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“Grandma, I’ve got it,” Allana said, waving them toward the back of the flight deck. “Now go save Uncle Luke and Ben!”

Han took Leia’s hand and led her down the corridor. “Come on, Grandma. Can’t you tell when we’re not needed?”

* * *

Outside, they found Tarth waiting with two airspeeders—one a lumbering yellow hauler with a large flatbed cargo area in back, and one that must have been a sporty red model when it had been first manufactured, about the time Han was being born, both open-topped—and four men and women.

Ignoring Zekk and his Batag Needle Ship, Han and Leia stepped away from the Falcon to greet them. Seeing an almost familiar face, Han approached the man, who was young, clean-shaven, brown-haired, dressed in dark shorts and a vest of hard-wearing green cloth. The vest had many pockets and attachment points and was festooned with tools, knives, and items of electronic gear; his knee-high boots were a hardy brown leather, and he wore matching belt and wrist braces.

Han gave him a curious look. “I know you, don’t I?”

The man extended a hand. “You have a good memory for faces. I was only a kid then.” His accent was Coruscanti. “Dyon Stadd. We met during the Yuuzhan Vong War. I was a Jedi candidate.”

Han glanced over the man’s gear but saw no lightsaber. “Candidate?”

Dyon offered a grin with some self-deprecation in it. “I didn’t quite have what it took to be a Jedi. More a Force-sensitive than a Force-user. But I took firsts in xenopology and language studies on Coruscant. Here, I help with trade negotiations between merchants and the Dathomiri clans.”

Leia shook his hand. “And you know how to dress for the climate.”

Dyon flexed a bare arm, showing well-defined biceps. “That, and the Dathomiri ladies like to see skin. Helps with negotiations.”

Han snorted. “Introduce us around, will you?”

The smallest member of the assembly, smaller even than Leia, was a Dathomiri woman named Sha’natrac Tsu, nicknamed Tribeless Sha. Dark-haired and unsmiling, built lean as if she were artificially constructed of cables and bone under skin, she had on interestingly vented trousers and a tunic of imported rust-colored ironcloth; in addition to an authentic Dathomiri knife with a hilt made of carved tusk, she wore a blaster pistol at her hip and went barefoot.

The second male, introduced as Carrack, was huge, two meters or more in height, muscled as if an exercise regimen were his sole intellectual pursuit. He was fair-skinned and fair-haired, but his face was all Han or Leia could see of him; he wore a full set of what looked like repurposed Imperial stormtrooper armor, painted in a green-and-black camouflage pattern, as were his oversized blaster rifle and the blaster pistols he carried on a baldric across his chest. His armor gave off the quiet but distinctive whine of a built-in cooling system.

“I take it you’re the valet,” Han said.

Carrack grinned. When he answered, he was soft-spoken. “The Witches respect shows of strength.” He shrugged. “Mostly, I blow stuff up.”

The last of Tarth’s finds was another woman. Her beauty and the distinctive delicacy of her features proclaimed her a Hapan, and she wore garments that only a Hapan might have considered appropriate for Dathomir: a red mini dress, gold sandals and accessories nearly matching the color of her hair, and a holstered blaster pistol plated in reflective metal so shiny that it dazzled. Her accent, though, was pure backcountry Corellian: “Yliri Consta. I’m your lead driver.”

Han snorted. “I’m my lead driver.” Then he frowned. “You look a lot like …” He struggled for a moment for the name, then he had it. “Sarita Consta, the holodrama star.”

“My older sister. I used to do stunt work for her. When she switched to comedy, working for her became just too boring.”

Leia nodded, sympathetic. “I felt the same way when Han switched to comedy.”

Han glowered at her. “Hey.”

Tarth cleared his throat. “The last of your supplies will be here in a few minutes. You have clearance for both speeders to leave the spaceport district.”

“That’ll give