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* * *

The antenna, not visible until Han used his macrobinoculars, was already spinning by the time they reached the cavern entrance. As he watched, a piece of machinery the size of a small refueling station shivered, tore itself off the cavern wall, trailing cables and a field of debris, and rolled across the fungus forest, finally fetching up, deformed, against the antenna.

The antenna was not slowed by the gigantic apparatus now obscuring it. The thing kept spinning, the huge machine spinning atop it. A moment later, when Han imagined that the antenna was pointing toward the cavern mouth, he lurched forward, pulled by his backpack and metal gear. The pull wasn't strong enough to drag him back into the cavern, but it was exerting considerable force.

Then the sensation passed as the antenna kept turning. “Got any ideas, lady?”

“Yes.” Leia shucked her backpack. From within it, she drew out a small holocam, one that Lando had provided them. “Got any strapper tape in your bag?”

“Leia, you're joking.”

She shook her head. “I'm going to set it to record and transmit. If we can get any visual images from this to take back to the surface, it might help persuade Lando what's going on down here.”

Han set his pack down and began rummaging through it. “What is going on down here?”

“Something caused the complex—and Han, the complex is planetwide—to end its sensor operations. Systematically, caverns have been self-destructing. These explosions are tests, sort of proofs of concept, making sure that the ancient program is still achievable.”

“You got all that from kissing a glowing ball of light?”

She glared but nodded. “Because I asked direct, specific questions this time, I think. And because I'd gotten better at communicating with them through practice. Anyway, there are going to be a few more caverns blowing up as the tests come to an end. Then they'll blow all the remaining caverns in a sequence that will crack the world into pieces.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“Han, Kessel has less than a week to live.”

* * *

Leia got the holocam strapped into place on the stone wall, oriented more or less toward the center of the cavern and set to maximum zoom. She set it to broadcast. Han confirmed that he was receiving its signal on the holocam in his own bag.

Then they ran, their great bounding, low-gravity steps carrying them rapidly away from the source of the explosion to come.

“Got any idea how to get out of here?” Han asked between breaths.

Leia nodded. “Sensor leads up to the surface. Shafts concealed topside, but I know what to look for down here. If we survive.”

They passed the mound of rocks and then the wreckage of their speeder.

Han suddenly felt warmth on his back. He saw the tunnel walls all around and ahead of him illuminated, the shadow of the rock mound cleaving the light into two halves. He grabbed Leia's hand and hauled her back, crashing with her to the stone floor just in front of the speeder.

A thunder like he had never known, and a howling wind driving stone and metal roared past, rocking the wrecked vehicle.

Allana awoke, frightened out of a dream she couldn't remember. She pulled her covers tighter around her and looked out the viewport. It showed only the sky above Kessel: a glittering starfield, a sliver of a moon, an empty patch where the Maw was.

R2-D2, at the foot of her bed, offered a questioning tweetle. She wasn't sure exactly what he said, but she had a sense of it. “I don't know,” she said. “But it isn't good.”

Three minutes later, after she lay down and tried to go back to sleep, the groundquake hit.

At first it was just a low rumbling and a sense of dread. She distinctly heard C-3PO say “Oh, dear” from an adjoining room.

Then there were crashes from throughout the building as items fell off shelves and furniture toppled. The walls shook; dust filtered down from the tiles overhead. Allana drew the covers over her head and clamped her hands over her ears, willing it all to go away. She desperately