civilian vehicles.

“Han, what do you think—”

Then he was fully among them, streams of traffic above as well as below. He pulled out of his dive two hundred meters below the average height of the buildings.

“—you're doing?”

“This way, we're off the major sensor boards. Only vehicles with line of sight on us will complain.”

“I understand that. I mean, why not turn to two-five-nine?”

“His course changes are just to jerk us around, to confuse us. I know where he's going.”

“Where?”

“The spaceport, right at the edge of the government district. He stole a starfighter; that means he wants to make space. It's damaged, so he can't. He needs another one. Right?”

“Right.”

“When it comes to piloting and pilots, I'm all-knowing.”

Leia put an artificial sweetness into her voice. “I'll never argue with you again.”

Han snorted and increased velocity. A Coruscant Security speeder following in his wake dropped back, left behind as though it were suddenly standing still.

Luke and Ben, in Ben's nimble red airspeeder, received the transmission with Han's guess about the spaceport.

Luke, at the controls, shook his head, not pleased. The spaceport, comparatively flat and built at a much lower altitude than the surrounding residential, business, and government zones, was not, as most supposed, actually situated at bedrock level. Below it were many levels of machinery, repair hangars, Empire-era emergency bunkers, spaceport employee facilities, and repair accesses.

If Han was right and Valin was headed that way, even if he was unsuccessful at stealing another spaceworthy vehicle he might escape into those subterranean regions, making it hard or impossible to find him before he detected his tracking device and destroyed it.

Their speeder emerged from the skytowers and was abruptly out over the flatter region surrounding the spaceport. It was mostly given over to speeder parking, though it had decorative elements, including tree-spotted grassy regions and a small artificial lake.

And sensor stations. Almost immediately, the speeder's comm board began blaring with instructions for them to turn back, to stay away from restricted airspace.

“Tell them who we are.” Luke had to raise his voice to a shout to be heard.

“I bet it doesn't work. Who's on the news as a criminal suspect? You are.”

“Do it anyway.” Luke put the speeder into a holding pattern, keeping close to the ring of skytowers, not approaching the port itself. The authorities might well decide to shoot down a suspicious speeder—piloted by a suspected criminal or not—heading straight toward an invaluable government and civilian transportation resource. Sabotage and terror attacks had taken place as recently as the war, two years earlier.

Ben looked up from the comm board, startled. “We're not the only ones.”

“What?” Luke scanned the airspace above the spaceport.

There were a lot of small vehicles there now, most of them airspeeders of one size or another. Some were bigger business vehicles, many with lettering and symbols on the sides.

From the utility compartment, Ben pulled out a pair of macro-binoculars and held them to his eyes. “That one's a press vehicle. Turret-mounted