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Five seconds was more than he needed.

He stood up and raised his hand. High up the underside of the ship’s slant, the belly hatch fell open, spilling light in a stretching rectangle up the night-shadowed hull. One Force-powered leap carried him over the smoking boulder to Nick’s side.

“I’m all right …” Nick wheezed weakly. “Just need a minute to … catch my breath. Or maybe a week. Or two.”

Luke knotted his left fist in the front of Nick’s Shadowspawn robe, gathered the Force around them both, and leapt straight up, over the edge of the freighter’s belly ramp—which, due to the angle at which the ship was stuck, was more like a slide—and skidded down it into the Falcon’s main cargo hold.

Which was full of men and women in curiously constructed armor that looked like it had been made out of lava, nearly all of whom were pointing blaster rifles at him.

For an instant, the only sound was the rattle and snap of rifle stocks being snugged against armored shoulders; in the next instant, the only sound was the lethal hum of a green lightsaber blade held forward at guard.

“Don’t shoot,” Luke said softly. “I’ve killed too many people already today.”

“Weapons down!” The speaker was a hard-looking woman with red hair, sporting a swelling bruise around her left eye. She stood with her left thumb hooked behind her blaster belt while her right hand dangled free and loose near the butt of a slim blaster in a quick-draw rig. “It’s the Jedi! He’s here to help!”

“Yes,” Luke said. “I am the Jedi. And I hope I can help.” That was true on enough different levels to make his stomach hurt—but on the other hand, this was the second time in a row that someone had decided not to mess with him based on who they assumed he was, which was a trend he hoped to encourage. “Where’s Han?”

“Han who?” Her right hand came up, but it came up empty. “Listen, we need you—we need your help. Shadowspawn’s got my—”

“No he doesn’t,” Nick wheezed from behind Luke.

“Nick?” Her eyes sparked and her voice had gone soft and breathless, and Luke could only wonder how he’d thought she was hard-looking; when she gazed past him at Nick, she looked like a Tatooine teenager on the way to her own star-seventeen dance at the Anchorhead community center. She brushed past Luke as if he weren’t even there and threw her arms around him. “Nick! I can’t believe it!”

“Hey, kid. Did you miss me?”

“Did I miss you?” She pulled his face down to hers and planted a kiss on his lips that would have opened the eyes of a dead man.

Luke cleared his throat. “I take it you two know each other?”

“Nick—” Her eyes were still shining when she came up for air, and her cheeks were wet, too. “You’re all right? How did you escape? What are you doing running around with a Jedi?”

“All right? Mostly.” Nick rubbed at the dried blood that crusted his shaven scalp and grimaced. “The running-with-Jedi business, well, we sort of rescued each other. As for escaping … um, you have noticed that the ship we’re on is stuck nose-first in the ground in the middle of a giant pitched battle, haven’t you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, stroking his face. “We’ve got you—that’s all that matters.”

Nick lifted his own hand to tenderly touch her black eye. “Still haven’t learned to duck, huh?”

“You oughta see the other—uh, guy.” She grinned at him. “Now all we have to do is find a place to hole up until the flares subside, and we can shake this rockball’s dust off our boots forever.”

“Um …” Luke said quietly. “No.”

She looked at him. “What?”

“We’re going back for Han.”

“Again: Han who?”

“Don’t.” Luke nodded generally around at the scorch marks and blaster scars that marred the hold’s interior walls, floor, and ceiling. “Are you going to tell me this is all from a slight weapons malfunction?”

Nick turned. “She’s not a pirate.”

“Is there another word for it?”

“Hey, this tub was abandoned when we found it—” the woman said.

“Try to remember who you’re lying to.” Luke sighed. “I know you didn’t kill them.