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Leia led them from the alley and along the sidewalk in the direction of traffic, but she walked backward, concentrating on the pilot of that garbage loader. “Nice time for a nap,” she whispered. “Good place for a nap.”

Lando ran from the alley mouth, neither leg apparently causing him distress; he carried his cane tucked under his left arm, military-academy-style. “We have maybe fifteen seconds,” he said. Then he gave Leia a curious look and turned to stare at the object of her interest.

The trash loader pulled over until it was mostly in the traffic lane but also fully covering the sidewalk, and came down to a landing directly in front of the alley mouth. The pilot, illuminated by blue cockpit lighting, was a jowly middle-aged man; he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.

“Kill the engines,” Leia said, and sagged just a bit; the effort to impose her will on someone at range, without benefit of the target being able to see her eyes or hear her voice, had taken a toll on her.

Han and Lando obliged by aiming their blasters at the front face of the garbage loader’s underside and firing four or five times each into it. The blasterfire immediately awoke the pilot, and Han saw the man seize the controls and try to lift off, but it was too late: the multiton vehicle was dead, firmly situated flush with the alley mouth. Now Han could hear curses and hammering from where the loader blocked the alley—the CorSec agents had reached the obstacle.

“Time to grab a speeder and run for it,” Lando said.

Teppler shook his head. “I’ll be less conspicuous on foot and on my own. Good luck.” He turned and dashed away along the sidewalk.

chapter eight

ELMAS PRIVATE SPACEPORT, CORONET, CORELLIA RENTAL BAY 601208

“Dad, something’s happening outside.”

Instantly awake, still dressed in a jumpsuit not much improved by having been worked in for a day, Wedge rolled out of his cot and joined his daughter at the hangar’s side viewport. The viewport was mostly covered in black sheeting, in which Myri and Iella had cut strategic holes for viewing.

The interior of the hangar was in darkness, so it took his eyes no time to adjust. Across the access way between rows of rental hangars, three people were making a hurried approach. They stopped well short of Wedge’s hangar and clustered around a personnel door two hangars down.

“Not our problem,” Wedge said, rubbing his eyes. He’d gotten to sleep only an hour or two earlier, after a long session of performing vehicle repairs and maintenance. Myri had been right to awaken him, but he was anxious to get back to sleep.

“I think it is.” The voice was Corran’s, from just behind Wedge, and Wedge started.

He turned to offer Corran a mock glare. “Ex-CorSec and Jedi. Makes you twice as sneaky. What makes you think it’s a problem? You can’t even see out there.”

“But I can feel.” Corran gestured toward the distant arrivals. “One of them is Leia Solo.”

Wedge whipped around and put his eye to the peephole again. The three people had disappeared, presumably having gone through the door. “You’re sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“What’s all the noise?” Stumbling down the boarding ramp of the Pulsar Skate, her Baudo-class yacht, covering a yawn and half smothering her words with one hand, was Mirax Horn, Corran’s wife and Myri’s namesake. Wedge had known her for decades; she was the daughter of Booster Terrik, Wedge’s mentor in the smuggling trade back in the days before Wedge joined the Rebel Alliance. Round-faced, with black hair cut in a short, practical style, she retained much of the fresh-faced, blue-eyed beauty that had characterized her when she and Wedge were both teenagers.

“Leia’s two doors down, with two strange men,” Wedge said.

“How do you know they’re two strange men?” Mirax asked. “It might be Han and Luke.”

“Han and Luke are two strange men.” Wedge looked around the people assembled before him. Only Iella was still horizontal; on her cot beneath the S-foil of Wedge’s X-wing, she had pulled her pillow